Analog Science Fiction and Fact - March 2014

by Penny Publications

  Mike drew in a deep breath. "That explains it!"

  "Pardon me, but—explains what?"

  "My name—Mike Christopher. Michael means 'who resembles God.' Christopher means 'bearing Christ inside.'"

  Kemal folded his hands and nodded. "Ah, I see. You were also raised in a Catholic orphanage. And you are, rather famously, not a believer."

  Mike asked Kemal, "How am I 'famously' anything?"

  "The gossip holospheres are already on fire with opinions about your arrival."

  "Everyone who thinks I'm some kind of soulless monster." He looked at Jeremy, who stood straight and tall, but didn't say anything.

  "My friend," Kemal said, "I hardly find you a monster. As for your soul... that is God's purview, not mine."

  Mike said, "You probably know what I say about that."

  "You like to point out that you're the only person who knows that a deity did not create you. But I believe, Mike, that you are unnecessarily limiting God's abilities and intentions. And the fact that He may work through individual Humans." Kemal reached out and pushed the image of the first document aside and indicated the next one. "Shall we look at more?"

  Mike gave a slow nod. "Of course."

  Kemal motioned Mike closer to the floating images of Aaron Corbin's documents. "You'll be interested in this one. A description of your birth." Kemal touched Mike lightly on his shoulder. "I'll leave you awhile to look at it." Kemal left the lab; Mike heard his echoing footsteps as he headed toward the lobby.

  Jeremy stood with Mike a moment longer, then followed Kemal.

  Mike stepped toward the floating document and with a swoop of a hand brought the image closer. Its first words: PLACED A STERILE TOWEL ON AN EXAMINATION TABLE NEXT TO THE ECTOGENESIS TANK. I TOUCHED A CONTROL ON THE TANK AND ITS CLEAR TOP SLID ASIDE.

  The document continued:I REACHED MY HANDS INTO THE WARM FLUID WITHIN AND RAISED THE NUTRIENT SAC, WITH THE CHILD INSIDE, OUT OF THE TANK. A handwritten note written with a shaky pen was inserted here: "Lord, forgive me, for I performed a role previously reserved only for You."

  The more objective tone resumed with the standard print: INTO THE ECTOGENESIS TANK AND PLUCKED THE NEW-BORN OUT OF THE NUTRIENT SAC. SEPARATING THE ARTI-FICIAL UMBILICAL FROM THE BABY'S BODY IS AS MUCH MECHANICS AS BIOLOGY—IT POPPED RIGHT OUT. I SUC-TIONED THE INFANT'S MOUTH AND NOSE CLEAR OF FLU-ID, AND HEARD AN IMPRESSIVE SERIES OF CRIES. GOOD LUNGS, BRIGHT HEALTHY SKIN.

  Tears fell down Mike's cheeks. He folded his arms and looked away from the document. This isn't a father's description, he thought.

  He read on: THE CHILD'S SKIN IS A LIGHT BROWN, HIS HAIR DARK BROWN AND TIGHTLY CURLED. EYES A BRIGHT BLUE, BUT WITH EPICANTHIC FOLDS. HIS NOSE IS THIN AND STRAIGHT.

  And that was it. A scientist's description, Mike thought, for an act borne of the desire for knowledge rather than a desire for love. I'm still all alone.

  Mike left the lab, made his way through the darkened hallway again, and found Kemal and Jeremy sitting in the lobby. Kemal stood and looked at Mike expectantly. Jeremy didn't look up, merely sat with his arms folded. Kemal asked, "Did you see enough?"

  "Yes. More than enough."

  Kemal's voice was quiet: "Do you think you'll ever want to see this place again?"

  Mike said, "I don't think so."

  "I only ask because if you do, I'd like to be the one to show you around again." Kemal looked directly at Mike. "It's something we share now."

  "How so?"

  Kemal's gaze went through Mike, who wondered what the other man was seeing. Something from years ago, Mike thought, something that matters quite a bit to him.

  "It's a test of us as a species," Kemal said, "how we react when individuals receive powers previously given nations—whether it's weapons that can destroy cities or biotech that can create life, as you say, 'from scratch.'" Kemal pressed the flat of his hands against his eyes for a long moment, apparently to hold back tears, then went on: "They worked here for decades, you know. The tech had grown sophisticated enough that they didn't need a large research facility. A replicator economy meant they didn't have to spend their days making money at a 'real' job."

  "And so they spent those days..."

  "Working on those first attempts. You've seen the pictures. You were one of the final projects. In between was my mother."

  "Oh, no," Mike said. "Is she—"

  "Still alive? No. Thank God for that. She barely had a face. She had only one arm. And her mind was apparently empty. But she lived to reach puberty."

  "And they—bred her? That's how you came about?"

  "If only it had been that simple. It would've been bad enough. Remember that Aaron Corbin considered himself at least somewhat a man of faith. He had his own strange morality, even though he took part in these hideous experiments. But some of the others working with him were highly intelligent sociopaths. No empathy for others. No friends, only potential victims."

  "And your mother was... one of those victims?"

  "She was raped," Kemal said. "Repeatedly, by one of the scientists."

  "Not Corbin."

  "No, it was another man, Gordon Sackett. In fact, when Corbin learned about it, he threw Sackett off the project. Corbin supervised my mother's prenatal care, made sure I was delivered safely. And unlike their other 'projects,' he gave her a name, or at least a first name. Amanda."

  "Small comfort for her," Mike said. "Given her condition."

  "As was the meaning of her name—'worthy of love.'"

  "Corbin seems to have given a lot of thought to names."

  "But little to morality. It doesn't seem to have occurred to him that if sociopaths are drawn to your cause, something's wrong with your cause."

  "What happened to him?"

  Kemal said, "Sentenced to prison. Refused emotional modification. Committed suicide a few years later."

  Mike considered that. "Was he distraught over what he'd done—or that he wasn't allowed to continue?"

  "He never said."

  Mike extended his hand. "If I ever come back here," he said, "you're the man I'll want to see." Kemal shook Mike's hand, then pulled him into a brief embrace. He turned to leave, Jeremy trailing behind him.

  Outside, Mike squinted against bright sunlight; no hint of fog remained.

  Jeremy remained quiet until he and Mike boarded the maglev train that would take them to Alaska on the first leg of their trip to Brussels. They sat across from each other in a tightly sealed compartment without windows— there was nothing to see but bare walls anyway, and the only sounds were from the interior of the train, since they traveled through a tube that enveloped them in a vacuum.

  At four thousand kph, the trip would only take about an hour, but Mike knew he and Jeremy had layovers of several hours both in Juneau and elsewhere that would keep delaying them. They had to take a roundabout route to avoid Jenregar incursions in various cities, many of which had targeted some of the major maglev routes for destruction.

  About ten minutes into their journey, about the time they would've been passing beneath San Francisco, Jeremy sat with his elbows on his knees, looked up at Mike and asked him, "How do you live with yourself?"

  Mike said, "I really don't want to get into this now."

  "You saw those monsters back there."

  "I was as disgusted as you were. But I didn't create them."

  "I don't think I could live with myself if I knew what I really was."

  "What would you have me do? I'm here— I'm the contact specialist on a Unity starcraft. I've been to dozens of worlds, got the rescue operation going on Splendor, acted as a diplomat with three other Galactic species as we watched the Moruteb system being destroyed by a rogue star. Should I just kill myself?"

  "I have no problem with your actions, Mike—it's who you are, and who made you."

  "So answer the question—what would you have me do?"

  Jeremy looked away from Mike. "That's the part I haven't come up with."

  I can't believe a trip on a
planet's surface took this long, Mike thought as he and Jeremy exited the underground terminal of the Brussels-Luxembourg Railway Station just an hour or so after local dawn. From the time they'd boarded the maglev train in San Diego, transferred to a different train in Juneau, Alaska, transferred again in Novosibirsk, Russia and Athens, Greece, it had taken just over twelve hours for them to arrive here, with little opportunities for decent sleep or a meal other than snacks.

  They left the towering glass and metal of the station, and the rumbling sounds of arriving and departing maglevs behind—fortunately, Earth Unity HQ was located in the old European Parliament's main building right above the maglev station.

  "Thank goodness we're finally here," Mike said as they entered the main lobby. More bright surfaces, more glass.

  Fatigue and strain showed in Jeremy's voice: "No one's happier about that than me."

  Mike thought, I've lost count of how many times I've held my tongue, given that he had to be rescued from a Jenregar ship, and that he still has no idea what's become of his wife.

  Once we're done with this briefing, it'll be good riddance to one another.

  Before Mike could even begin the search for someone in authority, a woman exited an elevator to their right and walked directly to Mike. Her handshake was brief but strong. Chestnut eyes seemed to pierce directly into his consciousness. "I'm Neriah Fulton," she said in English, moving quickly to shake Jeremy's hand as well. "I'm kind of a 'floating diplomat' here. A non-specialist, you might say. I do whatever's needed, and right now what's needed is to find out what the hell the Jenregar are up to and what we can do about it."

  "We're here to help," Mike said.

  "Anything I can do," Jeremy told her.

  "Excellent, gentlemen. Let's get started."

  Neriah took Mike and Jeremy to a briefing room and introduced them to two other people, Damian Rivera and Luisa Torres. "They were rescued from a Jenregar mound in Madrid," Neriah told them. "As you can see, they were both... changed... by the Jenregar."

  Damian's mouth had been altered to make it much smaller than the Human norm. His speech was halting, and sounded as if he was mumbling, but Mike's datalink translation of the man's Spanish also helped: "The Jenregar took me into that mound. They started working on me... without anesthetic. Apparently it's how they perform surgery on their own individuals, without regard for the pain they cause."

  Neriah said, "Apparently the hive mind only receives information and some sensory impressions from its individuals. Any painful sensations aren't included."

  Mike said, "So the hive mind doesn't know, and doesn't care. That fits in with what we already know about them. Individuals aren't important—only the group."

  Luisa held up her left arm, which had been made into a Jenregar-like limb—a biological hydrostat which maintained its shape through the pressure of internal fluids, much like a worm or an elephant's trunk. "That's how they changed me, as well. I passed out from the pain more than once."

  Jeremy said, "They'd just started working on me. They poked and prodded. I tried to look them in the eyes, develop some sort of rapport with them, but I realized they can barely see. They didn't care how much they hurt me."

  Neriah asked, "How far did they get with you?"

  "I thought at the time they were torturing me. I screamed at them, tried to let them know I'd tell them anything they wanted, but they didn't listen—I realized they couldn't understand me, weren't even trying."

  Luisa reached out with her right hand, the one that was still Human, but Jeremy pulled his arm away from her. "Sorry," he said. "I know you're being sweet, but I can't stand to be touched right now. Only Julia. That's the only person I want touching me."

  He's suffering post-traumatic stress, Mike thought. He's going to need major therapy whether his Julia returns safely to him or not.

  Jeremy said, "I've told you all I can. I'm not an expert on xenobiology. I'd like to get some rest."

  Neriah stood and told Jeremy, "We have quarters here in this building. I'll show you there." She asked Mike, "How about you?"

  "I'm okay. I can go some more. I'd like to find out a few more things from Damian and Luisa."

  Jeremy and Neriah departed. Mike told Damian and Luisa, "It looks as if the Jenregar is trying to develop a way to transcend its own abilities. They nabbed Jeremy from a Human ship, and it looks as if they were examining his eyes. And I saw a Jenregar individual with eyes that resembled a Human's. It was one of the most eerie sights I can imagine—scared the shit out of me."

  Damian said, "We know the Jenregar are developing augmented eyesight so they can better detect Humans who infiltrate their mounds."

  Luisa nodded. "We saw evidence of that in our own mound in Madrid."

  Mike said, "I think any solution we find to defeating the Jenregar is going to be biological, not military. They're trying to combine our Human advantages with their own—use our own abilities against us. We're going to have to figure out how to use their abilities against them."

  Damien ran a finger along the edge of his lower lip, as if still examining how the Jenregar had mutilated him. "They have been merciless toward us," he said. "We must be the same toward them."

  Luisa said, "I want to kill them all."

  Mike felt he had to say the word. "Genocide?"

  "Call it whatever you like. It is what they would do to us, isn't it?"

  "Yes, I'm afraid it is. The Jenregar doesn't pacify, it doesn't occupy. It doesn't assimilate. It kills and move on."

  "Then we must do that first."

  Mike had nothing to say for a moment, and Damian and Luisa also sat silently. We have to think not only about what we may have to do, Mike thought, but what we may have to become.

  After a couple more hours of debriefing, Mike took Neriah's suggestion of grabbing a few hours sleep in quarters the Unity provided. When he woke up, it was nearly night. I'm out of sync, he thought. In more ways than one. I've got to figure out what to do next.

  For now, he ordered a hot meal and sat in his suite and ate it alone. No company, no music, just his own disordered thoughts. Afterward, he stood on a balcony overlooking the lights of Brussels and wondered how long it might be until this great city saw a Jenregar incursion.

  Here at the center of Belgian, European, and Earth Unity government, Mike was all too aware of the weight of history embodied within the very architecture of this city. And it's only the smallest part of Human endeavor and achievement, Mike thought. Everything I am physically may come from that goddam ectogenesis tank, but all the rest that makes me Human—science, music, logic, love— comes from this planet. Deny it, and I'm denying the Sibelius Violin Concerto, Victoria Falls, and the late city of Florence. It's as if the Earth's grav has been reaching out to me all these years, unseen, unfelt, but slowly and inexorably drawing me back to itself.

  Until returning to Earth made me realize I love this world after all—despite people like Jeremy.

  I have to find a way to help save it.

  The door chime sounded. Mike took a deep breath. Not even a single night of peace, he thought, whoever this is, whatever they want.

  He went to the door. "Who is it?"

  "Neriah. It's urgent."

  He opened the door and Neriah's crestfallen expression and slumped shoulders told him something was very wrong. "What's happened?" he asked.

  "It's Jeremy's wife," she said. "She's dead."

  "Is it confirmed? How do we know that?"

  "We found the starcraft that she and Jeremy took from Costaguana. It was burned out inside, cast adrift. Most of the passengers and crew were never even taken off of it. Julia Sheffield was one of them. We've seen her body, confirmed her ID through DNA, prints, retina, everything."

  "Dammit," Mike said. "Does Jeremy know?" "Not yet. I'd like you to go with me to tell him."

  "Why me? I'm the last person he'd want to hear something like that from."

  "Like it or not," Neriah said, "you did share an awful experience the las
t few days. You both know the Jenregar and what it's capable of. In the heat of emotion... maybe he'll remember something we can use."

  "That's kind of cold."

  "So's a world where Humanity isn't Earth's dominant lifeform anymore."

  "All right," Mike said. "I'll come with you."

  Mike had read about virt parlors, and seen cubes of what they looked like. But he wasn't prepared for the reality of it when he and Neriah entered the large, sterile, and pristine room located in a structure that was just a short walk from the European Parliament building.

  Dozens, hundreds of dark green coffin shapes were laid out before them, each on a pedestal placing them chest-high. Silence ruled—no attendants were in sight and the tech involved both in maintaining each virt client and in delivering each one's preferred fantasy to his or her receptacle was utterly quiet.

  Perhaps given the coffin-like shapes of each receptacle, Mike had expected the place would reek of dust and decay, but the scents that greeted them were surprisingly fresh and natural, as if they were walking across a grassy landscape or down toward a beach.

  "Not what I anticipated," Mike told Neriah, as they walked down the line of receptacles, "but I still can't approve."

  "Now, now. We can't all be famous explorers. Or even unknown Unity diplomats. And I've been known to indulge myself for an hour or two sometimes."

  "Nothing wrong with that. But this is different. There's something wrong with a planet where a high percentage of its inhabitants would rather live in a fake reality for days at a time."

  "You won't find a argument from me there." Neriah stopped before one of the receptacles. "Here he is."

  Mike examined the readouts on the side of the receptacle. "Vitals look good. All in all, he seems pretty calm in there."

  "Which I suppose is the point," Neriah said.

  "I wonder if he's with Julia."

  "In his fantasy, you mean?"

  "Yeah. None of our business, of course, but..."

  "Let's get this over with," Mike said.