Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  Julie realized how hungry she was when she inhaled the delicious aroma of roasting meat carried on the smoke of the fire. She turned to check the cooking animal and gasped. The rodent was on fire!

  “Terrific,” she snarled, grabbing the stick and blowing out the flames. She poked the skewer into the ground and put out the campfire, then turned back to her food with a sigh of disappointment. She gingerly picked the black and smoking vole off her skewer and with wincing fingers practically threw it on her bark-plate. It was one sad looking specimen. “Don’t look so glum, pal.” She smiled sadly at the vole’s melted face. “Someday I’ll be just like you. What goes around, comes around. Happens to all of us.” She sighed, taking a small bite. Her teeth sank through the burnt crust into soft meat and she thankfully chewed.

  She had to admit that her luck couldn’t hold out indefinitely. On good days, she made about twenty kilometers. On the bad days, when she had to traverse or veer around a tributary, bay or marsh, she gained less than ten kilometers in her trek. At this rate she was at least another week, possibly two, from Icaria-5. She hadn’t even reached Lake Ontario yet and she still had to cross the turbulent Gananoque River, then hike another three hundred kilometres to Icaria-5. Someone was bound to catch her off guard and she’d be either dead or hauled to the Pol Station for execution or dissected at Icaria’s DP, depending on who caught her first. “Dead or worse...just like you,” she said to the vole then took another bite and chewed slowly, letting the evening cacophonies of birdsong lull her.

  Her gaze drifted back to where the sun had set to the southwest, the direction she was going. Glowing like crimson embers beneath dark purple clouds, the sky lit a brilliant red gash over the dark horizon. The contrast was remarkable.

  Contrast and paradox were deeply embedded in nature, she mused. Her father had always recognized that these lay at the heart of chaos theory. Just as wisdom existed in folly, action in inaction, bravery in cowardice, and ultimately order in chaos. Julie knew her father had been an honorable and meticulous scientist, a fractal ecologist who didn’t shy away from controversy. He’d been brave and daring when it came to seeking the truth, yet he’d carelessly cast her to the neurologists to play with and then lied like a coward to her about what he’d done. Julie looked down at what was left of her food and sighed, no longer hungry.

  How did chaos theory apply to her? Irregular phenomena, that’s what chaos was. She seemed to cause it wherever she went like the spread of an epidemic. Changing populations of insects, the propagation of an impulse along a nerve, the random changes in weather, the rise and fall of civilizations...What had her father created? A paradox. That’s what she was. He’d called her his angel. “Yeah,” she murmured to herself. “I’m an angel alright, an angel of chaos...”

  After cleaning up in the growing darkness, Julie carefully surveyed her surroundings to ensure no one lurked nearby, then laid out her insupad and sleeping bag on a flat piece of ground inside a tight ring of bushes. She placed her backpack as a pillow at the head of the insupad then took off her sweaty clothes and slid into the bag, tucking Aard’s gun beside her. She lay on her back, hands clasped behind her head, and looked up at the clear night sky through the broken canopy of shrubs above her. She spotted the Big Dipper, Cassiopeia and Cepheus and wondered if Daniel was gazing at the same night sky. The rhythmic sissing of crickets covered the night with a comforting mantle.

  She felt Aard’s gun nestled against her skin like a lover’s hand. It seemed so long ago, she thought, when out of rage she’d shot Frank in the crotch for hurting her uncle and then accidentally shot and killed Ron Hicks, Frank’s Pol partner in the ensuing struggle. Where was Frank now? Probably dead. While he’d recovered well enough from her gunshot wound, he’d told her just before she fled Icaria that he was battling Darwin disease. No one lived more than six months with Darwin, she thought, stroking the weapon and feeling it warm in her hand.

  She heard the lonely cry of a wolf echo in the darkness. It sent her mind to the times she and Daniel curled up together and watched the stars, wrapped in nature’s exquisite night sounds. Since they’d come out here they’d never been apart. Until now. Was she soothing herself or torturing herself by coaxing out these thoughts? She supposed that depended on whether she expected to see him soon again...or not...

  Julie turned on her side and, shutting her eyes, she imagined Daniel’s arms embracing her from behind, his warm body moulded to hers. His warm breath sighing on her neck. She felt the ache of longing swell inside her and wrapped her arms around herself. Did he ache for her too? More likely he was outraged with her.

  8

  Julie walks SAM’s cool crystal matrix with a disquiet she is unaccustomed to feeling here. She can’t find SAM. Abruptly the glittering walkway swells into a fetid-smelling hollow and Julie knows she will see the dark figure again. Moving mechanically against her will, she rounds the corner and sees the dark figure. The smell of decay overpowers her. The figure beckons her. She recoils, resisting the force pushing her closer to the figure. Feet skidding, she slides forward. Where’s SAM? What have you done with him? she demands, trying to hide her rising panic.

  [SAM is with us, a part of us now. Soon you will be. You must join us also...It is time to return...]

  NO—

  Julie jolted awake to the cacophony of chirping in her head, her danger sense flaring. She shook the sweaty hair out of her eyes and threw a searching glance around her in the pre-dawn glow. She saw nothing in her immediate vicinity, but something had woken her. A noise perhaps. She slid out of the sheet, hastily dressed and slipped the gun beneath her shirt in the small of her back then pulled on her hiking boots and threw things in her pack. As she slung the backpack over her shoulders, she flinched at the sound and knew one like it had initially roused her: a laser blast. To the northeast.

  Heart slamming, she sprinted in a semi-crouch up a rise toward the east. When she crested the hill and peered over to the other side, she saw a shape, sprawled on the ground below, midway down a scree slope across from her—it was Aard! After a darting glance to ensure no obvious danger presented itself, she scrambled down the other side of the hill and up the scree slope to his side.

  His shirt was soaked in blood that issued from a dark tear. She crouched close to his head. “Aard, who did this to you?” she asked in a hoarse whisper. She heard his breaths rattling in his throat. Someone had shot him in the chest. He blinked up at her and tried to point with the gun still clutched in his shaking hand. After a glance in the direction he was pointing and seeing nothing, she patted his shoulder and made to get up. “I’ll get help—”

  “No!” He clutched her arm. “No time,” he choked out the words. “Victor Burke hired me to protect you. But things have changed in Icaria—Burke’s no longer mayor. He disappeared. I came to warn you—his replacement knows you’re out here.” He gasped in a breath. “So do those who want you dead.”

  “Terrific,” she muttered. A dozen years ago it was the Dystopians who wanted her dead, not to mention Icaria’s entire Pol force once she’d been accused of murder and sedition. The Dystopians wanted to prevent her from getting her incriminating info-cube to the Head Pol. What they didn’t know was that her info-cube also held the key to Darwin’s creation and the possible answer to its cure in addition to Gaia’s pernicious conspiracy to reshape Icaria.

  She knew Frank had delivered the cube to Burke. What had Burke done with it? Had the Circle removed Gaia? Given the present circumstances, it seemed unlikely and Julie was no doubt still considered a murderer.

  “Something happened,” Aard continued in gasps. “Burke’s replacement ordered you hauled in, which made the others desperate to kill you. They kept sending more assassins. I took care of two of them.” So he had been shadowing her, after all. She’d guessed right; Aard had been picking them off her back. He’d saved her life several times already. Aard forced gurgling breaths in and out. “I got the one a
t the creek.” Julie felt her face warm briefly at the thought of Aard watching her bathing naked. He inhaled sharply then choked out, “...but his partner got me...”

  “Oh, Aard,” she murmured sadly and gripped her lower lip with her teeth.

  Aard clenched her arm and his eyes blazed like the sparks of a dying fire. “Julie, they want to kill you,” he forced the words out in halting breaths. “You’ve got to run. I can’t keep them away anymore.” The fire in his eyes was fading. “I failed.”

  She swallowed and had to ask: “Aard, do they know about Angel? Who—what—she is?”

  “We didn’t tell anyone,” he said, drawing in ragged breaths. “But they might know from their own spies. I’m sorry—” he strangled out the last words.

  “Aard, no. Don’t be. I want you to know that—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish. The chirping in her head spiked and she swung around just in time to catch the glint and to jerk out of the line of fire. Missing her by millimeters, the silent burst of laser fire hit Aard in the chest. He gasped and shuddered violently, then lay still. Julie bolted to the cover of a nearby boulder, realizing that it must be a Secret Pol a Dystopian hunting her. Those had definitely been silent laser pistol shots, standard Secret Pol issue.

  The shots had come from the top of the scree slope behind a large boulder. She thought she made out a head poking out of the dark boulder silhouetted against the blood-red sky. Pols were typically dead shots, but she still had one advantage over him she knew this terrain far better than her pursuer did. Aard had also shown her a few tricks over the years.

  Julie slipped off her backpack, then threw a last glance at Aard’s crumpled form before scrambling out from behind her rock shelter and pounding down the steep valley slope. The ground spit rocks around her from wide laser shots. The shots soon ceased as the man abandoned his vantage point to give chase.

  Ditching silence for speed, Julie crashed through Spirea and willow shrubs and felt branches and leaves slap her bare arms and legs. With some satisfaction she heard the thuds and grunts of her predator’s awkward descent into the gully. City boy.

  Julie led the assassin down the scree to a small winding ravine of a dried up creek. Once she heard him stumbling along the cobbles twenty meters behind her, she picked up several mid-sized water-worn rocks and ducked behind a thicket of Spirea and sweet-gale. Inhaling their pungent sweet aroma, she watched him pass her with awkward steps. She flanked him silently and smiled grimly. Then she pulled out her sling, tucked a rock in the pouch and, taking careful aim, sent the rock hurtling. It hit him on the back of the head with a sickening thud. He stumbled forward and fell but quickly scrambled up and spun around, weapon tracking toward her.

  She inhaled sharply when she saw his face. It was the first time she got a good look at him. His shaven head and face were a monstrous tangle of scars and stubble. His crooked nose had obviously been broken at least once. One eye drooped as scar tissue pulled it down. Some new breed of killer, she wondered and reached for the small of her back.

  He touched his head where the rock had struck him and brought his hand in front of him to see blood. He’d already spotted her standing in the bushes and now smiled with malice. “Thought a rock would do it, huh? Let’s see you do magic out here, veemeld, where you can’t use your A.I.-lover,” he spat out. “Die, bitch!”

  Hand concealed in the bush, Julie pulled the trigger of Aard’s old gun a split second before the Pol did. The laser squealed and he jerked back. He stared at her in disbelief then toppled.

  Shaking with fear and rage, Julie stepped out of the bush and stood over the dead man. She’d shot him in the heart. “No magic. Just a gun,” she said.

  She forced herself to bend down and search him for identification then abandoned the grizzly task. He’d already identified himself as a veemeld-hater. Probably a Secret Pol. Had nothing changed in Icaria?

  A swift glance confirmed that the man’s boot tread matched the prints she’d seen. Julie replaced Aard’s gun in her makeshift holster and grabbed the dead man’s weapon, a Secret Pol-issue silent laser pistol, and tucked it beneath her cinched-in belt. Then, grimacing with effort, Julie dragged the body to the bushes.

  It was only as she regarded the crumpled form lying in an unnatural position in the bush, that she fully acknowledged what she’d just done: intentionally killed a man. She stared at the body and hugged her arms around her waist, feeling the air shiver through her lungs. It had started again. Would it ever end? That awful foreboding she’d felt lately of an imminent collision between past and future made her shake. How could she protect her cherished daughter and husband from this? Would she ever see them again?

  Leaving the dead man behind, Julie sprinted up the dried creek bed back to the scree slope where she’d found Aard. Her assailant must have had a vehicle. She was going to find it, she thought as she scrambled up the steep ravine to retrieve her backpack. She was almost to Aard’s body when—

  Mom?

  Julie jerked to a stop. Her chirping sounds warbled as if tuning to the transmission. Angel?

  I didn’t mean what I said. Angel’s voice was edged with pain. Please come back.

  Julie dropped into a cross-legged sit on the talus. Oh, honey. I didn’t leave because I was mad at you...

  The chirping abruptly changed to a staccato grating like sheet metal ripping. Not the usual spike of danger. Just major interference. Julie couldn’t help grimacing with the effort of hearing her daughter through the fierce static that hurt her ears.

  Please come home...

  I can’t, darling. Not yet. Julie glanced down at the gun she’d taken from the man she’d just killed. Her nose flared as she tried to keep her composure. The Icarians are after me right now, sweet pea. She swallowed convulsively and brought a hand to her mouth. Look after Daddy for me, will you? Until I come back? The static became overwhelming. She couldn’t be sure Angel had heard her. I love you, Angel. Her throat closed and she felt her eyes heat with tears. Tell Dad that I love him...Angel?

  There was no answer and soon the insect wail subsided to its normal trill. Julie dropped the gun, leaned her elbows on her knees and then cradled her head in her hands. Running her fingers into her matted hair, she let her tears flow. The chirping in her head spiked. She fisted away her tears then grabbed the dead man’s gun and leaped into a crouch, eyes roaming the slope. The sun was breaking over the horizon, firing the red sky with bold brilliance. There...on its highest point. Of course, her hunter had a friend. She caught a glint from a weapon and saw him, silhouetted against glittering sunlight.

  She didn’t hesitate this time. Her shot missed and he returned fire.

  Her right upper arm exploded in a blaze of pain. The next thing she knew she was sliding uncontrollably down the slope, smashing into jagged rocks on the way down. She heard the pistol that must have flown from her hand clatter far from her. Had she cried out? When she finally came to a stop on the dry creek bed, she pushed herself up with trembling hands and shook her head to clear it.

  The nervous chirping spiked. She dropped on one knee and scanned for her assailant. He’d already moved off the slope top. Nauseous with the shooting pain in her arm, she looked at it and immediately wished she hadn’t. Her stomach twisted in alarm at the site of the large burn that had angrily carved through muscle. Shiny blisters and black flakes of burnt flesh boiled up and wept plasma and dirt. Fighting the urge to throw up, Julie scrambled unsteadily to her feet to bolt for cover.

  “You’ve led us quite a chase,” said a calm voice close to her. “No need to run anymore, Ms. Crane.”

  She spun toward the voice, squinting at the sun, and whipped out Aard’s weapon from her back holster. She didn’t get very far with it. Something hit the back of her head. The pain arced and shafts of brilliant light lanced the image of a man with tidy blue hair looking at her with an amused smile. The last thing she saw as
the ground rushed toward her were several size-nine, freshly made boot prints. Then the darkness took her.

  9

  It took her a while to realize that the thunder in her head came mostly from outside. Some motor was pulsing to the rhythm of the sharp pain that resonated through her head. Her whole body ached, she felt sick to her stomach and her arm smoldered with a brooding pain where the laser shot had burned her. She cautiously opened her eyes and when her vision cleared she saw that she was slumped in a curled position in a back passenger seat of a skyship. A pilot in front of her was doing diagnostics on the ship and the blue-haired man sat next to her, regarding her with a faint smile.

  “Ah, welcome to the living again, Ms. Crane.”

  She straightened up and winced from the painful jolt in her right arm. “Who are you?” She noticed that the wound in her arm had been bandaged.

  “Inquisitive. Good. You must be feeling better. Don’t worry about the arm. Raymond treated it topically with mitigin and gave you some ambrosia to ease the pain.” That explained her nausea, she thought—Icaria’s drugs had always made her sick. “But we’ll soon get you to a Med-Center where they’ll treat it properly and clean you up. I’m Greg Tyers.”

  The ship shuddered, beginning its ascent. Julie looked outside and caught a glimpse of Aard lying in a heap. She watched his dark corpse recede into the vast heath. Seen from this vantage point, the heath’s brilliant purple and green patchwork blazed with breathtaking beauty on either side of the widening river with its thousands of islands and the lake beyond. Then she could no longer make out Aard’s body from the heath’s multi-coloured quilt-work.

  As the skyship skirted along the shore of Lake Ontario, Julie gazed to the north. Like pointillist paintings, the ancient remains of the old roads and buildings revealed themselves from the air in an abstract network of light green lines and shapes. The history of human habitation spoke in subtle whispers of shade and texture.