The Golden Space (20 page)

“That was my vision.” Teno’s voice was stronger.

“It can’t be.” Giancarlo’s voice shook. He peered at the console, tracing the panels with his fingers. “Something must be wrong.”

Hilde stood up. She looked around the room; her eyes were narrowed. “You know what it means,” she said. Her voice was loud; it filled the room. “You all know what it means. It means that Teno has no soul. The way to the higher state is closed to such beings.”

Giancarlo was shaking his head, as if denying the words. Mikhail got up and went toward Teno, then stopped, as though afraid to be too near his friend.

“You know I’m right,” Hilde went on. “This is the sign. The biologists have created beings who cannot reach the higher state, and we must now oppose them. What greater crime can there be?”

Nola gazed at the others. Even Yasmin, eyes wide, was nodding her head. Teno rose slowly, then walked past Mikhail and toward the door. Nola looked up as Teno passed her; the blank gray eyes met hers for a moment. She looked down.

Teno was gone.

She heard a snort. Leif was laughing, covering his mouth and nose with one hand. “You know I’m right, Giancarlo,” Hilde was saying. “If we don’t stand against them, they’ll continue their evil work. Can we enter the higher state with that on our conscience?”

Nola could not bear it. She leaped up and ran from the room, stumbling down the stairs in the darkness. She imagined the stairs continuing endlessly, leading her to a black, subterranean realm. She reached the bottom and hurried toward the door. The sunshine made her blink; she covered her eyes.

She went to Mikhail in the evening. He was alone in his house, seated by the pool. One hand dangled, rippling the water.

Nola said, “Come with me.”

“You should have knocked.”

“Come with me.”

Mikhail was silent.

“I thought you cared about Teno. How can you stay here after what happened to your friend? Teno will have to leave now. Only people with souls can stay.”

He looked up. “I can’t go.”

“You must.”

“You saw what happened, Nola.”

“Yes, I did. It doesn’t matter. Your visions are illusions; this proves it. They may be nature’s way of easing death, of making it less painful.” Something in her recoiled at the words.

“That’s not what it proves.”

She wanted to strike him. “You can’t stay, Mikhail. If Giancarlo goes on, he’ll have to try to stop anything the biologists attempt to do. Maybe he’ll start with speeches and spreading the word, but it won’t stop there. When that doesn’t work, there’ll be stronger measures. You saw Hilde. She meant it. You ought to be able to figure out what she might want to do.”

“I must stay, Nola.” His blue eyes searched her face, as if he wanted to say more.

She raised a hand, let it fall, and hurried from him.

As she strode toward Yasmin’s house, she noticed that Leif’s tent and cart were gone. He would try to warn others. She stared at the spot where his tent had been, hoping he would succeed. She had almost been fooled herself. She could no longer recall how she had felt when, for a brief moment, she had believed Giancarlo.

Yasmin was standing next to the hovercraft. Nola had already packed her things. “I’m sorry you’re leaving,” Yasmin said.

“I’m not sorry,” Nola replied.

“I wish you’d stay. If you would endure the little death, you’d understand.”

“Would I? Maybe I’d be like Teno. Maybe I wouldn’t see the correct vision.”

Yasmin shook her head. “Oh, no. You’re human.”

“Am I? Are you sure? Where do you draw the line? How many genes have to be altered before you lose a soul? Is there a gene for that, too? Maybe somatic changes would do the trick. If the soul’s not made of matter, then how can altering the body change it? You’d better start asking questions, Yasmin.”

Nola got into her hovercraft and pulled away. As she turned toward the gate, she saw a shadow in the road. A hand was raised. Nola stopped.

Teno came to the side of the craft. “May I go with you?”

“Where to?”

“There’s a town one hundred kilometers south. I have friends there.”

“Get in.”

Teno walked around the vehicle and got in on the other side. Nola drove through the open gate and did not look back.

They moved toward a hill. “Didn’t you bring your things?” she asked.

“There’s nothing there that I need.”

She glanced at her passenger, thinking she detected bitterness in the words. But Teno seemed composed. “Did it bother you, Teno?” she said carefully. “Going through that, I mean.”

“Why should it bother me? I had no expectations, and my curiosity was satisfied.”

She signaled her implant and set the vehicle’s course, then leaned back. “Maybe you lied. Maybe you lied to them about your vision.”

“Why would I lie?”

“I don’t know. Maybe you wanted to see what would happen. Maybe you were doing a little experiment of your own. Maybe you wanted to find out whether Giancarlo would abandon his ideas, or find another way to explain what happened to you.”

“Is that what you want to think, Nola? Would it make it easier for you to accept his ideas then?”

“I don’t care about that.”

“Perhaps you do. I saw what I said I saw.”

The sky was growing dark. She would see the stars soon, and the familiar black heavens she knew. She would travel through a comforting darkness. She would leave; Earth would once again be a distant globe on the horizon. In the caverns and enclosures below Luna’s surface, she would no longer have to look at it at all.

She thought of her work. She would return to it, watching the clouds and gathering the storms, her implant murmuring to her all the while, guiding her again. She might turn her attention from the earth to the stars. The dynamics of a galaxy, awesome and stately, dwarfed human lives; but were they more interesting, more meaningful, than the jagged orbits and splintered attractions of human existence?

She needed her humanity, with all its narrowness, to feel dwarfed, to be awed, to think the galaxy stately. She needed the smallness of self-conscious intelligence. She would fall around Earth, weightless and alone; yet not alone. She needed the peopled earth to be there; but she also didn’t need it.

The Summer’s Dust

I

Andrew was hiding. He sat on the roof, his back to the gabled windows. He had been there for only a few minutes and knew he would be found; that was the point.

He heard a door open below. “Andrew?” The door snapped shut. His mother was on the porch; her feet thumped against the wood. “Andrew?” She would go back inside and find that he was still near the house; tracing the signal, she would locate him. He glanced at his left wrist. The small blue stone of his Bond winked at him.

He looked down at the gutter edging the roof. The porch’s front steps creaked, and his mother’s blond head emerged. A warm breeze feathered her hair as she glided along the path leading down the hill. From the roof, Andrew could see the nearby houses. At the foot of the hill, two kobolds tended the rose garden that nestled near a low stone house. The owner of the house had lived in the south for years, but her small servants still clipped the hedges and trimmed the lawn. Each kobold was one meter tall, and human in appearance. On pleasant evenings, he had seen the little people lay a linen tablecloth over the table in the garden and set out the silverware, taking their positions behind the chairs. They would wait silently, small hands crossed over their chests, until it was night; then they would clear the table once more. A troll stood by the hedge; this creature was half a meter taller than the kobolds. The troll’s misshapen body was bent forward slightly; its long arms hung to the ground, fingertips touching grass. At night, the troll would guard the house. The being’s ugly, bearded face and scowl were a warning to anyone who approached; the small silver patch on its forehead revealed the cybernetic link that enabled it to summon aid.

Farther down the road, the facets of a glassy dome caught the sun, and tiny beings of light danced. Andrew’s friend Silas lived there with his father Ben and several Siamese cats. Andrew frowned as he thought of Silas and of what his friend wanted to do.

Andrew’s own house was old. His mother had told him it had been built before the Transition. Even with extensive repairs and additions to the house, the homeostat could not run it properly. The rooms were usually a bit warm, or too cold; the doors made noises, the windows were spotted with dirt.

He watched his mother wander aimlessly along the path. Joan had forgotten him, as she often did. They could be in the same room and she would become silent, then suddenly glance at him, her eyes widening, as if she were surprised to find him still there. His father was different; Dao was completely attentive whenever Andrew was around, but content to ignore him the rest of the time. He wondered if Dao would ever speak to him at all if Andrew didn’t speak first.

He moved a little. His right foot shot out and brushed against a loose shingle. Andrew slid; he grabbed for the windowsill and held on. The shingle fell, slapping against the cement of the path.

Joan looked up. She raised her hands slowly. “Andrew.” Her voice was loud, but steady. He pulled himself up; he would not fall now. Joan moved closer to the house. “What are you doing up there?”

“I’m all right.”

She held her arms up. “Don’t move.”

“I’ve got my lifesuit on.”

“I don’t care. Don’t move, stay where you are.” Her feet pounded on the steps and over the porch. The front door slammed. In a few moments, he heard her enter his room. Her arms reached through the open window and pulled him inside.

Andrew sighed as she closed the window, feeling vaguely disappointed. “Don’t ever do that again.”

“I’m wearing my lifesuit.” He opened his shirt to show her the protective garment underneath.

“I don’t care. It’s supposed to protect you, not make you reckless. You still could have been hurt.”

“Not at that distance. Bruises, that’s all.”

“Why did you do it?”

Andrew shrugged. He went over to his bed and sat down. The bed undulated; Joan seemed to rise and fall.

“Why did you do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do I have to have a kobold follow you around? I thought you were too old for that.”

“I’m all right.” I wouldn’t have died or anything, he thought.

Joan watched him silently for a few moments. She was drifting again; he knew the signs. Her blue eyes stared through him, as if she were seeing something else. She shook her head. “I keep forgetting how old you are.” She paused. “Don’t go out there again.”

“I won’t.”

She left the room. He rose and crossed to the windows, staring out at the houses below and the forested hills beyond. His room suddenly seemed cramped and small; his hands tapped restlessly against the sill.

Andrew was sitting on the porch with Dao and Joan when Silas arrived. The other boy got off his bicycle and wheeled it up the hill to the porch. He parked it and waved at Andrew’s parents. Joan’s thin lips were tight as she smiled. Dao showed his teeth; his tilted brown eyes became slits.

Andrew sat on the steps next to Silas. His friend was thirteen, a year older than Andrew. He was the only child Andrew had met in the flesh; the others were only holo images. Silas was big and muscular, taller than Joan and Dao; he made Andrew feel even smaller and slighter than he was. Andrew moved up a step and looked down at the other boy.

Silas rose abruptly. Brown hair fell across his forehead, masking his eyes. He motioned to Andrew, then began to walk down the hill. Andrew followed. They halted by the hedge in front of the empty stone house. The troll waved them away, shaking its head; its long tangled hair swayed against its green tunic.

“How about it?” Silas said as they backed away from the hedge.

“What?”

“You know. Our journey, our adventure. You coming with me? Or are you just going to stay here?”

Andrew held out his arm, looking at his Bond. “We can’t go. They’ll find us.”

“I said I’d figure out a way. I have a plan.”

“How?”

“You’ll see,” Silas said. He shook his head. “Aren’t you sick of it here? Don’t you get tired of it?”

Andrew shrugged. “I guess.”

Silas began to kick a stone along the road. Andrew glanced up the hill; Joan and Dao were still on the porch. They had lived in that house even before bringing him home, making one journey to the center to conceive him and another when he was removed from the wombart. They had gone to some trouble to have him; they were always telling him so. “More people should have children,” Dao would say. “It keeps us from getting too set in our ways.” Joan would nod. “You’re very precious to us,” Joan would murmur, and Dao would smile. Yet most of the time, his parents would be with their books, or speaking to friends on the holo, or lost in their own thoughts.