Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  He’d invited her and her little sister to join his rag-tag group of orphans abandoned by confused parents in the chaos of the Darwin plague. For two years they lived in bivouacs built of the city’s refuse, sleeping in nests of garbage and stealing food—mostly nano-soup—and technological equipment. Techno-slumming. And always on the run from the cypols, the inner-city’s predatory robots that chased them like they were vermin. Julie called herself Angel, and that was what she was, a savior to his disparate group.

  When she let herself be captured by a cypol to find her sister who’d been taken earlier, Daniel never forgave her. He knew she was safe because veemelds were prized in the outer-city. Because he didn’t have to worry for her welfare, there remained only a burning resentment that she’d left him behind. Eventually his orphan group fell into disarray and he was left miserably alone with the empty dreams she’d fed him. Daniel vowed never to trust his heart to a veemeld again.

  Years later, fate threw them together again, but by then they didn’t recognize each other. When she’d been taken to the outer-city they’d fixed her over-bite, then she’d let her hair grow long and eventually she’d filled out from that scrawny garbage-picking kid into a graceful, beautiful woman. Daniel, too, had undergone the obligatory transformation toward outer beauty once he made it to the outer-city: he’d fixed his broken nose and acne scars, then he’d changed his brown eyes to blue and coloured his hair with ‘nuyu’. They fell in love, of course: two strangers, inexplicably familiar and on a collision course with deception, lies and betrayal...

  Julie made it to the other side of the creek and scrambled up the steep slope to a willow stand she intended to cut down for the insulation of their new roof.

  Daniel returned his gaze to the wall he was building and exhaled. Several days ago he and Julie had finished hauling in five dozen birch logs from the woodland a kilometer to the south and he was presently sealing the horizontal logs stacked between support poles with straw-and-mud mortar. Unlike their cabin at the camp they’d shared with Aard, this one would have rough wooden shutters rather than duraplast windows because there was no Aard to provide them with materials from abandoned dwellings. This was going to be a very basic log cabin, Daniel concluded. They required a solid shelter to keep them warm in the winter and cool in the summer but it wasn’t worth the bother to make it fancy, he thought, especially if they weren’t going to stay in it for long.

  This was their third camp in three months and Julie remained restless like a trapped cougar, like she was running from something. Herself, maybe? She’d always given them good reason to break camp but he knew she was lying and it disturbed him that she’d resorted to that. It saddened him that she didn’t include him in her greatest concerns. She didn’t trust him anymore. Since Aard had disappeared, her nightmares had also increased and a subtle darkness around her eyes told him that she wasn’t sleeping well.

  Daniel picked up his binoculars to observe her more closely, something he’d taken to doing a lot lately. Watching her from his vantage point half hidden by the wall, he thought she looked remarkably the same as she did twelve years ago when he’d fallen in love with her. They’d had an interesting time of it, he pondered with a wistful smile. Not easy. Not smooth. But wonderful. Those green eyes that stormed into a wild tempest when she was angry flamed as brightly as ever with joy. There were certainly a few more lines radiating from them but he still felt a thrill when he caught her fierce gaze, especially when it was accompanied by that lopsided smile. Framed now with a permanent crease, her smile melted him into acquiescence every time, and she knew it.

  Their love had evolved from a tumultuous brook into a rich deep river as their bond cemented. Fiercely independent and as stubborn as he was, she’d overcome many obstacles through cooperation and co-reliance. Despite her reserved nature she’d learned that they complemented each other well and could rely on him.

  But lately she’d grown extremely restive and withdrawn, as if guarding a dark and bitter sadness growing inside of her. Aard’s disappearance spooked her. Daniel could sense it in her taut muscles whenever he embraced her. Could see it in her ever-alert posture. Could hear it in the edge that crept into her voice, but most alarmingly in her darkly veiled references to some arcane, sinister force that connected past to future. She knew something she wasn’t sharing.

  He recognized that she’d always harbored suspicions about Aard, but even her weak, half-hearted efforts to search for him seemed uncharacteristic of her. It only fueled an already existing tension between protective mother and rebellious pre-teen. Julie’s insistence on breaking camp soon after Aard’s disappearance hadn’t been popular with Angel, who’d accused her mother of being callous. Perhaps more perplexing was Julie’s own reaction to her daughter’s seemingly founded accusations: she refused to explain herself and made no move to repair the growing rift between them.

  Julie was in mid-cut when she abruptly dropped to one knee, her attention caught by something on the ground. Although Daniel couldn’t tell what she was looking at, he saw in her sudden frown that it distressed her. After spotting something further to the side she sprang to her feet and scanned the woods around her, letting her hand fall to the small of her back as she often did lately when she was spooked by something.

  A few weeks before, when he’d seized her in a playful embrace, he’d felt a hard object beneath her shirt, tucked in her belt at the back. She’d jumped out of his arms but when he questioned her about it, she’d given him a silly answer and diverted him with another comment. He started watching her more closely after that and soon realized that she guarded something on her at all times. Periodically he searched through her rumpled clothes when she went to the creek to wash up, but he never found anything. Whatever it was, she never went anywhere without it and yet she managed to keep it hidden from him at the same time.

  ***

  Listening to the chorus of crickets in the heat of the night, Daniel stared at the stars sparkling overhead through the gap in their partially complete roof and waited until Julie’s sighing breaths told him she was asleep. He carefully pulled his arm from under her and looked down at her sleeping form, eyes tracing the lines of her face defined in the faint moonlight. No nightmare yet, he thought, appraising her sanguine expression. But she had behaved very strangely today after the moment in the willow stand. She’d snapped at Angel one minute and then snatched her up in a fierce hug the next. The smallest things set her off and Daniel noticed Angel watching her with confused apprehension. Julie’s face, already overly pensive these days, seemed to withdraw completely at times, as if she’d left them for another world.

  He smiled at the beauty of a few rogue hairs lying across her cheek then he got up slowly. A quick glance back at her ensured him that she was still asleep. He stole over to her side of the bed and bent over the clothes she’d discarded in a pile. There, beneath her buckskin shorts and rumpled blue shirt and nestled inside a pouch on her belt, he found it. His hand slid under the shirt and pulled the heavy object out of the pouch. He stared at it and felt his stomach clench—

  “What are you doing?”

  Daniel jerked around to see Julie, raised on an elbow, gazing at him with a tight face. Then she looked down his naked figure and he followed her gaze to the laser pistol in his now shaking hand. His eyes seized hers. “Where did you get this?” he asked, realizing his voice had acquired an edge.

  She sat up sharply, flinging the blanket from her and swinging her legs over the side. “Since when are you in the habit of going through my clothes?” she demanded.

  “Since you started carrying this,” he answered bluntly, waving the gun in his hand. “Julie, what’s going on?”

  She inhaled sharply and seemed about to retort but slumped back on the bed instead. Leaning her elbows on her knees, she brought her hands up against her forehead and exhaled. “Yes, you deserve an explanation.”

  He laid the gun carefully on
her clothes and sat down next to her. She told him about Aard being a Pol and his secret hanger. She told him about the two times since Aard had left that she’d seen signs of someone spying on them, pressing her to urge them to break camp. He felt like she was still withholding something even as she said in a hollow voice, brimming with emotion, “There’ll always be someone watching us. And one day they’ll snatch me or Angel right from under us.” Her face grew somber. “Or worse.”

  Daniel put his arm around her. He searched for something reassuring to say but couldn’t find anything, so he simply held her tighter. She said in a dark voice that startled him, “I won’t let that happen, Daniel. I’ll do what I need to keep them from harming or taking her.”

  Her face pinched with the fierce determination and protectiveness that only a mother could feel for her child, and his unease spiked into alarm. It was as though she’d made some ominous and irrevocable decision. “What do you mean?”

  Her dark eyes flared and she held his gaze for a long time before finally turning her profile to him. “For now it’s me they’re interested in, one way or another. But that’ll change. Angel will be next.”

  The determination in her eyes frightened him. “Who?” he prompted.

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not sure who’s behind it. There may be several groups with different motives, like before. Some probably want to use my abilities and others just want me dead,” she ended flatly.

  Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed it back, with difficulty. A lot of Icarians had reason to want her dead. It was said that she’d caused the plague that killed millions of people, and if that wasn’t enough, she’d also been accused of terrorist acts and murdering a government official. Daniel had tried to help her escape and instead led them into an inner-city ambush, lead by a Secret Pol.

  Some time before, Julie had been hired to create the personality profile of Dystopians, a terrorist group who hated veemelds and were bent on bringing down the current government. But Julie’s model had been too accurate and implicated the Chief of Secret Pols himself—John Dykstra—and all those under his employ as Dystopians. She sent the info cube containing her findings to the Head Pol, entrusting the cube to Frank Langor, a regular Pol and her former lover. Vadim, one of the Secret Pols, took some regular Pols to intercept the info-cube before it reached the Head Pol, but Vadim never got the cube because an inner-city mob in a frenzy of anti-government rage rushed the Pols and in the ensuing melee, Vadim was beaten and his head crushed.

  The Dystopians had boldly taken the name that described the outlawed scientific movement that promoted the heretical science of Julie’s father, who was ironically a veemeld himself. Although she had trusted Frank Langor at the time, judging from the news shared by Aard when she last saw him, her trust had been misplaced with Frank. Was it possible he, too, was a Dystopian?

  “And the ones following us?” Daniel posed.

  “Could be either. Or both.”

  His mouth went dry. “What can we do?” he whispered hoarsely.

  After a long silence she turned to him. The dark purpose that had fired her eyes now smoldered beneath the cloak she’d drawn around herself and her eyes glistened of unshed tears.

  “Just hold me, Daniel.” Her voice trembled.

  He folded his arms around her and they reclined on the bed. Curled inside his protective arms, face pressed against his chest and silky legs entwined around his, she shuddered with silent tears and clung to him. Wanting to comfort her, he bent to kiss her wet cheeks and wished she would share it all with him.

  As if sensing his disappointment, she lifted her face up to his and looked into his eyes with longing and fear. He was reminded of the first time that they’d made love, when she’d looked at him with almost the same expression. She’d harbored a secret then, too. The secret of who and what she was. He’d thought then that she was just Julie, a bright data handler, but she’d turned out to be a veemeld, one who could talk to machines in her head from anywhere in Icaria.

  She was also Prometheus, the alpha carrier of the deadly Darwin. And she was Angel, his long-ago innercity sweetheart who deserted him suddenly. Now, as he gazed back into her eyes, sparkling like constellations in a black and infinite universe, he sensed that she’d faced yet another dark decision without including him. What had she seen in the willows?

  She startled him by taking his face in her hands and kissing him fiercely. She’d learned over their years together how to please him, hands caressing him in a delightful way from the soft curls on his neck down to his thighs. He threw his doubts aside and let her pour her gift of selfless devotion on him, taking him to a world where only the two of them existed. She seized in halting breaths, soaring alongside his swelling passion. He responded by pleasing her in turn with his fingers. She gasped into a keening wail that roused a pack of wolves in the heath. They made love that night to the echoing bay of the pack as shafts of moonlight glistened like beaded jewels on their wet undulating bodies.

  When Daniel woke drowsily to the light of a breaking dawn and reached out for Julie, his hand caught air. She was gone. So were all her clothes. And the gun.

  6

  In the dim light of pre-dawn, Julie rose from the bed with a sad but determined look back at Daniel’s sleeping form. He murmured something in his sleep and continued breathing heavily. She dressed quickly then slipped the gun into the makeshift holster at the small of her back. After stuffing more clothes, her knife and sling and a few other essentials into her backpack she turned for the door then stopped and let her gaze linger over Daniel’s bearded face. Mouth open and snoring softly, he showed the vague contentedness of deep sleep. His dark hair, a mess of sleep-tangles, spread out from his face over the pillow and she wished with all her heart that she could be curled up beside him, to make love again when he woke.

  As she committed that image to memory, she felt her throat swell with longing and regret. He’d think she was abandoning him again, and she was certain that this would irrevocably shatter his trust in her. It was a fragile trust that he’d forged over twelve years and which she would crumble within moments. Julie swallowed down her emotions, realizing that everything Daniel had built and accomplished had been to keep her here, content with him. Perhaps he never did quite trust her. And perhaps he was right. Darling, forgive me...

  But there was no stopping what she had to do and she knew he’d try to stop her. Icaria wasn’t going to get Angel and the only way she was going to prevent that was to leave. They were after her now—Aard had—as much as told her that—and they weren’t going to stop following her. She thought of the clean, fresh boot track she’d spotted yesterday in the mud among the willows. That had been the first time a spy had come so close and so soon after they’d relocated. She and Daniel hadn’t even finished building their new home.

  That was distressing enough, but then she’d spotted the unique and unmistakable tripod impression of the Shadow Unit’s assassin’s gun mount. She’d recognized it from ones Frank had shown her a long time ago. A further examination of the area had revealed that a struggle had occurred where branches had snapped off and a body was dragged for some distance. Who had stopped this operative from killing her? She wondered if Aard was still out there, fulfilling his initial directive. Either way, the stakes had escalated and she knew she was lucky to be alive. If they wanted her, they’d have to follow her and find her, she thought.

  She paused at Angel’s own half-finished hut and peered inside. Her daughter lay sprawled on her stomach on her bed, covers akimbo, feet exposed, mouth open in the bliss of sleep and auburn hair spilling in all directions. Julie raised her hand to her mouth and took in a halting breath, fighting the urge to stay. She swung her heavy backpack over her shoulder and that simple action coaxed back a flood of memories: how she’d carried Angel everywhere as an infant in a modified backpack without once considering the added weight. Julie had carried Angel as she tilled t
he garden, foraged, fished or hunted or fetched firewood or water; while the happy baby pulled her mother’s hair and put it to her mouth, wriggling with pleasure. Julie had never been apart from her child. Now she was willingly leaving her.

  Fighting down a moan of grief rising in her throat and quelling the need to seize Angel in one last embrace, Julie turned away and hurried out of the camp.

  ***

  She struck southwest in the burning summer heat toward the large river once called the Saint Lawrence. She intended to keep fairly close to the river in her 450-kilometer trek until she reached Lake Ontario on whose northern shore the ghost surface city, Toronto, used to sprawl. Lying beneath it, with its resplendent towers sprouting up like great crystal stalks out of the brown froth of heath was Icaria-5.

  She foraged and ate as she hiked. The season was ripe for berries and ground herbs and so she had plenty to eat. While her plans were admittedly a bit sketchy, her mission was clear: lure them away from Angel and Daniel and then stop them from pursuing her and her loved ones, forever. The first part had been easily accomplished by leaving her family behind. The second part of her mission ultimately relied on her returning to Icaria-5 and confronting those responsible, Julie decided, as she bedded down for the night under a grove of feral apple trees in a long-abandoned settlement. Before she fell asleep, she wondered if she was just rationalizing her urge to return to Icaria.

  On the second day she reached the great Saint Lawrence River at the remnants of the small village of Iroquois. Julie made out the seaway locks and the dam as she waded through the hummocky wetland of sedges and purple loosestrife. Overgrown and crumbling from disuse, the locks used to control the river’s fluctuating levels and linked the northern shore, once a part of Ontario, Canada, to the south shore that used to belong to New York State in the United States of America. Now it was all simply Icaria’s North Am.