Gods of the Greataway (12 page)

The girl’s feet were small, and she left a straight trail of small footprints behind her. If that line of footprints were extended from the moving girl toward the water, they would pass directly over a low dune. To the right of this knoll lay a piece of bark, paper-thin, about the size of a man’s chest. To the left of the knoll lounged Antonio, trying to hear the sound of the girl’s approach above the pounding of his heart. The girl would turn right, he knew, choosing not to climb the knoll and choosing not to walk too close to where he lay. So she would see the poem, right in front of her. Antonio, lay propped up on one elbow, hearing his heart and the murmur of surf. Suddenly, hearing a tiny click as two stones met, disturbed by the girl’s passing.

A shadow fell across the dune. She was here. The shadow shifted. She was turning right, around the base of the dune. Antonio gulped as his throat misbehaved. His fingers traced an endless pattern in the sand. Love should be a simple thing.

“Pick it up! Pick it up! Pick it up!” The spectators at the groyne, wickedly knowing, set up a chant.

The girl had paused. Antonio risked a sideways glance from under his hair. She was looking at the bark at her feet. Now another figure appeared, walking diagonally across the beach. A slow geometry of disaster.

The girl had picked up the bark. She was staring at the scrawlings.

“Hello!” The
muscular figure, Hernando, strode toward her. “Coming for a swim?”

She looked up, saw him, then looked back at the bark. Her gaze slid almost to Antonio; her eyes were puzzled. Again she looked at the bark, then shrugged and cast it aside. It fell to the sand waveringly, like a falling leaf. Now she looked at Hernando again, and smiled.

“Coming!” she called and ran toward him. He took her hand and, laughing, they ran together into the waves.

Just two more things happened.

Antonio watched them go, then he stood, brushing the sand from his thighs. He turned around and looked back at the cottages, with the mountains in the distance, and, nearer, the giggling group at the groyne. His emotions surrounded him like a cold mist. He thought for a moment, fought himself, then, unable to bear the pain any longer, reached down into his being, into some core of awareness deep inside him.

Help me, Little People, please help me!

Help?

Make me happy, now. I do not want to love
.

They saw him standing like a rock; then they saw him relax and smile. He gave a little skip and turned, saw them and ran toward them, his heels throwing up puffs of sand. Now he was a carefree boy; he had cast love off like a hermit crab casting off an old shell that had become too confining. Laughing, he joined them at the groyne, shadowboxing, suggesting games. A couple of them became quiet, eyed him curiously, and continued to observe him covertly for the rest of the day. Antonio was a strange fellow. Unpredictable.

*

“He was a nice boy,” said Ana again, remembering. “Why wouldn’t you let me talk to him?”

“He had to be hurt, and I had to observe his reaction. It was a test. Love used to be a very powerful driving force in humans, and Antonio had love. Not many humans did, by that time. That’s one of the reasons they lost the knack of Greataway travel. But Antonio was exceptional, and I had to know if the Macrobe gene was strong enough to defeat his love for you.”

Ana
said sadly, “He never really looked at me, after that.”

“His Macrobes knew he could destroy himself for love of you. You were a very beautiful woman in those days,” said Shenshi dispassionately.

“Some men think I’m not too bad right now,” said Ana, annoyed.

“One thing I never knew. Why did you choose that name? What was wrong with your own name?”

“I didn’t like what I was doing, Mother. I suppose I didn’t want to associate my name with it.”

“But why that particular name? It’s not from this region.”

“Bonnie? It’s an old human legend I got from a terminal of the Rainbow. Bonnie was a cow with a human mind, and a man called Adam fell in love with her. I think the story was intended to mean that human love and sex weren’t the same thing. Bonnie seemed an appropriate name, so I used it. Did you notice how Antonio’s poem spelled it out?” Ana smiled.

“It will be a good thing when you lose your human emotions, Ana. Remember, you only have them because I gave them to you as a disguise while you live among these creatures. You will not have them much longer.”

“Perhaps that will be my loss.”

“When you reach my age, you won’t even remember those emotions. However, young Antonio had them in full measure, and this was recognized by the Cuidadors. They came from the Dome and took him, and shipped him up to their People Planet. He was a perfect specimen from their point of view. He had love — so essential for their Greataway travel. Physically, he was acceptable.

“And most important, the Macrobes were in his genes. So they gained their foothold in the breeding program — unknown to the Cuidadors.”

Ana said thoughtfully, “I haven’t noticed much difference around Pu’este in the last thirty-five thousand years. The Wild Humans are still out here, looking more like barrels every generation. And the Domes … All I know about them is what Zozula tells me occasionally. I haven’t heard of any big changes over the millennia. So what have the Macrobes done lately?”

“They
haven’t been very successful on the People Planet. Although they have a collective intelligence, their sense of self-preservation can lead them into mistakes. They started by neutralizing the human genes that cause ageing, thinking this would insure their survival. Maybe it will, but since their hosts never reach puberty, they cannot reproduce. A thousand of these creatures were produced before the True Humans realized something was wrong. They were placed in isolation in a corner of the People Planet, and as far as I can foretell, they will remain there until the sun goes nova. The Cuidadors call them the Everlings.”

“Poor things.”

“They were the Macrobes’ first mistake,” said Shenshi. “But the Everlings were of little consequence, compared to what the Macrobes did next …”

S
elena
was carrying a memory potto on her shoulder, and the sight of it saddened Zozula, reminding him that the Cuidadors were getting older and having to rely on more and more artificial devices to carry out their jobs. The little primate stared at him with its huge eyes, seeing everything, hearing everything, remembering everything. It was telepathic, too, and whenever it sensed that Selena was groping to recall some fact or incident from the past, it would feed the memory to her as if it were her own. Selena was rarely without her memory potto, these days.

She saw Zozula looking at it. “There’s so much to remember, up on the People Planet,” she said defensively. “The display screens shift so fast … I don’t have time to take it all in.”

They sat around a table in the Rainbow Room. The atmosphere was gloomy. The search for True Humans in the ocean had failed, and meanwhile another seven neotenites had died.

“I’ve asked your man Brutus to make sure the nurses replace all sick neotenites immediately,” Zozula said, and before Selena could object, he continued, “I’m aware that the recent deaths seem to be due to some kind of mental problem, but I want to make sure we’re covering all angles. Brutus tells me there are thirty-four standby bodies in storage, and I told him to use them all.”

“That doesn’t allow us any spares for emergencies,” said Selena, white-faced.

“You’ll
have to ship in replacements from the People Planet.”

“They’re not old enough! The rules state they have to be at least six months old before they’re brought to Earth.”

“We made the rules, Selena,” said Zozula gently. “We can change them.”

Meanwhile, Manuel, listening to the argument with half his mind, was watching the Girl on the other side of the Rainbow Room. She sat at the console, renewing her acquaintanceship with Dream Earth. A prehistoric scene was enacting itself under the vaulting roof of the room. A herd of mastodons strode in stately line along a valley bottom, and Caradoc sat on a rock nearby, bringing the Girl up to date on recent happenings. The Girl looked terribly vulnerable, a mountain of delicate flesh sitting beneath the stamping feet of the mastodons, albeit in another dimension.

She had been very kind to Manuel since the death of Belinda. Kind and sympathetic, and sad. In her present form, she thought, no young man would fall in love with her. (She had never heard the legend of Bonnie and Adam.)

Manuel, looking at her, experienced a rush of pity that made him forget his own sorrow. “There’s only one thing to do,” he said suddenly. “We’ve got to find out what caused neoteny in the first place. If we can do that, we might be able to discover a cure — or the Rainbow might discover it for us. It could be something quite simple, some little thing lost in history. But people didn’t always have bodies like that,” he pointed at the distant Girl. “Something caused it. So it can be reversed. But instead of getting to the bottom of the problem, we’ve been wasting our time running around looking for ready-made True Humans.” Aware that he had been making a speech, he fell silent, abashed.

Selena said, “Neoteny happened over a long period of time.”

“But it must have had a beginning,” said Manuel.

“What I mean is, there’s probably no cure. Humans simply changed, gradually, because they were in the Domes. It happens to animals, when you take the element of threat out of their environment. Juvenile characteristics are retained in the adult form — things like big eyes, high brows, plump cheeks and small noses.”

“Why?” asked
Manuel.

“I don’t know. It may be that childhood becomes lengthened because there is no need for adulthood. It may be a survival factor because the childlike appearance is appealing. Look at that archetype that used to be popular in Dream Earth — remember when all those people were Marilyns? The Girl was one herself, once. Well, those Marilyns had a number of the characteristics of neoteny.”

“I don’t believe all that stuff,” said Manuel. “You’re just saying what your potto tells you.”

Selena flushed. “The potto never makes a mistake.” She reached up and patted the little creature reassuringly.

“The potto only knows what you once knew. You could both have missed something.”

Zozula said quietly, “He could be right, Selena.”

“There’s nothing to miss. Do you think I haven’t checked it all, hundreds of times? Neoteny was first observed in the hundred and sixth millennium, and the Cuidadors became so concerned about it that they founded the People Planet.” Selena dropped all pretense of quoting from her own memory and closed her eyes as she allowed the potto’s thoughts to reach her mind. “Then, around the year 108,270, things started to go seriously wrong. First the Everlings were created, then there was a rush of neotenite births. There have been very few normal creations on the People Planet since …” She opened her eyes, looking a little puzzled.

“There you are, then,” said Manuel. “Something funny happened around 108,270. We have to find out what.”

“I think … Yes, I’ve already tried. There are gaps in the records.”

“We’ll just have to fill those gaps,” said Manuel.

Zozula was eyeing him curiously. “What’s your interest in True Humans, Manuel? Why are you so anxious to help us?”

The youth hesitated. “I don’t necessarily want to help True Humans. I think you’re a bunch of snobs who refuse to admit that Wild Humans have taken over the Earth. No — I feel sorry for all those neotenites who could hardly walk if you unplugged them from Dream Earth. I feel sorry for the Girl.” He watched as the Girl rose awkwardly from her seat at the console and walked heavily and painfully toward them. “Most of all, I feel sorry for the Girl,” said Manuel.

Selena said, “I’ll do my best.”

At that
moment Brutus arrived, in great distress.

*

Brutus was a troubled gorilla-man. He did not know it, but in the Song of Earth he would become famous as one of the great human symbols of compassion, the Specialist who had attempted to save the lives of hundreds of neotenite babies instead of recycling them as he had been instructed to do by his True Human mistress, Selena. He had been caught out, and had received a severe reprimand. Now, still nursing his grievance, he had been helping the raccoon-nurses revitalize the standby bodies. He was carrying out Zozula’s instruction to replace the sick neotenites.

“It’s inhuman, killing all those babies,” he remarked to one of the nurses. “There has to be a better way.”

“Well,” said the nurse in practical tones, “you can’t know they’ll turn out to be neotenites until you’ve created them.” She gave him a quick, sympathetic raccoon smile.

“Maybe we should shut the breeding program down.”

“Then you’ll never create True Humans.”

“We haven’t been able to create a True Human for as long as I can remember.”

“You’re a gifted man, Brutus. Don’t throw your career away.”

Brutus slid another hibernating neotenite into the revitalization chamber. “I’m beginning to wonder if my career is worthwhile. I have to go through all this — the strange creatures on the People Planet, the disappointments with every breeding cycle, the murder of babies whose only crime is being born — all for the sake of True Human form. Well, I’m not a True Human; I’m a Specialist. I have animal genes, and different loyalties. Most of all, I’m loyal to life itself — that’s why I do this job. I love being a part of bringing new creatures into the Universe. But the disadvantages are beginning to outweigh all that.”

The
transparent chamber misted over but they could still see, faintly, the first movements of the awakening neotenite. “We must stick to the rules,” said the nurse. “Try to remember that, Brutus, the next time they give you a batch of babies for recycling.”

The shelves in the hibernating room were all empty now, and Brutus said suddenly, “I thought there was one more neotenite in here.”

The nurse glanced at the indicator on the revitalization chamber. “You must have miscounted. We’ve processed thirty-three.”