Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  The burst of “servo-squeak,” as Raincloud called it, greatly excited the specialist. “This phenomenon we call ‘sonic byproduct,’” she said. “Sonic byproduct consists of sonic and ultrasonic vibrations emitted spontaneously by servos. Its occurrence was unforeseen by the network trainers. One theory holds that sonic byproduct is a form of communication which evolved independently among servos.”

  “Really,” said Raincloud. “A servo language.”

  “Of course, Mother,” said Hawktalon. “Doggie talks to us all the time.”

  The specialist smiled indulgently. “The research has proved inconclusive. The House of Chrysolite won’t support it; any hint of unreliability in their trained products might embarrass them.”

  Raincloud asked, “What’s the difference between training and programming?”

  “Programming means telling the hardware exactly what to do. Training means ‘teaching’ a neural network with built-in uncertainties to go about a partly defined task. It’s like training a dog: You can predict the result in general terms, but not in detail.”

  Blackbear smiled. “Like training a shonling.” He thought ruefully of Sunflower, who by now had learned pretty well what his dad expected in the potty, but it was so much more fun to “spill it” on the floor and watch the floor-servos scuttle out to clean it up.

  Hawktalon enthusiastically ticked off Doggie’s qualities. “She’s got intelligence, and feelings, and even—curiosity.”

  “What’s that?”

  Hawktalon took out the rattleback toy from her overalls. The rattleback was a wooden oblong with an obliquely rounded turning surface. She spun it swiftly on the floor; the object turned and wobbled.

  The trainsweep immediately crossed the room, coming right up until her front end arrived just at the wobbling object. The object slowed, then suddenly reversed and turned round the other way several times before it came to a stop, the “rattleback” effect. All the while, Doggie trained her visual sensors on the object as if fascinated.

  The specialist’s eyes widened with astonishment, but this time she said nothing. “Curiosity,” Blackbear guessed, was another unintended “byproduct” of neural network training. Nodding slowly, the specialist took the light pen from behind her ear and made some kind of note on her electronic sketchpad.

  Raincloud cleared her throat. “How much is it worth?”

  “Well, for the servo—”

  “No, no!” shouted Hawktalon. “You can’t give Doggie away, you promised.”

  “We’ll scan the network, that’s just as good,” said the specialist. “A thousand credits for the scan.”

  Blackbear smiled. That would at least get them ahead a month.

  “Plus a royalty,” added Raincloud, “in case you come out with a product.”

  AT THE FERTILITY LAB, BLACKBEAR TACKLED THE PROBLEM of the Eyeless gene. He would test a variety of mutant alleles—DNA sequences of Eyeless that differed slightly—for their predicted effect in the embryo simulator. First he had to learn to manage the delicate instrument, with Onyx’s patient tutoring.

  The elephantine embryo loomed before him above the holostage, its triangular head folded over with two round bulging eyes. “This is the first month, a critical stage for Eyeless,” Onyx explained. “As you can see, the eyes are normal with this allele.”

  She stepped onto the holostage. The “skin” of the embryonic form puckered as her arms entered, and she stepped inside. Her hand rested lightly beneath the pulsating bulge of the heart tube, which had yet to develop separate chambers. She reached up into the head between the eyeballs, cupping them in her hands. “You can see the lens and cornea tissues are shaping up. Come on in,” she urged.

  Strangely reluctant, Blackbear stepped inside. He had to remind himself it was only a model, not the actual sacred act of creation. The outer embryonic “tissues” surrounded him with a weird fog of light. But the surface of the heart tube actually pressed back against his hand.

  He felt nauseous. “How does that happen?” he exclaimed.

  “The program is set to ‘feel’ the heart and eyes,” Onyx said. “You can set it plenty of other ways; to ‘feel’ the brain and spinal column, for instance, and penetrate all the rest. Whatever you want. I test a dozen standard settings for each allele.”

  Tentatively his hand caressed the vessels of the shuddering heart, its rapid pulse never slacking.

  “Now this will be hard on your stomach,” Onyx warned. “We’re going to expand…”

  As Onyx spoke orders to the servo, the embryo expanded around them. The heart ballooned and dropped out of sight, while the two eyes grew to the size of basketballs within the gigantic head cavity. It was all Blackbear could do to keep steady on his feet.

  Now the tail end of the embryo was expanded around them, curving into a transparent scallop. Tubes of various tissues filled this region, the developing gut and kidney tissues. Onyx pointed to the posterior tip of the hindgut, just under the “tail,” where a spattering of red dots stood out. “Those are the primordial germ cells. The future eggs and sperm. They’ve migrated as far as the hindgut. Now watch as they develop.” She spoke a word to the simulator.

  The tubes of light undulated and expanded, as the model tissues “grew,” the gut and early kidney tubules differentiating. Meanwhile, the red-coded germ cells crept gradually up through the embryo, dividing and increasing in number as they moved. At last they reached the ridge-shaped tissue of the early gonads, where the cells settled and concentrated in two splotches of red.

  “You can’t tell yet, but they’ll just reach the preovarian part of the gonad,” Onyx said, “where they’ll develop fine until meiosis. Anyway, I guess you’ve had enough for your first time,” she added; he must have looked a bit disoreinted. What an epic voyage for those tiny cells, and barely one in a million would ever germinate to become a human being.

  Onyx spoke to the simulator, and its glowing apparition dissolved. “Let me show you our tissue culture facility.”

  The predictions of the egg development program had to be tested in tissue culture for biochemical side effects before it was worth trying gene replacement in the simbrid embryo. So, any allele whose simulation showed promise for egg development would be built into actual genes within cultured germ cells. The cultures grew in clear vessels that looked like plastic, but in fact were “intelligent” nanoplast. Each vessel oozed open at the touch of a light pen, then closed, self-sterilizing.

  For a week Blackbear immersed himself in his project. His home terminal accessed an immense range of literature on embryonic engineering. The kitchen window obligingly printed out bound volumes of text, much to the delight of Raincloud, who began to request all the Clicker classics. Blackbear wrote his brother Quail about his progress, and how their children would be born immortal some day.

  His own children soon adjusted to the lab routine. While Sunflower occupied himself with his animal dolls or molded a chunk of nanoplast with a light pen, Hawktalon helped her father by setting up vessels of tissue culture. When Visiting Day returned, they were happy to go out and tour the butterfly parks, the circus, and other amusements whose existence Blackbear had begun to discover.

  IN THE MEANTIME, RAINCLOUD DISCUSSED HER URULITE texts with Verid. “Your translations are first-rate,” Verid told her, sitting forward in her walnut chair, alert as a perched owl. “Your contact with Zheron is better yet. Zheron wants to establish an informal channel between us and his master, the Imperator. Your visit will do much to enhance his confidence in us.”

  Raincloud was skeptical. “A ‘duel to the death’ hardly suggests peaceful intent.”

  Verid laughed heavily. “Surely you know better. We must respect cultural differences. L’liites, for instance, always avert their eyes when dealing with strangers.”

  Raincloud hesitated. “You have to draw a line somewhere.”

  “Urulan has a lot farther to go, to meet our standards. We can expect a first step, not a great leap forward.”

/>   “I know all about Urulite standards,” Raincloud said frankly. “You did say you’ll double my pay?”

  “Of course, hazard pay. Not that you’re in any real danger.”

  “Then why are no Elysians willing to play their game?”

  Verid nodded. “You’re right, we need to train Elysian staff. That’s why Lem Inashon will accompany you to the Urulite Legation.”

  Lem Inashon was Verid’s junior associate, the well-muscled fellow she had run into briefly with Iras. Lem’s mate soon met Raincloud for lunch at a garden of heliconians.

  The flocks of fluttering blue wings were enough to daunt the most jaded eye. Inside the pavilion, a pair of Valan jugglers tossed balls of flame. Two things Elysium never seemed to lack were amusements and money.

  “You know,” said Lem’s mate over tea and flower cakes, “Lem can give you a really good time, if you like.”

  “Well, thank you,” Raincloud replied, somewhat puzzled.

  “I mean, a real good time. Lem took quite a shine to you,” the Elysian explained. “He likes a well-built figure. He’s very potent, and experienced; he can satisfy foreign women.”

  As her meaning sank in, Raincloud’s jaw fell. She hardly knew what to say. “But—but he’s your own mate,” she sputtered at last.

  “Of course, dear. That’s why I recommend him with confidence. He arranges the same for me; we both have sophisticated taste.”

  The idea of a goddess offering her own consort for service was repulsive beyond words. How could Raincloud possibly work with this man now?

  “Don’t worry, dear; I can see you’re not interested. Lem himself won’t say a word; he’ll be quite correct, I assure you.”

  “Uh, thanks,” Raincloud muttered. Cultural difference, she thought wryly.

  Perhaps she had better find out more about Elysian manners. Iras might give her some pointers. She and Iras had quickly become friends. They understood each other perfectly on matters of finance and outsmarting bureaucracy. On one coincident Visiting Day, they spent an afternoon at the circus, a haunt Iras favored because the servo manager was lenient about overlooking her bank calls.

  The acrobats in the ring had just completed a quadruple somersault in midair when Iras returned to her seat from the nearest holostage. “The deal’s done,” she said breathlessly as the sound of clapping died. “I can’t tell you the terms, but the L’liites plan to build a hydroelectric dam across the River of Babies.” The River of Babies was so-called because impoverished L’liites dumped their unwanted babies in the river, in the traditional belief that their suffering would earn them reincarnation into families of wealth. “The Valans will build the dam, actually. A kilometer in height, it will store enough to irrigate an entire continent.”

  Raincloud herself would never seek a loan outside her clan, much less offworld, for several trillion credits. “That’s a major asset for you,” she said at last.

  “My biggest since taking the L’liite division. So how’s your little shon? You seem thoughtful, today.”

  Intermission was called. Raincloud got up and stretched. “I’m working on ‘cultural differences.’”

  Iras nodded. “I’ll bet. Elysians do have certain stereotyped beliefs about foreigners. For instance, they assume that all foreigners are willing to risk life and limb as acrobats,” she said, nodding to the ring below, where the performers were rearranging the set for the next act. “Virtually all circus performers are foreign of course; what respectable Elysian would cavort like that in public? Of course, the reverse inference does not logically follow, but there you are.”

  “So that’s why Verid expects me to risk life and limb with Lord Zheron.”

  “Now, now, let’s not be touchy,” Iras said.

  “Another thing—how do I make it clear that I’m uninterested in being shown ‘a good time’?”

  Iras laughed as if Raincloud had made an exceptionally witty remark. “You can’t blame them for trying. Everyone knows foreign heterosexual females are, shall we say, sex-starved? Their men slow down with age, don’t they?”

  “But why would Elysian females introduce me to their mates?”

  “Marriage Elysian style works different ways. For some, it’s just a partnership of convenience; others keep a lover for a century or more. Verid and I met out of the shon, and we’re still lovebirds. But forever—who can say?”

  Raincloud was shaking her head. “Where’s their honor,” she clicked softly to herself. Elysians had no notion of “male honor” in her terms. To think of Lem with his youthful body, ready to serve her pleasure just like that; and now she had to work with him daily. What an assault on her virtue.

  Her eyes narrowed at Iras. “Quality is better than quantity. Besides, where I come from the women increase in desire as they age. Perhaps in ageless Elysium the men are starved.”

  Iras shrugged. “Let them eat cake. Anyway, if your virtue ever needs relief, you might try the delights of reality simulation in the Palace of Rest. Some prefer it to the real thing.”

  WHAT TO WEAR FOR THE URULITE VISIT WAS A PUZZLE. Chainmail was out of the question. She settled on her native rei-gi outfit, freshly pressed so the trousers swung out like bells, with her butterfly train for outdoors. An unlikely combination, but the best she could manage. Whatever she wore, she still felt undressed without Hawktalon or Sunflower on her back. Instead, only Lem Inashon, her admirer in scarlet, accompanied her. Fortunately his behavior was strictly correct. He had done his homework on Urulan, and he was trained in Alin’s style of fighting. Still, Raincloud would have felt better with Hawktalon; she was well acquainted with the girl’s ability to defend herself.

  The Urulite legation was an unmarked facade on a small street in the diplomatic quarter—one of the few sections of Helicon immune to the Visitation Rules. No electronic scandals would arise here.

  As she and Lem arrived, a doorway pinched open as usual, revealing a man who wore chain mail with leggings of brilliant geometric designs. He escorted them up a long hall lined with cultural artifacts, mostly painted screens depicting traditional Urulite processions, battles, and mythic stories, such as how the sun-god Azhragh carved the world out of the sky-goddess Mirhiah and sowed it with people-seeds. The seedlings grew up and got the bright idea of cutting off their stems with their swords to liberate themselves from the soil.

  She came to a large hall with a central area ringed by a black circle. Around the circle were several men with the thick-limbed build of her old teacher, all wearing swords. They sat in imposing wooden chairs with legs carved into animal heads with knobbed horns and ringlike mouths full of teeth—the famous fourteen-legged “caterpillars” that prowled the uninhabitable valleys between the needle rocks of Urulan. The men stopped talking as soon as she entered.

  Raincloud felt her heart pounding. She reminded herself, they were only men after all, grown men without even children on their backs. Where were their sisters to look after them? There was something pathetic about men who had to hide their own goddesses, then go to such lengths to protect themselves.

  The sound of a drum reverberated in the hall. One man rose to greet her, clapping his hand on her shoulder as Zheron had done. “Lord Zheron bids you welcome in the name of the Imperium. I am Lord Dhesra, weapons master. For your choice, we have knives, swords, spears, or staves. Apologies, on this barbaric world no lasers or particle disintegrators are available.”

  What a pity—she could have used, say, a guided missile. “A stave, please,” she said, since she had to pick something.

  Dhesra turned expectantly to Lem.

  “No, Lord,” said Raincloud quickly. “I represent us both, today; it was agreed.” No point in risking two casualties where one would do.

  Dhesra nodded to Zheron, who rose and entered the ring. “This is the ring of death,” Dhesra added, pointing to the black circle. The first person to touch outside was “dead”…Rhun’s face arose in her mind, recounting the custom in his gently ironic tone. The “ring of death”�
�in the old days, a moat full of armor-plated caterpillars would have lain outside.

  Lem gave her a sharp look, but Raincloud nodded back; all was well, so far. She accepted the stave from one of Zheron’s men. Then she stepped into the circle.

  Zheron stood opposite and faced her squarely. Holding his stave in his left arm, he saluted her with his right arm to the shoulder, and she did likewise. Then they separated.

  Raincloud held her stave horizontal at first, trying to gauge its weight. It was heavier than the sparring poles she was used to. Her rei-gi training made her highly conscious of vulnerability as an attacker.

  Zheron spread his feet and crouched with the stave held between his two hands. He made a few tentative moves, like a rei-gi assistant, none serious yet, though she shifted her weight just in case. He stepped sideways, then again, causing her to circle as well. His aim, she realized, was to steer her gradually back to the ring.

  Raincloud thrust her stave handle directly at his chest, a move any beginner might parry, but at least it would get things started. Zheron deflected the blow with the side of his stave, and a couple of the onlookers laughed. Seeming to sense her reluctance, Zheron attacked with a broadside swipe. Raincloud ducked underneath and slipped sideways. He was too far off for her to do much; she would have to close in, somehow.

  Another blow she parried with the side of her stave. The force of it jarred her hands, and she felt herself being pushed backward. The heavy pole was a nuisance, she thought. Would it be too dishonorable to drop it?

  Now, though, she was back dangerously close to the ring. Zheron struck again; and this time, as her stave caught the blow, it flew out of her hands. It clattered to the floor, the end of the handle falling well across the dark line of the ring. That was it; the ring was crossed, she was finished.

  Yet in the same instant, she saw out of the corner of her right eye that her opponent had not relaxed his stance. The onlookers were shouting, but the match was not done. The fallen stave, once released from her body, did not “count.”