A Mosaic of Stars: Short Stories From Other Worlds (17 page)

She settled down into a padded grey chair, and Michael took the one opposite. Cowley lingered outside the door making phone calls – the business of government didn’t stop for personal tragedy.

“You said we needed to talk,” Michael said. “About Chris’s funeral.”

“Yes.” Boyd’s expression was sad, but her gaze didn’t waver from his. “I’m afraid that the genome tests following Christopher’s autopsy revealed a substantial proportion of Neanderthal ancestry.”

Michael frowned.

“That’s impossible,” he said. “Both his parents were human, and born long before the first cloned revivals.”

“I’m afraid it’s not that simple.” Boyd handed him a sheet of paper, showing the results from the test. “Nearly all of us have some DNA from Neanderthals and other archaic humans. So while these tests are successful in keeping Neanderthals out of human cemeteries, they also very occasionally exclude others too.”

“That’s absurd!” Michael rose to his feet. This was where Chris’s family was buried, where he’d wanted to be buried. The thought of not doing that stirred up all the pain of the past few weeks, and he found himself choking on his own words. “Can’t you change your rules?”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “If I had my way I would open up the gates and let those protesters win. Everybody would be buried here, homo sapiens or Neanderthal. You know that they bring flowers to the graves? We won’t even let them bury their families here, but they still make sure that the graves are tended.”

“Surely you can make an exception.” He felt desperate, nothing but her denial sinking in. “I have money. I can make a donation to the cemetery. Or to you, if you prefer.”

“Minister.” She rose and placed a gentle hand on his arm. “You should be careful. That almost sounded like a bribe. And I’m afraid that the law is clear, a law that you voted for. The Prime Minister said, ‘we do not force people to be buried in the same ground as pets, can we make them accept graves alongside anything other than our own species?’”

“Then there must be something wrong with the test. Chris was a human being!”

“Do you think she isn’t?” Boyd pointed out through the glass doors, past Cowley, to where an aging Neanderthal in a long coat was placing sunflowers on one of the graves.

“But the test is for being a true human.” Uncertainty and grief made Michael wobbly on his feet. He leaned against the door, forehead pressed to the cold glass.

“The test is for Neanderthal DNA,” Boyd said. “What you’re talking about is far harder to pin down.”

The Neanderthal woman looked directly at Michael. She didn’t wave or make that strange little frown others used to tell him how sorry they were. But her eyes communicated her understanding of his hurt more completely than anybody saying “I feel sorry for your loss.”

“Her husband died recently too,” Boyd said. “That’s not his grave, of course.”

A sense of conviction rose in Michael, one he hadn’t felt since his first election campaign. He stood up straight, turned and shook Boyd’s hand.

“Thank you for taking the time to talk,” he said. “I’ll contact the undertaker about Chris.”

He opened the door and strode out into the snow. Cowley, seeing his master spring into action, snapped his phone shut and scurried after him.

“Is the funeral arranged?” Cowley asked. “I have the invitations ready.”

“No.” Michael stopped in the cemetery gates, looking out at the sad, silent faces of the protesters. He felt like he might cry at any moment, like only the drive to act was holding him back. “Contact the media. We have other things to deal with.”

He joined the crowd, making eye contact with each quiet figure in turn, falling into the moment of shared sorrow. Tears ran down his cheeks, yet he felt a lightening of his burden, a sense of release.

“Then call the Prime Minister,” he said, turning to the shocked looking Cowley. “I don’t think he’ll want me in his government anymore.”

He pulled out his own phone, found a picture of Chris and showed it to the Neanderthal next to him.

“My husband,” he said.

The Neanderthal pulled a picture out of his pocket, a smiling Neanderthal woman in a flower print dress.

They stood together in grief.

Broken Phones and Empty Bellies

The bottom of the air barge opened, spewing thousands of tons of abandoned technology across the empty wasteland. Even before the broken computers and old phones had stopped falling, Mei dashed out to start rummaging through the heaps, one of hundreds of children hoping to scavenge enough metal to feed themselves for one more day.

Mei at least had one advantage over the other zinc monkeys. Before she ran away, Lok had replaced her middle finger with a scanning pen that flashed different colours depending on the metal content of the rubbish. She still remembered the pain of the rusty sheers slicing through her finger, but she was grateful for the scanner.

With swift, practiced movements she cast aside the useless items, dropping the more valuable ones into her sack. A circuit board here, a battery there, anything with enough precious metal to make it worth melting down. She ignored the numbness of her feet and the desperate hunger in her belly, just kept on digging.

A tablet flashed as she pulled it from the heap. In surprise, Mei tapped the cracked screen and watched it flare into life. The battery was nearly dead, but it had enough energy to show her that it was still full of files, the former owner having forgotten to purge it. There were accounts here, and what looked like a diary.

Hastily, Mei thrust the tablet through her belt and pulled her shirt over it. Her breath quickened in excitement. Data was worth more than all the gold and zinc she’d ever gathered. If she took it to Lok he could identify the owner through the DNA with which rich people marked their property. He might use the accounts to raid their funds, blackmail them with the diary, even get them to pay to have their own data back. And Lok was never as vengeful as he was greedy – he would pay well for this, and not beat her much.

The sound of helicopters made her look up. Figures with guns were descending on ropes all around the heap of discarded electronics, their armoured masks creating a faceless ring surrounding the zinc monkeys.

“This land has been re-zoned as a municipal dump site,” a metallic voice announced from speakers under the helicopters. “All refuse will be processed by the Ryu-Bok Corporation. You will be searched and escorted off the site.”

Mei cursed. The Corporation were getting quicker. They must have had the re-zoning writ on the mayor’s desk before the refuse had landed, again claiming all the resources under their government contract.

Abandoning her sack, Mei raced toward the edge of the heap, the tablet still pressed against her stomach. If the guards were busy she might get through a gap. They couldn’t catch everyone, could they?

A mercenary appeared around a heap six feet ahead of Mei. He raised his gun.

Mei twisted on the spot and dashed back among the heaps. Pain jolted her arm as a rubber bullet clipped her, but she kept going, weaving between the piles of rubbish and the other panicking children.

As she ran she kept glancing at her surroundings, desperately searching for anything that might help. She couldn’t outrun the guards, but how else could she keep the tablet? And without getting something from this drop, how could she feed herself?

She scrambled up a heap of broken mainframes. Her clumsy scanning finger caught on a metal edge and she winced as its rough connectors dug into her flesh. Behind her, someone else was coming up the heap.

At the top she stopped, looking around for the best way to run. A Ryu-Bok guard was clambering up behind her, a government inspector in a grey suit coming from the other direction. She was trapped.

She glanced back at the guard, and then at the inspector. The inspector might arrest her if he found her carrying the tablet, while the guard would surely beat her. Which was worse? How many years’ freedom were broken bones worth?

Pressing her hand against her belly, she felt the cold, flat surface of the tablet. Tears welled up inside her. She had come so close to something precious, only to have it snatched away. It could have been hers, just as it had belonged to whoever’s DNA it was marked with.

She gasped as a desperate hope glimmered inside her. The guard and the inspector had almost reached her. She only had seconds.

Closing her teeth around the scanning finger, she wrenched her hand away as hard as she could. There was a moment of agonising pain as the scanner separated from her flesh, and then blood poured from the empty finger socket. With her other hand she pulled out the tablet, then wiped the wound all across its surface, covering it in blood.

Her pursuers reached the top of the heap and stood staring at her.

“This is mine.” She held up the tablet. “It is marked with my DNA.”

“That can’t be legal.” The guard’s voice was muffled and inhuman.

“Probably not.” There was doubt in the inspector’s voice. “But do you want to cause the test case?”

“Not for what I get paid,” the guard said. “Not for the sake of a broken old tablet.”

“Come on, kid.” The inspector shook his head. “You’re not allowed here.”

Mei followed him down the heap.

“Can you take me to a hospital?” She felt wobbly, like she might fall over at any moment, and blood was still running from her hand. But she clutched the tablet tight. For the next month, she would not go hungry.

Faces

The Alt-Face mask was tight against Casey’s skin. It still worked perfectly after years of use, months with these features, so long that she seldom noticed the pressure of the wires on her skin. The face she saw in the mirror almost felt like it could be her own.

As far as the Foreign Minister knew it was her face, just as her name was Janice Long and she’d spent her life working as a personal assistant. He’d started to trust Janice, to let things slip. A few more days and she would have the details of the treaty negotiations. A few more days and she could move on to whatever life the agency sent her to next.

She trailed along behind the minister and his cloud of bodyguards, carrying his computer and the suitcase with his notes for the President. He laughed and pointed as they passed a cheap Alt-Face store, the dummies in its windows shifting to show the latest trends. One showed a face like member of a girl band, just different enough to avoid copyright infringement. The next a licensed imitation of a b-list actress. Next to that was a dummy showing a range of custom-designed faces. Faces which morphed, to Casey’s horror, into her own.

The minister pointed and laughed again, turning back towards her. His bodyguards turned too, but they looked less amused. Hands reached for under-arm holsters as they glared suspiciously at Casey.

There was no time to think, but then there was no decision to make. If they checked then they would realise that this wasn’t her own face, and then the questions would come.

Still clutching the computer bag, Casey turned and ran.

Barging her way through crowds of shoppers, she heard some shouting indignantly at her, others yelling in alarm as armed men followed behind.

She ducked into a network of back alleys, silently cursing the rip-off merchants who’d imitated what was supposed to be a copyrighted face.

By now she was out of sight of the bodyguards, though she could still hear sounds of pursuit. Emerging into an open air market she grabbed a coat off a stall and flung her wallet at the man behind it.

“Keep the change,” she called out, still running as she pulled the coat on.

Letting down her hair, she ducked and weaved between the stalls, looking around for any that sold Alt-Faces, or even the tiny drives programmed with different features. But this neighbourhood was too cheap.

Up ahead, she saw cops approaching between the shoppers, comparing the screens of their phones with every face they passed. It didn’t take a secret agent to work out who they were looking for.

The cops were closing in, and she could hear yells of indignation as the bodyguards shoved through the crowds behind her. Stepping into the narrow space between two stalls, she pressed her hand to her face, felt the wires beneath the thin layer of flesh.

In desperation, she tore it off and kicked it under one of the stalls, then scrabbled at the skin around the sides of her face, trying to remove any traces of its presence.

“Excuse me, ma’am.” The policeman tapped her on the shoulder.

“Yes, officer?” Casey turned towards him.

The man looked down at his screen, then back up at her. She froze as he reached out a hand.

“Sorry about this.” He touched her face, then nodded, apparently satisfied. “Just checking for Alt-Faces. We’re after a criminal who was using one.”

He turned away and carried on between the stalls, leaving Casey standing alone, trembling at her close call, and at a sensation she hadn’t felt in years. As she set off once more through the streets, the ministerial computer and its secrets still in hand, the wind brushed her own bare face.