The Golden Space (34 page)

“I’ve favored them,” Domingo said. “Once again, I’ll live among them for a while. Perhaps I will leave them a child.” Merripen glanced at him, and Domingo smiled. “That man who brought you here—he’s one. That’s why he holds the rank he does. I brought his mother to the temple here and lay with her. Of course, I had to put her in suspension afterward while I made adjustments in the zygote, but she carried the child to term and I blessed it.”

Karim’s eyes were narrowed with anger. “Why?” he said hoarsely.

“Can’t you see?” Domingo waved his arm at the village. “There is no evil here. There is no sin, only innocence. It is a paradise, in a way. We ourselves might have risen from that state, or fallen from it.”

Merripen looked down. Everything in him recoiled from the man and what he had done. “You did it for power,” he said. “Whether or not it’s right has no meaning for you.”

Domingo seized his arm. “Look below. Are they unhappy? They are what they are. I’m not the first biologist who ever made a new sort of being. If it hadn’t been for me, they wouldn’t exist.”

Merripen could not speak. Karim opened his mouth, then closed it again. Domingo let go of his arm. “It didn’t begin this way,” he went on. “At first, it was only a small experiment. I made a few and raised them. I had a question to ask. Were we once this way, bicameral people with divided minds? Did our self-consciousness arise when the complexity of the mind made it know itself, when the connections between the two hemispheres grew stronger and the cerebral cortex developed further? I wanted to test the theory, but then I realized I couldn’t do that with only a few individuals. I wanted to see what a community could do, to know how such people would live from day to day, how much they could manage, whether it was indeed possible for such people to build, and farm, and make pottery, and make a community, and plot the courses of the stars, and do all the things our ancestors did, without knowing themselves. So I made more, and gave them tools, and sent them out.”

A breeze fluttered Domingo’s hair; the sunlight gilded it. A cloud drifted in front of the sun, and Domingo’s face was shadowed. The lips under the blond beard were drawn back; the gray eyes were bluer. Karim was a dark specter in white, arms folded, a silent judge.

“It was painful to observe them,” Domingo said. “Many died. But they learned quickly, perhaps because I couldn’t heartlessly leave them to themselves. Even now, I help them. I give them food if there’s a danger of famine. I try to make their lives a bit easier.”

“Did you prove anything, then?” Karim asked.

“It’s difficult to say. I suppose they could go on without me, though it would be more unpleasant without the things I’ve given them. But it’s hard to think of leaving. I’ve been with them so long.” He stroked his beard. “I have to keep to a rather rigid schedule, visiting the villages at specific times for seasonal festivals, accepting offerings, speaking over the holo, sometimes staying in one place for a while.”

“We stopped at a town called Harsville,” Karim said, and his voice was strained. “It had been burned. Some of the people there were murdered. Was that an offering to you? That’s where we were when we were found. Was that their doing, these innocent folk of yours?”

Domingo stepped back. “I didn’t know about it until too late. I would have stopped it otherwise. Believe me, the ones who did it were punished.” He held out his hands. “You have to understand. The people there tried to defend themselves, but you can’t do a good job of that when your enemy has more men to send against you, and no fear.” He lowered his hands. “They’re breeding. They have many children. They’ll need a new village soon. Eventually, I may lose control—I don’t know.”

“What are you going to do about them?” Karim asked.

“What would you suggest I do?” Domingo said harshly. “Kill them? Terminate the project?”

“You could begin to change them,” Karim responded. “You could introduce normal children into the population and change it within two or three generations.”

“Oh, no. I would only have other godlings contending with me for control, and they would have an unfair advantage over the others. It would change the society at the cost of great suffering. Is that what you want? Imagine these people having to live through that, with no way to fight it or even to know what is happening to them.”

“You could make them sterile. Call them to the temple and make the adjustments—you can do that.” Karim tilted his head. “The ones alive now could lead out their lives, but there would be no children.”

Domingo lifted his head. “You’re talking about genocide.”

“I’m talking about ending this project.”

“It would be genocide. They’re here now—they’ve living beings. They have a right to their existence, and to their children’s as well.”

“You made them.”

“It doesn’t matter who made them now.”

Karim turned and paced to the edge of the roof and stood at the top of the marble steps. A woman below looked up, then bowed. Merripen thought: What makes us do things like this? What perversity makes it seem reasonable? He shivered; the air was turning cool.

Karim walked back to them. “You talk about their right to exist,” Karim said, “but you let them die. You could have made them immortal—you have the means.”

Domingo had no answer to that. Karim walked toward the opening in the roof and disappeared down the steps.

“There will be more of them, then,” Merripen said.

“Probably. They have many children.”

“And that means that the rest of us will either have to confront them eventually or keep retreating. Didn’t you consider that?”

“I have. It’s no concern of mine. Our world is dying anyway. We’ll either choke in its decay or abandon it. These may be our heirs.” Domingo gestured at the people below.

Merripen was silent, thinking of his own project. His children were to have been the inheritors if humankind did not adapt. He felt as though Domingo had stolen their heritage.

“Think of it,” Domingo went on. His broad chest rose and fell under the red robe. “Their society will grow in complexity. Sometime in the distant future, if my hypothesis is correct, they will know themselves. And I will have made them. They’ll worship me even then, even when I no longer live among them. They’ll be a new human civilization, and everything they do will be because of me. There’s beauty in it. Can’t you see that?”

Merripen backed away. Domingo was mad. Perhaps the isolation from others like himself had made him mad, or maybe he had always been that way. He thought: We’re all like him. We don’t know ourselves. The old brain rules, and reason makes up stories after the fact.

Domingo held out a hand. “Follow me,” he said. Merripen was unable to refuse. He followed the golden-haired man down the steps. People bowed as they passed them in the streets. They came to a house; a woman with silver in her hair and a baby in her arms met them at the door. Domingo said something to her, growling the words; she bowed and left them. They walked inside.

A young woman, hardly more than a girl, stood before them. Her long dark hair hung to her waist; her cheeks were pink. She glanced fleetingly at Merripen with her brown eyes, then knelt, one arm out.

“She’s yours,” Domingo said. “Do you understand? She won’t question it, and you’ll do her family an honor. They’ll pray that she has your child. Go on.”

Merripen stared at the slender form, realizing with horror that he wanted the young woman, that her passivity had stirred an old instinct within him. His legs carried him toward her. She raised her eyes to his face. There was a malignancy in her gaze for a moment, an evil, calculating look, as though she had suddenly linked the disparate thoughts in her mind. Then it was gone. Her lips curved and her eyes pleaded, slaves of instinct’s force.

Merripen turned away and fled. He stumbled through the street, stopping near another house. He leaned against the cool stones. Clothes rustled and voices murmured as people gathered near him. A little child grabbed his leg. A woman tried to pull the child away, but Merripen picked him up and held him, pressing his cheek against the curly hair. “You can choose,” he said to the child. “You can choose.”

Domingo came up to him, took the child away, and led Merripen back to the temple.

Domingo told his story to Andrew and Eline that afternoon. Andrew had said nothing to Merripen about his reaction; Eline had remained silent and sullen. Domingo had disappeared into a room near the holo, closing the door behind him; Andrew had muttered something about finding a way out and had gone up to the roof with Karim.

Merripen found Eline by the glass-topped table, helping herself to wine from the dispenser. She poured out a glass for him and put it on the table with the wine bottle and her own glass. She threw herself into a seat and gulped the pink liquid.

Merripen sipped. “This must be disturbing for you,” he said awkwardly, “feeling the way you do about biological experimentation.”

She shrugged, drained her glass, and poured another. Merripen lowered his eyes. All of them seemed to have arrived at an unspoken agreement; they had not told Domingo that she was a Rescuer, and she had not volunteered the information. Neither had they told the blond man that Karim and he were biologists. If they were to stick together, they couldn’t let Eline know that, and they had to stick together if they were to find a way out. Domingo might eventually let them go, or he might, if he sensed divisions among them, toy with them instead; he was used to manipulating people. Merripen wanted to ask the man certain technical questions about his original experiment, but could not without revealing what he was.

Guilt stung him again. For a moment, he had been thinking of Domingo only as another scientist. Had he done anything Merripen had not done himself? Merripen had created humankind’s possible successors, while Domingo had made their ancestors live. Domingo’s children had made him a god, while Merripen’s had abandoned him.

“Cheer up,” Eline said. She was pouring another glass of wine. He watched her warily. She was drinking too much; he did not want her confronting Domingo in an alcoholic rage. “We’re safe enough for now.”

“As long as Domingo’s happy with us.”

“Oh, I think he is, so far.”

Merripen narrowed his eyes. “Were you planning to flirt with him?”

“Is that a suggestion?” she said harshly. “Don’t be ridiculous. You heard what he said. He’s used to stupid cow-eyed women who submit to the god. He wouldn’t be interested in me. He’s been eyeing Andrew, though. That would be a nice contrast for our host, a virile, forceful fellow after all those servile females.”

Her cheeks were flushed; her lips glistened. Merripen reached for the bottle, not because he wanted more wine, but because he did not want Eline to drink any more.

“It might not be such a bad idea,” she went on. “Maybe Andrew could force him to take us back to Harsville.”

“No. I’ll tell him to be patient. He’ll listen. He may not like it, but he’ll listen.”

She toyed with her glass, twirling it by the stem. “Maybe Domingo didn’t have such a bad idea. I ought to get him to take me into the town. I might have a nice, agreeable man who’d enjoy making love to the god’s friend.”

“You wouldn’t like it,” he responded, too forcefully. Her eyes widened. “You don’t seem that disturbed by what he’s done. I thought you would be.”

“You think I’m simpleminded.” She drank; he saw her throat move as she swallowed. “He said that he had created human beings without self-consciousness. We don’t object to anyone making something that once existed—an extinct species, for instance. That’s what these people are.”

“That’s only his theory. He hasn’t proved it. He never can. He can only show that it’s possible.”

“He must have had evidence for the assumption.” She paused. “I’m not saying others like me would accept it,” she continued in a low tone, “but then they’ve never confronted this sort of situation. I must hope for some guidance.” Her eyes stared past him, as if she were no longer conscious of his presence.

Merripen heard Eline pacing during the night. He listened, afraid to open his eyes. In the morning, she seemed calm; she even smiled at him.

She took to following Domingo around. She peered from behind the door when Domingo welcomed his priests and sat on the steps near the roof whenever he held a ceremony there. She even began to learn the language of the community. It had once been an old, dead language, chosen by Domingo; now it lived and had been changed.

At least Eline had found something to do. Karim rested and slept, as if he were still ill, while Andrew divided his time between spying on Eline and looking for a way to escape.

Merripen sat at the table with his breakfast. He had fallen into passivity and depression; the temple seemed the only place on Earth. He was unable to concentrate. He had been watching Domingo for a sign that he was tired of their company and would let them go, but the man, while ignoring them most of the time, seemed to want them around.

He stared at his coffee cup, as if slowly becoming conscious of the china. He had always eaten this sort of breakfast at the Citadel—cereal, fruit, two cups of coffee, no more, no less. He had, unknowingly, been armoring himself in old habits, as if the familiar routines would turn the temple into his home instead of his prison. In two hours, he would exercise; at night, he would wash before going to sleep. If he kept at it, the habits would become chains.