Mary Rosenblum: The Eye of God

“Can you hear him?’ Zynth peered over her shoulder as Etienne drilled the anchor into the gray stone well back from the cliff edge.

The rock wanted to fracture. Bad stone for an anchor point, but there wasn’t anything better. “I’ll listen when I can concentrate.” Satisfied at last that the anchor would hold, she threaded the tough thin rope through it and tied it off to her harness.

It moved in her hands and she almost dropped it. Bio-fibers, she realized. Another bit of Rethe biotechnology. The rope was woven of thousands of living fibers that could heal minor injuries and responded to direct stimuli such as stress. She tugged once on the rope, then stepped deliberately to the lip of the chasm. For a heartbeat she hesitated, reluctant to trust herself to this ahen rope. Then the wind gusted fiercely, and she swayed with it, leaning outward, with her feet planted firmly on the lip of stone. The rope tensed in her fingers. And held her.

Your small-act-of-defiance ritual, Vilya had dubbed this preliminary testing. Couldn’t she have found a better climbing partner? Etienne asked the staring orb of the Eye. Why Duran? Just because he had provided chromosomes for her daughter? Or had she been trying to wound Etienne—replacing the expert partner with the novice?

It had cost her her life.

There are a hundred labs that can put a kid together for you, she had yelled during their last fight. They could recombine your own gametes. They could use my DNA and… fix what’s wrong. Her voice hadn’t given her away when she had said that. Wrong, because that was how Vilya thought of her empathic talent. As a burden—too much for a child to have to bear.

Vilya had refused to get angry. If we create her, she had said implacably, if some technician snips out sections of your code and replaces them, then what is she? Not you—not me—but our construct. I don’t want that. I want her to be her own person—not our creation.

You’re in love with this Duran, aren’t you? Etienne’s angry words had scalded her throat. Don’t give me that artificial insemination song again either. Maybe I’m a failure, a genetic mutation, but that’s not really the issue, is it? You just want to fuck him!

Vilya had walked out of their condo and closed the door gently behind her. That had hurt the worst—that she hadn’t even slammed the damn door. Etienne had packed and left that afternoon. She didn’t know if Vilya had ever come back to the apartment.

Far below, still water filled the fiord-like channel between this cliff and the rounded mountains beyond. Their blue-white images reflected in water that gleamed purple beneath the baleful glare of the Eye. No wind down there? Maybe the Eye was just trying to blow them off the cliff, she thought bitterly.

She turned around in time to see Zynth lift her face to the Eye, hands weaving a graceful pattern in the air.

Acceptance? Reverence? Worship?

A human empath could read only a few universal emotions. Beyond that, you guessed what the Rethe were really feeling. Zynth’s head was bowed now, and Etienne caught the gleam of tears on her face, within the shadow of her thermal suit’s hood. Her grief she could be sure of. Without another word, Etienne began to rappel cautiously down the cliff. When you trust your rope, your life seeps into it and it becomes part of you. You feel the solid mass of the anchoring stone, feel the quivering strain in the rope as if it is your own tendon and ligament straining, your fingers wrapped around that ring of steel far above. The biofiber rope tensed like muscle in her gloved hands.

The wind snatched at her, tiying to smash her against the wall. Teeth clenched, Etienne fought it. The cliff face was sheer, polished to a smoothness that was eerie. It made her wonder if the damned wind blew forever up here. Grit stung her face and she regretted that she hadn’t asked for goggles. The only holds were tiny cracks and uneven protrusions. It would be a bad climb back up.

And he was down there. Duran. She had picked the wrong place to go over—he was off to the right. She wondered if he had tried to climb down—if he was that stupid. From above, Zynth’s flash beam probed the darkness, a weak finger of light that didn’t penetrate much below Etienne’s position.

An eye for an eye. The words shivered through her and Etienne paused for a moment, looked up to meet the Eye’s stare. She remembered those words most clearly from her childhood brush with religion: An eye for an eye. A life for a life.

Duran’s consciousness was like a whisper in the darkness. His lack of skill had cost Vilya her life. It had cost Vilya’s infant daughter a mother. Etienne’s groping foot came down hard on a ledge and the shock jarred up through the top of her skull. Standing on the bare meter of polished stone, Etienne listened to the wind and the faint murmur of Duran’s dying. Maybe Zynth’s flash beam would find him. Maybe not. He wouldn’t live much longer. Until daylight?

“Zynth?” She raised her voice. “I hear only wind.” Only truth beneath the Eye’s stare. She met it, cold inside, maybe cold forever—but everything has a price. “I’m coming back up.”

“No.” The determination in Zynth’s voice pierced Etienne with memory.

You can’t quit the team, Vilya had said, again and again, when Etienne got tired of the endless meetings, the familiar boring dance of diplomat circling diplomat. We need to understand the Rethe, we need to learn that we are their equals. If we don’t, our spirit will die.

Throat tight, she threaded the loose end of the rope through the autobrake, and searched the rock face in front of her for a toehold. The living rope quivered and she looked upward. “Stop!” she cried as the dark shape of Zynth backed out over the cliff edge. “Zynth, go back up!”

“I cannot.” Zynth’s voice was calm. “This is my punishment—that I should risk my life.”

“That anchor won’t hold us both!” Etienne’s fingers clenched uselessly around her own rope. “Zynth! Stop!”

Zynth’s foot slipped on the polished stone face. Etienne sucked in a gasping breath as the Rethe skidded downward, but the rope jerked her to a bouncing stop before she had fallen more than three meters. Either she had managed to use the auto-brake but not properly, or this living rope had the ability to stop a fall. “Climb back up,” she croaked. “Before the anchor goes, if you have to come down here, I’ll put in another anchor. Do it now. ”

Too late. A gust of wind slammed along the cliff face, striking Etienne like a giant fist. Staggering, gasping for breath, Etienne skidded across the narrow ledge. The rope was stretching, thinning as it took up the strain. Then stone crumbled beneath her, and she dangled briefly over the void. The rope gave. Etienne threw her weight forward, clawing her way onto the ledge.

The anchor was breaking loose. “Climb up!” she screamed into the howling wind. “Damn it, Zynth, climb up. ”

Another hammering fist struck them. A vague shape flapped along the edge of the cliff, stooping like an alien bird of prey. The habitat had torn loose from its anchors. For a moment Zynth was obscured by the twisting folds of plastic. Then the rope convulsed in Etienne’s hands and went slack. Zynth’s scream echoed from the walls as Etienne flung herself against the face of the cliff. Zynth’s falling body was directly above her—seeming to drift downward in slow motion. In another moment, she would hit, would smash her downward and outward, and they would both fall into that dark void beneath the Eye’s mocking stare.

Because I lied, Etienne thought.

Zynth’s wide eyes met hers for a second, sharing fear, sharing death. Then her body twisted convulsively, and she hit the wall, rebounding as she clawed for a hold.