I thought I'd fallen asleep and dreamed that last sentence. The words beg your pardon? formed in my mind and almost came out of my lips. But then I realized he was looking at me with an extraordinarily intent look.
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't speak. I'd heard about the Mules. I'd learned to fear the Mules. They were the enemies of Earth. They were going to come back . . .
But this was Doctor Bartolomeu, who reminded me of nothing so much as what I'd like Father to be. I took a deep breath. "And?" I asked. My voice shook, but it seemed to reassure him. He smiled.
"Who created you?" I asked. "And what happened?"
"In my case? My own group was created by the governing body of United Europe. The European Congress voted on it and some minister without portfolio got the assignment to see the project through."
"Isn't that a fairly high level for slave supervisors?" I asked.
He grinned. "Give the lady a cigar," he said, completely confusing me. "Yes, indeed. But myself and my . . . companions . . . my brothers, were created for other purposes, connected to those who supervised the slaves, or at least that, but up a chain of command several levels high. We were to report on the Mules to the human government. To do the jobs they could not do. We, as well, were supposed to be the innovators, the creators. To find a way out of the genetic mess humanity had created for itself and to render our own kind obsolete eventually."
"Scientists?"
He shrugged. "Some of them. Do you know the term renaissance men?"
I nodded. "People who are good at everything."
"Kind of like that," he said. "We were truly designed as everything you've heard about the Mules. Created to be smarter, faster, healthier, live longer . . . The latter because we were expensive. I don't know how many years of work it took to assemble a viable embryo for one of us. The later experiments . . . Well, even cloning one of us turned out to be very hard, so I imagine designing from scratch was more so, and generated any number of culls.
"At my level there were about two hundred of us, maybe five years apart. In Europe. We were, you see, treated a little better than our sad brethren in the fields and factories." He was quiet a long time. "Young women were paid or conscripted into carrying us. That was one big difference. And though we were still raised in creches like the others, we were raised in a creche where . . . A lot was demanded of us, intellectually. They gave us teachers and demanded we learn. We were culled for intelligence and ability to learn as well as everything else."
He shrugged and smiled at me, a smile that managed to look infinitely sad. "I'm not going to say we were any better adjusted than the rest of the Mules. No. We were smarter, designed to be so. And we were learned. But . . . Well, I suppose it was no grimmer than the average Victorian orphanage of a couple of centuries earlier. But . . . you see, I can't blame them. By then they had twenty-five years of Mule riots and Mule crimes. They didn't trust us. They might have suspected it was the way we were gestated, the way we were educated, but most of them thought there was something wrong with us. At a very fundamental level. Dragon's teeth and all that. Their religions told them we were unnatural. Their instincts did too.
"We weren't so much socialized as broken to rules and bound to behavior, till we didn't know who we were, but we knew which set of silverware to use for which meal.
"At first," he said, "we did what we were supposed to. We took our jobs between the upper echelons of the Mules and the lower ranks of government. And we did it well, and we developed other interests. Music, art . . ." He shrugged. "You have to understand . . . we were smart. Designed so. Trained to learn. It didn't stop when they stopped whipping us to make us memorize things. We filled every niche, from secret courier to researcher. Sometimes one person filled several of those. We had no personal lives, after all. The time other people filled with children and parents and . . ." For a moment I'd swear there were tears in his eyes. "All that didn't exist for us. We were humans but not humans—creatures not related to the past of humanity and with no room in the future."
"But . . . but you could make friends!" I protested, mostly to stop the flow of the narrative because in my mind I was seeing a line of little boys dressed in grey studying the proper fork and spoon to use.
He threw his head back and laughed though tears still shone in his eyes. "Oh, yes, I had friends. There were three of us who were very close, in fact. One of them was the man I have called your ancestor, though he can't be—more on that later—Alexander Sinistra. The other was . . ." He took a deep breath, the sort of breath people take when alcohol is applied to a wound. "Jarl Ingemar." He pronounced it like people from the Norse region of Europe did, the J as I, the Ingemar like he was trying to talk through a mouthful of sticky oatmeal, and looked at me as if he expected me to know the name, to react to it.
I didn't. I'd never heard it. He sighed and shook his head. "The things that people choose to erase . . ." He got up and opened what looked like a compartment in the wall, and fumbled in it. When he came back, he handed me a small translucent cube. I knew what it was, because I'd seen them in museums. They were the early forms of holos. Activated by the warmth of someone's hand, they projected a little 3-D image above the cube.
The image that formed, slowly, hesitantly, like a ghost from beyond, looked like a man of twenty, maybe a little older. He looked very familiar, and yet not like anyone I knew—then again the image was small and somewhat faded, as such images get with the centuries.
He was a green-eyed redhead with the sort of gracile build young men have—though he had broad shoulders and a squarish construction to the face. Handsome, I supposed, in a very Norse way. Put a beard and a few years on him, and he could have been a Viking pirate—though the women of the targeted villages might have made sure to trip as he approached.
"Once upon a time," Doc Bartolomeu said. "Jarl's face was as well known to everyone on Earth as . . . as Einstein's a century and a half earlier. And for the same reason. You have to understand, we didn't long stay servants, or even . . . in the quaint idiom of an earlier age, middle managers. We knew we were brighter, smarter, more efficient and definitely more creative than the bureaucrats we served. There was no revolution, or not as such. First we did someone's work for him and then . . . when he died, we took over. Jarl was not . . . ambitious as such. He took over the small Seacity of Olympus. What he cared about and lived for were three things—I should explain we all had obsessive hobbies. They made up, I think, for all we lacked. Or at least we hoped they would. Jarl's were biological research, space travel and music."
"Music?" I said and looked at the faded hologram and bit my lip and hoped I was wrong. There was no telling. The hologram was too small, too faded, too . . . unrecognizable.
"As we were ruling the world—and I will agree with you we might have been unfeeling and uncaring, and perhaps inhuman—Jarl was designing things. The bio-womb, for one. And . . . and seeding the energy trees. We called them Jarl's folly. Until they worked . . ." He took the little hologram from me, gently—as though the person who'd been captured in it might still have feelings—and carefully returned it to the enclosure in the wall.
"It couldn't last," he said, as he returned to his chair. "We weren't bad rulers, but we weren't good either. It might be impossible to exert power at that level, that concentrated, and not be inhuman. And we had a head start on it, as you might say. Fifty years and Jarl said we should build a spaceship for escape from Earth because the time would arrive they would come for us with torches and pitchforks. The idea caught. We started building. The revolt broke out just a little before we anticipated—it spun out of control faster than we expected. And some of us . . . enjoyed it. Reveled in it. There are no external marks of being a Mule. And most of us were never that sane.
"We got as many as we could to the spaceship—Jarl christened it Je Reviens—and we . . . took off. Only . . . at the last minute, in the riots . . ." He shook his head, and looked at me, miserably.
"I've seen holos," I said. "
I know they're classified but I . . ." I shrugged. "I'm good at defeating safeguards on machinery. I've seen holos of the riots. Kit says that here they make children feel being one of the victims during the turmoils. He said that . . . he said that they made virtus . . ."
"Yes," Doctor Bartolomeu said. His voice had gone unaccountably hoarse. "Yes, they do. I'm not sure it serves anything but instilling hatred of non-bioed Earthers. But . . . Then it's always easier to instill hatred than caution, isn't it?"
"Jarl died in the turmoils?" I asked, thinking I knew how this story went.
He started. "No. No, no, no. But before we were in the ship and the ship sealed, we'd realized two things. First, a lot of the people who'd been bioed and who'd worked closely with us—as functionaries, as scientists, as artists even—were at as much risk as us. And the other was that a lot of us simply couldn't be taken to space—not if we wanted to establish a colony somewhere and not have it be hell on Earth. They would bring the hell with them, you see?" He took a deep breath. "That was Jarl and I, between us. We accepted the responsibility for it, for . . . misdirecting some of our brothers, for . . . knowing they would end up dead and knowing themselves betrayed. We were in charge of coordinating getting everyone to the ship. Jarl . . . Jarl was somewhat of a legend by then, and we . . . we had lists, we went over them." He looked at the fire. "One of the people to whom we gave the wrong directions, the wrong time, was our childhood friend, Alexander Sinistra." He finished his drink. "We argued over it, and worried over it, but Alexander . . . he enjoyed his craft. What he did for the rulers. It wasn't . . . nice. He thought humans were . . . livestock. I didn't think we could trust him with the bioed humans aboard, or . . . with the other Mules, even.
"Jarl and I were blamed by the others. Everyone had dear friends, beloved brothers left behind. In the ship . . . it was . . . uncomfortable. And it was difficult to coordinate the two very different populations. We hadn't counted on the bioed humans. They'd reproduce, of course. And though the ship was FTL, it would take us very long to find a livable planet. We had anti-aging meds and we were sure we could . . . survive a long time, find a world, perhaps finally, in the time we'd have, find a way to defeat our curse and reproduce. But if that were to happen, no Mule wanted to share the world with normal humans. It would be just Earth all over again. So the decision was made to have the humans settle in Eden. By then the situation with . . . with Jarl and me and the rest of our brethren had become untenable and Jarl and I chose to stay behind with the non-Mules."
"Jarl stayed openly as a Mule—a renegade Mule, you might say—but he told me not to tell them what I was. They didn't know, you see, in the confusion. We had a few thousand humans aboard. The Mules all knew each other, the humans not so much. But everyone knew Jarl. He couldn't hide.
"His story was that he was staying behind to . . . shepherd them. To get them to a point where he'd find the way to seed other powerpods—where we'd have enough resources to do that." He shrugged.
"He didn't have a choice, but he also wasn't trusted . . . I was welcomed among them, set up bio-wombs, decanted children. I made friends. And if people noticed I was aging a little slower, it wasn't that different. With transplants and care, people live a good hundred and twenty years, here. I am now only . . . three hundred and fifty. Only three hundred in this world." He shrugged. "They think me a freak of nature, I believe, but not a Mule. Oh, some people might suspect, but I make it a big point of being eccentric in a very human way." He gestured around his home. "And people really can't believe two Mules would stay behind. Jarl maybe, but . . ."
"So you and Jarl remained friends," I said, "for the next three centuries."
He nodded. "Yes. And we had other friends, and their descendants inherited us, in a way. Some even knew what I was."
"The Denovos," I said.
"Ah, yes. I don't know if they were ever told, but I think they know. And yes. But Jarl . . . Jarl was never right, after we left Earth. I did say none of us was exactly stable? His instability was not of the kind to endanger others. There was never any reason to leave him behind. But he was not . . ." Another deep breath. "He blamed himself for the people left behind, Alexander in particular. And he . . . he . . ." Shrug. "Well . . . He didn't live well with himself. A few decades ago he got very depressed, and you must understand, he was the only friend I had left, from my childhood, the only one of our kind. I convinced him of this plan, to . . . to create a clone of himself. I thought watching himself grow up would give him something to live for. In his case, I think it was more important than that, an almost religious idea of absolution. He would be born anew and pure.
"It's not like that, of course. It's just genes. Which ones express, even, is different. And he knew that. But this wasn't about reason.
"We're difficult to clone. It took us over ten years. And then we found him a wife, the daughter of one of those families who knew about us. You see, we wanted to set it up so no one knew the child was a Mule. No use saddling the child with that. The idea was that his wife had a child designed to look and be almost like him but human. That was the story we'd give out. It . . . Some people had done it, before the turmoils. I suspect Alexander had, and that you're descended from that child—thus you look like him, but not quite, and some of the traits came through in the blood. That's what . . . That's how we wanted to set it up for Jarl's clone."
I couldn't breathe. There was a knot at my throat. The music. And that face, so strange and yet familiar. With different hair and eyes . . . "Is that how . . . is that how . . ." I wanted him to understand. I wanted him to say no, to laugh at me.
But he looked at me, his eyes unreadable, and lowered his head, in that odd little nod-bow. "That was how we created Christopher."
Thirty
I was on my feet. I was making for the door. There was a lump in my throat the size of an egg and I felt like I could only get breath in around it with an effort.
He was at the door ahead of me.
I clenched my fists. "Let me go. You said you would."
"When I was done," he said. "I'm not done."
My breath was fast, my heartbeat pounded at my chest making me feel like my ribs would crack. The hissing of blood in my veins seemed to be rushing through my ears, making a sound like twin rapids. "Oh, you are done."
"No," he said. He spoke very calmly. "No. I'm not. You came to me to find out why Christopher was doing what he does. You will be told."
My nails were probably drawing blood from my palms, and I didn't care. I stomped my foot on the floor and even as I was doing it, realized how childish, how futile my fury was.
"You haven't slept properly in a week," he said soothingly. "And I wouldn't choose to tell you this now. Christopher was supposed to tell you all this the night he was first wounded, but I guess his courage failed, and after what he's been through I can't say I blame him, or not too much. But now you will hear."
"You are lying," I said, hoping it would stop it. "You're lying, saying Kit is a Mule. An unstable Mule."
It was his frown that undid me, that pierced through the denial I was trying to build. He frowned as if he were considering what I'd said. As if he was seriously pondering whether Kit might be an unstable Mule. "A Mule, I suppose," he said at last, frowning a little, as if the term had no pejorative associations, which I supposed it didn't, for him. "A Mule, yes, but not unstable or . . . not as such. I think he was a perfectly normal little boy. Atrociously stubborn and capable of the most Machiavellian plans, but a happy child. The Denovos were a good family for him. I . . . I often wished Jarl had gotten to see him."
I swallowed, trying to get the air-blocking egg down.
"You see, the woman who was legally Chirstopher's mother had sole . . . ownership of the embryo. Jarl was trying to keep it . . . untainted. I don't know what . . . what happened. He didn't tell me. Neither of them did. But something convinced her that we were doing the wrong thing. Perhaps she was aware that Jarl's depression was hereditary—such things tend to
be—and decided it wasn't right to bring a human being into the world to suffer through this. She decided to have Christopher . . . prematurely decanted. Aborted, I guess you'd say.
"Or perhaps she didn't even decide it, but merely considered it. Wanted to discuss it. But she hadn't known Jarl for hundreds of years. And if she guessed the guilt eating at him, she didn't know how bad or how strong it was. She didn't know that in his mind, this clone, this child was supposed to be his redemption . . ."
"He killed her," I said.
"And then himself." He looked at the little compartment where he'd stowed the hologram. "Which was probably for the best. I don't think he could live with the guilt of another death. He made me his heir . . ." He inclined his head. "And he was hers. This means I had responsibility for Christopher. Her family might have disputed it, but they didn't. The Denovos offered to adopt Kit. We had already arranged to have him ELFed to obscure any too-close resemblance. Not that he . . . well . . . cat-speed is the same thing we have and forms of telepathy are limited. The idea was that he'd been designed to resemble his mother's husband but not so closely he looked like the pictures in the history holos, which was fortunate when the Denovos adopted him. Kit didn't know he was adopted until he was twelve, and I don't think he gave it much thought after. He attended the school for the energy collectors. He served in the Energy Center Hushers, as a volunteer. He fell in love and proposed."
"And got married," I said. "And she killed herself."
He gave me a curious look. "You know I never knew for sure? Oh, I'm sure Christopher wouldn't kill her unless he had a very good reason, but like Jarl he has a horrible temper, and given a good reason and fury in a closed space alone with her . . ."
I shook my head. "She killed herself. I got it from his mind." He was leading me by the arm, back to the chair; he made me sit down; he offered me a glass of water that he had seemingly conjured from thin air. "Drink," he said. "Drink."
I drank. It could be poison, but I had to drink, because I had to be able to breathe and the damn egg wouldn't go down. I drank, then drank again, then I hiccupped, then I drank once more. The egg remained, but now allowed some air through.
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