Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  Just as with humankind’s many artifacts, the heath would reclaim Aard into its fractal fabric of colour and filigree, while she hurtled toward the dark and sterile halls of Icaria. She couldn’t help feeling that her journey and her end lay in those dark halls, not in the heath below, where her sweet child was born and belonged. Not me, thought Julie. It seemed her own destiny lay along a path different from Angel’s or Daniel’s. A darker path. She’d cheated destiny, after all. She’d fled and raised a beautiful child in nature’s wilderness. Now the fate she’d forged for herself over twelve years ago when she’d discovered who and what she was had caught up to her at last and was drawing her back into the dark place.

  Within minutes the ship was soaring southwest over the vast lake and Julie stole a glance at Tyers, seated beside her. In contrast to her tattered leather shorts, rumpled shirt and her sweaty body, dirty and rough with abrasions and cuts. Tyers looked groomed in his freshly-laundered Enviro-Center uniform and his creamy complexion that radiated with nuyu treatments. He sat upright, manicured hands folded over his lap, and gazed with detached interest at the lake below. He looked about her age, in his thirties, with a square, unexceptional face. A pleasant kind of face with unobtrusive features one never remembered—the kind that dangerously blended into a crowd.

  Did Tyers work for Gaia or was he a hired assassin of some new government faction that had subverted her? Time had a way of changing players; yet somehow the game stayed remarkably the same. Pol renegades. Dystopians...Did these dissidents still exist or had others subverted them in turn? She supposed that hinged on what Burke had done with her info-cube and what Darwin was presently doing to Icaria. Julie thought of the irony of Gaia’s Secret Pols, her Gestapo that secretly reported to her while Mayor Burke and his Head Pol thought they were running the show. The chief of Secret Pols, in turn, kept his own agenda hidden from Gaia: the trickster tricked, subverted by her own rebel unit. Dykstra’s agenda ran counter to Gaia’s who wanted to empower veemelds under her influence; he just wanted to eradicate them. It was all such a tangled web.

  When Julie first met Gaia at Kraken’s fateful birthday party, she was mesmerized and strangely drawn to the captivating woman, as if to a beautiful but deeply disturbing piece of art. Gaia had brought up the grizzly example of vampire bats’ mutual sharing of blood to illustrate the need for reciprocity in Icaria and to reprimand Julie for her reckless and uncooperative behavior. Julie had no idea until later of Gaia’s role in her own fate as Prometheus because she hadn’t yet discovered that she was Prometheus. Was Gaia behind this current abduction?

  Julie looked Tyers directly in the eyes. “So, are you with the group who wants me alive or the one that wants me dead?” she demanded, realizing as she did how naïve she sounded. No matter, she didn’t have time to be delicate about the situation.

  He smiled with what looked to her like sardonic amusement. “You don’t mince words, do you?” he said. “I’d heard that about you. Something about razzing the Shame Court judges...” No mistaking the sneer now.

  He would bring up her awful Shame Court appearance for tripping a Pol twelve years ago, she thought with a glower. And what else had he heard? That she had a gifted daughter? “You didn’t answer my question.”

  “You needn’t be concerned, Ms. Crane,” he said in an assuring tone that sounded condescending. “Our intention isn’t to harm you.”

  “Could have fooled me,” she said with open sarcasm, glancing at her injured arm, and temper flaring. “Like your intention not to harm Aard?”

  “Regrettably, we had to suppress you somehow,” he said, lips curling with a little more amusement than she cared for. “You didn’t give us much choice, attacking us like that.” He raised a hand and flicked it. “You should count yourself lucky that it was us or you’d be dead now. Raymond’s a crack shot. He only meant to slow you down. If he meant to kill you, believe me, you’d be dead now. As for your friend, we found him that way just before we caught up with you.”

  He was lying, she thought. She could see it in his cloyingly sweet smile of reassurance and that overly earnest voice he’d adopted. “Sure,” she said not hiding her disgust and turned to stare pointedly out at the northern shore of Lake Ontario. Strange, for instance, how Tyers had come to haul her back to Icaria right on the heels of that assassin. Julie didn’t believe in coincidence.

  They remained silent for the remainder of the journey. Tyers settled back in his seat and donned his vee set while Julie kept her eyes riveted on the glittering lake and the rough heath scudding past her. She saw her past and future flowing on a collision course and it seemed that the greater distance they put between them and her former home, the more keenly she felt those contented years in the heath dissolve before her. But it was tempered by a mixture of relief for the family she’d left behind. If they knew about Angel, they certainly weren’t pursuing her...yet. She and Daniel were safe for now. If they could stay that way for a little while longer until she succeeded in securing them permanent safety...

  Suddenly Julie thought to try reaching her daughter with her mind. Angel? It’s Mom. I’m okay...The chittering grew animated with a grainy sound. Can you hear me, sweetheart? She shook her head to try to clear the static. Go away. Let me hear my daughter! As if in response, the virus twitters only increased. Julie slumped in her chair. It was as though the virus refused to carry her message...

  An hour later she could make out the glimmering towers of Icaria-5 to the northwest and ran her teeth absently over her lower lip. It was a beautiful sight, she conceded with growing excitement. The enclosed city had sprung up literally from beneath the ancient surface city. Icaria had evolved from Toronto’s extensive underground malls, connected to its transportation system, then burst like a phoenix out of the abandoned outer city, glass towers reaching for Heaven. She’d had a lot of time to think of what her return here meant to both her and to the family she’d left behind. Hopefully, she could fulfill both her needs getting concessions for her family and Icaria’s need whatever that was then return home to the heath. There lay the quandary. Depending on what Icaria wanted with her, it was also possible that those needs were mutually exclusive; in which case, she was ready to abort her mission and flee, knowing that she’d once again be condemning herself to a fugitive’s existence, this time never to see her family again.

  Over a decade ago, the Pols of Icaria had chased her out of Icaria for a murder she hadn’t committed. Now she was returning there.

  She wondered if Darwin had removed more than half of the population, as predicted. Funny how she’d never asked Aard, who used to travel to Icaria at least twice a year. Perhaps she didn’t really want to know. And what about the veemeld community? Had they finally consolidated and become a power to contend with? Or had they remained the same disparate and disorganized group of individuals they were when she left? She remembered how Zane, obviously desperate for members, had tried to lure her into joining their organization. And the A.I. community? What about SAM? Just before her departure from Icaria, SAM had talked about his ambitions for an “A.I.-community”. Did he have friends now? She wanted desperately to ask Tyers. She was certain that he had all the answers, but she refused to speak to him and instead let her curiosity rage inside.

  As they approached the high towers, Julie felt her breathing escalate. This was where Icaria’s machine voices had faded away when she’d left. Would they...?

  Abruptly the machine voices of Icaria-5 washed in her mind as if on an incoming tidal surge and she inhaled sharply. She’d initially thought that they would burst in, but, perhaps because she’d anticipated them, it felt more like walking from an empty hallway into a crowded room.

  She caught Tyers watching her carefully and wondered if he knew about her strange abilities. Of course he did. It was obvious that she was being brought back because of those very abilities, though for what exact purpose she could only guess. Ignoring him, she felt her hear
t slamming as she prepared to veemeld. She knew she was within SAM’s range if the machines of Icaria were already talking to her. Would she remember how? Was SAM even there? Or had they dismantled him? Or had Zane, who’d inherited SAM as his new veemeld partner, irreparably changed SAM’s personality? Only one way to find out. She plunged in: Hey, SAM...It’s me...Julie...your...well, hi...

  [Hey, Julie. Welcome home...]

  SAM sounded strange. Different. His gentle voice resonated like a cool rippling wave. Julie didn’t care. She felt a smile blossoming on her face. SAM! You’re there!

  [Yes, we are. We’ve been expecting you.]

  We? She killed the smile and felt her stomach twist with a dark dread.

  [We are joined. Proteus and SAM.]

  Julie realized that she was staring wide-eyed at Tyers who was looking directly at her with intense interest.

  10

  Angel was pulling his arm. “Dad, they took Mom!”

  “What?” He turned to his distressed daughter from his workbench. Lately, she looked more like a scamp than a young girl, taken to wandering off to explore while he worked silently on projects with little meaning.

  “I couldn’t talk to her,” she continued, her words rushing out like a turbulent brook, “because the insects played interference.”

  “The insects what?” She wasn’t making any sense, he thought, realizing he was annoyed that she’d brought up her mother. He was trying his hardest, without much success, to forget her. Since Julie left them over a week ago, he’d sadly accepted that he’d probably never see her again and the loss opened up a huge, pulsing wound. The wound was healing, at least going numb, and here was Angel opening it up again.

  “Got in the way,” she explained. “They got in the way.”

  Daniel frowned, confused as well as annoyed. “But I thought the insect noises carried your voices, let you talk to one another.”

  “Except they got too loud. As if they didn’t want me to hear Mom.”

  “That’s—” ridiculous, he silently added to himself. She was implying that the virus had a mind of its own. He dismissed the thought as absurd, just a child’s impression, and exhaled with impatience. “Who, Angel? Who took her?”

  “I don’t know. But they’re taking her back to Icaria,” she continued, dancing from one foot to the other in nervous agitation.

  Icaria, he thought, looking off into infinity. Icaria, the last place he ever wanted to be, but the place Julie had never stopped longing for. Although they’d never discussed it, he knew of her strange yearning to return. There were a lot of things she never discussed with him, he thought. A lot that she kept secluded, close to her heart. Her family, for instance, and her father particularly. Daniel had met Bobby, her eccentric uncle, her only living relative at the time. After the cypols took her and tagged her a veemeld, useful to the outer-city, she’d lived with Bobby for a while until the DIC offered her a high-end job with high-end pay.

  Bobby was a crusty old hermit and didn’t like attachments, but he had a tender spot for Julie and they’d become very close. When her ex-boyfriend arrested Bobby and her uncle died while in custody at the Pol Station, it hurt her deeply. Daniel supposed maybe that was exactly what that Pol had in mind when he’d arrested Bobby: to hurt Julie. Revenge for leaving him and loving another. Only days earlier Langor had spotted her with Daniel and had hurled an insult, one that had convinced her to reveal her identity to Daniel. The Pol had done his work: Daniel left her in disgust. It was, ironically Langor’s further action—Bobby’s arrest and incarceration in the Pol Station—that brought Daniel and Julie together again.

  Of her mother, Daniel knew only a little from the hushed arguments between Julie and her little sister when they techno-slummed with him in the inner city. Despite Julie’s defensive remonstrations, her sister had insisted that their mother was a drunk and had deliberately let go of them in the crowd that day that they’d lost her. For years Julie continued to look for their mother. They never found her and had to resort to living in the streets.

  Then her sister was snatched by a cypol and Julie left Daniel to look for her. Julie had finally tracked her down: she’d died in a foster home, but Julie had refused to discuss the details with him. Of Julie’s father, Daniel knew nothing, except that he’d been arrested for a double murder and had left Julie, her sister and mother destitute. Julie had adopted the nickname he’d given her when she was a child: Angel.

  Julie so fiercely locked away that part of herself, but he knew it was there. He’d caught glimpses of it from time to time during their twelve years together. Usually it boiled to the surface during arguments, the kind they used to have during their early years outside.

  It often began with some innocent remark on his part, followed by a surprisingly biting response from her then a bark of rebuke from him to which she would take great exception and throw him a monosyllabic word like “fine.” He’d learned to dread such a response for what it was: a smoldering rage building inside her. Eventually he recognized always too late that he’d unwittingly touched upon a close-guarded fear or pain that erupted in a stunning explosion of emotion that she just as quickly subdued and tucked away, leaving him dazed, as though he’d just slammed head-first into a tree.

  He never understood Julie’s obsession with Icaria. It should have been the last place she wanted to be. They’d barely gotten away with their lives. Memories of that last day in Icaria still strobed through him like a fibrillating heart. He’d already left her by then, because she’d deceived him by concealing who and what she was, but then she got in that row with Langor for arresting her uncle and she accidentally killed Langor’s partner. Someone then tampered with the vids, cleverly skewing her actions into those of an assassin and suddenly the whole Pol force was chasing her and only Daniel could help her.

  He found her huddled and shivering in a grimy lower-level hall, sobbing uncontrollably, overcome with despair and completely undone. He’d never seen her that way before; she’d always been the quiet and stalwart inspiration of their techno-slummer group and that momentary breakdown alone had shocked him into feeling immense compassion for her. He took charge, for once, and led Julie to the inner city—straight into an ambush by Pols, lead by a Secret Pol who wanted her info-cube, and wanted her dead. She and Daniel only slipped away because a techno-slummer she’d mothered recognized Julie and the gathering mob did the rest.

  Daniel had never intended to join her: he’d promised himself that he would help her escape outside, where she could eke out a living on her own...but as they said their good-byes, both miserable and lonely, something snapped inside of him and he knew he couldn’t live without her. He had never regretted coming out here with her, but he sometimes wondered whether he really knew his wife...and whether she had ever really been happy.

  Angel’s glum voice filtered through his miserable thoughts: “...and it’s because of me that she left.”

  Startled, Daniel studied his daughter for several heartbeats and finally realized that she blamed herself for her mother’s departure. He berated himself for not noticing before. Angel had probably been beating herself up this whole time, but he’d been too busy feeling sorry for himself to notice just how much his own grieving daughter was hurting from misplaced guilt. He’d spent many hours picturing Julie back in Icaria, striding with confidence in that blazing tunic that looked so good on her and brought out her forest-green eyes. He saw her lured back into the technological paradise to which she was so accustomed and possessed such prowess. He saw her laughing with her A.I.-friend, SAM. And he felt hopeless, so hopeless he hadn’t recognized the quiet agony his daughter was suffering.

  Daniel leaned close to Angel and took her hand. “Sweetheart, it’s not because of you...well...” he trailed. That wasn’t strictly true either.

  “I was so mean to her. She got mad at me and I shouted at her and didn’t listen. We’ve been arguing so much.
I can’t do anything right—”

  “Now hold on there, Angel.” He squeezed her hand for emphasis. How mother and daughter resembled one another in temper, he thought. “Your mother loves you more than anything. She left because of you but not because of anything you did. She left to protect you.”

  “Well, we have to go after her! Now!” Angel shook out of his grasp, agitated.

  Daniel stiffened at the thought. Then he rested his hands on her shoulders to calm her. “Listen, Angel, that would undermine what your mother just did. She left to lure them away from us from you. She made it clear from the way she left that she didn’t want us to follow her. If we did, we’d make her sacrifice meaningless.”

  “I don’t care!” she said hotly.

  “Icaria’s 500 kilometers away. It’s at least three weeks, more like two months, just to get there. By then she could be—” He cut himself off but finished the thought in his head: she could be dead...or worse.

  “All the more reason to go NOW!”

  He slumped in his chair, meeting the blazing eyes of his fierce little daughter. He’d just started getting used to the idea of losing Julie again maybe forever this time. Well, no, he’d never get used to it; there would always be a gnawing empty ache inside him where she belonged. But he’d visualized a life without her. Now Angel wanted him to go on some rescue mission to save Julie who likely didn’t want or need to be saved, in a place where he no longer belonged.

  “They hurt her, Dad,” Angel finally said in a low voice. “I felt her pain. I heard her mind scream.”

  Swallowing hard, he put an arm around Angel and squeezed her tight to him. He felt her anguish ooze into him like blood from one cut to another. He understood Julie’s compulsion to save others. Her history of abuse and abandonment had taught her to be fiercely self-reliant but also to care for others less fortunate than her. He’d let self-centered and selfish anger rule his adolescence. While he lay passed out in self-pity in a dark alley, covered in his own vomit from drinking tub-jet fuel, Julie had swept in like a warm ocean tide, raised his techno-slummer group out of the gutter of despair, fed them with love and hope and set them on the shores of self-sufficiency. She was his valiant hero and he loved her. Then she deserted him to go save her sister, who’d been taken by a cypol. But instead of finding Diana, Julie was taken to the outer-city for her useful abilities as a veemeld. Only years later she found her sister: she’d died of Darwin Disease in a foster home.