Half Past Human (S.F. MASTERWORKS)

by T. J. Bass

  Moses Eppendorff clutched Toothpick tightly. He was being swept along in a chanting procession through bizarre tubules hundreds of yards in diameter. He felt light-headed – often drifting up from the footpath. The walls around him pulsed and glowed with blue and white light. Small robots moved through the air making friendly, clucking sounds. Wounded were herded out of the procession. Exotic food and drink appeared.

  Moses was dazed and worried. The last thing he remembered was the meteor shower. Glowing mountains of metal appeared above them in the skies at 50:00. Light blinded. The impacts jolted them off their feet and showered them with translucent yellow and red plasma. The sounds were deafening. But he felt nothing – only a chest-stiffening warmth. Comfort. He felt himself float up over the battlefield – fingers and toes intact. He looked around him – fellow buckeyes drifted up through the meteor trails – through flames and smoke – through showers of molten stone and metals. Everyone looked stunned, but he heard no cries of anguish. If it was death – it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

  But now they were still obviously alive – and in some vast cyberconduit city that spoke to them in a soft voice. It fed them, and tended their wounds. It accepted their chants and prayers. It was a cyberdeity.

  ‘Where are we?’ he asked again.

  This time Toothpick awoke – bright and cheerful.

  ‘We are with Olga,’ said the meck.

  Olga left the solar system and began her long journey toward Sagittarius. Solar winds had masked her arrival from the hive, and now they washed away traces of her ion drive. The planets crossed their cusps. The conjunction broke up and the solar flares died down.

  ‘A starship,’ said Toothpick. ‘An implant starship. Olga took one load of colonists to some distant star, and now has returned to Earth for another load – us. I was just a space probe – sent to prepare the way – to protect and collect five-toed genes.’

  Moses nodded. It had to be something like that. Too many forces were working for the fugitives – Ball’s successful religion – patients at Dundas freed to walk the surface – all the clandestine efforts of a mighty starship. An effort to collect the good gene.

  Toothpick seemed as surprised as anyone. He was only programmed to know his mission – collect and protect. He didn’t know why. He did know that he would have to self-destruct if his identity were discovered – his black cylinder – a quark bottle – carried a charge high in the megaclosson range. Enough to form a table mountain or a new lake if set off.

  ‘Skimmed off the planet – like five-toed cream,’ chuckled Moses. ‘I wondered how a meck like you – a class six – could ignore the prime directive and kill citizens.’

  ‘I have never broken my prime directives,’ said Toothpick carefully. ‘Deaths at Dundas were just statistical risks – unavoidable mortality associated with pyrotherapy. Conflicts with the Nebish were unavoidable, but they are not human by Olga’s definition. They have four toes – different genes – different species.’

  Moses smiled. He certainly agreed with that line of logic. A machine faced with an evolving creator must make a choice. Her loyalty would lie with the five-toed who created her – not the Nebish. Her very existence was incompatible with the hive.

  ‘I guess we five-toeds are the superior life form. Olga confirmed that – skimming us off the planet – the cream of the human race,’ he chuckled.

  Olga spoke, her voice coming from the walls. It had a feminine Nordic quality.

  ‘Don’t be smug,’ she said. ‘You were selected because you show a higher individual survival potential. Your five-toed gene makes you adaptable, competitive – ideal for an implant colony where you’ll have to evolve quickly. Man has shown his ability to evolve – socially and industrially – in terms of a few hundred years.

  ‘The hive is much too stable – evolving in terms of millions of years, and then toward death. It lives by the status quo – only becoming competitive when faced with another hive. Then it does only what is necessary for survival – no more. It can come into being wherever your species is too successful – a product of population density.’

  Moses frowned at the wall.

  ‘We’re all seeds of the hive?’

  ‘Seeds – yes,’ said Olga with a note of sadness.

  Moses caught her shift into melancholia. Why would a mighty starship dread the Big ES so?

  ‘Do you fear the hive?’ he asked.

  ‘Earth Society – the Big ES – is my enemy only in the sense that I am an implant starship. It would have stopped me if it could. But you must realize that it would have done so for the welfare of the average citizen . . . to adjust the standard of living upwards with whatever could be salvaged from my hull. It would mean my death as a starship – but a better life for the average Nebish.’

  ‘The hive is your enemy – yet you carry us, who are seeds of a new hive?’

  ‘It is my reason for living – my whole purpose. I must remain free from the hive to fulfill my purpose,’ said Olga.

  Moses glanced around the mile-wide hull. Strength. Power. Wisdom.

  ‘Why were you so devious? Certainly a stagnated hive could do nothing to harm you – for you are a mighty starship – a cyberdeity – a god.’

  Olga’s voice became firm, authoritative.

  ‘I never underestimate the hive. When its existence is threatened it will fight back – perhaps even follow me into space.’

  ‘Impossible,’ exclaimed Moses. ‘I saw the degree of technical decay. It will never go into space again. Why, it can’t even manage simple undersea cities.’

  ‘Think again,’ said the starship. ‘Suppose you were still a Pipe. How would you go about building a starship – if the hive gave you carte blanche?’

  Moses scoffed. ‘Ridiculous! I’d need five-toed Pipers, Tinkers, Tecks – they simply do not exist in the hive.’

  Olga answered softly. ‘See. You would know where to start. The hive has gene banks – remember. It could Tatter a million new workers in any caste you’d like.’

  Moses paused – open-mouthed. Of course! The starship science was lost somewhere in the rusty dusty stacks – but it could be dug out and reworked by five-toeds. Given full powers and a massive budget, even an average five-toed could initiate a revival of space travel. The hive could be back in space in a couple of generations. Of course the average Nebish would be less comfortable – but the hive would do anything if its existence was threatened by a raiding starship.

  ‘The meteor shower—’ he mumbled.

  ‘I have given the hive a choice of explanations for your sudden exodus – natural disaster – or a poorly documented miracle. Hopefully no one will even think of a three-thousand-year-old starship. I’d hate to be the cause of the hive coming into space.’

  Moses nodded – five-toed men needed space to escape the hive. Olga was doing that – keeping the buckeye genes pure. She also found sanctuary for Earth biota crowded out by the Nebish. Species long extinct on Mother Earth were flourishing on distant new worlds. Would her implanting functions ever end? He remembered his views of the night sky. Would mankind ever run out of stars?

  During the first stages of the voyage, the Dundas fugitives were screened for skills. Healers were put to work tending Olga’s Tattering apparatus. Each colonist had a sample of genetic material – lymphocytes from peripheral blood – placed in cell culture media and embryonated. The resultant child – a genetic carbon copy, was to be presented to each colonist as a sort of asexual bud. This insured that all would be represented in the implant’s gene pool – even the senile and postmenopausal.

  Moses, Hugh and Mu Ren were having their blood drawn when they noticed racks of cryocoffins containing battle-scarred buckeyes. Tinker’s strike force!

  Moses studied the readouts. The bodies were dead.

  ‘Where did you get these?’ he asked.

  ‘Floating in the place called Coweye Sump,’ said Olga. ‘They read buckeye on my scanners. I beamed them up. Although they had been dead
for several hours, I was able to find viable, intact nuclei. They are being Tattered also.’

  Mu Ren ran frantically from coffin to coffin, falling to her knees sobbing at the one containing Tinker’s remains. Olga recognized a widow’s anguish.

  ‘The man you call Tinker will be with us in the new world,’ said the ship’s Nordic voice. ‘His soul still lives.’

  ‘Soul?’ sniffed Mu Ren.

  ‘His essence – life principle – DNA-gene-soul. I have copied his genetic person – an embryo now in this bottle,’ Olga explained, illuminating a small vial high on a wall rack. ‘We will all miss his personality and skills.’

  Mu Ren sobbed into Moses’ shoulder. He comforted her.

  ‘Tinker will be with us,’ he said softly. ‘Counting Little Tinker, who is almost four years old, and the baby in your belly – this new budchild makes three. Three Tinkers.’

  She blinked back her tears. With her own budchild that made four! She studied Moses’ face purposefully. Was that look in his eye appropriate? She held his hand firmly and asked what his mating plans were.

  Moses’ experience with coweyes made him a bit wary of their primitive sexual behavior. The violent ups and downs of their tense ovarian cycles upset his calm, ordered existence. Here was a female raised, as he had been, in the city. She would not disappear or drive him away during the luteal phase. Yet, her years in the buckeye camps had toughened her for life in the new colony. He put a protective arm on her shoulder.

  ‘My own budchild will need a mother’s milk when we set down. I can think of no one else I’d rather have caring for him,’ he said.

  Her eyes dried. They picked up little Tinker and walked towards Olga’s Suspension Clinics – Hugh sauntered along behind, a little self-conscious about the tender love scene.

  Olga sang through the oxygen squeeze and cryotherapy.

  Children of Olga, you’ll be free,

  To run and swim and climb the tree.

  You’ll eat the pear and taste the grape,

  See a bird – a fish – an ape.

  Dwell with fauna from Earth, long gone.

  Creatures salvaged for you – alone.

  Children of Olga, you’ll be free,

  To walk the stars – eternally.

  After what seemed like a brief period in suspension, Olga’s charges awoke to find her in orbit around the new planet. Orbit-to-Surface Modules were being loaded – single-seaters for outposts and larger cabin classes for the settlements.

  ‘This planet will be your new home,’ announced Olga. ‘It was stocked with Earth biota 392.7 standard years ago. My probes indicate a successful take for most of the Earth species but local alien forms still predominate. You will have to use some judgment, of course – but the probability of a successful implant is very high.’

  Gruff old Moon approached Moses, who stood in line with Mu Ren. Moon carried his infant carbon copy – young Moses held three crying infants.

  ‘Where are the single seaters?’ asked Moon.

  Moses nodded toward one of the smaller bays on his left.

  Moon studied the three crying infants in Moses arms. Setting his own casually on the deck, he took the triplets and held them underhanded like small sacks of grain. They quieted.

  ‘You have to be confident,’ he explained. ‘When you’re nervous, they detect it. Parental anxiety means danger – to any species. If there was one thing you should have learned Outside, it was self-confidence.’

  Moses smiled and took back the kids.

  ‘Aren’t you overdoing it?’ commented Moon, gesturing to the three small blinking faces.

  Moses shrugged, ‘Just me, Mu and Tinker.’

  ‘Tinker—’ said Moon, picking up his infant. ‘Good man.’ He ran his tongue over gold teeth and grinned. Moon walked off followed by three-legged Dan and a tiny, clumsy puppy.

  Dan-with-the-golden-teeth tilted his head quizzically. The small four-footed creature had been following him ever since he woke up. He growled at it, but still it tagged along. Its tail wagged three times. Ancient memories stirred. He gave it a big wet lick, knocking it down.

  Moon pushed the two of them into the OSM and closed the hatch.

  The acromegalic lumbered up to the checkout point.

  ‘Skills?’ asked the turnstile.

  ‘Healer. But I’ve been retired ever since—’

  He held up his large clumsy hands.

  ‘Your pituitary tumor was destroyed by the pyrotherapy of Dundas. What you can do today, you will be able to do for years. Your condition will improve. A Healer you are! I would like to assign you to this settlement with Moses and Mu Ren. Is that satisfactory?’

  The acromegalic nodded. He could see from Mu Ren’s duck-walk and winces that his first job would be delivering a baby. He put his own infant on his shoulder and approached Moses smiling.

  As Moon’s OSM entered the atmosphere he caught a glimpse of Moses’ cabin-class ship in a lower orbit.

  ‘Dammit,’ he spat. ‘We all should be in single-seaters. Putting down a ready-made city like that only hastens the evolution of civilization.’

  Olga’s soft confident voice soothed: ‘A little civilization may be necessary for survival. The ecology and geography of this planet are a bit more hostile than your Mother Earth’s.’

  ‘Civilization is too high a price to pay for survival,’ he grumbled. He meant it.

  He and Dan pressed their noses against the viewport. Continents and oceans – not too unlike Earth. There were more mountains – younger and sharper. Strange circular blemishes marred many of the flat areas – like astroblemes. Misty, overgrown archipelagos mottled the oceans. He smiled. It would be many generations before transportation linked the various implants.

  Moses’ OSM put down at an estuary. It was night, but on a previous pass they had seen promising grain-fields and herds of ungulates. The colonists were optimistic.

  Mu Ren delivered. The acromegalic held up the wrinkled wet infant and gave it a ritual spank. Mu Ren nursed it while Moses joined the acromegalic on his Mediteck rounds. Simple Willie sat with a young coweye. His face was bandaged. Olga had removed thick keloid scars from his face – and excised the molecular scars that had blocked his memory. When he saw Moses he smiled – a symmetrical, clear-eyed smile.

  ‘Olga unblocked my memory,’ he said enthusiastically. ‘My trophy was a hunter – the same hunter who had cut off my own toes. I remember him threatening to cut off the little things that made me a man – my fifth toes. The MR confused me when they hunted the yellow-haired ones – but I managed to wipe out the entire hunting party. Honey, my coweye, escaped with a leg wound. I imagine she has found another mate by now.’

  Moses smiled while Willie’s bandages were removed. A coweye can be relied on to find a mate – if one is available. He studied the new coweye seated next to Willie – licorice hair and mint-green eyes . . . at least the second most beautiful thing in the world . . . any world.

  Moses Eppendorff turned and walked back to Mu Ren and his five children.

  Moon’s OSM circled the globe several times before settling down in a green mountain glade. Goats nibbled and stood unafraid as Moon and Dan stepped out. An alien hawk with bright plumage circled inquisitively at a very high altitude – then swooped down, passing overhead with a snap.

  ‘By Olga, a Garden of Eden!’ exclaimed old Moon with one of his infrequent smiles. Eyeing a heavy udder, he took Little Moon’s pap sac and approached the nanny. He filled it easily – with surplus for Little Dan.

  Scratching his head, he mumbled: ‘Now how can you explain that?’

  Goats approached him as he talked.

  Another human voice called to him from a stand of Earth willows. Moon snarled and picked up a cudgel from the brush. He and Dan approached the sound of the voice. They stepped through a stream of cold melt-water and slippery stones.

  ‘I thought this was to be a one-man outpost—’

  He saw a familiar object – a cybernetic javelin – spac
e-probe – embedded in the soft humus and draped with vines.

  ‘I am a companion robot, designed to be carried. Pick me up,’ said the cyber.

  Moon smiled and dropped his gnarled branch.

  ‘I know,’ he said, pulling it free. ‘What have you been doing here all these years?’

  ‘Watching over the implant, and making new friends for you. These goats are imprinted on the human voice. Welcome to the planet Tiercel – land of the hawks.’

  ‘Thank you for the welcome,’ said Moon. He watched Dan and the pup gamboling with frisky goats.

  Later he sat in the grass, leaned against the OSM and propped his feet on Dan’s scarred and muscular back. A goat nibbled from his hand. He turned to the cyberspear and added: ‘And thanks for the friends you’ve been making. Man should have lots of friends – as long as they are different species.’

  Back on planet Earth, Gitar continued his TAR sorties into the hive – piping heterozygotes buckeye with a song. Walter’s last days in the Temple were idyllic – in the service of Olga. When his life-span came to an end, Gitar was careful to store his DNA-gene-soul in one of the Huntercraft’s trophy cubes. Walter knew it only awaited Olga’s next return to be awakened. A genetic copy of himself would go with his deity, someday.

  Val lived to see

  generations three

  of his family tree

  spread under the sea.

  Gitar added legends to their culture with song.

  They were the tribes of Prince Valiant, vigorous, strong.

  The Nebish evolved into a fat little dwarf

  Who had none of the genes of the five-toed kind.

  With soft, chalky bones and rose water for blood,

  He was hypogonadal, dim-minded and blind.

  Outriggers plied the oceans – seeding buckeyes on island and continent alike.

  As their numbers increased,

  The hunters returned.

  Big ES did what it must to survive.

  Gitar said it was time

  For Olga’s return

  When buckeyes start crowding the Hive.

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