Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014

by Penny Publications

  "There's enough of a functioning brain stem to permit regulation of heartbeat and breathing," the doctor said. Then, very gently, she added, "He can't feel anything. He's not in pain. He's not suffering."

  "My son is alive," she said adamantly. The doctor said nothing.

  "My son is alive!" she repeated.

  "Come look at Shep!" Cheryl calls out. "He's so lively!"

  I shuffle into the living room. I need coffee.

  Cheryl is excited, beckoning me over to the planter. I look and suck in my breath.

  Overnight the pulsating lobes of the plantimal have broken like an eggshell, and what has emerged is a creature about twenty centimeters long: two bluish arms ending in ten tiny pale green fingers, two bluish legs ending in ten tiny pale green toes, and on top, a little green head with a vaguely defined nose, a mouth, ears, a floppy, grass-like head of hair, and a pair of eyes, still clenched shut.

  "It's a miracle!" Cheryl says, her voice filled with awe.

  I think back to what Dave had told us. If they grow up near other plants, they take on their form over time.

  We are those other plants.

  Shep's chest rises and falls like the old pulsating lobes. The arms and legs twitch as it turns its little head from side to side.

  I'm out the door before Cheryl can say anything.

  The hospital lawyer shut the door after we sat down. It was not lost on us that they'd sent him rather than a doctor.

  "I'll come straight to the point, Mr. and Mrs. Carr. Legally, the hospital does not have an obligation to maintain your son on life support."

  "Of course you do," replied Cheryl. "My son is breathing and when you touch him, he moves."

  "Those are automatic reflexes. The legal definition of death is the irreversible cessation of all higher brain functions, the foundation for personhood. Your son never had and never will have any higher brain functions."

  I knew he was right. The definition he quoted was from that big case before the World Supreme Court of Human Rights a couple of decades ago. Something about no obligation to maintain patients in a permanent, irreversible vegetative state. Scarce resources and society's need to move from whole-brain death to more humane definitions and all that. For a while back then it had been very controversial, and then people accepted it.

  "Don't you dare to tell me my son is not a person!" she continued defiantly. "My son smiles when you caress his face."

  The lawyer folded his hands. He hated this conversation, I could tell. I believed that he was trying to do the right thing. I did and still do.

  "The doctors tell me that Joey cannot hear, see, taste, or feel anything. He cannot experience any emotions. He is not now and has never been conscious."

  "Then the doctors are wrong."

  "I can refer you to some research. The medical consensus on this is overwhelming."

  "I don't need research when I can see him with my eyes. He knows who I am! He reacts when I sing to him."

  He stared at her, not without sympathy. "Do you think it's possible that you're seeing what you want to see?"

  She said nothing.

  I thought about the times when I held Joey. Did I think he was responding to me when I caressed him? Did I think he was a tiny little person or just a bundle of cells? I honestly couldn't tell. I was terribly confused. I didn't know if I loved my son, or if I ever could love him.

  "The NICU team has been working around the clock for months, Mrs. Carr. We can't keep this up forever. There are other children who need care. When it comes to picking between children who are alive and those who are not, we have to follow rules. They exist for a reason."

  Cheryl's expression hardened. "We'll sue and get an injunction."

  The lawyer sighed. I wondered if he had children. I wondered if he loved them. I wondered if it was effortless to love a child who was normal.

  "You should do what you feel you must."

  I must love my son, I thought. I must.

  "I'm telling you, it's a plant!" Dave is impatient. "This isn't even open to debate."

  "Then how does it move like a baby?" I say. "Why does it move like one?"

  "Look, here's the botanists' report. They dissected tons of specimens. There's no evidence of any nervous system. It doesn't feel anything. When they planted one near some wheat stalks, it grew up looking like a wheat stalk. When they planted one near a flock of chickens, it grew up looking like a rooted vegetable chicken. But it's all just an adaptive, automatic, imitative reaction. It's just goddamned mimicry!"

  I read the report. What he says is true.

  "I'm not going to carry any more of them, I can tell you that," he says. "I can see how they'll freak people out. Bad for business."

  The court issued a preliminary injunction while the suit was pending.

  The hospital staff remained polite to Cheryl and me, but I could sense the impatience and annoyance that they tried to disguise. We strained their budgets, not only by taking up their resources but also by forcing them to spend money on a lawsuit we were sure to lose. Were there other children who couldn't get the care they needed because of what Cheryl and I were doing? Doubtless they thought we were selfish.

  I wasn't sure that I disagreed with them.

  Cheryl sang to Joey when she fed him. She talked to him, kissed him, gave him sponge baths.

  But never for long. He was constantly sick, and had to be tied back into the life support system and pumped full of drugs.

  Cheryl and I put our lives on hold. This is the only period of my life from which I kept no mementos. What would I keep? The hospital bills? The court filings? A white blanket to remind me of the nights sleeping in the hospital and the antiseptic smell and constant beeping of machines?

  "I read that it could have been something I ate," Cheryl said. Then she added in a tired monotone, "I wish I hadn't tried so many foods on Ranginui."

  No matter what I said to her, I knew I could never get the idea out of her head. Guilt, once it had taken root, couldn't be weeded out.

  And then Cheryl fell sick as well, and I alone had to care for Joey.

  Holding the baby, constantly worried that at any moment the little monitor attached to his chest could start beeping, I dared not sleep. To entertain myself I began to tell Joey stories my father had told me, to sing him the songs my mother had sung to me as a child, to kiss him, really kiss him, as a way to keep myself awake.

  That was when I finally began to love my son, to see him as a person. The forced intimacy of having him depend on me entirely broke through my ambivalence and fear. I looked into his face, and his misshapen features no longer repulsed me. I could see the shape of Cheryl's jaws and the curve of my lips. He looked like me and he also looked like Cheryl. He was our son.

  And yes, he did react when my lips touched his face. Yes, he was smiling when I moved him through space in wide, swinging arcs, trying to entertain and comfort him through the physical sensations of shifting acceleration and weight—and yes, I believed that he could feel, even if he couldn't see or hear. I finally knew Cheryl was right... but then, she had always been the wiser.

  In my exhausted, delirious state, I began asking the doctors insane questions. How insane? Like this, for example:

  "Why can't you clone a brain for my son from his own cells? You can clone hearts and lungs."

  "Mr. Carr, we don't know how to do that. We may never know how to do that."

  I was thinking science fiction, I guess, but hell, we'd reached the stars and done a million other things, we were living in a science fiction future, so why couldn't the fiction come true?

  When Cheryl recovered and we were back to distributing the work evenly, I seemed to wake from a dream. Were those reactions I had seen in my son real? Was I sure that they were not figments of my tired imagination? Could I ignore the consensus of experts and scientists and carefully designed protocols and think I knew better what was true?

  I wished I could, I hoped I could, but I truly had no answer.
r />   Shep grows so fast that it changes daily.

  Now about the size of a one-year-old, it has long since outgrown its planter. Cheryl and I bought a new one, the biggest one that Dave had, and transplanted it. It giggled—actually giggled —while we moved it.

  Cheryl is teaching it to talk.

  "Can you say 'Mama'?" she urges, sitting in front of the plantimal. She's surrounded it with colorful toys and nutrient bulbs.

  We have so many baby things in the cabin now that I can't make my way around without toppling over piles of paper or knocking down some mementos. Just this morning, I broke the glass dish that we bought when Cheryl and I moved back together after our brief and horribly unhappy trial separation more than half a century ago.

  We are running out of space. If Shep keeps on growing, we'll have to discard bits of our life together.

  I try to ignore the plantimal as much as I can. It's just mimicry. It has no nerves. When Cheryl caresses it, it moves its arms and legs.

  When Cheryl kisses it, the arms and legs move in a manner that looks remarkably like joy.

  "Sa-Sa." The voice is raspy, high-pitched. It sounds like something made as a breeze causes two fibrous leaves to rub against each other. But the rhythm is unmistakable.

  Can you say "Mama"?

  I look up, and there are tears streaming down Cheryl's face.

  I'm suffocating in here. I leave the apartment, not knowing where I'm going or what to do.

  "You've lost the appeal," our lawyer said to me. Cheryl was asleep, exhausted. Joey was in his crib, and for the moment, his life signs were stable.

  "So that's it?" I said. "Are there no other options?"

  I didn't know quite how I felt. I was tired all the time, and my emotions seemed dulled. There was a new feeling I couldn't quite place, though.

  "Well, it depends. We can petition for a rehearing with the panel, and if that fails, petition for en banc rehearing. And even after that, there's the certiorari process. You haven't exhausted all options yet."

  But our assets were depleted. We had spent all our retirement savings, mortgaged the house, pledged our future income streams and social welfare benefits. And we still owed the law firm and the hospital. She didn't explain what our chances of success were, but I knew that with every appeal, the likelihood of victory diminished.

  And was it even a victory I wanted? Did I want to spend the rest of my life caring for Joey, a child who could never, all the doctors told me, ever feel?

  And suddenly I understood what that new feeling was: relief.

  "When my wife wakes up," I said, "tell her that we have no options left."

  "I can't do that," answered the lawyer. "That's"—she searched for the right word— "unethical."

  "It's unethical to hold out false hope to Cheryl," I said. I didn't know who I was trying to convince more, her or myself. The feeling of relief grew stronger, like a light at the end of a tunnel. "I'm begging you. We have nothing left."

  I pushed the questions away.

  "Cheryl and I can still have a life together," I continued, "but she'll never give up.

  You know that. My son is dead, has always been dead."

  The lawyer looked at me, looked at the sleeping figure of Cheryl, looked at the state of disarray of the hospital room, which had become our home. She did not look at Joey in his crib.

  Finally she nodded.

  I stay out past midnight, Station time. I walk around the outer ring, trying to tire myself out so I can stop the memories surfacing from sixty years ago. Why is it that you can never remember what you want to remember, but can't stop remembering what you most want to forget, what you've been trying desperately to forget for more than half a lifetime?

  I go into a bar. It's got loud music and flashing screens, not the kind of place meant for someone my age. But my money is good, and the alcohol, after four or five quick drinks, dulls things enough that it's like forgetting.

  The ground moves beneath me, and I fleetingly think I've had too much to drink before realizing that everyone is sprawled on the ground like me. The bright lights and screens go dead and everything is plunged into total darkness.

  Mass confusion. Loud voices.

  The emergency lights come on, and the PA system crackles to life.

  "This is the Station Commander speaking. Sorry about that, folks. Looks like we lost a few of our thrusters. Well, that's life on the frontier. No need to panic, as we're losing altitude very slowly. And we'll get this fixed as soon as the next supply convoy can be sent from the core systems. But as a precaution, I'm going to have to ask all of you to jettison some things to lessen our mass. By tomorrow morning, everyone has to designate 20 percent of their possessions by mass for disposal. There will be no exceptions."

  I stumble my way home through the corridors past confused, angry voices, feeling trapped. We've come to Shepard Station to spend our golden years, only to find that the Universe's warped sense of humor hasn't improved since Ranginui.

  "Where have you been?" Cheryl asks as I open the door and stagger in.

  "We have to pick out things to throw away by morning," I tell her.

  "Yes, I heard," she says. "It was broadcast everywhere."

  I look around at the apartment. Everything here has a memory, something I want to remember, something to hold the memories I don't want at bay: there's the holograph Cheryl and I took diving in the Great Barrier Reef; there's the award Cherylwon for forty years of excellence in teaching; there's the ticket to the first play we saw after... we finally paid off our debt.

  How can I choose to throw any of it away?

  Cheryl yawns. "Can you watch Shep for a bit while I catch some shut-eye? He refuses to sleep. I think he misses you."

  Before she goes through the door to the bedroom, she turns around and says, "I'll get up in a few hours and help you figure out what to throw away." She flashes me a smile. "I've always said we have too many things."

  And she leaves me alone with Shep. With Shep and all my memories.

  I go over to the plantimal. It's bobbing up and down, making a mewling noise. "Ta-

  Ta." There's no evidence of any nervous system. The planter is huge. I try to calculate the mass. What if I add in all the toys and other baby things Cheryl has bought for it?

  It doesn't feel anything.

  I picture myself carrying it down to the disposal airlock, before Cheryl wakes up. Shep turns to me, and waves its arms at me. It's just an adaptive, automatic, imitative reaction. I reach out and caress it. And somehow I know, I know that its shiver is a sign of pleasure. I hold up the nutrient bulb, and it leans over to be closer to my hand. There's no doubt in my mind that it's excited about its pending snack.

  Is it possible that I'm seeing what I want to see?

  The Station Commander has laid down the rules. Rules that must be followed. "I'm sorry," I say. I put down the nutrient bulb. I bend down to lift the planter. I have to get rid of it now, before Cheryl wakes up, before I have to lose all that we've fought so hard to remember: our life together.

  "Si aaaa oooo," Shep says, its leafy lips rasping against each other. The rhythm is familiar, bringing to mind something Cheryl used to say a lot, but now, rarely.

  Cheryl's voice comes from bpehind me. "That's how he says 'I love you.' "

  Cheryl took the news better than I expected. When the nurse disconnected the life support system and left us alone, she just sat and held Joey.

  "You should eat something," I said.

  "Soon," she said.

  I sat next to her, not wanting to touch my son. I hated myself. I hated how relieved I felt. Almost euphoric. I was a monster.

  This is what should have been done in the first place, I told myself. We were being selfish. And now we're doing the right thing. The rational thing.

  Joey twitched violently in her arms, a seizure. He had those often. Usually we'd call the nurse, but not this time. Not anymore.

  "Can you hold him?" she asked. "He usually calms down if
you hold him."

  I thought if we really checked it scientifically, there would be no evidence that my holding him made any difference. But I said nothing and opened my arms.

  The twitching body fluttered against my chest, my arms, my shoulders. Then the movements subsided, and Joey was still. His breath, wheezy, caught in his throat.

  I looked down and kissed the baby. Did I do it for myself or for Cheryl? Even now, after all this time, I'm not sure.

  Joey's left arm moved up, the fist tightened, and then moved back down. I'd never seen him do that before.

  "That's how he says 'I love you,' " Cheryl said.

  I gently put the planter down.

  I'm crying the way I haven't cried in years. It feels like something inside me wants to force its way out. The sobs wrack my body and it's hard to breathe.

  It's not rational to love something that can't feel, that does not have consciousness or will, that can't love you back. But love has never been rational.

  It's the effort you put into someone, to care for them, to sustain them when they need you, that gives love life.

  Cheryl's arms wrap around me. And I cry even harder. She kisses me and I turn my face away. "I have a confession," I begin.

  "I know," she says. "I've always known. I wasn't really asleep."

  I look at her, not understanding.

  "I loved our son," she says. "But I also love his father. I was selfish, and let you make the decision by yourself because I didn't want the responsibility. Sometimes there are no good choices in life."

  We were selfish, but sometimes love and life both depend on being selfish, a selfishness that requires no return.

  We cry together. More than half a century of guilt, of things unsaid and topics avoided, cannot be erased in one night. But it's a start. It's the start of relief and hope.

  "Do you want me to help you pick out what to throw away?" she asks.

  I look around at the binders, the souvenirs, the awards and photos and knickknacks. I had thought I hoarded them to help me, help us, remember, but I had really kept them to forget.

  They have lost their glow now, their magic. They don't have a hold on me.