Singularity's Ring

by Paul Melko

  One can hide. Four can’t!

  The consensus was fierce, but valid. The three entered the lock, leaving Scarlet. There was a whoosh of air as the door shut. They heard a pulse of fire from the hall, suddenly muffled. So were they. Instead of four, they were three. A quarter less, a quarter slower.

  The womb smelled of antiseptic.

  Outside, through the windows, they watched Scarlet working on the outer door lock. They could almost hear her thoughts. The outer door opened, and the inner door light flashed red. Unless they had explosives …

  Then we’re more than screwed.

  Scarlet looked over her shoulder.

  Hide! Go!

  But she couldn’t hear them now.

  The gears of the door shook in the doorway, something grinding in the wall. Scarlet had fried the motors.

  Martha stood at the window, glass so thick it made the outer lab seem a mansion. Vivian and Rachel looked away, but watched the view from Martha.

  Scarlet scrambled for the hood. If she could climb up onto the lab table and squirm into the unused hood, she’d be hidden in the black shroud. Shapes flashed into the room before she reached it. Martha watched, terrified.

  Scarlet screamed, the words unheard. The guns cracked, and Scarlet dove for the floor.

  Not hit!

  Scarlet struggled backward, crabbing behind the lab tables. She turned and ran back toward the womb room. The military duo cleaved at the door, one following the columns, the other the rows.

  Scarlet slid past the outer door as one of the duo came around the lab table. The gun barked, and blood splashed against the window. Scarlet’s blood.

  Martha’s brain stopped as she watched Scarlet buckle to the floor.

  Open the door!

  She wasn’t sure who was screaming. It could have been herself.

  Scarlet rolled against the wall and sat up, watching the door, looking into the lab where Martha couldn’t see. She turned then, formed letters with her hands in rudimentary sign language.

  I-t w-a-s—

  The burst of automatic fire resounded in the antechamber of the womb room.

  Martha jerked. The spray of blood coated the inner window, but still she saw the military duo standing there. They raised their guns, and the bullets ricocheted off the inner window. Both of the duo looked to the right, looking at something else, perhaps listening to something. Martha heard nothing.

  Another burst of gunfire pounded the glass in front of her face. Tiny scars appeared, obscuring the sight of Scarlet. The womb would not open.

  One of the duo grabbed the arm of the other. They seemed to confer, gesturing at the damaged door lock, stepping over Scarlet’s body as they did so. They spoke to someone off to the side, out of Martha’s line of sight, then turned and disappeared.

  Martha found she didn’t care that they had survived. If she could have she would have turned their guns on herself.

  Instead she sank to her knees. Vivian and Rachel were there behind her, holding her, but there was a void among them.

  They didn’t remember the hours it took the building team to tear open the womb. They didn’t remember until later clinging to Scarlet’s body, until the doctors led them to the stretchers.

  The next few days were a buzz as doctors came and went, fighting off their pod shock with kind words and exercises. Redd couldn’t fight the hollowness, and they kept thinking of themselves as Vivian, Rachel, and Martha. They slept alone, even though the beds were big enough for all three.

  Nicholas came to visit, but he hovered by the door and wouldn’t come that far in.

  “Redd, we were wondering …”

  But then he stopped, and Redd knew what he was thinking. Which one was missing? Which one had died? The horror was on all of his faces.

  “I’m sorry. I just …”

  “You don’t have to wait for us.” He probably had job offers or postdoc opportunities.

  He swallowed. “When things are right for you, call me.”

  Martha nodded, but all three of them felt the falseness in the offer.

  The pain might have brought them together, but instead it sheered them further. Twice orderlies brought Vivian back after she had wandered off in near-catatonic states.

  Some of her students came to visit, but Redd felt their discomfort. The loss she had sustained was what they feared, a partial loss of self, a disassociating that resulted in less than the whole.

  Even Khalid came to see her. His manner was calm, analytical, as he discussed her lab work, some of which he had taken on. The gruff manner she had always hated was reassuring. He treated her no differently than when she was whole.

  After a pause, he said, “I should thank you for what you did.”

  “What did I do?”

  “The quintet embryos. No one will harm them, not even the Eugenics Department.”

  “Oh, I guess …” Martha started.

  “You sacrificed yourself for them, even though they were … not sanctioned. You’re a hero, and the embryos are sacred.”

  “I’ m glad.”

  “Redd,” Khalid said. “They’ll need a teacher, a mentor. I’m just a genetics specialist, and not that good according to you.” He laughed coldly at his own humor. “But you could be a great mentor for the kids, the quintets, I mean.”

  “I haven’t given any thought to what I’ll do next,” Martha said.

  Vivian turned then from the window. I’d like to take care of them.

  Martha felt Rachel’s agreement.

  “I understand,” Khalid said. “It’s not your line of research.”

  “I might, if you tell me where you got the DNA sequences.”

  Khalid flushed, startled, then he smiled. He shook his head. “Cahill gave them to me. She got them from …” Khalid lowered his voice. “The Ring Intelligence sent the information just before the Exodus. The sequences for the quintets and more. The Institute has been doling it out for a decade.”

  The Ring!

  They have the wealth.

  “No!”

  “The code is sound, Redd. Cahill has checked it. They’ll be as human as you or I.”

  Redd nodded. “I’ll mentor your quintets, Khalid.”

  He returned her nod. “I expected you would. Thanks.” He left the three of them.

  Children to raise, Vivian sent, more happy than she had been in days.

  It’s important work.

  That’s all she had left.

  Vivian pushes Manuel away.

  “Though you can do such things doesn’t mean you should!” Mother Redd yells.

  It is the first time since seeing her that we are on the defensive. We are chastened.

  “Sorry,” Meda says.

  What we have learned, that this is not the first time that someone has wanted us dead, is a shock. Not just us, but all quintets, even our classmates.

  “Is Elliott in danger?” It has been a long time since we’ve thought of our classmate who was chosen over us to pilot the Consensus. In light of Khalid’s and Redd’s professional jealousy, our competitiveness with Elliott seems petty.

  Mother Redd is still shaken as well, we see. We have made her relive the death of herself. But she focuses on our question and says, “He’s as safe as we can make him. All of you are. You were until you ran off from Columbus Station.”

  “We—”

  “That was foolhardy. The Ring is dangerous.”

  “The Ring made us.”

  “No, the Ring Intelligence helped create some of your genetic strands. Humans made you.”

  “Who wants us dead? Who sent the duo?” When we say it, we don’t know if we mean Anderson McCorkle or the one who killed Scarlet.

  “Come walk with me to the aircar,” Mother Redd says.

  We must trust her, Moira sends.

  We’ve seen her thoughts.

  She died for us.

  She is at the edge of the forest by then. We follow, Meda at the lead.

  The rest of the aircar pa
ssengers, if there are any, have remained inside. The pilot duo still watches us through bug-eyed helmets.

  “Immediately after the Exodus, no one in the OG or pod society wanted anything to do with the Ring and Community tech,” Mother Redd says. “They blamed the Community, and specifically the Ring Intelligence, for the collapse, the war, the deaths. They wanted nothing to do with any of it.”

  “How much of the pod genetic code is from the Ring?” Meda asks. “Dr. Baker says it was directed from the beginning by the Ring.”

  Redd shakes her head. “This is the first I’ve heard that theory. I knew Baker. He never joined the Community, one of a few scientists who didn’t. The Community spent no time on genetics. It was never an interest to them, nor pods. Perhaps we were wrong about that.”

  “You knew him?” Meda asks.

  “Yes, that was before …” And we know what she means: before Scarlet was killed. “He presented a paper at a colloquium, on the speed of pod consensus. He talked so fast, we hardly followed him. Chemical memory uptake, pheromone catalyzation, blood-brain barrier optimization.” She shakes her head at the memory. “He disappeared not long after that; his apartment was firebombed by anti-Community protesters. Don’t look shocked. It was an angry time after the Exodus. No one knew what to do.”

  “Why did you let Malcolm Leto near us?”

  She stops. She is ten meters from the aircar.

  “That wasn’t my idea. It was Khalid’s.”

  “Why?” Meda’s words are more anguished than we expect.

  “He wanted to know if there was some plan for you. He wanted to know if the Ring had meant to build you for a purpose.”

  “Did it?”

  “I still don’t know.”

  We were on the Ring and nothing happened.

  How do we know for certain? Moira asks.

  How could she let that happen? Meda asks.

  “How could you … ?” Meda repeats out loud.

  “I didn’t know what he was,” Mother Redd says, her voice filled with anguish. “I couldn’t guess that he was a sociopath. No one expected it. The Community had no crime. We have hardly any. We assumed he was as socialized as any of us.” She pauses. “I haven’t forgiven myself for that, Apollo.”

  “Have you forgiven Khalid?”

  “Why?”

  “It was his idea.”

  “How could he know?” Mother Redd continues, “I’m here now not just because I care for you. I came because of Malcolm Leto.”

  “Why?”

  “We let him get away, and now he’s building a Second Community. He must be stopped.”

  We fly across two thousand kilometers of North America to Mother Redd’s farm at close to mach two. Quant stands at the door of the cockpit to the Scryfejet, inserting us into the duo pilot’s thoughts. Their communication is curt, simple, and fast. Still we understand it. We are only eavesdropping, not communicating.

  This is the third pod, not counting the bears, into which we have inserted ourselves.

  What of those singletons in Bolivopolis? Quant asks.

  Yes, but they weren’t a pod. They were pod-born singletons, Manuel sends.

  We have not understood what had happened until now. Gueran had wanted to rub our noses in what the OG was doing to the broken pods, shipping them off to South American enclaves to be cared for by singletons. The group of broken podmates that walked by had slipped into our consciousness and overwhelmed us.

  That was the first time, Quant reaffirms, asking for consensus.

  We agree, the matter settled. The first time had been in Bolivopolis, the second with the bears, the third with the pilot who had found us, the fourth with Mother Redd when we had dredged her memory for her knowledge of OG military attacks on us, and now this fifth, the pilot of the Scryfejet.

  It is Strom who rejects our matter-of-fact recital.

  This should not be possible, he sends. What have we become?

  Quant, oblivious to Strom’s and the pod’s emerging horror, sends, Perhaps Strom was first with the bears. Then the pilot is six. But he was alone—Oh.

  She catches the thought coming the other way.

  “I don’t know,” she says aloud. Moira squeezes Quant’s arm, and we think, withdrawing from the pilot in guilt. Mother Redd is sitting as far from us as she can in the passenger compartment of the jet.

  Meda unstraps from her seat and takes another in front of her.

  “We won’t do it again, unless we both agree.”

  Mother Redd nods. “We need to keep this to ourselves, child,” she says. “This wasn’t … expected.”

  “No,” we say. “Were we in those wombs?”

  One of Mother Redd sighs. “Yes. Some of you. Strom, yes. Some of Elliott O’ Toole. Meda and Moira came later. Manuel … and his sister later still. But Dr. Khalid had the funding and approval to grow as many as he wanted after the attack.”

  “Who was it? And why?”

  “We don’t know. The military duo wasn’t caught, but the hardliners were quietly asked to step down. The Eugenics Department was curtailed in many ways. It marked a liberalizing of the OG following the Exodus and the Gene War.”

  “What did Scarlet see?” we ask.

  Mother Redd starts. She holds hands, thinking among herself. The memory is as real to us as if it had happened to us the day before: Scarlet signing through the glass, “It was—”

  “We’d forgotten that,” Mother Redd says. “We’d almost forgotten what Scarlet did to us.”

  Anger and fear pheromones cascade through the jet.

  “I didn’t mean to dredge that up,” we say. “I’m sorry.”

  “No, no, child,” Mother Redd says. “The memory was already there.”

  “What was she saying to you?”

  “I’ve always thought she was saying, ‘It was the right thing to do.’ She was telling the rest of me that the sacrifice was necessary.”

  “Was it?”

  Mother Redd laughs. She stands and pulls Meda from her seat, hugging her. The rest of us come too, and we are holding her tightly. We have been gone a long time from Mother Redd.

  “Child, you’ve given me such a worry,” she says into Meda’s hair. “I’ve been looking and looking for you. But I knew you’d be all right.”

  “We are all right.”

  We’re more than all right, Manuel sends. We’re beyond.

  “Has any of the other quintets shown these abilities?” Meda asks.

  “No, of course not,” Mother Redd says. “Just you.”

  “What else was in our gene sequence? Dr. Baker was scared of what we are.”

  “He was paranoid when he was a part of society. A dozen years by himself—”

  “Except for the bears.”

  “—except for the bears, didn’t solve that problem.”

  “He was a brilliant man,” we say. “The bears … They were a friend.”

  “Bears,” Mother Redd says, shaking a head. “The beaver pod IQ was never more than ninety.”

  “The bears had stories. They had … community.”

  Tell her, Strom sent. Tell her what we have.

  “We have Baker’s notes. We have the bear genome.”

  “What? You have it? That means …” Mother Redd looks at us, and we know what she’s thinking, not because we steal her thoughts, but because we have just been her, Apollo-Redd.

  “You never trusted Khalid’s DNA because it was from the Ring. Can you trust Baker’s? He spent decades trying to unravel it.”

  “If what he says is true, then even my DNA, going as far back as the trios, all pod DNA was modified by the Ring. I should trust no one including myself.”

  Meda smiles for us. “And you thought Dr. Baker was paranoid.”

  “I’d like to study it. Will you let me?”

  “For a clean bed and a shower.”

  “Done.”

  It has been months since we’ve slept in our own bed. No wonder Mother Redd was trying to stay away from us. We s
melled like bears.

  SEVEN

  Apollo

  We have been gone from the farmhouse on Worthington Road since we went off on our senior trip to Columbus Station; it seems much longer than it actually is. It is warmer than the mountains have been, yet the fields of soyfalfa are ready to harvest and Mac, the trio of oxalope, is busy with the thresher. He disconnects his harness and comes over to us, licking our hands.

  “Hello, Mac,” we say.

  He sniffs at us.

  Smell bears, he sends. Even the thoughts of the oxalope are open to us. He gives us a look and a snort and returns to his work.

  “Come on,” Mother Redd calls. “Your room is exactly as you left it.”

  “Would you have rented it out?”

  “If there’d been any takers.”

  The Scryfejet whines away into the sky, whipping away thought and emotion.

  The upstairs room is the same. We take turns in the shower, two at a time, Strom last taking double the time.

  Because I’m bigger. More surface area.

  Quant plots the surface area of each of us. Strom does have more, but not twice as much.

  Manuel logs onto the network, and we heave a sigh of relief. Worse than no showers has been no network access. From our account, we see our work units. This is how much our skill has contributed to pod society. We have been using singleton scrip for so long, we have forgotten our work unit total.

  That’s not right, Quant sends.

  As students, our work unit rate is just a few percentage points above basic living allowance. The work we did each summer for Mother Redd boosted that a few percent more. The value of our work unit account now is ten times what we’d made the year before.

  Meda calls down to Mother Redd. “There’s a whole lotta cash in our account. Why?”

  “Your resignation was not accepted,” she replies, calling up from the kitchen. Something with tomatoes is simmering.

  Oh.

  Quant does a quick calculation. We marvel at our daily rate.

  I feel bribed, Manuel says.

  That’s a lot of pay for running around the jungle all that time.

  We should donate it, Moira says, but we know she is kidding.

  We should convert it to singleton scrip, Strom says, the voice of practicality. Maybe gold. Just in case.