Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  “Time to work on your servos,” Nana called. “Hawktalon, you may observe the others today, and get ideas for what you might like to build.”

  “Come see mine,” whispered Maris. “It’s nearly done.”

  The shonlings were rushing across the room to the hallway. They came to a room full of mechanical constructions, brightly colored, emitting popping noises and occasional bars of music. Maris’s construction looked something like an overgrown cuckoo clock; its frame was twice her height. From a window at the base appeared a mechanical green mouse that wiggled its head and started to climb up a miniature spiral staircase. Halfway up the frame, the mouse stopped and pulled a string. A bell chimed, and a shower of glitter fell down into a pan. The glitter assembled itself into a bird with red and blue feathers and a long silver tail. The bird flapped its wings and sang. At the top of the frame, a door flew open.

  The action stopped. Pops and whistles were heard from another child’s construction nearby.

  “Now I’m going to make something come out the door,” Maris explained. She placed a chunk of nanoplast on a small stage beneath a bright light source. The nanoplast shaped itself this way and that.

  Feeling dizzy, Hawktalon withdrew and put her hands in her pockets protectively. There was too much new to see all at once; she closed her eyes for a moment. Then she hugged Fruitbat and pulled out her rattleback stone.

  The stone was a carved oblong of obsidian, with a rounded base like a half-egg twisted off center. With a flip of her wrist, the stone spun around clockwise. It slowed and started to wobble up and down, until it ceased turning for a brief instant; then it turned counterclockwise, gathering speed. It rotated thirteen times more before it finally stopped. Not bad, Hawktalon thought, giving it another spin.

  Blue-eyed Maris tugged her sleeve again. “How does it do that?” Maris asked. “Does the nanoplast send out tiny jets of air? Or a magnetic force, perhaps?”

  “It’s not nanoplast,” said Hawktalon scornfully. “It’s magic.”

  Another girl-or-boy came over, saying, “Let me see, too.”

  Hawktalon let Maris pick up the stone. She turned it over, looking at the twisted half-egg. “Its underside is skewed,” Maris said. “It must be biased somehow to turn one way.” She set the stone down, then pushed down on one end.

  The stone wobbled up and down a few times. Maris pushed it again, at a corner. This time the stone wobbled, then turned briskly counterclockwise. “It converts up-and-down wobble into counterclockwise turn. It turns toward the overhanging weight of the upper part. I bet I can make one.” She picked up the stone and placed it next to a piece of nanoplast upon a little stage. At a command, the nanoplast shaped itself into a replica of the rattleback stone.

  For the rest of the hour, several children experimented with the rattleback shape, making samples that were longer or thicker, or had differing proportions at the rounded base. One shape actually reversed itself both ways, seeming unhappy with whatever direction it found itself turning. No one could quite explain that one.

  By lunch hour Hawktalon wondered where the time had gone, and after lunch she eagerly sat down beside Maris for “afternoon meeting” with Nana. Nana knelt on the floor before them, her layered skirts spreading around her. Two of the children hurried up to sit in her skirts, nestling next to her.

  “Today we have two exciting things to share,” she told the children, “both having to do with foreign worlds.”

  “Wow, foreign worlds,” exclaimed a child. “Can we hold another craft fair?”

  “Please raise your hand,” Nana reminded him. “First, I’d like you all to welcome our new guest shonling, Hawktalon Windclan, from Bronze Sky. It’s a rare treat for us to have a guest from Bronze Sky, the most geologically active planet inhabited by humans. Here’s a view of a volcano that erupted in Hawktalon’s neighborhood just last year.”

  A sunshine-light appeared, containing the panorama of Black Elbow, the mountain dwarfed by the billowing clouds that had spewed upward and spread for thousands of kilometers. Hawktalon remembered the sound of the explosive eruption, and the layer of ash that had covered the ground outside over the next few days. Tumbling Rock was several hills away from the eruption, but another Clicker town was less fortunate. A cousin of hers, married into the Graymountainclan, had been caught trying to outrun the blast. Hawktalon recalled the funeral procession, the High Priestess with the snakes, her dead cousin wrapped in white, and the little white bundle beside, his youngest daughter.

  “Hawktalon’s name comes from a bird,” Nana added. “It’s a very beautiful bird.”

  The volcano vanished, as things had a way of doing in the sunshine-light. A bird appeared, startlingly three-dimensional, and twice as large as Hawktalon had ever seen. It was a blue-speckled hawk, its small black eyes staring, its feathers ruffling now and then. She gasped and smiled happily. “Yes, that’s me!”

  “That’s you?” A child giggled.

  “Now remember,” said Nana, “all of us will help Hawktalon to feel at home with us. Perhaps in a week or so she’ll feel like sharing more about herself with us.”

  Maris raised her hand.

  “Yes, Maris?”

  “Can she tell us about her parents?”

  “We’ll see about that. Hawktalon, since our children do not have ‘parents,’ naturally they are always curious. Now shonlings, your generen is just arriving with an important announcement.”

  The generen, her mother had explained, was something like a school principal. He entered the room just as Nana spoke; but how did Nana know he was coming just then? His hair flowed like water down the back of his bright red Elysian robe bordered with iridescent heliconians. Hawktalon felt her scalp prickle; only a magic person, she thought, could wear hair so straight and long. As he entered, the children clustered around him, stroking his hair and telling him what they had done that day.

  “Did you see me?” Maris demanded. “Did you see me figure out the rattleback stone?”

  “Of course I did, Maris,” said the generen. “That was very clever of you. Now, I’ll get a chance to talk with every one of you; but first, a very special announcement.” The generen sat down with the children and brushed his hair behind his shoulders. “One of you asked about the craft fair. We all recall how wonderful it was to entertain guests from so many far stars, and how especially wonderful the Urulite exhibit was.”

  Heads nodded vigorously.

  “Well, we’ve just received approval for a new interstellar project: an official children’s exchange program.”

  A child raised a hand. “What’s a children’s exchange?”

  “That means children from other worlds will visit our shon, and our shonlings will visit families on other worlds. We’re inviting all the worlds who sent delegates to our craft fair.”

  Chapter 4

  BLACKBEAR TOOK A VISITING DAY AT HOME, JUST IN case Hawktalon called for him to rescue her. To leave his firstborn daughter with a servo all day—the thought still made his skin crawl.

  Yet the hours passed with no frantic call. Half-disappointed, Blackbear set himself to stitching garments for the gifts on the Day of the Child. Embroidered suits for Raincloud’s mother and father, smaller ones for her various nieces and nephews; and although he was not obligated, he could not resist a matched set for the twin daughters of his brother Quail. Quail, a mountain of a man over two meters tall, had been blessed with twin daughters right after twin sons, and he still managed to carry all four of them. Blackbear felt his chest tighten. He wanted so badly to see him again and swing all the little ones into the air. But the best they could do for the holidays was to see each other long-distance.

  “Can I help?” offered the house solicitously, as Blackbear began to cut the cloth. “I’ve figured out your pattern by now.”

  Could the house really copy his sewing? It produced food and books, after all. The offer tempted him. “All right,” he muttered, ashamed of his laziness. He was getting as soft as those El
ysians. “Could you make one for a goddess about the size of Raincloud, except two centimeters taller?” That would be her mother’s size.

  “Certainly, Citizen.”

  Minutes later, the kitchen window opened. A garment appeared, identical to Raincloud’s trousers, down to the details of embroidered foxes round the hems. His jaw fell. “Could you do one plain, without the embroidery? I have to make that distinctive.” There was still something he had to do himself.

  Later Alin came over to practice rei-gi. Blackbear’s inability to be thrown still astonished him. “Let me attack from behind again,” the logen insisted, taking care to turn off the public transmitter first.

  Blackbear grinned. He turned away from Alin, set his feet apart slightly, and let his arms relax in the spirit of the Dark One.

  From behind him Alin padded lightly across the mat. He had learned the hard way not to reach upward, a distinctly unbalanced position. Instead he grabbed Blackbear across his lower arms, intending to lock on with his elbows and force Blackbear down.

  Blackbear locked Alin’s forearms to his chest, sliding his own right leg forward and bending at the knee. In the next instant he pivoted his right side down and his left side up. His arms released, and Alin landed an arm’s length away.

  Sunflower clapped. “Hooray for Daddy!”

  “I saw how you did that,” exclaimed Alin. “Let me try it this time.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Blackbear warily, for an inexpert throw was more likely to cause injury. “Remember, you have to bend at just the right moment.”

  “Let’s replay it first.”

  The pair of them reappeared on the holostage, in slow motion, Blackbear bending and twisting down just as Alin’s arms clasped about him. His timing was off, though, Blackbear thought. “I should have moved sooner; the throw would have been safer for you.”

  “Foreign perfectionist,” Alin grumbled. “All right, let’s have it.” He turned his back and stood expectantly on the mat.

  Blackbear caught him from behind, and sure enough Alin tossed him with a creditable twist. With a full somersault he met the mat, first the back of his wrist, then his shoulder, then his back, his legs sailing straight overhead. “Well done!” he exclaimed, pounding the mat with his palm. “That one is called ‘Bird Tilts its Head.’ You should try the ‘Tumbling Rock’ next.”

  But Alin shook his head. “You weren’t thrown at all. You planned your fall exactly; your leggings sliced the air like a fan. Even in defeat you mock me.”

  “I told you, there’s no such thing as defeat,” Blackbear insisted. “What starts as a contest turns into a…a dance,” he said for lack of a better word.

  “A dance,” Alin repeated thoughtfully.

  “My turn, my turn!” Sunflower rolled over twice on the mat.

  “At least my audience is down to one,” Alin observed. “Where’s your girl?”

  Blackbear winced, feeling a fresh stab of worry. “Hawktalon is at the Helishon.”

  “How wonderful! Why not the little one, too?”

  “Sunflower’s too young,” Blackbear curtly replied.

  “You’re attached to him, aren’t you. Like Tulle and her capuchin. Have you been back to the lab yet?”

  “No, but I’ll keep a closer eye on him.” The “accident” with the nanoplast distressed him acutely.

  “Well, your Hawktalon’s a lucky girl,” Alin assured him. “I wish I could go back to my shon, sometimes. I still miss my nana.”

  “Really? It’s just a machine,” said Blackbear. “A padded machine, like Kal’s ‘mate.’”

  “Where do you think he got her? He picked up one of the nanas, back when he was generen of the Anaeashon. What a perverted example to set for the shonlings.” Alin shook his head. “You hear what Kal’s up to now? He’s brought your fertility research to the agenda of the Sharer World Gathering.”

  “What? I thought the Guard turned it down. He lost the logathlon with Tulle,” Blackbear remembered.

  “By a narrow margin. Anyway, Kal has connections among the Sharers.”

  Blackbear frowned and looked away. He felt angry at this stab at his work, and yet he was curious to unravel the intentions of that enigmatic logen. “When is the World Gathering?”

  “The Sharer World Gathering has two phases. First, all the rafts send wordweavers to ‘gather in’ issues that need chewing over: the numbers of children born, the populations of fish and seaweed, the pollution from our floating cities. The Gathering itself takes place six months later, after the seaswallowers have migrated back to the south pole.”

  “So they’ll all ‘gather’ together, and decide we have to stop our research?”

  “Any decision of the World Gathering is binding on Elysium. It’s a fundamental condition of our treaty. In practice, it rarely comes to that; even so, merely raising an issue puts pressure on the Guard.”

  HAWKTALON CAME HOME IN RAPTURES ABOUT THE shon, her new friends, and the “servo” she would get to build. So Blackbear returned without her to the laboratory the next day.

  As he and Sunflower approached the tissue culture room, something felt different. The hallway had changed its dimensions somehow; or was it the spacing of the rooms? He came to a halt, keeping a tight grip on Sunflower’s hand.

  “Ow, Daddy, let me go,” the child complained. Blackbear’s heart sank, as he wondered how he would get anything done now.

  Tulle strode quickly down to meet him, the metalmarks flashing on her talar. “Look what we’ve installed for you. ‘Open up, Toybox,’” she ordered to the wall.

  The wall beyond the culture room opened into a large window, revealing a small boxlike room that had not existed before. “Good morning,” said the room. “I am your toybox. Won’t you play with me?” A marionette danced across the floor, a toy spaceship descended from the ceiling, and a locomotive tunneled out, followed by half a dozen cars crawling around in a circle.

  Sunflower needed no second invitation. In a flash he had sprinted to the window, hauled himself over the ledge and clambered inside. The other lab members gathered to watch, laughing and making envious remarks.

  “It’s wonderful,” Blackbear exclaimed, recovering from his surprise. “I’m sorry to put you to such trouble.”

  “No trouble at all. We just pushed the next lab over a bit and reshaped some dead space from the ceiling. It was Alin’s idea; he spent yesterday evening ‘trying it out.’”

  “It’s just like home. In Tumbling Rock, every room has a children’s corner.”

  “Well why didn’t you say something? You can leave him, all right; it’s guaranteed childproof, and it will send an alarm if he tries to climb out.”

  Onyx caught Blackbear’s arm. “Have you seen Pirin’s results on your Eyeless embryo?”

  “Does it look good?”

  “Well…”

  “It’s interesting, though,” Tulle assured Onyx.

  Blackbear followed them to the embryo facility, leaving Sunflower to tell the toybox what toys he would like next. The simbrid embryo, containing the new Eyeless mutation, had developed within its artificial womb for the past eight weeks. By now its curled track of somites would have expanded into limb buds, and the heart tube would have folded itself into ventricles.

  Pirin was viewing a recording of the mutant simbrid embryo which he had grown. “You’ll see its development from the beginning,” he said.

  Upon the holostage the giant image of the embryo appeared, as it had the first day Blackbear had arrived at the laboratory, only this time it was a record of the live organism, not just a computed model. First the fertilized egg appeared, containing Blackbear’s mutant Eyeless gene somewhere in its tangled chromosomes. After many divisions, the cells expanded into a curl of somites with its beating heart tube. The heart tube expanded as the embryo grew, but then…

  The heart tube did not fold over to form ventricles. Instead, just during the last few days of development, it twisted around itself and expanded as the embryo grew, bul
ging out into the abdomen. The pulse slowed as the bulge grew, distorting the embryo grotesquely.

  Blackbear’s hair stood on end. The Eyeless gene had been isolated originally as a defect in the mesodermic eye covering; but no one had predicted an effect on the heart. How could he have let this happen?

  “It’s most interesting,” Tulle insisted. “There are plenty of heart mutants, but this particular defect is one we’ve never seen before. We must definitely write it up.”

  “But how did it happen?” Blackbear asked unsteadily. “The models predicted nothing like this.”

  “Don’t take it so hard,” Onyx tried to reassure him. “It’s only your first mutant. We knew the Eyeless gene gets expressed in the heart tube, along with a dozen other tissues. I’ll bet a few parameter changes would make this defect show up in the model.”

  “The germ cells did develop correctly,” Tulle said, pointing to the patch of red-coded cells. “The cells migrated to the genital ridges, and they did not degenerate. If this embryo survives long enough, it will be interesting to see whether the pre-egg cells start meiosis.”

  Blackbear turned away, trying to hide his revulsion. It was all in the lab, he told himself. It was hard to remember, this was not the Hills where he practiced, where a deformed eight-week embryo meant a pregnancy ending in a stream of blood.

  AFTERWARD, BLACKBEAR JOINED THE OTHERS IN THE coffee room, where Hawktalon used to order ice cream. He missed her badly, resenting her apparent happiness at the shon. At the holostage Draeg watched a newscaster go on about the crashed L’liite ship and its unwanted passengers.

  Pirin approached Blackbear, nodding sympathetically about the failed experiment. “You see now why the simbrid embryos are so important,” he said with a hint of satisfaction. “But Tulle is right—it’s exciting that the germ cells developed so far. I hope you’ll test another allele of Eyeless.”

  The hot coffee burned his tongue, but he barely noticed. He began to see his project from a different angle. Here he was, mutating one gene after another, only to lead to endless “interesting” deformed embryos. The chance of ever reaching a fertile, ageless embryo seemed slight, at least for the near future. Tulle might not understand that; her own future extended rather longer than his.