Li's grave expression scarcely changed. "I believe so." He tilted his head. "Is there anything I can do for you? Anything I can arrange?"
"Not now, no," said Davout.
Li's look turned abstract as he scanned indicators projected somewhere in his mind.
"West Java. The city of Bandung."
Earth, then. Which Davout had not seen in seventy-seven years. Memory's gentle fingers touched his mind with the scent of durian, of ocean, of mace, cloves, and turmeric.
He knew he was never in Java before, though, and wondered whence the memory came. From one of his sibs, perhaps?
Dr. Li left Davout alone, in his new/old body, in the room that whispered of memory and pain.
In a dark wood armoire Davout found identification and clothing, and a record confirming that his account had received seventy-eight years' back pay. His electronic inbox contained downloads from his sibs and more personal messages than he could cope with—he would have to construct an electronic personality to answer most of them.
He dressed and left the hospital. Whoever supervised his reassembly—Dr. Li perhaps—had thoughtfully included a complete Earth atlas in his internal ROM, and he accessed it as he walked, making random turnings but never getting lost. The furious sun burned down with tropical intensity, but his current body was constructed to bear heat, and a breeze off the mountains made pleasant even the blazing noontide.
The joyful metal music of the gamelans clattered from almost every doorway. People in bright clothing, agile as the siamang of near Sumatra, sped overhead along treeways and ropeways, arms and hands modified for brachiation. Robots, immune to the heat, shimmered past on silent tires. Davout found it all strangely familiar, as if he had been here in a dream.
And then he found himself by the sea, and a pang of familiarity knifed through his heart. Home! cried his thoughts. Other worlds he had built, other beauties he had seen, but he had never beheld this blue, this perfection, anywhere else but on his native sphere. Subtle differences in atmospherics had rendered this color unnatural on any other world.
And with the cry of familiarity came a memory: it had been Davout the Silent who had come here, a century or more ago, and Katrin had been by his side.
But Davout's Katrin was dead. And as he looked on Earth's beauty, he felt his world of joy turn to bitter ashes.
He lived in a world where no one died, and nothing was ever lost. One understood that such things occasionally occurred, but never—hardly ever—to anyone that one knew. Physical immortality was cheap and easy, and was supported by so many alternate systems: backing up the mind by downloading, or downloading into a virtual reality system or into a durable machine. Nanosystems duplicated the body or improved it, adapted it for different environments. Data slumbered in secure storage, awaiting the electron kiss that returned it to life. Bringing a child to term in the womb was now the rarest form of reproduction, and bringing a child to life in a machine womb the next rarest.
It was so much easier to have the nanos duplicate you as an adult. Then, at least, you had someone to talk to.
No one died, and nothing is ever lost. But Katrin died, Davout thought, and now I am lost, and it was not supposed to be this way.
Davout and Katrin had met in school, members of the last generation in which womb-breeding outnumbered the alternatives. Immortality whispered its covenant into their receptive ears. On their first meeting, attending a lecture (Dolphus on "Reinventing the Humbolt Sea") at the College of Mystery, they looked at each other and knew, as if angels had whispered into their ears, that there was now one less mystery in the world, that each served as an answer to another, that each fitted neatly into a hollow that the other had perceived in his or her soul, dropping into place as neatly as a butter-smooth piece in a finely made teak puzzle—or, considering their interests, as easily as a carbolic functional group nested into place on an indole ring.
Their rapport was, they freely admitted, miraculous. Still young, they exploded into the world, into a universe that welcomed them.
He could not bear to be away from her. Twenty-four hours was the absolute limit before Davout's nerves began to beat a frustrated little tattoo, and he found himself conjuring a phantom Katrin in his imagination, just to have someone to share the world with—he needed her there, needed this human lens through which he viewed the universe.
Without her, Davout found the cosmos veiled in a kind of uncertainty. While it was possible to apprehend certain things (the usefulness of a coenocytic arrangement of cells in the transmission of information-bearing proteins and nuclei, the historical significance of the Yucatan astrobleme, the limitations of the Bénard cell model in predicting thermic instabilities in the atmosphere), these things lacked noesis, existed only as a series of singular, purposeless accidents. Reflected through Katrin, however, the world took on brilliance, purpose, and genius. With Katrin he could feast upon the universe; without her the world lacked savor.
Their interests were similar enough for each to generate enthusiasm in the other, diverse enough that each was able to add perspective to the other's work. They worked in cozy harmony, back to back, two desks set in the same room. Sometimes Davout would return from a meeting, or a coffee break, and find that Katrin had added new paragraphs, sometimes an entire new direction, to his latest effort. On occasion he would return the favor. Their early work—eccentric, proliferating in too many directions, toward too many specialties—showed life and promise and more than a hint of brilliance.
Too much, they decided, for just the two of them. They wanted to do too much, and all at once, and an immortal lifetime was not time enough.
And so, as soon as they could afford it, Red Katrin, the original, was duplicated—with a few cosmetic alterations—in Dark Katrin and later Katrin the Fair; and nanomachines read Old Davout, blood and bone and the long strands of numbers that were his soul, and created perfect copies in Dangerous Davout, later called the Conqueror, and Davout the Silent.
Two had become six, and half a dozen, they now agreed, was about all the universe could handle for the present. The wild tangle of overlapping interests was parceled out between the three couples, each taking one of the three most noble paths to understanding. The eldest couple chose History as their domain, a part of which involved chronicling the adventures of their sibs; the second couple took Science; the third Psyche, the exploration of the human mind. Any developments, any insights, on the part of one of the sibs could be shared with the others through downloads. In the beginning they downloaded themselves almost continually, sharing their thoughts and experiences and plans in a creative frenzy. Later, as separate lives and more specialized careers developed, the downloads grew less frequent, though there were no interruptions until Dangerous Davout and Dark Katrin took their first voyage to another star. They spent over fifty years away, though to them it was less than thirty; and the downloads from Earth, pulsed over immense distances by communications lasers, were less frequent, and less frequently resorted to. The lives of the other couples, lived at what seemed speeded-up rates, were of decreasing relevance to their own existence, as if they were lives that dwelled in a half-remembered dream.
The sea, a perfect terrestrial blue, gazed back into Davout's eyes, indifferent to the sad
ness frozen into his fingers.
"Your doctors knew that to wake here, after such an absence, would result in a feeling of anachronism," said Davout's sib, "so they put you in this Victorian room, where you would at least feel at ease with the kind of anachronism by which you are surrounded." He smiles at Davout from the neo-gothic armchair. "If you were in a modern room, you might experience a sensation of obsolescence. But everyone can feel superior to the Victorians, and besides one is always more comfortable in one's past."
"Is one?" Davout asked, fingers signing
"I discover," he continued, "that my thoughts stray for comfort not to the past, but to the future."
"Ah." A smile. "That is why we call you Davout the Conqueror."
"I do not seem to inhabit that name," Davout said, "if I ever did."
Concern shadowed the face of Davout's sib.
"I understand," he said. "I experienced your last download. It was . . . intensely disturbing. I have never felt such terror, such loss."
"Nor had I," said Davout.
It was Old Davout whose image was projected into the gothic-revival armchair, the original, womb-born Davout of whom the two sibs were copies. When Davout looked at him it was like looking into a mirror in which his reflection had been retarded for several centuries, then unexpectedly released—Davout remembered, several bodies back, once possessing that tall forehead, the fair hair, the small ears flattened close to the skull. The grey eyes he had still, but he could never picture himself wearing the professorial little goatee.
"How is our other sib?" Davout asked.
The concern on Old Davout's face deepened. "You will find Silent Davout much changed. You haven't uploaded him, then?"
"Ah."
"I will." He looked at his sib and hoped the longing did not burn in his eyes. "Please give my best to Katrin, will you?"
"I will give her your love," said Old Davout, wisest of the sibs.
The pain was there when Davout awoke next day, fresh as the moment it first knifed through him, on the day their fifth child, the planet Sarpedon, was christened. Sarpedon had been discovered by astronomers a couple centuries before, and named, with due regard for tradition, after yet another minor character in Homer; it had been mapped and analyzed by robot probes; but it had been the Beagle's terraforming team that had made the windswept place, with its barren mountain ranges and endless deserts, its angry radiation and furious dust storms, into a place suitable for life.
Katrin was the head of the terraforming team. Davout led its research division. Between them, raining nano from Sarpedon's black skies, they nursed the planet to life, enriched its atmosphere, filled its seas, crafted tough, versatile vegetation capable of withstanding the angry environment. Seeded life by the tens of millions, insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, fish and amphibians. Re-created themselves, with dark, leathery skin and slit pupils, as human forms suitable for Sarpedon's environment, so that they could examine the place they had built.
And—unknown to the others—Davout and Katrin had slipped bits of their own genetics into almost every Sarpedan life-form. Bits of redundant coding, mostly, but enough so that they could claim Sarpedon's entire world of creatures as their children. Even when they were junior terraformers on the Cheng Ho's mission to Rhea, they had, partly as a joke, partly as something more calculated, populated their creations with their genes.
Katrin and Davout spent the last two years of their project on Sarpedon among their children, examining the different ecosystems, different interactions, tinkering with new adaptations. In the end Sarpedon was certified as suitable for human habitation. Preprogrammed nanos constructed small towns, laid out fields, parks, and roads. The first human Sarpedans would be constructed in nanobeds, and their minds filled with the downloaded personalities of volunteers from Earth. There was no need to go to the expense and trouble of shipping out millions of warm bodies from Earth, running the risks of traveling for decades in remote space. Not when nanos could construct them all new on site.
The first Sarpedans—bald, leather-skinned, slit-eyed—emerged blinking into their new red dawn. Any further terraforming, any attempts to fine-tune the planet and make it more Earthlike, would be a long-term project and up to them. In a splendid ceremony, Captain Moshweshwe formally turned the future of Sarpedon over to its new inhabitants. Davout had a few last formalities to perform, handing certain computer codes and protocols over to the Sarpedans, but the rest of the terraforming team, most fairly drunk on champagne, filed into the shuttle for the return journey to the Beagle. As Davout bent over a terminal with his Sarpedan colleagues and the Beagle's first officer, he could hear the roar of the shuttle on its pad, the sustained thunder as it climbed for orbit, the thud as it crashed through the sound barrier, and then he saw out of the corner of his eye the sudden red-gold flare . . .
When he raced outside it was to see the blazing poppy unfolding in the sky, a blossom of fire and metal falling slowly to the surface of the newly christened planet.
There she was—her image anyway—in the neo-gothic armchair: Red Katrin, the green-eyed lady with whom he in memory, and Old Davout in reality, had first exchanged glances two centuries ago while Dolphus expanded on what he called his "lunaforming."
Davout had hesitated about returning her call of condolence. He did not know whether his heart could sustain two knife-thrusts, both Katrin's death and the sight of her sib, alive, sympathetic, and forever beyond his reach.
But he couldn't not call her. Even when he was trying not to think about her, he still found Katrin on the edge of his perceptions, drifting through his thoughts like the persistent trace of some familiar perfume.
Time to get it over with, he thought. If it was more than he could stand, he could apologize and end the call. But he had to know . . .
"And there are no backups?" she said. A pensive frown touched her lips.
"No recent backups," Davout said. "We always thought that, if we were to die, we would die together. Space travel is hazardous, after all, and when catastrophe strikes it is not a small catastrophe. We didn't anticipate one of us surviving a catastrophe on Earth, and the other dying light-years away." He scowled.
"Damn Moshweshwe anyway! There were recent backups on the Beagle, but with so many dead from an undetermined cause he decided not to resurrect anyone, to cancel our trip to Astoreth, return to Earth, and sort out all the complications once he got home."
"He made the right decision," Katrin said. "If my sib had been resurrected, you both would have died together."
The green eyes narrowed. "There are older backups on Earth, yes?"
"Katrin's latest surviving backup dates from the return of the Cheng Ho."
"Almost ninety years ago." Thoughtfully. "But she could upload the memories she has been sending me . . . the problem does not seem insurmountable."
Red Katrin clasped her hands around one knee. At the familiar gesture, memories rang through Davout's mind like change-bells. Vertigo overwhelmed him, and he closed his eyes.
"The problem is the instructions Katrin—we both—left," he said. "Again, we anticipated that if we died, we'd die together. And so we left instructions that our backups on Earth were not to be employed. We reasoned that we had two sibs apiece on Earth, and if they—you—missed us, you could simply duplicate yourselves."
"I see." A pause, then concern. "Are you all right?"
"I
've got seventy-odd years' back pay," he said. "I suppose that I could hire some lawyers, try to get Katrin's backup released to my custody."
Red Katrin bit her nether lip. "Recent court decisions are not in your favor."
"I'm very persistent. And I'm cash-rich."
She cocked her head, looked at him. "Are you all right talking to me? Should I blank my image?"
He had feared agony in seeing her, but instead he found a growing joy, a happiness that mounted in his heart. As always, his Katrin was helping him to understand, helping him to make sense of the bitter confusion of the world.
An idea began to creep into his mind on stealthy feet.
"I worry that you're alone there," Red Katrin said. "Would you like to come stay with us? Would you like us to come to Java?"
After his talk with Katrin ended, Davout called Dr. Li and told him that he wanted a new body constructed.
Something familiar, he said, already in the files. His own, original form.
Age twenty or so.
"It is a surprise to see you . . . as you are," said Silent Davout.
Deep-voiced, black-skinned, and somber, Davout's sib stood by his bed.
"It was a useful body when I wore it," Davout answered. "I take comfort in . . . familiar things . . . now that my life is so uncertain." He looked up. "It was good of you to come in person."
"A holographic body," taking Davout's hand, "however welcome, however familiar, is not the same as a real person."
Davout squeezed the hand. "Welcome, then," he said. Dr. Li, who had supervised in person through the new/old body's assembly, had left after saying the nanos were done, so it seemed appropriate for Davout to stand and embrace his sib.
The Green Leopard Plague and Other Stories Page 5
