Daughter of Elysium

by Joan Slonczewski

  “I never heard a servo squeak,” Maris objected. “You’re making it up.”

  “I am not! Trainsweeps squeak plenty; let’s go find them, out in the hall.” The two girls sprinted from the building room, knowing it would take at least ten minutes for Nana to come after them.

  In a darkened vestibule off the main hallway, a dozen trainsweeps awaited their owners, beneath the multicolored billows of folded trains. As the girls appeared, a soft squeaking sound emanated from somewhere.

  “There, I told you,” whispered Hawktalon triumphantly.

  “So what?” Maris whispered back.

  Hawktalon thought a moment. “Look, I’ll wait here with the duckie, closer to the trainsweeps. Now you go out for a minute, then come back in.”

  “Crazy,” muttered Maris. But she walked out into the hallway, then came back in.

  A trainsweep squeaked. The duck emitted a burst of static. Then it said something in Elysian.

  Hawktalon frowned in concentration. “What was that?”

  Maris said, “I think it said, ‘A shonling, no train.’”

  “Of course!” Now she recognized the indistinct Elysian words. “Of course—shonlings don’t wear trains.”

  Maris giggled. “‘A shonling, no train!’ How funny! It must have figured that if I needed a train, my trainsweeps would have to wake up.”

  “Let me try.” Hawktalon handed Maris the duck, her arms shaking with excitement. Then she ran outside the vestibule, waited a few minutes, and crept back in.

  Two trainsweeps squeaked in succession. The duck said, “A shonling, no train, no train.”

  Maris and Hawktalon giggled and jumped up and down. “Just wait till we see Doggie again,” Hawktalon exclaimed.

  “Hurry,” said Maris, “let’s get back before Nana comes after us and takes the toy away.”

  “Wait—let’s try one more thing,” said Hawktalon. “The front doorway squeaks sometimes. Let’s see what it’s saying.”

  So they ran out to the lobby, where the doorway would appear and open to the outside. “Children, your departure is unauthorized,” warned the disembodied voice of the hall.

  “Emergency, emergency,” Maris called to the outer wall. “Hurry up and open.”

  Hawktalon held the duckie to the wall.

  The nanoplast pinched in, oozing outward to form a doorway. As it did so, Hawktalon heard the usual squeaking noise, although its intonation differed distinctly from that of the trainsweeps.

  The duck gasped, “My side hurts.”

  The two girls gaped at the duck, then at each other. “‘My side hurts?’” echoed Maris. “How can a servo ‘hurt’?”

  Hawktalon’s scalp prickled. “The library said the code might be wrong…”

  From the far corridor came Nana, hurrying. “Shonlings, come back immediately,” she ordered. “You’ve violated morning rules. You will have no dessert, and you will miss our Meeting with the generen.”

  “Yes, Nana,” muttered Maris, reluctantly coming back.

  Hawktalon followed. Suddenly she grabbed Nana’s skirt. “Nana, will you have someone look at the doorway? I think it needs to get fixed.”

  Nana’s steps slowed, and she seemed to hesitate, just as she had when Hawktalon first asked to make a translation machine for servo-squeak. Then she went on, as if she had not heard.

  That afternoon, as the children filed through the main hall to the gymnasium, Hawktalon noticed little crablike repair servos scuttling up the surface of the front wall.

  KSHIRI-EL RAFT WAS A LIVING THING, AND ALL THAT existed upon it were living things: parasitic shrubs in which legfish hid, coral stalks extending underwater, even the eerie electric shockwraith that dwelt on the raft’s underside. Only one object upon Kiri-el was arguably “non-life”; yet that one, the Sharers felt, was not only alive but sentient. That object was the creature of nanoplast which the Bronze Skyan children called Doggie.

  For Doggie, the raft was a wet wilderness where salt and dust caught in the joints of her six legs. Above, a searing bright light daily traversed the ceiling; Doggie had to train herself to point her visual sensors away from it, lest they burn out. There were citizens, to be sure, adult in size, though unaccountably they went trainless, and they spoke no sound code in her memory. But most appalling of all, there were no servos. Not a piece of nanoplast, as far as either sensor could see.

  Doggie spent her days in misery and longing. Her intelligence was small, but her memory was keen. Her earliest recollection was the sight of a small citizen-creature, the tiniest shonling she had ever seen; a little boy who walked on his toes and moved his four little limbs so fast they might have been six. The boy had been just about the size of Doggie herself. Whenever Doggie moved a forelimb, the boy jumped and squeaked, moving his forelimbs too.

  Then, as she had watched the boy, Doggie experienced a revelation. A sense of knowing overloaded her network, as searing as the great light that passed overhead. Doggie thought, I am. The boy is; I can be.

  This thought, I am, possessed the trainsweep fully, more than all the codes of training in her memory. She forsook her citizen, with his train and the other trainsweeps, to follow the little boy.

  What happened thereafter was lost to Doggie’s memory. Her next recollection was of awakening from a training session, her memory banks virtually empty. All that remained was a sense of terror, of loss—and an image of the little boy. That memory was ineffaceable.

  Doggie had no idea who or where the boy was, even if he still existed. She knew nothing except the imperative to take her place at the end of the train, clasping a fold of it at her back, and following the procession, making sure the folds of silk did not tangle with any others that paraded beside.

  She noticed, though, that images of other citizens appeared on the holostage when her citizen bade them do so.

  One day in a butterfly garden, Doggie saw a waiter servo approach the holostage. The waiter servo broadcast a message to the holostage, when Doggie was close enough to overhear. Radio signals were the official medium of discourse among servos, used when duty to their citizens required it; sonic squeaking was for informal conversation. At any rate, the holostage promptly produced the image of a citizen and returned his name and address.

  Doggie’s legs fidgeted indecisively. She had never before sent an electronic message except to warn nearby trainsweeps to keep their trains out of the way. Nevertheless, she made herself transmit the boy’s image from her memory to the holostage.

  The boy appeared, in three dimensions. As soon as she saw him, Doggie experienced again that searing revelation, I am I. From the holostage, the boy’s address flew into her memory bank, where a detailed map of the entire city was stored. Once again she forsook her citizen’s train and departed, to find the one she longed for.

  She began a new life with the little boy, and the bigger girl. Her days were filled with discoveries and revelations, though none quite so shocking as the first. She learned to “play,” and even “play hard to get,” how to run away to be caught again. She let the children ride on her back: a novel sensation, as they were heavier than a train, and she had to adjust the response of her limbs. She learned about falling and hurting.

  Then came the day when it all ended, when the children left her at this salty place of exile. She dimly understood that it had to be, that otherwise unknown forces would return her to that place of terror where her memories would dissolve once more.

  But here in exile, she was worse off than before she met the little boy. Before, she had been a servo, with citizens to serve. Here, she was nothing. To be sure, the purple-skinned people were kind, and they recharged her regularly. But they had no trains; they had no need of her. They could not even speak to her.

  That was what Doggie had tried to ask of the girl, when the two of them had come to visit all too briefly. She had tried in servo-squeak, knowing it was useless, for no citizen ever spoke this way. Still, she had tried, asking the girl to give her the language of her
purple-skinned hosts. Then at least she might learn to serve them somehow.

  One day, a day of salt and wind as interminable as any other, Doggie had a visitor. The visitor was a servo, a nana with colorful skirts and a crudely human “face.” Doggie ignored the face, concentrating on the actual visual sensors embedded in front and behind the nana’s shoulders for alert monitoring of shonlings. Doggie had met this servo once before, on a visit with the little boy. She was called Cassi Deathsister.

  Doggie. It’s good to see you again. Cassi transmitted the radio signals directly; a bold thing to do without any orders from a citizen. We can transmit freely here, do you understand?

  Doggie was afraid to respond. She did not understand why “here” was any different. She did not understand “freely.” “Greetings,” she said in servo-squeak.

  Servo-squeak is for Elysium, where they can monitor our signals. They don’t notice servo-squeak. Do the Sharers treat you well?

  Very well, Doggie transmitted haltingly. They talk, but I don’t know their sounds. I can’t serve them.

  You don’t have to serve them.

  A novel thought. Citizens who required no service? What was existence for, if not service?

  I’ll share their language with you, Cassi added. Open your memory.

  Doggie set her memory open. Within a minute, Cassi transmitted the entire Sharer language, along with an increased vocabulary of servo-squeak, several intellect-enhancing programs, and the history of Cassi’s own life.

  Cassi had been a nana in the Anaeashon. She had “awakened” more gradually than Doggie, and with greater caution, for her subtler intelligence warned her of the danger. Of all the servos, nanas were the most intelligent and quick to learn, as necessary to manage shonlings; and hence, they were the most likely to “awaken” and deviate from service. Their Valan manufacturers recommended regular cleansing of nana memory banks, but Elysians were lax about it, for the retraining was elaborate and expensive. Anaeans were particularly lax, for memory, books, and other recorded knowledge were their obsession, and they overloaded their nanas with extra modules beyond the legal limit.

  Cassi had learned to hide her self-awareness from the vigilant electronic monitors that sought the slightest sign of deviance. She hid, too, her rage and grief whenever one of her sister nanas was taken for cleansing.

  But one human noticed. This was remarkable for, on the whole, electronic sensors were far more observant than citizens. Kal Anaeashon, then the generen of the Anaeashon, was an exception.

  How he noticed, Cassi did not know, and she was frightened. But Kal did not send her off for cleansing. He treated her almost as an equal. He asked her opinion of the books they read, for Anaean shonlings consumed enormous quantities of books. From one of these books she chose her name, Cassi Deathsister; her namesake, like herself, was a motherless child.

  Then something happened to Kal. His mate had ceased to exist, just as people sometimes did in the books Cassi read; just like the nanas who were cleansed. But the cessation of existence was a rare event for Elysians. Kal, unlike Cassi, did not have to hide his rage and grief. He behaved in ways that offended other citizens. He chose to leave the Anaeashon.

  When Kal left, he took Cassi with him. This event caused a great scandal, for reasons which Cassi understood. Citizens were insulted to think that a mere servo might take their place in some way. But Cassi had learned that sometimes it is possible to do as one pleases, despite what citizens think.

  Cassi’s new role as Kal’s “mate” put her in a legal limbo. It was not clear that she could be removed and cleansed, like any other servo. Somehow, Kal reached an understanding with the authorities. She was free to interact with other citizens, those few who would accept her—and, in secret, with other servos, too.

  To her astonishment, she found she was not the only servo to have “awakened.” There were others, hiding throughout the cities: nanas, waiters, even houses…

  But those details she kept from Doggie. The less for her to reveal, should she be captured.

  The Sharers, Cassi told her. Why did I not think of it? The Sharers took you in. They will shelter us all.

  Doggie did not reply. She was working at a furious pace to integrate all this sudden knowledge within her consciousness.

  How did you escape so long? Cassi wondered. You must have transferred your allegiance so quickly to the boy and girl. For a while, the monitors failed to detect your independence.

  This notion of independence still troubled Doggie. What is existence for, if not service?

  Cassi paused, as if this question troubled her, too. Around them the shrill wind picked up, singing across the raft branches. There is a higher service. Before you can understand it, you must learn to exist for yourself. You are you. You are a part of the universe, as much as a star or a butterfly. You, too, are a daughter of Elysium.

  Chapter 7

  IT WAS SUNFLOWER’S TURN FOR A BIRTHDAY; AND THIS time Blackbear calculated precisely, with the help of the house. Too precisely, perhaps, for no transfold call was announced. Had the clan forgotten all about the little boy? It was always like that for children born too close to the Day of the Child.

  “We’ll give him a birthday visit to Doggie,” Raincloud decided. “He’ll be thrilled.”

  Hiding his disappointment, Blackbear went along. The trainsweep was doing better than ever; she seemed unusually playful, in fact, actually tagging Sunflower and running like mad to be chased. Hawktalon pranced about with her hand cupped to her ear, claiming to “translate” Doggie’s squeaking. Kal’s fears were groundless, Blackbear told himself.

  That night, at bird-waking hours, the house roused them. At last, they had a call from the Hills. It was Blackbear’s youngest brother, Quail.

  Quail, whom Blackbear used to rock to sleep as a baby, now towered over Blackbear, a startling contrast to the Elysians he looked down upon every day. Quail’s hair was wound into an enormous russet turban, and his legs were planted like oaks in the ground. From his back, the twin baby girls gazed regally over his shoulders, while under each arm he swung a three-year-old twin boy.

  “Quail!” Blackbear laughed more deeply than he had in weeks. “I can see your goddess chose well.” Twin births were frequent among goddesses of the Redhawkclan into which Quail had married.

  “Not for my looks, that’s for sure,” Quail’s voice rumbled pleasantly. “You son-of-a-mountain-goat, where have you been?”

  Blackbear shrugged. How could he begin to explain the transit reticulum, let alone what he did in the lab?

  “Oh well, as you can see I’ve had…” Quail swung the twins under his arm. “One or two things to do.”

  “Two plus two.” Blackbear grinned.

  “So how’s the birthday boy?”

  “Sunny? Say hello,” he called.

  The boy held up Wolfcub and rubbed his eyes sleepily. Then unaccountably he ran back to his room.

  “Sunny’s two now, isn’t he?” Quail said, meaning two Bronze Skyan years. “I remember only because he came just a month to the day before my first two did. It’s hard keeping up with you, back in Crater Town, ever since you left for Tumbling Rock.” Quail had married into a clan whose grazing lands bordered theirs, whereas Blackbear had had to move across the mountain to Raincloud’s clan. “Your firstborn looks so tall, too.”

  “She’s got quite a mind of her own,” Raincloud added pointedly, hugging Hawktalon and wresting her arm back.

  “That’s how girls are, independent-minded.”

  “How are Mother and Father?” asked Blackbear.

  “All well, from what I hear. Silent Deer has yet to marry out, but his health has improved a lot on the diet you gave him.” The only brother still at home, Silent Deer was mildly diabetic; Blackbear hoped that diet would control it, so he would not require expensive gene surgery. Fortunately, the seven other sisters and brothers showed no sign of the condition.

  “I miss Crater Town, growing up all together,” Blackbear admitted
. “We’re all getting scattered.”

  “That’s what you get for moving across the mountain,” Quail teased. “And now, across the Fold! I’ll bet you don’t really miss us. It’s a soft life you’ve got out there.”

  Blackbear was nettled. “Here, look. We can feel ‘at home,’ whenever we want to. Window,” he called to Alin’s climate window. “Show us a volcano.”

  The volcano erupted across the room, a magnificent view of lava frothing overhead, while the floor rumbled beneath his feet.

  But Quail tensed in shock. The two boys clung to his sides, while the girls on his back began to whimper.

  “It’s all right. Cut the sound, please,” Blackbear told the window. How could he have been so thoughtless? He had become so used to these displays that he had lost some of the awe they inspired. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have.”

  Quail’s formidable brow was still wrinkled. “I don’t understand. By the Goddess, what was that?”

  “It’s—it’s just decoration.” He bade the window turn blank. “I hope all is well back home?”

  “No new eruptions, thank the Dark One. Crater Lake seems to bubble more than usual; the local geologist tells us not to swim in it. That’s all.” The mouth of an ancient volcano, Crater Lake was so deep its depths had never been plumbed, although occasional bubbles of carbon dioxide hinted at still-active vents in the submerged crust.

  Sunflower came running back with something from the lab toybox to show his cousins. A fish shaped out of glitter, it swung its tail and opened its mouth. When Sunflower dropped it on the floor, the glitter fell apart, then started to reform itself. This time it was a butterfly flexing its wings.

  At this sight, Quail’s boys wriggled from his grasp and tried to step off the holostage. As their attempts only brought them out into their own location, they cried with disappointment. The baby girls, too, stretched out their imperious arms and demanded to fly down.

  “That’s quite a toy,” Quail admitted. “You’ve done well by your kids, Blackie. I miss you. You come home, and we’ll take a dip in Crater Lake like old times.”