by Paul Melko
His mother pulled him closer and began brushing the brown leaves from his coat.
I heard. And so did the whole forest!
Then the three bears all laughed and laughed, as if it were the funniest story they had ever heard. We shared a glance and a mental shrug, then told Papa that it was the best story we’d ever heard a bear tell.
I laughed simply because the bears were happy to tell the story. Roam rolled on her back and stroked Papa’s flank. I scrubbed his ears with my fingers. He massed more than all five of our pod together, and yet there was no fear in me or any of us. Who could fear someone who told such jokes and stories?
I noticed Roam’s fuller belly as she lay against Papa. It was late summer now, spring long faded, but spring was the time to conceive.
You’re pregnant, I sent.
Yes! she replied, suddenly more gleeful.
We all stopped petting Papa to rub her belly. She sighed wistfully.
Where did my attention go? Papa asked. He chuffed twice.
How long do bears gestate? I asked.
“Seven and a half months,” Quant said, digging the fact from somewhere.
No wonder you find Little Cub so funny, I sent.
In the falling, I will have three or four Little Cubs, Roam said.
Sleepy signaled mild jealousy. I rubbed her belly too. One day you’ll have Little Cubs too.
Sleepy replied, Not allowed yet. Neither is Roam.
Lightning flared and thunder crashed just outside the cave mouth. The bears jumped, and Sleepy’s claws grazed my arm.
It was a searing pain, but I found myself mesmerized by the feel of it, and I didn’t cry out. My pod, laughing awkwardly in the wake of the explosion, didn’t even notice.
My fingers were cold and wet. Another flash, farther away now, and I saw the triple lines of black on my skin.
Blood.
Papa had smelled it.
Meda turned around then and popped on her flashlight, finding my wound.
“Uh-oh.”
Come on! she added. My pod dragged me to the overhang that shielded the cave mouth. We stood in the rain, washing the wound, letting the water douse me.
I felt every single drop.
Sleeping with bears isn’t always safe.
They are powerful and always armed.
Like children with guns.
Strom told me to stimulate antibodies, then wrapped the wound in gauze, then a bandage.
We settled back in the cave, but on our side now, and slept.
Each of the bears had a spider-silk bag that it wore around its neck. They used the bags to store food, which allowed them to travel farther without consideration for their stomachs, which seemed to be always clamoring for food. Around their necks the bags looked small. But they were larger than any of our backpacks.
The next morning, my arm still throbbing, I asked, Where did you get those bags? We humans were making breakfast over a flame while the bears were digging berries from their bags.
It’s my purse! Sleepy replied.
The doctor gave it to us, Roam said, shoving Sleepy. The older female was the more aggressive of the two. When she said “doctor,” I saw an image of a tall man in a lab coat. His face was almost a caricature, but then the same was true for their internal images of us. Their smell of him (and us) was unique, however, and precise. The bears were nearsighted.
They are very pretty, I sent.
Yes, said Sleepy. I like my purse.
She was almost as big as Roam, and Roam’s shoves often produced no effect on Sleepy.
Where is the doctor? I asked.
North, Papa sent.
Are we going to see the doctor soon?
Before Roam has her Little Cubs, Papa sent.
Will the Little Cubs be part of you? I used the word for the entire entity of you, for a pod.
Roam said, Of course.
Papa glanced at her, seemed ready to say more, but then said nothing.
The bears spent the morning eating termites from an old log. They would take turns; two would hold the log and shake it while the third would catch a rain of termites in its paws.
Termites. Ick!
We should …
The pod’s thoughts drifted away, and I felt for a moment like Quant feels when she zones out, mesmerized by anything and everything. But that wasn’t all. My eyes were tired; they fluttered closed, and I couldn’t will them to open. I knew something was wrong.
I pitched over, landing with my cheek against the mulchy dirt.
She’s burning up!
Did she make enough antibodies?
Someone touched my wrist and I winced.
We need to get her to a doctor.
The bears looked down at me, Roam licking her lips of termites. The image I took from her was of a handsome doctor in a lab coat, taking care of her and her pod.
We know a doctor. He can help her.
I passed in and out of consciousness, alternately groggy and hyper from fever. Something had infected the cut on my arm, something I didn’t have the antibodies to defend against.
I imagined legions of white blood cells fighting a pitched, scorch-and-burn battle around my radius, across my ulna. Guerrillas were hiding out in the lowlands of my carpels. In my mind the battle was in bright color and loud sound.
Strom and Papa took turns carrying me. I lost track of who was who, until Strom was fur covered and Papa walked on two legs. I tried to keep my thoughts to myself, but I flooded the air around me again and again with hallucinations.
That night Meda and Quant coaxed me into making different kinds of antibodies, but I remembered that from later. Then, I was engaged in a dream world of pulsating colors. It was only after the fact that I remembered the trek through the high mountain valley, following the bears to their home, and the meeting with Dr. Immanuel Baker. I remember it all as a play or a movie, removed from it, seeing myself as one bit player with a single action: hallucinate. Again, with feeling.
I awoke in the middle of the night, in a room with Meda and Quant. The boys weren’t there. They dreamed of trees and flying through the branches. I had no idea where I was. My arm was bandaged and stiff.
I tried the door and stepped out into a dimly lit hallway. The air was damp, as if we were underground. The walls were concrete block. I smelled the bears: their odor permeating everywhere, their thoughts nearby but indecipherable.
I felt refreshed, impatient, and picked a direction at random, following the hall until it opened into a large lab. Gene-splicers, old ones, but rows and rows of them, lined the walls. Chromatographs. Computers, presingularity models. DNA analysis tools. The room was a genetics lab using the height of pre-Community technology. It was almost archaic, but the lab was decked with more firepower than Mother Redd had access to at her lab on the farm.
“Hello, there. Alive, I see.”
I turned. A man stood there, dressed in a lab coat. He was tall, thin, and perhaps seventy years old. His hair was full and white, his goatee well clipped. A name drifted into my consciousness, a name I overheard when I was spinning in visions.
“Dr. Baker.”
He stepped over to me, and, instead of shaking my hand, he flipped my wrist over. Unwinding the bandage, he clucked and nodded.
“The forest has some nasty beasties in it. Good thing I had good old-fashioned penicillin.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Interested in my lab? Your pod and your friend were,” he said. “You missed the tour.”
“I’d like that. How long … ?”
“Oh, you’ve been here for twenty-four hours or so,” Dr. Baker replied. “Amazing, really, that the bears knew what to do. Bringing you here when you’d been injured.”
“The bears knew—” I stopped. Didn’t he know how smart the bears were?
“Yes, you like my bears? Probably scared you when you found them, but really they’re meek creatures. I made them that way.”
“They’re wonderful.”
> “Yes, wonderful creatures, bears,” the doctor continued. “Trick of fate that primates lead to sentience and not Ursidae. Fabulous genome to work with, fascinating. As you all shall soon learn.”
“We will?” I asked.
“That little cut almost killed you, but it brought you to me!” A gene-splicer beeped and he scuttled around the lab table to the far side. “I’m not a young man, you know. I’ve been working in here for decades. Sometimes with assistance, sometimes not. But now I need someone to help me, help me carry on. And look at what happens: two biologist pods arrive, to be sure only a trio and duo, but that’s enough, I think. Now I have someone to help with the bears.”
I began to realize that things had transpired while I was unconscious. The need to go and consense with my pod was an itch.
I said, “I should get back to my pod.”
“Really? I’d like to show you around. No time like the present,” he said. “I really do have so much for you two to do, now that the bears have come back.” I backed away, as he came closer holding a beaker in his hands. “Take a look at this.”
“Moira! There you are.”
Meda and Quant were at the door of the lab, looking alarmed. I clasped hands with them.
We awoke and you were gone, Quant sent.
I woke up and wandered.
Dr. Baker came out of the lab.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
“Oh, yes. Good morning. I guess we’ll have breakfast instead of a tour of the lab,” he said.
As we ate, I caught up on what I had missed. Quant and Meda passed me memories of what had transpired in the time I was unconscious and fevered.
When the infection had taken root and none of the antibodies my pod helped me produce seemed to work, the bears had led us to the doctor’s research station. It had been a two-day hike to the station, which was an underground bunker, hidden in a pine forest. I remember brushing the needles with my fingers, though this was Meda’s memory, not mine.
The doctor had been happy to receive us and his medical supplies had cured me in the day we had been there. We had pretended to be a trio and a duo again, because we had no idea if the doctor was associated with the OG; now we knew that he was not. It would not have mattered if we had shown ourselves as a quintet; his facility had no connectivity with the outside world.
In the tour, he had proudly shown us the equipment he had used to build his ursines: the one we had met was the sixth in a line of pods. He was proud of their bonded nature and was certain they shared basic thoughts.
My guess that he had no idea how intelligent the bears were was correct. He had no way to understand what or how they thought. He based all his conclusions on observed characteristics and dissections.
Did he … ?
No, our bears are in a pen next to the lab, Meda replied.
He has no idea what he’s created or that we can communicate with the bears, I sent.
None.
Dr. Baker created breakfast with the same scientific zeal that he spliced genes. The eggs sat atop a mound of some unknown grain. The milk had a perplexing thickness. The jam was made from unidentifiable fruit.
“Eat!” he said. “Eat! We’ve so much to do today.” He flicked on a monitor hanging in the kitchen. “The boys are already working.”
Working? I asked.
Meda flushed. We sort of agreed—
—to help Dr. Baker out, Quant finished.
Without me? I asked, remembering the last time they made decisions without me, we had found Malcolm Leto.
Meda shrugged. Sorry.
I was angry, but I let it drop. I did not like Dr. Baker’s manner, but that was after only one meeting, and purely a superficial observation. Still, that the pod had made a major decision without me annoyed me.
After breakfast we found Strom and Manuel feeding the bears in their pen. I could almost hear the bears’ depression at being limited to two hundred square meters. Yet they seemed to be relaxed.
“They should be out roaming,” I said. Meda glared at me.
I’m interface, Meda said.
He’s not pod human. He doesn’t understand the rules, I replied. I realized I was pettily undermining Meda’s role as she had mine while I was unconscious.
He’s looking at us, Quant sent.
Dr. Baker harumphed. “Think amongst yourselves, don’t mind me.”
“We were just thinking the bears should be able to roam free,” Meda said.
“Not while we’ve got work to do,” Baker replied. “The male has a broken tooth. We need to cap it.”
“Papa,” Meda said.
“What’s that?”
“His name is Papa.”
“You’ve named them, have you? Don’t get too close to them. They are still wild animals.”
Meda came close to saying it was what he called himself before I sent, Don’t say it!
“Yes, Doctor.”
“I’ m so glad you’re here. I’ m so glad you’re interested in the bears,” he gurgled. “I need someone to watch how they deal with being a trio. Bears are solitary by nature, except for sows raising their young. How does podlike faculties affect their solitary nature? I need to know. I’m just not as spry as I used to be. Field work hurts my knees.”
Why is he doing this all by himself? I asked. My superficial impression of Dr. Baker wasn’t changing.
“We’d be glad to help. But really, you should contact the OG and share your research,” Meda said.
Dr. Baker looked at her with hooded eyes. He lost his visage of lovable scientist, replaced it with a predatory gleam.
“The OG is no better than the damned Community. One and the same. One and the same.”
Better drop that subject, I offered.
“Look at what they did to you,” he said, nodding at Quant. “Saddled you with broken goods. I’d like to test that one.”
“You are not testing me!” Quant said.
“Look how intelligent she seems now that she’s with the other two. Alone, she probably can’t understand a word I say.”
It was Quant’s turn to glare. “I can understand you fine!”
“Yes, yes, to you it would seem so.” He scratched his beard, yellow with egg yolk. “Why use a damaged human in a pod? What good?”
“I have my skills!”
“What was their goal in building you?” he mused. “Don’t you wonder?”
“Maybe we should see about Papa’s tooth,” Meda said, changing the subject.
Papa looked at the needle with trepidation.
Sharp.
I saw you take a hundred stings for a honeycomb, I sent, stroking his ear.
Where’s the comb? he asked. His thought was tinged with irony.
Your tooth hurts, doesn’t it?
He nodded. I stuck the syringe into his neck. After a moment his eyes glazed and his head lolled onto the table in the lab. It was so heavy, I could barely line it up with the MRI aperture.
“That was easy,” Dr. Baker said. “He usually fights the needle.”
Roam and Sleepy watched from a window, with the boys trying to distract them. It was no use; even from inside I could smell the concern.
“The three of them are very close,” Meda said.
“Yes,” the doctor said. “The last trio … only two of them came back. They have tracking chips, but I have no way of knowing what happened.”
“How old are Papa, Roam, and Sleepy?”
“Six years old. They’re my fourth pod of bears, the one that’s stayed together longest.” The machine hummed. It was old tech, big and clunky, yet the image of Papa’s skull was clear. “See the vomeronasal organ? See how big it is? This is one of the things I had to fix in your DNA.”
“What?” Meda asked.
“In you pods, the vomeronasal organ, on either side of your septum, is enhanced to receive the pheromonal scents that you pass between yourselves.”
“We know that. We’ve had biology.”
“Don�
��t get feisty,” Dr. Baker said, laying a hand on Meda’s shoulder. “Basically, humans used to have better pheromonal communication than they did at the end of the last century. Pod biology just took advantage of the capabilities that were dormant in the normal human DNA. Only not all of it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Chemoreceptors in pod humans are about three percent as efficient as they could be. As they are in the bears.”
Purposely? I asked.
“Are you saying that pod DNA is purposely sabotaged?” Meda asked.
“Yes,” Dr. Baker said, as he maneuvered a pair of plastic forceps into Papa’s mouth, one eye on the MRI screen, one on the bear’s mouth. “Where is it?”
Pod DNA is sabotaged, Quant sent. Purposely decayed performance. Conspiracy.
Hold on, I replied. We don’t know for sure. It could be simple chance. Maybe that’s the only deficiency for some reason lost to antiquity.
What else is masked? What else is deficient? Quant asked.
“What else?”
“Oh, lots of things. Chemical memory speed. Weak ties to recessives. Things I can’t even begin to understand yet. It’s amazing that you pods are still around. Should have died out long ago. With the Community, which made you.”
Quant, Meda, and I found ourselves staring at each other.
We need to consense! I sent.
Meda signaled the boys with her hand. They were in the pen, separated by glass with the sow bears. Need you now! she signed.
Strom caught it and nodded. He grabbed Manuel and they came in from the pen. The doctor didn’t notice when we slipped away.
He’s crazy! Manuel sent when we replayed conversation. Pods and the Community are utterly … different.
They’re fundamentally the same thing, Quant replied. Groups of humans.
The Community used silicon and computers.
The brain is a computer.
It doesn’t matter. My brain is nothing like a silicon-based computer.
How much do we really know about the origins of the pods? I asked, diverting our argument.
We knew what we’d learned in school; the first pods had been built seven decades before, a duo, by two geneticists. They had simple sharing of feelings and moods with pheromones. The duo, caught in a feedback loop of anger and hate, had murdered one of their creators, their father.
