Asimov's SF, January 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Taney merely repeated, “The world keeps you safe."

  Sudie said suddenly from her place against the tree, “Your voice is sad, Taney."

  Jana said, “When will we get new cartoons?"

  But Taney was already getting to her feet, slow and heavy in her white covering. Even Kim knew what that meant. Kim climbed onto Taney's lap and started to lick frantically at Taney's face, and it took both Sudie and Li to pull her back. Kim was tall and strong. Taney said, as always, “Be well, dear hearts,” and started away.

  Li, clutching the screaming Kim, watched Taney walk the path between the trees until he couldn't see her anymore. The leaving door was in a big pink rock at the small end of the world, near the pond. Maybe tomorrow they would splash in the pond. That might be fun.

  Except that nothing was as much fun as it used to be. Li didn't know why, but it was true.

  Eventually Kim stopped screaming and they let her go. Jana folded and refolded the white paper bag Taney had left her, making pretty shapes. The sky overhead and beside the Grove darkened. The feeder with its three untouched bowls and one empty one sank into the ground. The blankets rose, clean even though last night Kim had shit hers again.

  The four children wrapped themselves in blankets and lay down on the grass. Within minutes all were asleep in the circling grove of antiseptic palm trees that produced no fruit, and whose fronds never rustled in the motionless air.

  * * * *

  "Two-and-a-half enclosed acres. Double-built dome construction, translucent and virtually impenetrable. Negative air pressure with triple filters. Inside, semi-tropical flora, no fauna, monitors throughout. Life-maintenance machinery to be concentrated by the east wall within a circle of trees, including the input screen. All instructional programs to feature only cartoon characters in biohazard suits, to minimize curiosity about other people."

  Katherine said, “Two-and-a-half acres isn't sufficient for a self-sustaining biosphere."

  "Of course not, ma'am,” the high-clearance DOD engineer said, barely concealing his impatience. “An outside computer will control all plant-maintenance and atmospheric functions."

  "And personnel?"

  "Once the biosphere is up and running, it will need little human oversight. Both functional and contact personnel will be your agency's responsibility. Our involvement extends only to the construction and maintenance of the cage."

  "Don't call it that!"

  The engineer, whom Katherine knew she should be thanking instead of reprimanding, merely shrugged. His blue eyes glittered with dislike. “Whatever you say, ma'am."

  * * * *

  Three days later, Taney didn't come.

  It was her day. But lunch came up on the feeder, and then dinner, and then the sky got dark, and the leaving door never opened. Kim sat staring at it the whole day, her mouth hanging open until Jana pressed it closed. Kim couldn't talk or do much of anything, but somehow she always knew when it was Taney's day. So she sat, while the others splashed in the pond and pretended to have fun.

  All at once the water in the pond gave a small hiccup and sloshed gently onto the sandy beach.

  “Did you feel that?” Sudie said. “The ground moved!"

  “Ground can't move,” Li said, because he was the leader. But it had. He waited for the ground to do something else but it just lay there, ground under water. Li got out of the pond.

  “Where are you going?” Jana said.

  “Feeder time,” Li said, although it wasn't.

  They pulled Kim to her feet and ran. By the time they reached the Grove, their naked bodies were dry. Li could feel his hair, which Taney sometimes cut, curling wetly on the back of his neck. Jana's hair, shorter than his, stood up in yellow fluff that Li liked. Maybe Jana would want to play bodies with him tonight.

  They sat in a circle under the trees, hungry and pleasantly tired from splashing in the pond. Sudie studied the keypad under the screen, each button with a little picture on it, and chose the cartoon about four children helping each other to make sand paintings. Li was tired of that cartoon, although when it first appeared, they'd all loved it. Days and days had been spent making sand paintings with the many-colored sands on the beach by the pond.

  The cartoon played, but only Kim really watched it. The feeder rose and—

  “The bowls are empty!” Jana cried.

  Li leaped up and examined the four wooden bowls. Empty. How could that be? Why would the feeder bring empty bowls?

  The ground moved gently beneath them.

  “The feeder is broken!” Sudie jumped up and ran to the keypad. Each of its buttons had a picture of a cartoon showing the right thing to do for eating, for playing, for cleaning themselves, for fixing bloody scratches if they fell, for not using up all their kindness if they got angry with each other. But nothing for a broken feeder, a thing that couldn't happen because the feeder was part of the world. But if there was an inside to the covering that was the world and therefore an outside then maybe—Li had never thought this before—maybe the feeder, like Taney, went outside and things could break there?

  Cold slid along Li's neck. Kim started licking everyone's face, running from one to another. Li let her because Kim was stronger than he was and anyway he was used to it.

  “I'm calling Taney,” Sudie said, but she looked questioningly at Li. Calling Taney was, they had all been told over and over, very serious. The only times they'd ever called her was when Sudie broke her arm and when Jana ate the bad flower and all her food came back up through her mouth. Only twice.

  “Do it,” Li said, and Sudie pushed at the exact same time both buttons with Taney's picture.

  * * * *

  Katherine sat very erect, the back of her best suit not touching the back of her chair, her face stone. A secret congressional hearing didn't scare her, veteran of far too many. But what this particular committee might decide, did.

  "Dr. Taney, are they, in your expert opinion, the result of deliberate genetic experimentation?"

  "Of course they are, Mr. Chairman."

  "And intended by the enemy for use as a covert terrorist weapon against the United States?"

  "The enemy does not inform me of its intentions."

  "But if released, these things—"

  "Children, Senator. And no one is suggesting releasing them."

  "But—"

  "They are children. Have you even seen them?” Katherine pressed the button on her purse. Equipment she should not have been able to get into the committee room suddenly flashed an image on the far wall. Four babies, three of them beautiful with skin pink or brown or golden, one with a shock of thick black hair and eyes already the color of coffee beans. They could have posed for a diversity poster. Smiling, plump-armed, adorable.

  Lethal.

  * * * *

  Li hadn't expected Taney to come right away, maybe not until morning. He couldn't sleep. He didn't want to play bodies with Jana or Sudie. All night, it seemed, he lay in his blanket, listening to Kim breathe heavily beside him, her mouth open. And in the morning, the world broke.

  It began with a big shake of the ground, much harder than yesterday, that would have knocked them all down if anyone had been standing. Next came a terrible grinding noise like scraping rocks together but so loud that Kim clapped her hands over her ears. Sudie screamed. Then the ground shook even more, and the sky cracked, and pieces fell down on Li.

  He rolled over and shut his eyes tight. The noise went on and on. A tree fell over—he knew it was a tree even without looking, and that made him jump up and shout, “Get away from the Grove! Go! Go!"

  No one moved. Another tree toppled and something went bang!

  All at once, it was over.

  Kim began licking Li's face, then Jana's. Sudie still screamed. Jana cried, “Stop that!” and hit her. Sudie stopped. Kim did not; she licked Sudie's face until Sudie shoved her away.

  Silence.

  * * * *

  "Children,” Katherine said into the silence. �
�And I have more pictures. So do others, who know these babies’ stories."

  The chairman leaned forward, his face colder than the medals on the chest of the general beside him. “Dr. Taney, are you saying you have breached national security by leaking this information to others? And further, that you are attempting to blackmail—"

  "I attempt nothing, Mr. Chairman. I don't have to. Secrets extend only so far, even secret terrorist weapons. Which these children are, in a long and shameful tradition. Children have been used to blow up American soldiers—and themselves—on four continents, to smuggle poisons into military camps, to deliver biological bombs. We all know that. Right now your impulse is to destroy these children as soon as researchers have taken enough blood and tissue samples. You want to destroy them partly because they are truly dangerous and partly to avoid widespread panic. With the war so recently ended, you don't want the populace to know what the enemy was—and may still be—capable of, both technically and morally. That's understandable. But—"

  Katherine leaned forward, her gaze locked with the chairman's. “But I am telling you, Senator Blaine, that your information chain is not secure, and that if you destroy these children—these innocent and very photogenic babies—that fact will become known. This administration—and your political party—has worked very hard to position themselves as the new world force that acts compassionately, that does the right thing. You've had a hard row to hoe in that regard, given your predecessors’ actions on the world stage. Do you really want to undo all that careful positioning by destroying four innocent children?"

  The senator said angrily, “This is not a partisan—"

  "Of course not,” Katherine said wearily. “But you've already commissioned a feasibility study for a self-contained and completely secure dome to—"

  "How do you know that, madame? How?"

  She just stared at him. Then she said, in a different voice, “I was with the original team that extracted the children from behind enemy lines, and I just told you that your information chain is not secure. How would I not know?

  "Senator—grow up."

  * * * *

  Cautiously Li stamped one bare foot on the ground. It didn't move. He said, startled to hear his own voice so high, so squeaky, “Is anybody hurt?"

  “No,” Jana said. Sudie said, “Find the cartoon about the right thing to do if the world breaks."

  “There's no cartoon for that,” Jana said. She looked at Li. “What should we do?"

  “I don't know,” Li said, because he didn't. How could the world break?

  “Let's go to the leaving door,” Jana said. “Maybe Taney will come."

  They wound their way to the far end of the world, Jana in the lead, Li lagging behind to look at everything. Trees fallen to the ground or leaning over. Big pieces of the sky on the ground—what if one of those had fallen on the Grove? And then, almost to the pond and the leaving door—

  “Stop,” Li said, and looked, and couldn't stop looking.

  Sudie breathed, “What is it?"

  Li took a long time to find the right words. “It's a crack in the world."

  A narrow jagged break, just like when he cracked a stick on a hard stone. The break started at the ground and he could follow it with his eyes up the sky to a place where pieces of sky had fallen, making a white pile. Jana started toward the crack, stopped, started again. Li followed her. After a moment Kim darted after them both, frantically trying to lick their faces.

  “Not now, Kim!” Li snapped. He stood beside Jana at the crack and they both peered through.

  “What is it, Li?” Jana whispered.

  “It's ... it's another world. Where Taney goes when she leaves us."

  Jana turned her thin body sideways and squeezed through. Li said, “No! You don't—"

  “We need to find Taney, don't we?” Jana said.

  Li didn't know. He didn't know anything any more. The world on the other side of the crack looked so different.... All at once he wanted to see more of it, see it all. He turned sideways and pushed himself through, scraping skin off his shoulders. Immediately Sudie and Kim began to howl.

  “Stop that!” Jana said. “We're going to find Taney! Sudie, push Kim through."

  Kim was the biggest but very strong and flexible; she wiggled herself through easily. Once out, she just stared from the tiny eyes in her broad, flat face. She didn't even try to lick anybody. For once Li knew how Kim felt. He had walked a few steps away from the old world and he couldn't stop staring.

  Rocky, wrinkled ground stretched away on all sides—so much ground! Li's stomach flopped; this world was so big. But empty. He saw no palms, no bushes, no flowers, nothing but ground that was red and white and brown, endless ground, and far, far away the ground rose up high, blue with white on top, and above that—

  The sky of this world was blue, not white, and it went on forever. Forever, so high above that Li's head wrinkled inside just like the ground. All this ... and Taney had never told them. Why not?

  “Li, Sudie won't fit,” Jana said. “She's too fat for the break in the world."

  Sudie had reached one arm through the crack and was frantically waving it and howling. Li wanted her to shut up; he wanted to go on looking and looking. The endless ground was covered with rocks, hundreds of rocks; for the first time, Li understood what the numbers cartoon meant by “hundreds.” Rocks red and white and gray and black, all sizes and shapes, some tiny as a thumb and some bigger than Li, some—

  “Li, she won't fit,” Jana said. Sudie howled louder. Jana said, “Oh, be quiet, Sudie, we're not going to leave you. Li?"

  “Tell her to go roll in the mud by the pond and get all wet and slippery."

  Sudie did, and eventually they pulled her through, although not without making blood come out on her arms and shoulders and hips. Sudie didn't seem to mind the blood. But she took one look at the new world and promptly began howling again, plopping down onto the ground and covering her head with her bloody arms.

  Something very bright came into the new sky over the top of the old world. Li tried to look at it and couldn't; it hurt his eyes too much. Fear filled him.

  Jana gasped, “What's that? Sudie, shut up!” Kim began licking all their faces.

  The bright thing didn't seem to be falling on them. Li said, “I think ... I think it's morning."

  “That's silly,” Jana said. “Morning comes all over the whole sky at the same time."

  “Not in this world,” Li said. He felt a little dizzy, as if he'd been playing the spinning game. “Jana, this place is so big."

  “Then how are we going to find Taney? I think we should walk on the path.” She pointed.

  Li had to turn his back on the morning and squint before he could see what she pointed at. A faint path, no more than a pressing down of rocks, led away from the real world. Closest to him, it had a broken pattern of triangles in the dust.

  “Come on, Sudie,” Jana said. “Get up. We're going to find Taney. Li, follow me and she'll come, too."

  Li followed Jana, who didn't look around but just walked fast on her thin, long legs. Sudie and Kim stumbled after them, Sudie complaining that all the stones on the ground hurt her feet. Jana seemed to have become the leader now, but Li didn't care about that, or his feet. All he wanted to do was look and look.

  Rocks, growing redder as the morning rose in the sky. The morning looked like a rock, too, brighter and brighter, so that looking at it for even a second hurt Li's eyes. And there, on that flat rock...

  Sudie started to scream again. Jana, who had used up all her kindness, hit her. The thing on the rock scurried away, underneath more stones. Li said, “Don't hit Sudie, Jana!” at the same minute that Jana said, “I'm sorry. She won't—what was that, Li?"

  “It was alive, I think,” Li said uncertainly. “Like birds."

  “Then why didn't it fly away?"

  “I don't know.” He had never seen anything alive except themselves, Taney, and the birds in the old world. A memory came
, himself asking Taney, "What do the birds eat?” “The world gives them food high up on the sky,” she'd answered, “just like the feeder gives you food. The world keeps you both safe."

  They weren't in that world anymore. Li said, “Watch out for other living things. Don't step on any because you might hurt them. You might even make them dead.” They had all seen dead birds in the real world. Taney always took the bodies away with her.

  They walked for a long time. The morning rock in the sky got brighter still. Something was wrong with the air; it got way too hot. Li was very thirsty but there was nothing to drink. They walked silently, even Sudie, and Li began to feel very afraid. The hard-to-see path didn't seem to go anywhere. Why would there be a path that didn't go anywhere? What if they couldn't find Taney?

  “Look,” Sudie said as they trudged over a low rise, “a big path!"

  She was right, but this path was different: very wide and very straight and very hot. Putting a foot on the black stone, Li yelped and immediately pulled it back. But immediately he forgot about the pain. Something was coming very fast along the path.

  Sudie screamed until Jana raised her hand and Sudie stopped. Li could feel Jana tremble beside him. All four children huddled into a knot. The thing made a lot of noise, growing bigger and bigger until it stopped with the loudest noise yet and a person jumped out.

  A person who was not Taney, and not in a slippery white covering or a faceplate. Again Li's mind wrinkled and dizzied. Even Sudie was too scared to make noise. The only one who moved was Kim, licking everyone's faces.

  “Oh my God, you kids caught in the earthquake? What in hell happened to you? Jack, one of ‘em's bleeding!"

  Another person got out of the moving thing. Now Li could see that the thing wasn't alive, like the not-bird had been, but it still made puffing noises. The second person had a lot of hair growing on his face, which looked silly and scary. But his voice was kind. “Where's your folks? And your clothes? Sally, they look damn near dehydrated. Get the water. Kids, what happened?"

  Jana said, “We have to find Taney."