No Life But This (24 page)

For a long time the old man looked at her. Just looked at her. Finally, he opened his mouth. ‘Life,’ he said pointedly. ‘Brutal, unfair, complicated, and sordid. I have lived for over seventy years. Many of them through wars and plagues and deaths you cannot imagine
– and I’m glad of that. If there is one thing I am glad of it is that you were spared those times. Unfortunately, as I slogged my way through it alone, I learned a few unpleasant truths. Like sometimes, it is impossible to keep your hands clean.’

The words were accusatory, and I knew why. I knew how angry Xavier really was at Rose for leaving him in the first place. I felt that anger, too – been
fighting it ever since I’d touched him. He loved her, loved her desperately, but anger doesn’t negate love.

‘Tell me what happened,’ Rose said again. She was not going to let it go.

The old man took a deep breath. ‘Twenty years ago,’ he said quietly, ‘I was sent to oversee the development of the Europa Project. When it was instigated, it was not intended as an attempt to develop human beings
with the traits of the microbes. At least that’s what I was told. My understanding of the project was to coordinate scientists in the hopes of discovering a way of keeping the EM microbes alive long enough to bring them to Earth, and study them there. That’s all it was. A research project on a single-celled organism. All attempts at this, as you know, failed. In twenty years of research, only Ted
has gotten as far as he has, and even he can’t keep them alive for more than a few weeks. Finally, the demand was too great. I received a message from Reginald Guillory, who was on track to be appointed as CEO of UniCorp, to deliver an ultimatum to the scientists. These included, unfortunately, bio-engineers as well as geneticists and exobiologists. Get the DNA to Earth alive. It didn’t matter how.’

‘That’s insane,’ Rose said. ‘That has nothing to do with creating human hybrids!’

‘You wouldn’t have thought so, would you?’ Xavier asked. ‘And you’d be right. But Guillory had his own ideas. He had arranged for all GMO restrictions to be lifted for the Europa Project. Here in the colonies the only genetic laws involve the development of human-like organisms – anything more than three per cent
human is prohibited. On Earth, genetically modified organisms are all but completely abolished. Reggie and people he had worked with had been lobbying extensively for eases in the restrictions ever since the EM microbes had been discovered. The Europa project waiver gave the scientists free reign to do anything they wanted.’

‘But not from you,’ Rose said. ‘Why didn’t you protest, or—’

‘I did,’
he said. ‘But there was a limit to what I could do. Guillory had pulled this as a political ploy. He had only narrowly been promoted over me, and that was only because I didn’t want the position. I had no desire to climb to CEO. But Guillory never believed that.’ He shook his head. ‘He set me up.’

‘How?’

He sighed, rolling his eyes. ‘At the time the Europa Project was instigated the colonies
were in a state of upheaval. Like right now, only worse. This place erupts into rebellion every couple of months, it seems. At least once or twice a decade. It was set up to do so. Fitzroy set it up that way. Any culture in a constant state of upheaval is ripe for exploitation. My job here had been two-fold. I was to both oversee the Europa Project, and to act as a secretary of state. My role had
been to negotiate with the workers in the hopes of stopping riots – riots and terrorists which were much more bloody and brutal than what is going on right now.’

‘Hundreds have already died,’ Rose said. ‘How can you say that?’

‘Because thousands were being slaughtered,’ Xavier said. ‘Sabotage was rampant. Some of the workers had decided to poison the food supplies, particularly of exports. Oxygen
deprivation was used as a weapon, by both sides – either officially or through sabotage. Hydrogen explosions were happening everywhere. You’ve seen what happens with those. The burns and deaths were terrible to see. People were starving. The cities were over populated, and some thought that mass killings, or just letting the rabble kill each other, was the solution. I did not. My goal, at the
time, was simply to stop the terrorism. I didn’t care about anything else.’

‘Terrorism?’ Rose asked. ‘You call starving people fighting for freedom terrorism?’

He blinked at her. ‘Rose.’ He looked at the ceiling, and then rubbed his eyes under his glasses. ‘You’re still so naïve,’ he whispered to himself. The thought pained him, you could see it. ‘There’s no such thing as freedom,’ he said,
speaking for her to hear again. ‘Not the way you mean, with everyone dancing happily in the streets, all righteousness and charity. I have seen … too many resource wars, too many riots, too much death. I know one thing. It doesn’t
work.
I have seen too many attempts at revolution go spiralling down into degeneration and self-destruction.’ He gestured around him. ‘Take these people. Not here on
Europa, but back on Earth, before they were emigrated. India was united under a brutal, exploitative British imperialism. Nehru and Ghandhi and the freedom fighters of the time shook off the yoke of oppression … only to fall into a civil war between Muslim and Hindu that cost the lives of millions. Entire trainloads of innocent people, slaughtered in violent sectarian attacks. Freedom, but at what
cost? The country split, and India and Pakistan remained in a state of perpetual war for centuries!

‘Then the genetics wars came about, and the countries were forcibly united again under the auspices of the South Asian Union. The union was brutal and totalitarian, too. People fought. Entire rebel villages were slaughtered. How do you think UniCorp was able to recruit so many willing volunteers
to come to a barren and inhospitable ice moon six hundred and thirty million kilometres from their home? Millions came. Because millions more were dying, under the banner of the freedom fighter.’ He was angry. Oh, he was angry. His eyes glared. ‘And that was even before the Dark Times struck, and half the population sank under disease and war. You should know all this! You were there with me; you
saw it, or at least what you weren’t sleeping through.’

Rose’s face went red again, but her lips were pale and tight.

He stopped, realizing what he’d said. ‘I’m sorry.’ His head sank onto his hand and the persistent tremor which was always with him was very pronounced. ‘I’m sorry, I … It wasn’t your fault. We were children,’ he said. ‘And selfish. I know that. Neither of us was paying much attention
at the time.’

‘We had our own problems,’ Rose said quietly.

Xavier looked at her. ‘We did.’

‘Tell Otto what happened,’ Rose demanded. Her voice was gentle, almost soothing, but it was a demand nevertheless. I didn’t need to know – I knew it already. Xavier had known it, so I did, too. But shifting the question on to me was easing her pain, and I wasn’t about to stop her.

‘Where was I?’

‘Freedom
fighters,’ Rose said. ‘Terrorists.’

‘Right,’ Xavier said. He looked immensely tired. ‘It had to be stopped. I’m not proud of what it took, either. The oxygen taxes were my idea. I devised a series of sanctions which, I’m afraid, ultimately solidified the power of the captains of the three city ships. This was Captain Jagan’s father, and he seized on the powers and enforced them to the fullest
extent. The people had to pay for their oxygen … but the fighting stopped. Rather than killing them, I saw to it they were beaten economically.’

Rose was not mollified. ‘And how many have died from starvation or overwork, trying to pay off those oxygen fees?’

‘The bloodshed stopped,’ he said, with the finality of an axe blow. ‘You don’t even know what you’re accusing me of. The children stopped
being murdered. That was all I wanted to do.’ He rested his head in his hands and shook his head. ‘That’s all I had the power to do. I couldn’t devise a democratic structure that gave everyone what they deserved. The captains wouldn’t have stood for it, and the rest of the colonies would have suffered from their split from UniCorp.’ He looked at me, and then to Rose. ‘I had four colonies to think
of, not just one.’ He looked away, into the distance of nothingness. ‘Blame me. I don’t even mind. Not even from you. I’ll gladly take the blame for those deaths by overwork. One man’s conscience is a small price to pay for what I stopped.’

Rose’s face was white and stern. ‘None of this explains Otto and the others.’

‘I was
busy
,’ the old man said, with a voice so raw and pained even I felt
sorry for him. ‘I couldn’t find the time to oversee the scientists. I could barely find the time to
sleep.
The floors of the lower levels of the city ships were running with blood – literally running red with it, it was contaminating the air supply! – and I handed over Guillory’s waiver and left them to it and gladly. By the time I finished with the political nightmare of the revolution I came
back and found myself in the middle of a Frankensteinian horror show.’

His voice was coming quickly now. ‘The last I’d heard of the project they had planned to implant the M9 DNA into living tissue – just muscle or skin tissue, not a functional being. Apparently, the cells died almost immediately when the sequence was inserted. By the time I got back the scientists had abandoned this and implanted
the sequence into embryonic stem cells, which they claimed were the only things which didn’t self-destruct. This meant each of them – each of you, Otto – had the potential to become living beings, and the only way to transport you to Earth was in stasis, implanted in a surrogate mother as a viable embryo.’

‘You must have known what would happen,’ Rose said. ‘Why didn’t you stop it there?’

‘I
wanted to go home,’ he said, without sparing himself. ‘It was selfish of me, and I know it. I should have said no. I should have put my foot down and ended it there, but it would have meant my career. Not to mention four, five, ten months to dismantle the project, and god knows, Guillory could have just sent someone else to restart it as soon as I was done. I’d been on this ice rock for four, blood-soaked
months, and I’d lost half a year in the travel. I missed my wife. I was going to miss the birth of my oldest grandson. I was missing it!’ His eyes searched Rose’s face. ‘You know what that’s like. I
needed
to get back.’

He turned away from Rose and looked to me. ‘I never meant for this to happen,’ he told me. ‘Guillory assured me, when I expressed my … distaste for the direction this project
had taken, that the embryos were to be aborted, frozen and studied on Earth. They would never be developed into sentient creatures. I made myself believe him.’ He shook his head. ‘I did it. I finished the project. Tied up all the loose ends. Fifty women were hired and assigned two embryos each. Mostly they were scientific assistants, or maintenance workers, middle-class, educated, for here. Upper
level. I insisted on this. I would not allow helpless women to be exploited without their full understanding. I was rigid in my demand for their qualifications. I tried …’ He closed his eyes, and his voice was soft. ‘I tried so hard to make it all right. They were cells. Just a few cells. It shouldn’t have been anything.’

He shook his head. ‘I was a fool,’ he said. ‘Guillory had been planning
for this. When I returned to Earth with the women, I found their contracts had been subtly manipulated. The contracts were extended, not for as long as the trip to Earth, but for as long as the embryos were established within their bodies. I had been assured this meant the cells would be aborted, and the women would be free. But UniCorp owned the rights to their bodies for as long as the embryos
were implanted, and that included the right to an abortion. They were … enslaved. For as long the pregnancy lasted, they did not own themselves. So long as those cells were in their bodies, they were owned and controlled by UniCorp.’

I blinked. To my surprise, my own memories surfaced briefly. I had never realized that my mother – my surrogate mother, not related by our genes, but nurtured by
her shared blood – had been as enslaved as I was. I had always resented her. Her name was in my records, but she had never been one of the few mothers who had banded together and insisted on human rights for us. I’d always been rather scornful of Penny’s surrogate, who sent her birthday cards and a single Christmas present once a year. That didn’t seem like enough of a mother to me – and why carry
a child if you didn’t want to be a mother? I had thought my surrogate was callous, more inhuman than I ever was, who viewed the pregnancy as a rental, sold her body as surely as a prostitute, for a moonliner ticket and a few credits. But to be forced to carry a child to term when it wasn’t your own choosing …?

‘The women were established in a dorm situation in a laboratory – your lab, Otto,’
Xavier continued. ‘The development of the foetuses was monitored and recorded meticulously. But frankly, my attention was not on the developing cells, but the indentured women. I blamed myself, and I was desperate to do something to help them. I had had no idea I was being used to traffic human slaves.’ He looked at me. Square into my eyes. ‘I campaigned for abortions – particularly as many of the
foetuses died. Many of the surrogates were horrified at the thought of these … inhuman … creatures developing in their wombs. A few went mad. Two of them committed suicide. They had not signed up to be mothers for monsters – they had signed up to earn free passage to a new and better life on Earth.

‘There was a major international debate on the ethics of the EP children.’ He scoffed. ‘Children.
Even the title is suggestive. The news community, no doubt at the prompting of UniCorp, which owned most of the news agencies, instantly called the embryos “children”, thus framing the debate in religious terms. DNA splicing was banned on Earth, but these “children” came from Europa. The religious communities were split between the sanctity of life, and the sanctity of human life. Many of the hardest
core, staunch fundamentalists suddenly found themselves in favour of abortion. Many called the children abominations.’ I cringed. I’d heard that. I’d had it thrown into my face. I knew there were people who would gladly kill me because of it. Fortunately, none of them could easily get into the controlled UniCorp ComUnity, and for the most part I’d been kept safe from them.