Playing God

by Sarah Zettel

  Arron lifted the lid on his portable. DATA CONFIGURED AND SLOTTED INTO REPORT THREAD FORMAT, read the screen. He closed it down and put it into his backpack along with three old clean-suits to take to the outpost recycler.

  Most of the house was still asleep. Arron moved quietly past the second-floor sleeping rooms and down the central spiral staircase, which was closer to a Human's idea of a ladder than a Human's idea of stairs. It had taken a long time to get to the point where he could climb down it without going backwards and using his hands. The task had been made more difficult by the fact that the rungs had been spaced for longer legs than his.

  Outside, morning light filtered through the layers of cloud and smog, turning the eastern sky into a furnace of orange, pink, and gold. The city was hot, crowded, smelly, and strangely three-dimensional. Rather than flattening the nearby cliffs or just building on top of them, the city builders had carved them. Natural caves had been enlarged and regularized to form compartmentalized buildings with ladders on the outside linking their terraces the way the streets linked the buildings on flatter ground. Suspension bridges ran from hill to hill, and cliff to cliff, allowing what motorized traffic there was to have a path, jostling alongside pushcarts or animal-drawn wagons, the Getesaph's wide, clunking, four-wheeled pedal cars, flocks of fowl, and cattle with their herders.

  Mothers and sisters with baskets or daughters on their backs avoided the bridges. They swarmed up ladders instead, crossing roofs and climbing down into narrow, winding streets full of garbage, vendors with carts, or baskets making deliveries or hawking wares, their neighbors, and their cousins. A father, restless, engorged, and strangely graceful, flitted through the crowds.

  The vital traffic—military, public health, and anything that had to be rushed between islands—was not on the streets. That traffic drove through the network of concretelined “security” tunnels that ran even deeper than the sewer pipes.

  Arron squeezed through the crowd, saying “hello” and “the light of day looks good on you” about every three minutes to somebody who called his name. Occasionally he was able to call a name back to a recognized face.

  His notoriety had sneaked up on him. In addition to his research, he'd done lectures and talks for assorted Getesaph schools and government departments. Copies of his less formal pieces, modified for paper, got reproduced all over the Hundred Isles. He was Human and he was a man, so of course he was a curiosity, but somewhere along the line it had turned into more than that. He had to admit he enjoyed it. It wasn't every field researcher who got to have fans.

  Arron started up a broad, much-braced metal ladder that slanted over a grocery. A shortcut over three roofs that would save him a half hour of threading through crowds. He slid sideways for a mother who carried three infant daughters on her back. A fourth peeked over the rim of the linen-swaddled pouch.

  On the roof, a loose crowd gathered around a dry fountain in the northwest corner. Mothers, sisters, and daughters talked, exchanged items out of baskets, or just stood together holding hands. All the public fountains and pools were dry since the plague hit the city. They had been places for bathing, drinking, and laundry washing, and had spread disease even faster than the dirt and animals in the streets. Looking up the island's slope, Arron could see the chvintz Thur, the Dead quarter. The edges of the city had been deserted as the population shrank and huddled in on itself.

  Sudden thunder split the morning open. The roof shuddered underneath him. A gust of hard, hot wind knocked him flat against the smooth tiles and smashed all the breath out of him. Something thunked against his helmet. Screams, tearing stone, rattling dust, and more thunder poured over him. The tiles under him seemed to tilt.

  His ears rang painfully. Arron lifted his head and saw a dust cloud folding in on itself. He lowered his gaze to the roof and swore. The tilting sensation hadn't been an illusion. The roof sagged dangerously in the northeast corner across from the fountain.

  Around him, Getesaph gingerly raised ears and heads. They saw the dust cloud and the sag in the roof. The sound of shouts, swearing, and bloody protracted curses against the t'Therians penetrated the sharp ringing that engulfed his hearing.

  Of course it was the t'Therians. It was always the t'Therians, whatever it was. Almost always. Enough times.

  Arron's fingers felt a vibration under the tiles. He was pretty sure he'd have heard a low creak if his ears were working right.

  Down. We need to get down.

  Mothers and sisters with daughters clutching their backs or held tight against their chests, crawled or walked in a half crouch up the slope. Some leaned against one another. A number were cut and bleeding. At least two limped.

  “Scholar Arron!” exclaimed a sister he didn't know. She peered closely at him, almost pressing her nostrils against his helmet. “You are hurt? You are hit? Someone help me with Scholar Arron!”

  “I am fine! I am fine!” he protested as half a dozen hands lifted him to his feet and settled him in the approved crouching position. There was an idea running around that Humans were delicate, just because they were smaller, and not as strong, and were very bad swimmers, and couldn't stand up again immediately after a bomb blast without their vision blurring and their knees wobbling.

  Arron let himself be gently led to the southwest edge of the roof. The ladders on that side had been sheltered from the blast. Sisters hung back, and Arron with them, to let the carrying mothers pick their way down first. The streets below were a stew of milling, shoving bodies and, to Arron anyway, unintelligible voices.

  When Arron's turn came, he abandoned pride and climbed down backward, using both hands. His escorts followed solicitously beside him. Once they reached the ground, the sisters stood him in an undamaged doorway.

  “Rest yourself, Scholar Arron,” one admonished. “Public Health will be here soon to see to you.”

  With that, they turned and joined the river of mothers and sisters heading for the blast site.

  Arron leaned against the arched doorway just long enough for his knees to stop trembling. His ears still rang, and his balance wasn't too certain, but he forced himself into a shambling run toward the devastation.

  The missile, or bomb, or whatever it had been, had turned a pair of buildings into mountains of rubble. Nearby buildings stood without faces or roofs. Some slumped as if not certain whether to stand or fall.

  The rubble was alive with Getesaph. They clambered over the ruin, digging with their hands. A few had gotten hold of shovels. One party lifted out a broken beam and passed it down the side of the mound to other sisters, who carried it out of the way. More sisters arrived every second. Many carried buckets, shovels, or jacks. What hoses there were got turned onto the dozen fledgling fires that sprang up like orange-and-gold weeds. Bucket brigades formed to help douse the flames and to soak down the nearby buildings. The wounded were carried to the sidewalks. Mothers, sisters, and daughters crowded around the victims, even if they could do nothing more than sit with them. No one was left alone or without a hand to hold.

  It should have been chaos, but it wasn't. The Getesaph worked together without flaw, panic, or hesitation. Whoever saw something that needed doing first was in charge until someone with more skill or better equipment arrived. Seniority was yielded without argument. There were no spectators. Each new sister who arrived fit herself into the rhythm of the work, like an expert singer joining in on a chorus.

  Even the two fathers lurking around the edges seemed to know something important was happening. They stayed where they were without seeking to touch anyone or find what they needed to satisfy themselves.

  It was incredible to watch. No group of Humans could have worked like that without years of training. For the Dedelphi this was simply the way it was. For Arron it was the ultimate contradiction. How could they work together so seamlessly but still fight so viciously? There were a million theories, of course, from hormones to pheromones to telepathy, but no one knew for certain. A professor of his had once said,
“God introduced us to the Dedelphi to show us how ignorant we still are.”

  Arron looked at the rubble and hesitated. The fire brigades and some heavy evacuation equipment were starting to arrive. He swerved around the main ruination and headed for the wounded. His first aid was good, and most of it functioned as well on a Getesaph as on a Human.

  After that, the world narrowed down to binding lacerations with stockings or torn sleeves or, occasionally, a real sterile bandage. Tunics, skirts, and trousers became pillows and blankets. Blood and gore and body fluids coated his gloves. More blood spattered his helmet and shirt. Sweat poured down his face faster than the clean-suit could wick it away. It puddled under his collar and in the small of his back.

  Once, he arrived to find someone impaled on a splinter of wood. Another time, he saw a wailing cluster of daughters around their mother, whose head had been crumpled in like a rotted pumpkin. He could only turn away and let sisters and other mothers comfort the ones suddenly bereaved.

  Then, as he lifted a prostrate sister's eyelids to check her pupils, a Getesaph in the white-and-gold coveralls of the public-health team, knelt beside him and gently lifted his hands off the patient.

  Arron stood up and backed away. His vision took a moment to clear. Around him he saw more sisters in public-health uniforms descending on the wounded with medical kits, body boards, and oxygen masks.

  His job was over. He could stand there and notice that his hands were shaking and how badly he needed a drink, and how prickly and uncomfortable he was under his clean-suit and how sick and withered his stomach felt.

  “Scholar Arron!”

  Startled, Arron looked up to see Dayisen Lareet threading through the shifting crowd. He lifted a tired hand and waved to her.

  “Mother Night Arron,” she said. “You look like you were in the blast, not just tending it.”

  “I'm all right, really.” He wiped his hands ineffectually on his shirt. “I've just been learning about some of the comfort limitations of this suit.”

  “I'm sure.” She looked him over sharply. “You need to rest. Do you want to go home, or to your outpost?”

  He looked at his gory hands. “I'd better go to the outpost. I'm going to need a fresh suit and a really long shower.”

  “I will walk with you.” Ignoring the substances soaking his sleeve, Lareet tucked her arm under his. “Umat became concerned when we saw you with the wounded. I said I would make sure you were all right.”

  “Thanks,” said Arron, as they turned down a crooked side street that sloped down toward the harbor.

  “Do we know what happened?” he asked after a little while.

  Lareet bared her teeth. “The devna.” The word meant cannibal, and was used to describe the t'Theria. “Who else would it be? We think they launched the device from a boat in the harbor, then sank their boat and took themselves to the bottom so they would not have to answer to us, but we're not sure. We will investigate and report to the Sisters-Chosen-to-Lead. They will report to the Confederation. The t'Therian Queens will claim to know nothing, and no payment will be exacted for our weeping dead.”

  Arron was silent.

  Lareet's ear swiveled sideways toward him. “What are you not saying, Scholar Arron?”

  “I am not saying how it is a fine thing that the Confederation prevents my sisters from launching an attack until they are certain who the target should be. It avoids waste of life and anger.”

  Lareet laughed once, hard. “Your humor is grim and strange, Scholar Arron.”

  “I was not joking. Consider: the Queens-of-All know that we could attack at any moment and destroy the Confederation and all hope of saving their daughters from the plague. The Humans will not stay if there is a war. If the Sisters-Chosen-to-Lead confront the Queens, the Queens will have to negotiate some kind of satisfaction. The life debt will be paid, and no new dead will be created.”

  “You make it sound idyllic, Scholar Arron.”

  He shrugged, and waved his hands. “As long as it is understood that the Families and the Others must work together to save their sisters’ children, it is possible. There is no reason for it not to be.”

  Lareet's ears sagged briefly. “No reason except them and us.”

  The buildings opened up to make space for the busy quay with its long docks protruding out into the boat-choked harbor. Blocky battlements stood sentry on the shore. One broad aisle in the water remained clear. This was the pass-through for the military. As Arron watched, a midsize transport pulled away from its dock and headed out toward the harbor mouth, maybe on its way to investigate the attack, maybe to make sure the attackers had no allies.

  “You can find your way from here?” asked Lareet. “The sister-ferriers will take you? I need to get back to Umat.”

  “I told you, I'm fine, Lareet.” He disentangled her arm from his and squeezed it.

  She dipped her ears. “Then I will see you back at our home.”

  Lareet retreated up an alleyway and Arron headed down to the docks. The harbor ferry was in its slip, and the sister copilots were aboard. Because they had no other passengers they were willing to take him out to the Human island immediately. It wasn't that they minded, they had assured him a thousand times, but some sisters, and mothers particularly, worried about the Human poison.

  Arron's pack bumped against his back as he stepped off the ferry and onto the creaky wooden dock. Human Island was really little more than a sandbar at the harbor mouth. Where it wasn't sand and silt, it was rocky, weed-scummed, and moss-coated. Fish washed up in its tidal pools to finish dying. The wind brought in the smells of salt, smog, fish, and burning petroleum. It was not a vacation spot, but it was a decent distance away from anything populated. If anything happened to the ventilation system, or if the outpost got hit in a skirmish, chances were no one would get hurt from exposure to Humans.

  The outpost was a service station for the indigent Human population of the Hundred Isles. Corpers and embassites had their amenities provided for them. Over the years, the leftovers—freelancers, curiosity traders, and academics on thread-thin grants, like Arron—had banded together and set up their own sites.

  Arron walked down the path they had cleared when the outpost bunker was built. Like the dock, it was getting moss-grown. Riotous orange fungi sprouted on the moss's back.

  Time to call a cleanup day, thought Arron automatically. Then, he winced at the thought of his colleagues saying, “Why bother?”

  A set of sponge-cement stairs led down into the heart of the island. The micropores in the cement's cell structure siphoned off the water and kept the stairs clean and dry. At the bottom waited a thick metal door that always made Arron think of the entrance to some ancient dungeon.

  He stood in front of the door's mirror, and said, “Outpost entry for Arron Hagopian.” There was a brief hum while he was scanned. The door cycled open with a huge whomp! of air from the ventilator's indraft.

  Arron stepped into the foyer. It was a locker room with packages of fresh clean-suits and recyclers for the used ones, along with cubicles for changing and showering. The sign over the inner door read STRIP, FRIEND, AND ENTER.

  Arron pulled a clean set of clothing out of his locker, stepped into one of the shower stalls, and unsealed his helmet with a feeling of relief. He stripped off his gloves, shirt, and trousers and tossed them into a pile. He disconnected what the suit-makers euphemistically called the “relief options,” the one portion of the clean-suit he'd never really gotten used to, and dropped those into a separate pile. Then, he began the wiggling shuffle needed to peel off the skintight layer of transparent organic that covered him from neck to toe. The organic had another day's worth of use in it, but he did not want to have to soak and scrub it to clean off the stains, so he dropped that in a pile with the other used clothing.

  After a long, steaming hot shower he began to feel mostly restored. He dressed in clean shorts and a blue jersey. The helmet and relief options went into the sterilizers, the used clothi
ng into a separator, and the suit and gloves into the recycler.

  When he approached, the inner door slid up slowly so as to displace a minimum amount of air and any dust particles that might have escaped the powerful vents.

  The outpost's main room was an open, Getesaph-style chamber. Its plaster walls needed scrubbing. Secondhand tables, chairs, and comm stations had been scattered around it. A pair of blocky foodstores sat across from the door. A few short halls led to work alcoves that could be closed off for privacy. Some Humans got tired of the endless communality of the world around them and just needed a place to sit and be alone for a while.

  “Arron! How's life in politics?”

  Cabal was one of the room's three occupants. He was a lean, copper-skinned man who managed to slouch in every chair he sat in, no matter how contoured it was. The other two were Rath and Regina, both short, round, sienna-colored women. They were also both anthropology students getting in some work in the xeno-field. Arron suspected they were also lovers, but had never felt the need to ask. They waved absently to Arron as he plunked his portable down on an empty chair, then bent back to studying whatever graphic the table laid out between them.

  “Today, life in politics is bad.” Arron headed for the food-stores, “I spent my morning at a blast site. Couple of buildings went up right in the heart of the Handworks quarter.”

  “We heard it go,” said Rath. “Didn't rattle us here though.” She stopped herself. “God, when did a bomb blast less than two kilometers away become passÉ?”

  “Just shows you're becoming like the rest of us, Rathillvna.” Cabal raised a pouch of bubbly, brown liquid to her. “Hard as diamond and mad down to your little toenails.”

  Arron shook his head and lifted the lid on one of the food-stores. Cabal was an antiquarian. He sold Terran ephemera to the locals, everything from books and beverages to honest-to-God antiques like watches and furniture.

  “So you say,” said Rath amiably. “Hey, Arron, you've got a hywrite waiting for you.”