The Soul Continuum (37 page)

“Do not be facetious with me,” he barks. “You know exactly what I am referring to. What are you doing bringing a child into my observatory? How did you come by it?”

All eyes focus on something behind me, all activity ceases,
and the only movement is the great, transparent orb as it continues its slow revolution. Nobody has seen a child in thousands of years, and here, as bold as a supernova, stands Oluvia Wade. I was already irked by Higgs's rebuke, but now I am incensed! She must have found a way to bypass all my security measures in the simulation suite and followed me here. No, not followed—she has changed her attire into a red-and-white-striped dress, which indicates a
gap of time passed after I left. There is even a poppy nestled in her golden locks. Oluvia must have tracked down my location
and navigated the full seventy kilometers all by herself. A
tremor of anger followed swiftly by worry tempts my muscles
to tense, but I suppress the urge.

“You should not be here, Oluvia,” I say with forced calm. “Why did you come?”

She ignores me, electing to squat down and push between my legs to face Higgs Tazaria. Smiling at his puffed-up, red-faced indignation, she has no fear at her discovery, no caution in her approach, no comprehension of the difficult position in which she has placed me, and seemingly no regard for all my warnings.

“Is this where you look at stars?” she says, wide-eyed, to Higgs.

He stares down at her, puckering his wet lips in a scowl, then redirects to me. “How old is it? Why was it birthed?”

“
She
is exactly five standard years old today.”

Higgs raises his bony hands slowly to his hips and looks down at her again, his rouged cheeks deepening in shade. “It is an illegal entity with no rights to exist until we reach Senerius, which—as you well know—is still at least another three years distant. There should be no births at all until then. What gives her privilege above every other fertilized egg in the nursery? What is your part in all this, hmm? What do you suppose I should do with it—and with you, for that matter?”

“I was an egg?” Oluvia looks confused, almost upset.

I do not like the way this is going. Perhaps if I return her home quickly, I can prevent any further damage to our circumstances, though I suspect the repercussions of this event will be far-reaching. Only one person has to report her presence here, and the resulting investigation will end in my exile. As for Oluvia, I have no idea what they will do with her. Anger comes again in hot waves through my muscles. Hard, very hard to contain.

“Happy birthday!”

It is one of the technicians hunched over a console to my right who speaks out, and I am grateful not only for the distraction from my own feelings but also that Higgs's irritated gaze is diverted. The technician winces under the weight of that stare and quickly turns back to his station.

“Thank you!” Oluvia brightens, then turns to me.
“That's why I came, Mother. To give you these. You left before
I had a chance to give them to you.”

She stuffs her plump hands into the pouch at the front of her dress and pulls out a bedraggled selection of flowers she has picked from our simulated garden.

“Poppies, tulips, and”—she struggles with the next word and squeezes her eyes shut in an attempt to concentrate—“rhodo . . . rhod . . . rhodee-dee-drons. I have never been able to say that word properly.” Her eyes pop open again as she thrusts the samples at me. “Happy birthday!” she insists.

“It is customary for you to receive gifts on your birthday,”
I tell her, “not to give them.”

“I know. Happy birthday! These are for you.” She thrusts them at me again so that I am forced to take them. “It's your birthday too, isn't it?”

I look at the flowers. She is correct; I had not considered this before. Though technically my assemblage happened at a different time, my severance from the Unitas Communion
happened at the same moment her growth was activated. Evidently Cartinian seeded her mind with this ancient nonsense about birthdays.

“Yes,” I tell her quietly. “But you could have waited for my return.”

“Don't you like them?”

“I . . .”

Higgs coughs loudly. “As touching as it is to witness . . . birthday exchanges between a cyborg and a forbidden child, this is not the place. If you do not remove her immediately, I will remove her myself.”

I care nothing for this man's opinion, but the rush of
anger comes as another heavy gust—not for myself but for Oluvia. I feel as if I must protect her from his hurtful attitude.
This sensation unnerves me but also intrigues me. Even with my machine emotions tuned out to nothing more than vague impressions, it is the first time I have felt anything other than repugnance for humankind.

All eyes are still upon us as the technicians wait to see if I defy Higgs, but Oluvia decides to take matters into her own hands. She selects a tulip from the bunch in my hand and slots it into the breast pocket of Higgs's overalls. “There,” she says. “You can't be grumpy now.”

Higgs sucks in a breath and glares at her. The moment seems to last much longer than it should as she counters his intimidation with a baby-toothed grin, but the standoff is broken by the repeated ping of an alarm signal. Another of the technicians is startled back to his console and, after a few frantic seconds, addresses Higgs. “It's happened again.”

Higgs ends his eye contact with Oluvia with a brief squint before engaging the technician. “Please tell me you got enough data this time.”

“Yes, it's being analyzed now . . . wait! There it goes again. The duration is longer this time. We should actually be able to see it.”

Higgs rushes past Oluvia, almost bowling her over. He presses his palms against the transparent wall behind us and cranes his neck upward, watching silently.

“Is this the anomalous data you were hoping I could analyze?” I ask.

“Mmhmm,” says Higgs absently.

The other technicians rush from their consoles to crowd in behind him, looking in the same direction, and I follow to do the same. From this viewpoint, the twenty-five-thousand-meter neck of the
Socrates
is a darkened silhouette blocking the fierce crimson light of our star Celetrix, and I imagine this is what they are waiting to see. It will take almost an entire minute before the observatory rotates to a position where Celetrix is clearly visible, and Higgs's frustration with the delay is growing more obvious with every passing second.

“I can't see,” Oluvia says. “Lift me up.”

“You do not need to see,” I tell her. “You should not even be here.”

“Silence her!” Higgs says without looking.

“Lift me up,” she insists loudly.

“Get her out!” Higgs shouts, turning this time.

I look down at her. She is wobbling on tiptoe, arms outstretched, grinning.

“Go back home, Oluvia. Do so now!”

She wrinkles her mouth and nose. I recognize that look. She is going to cry but not out of pain or distress. It is a protest. A ridiculous and futile act that piles yet another layer onto my anger, bringing me close to rage. Does she not realize how she is provoking the senior astronomer? But now I realize the error in my command to her. To travel the
full seventy kilometers to reach me, she must have boarded at least two travel capsules and was probably seen by hundreds
of people, and now I have told her to go back, risking the same exposure again. I should take her back. But I must see what the technicians have discovered.

“Mother!”

I do not know how to resolve this conflict. Worse still, the stress on my emotional stability might upset the delicate balance I have been striving so hard to maintain.

“I want to seeeee!” Oluvia screams.

Higgs looks ready to explode, but it is my anger that erupts, and with one lightning swipe of the back of my hand, I send Oluvia reeling across the floor. “Go!” I roar. “And if you are seen, I will see to it that it is the last time
anyone
sees you!”

Her crying stops immediately. One of her tiny hands gingerly cradles the side of her head and her left eye squints through the pain. The other eye contains a swirl of accusation, fear, and sadness as it meets my furious gaze, and in that same second, I find myself unsure if I am reading her correctly. Is it her emotion I see, or am I confusing hers with mine? This is her fault. Not mine. She made me act this way. She should not have come. She should not have—

“There! There!” I turn to see Higgs stabbing a finger urgently at the glass as a sea of red light floods the astronomics
section. Celetrix looms into view and the glass tints to compensate. I
want to see what Higgs sees, but I am momentarily distracted
by the other technicians. A few follow Higgs's lead, but most are staring in shock at the drama that just unfolded between myself and Oluvia. One of them—the one who said happy birthday—stares at me as if I am a monster. The look lasts only a moment. My own look, the look of an unblinking animated cadaver glowering menacingly back, is most likely far more intimidating, and adequately conveys my mutual feeling of hatred toward him and all his kind. I have five times his strength.

When he and the others turn back to view Celetrix, I turn to look at Oluvia, but all I see is a fleeting glimpse of her stripy dress as she leaves the observatory. I can feel my teeth clenching involuntarily and my silicon heart feels like it is pumping liquid fury around my body instead of arterial fluid. I wish I had never chosen to raise that child. Rather than any possible fondness for humankind being kindled, I see now that my hatred of this species is justified, not just because of Oluvia but because of these others standing near me. They are more interested in the anomaly than her.

I made a mistake. An enormous mistake. I should never have come. I should never have entered into this emotional experiment. I have to accept that the Unitas Communion's love of humanity will always be a mystery and a curse that
grates against the silicants' loathing of them. Like metal filings
caught in the lubricant layers of an eye, we must endure our lot or end the madness with suicide as so many of us have already done. I truly understand them now.

“Silicant 5, are you watching this?” Higgs has the expression of a teacher astounded at the ignorance of his student.
“Pay attention!”

I clench my fists. Does this ape not understand what just happened? How does he know I will not strike him
the same way I did Oluvia? But Higgs is completely oblivious.
His attention is consumed by the star burning over us. Oluvia has left, his order followed. And she has gone alone, without her mother.

“I no longer have time for this,” I tell him. “I must find—”

“You will stay here,” Higgs insists. “We have greater concerns than your dubious projects. I didn't summon you here as a sightseer; you are an analyst with faster processing
capabilities and more dexterous algorithms than our systems.
I need you here. We'll discuss the child later.” He smiles flatly with a curt nod, but it is not a kind gesture. “Do we understand each other?”

Even with the spectacle unraveling on Celetrix, Higgs holds my gaze for a few seconds longer, apparently determined to demonstrate that he will not be moved by anything other than my unswerving compliance. He knows he has the upper hand. If Oluvia manages to find her way home again without being stopped, Higgs could very easily report the issue. If I comply, he may be lenient and swear himself and the others to secrecy. But the chances are extremely low.

Higgs turns slowly back to the glass.

“The stellarform is peaking,” says a technician.

“Is that what we think it is?” says another.

“It can't be,” Higgs tells them. “Because if it is, we may never reach our destination, and I haven't waited for thousands of years inside the belly of this giant metal whale to be stopped by the likes of that, and a mere three years from the end of our journey.”

A flare bursts out from the star like a fiery serpent rearing its head, but unlike a natural occurrence, the fire holds position, and the tip swells and splits into several smaller strands, almost like a claw. And then it is gone, evaporating into the dark.

“I don't see how it could be anything else,” says the technician grimly.

“A stellarform,” I tell Higgs. “This man must be correct.”

Higgs lifts a finger to challenge me but then huffs loudly,
dropping his hand in defeat. “A stellarform,” he mutters.

“Good,” I say. “If my confirmation is all you need, my presence here is no longer necessary.”

“I can see you are anxious to leave, but you must calm down, and you must remain here,” Higgs says. He heads across the promenade, back to the console he was examining when I first walked in, waving impatiently for me to follow, and I hesitate before doing so. The temptation is to simply ignore him and leave, but there is still a chance I can secure his silence.

“We still need to prove the presence of a stellarform to the Council,” Higgs says, “and that means you need to run the math on the data.”

He offers his palm at the console and I place the tips of two fingers against the data port. Data flows into me, and what once felt so normal is now nauseating. Cerebral processors filter, aggregate, and correlate the binary at quantum speed and the rest of my unchained mind cannot cope with the violence of it. I manage to hold on until all the data is
received, but it makes me stagger back, holding my stomach.
Something else stirs there too. I think it must be guilt, because an image of Oluvia sprawled across the astronomics section floor comes unexpectedly, and with it, another wave of nausea. The guilt is not enough to snuff out my anger yet, though. Part of me knows it should be, but the anger has a will of its own, making me resist.