Greg Bear - Darwin's Children

In this zoo, who were the animals, really?

“What happens when someone disagrees? Do you compel her? Him?”

Stella thought about this for a few seconds. “Everyone is free in cloud, but they cooperate. If they don’t agree, they hold that thought until the time is right, and then cloud listens. Sometimes, if it’s an emergency, the thought is brought up immediately, but that slows us down. It has to be good.”

“And you enjoy being in the cloud?”

“Being in cloud,” Stella corrected. “All clouds are part of each other, just smeared out. We sort the differences and stuff later, when the demes catch up. But we don’t get to do that often, so most of us don’t know what it’s really like. We just imagine. Sometimes they let it happen, though.”

She did not tell Mitch that those were the times when nearly everybody got taken to the hospital to be sampled, after.

“Sounds very friendly,” Mitch said.

“Sometimes there’s hate,” Stella said soberly. “We have to deal with it. A cloud feels pain just like an individual.”

“Do you know what I’m feeling, right now?”

“No,” Stella said. “Your face is kind of a blank.” She smiled. “The counselors smell like cabbages when we do something unexpected./ They smelled like broccoli when we caught colds a few days ago./

“I’m over my cold now and it wasn’t serious but we acted sicker to worry them.”

Mitch laughed. The crossed intonations of resentment and wry superiority tickled him. “That’s pretty good,” he said. “But don’t push it.”

“We know,” Stella said primly, and suddenly Mitch saw Kaye in her expression, and felt a rush of real pride, that this young woman still came of them, from them. I hope that doesn’t limit her.

He also felt a sudden burst of longing for Kaye.

“Is prison like this?” Stella asked.

“Well, prison is a bit harder than here, even.”

“Why aren’t you with Kaye, now?”

Mitch wondered how he could possibly explain. “When I was in prison—she was going through rough times, making hard decisions. I couldn’t be a part of those decisions. We decided we’d be more effective if we worked separately. We… couldn’t cloud, I guess you’d say.”

Stella shook her head. “That’s fit , like drops of rain hitting each other. Slipskin is when the drops fall apart. Cloud is a bigger thing.”

“Oh,” Mitch said. “How many words for snow?”

Stella’s expression became one of a simple lack of comprehension, and for a moment Mitch saw his daughter as she had been even ten years ago, and loved her fiercely. “Your mother and I talk every few weeks. She’s busy now, working in Baltimore. Doing science.”

“Trying to turn us back into humans?”

“You are human,” Mitch said, his face going red.

“No,” Stella said. “We aren’t.”

Mitch decided this wasn’t the time or the place. “She’s trying to learn how we make new children,” he said. “It’s not as simple as we thought.”

“Virus children,” Stella said.

“Yes, well, if I understand it correctly, viruses play all sorts of roles. We just discovered that fact when we looked at SHEVA. Now… it’s pretty confused.”

Stella seemed, if anything, offended by this. “We’re not new?”

“Of course you’re new,” Mitch said. “I really don’t understand it very well. When we all get together again, your mother will know enough to explain it to us. She’s learning as fast as she can.”

“We’re not taught biology here,” Stella said.

Mitch clamped his teeth together. Keep them down. Keep them under lock and key. Otherwise, you might prime their fuse.

“That makes you angry?” Stella asked.

He could not answer for a moment. His fists knotted on the top of the table. “Of course,” he said.

“Make them let us go. Get us all out of here,” Stella said. “Not just me.”

“We’re trying,” Mitch said, but knew he wasn’t being entirely truthful. As a convicted felon, he had a limited range of options. And his own sense of resentment and damage reduced his effectiveness in groups. In his darkest moods, he thought that was why he and Kaye were no longer living together.

He had become a political liability. A lone wolf.

“I have lots of families here, and they’re growing,” Stella said.

“ We’re your family,” Mitch said.

Stella watched him for a moment, puzzled.

Joanie opened the door. “Time’s up,” she said.

Mitch spun around in his chair and tapped his watch. “It’s been less than an hour,” he said.

“There’ll be more time tomorrow if you can come back,” Joanie said.

Mitch turned to Stella, crestfallen. “I can’t stay until tomorrow. There’s something…”

“Go,” Stella said, and stood. She came around the table as Mitch got to his feet and hugged her father again, brisk and strong. “There’s lots of work for all of us.”

“You are so adult now,” Mitch said.

“Not yet,” Stella said. “None of us knows what that will be like. They probably won’t let us find out.”

Joanie tsked, then escorted Mitch and Stella from the room. They parted in the brick corridor. Mitch gave her a small wave with his good arm.

Mitch sat in the hot interior of his truck, under the low Arizona sun, sweating and near despair, lonelier than he had ever been in his life.

Through the fence and across the brush and sand, he saw more children—hundreds of them—walking between the bungalows. His hand drummed on the steering wheel.

Stella was still his daughter. He could still see Kaye in her. But the differences were startling. Mitch did not know what he had expected; he had expected differences. But she was not just growing up. The way Stella behaved was sleek and shiny, like a new penny. She was unfamiliar, not distant in the least, not unfriendly, just focused elsewhere.

The only conclusion he could come to, as he turned over the big engine in the old Ford truck, was a self-observation.

His own daughter scared him.

After the nurse filled another tube with her blood, Stella walked back to the bungalow where they would watch videos after dinner of human children playing, talking, sitting in class. It was called civics. It was intended to change the way the new children behaved when they were together. Stella hated civics. Watching people without knowing how they smelled, and watching the young human faces with their limited range of emotions, disturbed her. If they did not face the televisions, however, Miss Kantor could get really ugly.

Stella deliberately kept her mind clear, but a tear came out of her left eye and traveled down her cheek. Not her right eye. Just her left eye.

She wondered what that meant.

Mitch had changed so much. And he smelled like he had just been kicked.

BALTIMORE

The imaging lab office was separated from the Magnetic Resonance Imager—the Machine—by two empty rooms. The forces induced by the toroidal magnets of the Machine were awesome. Visitors were warned not to go down the hall without first emptying their pockets of mechanical and electronic devices, pocket PCs, wallets, cell phones, security name tags, eyeglasses, watches. Getting closer to the Machine required exchanging day clothes for metal-free robes—no zippers, metal buttons, or belt buckles; no rings, pins, tie clasps, or cuff links.

Everything loose within a few meters of the Machine was made of wood or plastic. Workers here wore elastic belts and specially selected slippers or athletic shoes.

Five years ago, right in this facility, a scientist had forgotten the warnings and had her nipple and clitoris rings ripped out. Or so the story went. People with pacemakers, optic nerve rewiring, or any sort of neural implants could not go anywhere near the Machine.