Clarkesworld Magazine Issue 107

by Clarke,Neil

  While a doctor was patching my lip, I used one of my secret modifications to link into the communication network and call my parents on Titania. That’s when I found out Titania wasn’t there anymore.

  Ten years later, I held Ryan in my tentacles among the shadows in Lock 212. I placed my gloved hands on either side of his face. It must have felt like a caress—the gloves are supple, though they can withstand void conditions. “How about a kiss, little Shantytown girl?” I said with my Magic Kingdom voice. “You’re not going to say no, are you? Shantytown girls who say no can find themselves on the wrong side of an airlock.”

  There was a glimmer of understanding in his eyes. He might not remember that those were the exact words he had once said to me—it was one incident in a lifetime of fun he had enjoyed at the expense of people who couldn’t fight back. But he wasn’t stupid. When I said Shantytown girl, I gave him a clue about my status in life. He seemed hopeful he could use it against me.

  “You’ll pay for this,” he said. But I guessed he was talking about what I had already done. He still hadn’t realized what I was going to do. Not until the alarm for the outer door sounded.

  I held him tight—I didn’t want him to fly out the door. Medusa’s tentacles locked us both in place as the air rushed past us, taking Percy O’Reilly with it.

  Death by exposure to void takes longer than you might think. But he didn’t struggle that much. The light of Hella Major poured into the airlock, lending the scene a sacred quality. To me, it was sacred. Those grand airlocks were the only places where I felt the presence of God. I wondered if Ryan felt Him, too.

  When it was done, I took Ryan’s body to the open door. With my modified vision I could gaze directly at Hella Major. Unfortunately, that sun was between Olympia and its binary partner, but it was still a glorious sight. I turned Ryan to face the light, and gave him a big push. He and Olympia were going the same speed, but their paths diverged as Olympia continued her journey to the distant star toward whose system we are faithfully bound.

  He must be floating there still.

  I no longer have my natural eyes, so I generate few tears. But I shed one as I closed the outer door and took Medusa back to her lair. It wasn’t out of pity for Ryan, but I couldn’t say it was for joy, either. I think it may have been for the sheer terror and beauty of what I had seen—and done. The music that played in my head then was Ralph Vaughan Williams’ Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, a piece that I’m sure Ryan never heard. My father was the chief advocate for the preservation of classical music from our past, and my father failed in that mission, even before he died.

  Or he seemed to fail. Because when I emigrated to Olympia I brought more than my toothbrush. I brought data entrusted to me by my parents. That data is the reason Ryan Charmayne had to die.

  Perhaps you thought I killed him for revenge? Not at all. Ryan died because he was planning to introduce a bill to shoot down Lady Charmayne’s Music In Education Initiative. Music was a tool of discipline, not inspiration, according to Ryan. He wanted to make the point that his father, Baylor Charmayne, was a wimp who was afraid to defy a mother who was long dead.

  He had never heard a note of that music. But that didn’t matter to him—or to me. His stupid bill mattered. That bill died with him, and Lady Charmayne’s (posthumously stated) will prevailed.

  I returned to my duties as a servant, attending Baylor Charmayne and his cronies. I was there when he learned that his son had disappeared. He eyed Clan O’Reilly, and they returned the favor. The Executives have very good reasons to suspect each other of murder and treachery. But no accusation was spoken out loud.

  Within ten rest/work cycles, Baylor rallied the house to pass the Music In Education Initiative, dedicating it to his son’s memory, and every child on Olympia was implanted with the vast library of classical and folk music that my father had so lovingly compiled and preserved.

  No one will ever know that my father did so. Everyone will believe Lady Charmayne designed the music education program, even though that idea never would have crossed her mind. She knew nothing about music. Her true ambitions were utterly heartless.

  She was the chief architect of our misery. But if I have my way, no one will remember her that way.

  No one will know what she was really planning.

  TWO

  The Girl From Shantytown

  “We felt soil and grass beneath our feet,” my father told me. “Can you imagine the mud squishing between your toes?”

  “No,” I said. “I never squished anything.” I had never seen the habitat sectors inside Olympia and Titania, but my parents pined for them. I was five, and my father spoke of the habitat sectors the way other parents speak of the wondrous lands in fairy tales.

  “Flowers and fruits and vegetables grow there,” he said. “Grain and nuts and sweet grasses. The air smells of green things. Far, far above you, clouds float in the center, and sometimes rain falls from them.”

  I knew what he meant, because I had seen images of rain. Also of snow, lightning, and tornados, though none of those happened on the Generation Ships. The ships were big enough inside to create light rain showers, but that was all. Crops were watered by irrigation, and the water was recycled. My father had worked in those gardens when he was younger, but robots did that work now. He was no longer allowed inside the habitat sectors. As a scientist, he was restricted to the tech sector.

  “Think of The Enchanted Lake.” His eyes shone. “Hear it inside your head. The images you see will show you the beauty of nature.”

  I didn’t have to search my memory for the music by Anatol Liadov. Father had implanted the music database in my brain when I was four. He broke the law when he did this, but his crime was unsuspected. My modification was one my father believed all children should have. His proposal had been shot down. The Executives thought it was foolish and pointless—they could not imagine why he wanted to do such a thing. So they didn’t suspect that he already had.

  My mother enfolded me in her arms. The images that came with the music were her contribution. They were from our home world: rain and lightning, waves on the shore, underground pools, tall grass waving in the wind—vids, photographs, drawings, paintings, tapestries, sculptures depicting scenes of a living world in all its aspects. The three of us snuggled in our cramped little burrow, seeing those scenes and hearing our music. It allowed us to hope, and dream, and imagine, while our fellow worms slept and plotted to survive another cycle.

  When I was eleven, my father tried to enroll me in the science program, and they refused me. It was the first time I ever saw him angry. But his voice stayed reasonable as he spoke with the official at the enrollment desk. “My daughter tested in the top two percent.”

  The official didn’t smirk, but I could tell she was enjoying herself. “The class is full,” she said. “They had to cut back, you know that. We’re in emergency mode.”

  My father’s hand tightened around mine. “She will have to work in the manual labor force if she doesn’t enter this class.”

  “Good thing she’s so smart,” said the official. “I’m sure she’ll find a way to rise above it all.”

  My father’s face was the color of coffee-with-cream, but it darkened to purple then. I was astounded at the amount of rage and despair that simmered in his eyes. The official should have melted on the spot.

  Instead, she seemed to feed on his anger. She pointed toward the bored security officer slouching near the door. “At the end of that corridor there’s an access hall that leads to Lock 17. You have two choices, citizen. You can walk your brat out of here and get back to work, or you can take your complaint to the wrong side of Lock 17. Got it?”

  She seemed to hope that he didn’t get it.

  My father turned and escorted me out of the room. His hand still held mine too tightly, but he took small steps so I could keep up with him. We walked down corridors that became narrower, but when we arrived at the junction that would lead me back to the c
hildren’s school/work sector, he chose another direction. His hand relaxed, and I could tell he had a plan.

  Executives have always said that the Generation Ships are overpopulated, but you couldn’t tell that if you judged by how many people you encounter in the tunnels. Sometimes you can walk for hours without encountering anyone. We were alone, but my father didn’t speak until he ushered me into a small room that looked like a doctor’s office. He helped me onto an examining table and put his hands on my shoulders. “Oichi, never act unless you have thought, first.”

  “Okay,” I promised, not yet realizing that he had given me the advice by which I would conduct the rest of my life.

  “I am not surprised by what the official had to say,” he continued. “Your mother and I worried this could happen, and we have a backup plan.”

  I gazed into his face. I thought my father was the handsomest man alive, but I worried about the white hairs on his head that seemed to be chasing away the black. My father was twenty years older than my mother, and he was beginning to look it.

  “Oichi, the database we placed in your head is different from the modifications that most other people have. Less than twenty of us have them. They were to be the new generation of brain enhancements, but our program was cut. We implanted them in each other, because we knew they might give us an advantage. This is your gift from us—and it is your greatest secret. You must never speak of it to anyone, not even to your mother and me—not even over what you assume to be a private link.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Good,” he said. “Because I’m about to break the law again. I’m going to give you more.”

  Two hours later, I felt my mother’s hands on my face. I lay in our tiny quarters, and she was toweling my hair dry after washing the blood from it. I didn’t try to open my eyes, I felt content to drift in the new inner space my father had implanted in my brain.

  There was nothing hazy about that space. But despite that clarity, I can never conjure my mother’s face in my memory. I remember that my mother had skin the color of honey and hair that was blacker than the void. But what I remember the most clearly about her is her voice.

  She finished her toweling and arranged my clean hair on the pillow. “Oichi, an ancient philosopher named Marshall McLuhan once said that the medium is the message. It doesn’t matter how elegant, or practical, or brilliant, or fair an idea may be. It will be ignored if it comes from the worms, or the asteroid miners, or the scientists, or even the mid-level Executives. It does no good to preach to the choir. For the powerful ones to change the laws, they have to believe that those changes are the result of their own intelligence. Their pride will stand nothing less.”

  I felt her lips on each of my hands, and then on my brow. Her voice was so beautiful, I’m surprised the Executives didn’t include it in their library of pleasant voices.

  “From now on,” she said, “you will learn everything you can from school, and even at work. Then you will come home, and your father and I will teach you everything we know.”

  What she didn’t say was that everything they taught me would stimulate what was now in my head to make other connections for intelligence and survival. One day I would be a conduit for the preservation of culture in a new, humanistic society. But if that were to happen we could never speak of that again, we could never even hint at it.

  “This cycle, you need to rest.” Mother kissed me again. “A new work cycle begins in twelve hours.”

  She and father spoke quietly to each other, and a little later they made sure I sipped some nutrient broth. I amused myself with my music library, starting with Gustav Holst’s Planets suite, then wandering on to orchestral performances of Claude Debussy’s Nocturnes. The images that accompanied the music ranged from majestic to whimsical, but all of them were beautiful, and I enjoyed myself immensely.

  Eventually I fell asleep, but I don’t think I slept very long. When I woke, the lights had been dialed down to night mode, and my parents were tucked away in their own cubby. I tried to decide on another music selection, but my mind kept wandering back to the official who had told us there was no room in the science program for another student.

  My father scoffed at this notion. “They always claim there is not enough. Not enough food, though we have plenty. Not enough fuel, though we mine it as we go. Not enough heat, not enough light. Not enough room in the habitat sectors—for anyone but the Executives. But the space on the inside edge of the Generation Ships is immense; it could accommodate all of us.”

  “Then why don’t they share?”

  “Because,” said my father, “nothing is valuable unless it seems to be scarce.”

  I lay in my cubby and wondered about the grass under the feet of the Executives, the mud they squished between their toes, and a notion occurred to me. My new modifications allowed me access to more than just information. They allowed me access to an extensive communications network as well. I thought there must be monitors inside the habitat sectors. I wondered if I might have a peek at what my father had loved so dearly. I pictured the general directory, then selected sub-directories.

  The directory was far more complex and detailed than anything I had known before. What delighted me about it was that it didn’t just provide links for individuals, it also provided them for systems—for instance, the maintenance system might contact a repair drone and order it to perform a task.

  Even more intriguing, it showed me links that were currently in use. I dove deeper into the directories, until I saw something that surprised me. I saw a link in use between two people: S. Charmayne and B. Charmayne.

  Even at my age, I knew who Lady Sheba was. My mother privately called her The Iron Fist, which did not make her sound like a nice lady. Without planning to invade anything, I touched that highlighted link between S. and B., hoping it might tell me who they were.

  < . . . not enough room in the lifeboat.> I heard the woman’s voice as if she were speaking right into my ear. This was because I was accessing the link with my implants, and the parts of my brain that processed language and hearing were stimulated. The voices I heard were the voices the Charmaynes had chosen to represent them.

  I withdrew from the link, startled. Did she know I had eavesdropped? Was it really the Lady Charmayne? Would she blow me out Lock 17 if she knew it was me?

  But father had said nobody knew about my special modifications. That must mean they couldn’t know, unless I told them. So I touched the link again.

  < . . . always use that metaphor,> said a man’s voice.

 

  The man sighed.

  They talked in that vein for quite a while, and I got bored with them. So I dropped the link and searched for anything that might give me a look at the habitat sectors, but the closest I got was a doorway leading from a supply room on the inside edge of Titania’s skin. The door was open, and I could see light filtered through green things. I saw a spot of color too, from a patch of flowers. It was pleasant, downright charming, but try as I might, I couldn’t get on the other side of the door to gaze at the big picture. My father had said that there was a horizon, and it curved up, and if you looked straight up through the thin clouds you could see the other side of the habitat far above you. But there were no pictures of that in my head, and there seemed to be none anywhere else either. It was as if the Executives didn’t want us to know what it looked like.

  Why not? I wondered.

  S. and B. might give me a clue, if I listened to them long enough. They might put me to sleep with their conversation, but maybe I could learn something if I was patient. I checked the link—it was still in use. So I touched it again, and I did lear
n something.

  said Sheba Charmayne.

  THREE

  Gamelan, My Little Doggie . . .

  The smell of rain is an astounding thing. If you live inside the arid skin of Olympia you may smell machines, blood, human sweat, that sort of thing. But the smell of rain is unlike anything you could imagine. Yet even if you’ve never smelled it before, you will know what it is.

  I stood in the rain of the habitat sector, waiting to serve the Executives at Baylor Charmayne’s garden party. They stood in the same rain. Precipitation on Olympia was so fine, it fell as a mist. Our clothing couldn’t absorb it; a Servant’s mantle covered our heads.

  Some of the Executives wore their own version of mantles, but most of them let their hair get wet. They found the discomfort amusing, because they endured it so rarely and could end it at any time.

  This was near the end of my first year on the job, and I watched this behavior because I found it odd. I also took note of the moisture on my face, the pretty colors of the fresh vegetables, and the handsome face of Nuruddin, who was one of my coworkers. In his Servant’s mantle he looked like an Egyptian king. But ancient art was not studied on Olympia at that time, so I was one of the few people who noticed that.

  Despite these distractions, I remained focused on my duties. The Executives require Servants to respond to their slightest cue, to be at hand with whatever is required in an instant, whether that be a napkin, a dish, a refill of a beverage, or any one of a thousand other details. We must move silently, unobtrusively, and efficiently. Those of us who can’t don’t make it out of training.

  My father wasn’t happy when I told him my ambitions, though he did understand them. No tech training had materialized for me on Titania, and we hoped that Olympia might provide more opportunities for me, since I was sixteen and still trainable. But extensive modification is needed to become a servant, and my forbidden implants could have been discovered at any time during that process. My father had to pull a lot of strings to make sure the right med-techs were on duty the cycles I went in for modification.