Darwin's Paradox

by Nina Munteanu

  Abruptly, he is wavering and buffeted in a sickening, howling maelstrom. A febrile sickly-sweet stench of rotting flesh overcomes him and he almost vomits. His feet are planted at the junction of a maze of tunnels—no, more like the confluence of a multitude of twisting rivers flowing in all directions, diseased organic veins through which a fetid wind blows like a sick behemoth’s breath, blowing then sucking: dark voices moaning a dirge. Did he imagine Julie’s name in that lonely lament? He’d pictured a living network of neurons, data streaming at the speed of light in Julie’s enhanced brain, but this is not a healthy system. Is this raging storm in her brain Darwin? What has gone wrong?

  The gale bites his face like a pelting hot rain and he wonders why he hasn’t been knocked flat. He looks down at his feet and finds he’s stuck in some kind of living muck. The hall shimmers as if it, too, is alive. Trails of slime slither down like snot and congeal with the swirling muck below. He gags but recovers again. How can he see? He can’t tell where the light is coming from—the hall itself appears to emit a light of its own.

  Where is Julie? The throaty voices echo ahead of him, where the raging gale seems to come from. In the other direction there is nothing but darkness, and silence. Had he imagined just now that he’d heard a whimper from there? He pulls himself out of the goo and heads with difficulty toward the darkness, each step squelching into and out of the clinging muck. Was that soft sound he heard Julie or some creature, waiting to attack him like Zane had been?

  His whole body trembles with fear, but he pushes himself on until he can barely see, stumbling along the lumpy wet surface. His steps gurgle and squish and seem to emit a new stench each time he releases his foot from the tenacious goo. The hall tilts down then suddenly gives way to nothing and with a yelp of surprise he is falling.

  39

  Victor shakes his head to clear it. He’s unhurt, having landed on something warm, dry and soft. Eventually his eyes adjust to the dim light and he pushes himself to his feet. He stands on a rich, burgundy carpet in a hallway whose walls are made of wainscoted wood and lit with glittering chandeliers from above. Beautiful pastoral paintings adorn the walls. This cloistered place gives no impression of the disease he’s seen above and no cloying wind blows. The faint scent of pipe smoke hangs in the air and classical music sings from the distance. A slight breeze carries the perfume of a female human’s body with the lingering scent of lilac. He inhales the alluring fragrance, recognizes it as Julie’s essence. She is nearby.

  Victor follows the hall through an open door to a room, a library with bookshelves on every wall and a massive oak desk. The shelves are thick with old books in leather covers and gilded lettering. The smell of old paper, leather and pipe smoke is intoxicating. On what walls lay bare, he glimpses a wooden sculpture of a crane and a shield with a sword, perhaps a family crest, then his eyes settle briefly on a beautiful watercolour painting of an old English village on a steep hill. Is this library a childhood memory?

  Something makes him bend slightly and look under the desk. He finds Julie, curled like a baby on the floor beneath the desktop. Her hair is wet and tangled over her pale face, shiny with drying slime. Her face looks battered: blood smeared over her cheeks and crusted under her nose. Her eyes are dark sparkling pools of despair and she stares at him with an intensity that arrests his approach.

  “Julie,” he says, commanding his wavering voice to sound convincing. “Come back with me. I think I know the way.” He bends and reaches out, haltingly, for her hand. She looks so small and vulnerable—he’s never seen her this way and it hurts him inside.

  She shrinks back and says in a shrill voice that makes him flinch, “Stay back, Victor. Don’t come near me. I’m not leaving.”

  He straightens with a sigh and clears his throat. “But you can’t stay here...” he looks around, “.…ot in this enclave. You’ll die...”

  “I can’t face Proteus again. It’s taken over my mind. There’s nothing left of me. Proteus is everywhere, in my dreams, in my thoughts...”

  “Not here,” Victor says with conviction, looking around and appreciating the warmth of the library, the smell of old books and the soft echoes of a domestic house in the background. “This place is all you...”

  In a voice as frail as she appears, “This is my father’s den. I used to come here to hide from my mother when she got drunk and hit me...before...” She can’t finish and swallows convulsively. Victor watches her in painful silence. When she speaks again, it’s in a hoarse whisper, “I felt safe here, smelling my father’s pipe smoke and his old books. I used to think that he’d protect me from anything.” She heaves a sigh, then flings her hands to her face.

  Victor kneels down on the thick carpet, pokes his head under the desk, and is heartened that she doesn’t shrink away from him this time. “You can’t give up. Too many depend on you. All of Icaria—”

  “To them I’m still a political assassin,” she says through her hands.

  Victor winces at her reference to his own failure to clear her name and says desperately, “Your family, then. Your loving husband—”

  “He’s better off without me. I’m dangerous to him.” She runs her hands through her tangled hair. “He hates veemelds, hates everything they represent. How can he possibly love me?”

  “But you and he lived together for twelve years in the heath.”

  “Living a lie, hiding from the truth—both of us.” Her eyes pierce his. “I saw him, Victor. He was with the Vee-radicators. He’s one of them.”

  Victor sighs. He can’t deny it. “Your daughter?”

  “I gave her this disease. She and I—” She hides her face in her hands again and whimpers through them, “I’m such a poor mother.”

  Victor aches at her hopelessness. This is all the worst of Julie her fear of failure and rejection, her guilt, her despair, her loneliness and all the vulnerability she’s hidden from Proteus, perhaps herself. If that’s it, then the best of her has to be here too, inexorably linked to the worst. Her resolution, faith and brave compassion. Her resilience and her hope. He just needs to coax it out of her. “What about SAM?”

  She looks up at him. “Oh, SAM...” she breathes, her face constricting with emotion. “I’m so sorry I killed SAM.” Her face grows hard with determination. “Victor, I think Proteus is dying. If I stay here, we both die and Angel’s safe.”

  Victor inhales sharply. That’s her mad plan?! He leans forward, placing his hands on the soft carpet, and says softly, “You don’t really believe that.”

  She cups her head in her hands. “I don’t know,” she murmurs.

  He inches closer to her. “All of Icaria depends on you, Julie...whether it realizes it or not. I know you’ve been served unfairly and most of that is my fault. But you’re a true hero and true heroes don’t need the world to know that’s what they are. You just do what you have to do because it’s right like shutting down the core. You did it to help Icaria. We’re relying on your strength, resourcefulness and your unfaltering courage for justice and fairness just like we did twelve years ago.”

  She raises her head and meets his eyes. “My father was a good man and he loved me, I know that, but that didn’t stop him from giving me away to science—” she breaks off, the words clotting in her throat. She swallows hard and Victor’s heart aches at the naked anguish in her eyes. “For the sake of scientific truth—not love—my father let them inject me with a virus. Life is full of paradoxes, Victor. I’m proof of that. What my father allowed me to become; what I’ve done. I tried so hard to protect those I loved but I failed time and time again. Now Proteus is taking over my mind.” Her eyes blaze with the fierce heat of a forest fire now. “I can’t let that happen to my daughter. I won’t fail this time.”

  Victor exhales. “But what if staying here isn’t the answer? What if you don’t save her this way? Proteus is inside her too.”

  “I think the mother-Proteu
s is only inside me,” she reasons. “I was the only person to receive the original virus.”

  “And you passed it on, unchanged, to your daughter,” Victor counters. He sees in her expression that he’s reached her with this. “Julie, you won’t fail. You’ll win, but not this way. Not alone, giving up. The Julie Crane I know doesn’t give up.”

  “I can’t!” she wails. He sees her eyes grow darker with grief and pain and she shrinks deeper under the desk. “I can’t fight Proteus anymore, and I certainly can’t be Icaria’s savior, Victor. I’m not a hero. You’ve conjured a myth of me. That me doesn’t exist. Never existed.”

  He disagrees but he doesn’t argue with her. “Do it for love, then,” he whispers. “Love of others for you. All the people you helped. The techno-slummers you gave hope to. Your husband and daughter who want to see you again. SAM, who needs you to breath life into it again. Zane, who looks up to you. Even Frank...and,” he swallows convulsively, “...me.” He pushes himself onward, feeling the thrill of fear coursing through him. “We all love you, Julie.” Then in a rush of words that he’s never spoken to anyone, “I love you. For twelve years I’ve loved you...with all my heart...”

  How has his hand gotten there? It grasps hers tenderly, and her hand trembles inside his as she stares at him in confusion and longing.

  “Icaria needs you, Julie. I need you. Help us help you. Help me right this topsy-turvy world to what it was after you gave me back my city twelve years ago, what it can be again. Help me defeat Gaia and this virus that’s taking over our world. You don’t have to do this alone. You’re not alone, Julie. We’ll be right there with you.”

  Then, like an angel, she rises with him, curls her arm around his waist and walks alongside him into the light.

  ***

  Slowly, like climbing out of a deep, dark hole, Julie awoke, her eyes fluttering open to the subdued light of Zane’s laboratory. She was lying on the lab bed and the vee-set was still secured on her head. She pulled it off and sat up, gingerly swinging her legs over the side.

  Her gaze settled on the chair next to her, where Victor was lifting off the vee-set from his head. He turned to look at her, a vulnerable smile playing on his lips. She returned him a crooked smile and said in a barely audible voice, “Thank you.”

  He broke into an awkward grin as she rose from the bed and drew near him as he got to his feet. She affectionately folded her arms around him and kissed his cheek. He stiffened with surprise and kept his arms to his side. Then, like a river flowing into an ocean, he returned her embrace. Comforted in the mantle of their mutual embrace, she felt his quiet pain and loneliness bleed away like an old wound and they both trembled with silent tears of joy and relief.

  Zane now stirred, drawing their attention. Victor broke the hug, blushing with self-conscious pleasure, and wiped his eyes with a rapid motion of his hand.

  “What in Vee’s name happened?” Zane said, drawing himself up off the floor and scratching his blue hair, which was mussed, for a change.

  Victor just saved my life, Julie thought, by risking his and revealing his great secret. She wanted to tell him that it was safe with her, that she’d hold it precious to her heart. She turned instead to Zane. “You just got a piece of Proteus,” she told him, her smile growing dark.

  Victor helped Zane, who was still shaky on his feet, to the chair he’d just vacated. Zane trembled with excitement and fear. “Good vee! Proteus is taking over your mind!” He looked at Julie with stricken eyes.

  “Not if I can help it,” she said quietly with a glance at Victor. He gave her a reassuring look.

  “It’s chaos in there. That awful smell and wind and the slimy corridors and that great hulking creature,” Zane babbled on. He stared at Julie as though she’d become something fearful. “How can you function with that inside you? Vee, I’d be insane.”

  “Cut it out, Zane,” Victor said sternly. “This isn’t helping her or us. Get hold of yourself.”

  “Okay.” Zane heaved a long breath and looked away from Julie, the object of his agitation. Then his eyes lit up into bright beacons as a sudden thought struck him. “I think Proteus is sick,” he said in a shrill voice. His eyes flickered rapidly between Victor and Julie. “There’s something wrong in there.”

  Julie exhaled slowly. “Do you remember what Proteus said to me before it threw you out?”

  “It called me an abomination.”

  “Before that.”

  “I can’t remember,” he said, frowning thoughtfully. “Oh, something about you refusing to join with it.”

  Julie nodded. “Proteus said that my refusing to join ‘endangered it’. I’ve been withholding from Proteus, keeping parts of me—my mind—from it. That’s the joining it’s referring to. I think my not joining is killing it.”

  They all exchanged silent glances.

  “We proceed with re-instating SAM, I think,” Victor suggested into the thick silence.

  “Why?” Zane challenged. “What’ll that accomplish?”

  Julie turned along with Zane to Victor, wondering the same thing. As much as she wanted to re-instate SAM, she wasn’t so sure it was the right thing to do considering his connection to Proteus. But SAM was also her best chance to discover what mischief Gaia was up to and for Julie to locate her family.

  “Well, for a start, we still don’t know Proteus’s intentions. Like Julie suggested in the first place, it might be better to ask SAM. Plus...” he trailed and shook his head, thinking better of what he was going to say. “Never mind.” He blinked in rapid fire and flicked his hands to his mouth.

  “No, tell us,” Julie insisted and gripped his arm lightly. She found herself gazing deeply into his eyes with new respect and wonder. He was the most timid man she knew. Preferring the virtual thrill to the real experience, he was the last person she’d have imagined would have risked himself to help anyone. Yet this was the second time he’d risked everything to help her, perhaps save her life.

  His eyes flickered across hers nervously then he finally settled his gaze on her as though studying the colour of her eyes for the first time. “Maybe, just maybe, there’s a chance that you can convince SAM to separate from Proteus, Julie.”

  They stared at each other for a few heartbeats. “It’s possible,” Julie whispered, daring a small hopeful smile.

  40

  “Okay, let’s go,” Washington growled as he entered the dark room.

  Abruptly jolted from a deep sleep, Daniel slowly propped himself up on his elbow and squinted at the ugly man. It had to be past midnight. “Where are we going at this time of the night?”

  “Cell Two found her and she’s up to her witch tricks again. Get up, veemeld-lover—”

  “Stop calling me that!” Daniel snarled as he sat up in bed and wiped the crusted sleep from his eyes.

  Washington cackled with amusement.

  “I don’t love them,” Daniel muttered bitterly.

  Washington snorted. “No, you just married one.”

  In Icaria’s eyes, they weren’t actually married, Daniel thought to himself sadly. Just living together like animals. He wished he could have repaired that, given her the kind of wedding she deserved and celebrated their union properly, legally...irrevocably. He pulled on his filthy sweat-stained shirt and murmured to himself, “It’s just one of those paradoxes in life, I guess.”

  “Love thy enemy, eh?” Washington grunted then hooted into a wild laugh. “Shit, man, that sassy wifey of yours set the plague on Icaria, then she murdered the Head Pol and a bunch more Pols. And she was a Dystopian too.”

  “Isn’t that in her favor with you, then?” Daniel said, hearing sarcasm in his scornful voice.

  “Shit, she’s your wife. If you’d kept that witch under control, you wouldn’t be here with me right now chasing after her. Chaos, that power-sucking viper already killed one Head Pol and now she’s making out w
ith the next one—”

  Something snapped inside him. Daniel flung himself at Washington. With a jerk, Washington sprang back and let his hand hover over his stomach where the doom-switch was. He raised his brows. “Just try me, veemeld-lover. I’m dying to see what the highest setting does to your insides.”

  “You’re an asshole, Washington,” Daniel snarled, backing down and shuffling toward the door. “You haven’t a clue about love?” He stopped at the door to face the brute. He wanted to wipe that ugly thing for a smile off his face. He wanted to smash it in and felt anger surge through him like a hot knife. “I love her despite her being a veemeld but also because she’s a veemeld. I can’t explain it.” He unclenched his hands, realizing that the anger he felt was directed at himself, and looked past Washington. “She was the best thing that ever happened in my life and maybe I don’t deserve her.”

  Washington rubbed his gnarled face with his huge hand, the stubby fingers like wrinkled, dirty sausages. “I think you’re all mixed up. That little vixen turned you around in the logic department. Either you hate them or you love them. Can’t have it both ways, you know. Can’t love one veemeld and hate the rest,” he sneered.

  Daniel shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “Well, maybe I don’t hate the rest,” he found himself saying before he realized it.

  “Then you’re more stupid than I thought you were,” Washington scoffed, stabbing the air with a stubby finger. “Veemelds are dangerous!” he spat. “And they’re going to destroy us by catering to those damn A.I.s. I’ve heard stuff that’d make your skin crawl about the A.I.-core.”

  “Maybe,” Daniel said, thinking of Julie’s A.I., SAM. From what she’d said of her A.I., although it showed signs of self-determination, SAM was totally devoted to her—so devoted that Daniel had actually felt jealous of their communication. “But I think you’re selling veemelds and yourself short. How can you hate a whole group of people without knowing the individuals? That’s stupid prejudice. It isn’t fair or realistic. Each of them is different and you’re lumping them all into one bad group based on what they could do as opposed to what they are doing or willing to do.”