Analog SFF, November 2009

by Dell Magazine Authors

  I stood too. He took my hands in his. My fingers disappeared in the folds of his rough palms. “Hippolyta.” It was one of the rare times he called me by my full name. “Do you really want to know? Right now?"

  I didn't answer. I told myself the question was rhetorical. I knew it wasn't.

  I pulled away, grabbed my surfboard, and stormed off down the beach, to the thin comfort of following Steve from the math department as the waves swept him out into the surf.

  * * * *

  The door swept open again. Two other men came in, then a third. I could hear something big but light banging awkwardly first on the doorframe, then against the door and the floor. They spoke in hushed voices.

  "Over there."

  "Like this?"

  "Right. But grab that."

  "Where should I put this?” someone asked in a voice that revealed obvious strain. I heard water sloshing in some kind of barrel.

  "There."

  Footsteps circled behind me. Someone jerked my arms up and I screamed. The pain was impossible. I was certain my shoulders both dislocated. But then my hands fell to my waist. They had lifted my chain off the spike.

  "What's happening?” I asked, as the white blaze of pain subsided. Self-loathing coursed through me when I heard the fearful pleading of my tone. No one answered.

  Each of my arms was seized. Keys jangled, and my chains were unlocked and fell away. They put their hands under my armpits and hauled me across the room, too quickly for me to try to walk, so that the soft tops of my feet dragged along the cold concrete. They turned me over, pushed me down onto something hard—a wood board. Velcro hissed. My arms were pressed down and wide straps were Velcroed closed over my wrists, then my ankles.

  "What are you doing?"

  My feet tilted up in the air. They had strapped me to a board, I realized.

  "What are you—"

  Water poured onto my face. For a second I thought the spray was meant to shock me. But it continued. Water filled my open mouth. I bit down, but the black bag over my head caught in my teeth. Water ran into my nose and filled my sinuses, burning. I choked, gasped, but could not find a way to breath. A horrible, wracking gag clawed at the tops of my lungs and bruised my throat. I was drowning, I was being destroyed by the water. I would have to breathe, I had to breathe, I had to breathe, I had to—

  The water stopped. I coughed bitterly. Then my harsh, explosive inhale scraped at my throat and lungs.

  "You will tell me now everything.” The man again.

  "What—” I choked. “What do you—” The water fell into the sentence, into my open mouth, into my gasping for breath.

  It was impossible. I was going to die now. Not even die. I was dead already: there was nothing left of me but the burning, the pain in my throat and lungs and stomach and nose. I was lost—all of me that was human was lost—and only a spinal, mindless, uncontrollable terror remained, a will without future that gasped for air, grasped to escape drowning.

  The water stopped again.

  I coughed and vomited water. It fell back into my nose, tasting of hot bile, and I had to vomit it again.

  "Everything,” I managed to croak, to cling to the life my body demanded that I seize. “I'll do anything you tell me to."

  * * * *

  "I did everything Uncle David told me to do. I followed the protocols perfectly."

  I sat on the edge of the bed in my father's hotel room, a generic suite in a mid-list hotel in Buenos Aires. It reeked of smoke; people still smoked in hotels here. He stood by the window, shoulder pushing aside dingy yellow drapes, and looked out at the night lights of the city.

  "I took the starter cultures,” I continued. “And tried to breed a viable vector population, but neither would take."

  He nodded. “We knew you would do everything perfectly. That's why you were scheduled to perform the last injection. The seeds must have been contaminated."

  "But why did you start the other injections? And weeks early! Now there's panic at the office. Everyone knows something is happening. The whole world knows. Hydrogen blooming through desert sands!"

  "There were difficulties at the other sites. We had to act or it would have been too late.” He turned away from the window. “I'm sorry, Lyta. We'll pull you out now. Tonight."

  "No way in hell,” I told him. I stood up. “No way in hell."

  He looked exhausted. He was jet-lagged, but also clearly overwhelmed with worry. His red eyes made me suspect that he had been weeping before I arrived. He locked his bloodshot gaze on me now.

  "It's not safe. Even David agrees. We need to—"

  "Fourteen years."

  "I...” But he could not finish his sentence. His hands fell at his sides, hopelessly. His gaze turned to recognition, his expression to sorrow.

  "Fourteen years,” I repeated. “Since you asked me to start this mad project. College, graduate school, summers here, a worthless job with men I hate, years climbing the ladder to become lead research scientist. No lovers, no friends. I was here, working, the night my mother died. Fourteen years. For this."

  "I know, Lyta,” he whispered, barely audible. “I know. I'm sorry.” He hesitated. “Your mother never doubted—I mean, she always knew how much you loved her."

  "Why did I do it?” I asked him.

  I knew what he would say. Tonight I wanted him to say it.

  "Because you're special."

  "Why am I special?"

  He sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. Our situations were reversed now. I went to the window and waited, holding my purse as if about to leave, while he kneaded his hands together between his knees, twisting them into fists.

  "Why am I special?” I asked again.

  "I ... your uncle and I ... we ... we were—we are...” He looked up at me. “GMOs."

  I thought about that a minute. “You mean gene-manipulated? Like those kids whose parents paid to make them blue-eyed and blond?"

  He grunted. “I never thought of it as something so ... mundane. I should have realized that it would be less of a shock—maybe no shock—to you. But yes. Like those kids."

  "But you're—that was years ago. They didn't have reliable technology before your birth, did they?"

  "It was done secretly. By William Marrion."

  "Oh my god. The founder of the orphanage. The man who raised you all."

  He nodded.

  "All of you are...? All the kids of the orphanage?"

  He nodded again.

  "And what...?"

  He smiled at me sadly. “Yes, ‘what'? That's the question. We're not all blue-eyed. We're not all blond. What was done? Just this: we were made to care more. About the future."

  "To care more? That's absurd."

  "No. No, it's not. It's basic neuropsychology. Jack has explained it to me many times. You can teach a dog to see the consequences of its actions a few minutes out, perhaps an hour out. Chew the chair and if the master sees you, you'll be punished. But you can't teach a dog to care about a day away. You can't teach a dog to plan for next week. Why? Because the advanced portion of a dog's frontal lobe is a thin wafer compared to ours."

  He pressed a rigid index finger against his forehead. “This is where the mammal brain represents the future, and also where it enables us to care about the future. And this ability is a matter of degree, not of kind. And we were ... designed to care far more about the future."

  I shook my head in wonder. “Who else?"

  "All the orphans of the former Marrion Home, the people you know as your aunts and uncles. And their children."

  "Uncle Reed and Aunt Trend and Aunt Joy and Aunt Marr and...?"

  "Yes. All of them. Eighty-eight in the first generation."

  "And mom?"

  "Including your mother."

  "And me?"

  "The genetic traits are dominant."

  I turned and looked out the window again. “So everyone out there...?"

  "To them, tomorrow is real. Next year is a vague image. A
nd five years away is as unreal, as unmoving as a fairy tale."

  He watched me for a moment, as I gazed at the city buildings and wondered about the futures behind each lit window.

  "You know it's true,” he said. “I have stood where you stand now, while Marrion told me this by recording. It seemed incredible, but I knew it was true, and I realized then that I'd always known it was true. That becomes clear now, doesn't it?"

  "Yes,” I admitted. My hands were shaking. I felt distant, as if I were watching myself from another time and place. These revelations weighed too much, stood too tall, for me to grasp them. My voice seemed to come of its own will.

  "And so,” I asked softly, “you think you're supermen? And you can just try to run the world, take things over, in order to make it as you see fit?"

  "Oh, no, Lyta. No. We are just the only people who care enough about the future to try to save it. That's all. We're the only people who care."

  We were silent a long time. Then I said, “It may make things much worse, you know. All the cities might go dark, the planes grounded, the cars heaped up in junkyards. Chaos could follow."

  "Chaos is guaranteed, now or later. The question is which will be worse. It's a matter of comparing calculated risks."

  "Calculated risks,” I hissed bitterly. He shrugged. I stared at him a long time before I said, “I'm going to finish it."

  My father shook his head. “Please, hon. They'll watch the well heads now. They'll watch you. A gringa."

  "No. They'll turn to me to help protect them. They have no one else. They'll ask me to test the wells. It'll be even better cover than before.” I held out my hand. “I'm going to finish it. I can inject during the tests. Give them to me."

  He looked at my outstretched palm.

  "Dad, you would not have come without them. I know this. Give them to me."

  He did not move for such a long time that I started to feel sure he would say no—that he would take my arm then and direct me out the door, to a car, to the airport, almost carry me like he did when I was a little girl. But then he reached very slowly into his breast pocket, and pulled out two shining cylinders. He laid them on my hand, one at a time. They clinked softly against my bracelet. I closed my fingers around the warm metal.

  "I wish I was like them,” he whispered. “Like all the others. I wish I didn't care about the future. I wish I didn't care about the world. I wish I only cared about you."

  I put the cylinders in my purse. “So do I."

  * * * *

  "I don't care!” This was a new voice. Out in the hall. Not loud but penetrating. Also American, and older, perhaps sixties. “You've broken all the rules here."

  The key turned in the lock. I listened to the footsteps of two men enter the room.

  After the confessions I was given a wet towel and a dry towel, and allowed to clean myself alone in the room, a silly pretense of privacy since I knew they watched me. An orange jumpsuit lay limp by the door and I dressed in that. I had to roll the sleeves and legs of it, but was glad for the thin addition of warmth it yielded.

  A lot of time passed. Three meals were slipped through a panel at the bottom of the door, and then later taken away.

  Finally, two men in masks came with two additional chairs and another table. They chained me to the metal chair with my back to the door, hooded me again, and left me to wait. Until now.

  Two chairs scraped, they sat, and the chairs scraped again as they scooted up to the table.

  "Ms. Hippolyta Sumaran,” the one I knew, the torturer, the younger man, started. Though I did not believe he would strike me again, I felt the shiver of fear to have them behind me, addressing me, while I sat there helpless. “With me is an important colleague. You will tell him what you told me."

  "Yes,” I said. My voice was a whisper.

  "How did the oil plague get into the Argentine reserves?"

  "I put it there.” I was ruined. Not because of fear of the waterboarding. The waterboard did not even seem so fearful now. But because I knew, clearly and without doubt, that I would break again if they put me on it. That knowledge, not the torture itself, crushed me into docility.

  "How?"

  "Through the test well. Where we do experiments."

  "And how did it get into the other reserves? In other countries?"

  "Other people. Like me."

  "A conspiracy?” the other voice, the older man asked.

  "Yes."

  "Including Allen Reed,” the younger interjected.

  "Yes."

  Papers shuffled. The older man said, “you went to school with Allen Reed."

  "Yes. At the Marrion School."

  "The elite private school?"

  "Yes."

  "And when were you recruited into this conspiracy?"

  "At the Marrion School."

  "At the school? Together?” A tone of incredulity seeped into the older man's voice.

  "Yes."

  "You both were told to become geologists?"

  "Yes."

  More shuffling of papers. “How old were you?"

  "Fourteen."

  This much I had confessed, but no more. I had not told him what we were.

  There was a long pause. Finally the older one sighed heavily.

  "Do you realize, Ms. Sumaran—do you realize how absurd that is?"

  "Sir...” the younger man started.

  "Shut up,” the older one demanded. “Shut up.” Then, in a softer tone, to me he said again, “do you realize how absurd that is?"

  Yes. Of course it was absurd. No fourteen-year-old girl could commit to a goal more than a dozen years in the future, not a goal that required her to push aside her dreams and to bend all her life to such a purpose. She might say yes, but she couldn't keep a secret for years, she couldn't follow through with the education, the long toil of climbing the corporate ranks. And if she could, if there were such a girl, there could not be a dozen other such boys and girls, also raised to this purpose. Such a conspiracy was impossible. Human beings simply did not have that kind of foresight and focus. They did not have that kind of commitment to the future. Especially not upper-class American kids, with a world of instant indulgences and possibilities laid before them, tempting them every second of every day with immediate pleasures.

  As if an open door stood before me, I saw clearly my way out of this cell: I had only to confess part of the truth and to yield to some of my fears.

  "Don't put me back on the waterboard,” I whispered. I started crying as I pleaded. “I did my best to say what he wanted me to say.... I could tell he wanted me to say something. Just tell me what you want me to say."

  "You bitch,” the younger man hissed.

  "Out,” the older man commanded. “Now."

  "Sir, can't you see she's playing games with—"

  "Stop. Shut up. Go to your office and wait for me."

  A chair scraped backwards. Footsteps retreated. The door opened and closed.

  The older man sighed.

  "Your father has influential friends,” he said. “He has made a lot of noise. He has convinced many people—including some people to whom I must answer—that a mistake has been made. I am now inclined to agree with him."

  "Please let me go,” I whispered.

  "Of course, Ms. Sumaran. Of course.” There was a long pause. His chair slid back. “May I just say something?"

  I did not answer.

  "Yes? Well. You will never find us, Ms. Sumaran. We don't exist. It would be best if you went home and forgot all about this. Raising trouble, making complaints, looking for revenge—dare I say, looking for justice—well, that will only make it harder to forget this mistake. It will be better for you if you just forget and move on."

  "I would like to move on,” I replied meekly.

  "I'm glad to hear that. We will bring your clothes. You may dress and then we will put the hood back on you. We will take you to your embassy and drop you there."

  "Now?"

  "Soon, yes.
"

  He shuffled papers. A pen scraped briskly across paper, signing. Then there was a pause, followed by the sound of a piece of paper—or perhaps a large photograph—being lifted and then snapped into standing.

  "What is this that it says over the doors, over the doors of the Marrion School? Ambit sap—"

  "Amabit sapiens cupient caeteri."

  "Meaning?"

  "The wise love, others merely covet."

  "Ah. A nice sentiment. I would like to think that some of the wise do love."

  "It is love,” I told him, “that makes them wise."

  * * * *

  They pulled a hood over my head, banded my hands together behind my back, and then put me into the back of a car. We drove around for a while, making lots of turns, and then they stopped, pulled me out, and shoved me stumbling forward.

  "Go straight ahead,” someone grunted. Doors thumped closed, and the car's engine gunned and retreated.

  I walked a short distance, until I bumped into a wall. I heard footsteps approach, hard soles slapping on pavement. The hood was pulled off.

  "Señora," a Marine asked, looking around, one hand on his belted pistol. "Señora, estas bien? Estas herida?"

  "I'm an American citizen,” I said. “Take me inside."

  After hours of questions and phone calls and stale cups of coffee, and after the ambassador allowed me to wash up in his private bathroom in his top floor office, they let me go. I walked, wobbly and shaking, to the elevator and rode it down. The steel doors opened silently on a small lobby. A man sat against one wall, reading a newspaper. Beyond him, two sets of glass doors, with a little armored Marine station between them, let out onto stone steps and then a walkway to an iron gate by the road. A black car waited by the curb, sunlight gleaming off the long hood. Its windows were opaque. Uncle David paced, like a furious lion, back and forth beside it.

  When I had taken two steps toward the door, I glanced at the man reading the paper. His face was hidden behind the opened pages, his hands holding them out between us. Then I saw it: the pinky of his right hand lacked one joint.