Only Superhuman (6 page)

As Emry grew older, Lyra and Richard always encouraged her to play with other children, but her rapid advancement made it difficult to gain their acceptance or form lasting bonds. Her parents remained her closest friends, their home her safe haven. Emry always loved their periodic trips to Davida, the “county seat” for Greenwood and other small Outers habitats on similar orbits. She was enthralled by its urban habitats, its bustling crowds, its diverse population and entertainments. But that was nothing compared to her excitement at visiting the Central and Inner Belt when Lyra booked a performance tour or Richard went to help with a disaster. She devoured the history and cultural diversity of the Ceres Sheaf, the glamour and glitz of Vestalia and Rapyuta. Once they even went to Earth to visit her mother’s family in Tennessee, though Emry was uncomfortable in a place where the ground curved the wrong way and there was nothing holding in the air but gravity. Still, she wanted to go everywhere and see everything, so long as she was always with her parents. She felt no particular ties to Greenwood; outside her house, it was never a place where she felt at home. But to Lyra, for all its problems it was a haven from the chaos of the Belt. And for Richard, it was the one place where he could be among family since he’d made his break with the Vanguard. It was the one subject on which Emry and her parents could never see eye to eye.

October 2091

“Mrs., uhh, Blair-Shannon?”

“Yes, hi! What can I do for you?”

“You have a daughter named Emerald?”

“… Is she all right?”

“I’m afraid there’s been an … accident, ma’am.…”

“My Goddess … please, is my baby all right?”

“She hasn’t got a scratch, ma’am. But the boy she attacked is in critical condition.”

*   *   *

Emerald’s mommy and daddy never yelled at her like the other kids’ parents did. They never did anything mean to punish her. They just got
very
disappointed. And it worked. Emry didn’t understand how other parents thought yelling and punishing would make their kids feel guilty. Usually it just made them feel angry and defensive, like they were being treated unfairly. But when Emry saw that her parents were sad or hurt because of something she did, it made her feel that she’d been unfair to them. She couldn’t pretend, like the other kids did, that she’d done nothing wrong. Because she loved Mommy and Daddy more than anything and couldn’t bear to think she’d hurt them.

Lately, she’d been starting to think that was very smart of Mommy and Daddy, because it got her to do what they wanted. But she didn’t think of it as a trick. It made her feel like they were treating her as an equal, trusting her to be responsible for them. And there were never any grudges. They always forgave her, and never did anything that she would need to forgive.

Right now, though, Emry didn’t know how they could possibly forgive her. When they came to the police station and held her and comforted her, she almost pushed them away, because she didn’t think she deserved it. But she didn’t push them away, because she was afraid of what would happen if she struck out at anyone again. And she was afraid of getting the blood on them. It looked like it was all washed off, but she could still feel it.

“Is he going to die?” she asked in a tiny, timid voice. She was only six, but she knew death. She’d crushed that little bird last year without meaning to. The strength in her fast-growing hands had frightened her then … but that was nothing compared to this. The other kids were right … she was a freak, a monster. A killer.

Daddy stroked her hair and smiled reassuringly, even though he was still sad. Until now, his strong, gentle touch had always comforted her, because she knew she’d be completely safe so long as he was around to protect her. But now it wasn’t her own safety she was worried about. “No, sweetie,” he told her. “Sean’s in the hospital, and they’re taking good care of him. He’s going to be fine.”

“Do you know? How do you know? He was, he was so … broken and, and it was all bleeding out and I felt things squish in him! I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t mean to, I just got so angry! I didn’t know he’d break so easy! I only wanted him to take it back, Mommy!”

“Take what back, love?” Her voice was the most beautiful sound Emry had ever heard. Every night that voice sang her to sleep, made her feel safe and loved. Sometimes she thought she remembered being tiny, still small enough to be carried in Mommy’s arms, and hearing that sweet, soft sound as she was rocked back and forth. And even here, even now, that voice was so gentle, so forgiving. It made her feel like everything was all right. But she knew it wasn’t.

“What he said.”

“Did he insult you?” Daddy asked.

“No, he—” Emry didn’t want to repeat it.

Daddy knelt closer. She was already big enough to be eight or nine—Sean was nine—but he was big too and had to kneel pretty far. “Emry, tell us from the beginning. The whole story, okay?”

So she told them. Starting at the beginning was easier. The kids on the block had decided to play
Annie Minute and the Time Trippers
. Emry asked if they’d let her play Annie this time, but they never let her play Annie, or Millie Second, or even one of the Groupie Gang who carried the Time Trippers’ instrument/weapons. When they let her play at all, she always had to be a Zelkoid or a Neanderthal or a Mega-Golem. They never even let her be one of the cool bad guys, like Kali or Tyranno Sora. Sean always got to be Ringo Planett, and he always blew Emry up with a cymbal mine the first chance he got, and she had to spend the rest of the game being dead.

“So I got tired of that, and I asked them why they never let me be Annie or Millie or anyone but a monster. And, and Sean said it’s because I was a monster.”

“Oh, Emry,” Mommy said. “We’ve been through this before, right? You know not to listen.”

“But that wasn’t it. He said, he said Daddy was a freak who … who should never have been born.” She was embarrassed to repeat it. “And then … and then he said I’d never have been born either if … if you hadn’t been such a … someone who’d marry anybody.”

Mommy caught what she tried to hide. “Emry, love, what did he say? Such a what?”

“He called you a slut! He said you were dirty! He had no right to say that about you, Mommy! I couldn’t let him get away with it! So I…”

Emry stopped when she saw the look in Mommy’s eyes. The look of horror and shame that Sean was in the hospital because of her. Emry broke down in tears. She’d wanted Mommy to be disappointed in her, in Emry—not in herself.

*   *   *

Richard and Lyra strove to contain their anger and sadness at the prejudice their neighbors still showed them after seven years. It was more important, they knew, to help their little girl make peace with her own power. Richard began giving her martial-arts instruction, seeking to pass on the discipline and emotional balance it had brought him. But she was an intense, impatient child. Because her mind was so quick, her body so energetic, she was always eager to race on to the next thing. Learning stillness and slowness was a labor. Only her fear of her own strength and her determination to tame it kept her focused.

But Emry needed more. She needed role models that could help her deal with both her power and the prejudice of others—something she couldn’t get from the mindless action of
Annie Minute
or the violent Striders-and-Earthers games of her peers. But Richard and others like him had faced the same need for role models, finding them in the imaginative literature of the past: Superman, Wonder Woman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, the Cyborg Corps, Lady M. Characters born or endowed with exceptional power they hadn’t sought, often struggling with their inner demons or with a world that hated and feared them, often making terrible mistakes that would take a lifetime to atone for—but always choosing to dedicate their power to the good of others, to the defense of truth, justice, freedom, and life. Richard and Lyra read these classic stories with their daughter, discussed their ideas and themes with her, kept her engaged and delighted as they pursued a solemn purpose together.

But the fiction was not enough for Emry, to whom superpowers were an everyday reality. She craved to learn if such mighty heroes had existed in real life. Her parents told her about the ninjas of legend who had defended commoners from noblemen’s abuses, creating a mystique around themselves with disguise and deft illusions; about Muslim women who’d used their veiled anonymity for protest and resistance, smuggling everything from literature to weapons to cameras under their
hijab;
about masked Mexican
luchadores
who’d used their glamorous secret identities as a platform for speaking against state corruption without fear of retaliation; about eccentrics who’d organized their own online communities of “real-life superheroes,” usually just playacting but sometimes promoting social causes or deterring minor crimes in their own ways. And Emry already knew about the so-called Troubleshooters and watched their exploits on the news with great excitement. But none of these satisfied her curiosity; she wanted to hear about people like her, and like her father. And this was when Richard grew abashed, while Lyra pressed him to tell Emry about her grandparents.

“It started when humans began to live in space,” he told her once he finally gave in. “They couldn’t survive its radiation without gene therapy to let their DNA repair itself. They couldn’t heal or grow well in low gravity without enhancements to their stem cells. But Earth was running out of things they needed for technology, like helium and rare metals. So they had to live in space to get them.”

“So?” Emry shrugged. “They could just mod themselves.”

“Earth had laws against that. People were worried about how genetic engineering could be abused. A lot of the time, people think it’s better not to try something at all if there’s a chance it can be dangerous.”

“That’s dumb,” Emry said from where she sat on the living room rug. “Just be careful when you use it!”

“That’s right—if you’re careful, you can do a lot of good with power. And that’s what people like the Vanguardians figured out. At first, once people accepted that they had to live in space, they just made the minimum mods they needed to survive. But once a generation of people had grown up in space with those basic mods, some of them began to wonder how much further they could enhance themselves. They figured out that the same stem cell boosts that helped them heal in low gravity could be adjusted to make their bones and muscles stronger in normal gravity, like on Earth or in the bigger habitats they were building by then. Their gene repair could make them live longer and get sick less. Their eye implants to filter sunlight could be tweaked to give them better vision. And so on. Vanguard was one of the first habitats that started trying it. And they snatched up the best geneticists and nanotechnologists to help them.”

“And they made you?”

“You could say that, since those scientists included my mom. She and my dad had themselves changed, and after a few years, when they were confident it was okay, they had me, and I inherited their mods. And when I was old enough, I agreed to let them make some further mods in me.”

“And then I got them from you!”

“That’s right, though they look a lot prettier on you.”

She giggled. “Oh, shut up. So when did they start being superheroes?”

“Well, it was around then that the effects of Earth’s climate change were being felt the most. A lot of places that are water now used to have people living in them. Hundreds of millions of people were displaced from their homes. And many more were suffering from huge storms and famines.”

“Didn’t they just move to space?”

“A lot of them did, eventually. But the institutions that could’ve arranged it weren’t working too well for a while. See, the Molecular Revolution was in full swing by then, and it changed how people lived their lives. Before, they couldn’t recycle everything or harvest any resources they needed from the soil or oceans, and they didn’t have three-D printers and bioprinters to make anything they wanted. So their old economic systems were based on scarcity, and on people having to work to find resources and make things. So after the Revolution, a lot of jobs were lost, and people didn’t know what to do with their lives or how to make their economies and societies work again. A lot of governments and institutions fell apart, and people got angry and desperate, and, well…”

“Yeah,” Emry said quietly. “I know what happens when people get too angry.”

“If they don’t know how to manage it,” Lyra amended.

“But the Vanguardians—mostly a man named Eliot Thorne, who was the most successful mod of your grandparents’ generation—made a decision. They had all these gifts that made them stronger and faster and quicker to heal, so they should use them to help people down on Earth. They knew it was a risk to flout the laws against mods, but they believed it would be selfish not to do what they could.”

“Did they wear costumes to protect their secret identities?” Emry asked him, excited.

“Umm, afraid not, jewel. In real life there are too many ways to see through a mask, or to track people’s movements and find where they came from. And grown-ups on Earth didn’t usually take flashy costumes too seriously. The Vanguardians had a hard enough time winning people over as it was. A lot of folks thought they were just another bunch of troublemakers.”

“Humph. Like J. Jonah.” She stuck out her tongue.

“Kinda, yeah. Or Senator Kelly.”

“Did anyone send Sentinels to get them?”

“Not as such. But there were people who tried to arrest them or make them look bad.”

Lyra interrupted. “But there were just as many people who thought they were heroes, who admired their courage.” She paused. “And their sacrifice.”

Emry’s huge green eyes grew wider with alarm. “Sacrifice?”

Richard hesitated to tell her, but they’d never been dishonest with their little girl. “Yes, jewel. That’s … why you don’t have a grandpa on my side. He … he gave his life to save a whole lot of people from a bomb.”

Emry was quiet for a while and shed some tears. But Richard sensed it was a fairly abstract emotion, since she’d never met either of her Vanguardian grandparents. “And Grandma Rachel?”