Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  He blinked, and his lips parted. As he struggled to frame a response, a soft squeaking noise out in the garden drew his attention. It was Doggie, jiggling back and forth next to Sunflower. To his horror, he saw the boy methodically stuffing caterpillars into his mouth.

  Excusing himself, Blackbear hurriedly got up to rescue the errant child and pull as much chewed caterpillar out of his mouth as possible. A sound scolding followed, under the gaze of a score of curious Elysians getting a first-hand lesson in parenting.

  Miserable, he returned to his seat. But Onyx and Draeg were doing a creditable job explaining how they and their siblings had been raised, including “modern education.” On Valedon, Onyx had gotten more science education than anyone in that audience, Blackbear suspected.”

  Then a man asked, “Why are you working only on egg genes for females?” It was the same question Verid had asked, half in jest. But this fellow was dead serious. “If females get to be fertile, and not males, they’ll all think they’re too good for Elysian men. You foreigners want to steal all our females; I know that’s what it is. Why should my tax dollars support that?”

  “I’ll handle this one,” said Pirin. “There’s hardly any difference between female and male germ cells worth speaking of. They both start out the same, and most of the egg genes turn out to be sperm genes too. Besides, quibbling over sex differences is for foreigners, not civilized people.”

  Blackbear put a hand on Draeg’s arm to restrain him.

  At last the Guardian Jerya Tenarishon rose to speak, her sash glittering. “As scientists, your work is beyond reproach…”

  Draeg muttered in L’liite, “That’s because you don’t grasp a word of it.”

  Frowning, Blackbear motioned him to hush.

  “…but my question calls on you as human beings,” Jerya went on. “As humans on this planet, please tell me: What is a human being? In terms of your own work, fixing this gene or that—is a human no more than a machine to be tinkered with? A common servo, say a housekeeper, possesses twice as many neural connections as a human does neurons. Is there any kind of tinkering that you would forbid, on the grounds of humanity, that you would not forbid on a housekeeper?”

  At this, Blackbear drew an ignominious blank. All he could think to say was “Humans worship the Goddess in Her temple,” an untranslatable answer that would hardly do here.

  But Alin could no longer contain himself. “How could any of us not know, not feel the difference between a human and a machine? The name ‘Helicon’ originally meant, ‘home of the Muse,’” he said. “Humans are musical; humans feel and imagine, envision and re-vision. We can’t put a set value on this quality, any more than fish can put a value on water. No one would dare to tinker with what is human, in a human; in a servo, it’s not there to be tinkered with.”

  Jerya smiled. “I hope you’re right, for all our sakes. But you scientists, now, would you never alter a gene, say, to make us more musical?”

  Onyx threw up her hands, exasperated. “It’s not in my grant, that’s for sure! Show me the gene, and I’ll tell you if I’d alter it.”

  From the audience Tulle arose to explain. “There is no such thing as a gene for musicality, or imagination. Genes can increase the range of hearing of the ear, and assure perfect pitch. Of course, we adjust our gene pool for such talents. But any genetic attempt to stimulate ‘imagination’ may well produce a psychotic. Other worlds have tried this; the Guard of Twelve has never considered supporting such foolishness.”

  “Not today,” said Jerya. “We will never know what monsters we wrought in pursuit of long life, back before the records were lost.”

  THE HEARING LASTED ALL DAY UNTIL WELL INTO EVENING, when the lighting dimmed in the street tunnel. The final hour was taken up by a citizen’s harangue over some border dispute although that scarcely fit the subject of this hearing. Sunflower ate enough treats from the servo trays so that he forgot about caterpillars, and he made use of an instant potty-chair which obligingly formed out of nanoplast at the public lavatory.

  Tired and exasperated, Blackbear started to hoist the sleepy child up on his back. “I wan’ go home. Ho-ome,” the child wailed.

  “Poor dear,” sighed Onyx, putting away her lightbox. She squeezed Sunflower’s leg affectionately between her fingerwebs.

  Alin bowed. “Splendid job, Blackbear; you brought it off like a citizen. I’ll catch you next Visiting Day; I’m practicing a new armlock to try out on you.” He approached Tulle, clasping the fold of her train behind her back, the closest to an embrace ever seen in public.

  Draeg seemed to have ended with the same high spirits he began; perhaps the breathmicrobes gave him extra stamina. “Hey, we showed those guys a thing or two! That Kal, he was too ashamed even to show up.”

  “He should have come,” insisted Blackbear. “He’s got to be set straight. No one really answered his claims.”

  Tulle shook her head. “Don’t bother. The more we can distance ourselves from controversy, the better.”

  “But people listen to him. He nearly won the logathlon. Next, he’ll go to the Sharers.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Go tell him yourself,” urged Draeg.

  “How?”

  “Anyhow. You can locate any Elysian anytime, on the holostage.”

  “You have to send Raincloud, first,” warned Onyx. “Or else it’s the worst insult.”

  The idea, sending his goddess upon such an errand. “Why is it such an insult,” asked Blackbear, “to introduce yourself to someone you have business with?”

  Alin turned to him. “It’s our duty as citizens to serve the pleasure of others; but what if one can’t, or won’t, in a given instance? One would lose face all the time; life would be intolerable. By asking indirectly, through a third party, we leave each other a way out.”

  “Only servos,” added Tulle, “are called upon without introduction by a mate or a generen. To do otherwise is to tell someone he is no better than a servo.”

  Blackbear thought this over, as the others departed. In Kal’s case, he thought, the comparison was unfair to servos.

  With sudden decision, he went to the nearest holostage. “Can you please locate Citizen Kal Anaeashon?”

  Kal was at home, his quarters in the upper sector of the first octant; an exclusive district, one unlikely to welcome a trainless foreigner with a crayoned trainsweep and a sleepy child. But Blackbear was tired of being polite.

  The transit reticulum easily steered him to Kal’s address. Sunflower, now asleep on his father’s back, was no trouble for the moment. Blackbear found the logen’s door; it must be the one, the right number, with the leafwing sign. “House please announce a caller,” he ordered firmly.

  The door simply opened. Taken aback, Blackbear paused at the newly molded frame of nanoplast.

  A roomful of diffuse lighting met his eyes, and the sounds of music, similar to those he had heard at the concert hall. Mooncurved seating structures in pastel colors seemed to extend from the walls; there were few distinct pieces of furniture. Books lined the far wall, which curved up into the ceiling.

  From one of the seats rose Kal. He wore his usual white robe, a plain talar belted at the waist. His gray hair and dark eyes were even more striking up close. “Doctor Windclan,” he said, with a slight bow. “How may I serve you?”

  Blackbear blinked twice and took a deep breath. “Why did you say all those lies in public about my work? You dared not even confront me, at my own hearing. What do you know about ‘families’? Have you ever lived in one? Do you call the Hill people poor, just because we herd goats instead of servos? Do you think our community fails to support our own children? Aren’t you ashamed to refer such preposterous claims to the Sharer World Gathering?”

  At this point, Sunflower stirred and lifted his head off Blackbear’s shoulder. “We home yet, Daddy?”

  “Not yet, dear,” Blackbear muttered, his civil instinct reasserting itself. “This is Sunflower, my younge
r child,” he said, bringing him down from his back. Sunflower sleepily held out Wolfcub.

  Kal bowed again. “Please come in. Excuse me, just a moment.” He disappeared in back, leaving Blackbear puzzled at the door. Upon returning, Kal presented Sunflower with what was unmistakably a stuffed teddy bear. “It was mine, in the shon,” he explained.

  Sunflower embraced the teddy bear, took two steps inside, then lay down and curled up with it on the carpet.

  Dazed with astonishment, Blackbear found himself entering the house, taking a furtive glance at the teddy bear. The stuffed bear must be ancient, perhaps twice the age of settlement on Bronze Sky.

  A servo came out to the room, a bipedal upright like those that carried trays of delicacies in the butterfly gardens. This one carried no tray and wore no apron. Instead, it wore a sort of talar with bright geometric designs. More startling, it had a “face.” The smoothly rounded dome of a “head” had features, cartoonish images of eyes, nose, and mouth that flickered across the surface like a video projected from within.

  “This is my ‘mate,’ Cassi Deathsister,” Kal explained. “It is my highest duty to introduce Blackbear and Sunflower Windclan.”

  Blackbear nodded stiffly, at a loss for words.

  “I’ve heard so much about you,” Cassi said, “and your excellent trainsweep. I thought I heard her call—is she there?”

  He blinked quickly. “Yes, of course.” Doggie had waited tentatively at the doorstep, expecting to be left outside as usual at an Elysian home. Cassi walked to the door and let her in. The two of them went off to another room. As Blackbear watched, he wondered how the trainsweep had “called” her, for he had heard nothing.

  Blackbear sank into the seat nearest Sunflower, now asleep on the floor. He refused a glass of something Kal offered. “She’s not really your ‘mate,’ is she?” he asked bluntly.

  Kal laughed, and for a moment his face acquired a wonderful look which soon vanished again. “Not in the carnal sense, of course. My mate from Anaeaon died in the ocean, at a Sharer raft we were visiting, some hundred fifty years ago. He had just completed a new Elysian translation of The Web, and he was collecting clickfly records of other Sharer works previously untranslated. The Sharers called him the ‘Scribbler’; they store their own knowledge not in writing but in the chromosomes of clickflies. The clickflies then spin the words into webs for the reading. It’s quite beautiful.”

  So Kal’s first mate had been a man, which seemed nearly as odd as having a servo.

  “Why do you want to be immortal?” Kal asked suddenly.

  Blackbear frowned, but after all, one frank question deserved another. “Nobody wants to age,” he said. “Age is a degenerative disease.”

  “So you told us, today. But before, you have said you seek immortality. It’s not exactly the same thing.”

  So Kal had followed Blackbear’s hearing, after all—and perhaps his practice sessions as well. What eavesdroppers these Elysians were. “Why didn’t you come today to find out,” he demanded, “instead of spying in secret?”

  Kal shrugged slightly. “Foreigners taking on Helicon in public; a brave show, but for me to come seemed, well, unsporting.”

  “It was cowardly not to.”

  “You’re right. I should have come.”

  The admission did not satisfy him. “If you don’t want to live forever, that’s fine; but why prevent those who do?”

  Kal considered this. “Blackbear, do you know the most serious crime an Elysian may commit?”

  “Well…murder, I’m sure.”

  “No, we’ve sanatoria for that.”

  Blackbear was silent. In the music from the room, a new voice entered, a hollow, resonant tone.

  “Suicide.” Kal paused, then added, “By suicide, one removes oneself and condemns the rest of us to mourn for the next thousand years. A doctor who once assisted a suicide had to flee to hide with the Sharers. Those of us who long to die are despised far more than those who long to live forever.”

  It occurred to Blackbear that the consequences of accident multiply as disease and age recede. Blackbear had lost his youngest brother just twenty years ago, and the thought still made him faint. Kal had mourned his lost mate for a century and a half.

  “Are you sure you won’t take some water?” Kal was saying at his elbow.

  Blackbear accepted a glass of water. He glanced at Sunflower, sound asleep with the teddy bear, quite still. “Sleeps like the dead,” his grandfather used to say. As a doctor, Blackbear had seen enough dead children to know the difference.

  “I know little of ‘families,’” Kal went on, “although yours I’m sure is rich and peaceful. How many children do you have now?”

  Blackbear knew well enough why he asked; the size of Clicker families was of great interest to tourists and demographers. “Our Hills can support our growing population, for the next century at least.”

  “And what then?”

  That seemed far off to plan, but an Elysian would hardly think so. “Bronze Sky still has land to expand.”

  “How much, do you know?”

  Blackbear tried to envision Bronze Sky’s other continents. Nowhere else were such rich soil and tall mountains to be found. Besides, what if other people filled them up by then? “We’ll have to terraform another new world someday,” he said. That’s why the Fold founded Bronze Sky.”

  “How long does it take to terraform a planet?”

  “Eighty years it took, for Bronze Sky.”

  “Do you know any good candidates?”

  He did not. Twenty years to find one, he thought. His forehead went cold for a moment; then he collected himself. This logen must have made a fake trap with figures.

  “Families throughout history have never planned ahead,” Kal said, “until the crisis hits. Most families spend most of their time getting out of one crisis and into the next. Look at L’li with its crowded billions. Even on Valedon, a stable democracy, nine-tenths of the people remain at subsistence level.”

  This was news to Blackbear, who knew only Valans like Onyx.

  “The Elysian Republic is not for families,” Kal added. “The Republic was not founded on ‘freedom of choice,’ but on communal virtue.”

  Blackbear glared at him accusingly. “Who uses up the Fold’s resources? Whose demand keeps the price of metals beyond reach? A single Elysian consumes a thousand times what one does on Bronze Sky—and your economy keeps growing. Twelve million citizens, you might as well be a world of twelve billion.”

  “Exactly so.” Kal smiled as if delighted. “Try telling that to the Guard, let alone to our citizens. One’s courage fails, I admit. Now, will it help us to have fertile citizens bearing children every four years, on into immortality?”

  Hardly. Blackbear felt his head swimming, and realized he was dead tired. Fortunately he could doze in the transit reticulum on his way back, for the servo voice would wake him up at the right stop. There was one more thing he had meant to ask, but its recollection eluded him.

  Chapter 11

  AT A HOLOSTAGE IN THE NUCLEUS, LEM INASHON showed Raincloud how to place a secure call to Zheron’s legation. To her surprise, however, the call was refused. Lem retried it, with the proper codes, but got only the same message; the legation was taking no calls at all.

  “How can they get away with that?” Raincloud wondered. “Their bill must be astronomical.”

  “They’re in the diplomats’ sector,” Lem reminded her. But he too sounded puzzled. “It’s not like them; they love attention. Well, I’ll let Verid know.”

  Raincloud felt much relieved for the moment, though a bit disappointed as well. In the meantime, Verid was unavailable, her office inundated by delegates from Papilion complaining about the fruit fly problem. Their tourist trade was hurting badly, and they demanded some action with the Sharers, who still refused to discuss the matter. Raincloud was curious to know more, recalling her contacts with the fascinating ocean women at their embassy in Founders City. But the
matter was outside her department.

  She went with Blackbear to a doctor for her prenatal checkups. “You two behave,” she warned the children out in the waiting room, “or Doggie will call us if you don’t.”

  Doctor Shrushliu was a resident foreigner of Sharer origin, as one could see from her ocean-born name and her webbed, nailless fingers. But she did have thumbnails, and her scalp had a thin frizzle of hair; perhaps a Valan grandfather, Raincloud guessed.

  “First, the surface exam.” The doctor approached her with what looked like a plant with fine tendrils. But the tendrils moved and twined like animal parts. Raincloud drew back. “Relax, please,” said the doctor. “It’s a lifeshaped organism. It will painlessly withdraw a blood sample, to test your chemistry and to sequence the fetal chromosomes.”

  “The fetal chromosomes?” Raincloud wondered.

  Blackbear explained, “A small number of fetal cells enter your bloodstream.”

  Raincloud looked at the tendrils winding around her arm. The Sharers used lifeshaped creatures for all their technology. A thought occurred to her. “The Sharer lifeshapers taught the first Heliconians. Why didn’t they make themselves ageless, long before the Heliconians did?”

  “Everyone asks that,” muttered the doctor. “Ask Leresha the Coward, the wordweaver of Kshiri-el.” Doctor Shrushliu next led her to a circular chamber, like a sawed-off spiral stairwell. “You’ll have to empty your pockets,” the doctor warned. “Watches, light pens—anything that deflects the magnetic resonances.”

  “It’s an imaging device,” said Blackbear, “based on the magnetic nuclear resonances of organic molecules. Remember, we used one in Founders City to see Sunflower.”

  But this one threw up a three-dimensional image of the unborn child that expanded and moved, its eyes round and staring, its limbs twitching now and then. “What,” exclaimed Blackbear, “it’s like the simulator come alive.”