Behind the Eyes of Dreamers (21 page)

Josepha came often to see them at play. The children were already used to each other, having visited each other’s homes frequently. They liked new places and had never clung to a parent in fear. But their play seemed to her a solemn affair. She had expected rivalries, fussing over toys, laughter, teasing, a few tears.

Instead, she saw red-headed Nenum taking apart a toy space city, peering at the different levels and at the tiny painted lake and trees at its center while Ramli looked on. When Ramli grabbed one level, Josepha expected Nenum to become possessive. But the two began to reassemble it together, whispering all the while.

She saw Teno play with a set of Russian dolls, removing each wooden doll from a larger one until the smallest doll was discovered. When Dawli, the frail-looking child of Teofilo Schmidt, came to Teno’s side, Teno willingly yielded the dolls and crawled off in search of another toy.

It was all strange to her. If one played alone, it was because the child wanted to be alone, not because the others left the child out. Josepha searched for tears or the formation of childish cliques, and saw only inquisitiveness and cooperation. Even the muscular, big-boned Kelii, who seemed to be their favorite adult, got no special affection. If he held a picture book on his spacious lap, a child might climb up and sit there, but only to see the illustrations more clearly.

They never misbehaved, at least not in the normal way. If a child wandered off, pursued shortly by a worried parent or psychologist, the young one was usually found investigating a plant or a toy or how a toilet worked. If they were told not to play with the computers until they were shown how to push the buttons, they listened, asked questions, and tried to understand the machines.

On one occasion, Ramli had punched Teno in the stomach. Teno had retaliated with a blow to the arm. Each cried out in pain as Josepha, worried and at the same time almost relieved by the show of normality, rose to her feet to stop it. But the battle was over. The two had learned that violence caused pain.

Although she tried to ignore it, she often felt frustrated. Chane had become more withdrawn, making frequent calls to old friends late at night behind the closed doors of his study. The children could not reward her love with spontaneous displays of affection. She wondered how long it would be before a parent, bewildered by the lack of any real emotional contact with a child, might lash out at one of them.

Josepha and Chane sat in the park with their children. The spring day was unseasonably warm, the blue sky cloudless. A week ago, a third birthday celebration had been held for all the children. The adults had been sociable and gregarious, the young ones solemn and bemused.

Teno and Ramli knelt on the grass, playing an elaborate game with marbles and pebbles; only they knew its rules. Twenty meters away, under an elm, Edwin Joreme lay on a brown blanket with his head on Gurit Stern’s lap. Edwin’s child Linsay poked at the grass with a stick. Gurit had apparently left Aleph, her child, at home.

Edwin was a thin man with ash blond hair who looked almost adolescent. Gurit, auburn-haired, green-eyed, and stocky, was one of the few in the village who still intimidated Josepha. Gurit had been a soldier before the Transition. Although she seemed a friendly, hearty sort, there was something hard in her, a toughness, a competence that made Josepha ill at ease. Watching Gurit, she thought of what the woman must have seen and imagined that she was one who probably savored her extended life instead of simply accepting it.

Edwin sat up and moved closer to Linsay. He spoke to the child; Linsay listened, then returned to probing the ground. Josepha thought that Gurit might have passed as the mother of both. Lines creased her face at eyes and mouth, and in the bright afternoon sunlight one clearly saw the gray hairs framing her face. Chane had once asked Gurit why she had not wanted a more youthful appearance. She had laughed, saying she got tired of seeing young faces all the time.

Edwin was still trying to distract Linsay, murmuring to the child intently. Josepha turned to Chane. He had brought some notes with him, but she did not know what they were about. He was ignoring them, gazing absently in the children’s direction.

“Is something wrong?” she asked.

He shook his head.

“What are the notes for?” They were written in Italian and Swahili, two languages she did not know.

He was silent for a few moments before replying. “Just some reminiscences, personal things, incidents I might otherwise forget.”

“Can’t you just consult the computer records?”

“Those are public records, Josepha. They tell nothing of subjective attitudes or personal reactions. And several incidents aren’t recorded.” His lowered eyelids hid his dark eyes from her.

Impulsively, she touched his arm. Then she heard a cry, a thin, piercing wail.

Edwin was shaking Linsay, muttering under his breath at the child. Linsay wailed. Josepha froze, not understanding what was happening. Chane jumped to his feet, his red caftan swirling around his ankles.

Gurit quickly grabbed Edwin’s arms. “Stop it,” she said firmly. “What’s the matter with you?” He pushed her away violently. Trembling, he stared at his child and then, shockingly, slapped Linsay.

Josepha tensed at the sound. “Why can’t you respond?” Edwin was shouting. “I’m sick to death of it, you’re as bad as a robot, not the slightest human feeling—”

Gurit again seized Edwin, holding him tightly, and this time he was unable to break away from her strong arms. He crumpled against her. Linsay sat calmly, blond head tilted to one side.

Josepha got up. “I think we should go,” she murmured to Chane, feeling that Edwin would not want them to witness any more. Teno and Ramli had stopped playing and were staring at Edwin, fascinated. Josepha thought wearily of all the questions she and Chane would have to answer later.

“We’re going home,” she said to the children.

3

A small death had entered their lives. Josepha and the children were burying the cat.

They had walked to the woods north of the village and stopped at a weedy clearing. Josepha wore a silvery lifesuit under her gray tunic; she always wore the protective garment when in the forest. She stood under a maple tree, shaded from the summer heat, while Teno and Ramli placed the small furry body in the grave they had dug. The children were dressed only in sleeveless yellow shirts and green shorts. Their stronger bones and muscles did not need lifesuit protection.

The children were seven now. Their rapid growth and the cat’s death made Josepha feel she was aging. She could no longer suspend time by living in a permanent eternal stability. Her child had been a toddler so recently. Now Teno was a student, learning to read and calculate or going off with Kelii and a few parents to the lake for a day or two to learn about the outdoors.

Teno was more of a companion to her as well. The child would ask questions about the desk computer, a sandwich, the lilac tree outside, about Ramli and Chane, about what parents were, and after Josepha had explained about Krol, questions about death. The child never smiled, never frowned. Josepha would see only expressions of thoughtfulness, concentration, curiosity, puzzlement.

Ramli and Teno began to cover the cat with dirt and leaves. They had kept the animal for three years; Chane felt that having pets was good for children. They had named the orange and white cat Pericles. Josepha loved animals but had never kept a dog or cat before, knowing that eventually the creature would die. It had been easier, when she lived alone, to watch the robins return to the trees, or the geese fly back to her pond after their migration. She could imagine that the same birds were returning.

The children got along with Pericles in their solemn way. They had learned that tweaking his tail caused him pain and that he would repay any affront to his feline dignity with a baleful stare and the swipe of a paw. They had cleaned out his box, scratched him behind the ears so he would purr, and protected him from the forays of Kaveri Dananda’s cocker spaniel Kali, although Josepha had always felt that Kali, despite the ferocity of her name, was frightened of the cat.

But they had also learned that Pericles would kill. Josepha had not always been able to hide the small birds who were victims from the children. It had been hard for her to explain the cruelties of nature and the instincts of animals that even humankind had not fully escaped. The children had listened and absorbed the information, but she did not know if they were reconciled to it.

Now Pericles was dead. He had disappeared for a few days, to be discovered by Chane near the woods outside the village this morning. The small furry body he had carried home had been unmarked. Josepha, seeing it, had wanted to cry. The children did not cry. Heartlessly, it seemed, they had the computer link sensor scan the body to determine the cause of death, which had been, oddly enough, kidney failure. Then Ramli had kindly suggested that they bury the creature in the woods he had loved.

The children had finished. Josepha went to them and they stood by the grave silently for a few minutes, then began to walk slowly back toward the village.

“Do cats always die?” Teno asked.

“All animals do sooner or later.”

“From accidents?”

“Sometimes. Other times it’s disease, or getting old.” She did not like discussing these matters, but there was no point in shielding the children from them.

“Some people die from accidents too,” Teno said emphatically.

“They don’t have to,” she replied quickly. “If the medical robots get to them in time they don’t, and usually they reach them in time because of the Bond, that’s why we all wear them.”

“Some people want to die,” Ramli said loftily. Josepha was too startled to reply. “I saw about it. They kill themselves or sometimes they kill somebody else or ask somebody to do it and they fix their Bonds so they don’t find them in time.”

“I know that,” Teno replied. “I saw a dead guy on the holo, he shot himself and there was blood all over, he put a bullet right in his head and they couldn’t bring him back.”

Josepha felt sick. She wanted to tell them not to use words like kill, but that would only turn it into a potent obscenity for them. She wished Chane were here instead of home getting dinner ready. “Where did you see such a thing?” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “You couldn’t have seen it at home or at school.”

“Over at Nenum’s,” Teno said.

“Don’t lie to me,” she answered harshly, stopping along the narrow path and turning to confront them. “Warner and Vladislav wouldn’t allow it.”

“Nenum knows how to override.”

She could read no expression in Teno’s gray eyes or Ramli’s black ones. She wanted to get angry, be firm, forbid them to look at such things again, but knew it would do no good. It would only make them more curious.

“Why do they want to die?” Ramli asked.

Josepha shook her head. “It’s hard to explain. Sometimes they’re unhappy or just tired of everything or … people like us used to die, you know that. Many of us still don’t know how to handle long lives.”

“That’s dumb,” Ramli said tonelessly. “I want to find out everything and it’ll take forever. I don’t want to die.”

She smiled at them. “Of course you don’t.” She motioned to them and they resumed walking.

“Is Pericles a ghost?” Teno inquired.

“Where did you hear about ghosts?”

“Kelii told us stories about them. They’re dead people except they’re ghosts, and you can’t see them except sometimes.”

She recalled the voice that had spoken to her years ago and was silent. “Are there ghosts, Josepha?” her child said.

“What do you think?”

“I don’t think there are any.”

“Kelii says it’s made-up stuff,” Ramli said. “He says people made it up because they didn’t know anything. I said if I didn’t know I’d find out, I wouldn’t make it up.”

“Did you ever see a ghost, Josepha?” Teno asked.

“How can she see one if there aren’t any,” Ramli muttered.

“She can think she did.”

“No,” she responded, feeling that she was being honest only technically. She could not explain her own experience and conviction until they were older, though she doubted they would understand her even then.

She thought of all the deaths she had seen and suddenly felt very old, too old to be raising children. The responsibility weighed heavily on her. The decisions were too difficult, the mistakes too frequent. She remembered her own father and mother and the problems they had encountered with her and her brother Charles. Her parents had died in an auto accident a few years after she had married Gene Kolodny. But she had been estranged from them long before, deeply resenting them for reasons never fully understood, knowing she had failed them in some undefined manner but afraid to find out how. After their deaths, filled with guilt and regrets about things left unsaid and undone, she had been forced to put them out of her mind.

They reached the edge of the forest and looked out at the village. The paths were filled with strollers; others sat on the front porches sipping cool drinks. Josepha looked down at Teno and realized that now she could think about her mother and father without the old feelings. It was as if she had a bond with them through the child, as if she was no longer cut off from them even by death.