Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  He clasped her arms. “I wouldn’t let her near a shon.”

  Raincloud turned her head and regarded him curiously. “Really? The shon is supposed to be a model nursery, not that I believe in nurseries. But one day a week wouldn’t hurt. They enroll foreign visitors free of charge; it’s considered a ‘cultural experience’ for their children.”

  “I wouldn’t trust them. All of us foreigners are ‘defective,’ remember.” He paused. “And what about you? How would you get on without her?”

  “I went to class alone, when she was little,” Raincloud reminded him. “You couldn’t bear to part with her. You took her to anatomy lab, where she drank formalin one day.”

  “Only a taste,” he muttered, wincing at the recollection. “Well, I’ll take her with me again. She wants to see my lab, after all.”

  “Are you sure? What will your Director say?”

  “Tulle won’t mind. That Science Park is full of foreigners. They adored Sunflower.”

  Raincloud nodded. “Elysium runs on cheap foreign labor.”

  “We’ll give it a try.”

  She flashed him a smile. Still, it saddened him to think of her alone in this bizarre city, without even a friendly little pair of eyes to share the view.

  IN THE MORNING RAINCLOUD LEFT TO MEET IRAS AGAIN, and Blackbear set off for Science Park with both children. Hawktalon skipped ahead gaily in anticipation.

  At the laboratory, Tulle was out for her Visiting Day, showing Alin’s colleagues about town, Onyx explained. Onyx and Draeg were delighted to see Hawktalon, and they offered to put her to work on the spot. “She’s a beauty,” added Draeg, nudging Blackbear in the arm. “My little sister back home is just her age.” Onyx, who as senior student had the best lab space, had already cleared out a place by her desk for Sunflower to play. Draeg had purchased a rattle and a toy servo from a tourist shop.

  Blackbear was deeply touched. This place was already feeling like home.

  They worked all morning at the embryo program, trying to fix the bug at the cellular level. Onyx kept shouting “I’ve got it!” and they seemed to make progress, though after two hours the program still overloaded. Draeg swore his head off like an angry goddess. Disconcerted, Blackbear knew that a man would never dare talk like that in Tumbling Rock.

  “What do you expect to see inside the mutant cells?” Blackbear asked. “What makes the heart tissue immortal?”

  “A new protein appears,” Draeg explained. “This protein scavenges oxygen radicals whose damage accumulates over time. It will prevent heart failure up to eight or nine hundred years.”

  “Eight or nine hundred years? What happens after that?”

  “Who knows?” said Onyx. “The Helishon itself has only existed a thousand years.”

  Blackbear nodded. “A thousand years without aging—that sounds immortal, to me.”

  Draeg and Onyx exchanged glances. Onyx said, “We never say ‘immortal,’ only ‘ageless.’ Most Elysians who escape accident will make it to a thousand, but a small percentage won’t. Nothing’s perfect. And in the future, say, by the year ten thousand, who knows?”

  “I see.” Blackbear considered this. So the Elysians had their “defectives,” too.

  Draeg chuckled. “Who do you think pays our salaries?”

  “‘Death pays a good wage,’ as the Sharers say,” quoted Onyx. “The Guard pays our salaries, of course, to work on longevity. Tulle manages a dozen students, scattered around Science Park. Only the three of us emphasize fertility, an offshoot of her main project. You’ll probably look at egg cell development; that’s hot right now. The Fertility Project attracts foreign students.”

  “The Guardians,” said Draeg, “are all quincentenarians at least. For them, we’re the Longevity Project.”

  “That’s right,” she teased, shoving Draeg in the arm, “Draeg just loves those Elysians; wants to help them live longer.”

  Draeg gave her a dirty look. “As you said, it’s all related.”

  Blackbear smiled. “It’s fascinating, but I still find it hard to see why aging and fertility are so inextricable.”

  Onyx said, “Remember the nematode—long life, fewer eggs? Evolution picks genes that make more eggs, early on, at the expense of later lifespan. It’s inevitable.”

  “Still…” Blackbear wished he could put into words what troubled him.

  “I have a hard time with that one, myself,” Onyx admitted. “Ask Tulle.”

  They broke for coffee in the lounge, where a service window overlooked a small garden of heliconians feeding at passionflowers, their scent filtering in. By the service window, a holostage displayed two Elysians seated within its column of light. One wore the motif of dead-leaf butterflies.

  Blackbear stared at the illuminated ghosts. “Say, that’s Alin.”

  Alin was speaking calmly to the other man, who was tall for an Elysian, draped in royal blue heliconians. “Is it not the case that Bank Helicon financed the construction of interstellar missiles for Valedon? And perhaps some of those missiles found their way to Urulan, as well? What will the Sharers say, I wonder.”

  “We violated no clause of the Sharer treaty,” said the man in the blue heliconians.

  Alin nodded. “The Sharers would say, ‘Let one fleshborer devour another.’ Where does that place us, I wonder.”

  The man looked tight in the face, and his hands gripped the sides of his chair.

  At Blackbear’s shoulder Onyx explained, “It’s a logathlon, a sort of trial by words. In public, of course. The defendant is the president of Bank Helicon.”

  A burst of applause came from an unseen audience. Blackbear remembered that Verid’s mate Iras worked for Bank Helicon; Raincloud would be interested.

  “The audience will vote in the end,” added Onyx.

  Draeg looked over. “Those logens are all Anaeashon. Alin’s okay, but some others cause us no end of trouble.” He tapped his knuckles on the service window. “Tea for three, metalman.”

  Onyx frowned and snapped her fingerwebs. “Wait till you get home to L’li and find yourself talking like that to your father.”

  Draeg laughed. “That will be the day. Where I come from, a man gets respect. You don’t take crap from Elysians.”

  Blackbear wondered at this. He had found Elysians reasonably respectful, in their own odd way. He watched Hawktalon approach the window, grasp it with her hands, and pull herself up. “Chocolate marble cake, with ice cream on top,” she said in impeccable Elysian.

  His mouth opened to speak, but he thought better of it. Raincloud would have to have a talk with the girl; it was better for a goddess to discipline young goddesses.

  “Newsbreak,” announced the holostage. The scene in the column of light had shifted. “Sharers at Papilion seek to ban motor-driven boats. The underwater noise of the boats drowns out the long-distance sonic communications of their giant starworms…”

  Two Elysian students he had not yet met entered the lounge. “Students,” of course, might be anywhere up to fiftyish in age; Elysians took their time about education. Blackbear rose automatically for introductions, but they walked past him, the man skipping to touch the ceiling.

  “Good morning, Pirin,” said Onyx.

  Pirin bowed with a flourish. “Good morning, Onyx. It is my highest duty to see you, as always. I hope the program for your heart model is running better?”

  “Oh, it’s just about there,” Onyx said with a hopeful grin.

  “Our new simbrid clone looks very promising,” Pirin offered.

  The other student, a goddess, clapped her hands. “We can’t wait to try out your predictions in the simbrid embryo.”

  Simbrid, or simian hybrid embryos, were bred from several primate strains to reach a pattern of development which closely matched the human. Any finding from the model program had to be tested in the simbrid before applying it to human embryos.

  Pirin told Onyx, “Our mates will be taking the new student to lunch today.” Presumably he meant Blackbea
r, whom he was unprepared to address until introduced by his mate.

  “A good arrangement,” said Onyx. “He will meet them with pleasure.”

  The two Elysians went to the window to order tea.

  Draeg stood and stretched. “Time’s wasting—let’s have another go at that program before lunch.”

  They left the lounge. Onyx’s sandals scraped softly on the nanoplastic floor.

  “That Pirin,” muttered Draeg. “Thinks just because he’s a Helishon he’s God’s gift,” he finished in L’liite.

  “Come on, Draeg,” objected Onyx. “They’re just kids, barely out of the shon; they take everything seriously. Give ’em a couple of centuries, they’ll loosen up like Tulle.”

  “Pardon me, I haven’t the time.”

  “If you’d knock that chip off your shoulder, maybe they’d loosen up sooner. Don’t mind them,” Onyx told Blackbear. “After your lunch with their mates, they’ll be perfectly civil. You see, if you were Elysian, and they spoke to you without introduction by your mate or theirs, it would be the worst possible insult.”

  Blackbear nodded. “It’s something like that, in the Hills. If you approach a man without asking his goddess, you might be shunned.”

  The L’liite eyed him skeptically. “What sort of man needs the word of a female?”

  “It’s for our own protection,” Blackbear assured him. A man who lost his honor might as well leave the Hills forever.

  “Protection! Have you no strength of your own?”

  “A man is built strong, to carry the children,” Blackbear said. “The ‘goddess’ bears them one at a time; the man carries them all.”

  Draeg grinned. “Say, I like that. Blackbear, you’re all right, and your kids are the greatest.” He put a playful armlock around Hawktalon.

  The girl caught Draeg’s hands, while bending her knees slightly. She took a deep bow forward, and Draeg somersaulted over her onto the floor.

  “Hawktalon!” Blackbear cried, adding in Click-click, “You might hurt someone. You will definitely talk with your mother.”

  “But Mother taught me to.”

  Rubbing his elbow, Draeg scrambled to his feet. He was not at all displeased. “Where’d you learn that, you little devil? We’ve got some sparring to do.”

  THE ELYSIAN STUDENTS’ MATES TREATED BLACKBEAR TO a lively luncheon at a nearby pavilion, complete with acrobats who tossed juggling pins across the tables and would have tossed Sunflower, too, if Blackbear had not fetched him back at the last moment. Although the skin of the young Elysians could scarcely be smoother than that of their elders, their youth was unmistakable in their spontaneity and careless laughter; they made Blackbear, with his two children to keep his heart on edge, feel old. Outside, of course, the Elysians were marked by their trains, the length of which increased a meter for each century of life.

  Upon his return, Pirin and Lorl greeted him with enthusiasm and pressed upon him several reports of their work, which he stacked in the growing “to read” pile on his new desk. Then Onyx rounded up everyone for a surprise conference with Tulle, who had managed to slip away from her visiting duties for an illicit conference with the lab.

  Draeg was worried. “Working on Visiting Day—she could end up in the Palace of Rest for a month.”

  “That’s why we’re meeting her outside the lab, at the swallowtail garden,” said Onyx.

  “The walls have ears. The servos will tattle.”

  The five of them, along with three other students whom Blackbear did not yet know, met Tulle in the same garden where he had met Alin. Tulle’s capuchin scampered to the floor; Hawktalon and Sunflower were soon in hot pursuit. The lab talk flew thick and fast, quite over his head.

  “Blackbear?” Tulle was addressing him. “What do you think of the new egg gene? Would the project interest you?”

  He swallowed and tried to think of something to say. Draeg observed, “He’s only just arrived.”

  “He’s got some good questions, though.” Onyx nudged him. “Ask Tulle what you asked us, this morning.”

  “Well—” He hoped he could frame the question so as not to sound foolish. “I just wondered, why is there such a tight link between fertility and aging? If the Heliconian Doctors were smart enough to beat aging, why couldn’t they unlink the functions of fertility?” The answer had to be obvious; he wished he had not asked.

  There was silence. Heads turned toward Tulle, but she looked around at the group.

  Pirin waved his hand. “The evolutionary link is too fundamental. For example, the int gene is needed for spermatogenesis, but it also functions in the central nervous system. The int alleles which yield the highest sperm count happen to cause aging of the brain. A thousand genes like that have evolved, enhancing fertility in youth but linked to aging. To reengineer that is as daunting a task as, say, making lungs into gills.”

  “That’s been done, hasn’t it?” someone asked. “The Sharers shaped themselves to breathe water. That’s why the Heliconian Doctors first came here to learn from them.”

  “The Sharers did a lot, but not that,” corrected Onyx. “Sharers get some oxygen through their skin, from the microbes that turn them purple; but even they can’t breathe water forever.”

  “That doesn’t prove it can’t be done.”

  A heated discussion ensued, ending with the students falling silent one by one and looking at Tulle.

  Tulle spoke at last, oddly reluctant. “The truth is, we have no clear answer to Blackbear’s question. The records of the Heliconian Doctors who made the first ageless humans were lost after the Fall.”

  The Fall of Torr. Once humanity’s birthplace, Torr had been consumed by its own machines. The machine-world then sent its rule to all living words, and death to those who would not obey. When the planet Helix learned to jump the space folds, cheating the speed of light, their first jumpship brought an end to Torr.

  But their ship was too late. Ten years after, at near-lightspeed, came Torr’s last ship of death. The Fall of Torr meant the Fall of Helix, too. Thus, Shora’s Heliconians became orphans, amid a chaos of awakened worlds tasting their first freedom.

  Onyx shuddered. “I can’t imagine what life was like before the Free Fold.”

  “Sure you can,” said Draeg. “Just visit Urulan, and watch them nuke their rebel provinces.”

  “But what do you think, Tulle?” Onyx persisted. “Why are the ageless infertile? You must have an opinion.”

  “My own belief,” Tulle said carefully, “is that the Doctors did not try too hard. They did not deliberately suppress fertility; they didn’t have to, given the natural link with aging.”

  Silence again. Lorl nodded slowly. “It’s interesting, you know. Only the reproductive functions are defunct in our bodies, not the sexual ones. That is, we lack wombs and eggs, but our sexual response is normal.”

  “Better,” corrected Pirin succinctly. “Males retain the potency we reach at age eighteen.”

  At that, Draeg made a crude hand sign at him. “The butterfly stud,” he muttered in L’liite.

  Onyx jabbed Draeg with her elbow. “But Tulle,” she objected, “you haven’t said why the Heliconian Doctors failed to fix fertility.”

  Tulle said, “They believed reproduction belonged to the Republic, state, not the individual.”

  “To the shon,” corrected Pirin. “The shons are independent corporations. They purchase their gene pool from all the planets of the Fold.”

  “And each shon, through its alumni, elects a Guardian of the Guard of Twelve. The shons are the Republic.”

  THAT EVENING BLACKBEAR GOT THE KIDS HOME EARLY enough to order a gourmet dinner and oversee a lesson from Hawktalon’s correspondence school. He bade Hawktalon to add up all the goats on each hillside before playing at the climate window again.

  “Blackbear?” called Raincloud from the door. “You have to come out and see.”

  Raincloud was resplendent in full Elysian regalia down to the sandals, with just enough of a trai
n to require a pair of trainsweeps behind. The background color was bronze yellow, a comforting hue, bordered with butterfly wings of pale yellow with orange-ringed black spots like rows of coins.

  “You had to see this outdoors,” she said, “before the trainsweeps insist on folding it up. Well? Do you like it?”

  He found his voice. “It’s—it’s fantastic. They give you an extra couple of centuries?” he asked, estimating her train.

  “The base length is two meters; anything less would look ridiculous. It’s a gift from Iras.”

  Of course, a gift from the mate of the Sub-Subguardian, just as Tulle’s mate had sent the climate window for him. Blackbear shook his head, thinking, their debts were mounting.

  “Don’t worry,” said Raincloud. “I told you, love, I’m working on that. Anyway, Iras said that at the Nucleus, robes and trains are de rigueur. She took me to The Golden Fritillary, where we got the stuff, then spent the afternoon helping orient the trainsweeps and teaching me how to walk so it doesn’t tangle.”

  Blackbear smiled. “I’ll definitely redo your braids tonight. Perhaps I can pick up some of the pattern.”

  “Thanks. The main thing is,” Raincloud explained, “now that I’m dressed ‘official,’ Iras promised that the Sub-Subguardian will see me tomorrow.”

  Chapter 4

  DESPITE HER NEW ELYSIAN TRAIN, RAINCLOUD WALKED light on her feet, as if the Goddess held her up in Her dancing arms. A ridiculously confining garment for a goddess, she thought, but of course she would not deign to say so. She thought of Nightstorm, her eldest sister, who could wrestle a bear to the ground or pull children out of quake-collapsed buildings. Raincloud would face her own job with equal confidence.

  At the entrance to the transit reticulum, three servos awaited her. Their build was the “floor lamp” type, their “lamp” heads bending forward now and then. News reporters again, she sighed.

  “Are you the new Urulite translator?”

  “Was the Valan freighter really a spy ship?”