Singularity's Ring

by Paul Melko

  Manuel is already on the network, downloading news.

  Checking on the Consensus.

  No. I don’t want to know, Quant sends.

  Check.

  A brief consensus is reached, and Manuel searches the network for news of the Consensus. Elliott’s captaincy is reported, but then nothing until a few weeks ago, when there’s a news article on budget cuts for the space program. The launch is delayed while the cost of the antimatter for the drive is debated.

  Strom wonders, An attack from the anti-Community contingent?

  It was impossible to say. Every news story we read—resolutions on singleton grievances, repopulation of California—we place in light of the forces we know now are at work in the world. We are coming awake after sleeping for our whole lives.

  We go down to dinner.

  On the steps, Quant stops to correct the slant of a picture. It is us and our ducks at the summer science fair many years ago. The ducks all seem to be trying to stand on Strom’s feet. The stairs creak as we descend, the seventh step, the third one. We look into the great room from there. A jigsaw puzzle we had been working on sits on the corner table.

  We are overcome by nostalgia.

  We hurt her, Strom sends.

  Yes.

  We have no mother. No pod does. We are born in artificial wombs or real ones and raised in creches so that we bond with each other, not a parent. Mother Redd is no more than a mentor, an educator, yet our running away must have broken her heart.

  Manuel dissents softly. She took the job. It was a job.

  She changed her name to reflect her job, Meda challenges.

  Would she have taken us if one of her hadn’t died? Manuel asks.

  No, says Moira. She would have continued her research.

  It’s more than a job for her now, Meda says.

  She loves us, Strom says, and Manuel nods. He cannot resist so strong a consensus as that.

  We walk into the kitchen, which smells of tomato sauce mixed with onions, garlic, basil, and thyme. All of these thing are from the garden or the greenhouse. All of these things are probably Mother Redd’s own genetic design.

  “Can we help?” Meda asks.

  “You can help eat it,” Mother Redd replies.

  Two pots of homemade pasta boil on the stove.

  One is for Strom, Moira sends.

  One and a half, he replies.

  We eat with Mother Redd, just as we used to. We chat of the farm, of her work. We skirt the issues. Neither of us raises the question of Malcolm Leto or Dr. Baker. We let those things pass for the moment.

  In the morning, we sleep in, dozing in and out. When one of us sleeps, the rest of us can run in the dreams, a surreal landscape that we shape. We hear the aircar, and Manuel climbs out the window to get a look from the roof. A wave of paranoia rises within us.

  “It’s Dr. Khalid,” Manuel says from above. He drops his hand into the room, while watching, joining consensus.

  At the sound of his name, we remember what we have retrieved from Mother Redd’s memory. For as long as we can remember, Khalid has been our doctor. Not for all of us, Manuel interrupts. Always, even when we were teenagers, he had rock candy for us in his pocket.

  But now the image we share of him is warped and cracked. Through Mother Redd’s eyes we see someone less bright than we remember, someone petty.

  He’s hasn’t changed. Just our perception, Moira sends, but the lack of force behind her statement stiffens our opinion.

  He’s coming to see us, Manuel sends from above. He is touching Strom’s left hand, while Strom touches Meda’s and Moira’s with his right. Manuel is a handle, not in the circle, and when thoughts pass over the triple junction, they jumble and turn.

  Come inside, Manuel, Strom sends.

  Thoughts are clearest when we stand in a circle and let thoughts pass in both directions. We have a set pattern for consensus—Moira, Strom, Meda, Manuel, Quant—that serves us well. Sometimes we reach different conclusions when we switch our order, or leave someone out completely. But thought is harder then.

  Manuel comes inside, finds his place, and we think.

  Khalid has been our doctor from our very first mental, as well as physical, conception. Yet, he was Mother Redd’s nemesis, and his actions led to Mother Redd’s loss.

  It wasn’t his actions! Manuel says.

  His going against Eugenic Department order led up to it, Moira replies.

  He had no way of knowing.

  He broke the rules and part of someone died, Strom says. The consensus is more heated than it usually gets.

  Negligent accidental death, Manuel replies. It wasn’t even pluricide. Mother Redd is still alive.

  “Don’t say that!” Quant says, speaking out of turn. “We saw Scarlet die!”

  Which created Mother Redd! Manuel replies. She didn’t exist before that.

  And Mother Redd nurtured us, Meda adds.

  Don’t try to justify the means by the ends! Moira sends.

  I’m not! Manuel replies. But Khalid did what he did for science.

  We found the bears for science, Strom sends softly.

  And Dr. Baker died! Quant sends. We are as guilty as Khalid of manslaughter. Moira cringes as the thought passes through her.

  “Child!” Mother Redd calls up the stairs. “Khalid is here!”

  We stop, Manuel pulling his hands free first. He stands at our door and listens. We hear the murmured conversation below, a laugh, a shared joke. Good friends visiting.

  See? he sends.

  Anger smell from Strom fills the air, but he says nothing.

  Manuel takes the stairs, and the rest of us follow. We can’t stay in our room debating our new relationship with Khalid.

  He greets us with a smile, all four of him turning to look at us. Three fourths of him is identical triplets, dark-haired, slightly stooped. The fourth is taller, dark-skinned with deep black eyes. He seems older than when we last saw him.

  “Home at last, I see,” he says. “After a long journey.”

  He’s condescending, Quant says.

  Of course not, Manuel replies.

  “Yes. It’s good to be home,” we reply.

  “I’ve come to give you a physical. I’d like to see how my star quintet is doing.”

  No! Quant shouts. All of us feel her skin crawl. Even Manuel shivers, and Dr. Khalid notices.

  “Not today, Doctor.”

  “Apollo!” Mother Redd says. “He’s come a long way to see you.”

  He should have called first, Quant snipes.

  Meda says, “We don’t feel up to it.”

  “Really, you’ve been in the jungle, then in the mountains for months. You look thin.”

  We are thin. We compare our body sizes from a year ago. All of us are leaner, sleeker, and stronger. Even Strom has put on muscle in his legs and shoulders. But our metabolisms are fine. We check it every day. We haven’t been sick, except for Moira’s infection.

  Meda is about to reply, when he cuts in. “Let me just reassure myself that you’re okay. For me, more than for you.”

  Manipulative, Quant says,

  But we say, “All right.”

  We step into one of the adjoining lab rooms, big enough for both of us, and with enough chairs for all of us, if not Khalid, to sit.

  “You seem a bit skittish, Apollo,” Dr. Khalid says, glancing at Quant.

  “It’s nothing. We’ve had a long trip,” Meda replies. Superimposed on this elderly, gentle man is his younger self screaming at Mother Redd.

  “Why don’t we do an exam? Just the basics.”

  No! Quant again, but Strom places a hand on her shoulder.

  “Mother Redd told us how her fourth died,” Meda says. “It’s just upsetting for us. She told us where our DNA came from.”

  All four of Dr. Khalid show surprise.

  “She … told you?”

  “Yes. She told us the Ring AI designed it. Dr. Baker confirmed it.”

  Dr. Khalid st
eps back from us, consensing.

  A swirl of thought erupts from Quant and she lunges forward, taking Dr. Khalid’s hand. We know she is trying to join his thoughts.

  No! Moira sends, mixed with veto smell.

  Strom catches Quant’s arm and pulls her back to us. Dr. Khalid is staring, shocked.

  Does he know?

  No.

  Quant’s thoughts are a violent cloud around her.

  Strom takes her into his arms, and we hear Quant send weakly, He was there when Scarlet died.

  We step back as one, all of our eyes on Dr. Khalid.

  “What was that outburst? Are you well?” he asks.

  We should not have done that, Moira says. Quant shouldn’t have done that. Her thoughts are almost shrill.

  But I did, and we know, Quant says.

  We can’t ignore it, Meda says.

  We had no right! Moira says. We can’t use what we have no right to. It’s as if we performed an illegal search and seizure. The OG is forbidden from touching private data. His thoughts are the same thing.

  He killed her, Manuel sends.

  We don’t know that, Strom replies.

  He did, I saw it. Quant is sobbing now.

  We saw Mother Redd’s memory. He didn’t do it.

  I know what I saw in his thoughts!

  “Apollo? Are you all right?”

  “Stay back,” Meda says, and we continue to think, though it can be considered rude to ignore social interaction to think deeply.

  We can’t unthink it, Manuel says. We know it and have to admit that.

  We can ignore it, Meda replies. We can send him away and never tell Mother Redd.

  Let’s get the full story from him, Manuel says, clenching his fists. He wants to force his way into Khalid’s mind.

  No! More veto from Moira. We can’t do two wrongs. Stop.

  Then what do we do? Strom asks.

  We confront him, Meda says. We let him know we know.

  Confront him, Quant says. Her anger is ours.

  “We know what you did to Mother Redd.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Mother Redd died because of you.”

  Whatever imbalance our earlier accusations caused has been erased. Dr. Khalid seems as at ease as he ever does.

  “Nonsense. It was a rogue military duo, sent by anti-Ring factions in the OG, to destroy the fetuses. To destroy you, in fact. It’s unfortunate, but I’d have it no other way.”

  Quant builds an image, the last memory of Martha before Scarlet dies. Scarlet looks at Martha and signs, “It was—”

  It was Khalid. He was directing the duo. Scarlet saw him, though the rest of her did not.

  Quant has reached a conclusion she is sure of, and we feel the pull of it. The force of her conviction is hard for us to fight.

  Quant works out the angles from the womb room. Someone could have stepped inside the lab and been out of sight from anyone inside the sealed room.

  “You hadn’t stopped Mother Redd from alerting the Eugenics Department. You knew it was a matter of time before it all blew up. But you were so scared of censure that you were willing to sacrifice us to save yourself. You brought the duo in. You directed them to kill Scarlet.”

  “I would never destroy you,” Khalid says, but he is nervous. His brow is damp. Manuel is watching his pupils. Khalid sees this and looks away. “Redd became your mentor. Why would I try to kill her if I wanted her to be your mentor?”

  “You didn’t know her sacrifice would make her a hero, would make us famous.”

  “She was a friend!”

  “She was an enemy! She was about to turn you in for illegal research.”

  “She was a colleague.”

  “You used Community technology to build us. You didn’t have any idea what it would do. You didn’t have any idea it would allow us to see through you, Khalid. But we do.”

  “It’s all nonsense. It’s all—”

  “You never understood the effect of the design. You never knew for certain what you had created, if the Ring had some plan, so you placed Malcolm Leto near us to test us.”

  “Preposterous!”

  “Did you send McCorkle too? And the avalanche?”

  He doesn’t reply, but we read his body language as if we are reading his thoughts.

  “Take my hand, Khalid,” we say. “Prove it.”

  Meda reaches forward with her palm up. The glands on the inside of her wrist are red and damp.

  Khalid’s thoughts are flying around us, but we aren’t listening. Not until he accepts, not until he takes our hand willingly.

  “Why? What do you want?”

  “You know what I am. Take my hand.”

  One of him reaches out, then shirks back.

  “No!”

  We look at him, frightened now, scared of us.

  So be it, Quant sends.

  “Get out, Dr. Khalid. Run as far as you can. It’s over for you.”

  The whites of his eyes are huge as he gathers his things into his bags.

  “I had to know,” he says at the door of the lab. “I had to know what you were. And I was right, wasn’t I. You’re something beyond, aren’t you. I was right.”

  Meda shakes her head.

  “Murder, rape, and betrayal are justified by nothing.”

  He blanches at the words, then opens the door. Mother Redd stands there.

  “I heard shouting,” she says.

  Khalid moves around her. He pauses, looks at us, then at Mother Redd. “I’m sorry, Redd. I’m sorry.”

  “What was that about?” she asks as the door closes behind him.

  Scarlet, Quant sends.

  She looks at us. Quant offers her hand to Mother Redd. She looks at us, tries to read our faces. Finally she reaches forward, and we show her everything that we know.

  “Oh, no!” Mother Redd cries. She sobs and we hold her until it’s done.

  A day later, in the dawn, another sky car lands. It is Colonel Krypicz, whom we have met before. He is adjunct to Space and Defense departments both. Triplets, all swarthy, tall, and solid, though not as tall as Strom. He is thicker across the chest.

  He greets us neutrally and asks us to sit with him in the common room. Mother Redd joins us, but remains standing in the kitchen doorway—one of her, while the other two prepare a snack. Mother Redd is quiet, keeping to herself.

  “Apollo,” he begins, then stops. He smiles, his interface does, and we dig into memory to see if he’s ever done it before. If he has, it hasn’t been around us.

  He starts again. “The duo, the duo in the Amazon who applied the … dissolution agent.” This last phrase left a snarl on his face. “He wasn’t one of ours. He and his cohorts were freelance.”

  “We understand, Colonel.”

  “Good,” he said, leaning back quickly.

  He’s not lying, Quant sends.

  Don’t dive into his thoughts! Moira warns.

  Quant shudders. I won’t. Not ever again.

  “This McCorkle. We have him in custody. Tricky bastard. Former military, does work for hire apparently.”

  “What about Khalid?” Meda asks. Mother Redd meets our eyes, then disappears into the kitchen to pour coffee.

  “No linkage that we can find between them,” the colonel says. “Yet. He’s in custody, but will not answer questions. Grave business, Apollo. Grave. You’ve rocked the OG. Factions are waiting to see who’s betrayed. Not pretty at all.”

  Mother Redd hands each of him a mug of coffee, and he thanks her. The movement of Mother Redd’s hand, her look at the colonel, and we know suddenly that she likes him.

  Since we have shared Mother Redd’s memory, we see her in a new light: in her lover Nicholas’s arms, as a scientist and a medical doctor. But this affection for the gruff and stolid colonel seems too much. Still we smile, and she catches it, looking at us quizzically.

  “Did you want something too?” she asks.

  “No, Mother Redd.”

&
nbsp; The colonel drinks more of his coffee, then nods. “Well, then we’ve looked at Dr. Baker’s lab, what’s left of it. Marvelous coffee by the way, Ms. Redd. He did quite a number on it. Primary charge, followed by accelerants in all the rooms. Nothing left that we could salvage. We assume”—he glances at Strom—“he was the source of the bears. Is that right?”

  “It is.”

  The colonel waits for us to say more or even consense.

  “Well, then. Other than the bears, then, we were wondering if you could tell us what he was doing.”

  “He was rebuilding the pod genetic code and placing it within ursine strands,” Meda says. “He was certain that all pod genetic code came from the Ring AI and the Community.”

  “Well, then. We knew that … Did you say all pod code?”

  “Yes, not just ours. We know about that too. But all the way from the start. Dr. Baker had found several planned deficiencies in the code and was reverse-engineering them.”

  “Planned deficiencies? My word. Why?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Meda says. We glance at Mother Redd, who nods.

  “That’s the problem with making every generation smarter than the last,” the colonel grumbles. “We oldsters don’t know a thing that’s going on.”

  “Harvey, you’re not that old,” Mother Redd says. “What Apollo is saying is that pods were designed to follow a particular path. The designer appears to have been the Ring. But those plans have been derailed.”

  “Not derailed,” Meda says. “Delayed.”

  The colonel looks up into the rafters, consensing. After a moment, he glances at us, startled.

  “Sorry. Quite a bit to fathom there,” he says. “Leto has to be stopped more than ever now, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes. He can’t restart the Community,” we say.

  “Who could we trust?” he mumbles. “Everyone is compromised.” He looks at us, and we know what he’s thinking.

  “We aren’t compromised,” we respond.

  “No, of course not.”

  One of him begins tapping at a portable console. “We can’t let the Community rise again. It would destroy the OG.”

  He doesn’t understand, Quant sends.

  He understands as it’s relevant to him, Moira replies.

  It is not the OG we need to save, Quant sends.

  It’s the entire world.