Singularity's Ring (25 page)

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Authors: Paul Melko

BOOK: Singularity's Ring
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Where’s my mama?
“I think that branch is going to break,” said the blue jay.
Go away, bird!
But the blue jay didn’t understand him. He had no air thoughts.
“You should call for help. I’d help you but I’m too small.”
Mama!
He tried pawing himself toward the trunk, but the branch was so bowed he was hanging nearly straight down and didn’t have the strength to climb up.
“If you’d just tell me who to go get for help, I’ll go and get them,” said the blue jay. He fluttered down and landed on the branch in front of Little Cub.
“No!” shouted Little Cub, but it was too late, and the branch snapped.
Little Cub yelled, “Mama! Mama!” as he fell, and this his mother heard.
She came running for her baby, through thorns and over hills, to find him sprawled on the ground.
Oh, my baby, oh, my baby!
she thought.
Little Cub shook himself and sat up. “I’m okay, Mama!”
He twisted his head, cocking his ears. “Mama! I can talk.”
His mother pulled him closer and began brushing the brown leaves from his coat.
I heard. And so did the whole forest!
 
Then the three bears all laughed and laughed, as if it were the funniest story they had ever heard. We shared a glance and a mental shrug, then told Papa that it was the best story we’d ever heard a bear tell.
I laughed simply because the bears were happy to tell the story. Roam rolled on her back and stroked Papa’s flank. I scrubbed his ears with my fingers. He massed more than all five of our pod together, and yet there was
no fear in me or any of us. Who could fear someone who told such jokes and stories?
I noticed Roam’s fuller belly as she lay against Papa. It was late summer now, spring long faded, but spring was the time to conceive.
You’re pregnant,
I sent.
Yes!
she replied, suddenly more gleeful.
We all stopped petting Papa to rub her belly. She sighed wistfully.
Where did my attention go?
Papa asked. He chuffed twice.
How long do bears gestate?
I asked.
“Seven and a half months,” Quant said, digging the fact from somewhere.
No wonder you find Little Cub so funny,
I sent.
In the falling, I will have three or four Little Cubs,
Roam said.
Sleepy signaled mild jealousy. I rubbed her belly too.
One day you’ll have Little Cubs too.
Sleepy replied,
Not allowed yet. Neither is Roam.
Lightning flared and thunder crashed just outside the cave mouth. The bears jumped, and Sleepy’s claws grazed my arm.
It was a searing pain, but I found myself mesmerized by the feel of it, and I didn’t cry out. My pod, laughing awkwardly in the wake of the explosion, didn’t even notice.
My fingers were cold and wet. Another flash, farther away now, and I saw the triple lines of black on my skin.
Blood.
Papa had smelled it.
Meda turned around then and popped on her flashlight, finding my wound.
“Uh-oh.”
Come on!
she added. My pod dragged me to the overhang
that shielded the cave mouth. We stood in the rain, washing the wound, letting the water douse me.
I felt every single drop.
Sleeping with bears isn’t always safe.
They are powerful and always armed.
Like children with guns.
Strom told me to stimulate antibodies, then wrapped the wound in gauze, then a bandage.
We settled back in the cave, but on our side now, and slept.
 
Each of the bears had a spider-silk bag that it wore around its neck. They used the bags to store food, which allowed them to travel farther without consideration for their stomachs, which seemed to be always clamoring for food. Around their necks the bags looked small. But they were larger than any of our backpacks.
The next morning, my arm still throbbing, I asked,
Where did you get those bags?
We humans were making breakfast over a flame while the bears were digging berries from their bags.
It’s my purse!
Sleepy replied.
The doctor gave it to us,
Roam said, shoving Sleepy. The older female was the more aggressive of the two. When she said “doctor,” I saw an image of a tall man in a lab coat. His face was almost a caricature, but then the same was true for their internal images of us. Their smell of him (and us) was unique, however, and precise. The bears were nearsighted.
They are very pretty,
I sent.
Yes,
said Sleepy.
I like my purse.
She was almost as big as Roam, and Roam’s shoves often produced no effect on Sleepy.
Where is the doctor?
I asked.
North,
Papa sent.
Are we going to see the doctor soon?
Before Roam has her Little Cubs,
Papa sent.
Will the Little Cubs be part of you?
I used the word for the entire entity of you, for a pod.
Roam said,
Of course.
Papa glanced at her, seemed ready to say more, but then said nothing.
The bears spent the morning eating termites from an old log. They would take turns; two would hold the log and shake it while the third would catch a rain of termites in its paws.
Termites. Ick!
We should …
The pod’s thoughts drifted away, and I felt for a moment like Quant feels when she zones out, mesmerized by anything and everything. But that wasn’t all. My eyes were tired; they fluttered closed, and I couldn’t will them to open. I knew something was wrong.
I pitched over, landing with my cheek against the mulchy dirt.
She’s burning up!
Did she make enough antibodies?
Someone touched my wrist and I winced.
We need to get her to a doctor.
The bears looked down at me, Roam licking her lips of termites. The image I took from her was of a handsome doctor in a lab coat, taking care of her and her pod.
We know a doctor. He can help her.
 
I passed in and out of consciousness, alternately groggy and hyper from fever. Something had infected the cut on my arm, something I didn’t have the antibodies to defend against.
I imagined legions of white blood cells fighting a
pitched, scorch-and-burn battle around my radius, across my ulna. Guerrillas were hiding out in the lowlands of my carpels. In my mind the battle was in bright color and loud sound.
Strom and Papa took turns carrying me. I lost track of who was who, until Strom was fur covered and Papa walked on two legs. I tried to keep my thoughts to myself, but I flooded the air around me again and again with hallucinations.
That night Meda and Quant coaxed me into making different kinds of antibodies, but I remembered that from later. Then, I was engaged in a dream world of pulsating colors. It was only after the fact that I remembered the trek through the high mountain valley, following the bears to their home, and the meeting with Dr. Immanuel Baker. I remember it all as a play or a movie, removed from it, seeing myself as one bit player with a single action: hallucinate. Again, with feeling.
I awoke in the middle of the night, in a room with Meda and Quant. The boys weren’t there. They dreamed of trees and flying through the branches. I had no idea where I was. My arm was bandaged and stiff.
I tried the door and stepped out into a dimly lit hallway. The air was damp, as if we were underground. The walls were concrete block. I smelled the bears: their odor permeating everywhere, their thoughts nearby but indecipherable.
I felt refreshed, impatient, and picked a direction at random, following the hall until it opened into a large lab. Gene-splicers, old ones, but rows and rows of them, lined the walls. Chromatographs. Computers, presingularity models. DNA analysis tools. The room was a genetics lab using the height of pre-Community technology. It was almost archaic, but the lab was decked with more firepower than Mother Redd had access to at her lab on the farm.
“Hello, there. Alive, I see.”
I turned. A man stood there, dressed in a lab coat. He was tall, thin, and perhaps seventy years old. His hair was full and white, his goatee well clipped. A name drifted into my consciousness, a name I overheard when I was spinning in visions.
“Dr. Baker.”
He stepped over to me, and, instead of shaking my hand, he flipped my wrist over. Unwinding the bandage, he clucked and nodded.
“The forest has some nasty beasties in it. Good thing I had good old-fashioned penicillin.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Interested in my lab? Your pod and your friend were,” he said. “You missed the tour.”
“I’d like that. How long … ?”
“Oh, you’ve been here for twenty-four hours or so,” Dr. Baker replied. “Amazing, really, that the bears knew what to do. Bringing you here when you’d been injured.”
“The bears knew—” I stopped. Didn’t he know how smart the bears were?
“Yes, you like my bears? Probably scared you when you found them, but really they’re meek creatures. I made them that way.”
“They’re wonderful.”
“Yes, wonderful creatures, bears,” the doctor continued. “Trick of fate that primates lead to sentience and not
Ursidae
. Fabulous genome to work with, fascinating. As you all shall soon learn.”
“We will?” I asked.
“That little cut almost killed you, but it brought you to me!” A gene-splicer beeped and he scuttled around the lab table to the far side. “I’m not a young man, you know. I’ve been working in here for decades. Sometimes with assistance, sometimes not. But now I need someone to help me,
help me carry on. And look at what happens: two biologist pods arrive, to be sure only a trio and duo, but that’s enough, I think. Now I have someone to help with the bears.”
I began to realize that things had transpired while I was unconscious. The need to go and consense with my pod was an itch.
I said, “I should get back to my pod.”
“Really? I’d like to show you around. No time like the present,” he said. “I really do have so much for you two to do, now that the bears have come back.” I backed away, as he came closer holding a beaker in his hands. “Take a look at this.”
“Moira! There you are.”
Meda and Quant were at the door of the lab, looking alarmed. I clasped hands with them.
We awoke and you were gone,
Quant sent.
I woke up and wandered.
Dr. Baker came out of the lab.
“Good morning, Doctor.”
“Oh, yes. Good morning. I guess we’ll have breakfast instead of a tour of the lab,” he said.
As we ate, I caught up on what I had missed. Quant and Meda passed me memories of what had transpired in the time I was unconscious and fevered.
When the infection had taken root and none of the antibodies my pod helped me produce seemed to work, the bears had led us to the doctor’s research station. It had been a two-day hike to the station, which was an underground bunker, hidden in a pine forest. I remember brushing the needles with my fingers, though this was Meda’s memory, not mine.
The doctor had been happy to receive us and his medical supplies had cured me in the day we had been there. We had pretended to be a trio and a duo again, because
we had no idea if the doctor was associated with the OG; now we knew that he was not. It would not have mattered if we had shown ourselves as a quintet; his facility had no connectivity with the outside world.
In the tour, he had proudly shown us the equipment he had used to build his ursines: the one we had met was the sixth in a line of pods. He was proud of their bonded nature and was certain they shared basic thoughts.
My guess that he had no idea how intelligent the bears were was correct. He had no way to understand what or how they thought. He based all his conclusions on observed characteristics and dissections.
Did he … ?
No, our bears are in a pen next to the lab,
Meda replied.
He has no idea what he’s created or that we can communicate with the bears,
I sent.

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