The Forever Watch (2 page)

That was that, and this is this. The rest of my life.

The loss of concentration releases the toothbrush. It falls and clatters around the drain.

I focus on my face again. Maybe it's not so bad. The chrome brings the sepia and umber highlights out of the brown skin and makes my round face a little sharper, a bit more adult. The green eyes look brighter because the cheek-plates catch some of the light and reflect more of it onto my eyes at an angle, and it brings out the hint of orange-jade at the edges of the irises. Maybe it doesn't look too bad with the white-yellow hair either, makes the long waves seem less like generic blond and more like something with an exotic name, such as maize.

Someone is knocking on the door. I know, without a reason why, that it's Mala.

“Come in!”

It is. She stands behind me and puts her hands on my shoulders, bare in my patient's shift. Her palms are warm but her fingers are cool. She's smiling with her eyes but not with her mouth.

“You're growing up.”

Then I am crying, and I don't know why, and she's crying and hugging me.

 

 

I trigger the cutout procedure, and my sensorium returns to now.

Here I am, in another hospital, looking in another mirror—only, I am thirty years old.

I know now why Mala was crying that day I was twelve and marveling over my new Implant and my shiny future. Because she would have to let go of me soon. Because I would forget her, too busy with training school and new friends and all the great things I would do with my talents, which put me squarely beyond the ninety-fifth percentile: one of the ship's elite, requiring earlier and more demanding training.

Life, she had told me, only went forward. But the Implant's memory features defy that. An idle thought relives a past moment as if it were the present. The distinction between yesterday and decades ago seems only a matter of semantics.

Now, I am not looking at my face. I am looking at my body.

It is as if nothing has changed between my going to sleep nine months ago, and my waking up today. Only Doctors with the strongest
healing
handle Breeding.

My arms and legs are smooth and wiry, the muscles not at all atrophied, despite the long period of inactivity. No scars or stretch marks cross my belly. My breasts are not particularly swollen or tender. I look down and cup the folds of my sex, and they are the same color, the inner lips the same size, and internally, when I clench, the muscles tighten around my fingers and the fit is snug.

It is as if I were never pregnant, as if I had not given birth mere days before.

I am crying, and the tears are hot. Mala is not here with me, and I do not want to see the Behavioralist waiting in the receiving room.

For women on the ship, Breeding is a duty and a privilege. Fertility is perfectly regulated. There are no slipups.

Perhaps there was with me. I am not supposed to feel any different now. It is supposed to be a long, paid vacation spent asleep. During that time, a woman's body is just a rented incubator. That's all. The baby may not even have been made with an egg from my ovaries. The father could be any of the thousands of male crewmen with favorable genetics.

Somehow, I know. Despite the lack of physical evidence, I know it in my body, in the flesh.

I have a baby out there.

Behind the meds, there is a longing to hold something tightly. There is a yawning cavity inside my body, which was filled and stretched, and now is empty.

I wash my face carefully and put on the patient's gown. Pink for a female—comfortable and warm. I bite down on the resentment of how much easier this is for male crew members. For them, Breeding Duty is a bit of awkwardness that can be done away with during a lunch break.

When I walk out and take my seat, the woman in the deep-green coat and spectacles processes me. She asks me the same questions I filled out on the form. I answer the same way. I smile and nod where appropriate.

But there is no deceiving a professional. The eye on her forehead is three times the size of her biological eyes, and the silver coat on her lips is solid, gleaming chrome. The circlet she wears glows green and gold and is actively drawing on the Noah's power. She
reads
me with the combined insight of centuries, empirically derived heuristics analyzing my posture and the muscle twitches on my face, as well as the mind-bond forged by her psychic ability and amplified by the circlet. Empathic and telepathic probes slide through my head with the delicacy and grace of a dancer prancing around onstage.

“Ms. Dempsey, it seems as if Dr. Harrison was a touch too conservative with the suppressors, that's all.”

“Which means?”

“What you're feeling is just a by-product: traces from a slight amount of telepathic contact with the fetus. It's not supposed to happen, but no Breeding is exactly the same. Some embryos are stronger than others. It's nothing physical. Dr. Harrison assures me that your hormones have been rebalanced and stabilized.”

“I see.”

“No need to feel so anxious, Ms. Dempsey.” She licks her lips and her fingers tap away at the black slab of crystal in her hand.

This Behavioralist is more practical than Dr. Harrison was. He liked to show off and gesture and point in midair.

The psi-tablet she uses is an interface device for accessing the ship's systems. Though everything can be done directly through the Implant, it takes continuous concentration and focus to do so—any misthought comes through as an error, can cause a typo in a document or slide in incongruous data, a flash of imagery, a scent, a taste. The psi-tab and larger hard-line desk terminals are easier to use for long durations, and for certain applications they can be endowed with stronger security than the sometimes leaky interface of discrete data packets passing between wetware and hardware.

“There we are. I've modified your prescription. The system will ping you with reminders when to take it. The orderly will administer a dose just before you are released. More will be in your mailbox in the morning. Be sure to follow the instructions.”

She flips the faux-leather cover on her tablet closed and stands.

“Is that it?”

“Yes, that's it. You'll be expected back at work tomorrow. You are discharged.” She pauses, looks to one side as she accesses the Network. “Yes, the paperwork has gone through. The Noah and humanity thank you for your service. When you check your account, you will see that the standard amount has been deposited.”

A week of evaluations, and the Behavioralist never even told me her name! Typical.

I take a deep breath just as those tall, black heels are about to pass the threshold of the doorway. “Could I, perhaps, just have an image of him, or her? Just a static two-D?”

She looks back at me and purses her lips. “You were briefed, Ms. Dempsey. You know that is not permitted. I'll adjust the dosage a tick upward. Now, let's not speak further of this.”

The urge to weep is strong. I fight it down. “Have you gone through this too?” She has gray hair, so by that age …

Those steel eyes soften. “Of course, Ms. Dempsey. Only postbirth Behavioralists see to Breeding patients. Go home. Take your meds. Buy something nice for yourself with the compensation package. You'll feel right as rain.”

I try to imagine that it will be so. But still, I want to hold my child, just once. I hope the drugs help me forget soon.

2

As promised, the orderly comes by. Still smiling. Flirting. He holds my wrist rather familiarly with one hand and administers my last intravenous dose with the other.

Call me,
he messages. Not mind-to-mind, as he has no telepathic talent, but through the standard messaging app preloaded on everyone's Implant.

To home then, by way of a ride in a long, sleek, white car. One last service provided for Breeders. The driver does not try to make small talk. Does he do this every day? What else does he do for BD Central? I could find out. It would take a few seconds. But everything seems to take so much effort. Just paying attention. Numb. The cityscape slides by in the windows. He stops, and here I am, at Torus—a ring-shaped building with clean, upper-class apartments for officers. Gray carpets, sterile steely lights, tastefully selected prints of ancient Earth art.

I could have afforded better years ago, but never got around to it. Moving would be inconvenient and I am set in my routines. But maybe it's time for a change; maybe that's what I'll do with the Breeding compensation. Put in the down payment for a lifetime rental on an actual house, in the same exclusive neighborhood where my friends live.

Up the elevator to the twelfth floor and I am swaying now, stumbling to my door. I have not done anything today but think and wait and I am exhausted.

I think the password to the lock, and there they are, laughing and cheering. They have glasses, they are eating, they are so close around me, touching my shoulder, my arm … They are very, very loud.

“Heya, D! So, what was it like?”

“Oh, come on! She was just asleep. It's not—”

“Give her some goddamn room!” Barrens's voice booms as he shoves them aside without a care for their complaining. He looks down at me and smiles what passes for his smile. Half snarl, it is harsh and a little cruel. “Eh. Hey. I told 'em a party wasn't a good idea, but—”

For a moment, we just stand there, him looking down and me looking up, for perhaps a little too long, while music and conversation pound the space around us.

“Come on, join in!” the others insist.

There are balloons of different colors. There is a cake with ten candles on it, surrounded by platters of steaming food. It's a carrot cake layered with enough sugared cream to induce diabetic shock. There is fettuccine with a cream sauce. There is tofu, breaded and delicately fried, seasoned with miso and spring onions. There is fresh bread, and an assortment of expensive cheeses. Most pricey of all, there is animal protein—an actual fish, steamed and stuffed and glazed with a sugary, peppery crust. In all, it represents resources that would cost an average crewman an entire month's income.

That is not a problem for Lyn and Marcus, who probably pushed the idea of this party to its completion.

Lyn is a project leader in Nth Web Development and Maintenance, one of the research arms of Information Security. And Marcus is the director of Water Management. It would not have taken much for them to convince Jazz, who loves any opportunity to party. She does research in High Energy Physics, but is not like the stiffs in her department.

Technically, as a City Planning Administrator, I am higher ranked and in a more direct line of command to one of the Ministers of the Council, but the internal hierarchies of the departments under the individual Ministries are not straightforward, and the three of them are all paid somewhat more than I am, though even I earn many times what the average crewman on the ship makes.

We met back in school, long before we qualified together for the Class V Training Center, the second-most-prestigious career-preparation track there is.

They are dressed in actual organic silk and cotton, wear shoes of leather, and have jewelry with real gold.

The rest of the less luxuriantly attired attendees are from our respective departments. Mostly young, ambitious kids a year out of their training groups, waiting for the opportunity to get ahead, get promoted, and replace us, and a few older officers who hit their ceiling and will never reach any higher.

My old schoolmates direct the evening's course and keep the social contract going. We chat about things that don't matter. They tell me about all the events I missed out on while I was on Breeding Duty, and I cannot help thinking that for all the things they talk about, nothing has changed between before and the present. Nothing, but myself.

Then there is Barrens. Barrens does not fit in with the rest of us. He is at least half a foot taller than anyone else in the room, and broader too. His clothes are cheap plastech processed to look like a plain, white, stretch T-shirt, and denim pants, and functional black shoes. His complexion is pale and watery—too many night shifts, not enough simulated sun.

He is quiet after that first loud moment. The looks he gets from my other friends and our coworkers are curious, amused. Lots of arched brows.

Some murmuring.

“The guy with the medals?”

“Heard he got written up or something.”

If I can hear it, Barrens, whose senses are sharp even when he isn't enhancing them with the Power, can hear it.

He doesn't offend easily. He just shakes his head and walks out to the balcony, a giant trying not to step on the normal-size people in his way. Out there, he starts puffing on his cigarettes, watching me through the glass.

I want to throw them all out. I do not.

They fill the air with conversation, about Web streams I've missed out on, old Earth movies being shown in the theaters, and minor improvements in the fidelity of the sky and weather simulation. They make me feel a little less empty. Everyone does his or her part, a show of caring. Of course the young ones from our respective departments are here more for the food, and for a chance to hang out with the superiors they depend upon for their quarterly performance evaluations and recommendations.

By midnight, the party has wound down and only the terrible three are left, with Barrens content to be an outsider, still puffing away on the balcony. The discussion becomes only marginally more personal. We talk about our school days, about bad dates and old drama and parties and sadistic teachers. The three take turns mentioning men they want to introduce me to.

“Come on, Hana,” Lyn says. “You haven't dated anyone in years and years.”

“I just like to focus on work.”

“Yeah, that's exactly the problem. You need a man, dearie, to scratch that special itch. Isn't that right, Marcus?”

He laughs, puts up his open hands. “Leave me out of this one.”