Gorgon Child

by Steven Barnes

  "You will succeed. The future of our people depends upon it. There is no alternative. It is the only reason you exist. You are NewMen! You are Gorgons! You are . . . Medusa!"

  16 raised his arm, returned Quint's salute. He was a warrior! He would fight! Would kill the woman Cotonou! Would bear children for his people! This was who and what he was, and his feelings came last. So he had been told. So it was.

  Wasn't it?

  3:47 p.m.

  With a scream like a dying giant, the poplar tree fell to earth. It thundered as its bark rent and the branches splintered and snapped away from the trunk.

  Aubry had seen buildings die, had personally punched the button that triggered pounds of high explosive in their guts, but watching the tree fall touched something unexpected. He felt a moment of grief, combined with a surge of giddy power. So high and mighty. We can bring you down!

  The last few feet of the descent were more sound than vision. The vibration slammed through the earth and rocked him to the core.

  Crewmaster Glenda Wright rubbed her hands together and slapped Aubry on the back. "All right, muscles. Let's see what you can do."

  She was a strong, stout woman with a weathered face. She might have been pretty if she had bothered to make that face up. She made no secret of the fact that she didn't give a damn.

  The saws were ultra lightweight, motorized framework with strands of iron-molybdenum monofilament crystal wire running in an endless loop. The wire was insanely stronger than steel, and sharp enough to slice dust.

  Aubry shouldered in next to the tree and began stripping away branches. A dozen other figures buzzed around the tree as well, carrying away the branches, clipping, judging, attaching the anchor pulleys.

  A tow line dropped from overhead, and he grinned as I hey attached the bobbling teardrop of an immense golden helium balloon to the tree trunk. The gigantic yellow balloon was moored to an overhead span of cable running north and south, and ballasted with a series of interlocked iron rings. When the rings were released, the trunk groaned and rose up into the air, dangling between the balloon and the line like a grotesquely huge musical note.

  The balloon rippled in the wind as the gears ground.

  The crew applauded thunderously as the log moved north toward the mill. There were too many workers—in any commercial operation, salaries would have eaten up the profits. But then, Ephesus sought something far more elusive than profit: health.

  Aubry stopped, wiping his arm across his mouth, shaking sweat droplets from his beard. They were about twelve miles north of the main camp, a decline nestled in the middle of the Tillamook Burn area in northern Oregon. A shallow fork of Trask River ran through the floor of the valley. This time of year, it was barely deep enough to moisten their boot soles.

  Before letting him out with the crews, they had indoctrinated him, shown him the films and reconstructions of the “Burn," the most hideously costly fire in Oregonian history. That had been almost a century ago, and the area had been refoliated with a vengeance.

  "We don't harvest trees here . . ." he had been told over and over again. "We rebuild human beings. Human beings who have been ravaged by the people who were supposed to love them. Protect them." Glenda looked at him pointedly.

  "And if you can't hack that, get out. We don't need you here."

  Aubry swallowed his ire, and shut up.

  He still didn't quite fit in, but after a week, no one stared anymore. There were few smiles and fewer friendly words, but he didn't feel like King Kong. It was gruelingly physical work, he had to admit that.

  The terrain was rough, all of it, and there was no way to make that less of a problem without raping the woods.

  So the women hiked up through the backwoods. And! they scouted, and they marked trees. And they cared for the sick timber, and they planted new seedlings.

  To the west, they plowed the ground, and made their harvests. And somewhere in all of it, people were being reborn.

  It seemed like bullshit to him. Bullshit.

  He sliced away a branch, and then another, and then clicked the saw off and slipped its safety sheath back on,j looking at the branch in front of him. It was three inches, thick, and he felt a flare of hatred toward it that was shocking.

  Aubry grabbed it and pulled at it, feeling the give in the structure, feeling it yield and spring back like a living thing.

  Didn't it know it was dead? Why did it resist? Why would it bother . . . ?

  For no reason, all of the anger and frustration he felt was suddenly focused on this harmless piece of wood, this] branch, already dying, its juices already slowing, growing viscous. He slammed at it with the side of his hand, and felt it crack. He snarled at it and wrenched fiercely, ripping it away from the bole of the tree with a single surge of strength.

  He stopped, suddenly aware that he was being watched, that shocked eyes had witnessed the single act of violence.

  Aubry sat on a stump, chewing on a piece of jerky.

  Glenda came over to him, eyed him suspiciously. "This is the first time you've sat down today, mister. What are you trying to prove?"

  Aubry looked up and said in a neutral voice, "Nothing! I'm not trying to prove anything. I just want to work. Is there anything wrong with that?"

  She shook her head, and trudged back downhill.

  His head hurt. He looked up at the sun, suddenly dizzy. The blinding yellow orb grew swollen, filled the sky. and suddenly—

  A hand reached out of the sky, a hand slimed with blood, and the face of Carl, teeth punched through lower lip, now crawling through the hallways of Death Valley, holding in his intestines with one hand as the other clawed him a few more inches forward. And Carl looked at him, eyes weary and numb with approaching death, and whiskered: "You were our friend, Aubry. We needed you, and you let us die—"

  He gasped, and ran. Ran up into the hills, trying to find some place to hide. The images were breaking through the blockade, through the mindshields that Warrick had helped him build. Suddenly, unbidden thoughts of Death Valley came back to him. All of the fear, all of the pain, all of the darkness, and the endless tunnels. His vision blackened at the periphery, and Aubry was suddenly half-blind, stumbling, the demons of night swarming out, baring their teeth in the light of day.

  And Maxine. Images of that horrid night on the beach, when the woman he thought he loved had betrayed him. As every woman he had ever known had betrayed him . . .

  No! That wasn't true. There was Promise. . . .

  Yes. And if it weren't for those damned mushrooms, how long would it be . . .

  He ran, the voices hammering their way through, the shields falling, peeling away from him. He screamed now, in reamed like one of the dying trees. He ran, straight up the hill, sprinted until he felt his lungs were about to burst. His legs flamed.

  There was nothing around him but walls, walls, and the darkness that hid death from him, and the screams of the shattered. . . .

  Aubry ran into a tree headfirst, fell and sprang up again, smashing into the trunk with his bare fists, smashing until the blood ran from his hands and the bark flew in crimsoned chips.

  He battered at it, smashing hands, knees, elbows, feet. . . .

  And finally he slid down and lay exhausted upon the ground.

  It had to mean something. All of it had to mean something. All of the pain had to fit in somewhere.

  With the strength of the pain in his hands, he bore down, and forced the walls to retreat, the darkness to lift. Forced the door to close. Forced the ugly images to retreat again, to hide for a few more hours, hissing and coiling in the back of his mind.

  Aubry gasped for air. Every night. Promise fought to teach him the dances of Ephesus, and every night he felt his body rebel. He couldn't. He just couldn't. He would look like such a fool, his great, muscular body twisting and mincing like a faggot. He just couldn't. . . .

  "They said I'd find you here."

  Aubry looked up into Promise's face. She examined the chipped tree
bark. "We kill them," she said, "but we rarely torture them first."

  He glared, his gaze sinking back to the ground.

  "Come on. You're through for the day."

  "How was the nursery?"

  She smiled wistfully. "I still don't know if that duty was a reward or a punishment. I guess—" She took his hand as they walked down the side of the hill. "Aubry! Your hands ..."

  He jerked them away, hid their torn skin in his pockets. "It's nothing. Just training."

  She stopped him there on the hill, and looked at his hands, his elbows, the torn, bloodied cloth on the knees of his pants.

  "What are you doing to yourself?"

  "Nothing. I'm fine." He pushed her to arm's length, hating himself for the lie. "I. Am. Fine. Read my lips."

  Promise stopped, stood there as Aubry stalked back down the hill. He got a dozen steps before he stopped. She stood up there, above him and seemingly very fragile, her hands tucked into her coat pockets.

  "Aubry," she said quietly. "Do you want to be here with me?"

  "I want to be with you. I don't want to be here."

  "I don't have anywhere else to offer you."

  Aubry slammed the side of his hand into a tree. Promise tried to work up a smile. "There you go, beating up the trees again." "Listen," Aubry said desperately. "I don't know where I want to be. I don't want to be in Ephesus." He slammed Ins hands against his chest, hard. "I don't want to be in here, either. I got no choice. Maybe nobody ever has a choice."

  Promise walked down to him. "That's a pretty lousy reason for us to be together, Aubry."

  "I need you," he whispered. He pulled her close. "I'm afraid, Promise. There's something wrong with me. Wrong with my head."

  "Cyloxibin?"

  "Death Valley. It isn't going away."

  He pushed her away gently. His mouth opened, as if about to say something, then closed again.

  He walked back down the mountainside without her.

  Aubry stood on the tiny balcony overlooking the compound, watching the women going about their jobs and pleasures, strolling hand in hand or alone. A few, a very few, were with men, but they seemed too self-conscious to touch.

  A string of children ran, laughing, under the balcony. Aubry turned to Promise, who sat up in bed, reading one of the reproductive clinic manuals.

  "Does it say anything in there about male children?"

  "What?"

  "Haven't you noticed?" he said. "There are about six little girls for every boy around here. Doesn't that say something to you?''

  Promise folded the book against her chest. "No. What should it say?"

  Her eyes were guarded.

  "How many ways are there of fixing that horserace? What do they do? Smother them at birth?"

  Promise spoke very quietly, with great control. "Of course not. A child's gender can be guided in several ways, Aubry. ..."

  "Just what are they doing over there in the clinic?" I "We have to be careful," Promise said. "We're on probation here."

  "Yeah, like Jenna said. I can screw things up."

  Promise patted the bed beside her. "Let's not argue. 1 Please."

  Aubry looked at her, and wanted to be reasonable. ; Wanted to see things her way, but saw only red, felt the door in his mind wedging open.

  "I'm getting out of here," he said.

  "Aubry—you can't. You know that we're under quarantine. They'll never let you past the door."

  You make me sick.

  "Don't worry," he said gently. "I'll be all right."

  Aubry walked back out to the balcony, grabbed the edge of the roof, and curled himself up.

  From the roof, he could see west to the big oval of the central compound. Directly around him were the dormitories of the single women, and some of the paired living quarters. At the north end of the oval stood the dome of the reproductive clinic, next to the administration building. I It drew his attention strongly, and as he focused his senses,] Aubry heard conversations from that direction, and the sound of clinking metal.

  And something else.

  Aubry climbed over to the edge of the building and caught hold of a drain pipe, tested it, and crawled down as soundlessly as a spider. He dropped to the next roof, maintaining his crouch.

  He took the two-story drop to gravel on the balls of his feet. He checked to make sure that he wasn't being watched,! and raced across the compound, heading north for the clinic. He dove into shadow.

  There was a stand of trees between him and the clinic,and something told him not to start out into it.

  People worked out there, in the near darkness, and his curiosity was piqued.

  They looked like men, but it was hard to tell. They wore genderless overalls, and had chunky wedges for bodies but that was meaningless.

  They were moving crates out of the clinic. Heavy crates.

  One of them emitted a wisp of steam. Two workers conducted a hurried conversation, and back it went to the lab.

  Steam? Or condensation?

  He watched, unsure of what was happening, as the last of the boxes was loaded into a vehicle that he couldn't make out clearly.

  Then with a hum, it rose from the ground. No prop wash, no landing or safety lights. Just up and away. It hovered for a moment as if orienting itself, and then took off to the south, a small, boxlike hovercraft that jetted thin trails of steam. It looked insulated. Stenciled on the side were the letters "MCF."

  He couldn't see any more. The doors of the clinic closed, and Aubry suddenly felt very exposed. He wasn't supposed to be here, that he knew. He was risking his own and Promise's life by being here, and yet . . .

  And yet . . .

  Aubry faded back into the shadows, and disappeared.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Dance of Death

  Ephesus was silent, at least so Aubry thought at first. As he flowed from one pocket of darkness to the next, he suddenly heard a steady, rhythmic thrumming from the southern end of the camp.

  He slipped through the rear of the administration building, across another small courtyard, and through the shadows of the dining halls and the library. From there, he could make out a circular amphitheater.

  The floor of the amphitheater was approximately thirty by thirty meters. Steps had been cut into the dirt, and layered with planks to make ten rows of riser seats. An; empty wheelbarrow lay on its side at the south end, when pale strips of concrete had been poured and molded into more permanent seating.

  There were no ki-yas or other violent explosions of] breath, but thirty women moved combatively across the floor of the amphitheater. In pairs, they shifted through a succession of dance movements, swaying and weaving! without music.

  Fascinated, he crept closer.

  Each of them held a tapered wooden dowel in an underhand grip. But they weren't attempting to stab or slash each other. Rather, the intention seemed to be to blend together moving in such a way that the blades came as close to the partner's body as possible without touching. The motions were circular, and flowing.

  He finally made out Jenna's figure, and the rest of clicked into place. Durga.

  The dance was very soothing to the eye, so that after a few minutes of watching the ebb and flow he had to stop and shake his head: he had been on the verge of falling asleep.

  A minute later, the same thing happened again. He caught himself yawning for no apparent reason.

  That alerted him: there was something hypnotic about the movement, something that deliberately lulled the senses. That was even more fascinating, and dangerous.

  He crept through the shadows, and moved in closer.

  Jenna's head snapped up from correcting one of the pairs of partners, and she stared out into the darkness, almost directly at him. She stared for ten seconds, then turned back to what she was doing.

  Aubry made out another figure on the outskirts of the practice area. A very old woman sat there. Her hair was long and white, and her face seemed very serene. Her shoulders swayed slightly as she watche
d the rites of Durga.

  The sight was mesmerizing, and somehow reminiscent of Promise's dance. The women meshed and then drew back from one another. They spun, and then one partner would break away, and plunge headfirst into the ground. With a beautifully fluid shoulder-roll, she was up again, and sprang back to the "attack." There was no counter, no attempt to block the knife. Only a twist of the hips to let the blade slip past and—

  On the other side, someone whirled into the air, and came down in what should have been a bone-jarring fall. But the woman collapsed like a rag and rolled back up to her feet and back at the opponent.

  It was a good workout. After five minutes the white-haired woman rose quietly and inclined her head to Jenna. Jenna raised her hands into the air and clapped twice. The thirty women ceased their rolling and tumbling. They turned, and bowed shallowly to the old woman.

  She retreated from the field, disappearing into the shadows of the administration building.

  Jenna clapped her hands again. The women all sat, backs straight, hands on knees, listening intently.

  Jenna demonstrated a few movements, short curving motions of the knife, and Aubry had the distinct impression that the movements were not attacks but entries techniques utilized to bridge the gap, cross the "no-man's land" between opponents. To move into killing range.

  Then she clapped her hands again. The women stood and dispersed, speaking in low voices.

  Jenna sat, framed by the pools of light, and peered out into the darkness for a while, once again almost directly at Aubry.

  Then she turned and sat on her heels, meditating for moment. Aubry moved out silently, steadily, coming in directly behind her on the balls of his feet.

  He stopped twenty paces away.

  She rose from the sitting position in a sort of reverse corkscrew movement, and ended facing Aubry. The knives gleaming in either hand were certainly not wooden.

  "You watched," she said. She smiled bitterly. "Men are not allowed to watch the rites of Durga. In ancient times, those who did were blinded and hamstrung."