Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  “No, I didn’t,” he said pointedly. “But I could have.”

  “By whose definition—”

  “So, after all these years why did you decide to come back?” he demanded.

  “Decide?” she retorted, straightening up in the bed. “I was kidnapped by your cronies. Tyers, who works under Dykstra, I take it works for you as a Secret Pol.”

  “But you wanted to come back,” Frank insisted, avoiding her question. “Tyers said you’d abandoned your family and were heading for Icaria-5.”

  Julie swallowed and wondered if she’d imagined his voice soften with compassion. She couldn’t trust him with the truth...yet. “I had my reasons.”

  He studied her for a moment, then straightened suddenly as if he’d made a decision. “Well.” His voice was crisp again. “You look well enough to take a journey.” He stood up and tossed her the Com-Center clothes and turned toward the door. “Get dressed.”

  “What about my other clothes?” she blurted out. “The clothes I came in?”

  He didn’t turn or answer her. “I’ll get Tyers—”

  “Wait Frank. Please,” she said, pleading. “Why am I here? What do you want of me?”

  “You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, turning his head only slightly to speak to her. He left the room and the door shut behind him with a soft nick.

  15

  “Okay, let me do all the talking,” Daniel said sternly to his willful daughter as they peered through the bushes at their gateway into Icaria, the glass tower rising from the outer-city rubble that rippled in the heat. “Remember, I used to live here.”

  “That was twelve years ago, Dad,” she reminded him. “Things probably changed a lot since then. Like that skyship we borrowed.”

  He frowned at her and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “Smart aleck,” he murmured. She was alluding to his less than impressive ability to pilot the skyship, despite the fact that he used to drive tubejets, Icaria’s commuter trains. Once Angel had convinced him to use the skyship, it was she who eventually figured out how to drive the odious thing and navigate to the towers of Icaria. The skyship had saved them three weeks of travel, which meant that they were now hot on Julie’s heels. Daniel noticed Angel staring at the towering structure that rose like a shining sentinel out of the ruins of the surface city and realized with wry amusement that she’d never seen a building higher than one story before.

  “It’s magnificent,” she said.

  “Is it?” he teased, following her gaze up. Wait until you see the inside, he thought.

  Angel tugged the sleeve of his leather shirt. She looked concerned. “Dad, do you hear it too?” To his puzzled frown, she explained, “Those funny sounds...in my head.”

  “Your mother heard them too.” He patted her on the shoulder as if to console her. “Don’t worry, they’re just the lower forms of artificial intelligence in the city talking to each other. You can hear them for the same reason that you and your mom can ‘talk’ to each other. Just ignore them.”

  “Okay, Dad,” she said, tilting and shaking her head as if trying to get rid of water in her ears. That confirmed it: his daughter was a veemeld like her mother. And like her mother, one with special talents, he thought.

  After stashing their packs, Daniel approached the building. He glanced down at the old service card he’d kept all these years and wondered if it would still work on the entrance door. This was not exactly the place he wanted to be. In fact, it was the last place he wanted to be. No great memories here. Except meeting his beloved Julie. She was the best thing that happened to him in Icaria. Now he had to go back in and try to find her and get her out. And he didn’t think it would be easy. First he had to convince his stubborn wife to leave. Then he had to convince Icaria to let her go. He thought of another possibility, one that had ached deep inside him and surfaced now. There was the awful but very possible chance that she was in no shape to leave or was even dead. He recalled those assassins she’d lured away from camp, for instance. Who had seized his wife? What if they’d taken her to the DP and conducted debilitating experiments on her? Turned her into a half-machine, eyes vacant and tubes coiling out of her into some immense A.I. device—

  “Daddy?” Angel looked at him expectedly.

  “Think they still speak English?” Daniel winked at her, then drew in a deep breath.

  In a few springing steps Angel beat him to the door. When she tried the door it refused to open. She turned back to her father with a frown.

  “Don’t worry,” he assured her with a smirk. “This might work.” He held out the old card. “And if it doesn’t, I’ll find some other way. I was pretty good with technical stuff in my day,” he said, recalling how he’d tapped into the cyber-network to feed and clothe his fellow techno-slummers in the inner city. He extended the card, secretly wondering if they were setting off some alarm inside, and couldn’t pass it over the reader. His hand didn’t want to do it.

  Angel took it gently from his hand and waved the card and they heard a soft click. Angel shrieked gleefully. “Look! The door’s opening!”

  Too easy, Daniel thought and managed a wry smile. I’m starting to think like my wife. He put a finger to his lips, indicating silence, and walked through the open doorway. It led into an empty hallway with another door. Once they entered, he shut the outside Exit door behind him and felt a strange foreboding he couldn’t shake off. Exhaling, he led Angel to the next door. She was looking around her at the smooth peach-coloured walls and floor with interest. Just you wait, little one, he thought, waving his card at the next door. There’s more, he thought. So much more...

  When he opened the inner door, they were assaulted by a dizzying cacophony of sounds, smells and images that made Angel start with surprise and gawk. Despite his unease with this place, Daniel couldn’t help laughing at his overwhelmed daughter. She’d just entered her first mall.

  ***

  A lot was the same. But a lot was different too, Daniel thought, noticing the inordinately high number of droids in the milling crowd as he surveyed Darwin Mall with his daughter and fought from wincing at every booming sound; he hadn’t remembered this place so noisy. Daniel swallowed self-consciously as they navigated the moving sea of dazzling colours. Instead of quietly blending in, they stood out of the crowd in their faded clothes like blazing holo ads.

  Angel’s excitement drew him out of his dark thoughts and he let his gaze drift beyond the crowd. He’d forgotten how splendid Darwin Mall was with its vaulted arches of white light, intoxicating music and heady perfumes. As he watched Angel gawking in wide-eyed wonder, he was keenly aware of the mall’s alluring qualities. As though she’d entered an enchanted land, Angel kept snapping her head left and right then up to catch everything.

  She pirouetted and twirled giddily as if animated by some invisible puppeteer. As if afraid to miss something. Like the giant moving holos above...the rushing sound of Icarians who sounded like a flock of chattering birds ...the many droids that plied through the sea of people like shiny vessels...the glittering shops and restaurants and strobing signs that beckoned even the most seasoned Icarian with their alluring messages of pleasure and delights.

  Once Angel had become used to all the people, she maneuvered the crowd easily, pulling Daniel along and bombarding him with questions: “What are those things they wear on their heads?”

  “Vee-sets, darling. Like wearing a vee-com.”

  “What’s a vee-com?”

  “It’s a machine that thinks for you.” Big frown.

  “The people look like machines,” she said. He had to agree; some looked mostly machine. Then Angel’s eyes lit up, “Who are they? How come they can fly like that?” Pointing to the holo ads floating above them.

  “Those are holos, three-dimensional projections. They’re not real, Angel.” The feeling of discomfort, of conspicuousness returned.
>
  “Look at that!” Pulling him toward a park. “They stuck part of the heath inside the mall!” Acutely aware that people were staring at them now.

  “I think we should leave the mall, darling...” He sensed the crowd drawing away from them as if they had some disease—

  “Show me your ID,” a baritone voice commanded. Daniel turned, hand still clutching Angel’s, and felt the surge of alarm. It was a Pol dressed in beetle black. The crowd continued to swarm around them, leaving an empty space around the trio.

  With a convulsive swallow, Daniel fought from cowering and started to stammer an incoherent reply, when Angel spoke up, “We lost them. Are you a cyborg?”

  The Pol’s mouth grew stern, eyes hidden beneath his opaque visor. He towered over Daniel like a behemoth. Everything about him was huge. His chest distended like a barrel and his arms were as thick as Daniel’s legs. Ignoring Angel’s question, he asked Daniel in an unfriendly voice, “How did you manage to lose your I.D.s?”

  “We-we...” Daniel stuttered desperately, his mind blank.

  “We came in from Icaria-6 and left our I.D.s on the transport,” Angel said with a friendly smile.

  The Pol decided wisely to direct his next questions to the girl and bending a little to look at her directly, he asked in a softer voice, “What’s your name?”

  “Angel,” she said before Daniel could stop her. “Angel Woods. And that’s my dad, Daniel.” She pointed to Daniel, who was trying hard not to look agitated. But Angel seemed to have disarmed the Pol. The man was almost smiling.

  “What’s your business here?” asked the Pol, now glancing at Daniel.

  Daniel started, “We’re here to—”

  “Look for my mother,” Angel said. “Julie Crane.”

  Time stopped.

  Daniel’s stomach heaved. His heart hammered and he thought of seizing Angel and pelting out of there. Then his gaze fell on the Pol’s gun.

  “I see,” the Pol said. His mouth tightened and it was obvious that he knew who Julie Crane was. “I think you better come with me.” His hand now rested on the gun.

  “Do you know where she is?” Angel asked him, completely unaware of what she’d done.

  “The legendary Julie Crane?” A smile finally slid across the Pol’s rough face. “I might.”

  16

  Victor Burke removed his Sentech-connected vee-set and his vision of Frank Langor’s bedroom abruptly vanished. Victor sighed and looked vacantly up at the ceiling from the bed he was lying on. He easily coaxed the image of her face and shapely body in that nightdress, her soft voice, and her wonderful scent to linger deliciously in his mind and smiled: Julie Crane, one of the rare women he admired and the woman he’d secretly been infatuated with for thirteen years. The woman he’d helped to escape Icaria twelve years ago despite all of Icaria demanding her capture and death sentence...The woman who didn’t even know he existed because they’d never met.

  She looked remarkably the same, thought Victor. Age had simply added dignified lines of experience and maturity to her still beautiful face. Mostly laugh lines, he noticed, pleased that she’d had a good life. The heath had imbued her now deeply tanned face with an incredible vitality that sent a thrill through him.

  He’d experienced her just now on Sentech’s transmission through Frank Langor’s implant—the one thing, along with his personal droid, that Gaia had left him during this incarceration, perhaps as a conciliation. No, he thought again. That wasn’t her style; she’d done it to torture him and gloat, to show him what she was doing to his precious Icaria. To punish him. Damn her. Damn that woman. And now she’d brought Julie Crane back. He suspected Aard was dead. Killed by that bastard, Tyers, probably. One of Dykstra’s men no doubt.

  Victor shook his head and frowned. Never should have trusted Dykstra, he thought. Like father like son. Dykstra had obviously been taking his orders from Gaia all along. Vee! Why did he always fall into the same trap, he thought miserably. Just when he thought he finally had control, she’d pulled the rug from under him. Now she was ordering his Head Pol around and running his city.

  He reviewed his twelve years of success at bringing Icaria-5, and himself, back on its feet. When Frank Langor delivered to him Julie’s vital information about Darwin and Gaia’s conspiracy, he’d acted swiftly and ruthlessly, feeling the thrill of a teenager breaking loose to undermine her power. He’d wiped out her Secret Pol force, then rewarded Langor with the top post of Head Pol. He’d ensured that his favorite veemeld remained safe and hidden in the heath, far away from Gaia’s evil hands, and protected by Aard whose progress reports and images Victor cherished.

  But he’d never played his Ace. He’d never given the Circle the information on Julie’s cube that would incriminate Gaia: such as her role in the development of the artificial virus and her manipulation of a naïve scientist to spread the virus, which then morphed and caused the worst plague humankind had ever experienced. Then there was Gaia’s personal involvement in the murders of her conspiratorial scientists Vogel and Tsutsumi, with the framing of a third scientist, Leonard Crane: all to silence them about the artificial virus, the true nature of its spread and her involvement. Add to that her indirect involvement in the murder of Kraken, the previous Head Pol because he was a loose wire and wouldn’t do her bidding and the framing of Julie Crane for that killing.

  To the puzzle as to why veemelds were found immune to the effects of the devastating disease, Gaia had convinced the entire governing Circle with that cock and bull theory about how Darwin had co-evolved with veemelds through the millennia. Her speech to the Circle had been brilliant. He summoned the memory of her sitting alone with calm regality on the stage, facing the audience with arms loosely folded over her thighs, that low cut gold satin dress clinging to her slender body like a second skin, jet-black hair coiled over one shoulder:

  “Animals and viruses have co-evolved over millennia,” she said, “presenting us with many examples of mutual co-existence between host and virus: rodents and hantaviruses; the green monkey and SIV, the chimpanzee and HIV-1, for instance. The Darwin virus obviously inhabits veemelds in an aggressive symbiotic relationship. We have many examples of this kind of aggressive symbiotic behavior. For instance, in the case of the ant and the acacia plant, the acacia berries supply the ants with food while the ants not only keep the foliage clear of herbivores and preying species of insects, but also make hunting forays around the tree and ravage growing shoots of potential rivals to the acacia. Similarly, the herpes-B virus, which co-evolved with the squirrel monkey in the Amazon Rainforest, induces a voracious cancer to all of the monkey’s competitors.”

  It was brilliant, Victor conceded: she’d even provided the answer to why the virus morphed just then: it was Icaria’s enclosed environment that triggered Darwin, otherwise happily co-inhabiting with veemelds and hopping to a competitive genome to protect its host. But it had all been fabrication, Victor thought miserably. Vogel had created Proteus and Gaia had been there when he did. Proteus didn’t kill veemelds because its design was based on a veemeld’s genetic makeup: Julie’s. When the news got out through Zane’s lab that Darwin was made by Vogel and injected into Julie, Gaia’s fancy co-evolution theory was rejected but the woman herself suffered no other accusations. Only Vogel and his assistants, all long dead, and Julie, exiled, took the fall.

  How Julie had been ill served, he thought with a wince of guilt, thanks to Gaia’s well-engineered lying machine and his own silence in the matter. Julie’s only true claim was that as Prometheus, she’d given some foolish scientist a false hope for a miracle virus. But in only partially disclosing Julie’s information, Victor had damned Julie as the worst abomination in Icaria’s history. To Icarians, Vogel, conveniently dead, was the evil Frankenstein who’d created Proteus and Julie was his acolyte, a banshee who’d single-handedly killed millions with Darwin then embarked on a career of sedition and murder because the disease
obviously made her insane.

  Considering Julie’s absence, and Gaia’s still potent presence as a member of the governing Circle of all Icarias, the decision had been easy for Victor. He’d refrained from disclosure out of self-preservation, thinking Gaia would leave him alone. But Gaia had retaliated anyway. In ways he couldn’t possibly have imagined. During her twelve-year silence, when he’d concluded that she’d found some larger prey to stalk, Gaia had calmly plotted. Stolen allies from his own men and sabotaged his city. And now he was here in the Pol Station and she was running his city again.

  Victor rose stiffly from the bed. Despite its luxurious furnishings, comforts and view of the heath, the room was still his prison. Victor scrubbed his head, raking his fingers through his burgundy hair, and paced the room like a trapped animal. Since Gaia’s henchmen had forcefully brought him here three months ago, she’d re-instated herself as mayor of Icaria-5 and taken over his people. Then she’d made her move to capture Julie and obviously succeeded. What else had she done? What was she doing about the A.I. insubordination? Was that why she’d brought Julie back, to talk some sense into SAM, or worse? Gaia wasn’t known for her patience or diplomacy. And what of the virus connection? What new despicable plan did Gaia have for Julie Crane? And his Icaria? For them all?

  From Frank’s implant Victor had learned that he now received orders straight from Gaia and that he still had no idea, like the previous Head Pol, that his Secret Pols were running circles around him with Dykstra at the helm. Langor was no more than a figurehead with mock power; a useful gopher. Until he eventually proved of no use, like the previous Head Pol; in which case, his fate was assured.