The Golden Space (9 page)

Aleph, Teno, and Ramli were on the dock, tying up the canoe they had taken out that morning. The young ones had wisely decided not to stay out on the lake. There was still time to have a meal inside one of the lodges before going back to the village.

Gurit, dressed only in a beige short-sleeved shirt and brown slacks, did not seem to feel cold. She smiled sympathetically at Josepha, then walked out onto the dock to make certain the canoe had been tied up properly. There was really no need to check. The children usually made only one mistake before learning a skill.

She was wondering idly whether they should turn the canoe over on the dock instead when she heard a voice. “Josepha?” She turned and saw Warner and Nenum scurrying down the hill toward the lake. She waved at them.

“I didn’t think anyone would be out here today,” Warner called as she came nearer.

Josepha smiled. “No one else is. Believe me, we wouldn’t be either if we’d known it was going to be this cold.”

Warner, dressed warmly in a red coat, smiled nervously. Nenum hurried down to the dock to greet the others. “We thought that as long as we’ve walked this far, we might as well eat before going home.”

“We were just about to have lunch ourselves.” Warner’s eyes did not meet hers. “You must join us,” Josepha continued. “I miss you. I don’t see you as much lately.”

“I wasn’t sure if you wanted to.”

“Oh, Warner. You’re my friend.” Josepha took Warner’s arm as they began to climb the stone steps that led to the lodge, a large log cabin surrounded by evergreens.

“He loves you, Jo.” Josepha, startled, let go.

“What do you mean?”

“I can tell. He hasn’t said so, but it’s obvious. I think he’s afraid to tell you. I don’t know why. Maybe he’s not sure how you’ll take it.”

She was about to reply when she saw something move in the woods above. A man stepped from behind the trees. He was looking down toward the lake. He was dressed entirely in white; there were dirt and grass stains on his knees. He held his hands behind him, as if concealing something. Thick, dark, shoulder-length hair hung around his face.

He stood fifteen meters above them without moving. Josepha stopped and glanced quickly at Warner.

“Visitor?” Warner murmured.

“Alone? Out here?” Josepha looked back at the man. Farther up the hill behind him, a small robot moved swiftly toward the stranger on its treads. And then the man quickly raised his arm and she saw the weapon, a small silver cylinder.

He aimed. She heard Gurit scream, “Get down!” A beam of light flashed
from the weapon.

Josepha turned numbly. Gurit had thrown herself over one child’s body, two others lay near her, the fourth … something was wrong with the fourth. There was another flash of light, shocking her out of her paralysis. She looked back.

The man’s headless torso toppled over into the foliage. For a moment she thought the robot had fired on him; then she realized the man had turned his weapon on himself. The robot reached his side and stood there helplessly, too late.

She turned to Warner. Her friend’s head shook from side to side soundlessly. She held out her hands to Josepha, then spun around and ran down to the children. Josepha followed her.

Gurit stood up, her hands on Ramli’s shoulders. Teno, still lying on the ground, looked up. Josepha thought: They’re safe, they’re all right.

Gurit reached out to Aleph and pulled her child near her. But another small body did not move. Josepha suddenly realized that she could not see Nenum’s red hair. Warner was running to the small, still body.

Josepha rushed to her friend, throwing her arms around Warner. “Don’t,” she managed to say. Warner pulled away and finally stood over her child.

Nenum, too, was beyond revival, head burned off by the visitor’s weapon. Nenum’s mother was silent, clenching and unclenching her fists, shaking her head, staring at Josepha with black, frightened eyes. Josepha opened her mouth and found she had no voice. Her knees buckled and she sat down hard on the ground, hugging her legs with her arms. Dimly, she saw Gurit go to Warner.

Warner began to wail. Gurit held her. Aleph observed them with pale green eyes. Josepha drew her legs closer to her chest.

Teno and Ramli were standing over her. She thought: We should go, I can’t keep them here with this, what do I say, how can I explain it? Fear swept over her and she found herself shaking. Teno reached out and held her hands until she stopped.

Others, she knew, would be there soon. The robot had probably already signaled to them. The machine intelligence, having failed to protect them, waited on the hill, its head slowly spinning as it continued to survey the woods. It held the weapon in its metal fist. The children were silent, watching her with calm, questioning eyes.

Josepha wound her way past the cots and mats, trying not to disturb the children who lay on them. The young ones had been living here in the recreation hall for a week, always watched, never left alone or allowed to wander. Two robots stood in the back of the room; another was posted near a doorway.

Kelii Morgan sat in a straight-backed chair near the mat where his child Alani was sleeping. He was unarmed; the robots would stun anyone entering the room with a weapon. She motioned to him. He did not move. The children slept, breathing rhythmically. They had not rebelled against the restrictions placed on them.

She moved closer to Kelii. “Should we go downstairs now?” she whispered. Alani stirred slightly. Kelii leaned over and adjusted the child’s blanket.

“I’ll stay here,” he replied softly. “Go on, Josepha, you can tell me what happened later on.”

“Sure you don’t want company?”

“Go on, it’s all right. I want to be here in case one of them wakes up.”

She left the room and hurried down the ramp. Below, in the room where the children usually played and studied, parents sat among the desks, computer consoles, tables, and chairs. Most of them sat on the floor. A few were on benches near the walls. Here three robots also stood guard, and she knew that there were others outside.

Chen Li Hua, who had taken it upon herself to call the parents together, stood under the screen in the front of the room. “Where’s Kelii?” she asked in her flat, hoarse voice.

“He wants to stay upstairs.”

“Then we might as well start, and I’ll say what I have to say.”

Josepha saw Chane near the doorway and made her way to him, sitting down next to him on the floor. “Where’s Merripen?” a man asked, and she recognized the voice of Edwin Joreme.

“I didn’t ask him,” Li Hua replied. “I didn’t ask anyone except parents to come here tonight. If any of the others arrive, as I suppose they might, that’s fine, but I think any decisions we make should be ours.” She cleared her throat and squinted; her eyes became slits. “Some of us have been asking for better security here all along, for restrictions on visitors, for supervision of any stranger who came here. We allowed ourselves to be talked out of it, supposedly for the good of the children. You see where that got us. It’s time we insisted on whatever we think is right.” The small woman brushed a hand over her short cap of straight dark hair.

Chane, looking sad and pensive, reached for Josepha’s hand and held it. “They’re gone,” he murmured to her. “I went over to their home and Li Hua told me. They left this morning, before anyone was up.”

“Where did they go?”

“I don’t know. Vladislav went with two psychologists. Warner left with a friend who came for her.”

She was silent, thinking of what she could have done, what she could have said to Warner and Vladislav, what she had been unable to do. It had not been enough, holding Vladislav while he sobbed, calming Warner, trying to figure out how to bury poor Nenum after skin scrapings had been stored for possible cloning.

Josepha had aided Warner in arranging a small ceremony in the foothills beyond the nearby woods. She, Chane, and Gurit had accompanied Warner and Vladislav. As they stood, watching two robots place the small body in the ground, Josepha realized that the ceremony had been a terrible mistake. They were marking an irrational act, an insane act completely outside the fabric of their society. They could gain nothing from Nenum’s death. The death of any child would have been horrifying enough in former times; even during ages when such deaths were commonplace and expected, there had at least been the hope of a life beyond or the harsher view that the deaths of the weak might make future generations stronger. Their discovery that the murderer had been a man with two suicide attempts to his credit only made the whole thing more absurd.

Josepha, standing with her friends, had found herself praying, clinging to the hope that the visions she had glimpsed so long ago were real. She wanted to speak of them to Warner and Vladislav, offer them something that would ease their pain. But she kept silent, thinking they would not understand or, worse yet, think she was mocking them with false hopes.

Warner had rejected the idea of raising Nenum’s clone and had talked Vladislav out of it, too. Instead, she had gone to Merripen, asking him to have the experience removed from her memory. He had called in a psychologist; at last they had agreed. It was a delicate business, this erasing of one’s memory, and Josepha knew it would help Warner only in the short run. Her friend would lose the past nine years, but eventually she would become aware of discontinuities or blank spots, and would attempt to fill them in; the memories, little by little, would return and have to be faced. And in the meantime, a black emptiness would exist in the back of her mind to bother her without her ever being quite sure of what it was until the recollections returned, perhaps wrenchingly, in dreams and disassociated fragments. Better to let time handle it, better to absorb it, face it, and let it fade. Merripen, she was sure, had agreed to the procedure only to assuage his own guilt and sense of failure in his responsibilities. The psychologist should have treated him.

But no psychologist could treat a biologist without the biologist’s request. The biologists had created the society and sustained it with their techniques; to question the motivations of one would be to question the society. Eventually, of course, the children, these children of Merripen’s mind, might question it and seek to change it, and then Merripen would be held to account, but not yet.

Li Hua was still speaking, apparently answering another question. She paused, and Josepha saw Gurit rise to her feet.

“Listen,” the former soldier said firmly, “you have something to tell us and you’ve been beating around the bush. Make your point, Li Hua.”

“Very well. You all know about those who want to exile the children. Now, some think we should have raised them with other children from the beginning, but most of us thought that would be a hardship, that there might be animosity, or a lack of understanding between the two groups. In any event, we thought it wiser to wait until the children were older, and we did encourage visitors, which was probably a mistake as I see it. The children are better off developing in their own way.”

Gurit coughed. “The point, Li Hua, the point.”

“I propose that we agree with the proponents of exile and move to a space colony of our own as soon as possible.”

Gurit sat down. Everyone absorbed the statement. A few shook their heads. Amarisa Drew, a tall Eurasian who was one of Yoshi’s parents, waved an arm. “How is that going to solve anything?” she asked in her musical voice.

“It will ease the fears of those who distrust the children,” Li Hua replied. “Security precautions will be simpler. The children won’t have to face hostility. Any latent talents they have can develop more openly. Later, when they’re older, they can return or lead out their lives wherever they choose.”

“One moment, please,” Dawud al-Ahmad called out. “Why should such a measure help? Why wouldn’t those who fear the children grow more afraid in their absence? Ignorance is usually a greater spur to fear than knowledge.” He tugged at his short beard. “Wisdom cannot grow in isolation.”

“There’s a practical problem,” Kaveri Dananda said, “that you haven’t mentioned either.”

“And what is that?” Li Hua asked.

Kaveri stood, adjusting her green sari. “What is to prevent a group of the insane from attacking our little colony in space?”

The Chinese woman shook her head. “Such an action requires planning and teamwork, something I hardly think fanatics would be able to do successfully.”

“Nonsense,” Kaveri replied.

“An isolated attack like the one Josepha and Gurit witnessed is one thing, a concerted attack quite another. Most people now have lost a good deal of the ability to work with others smoothly—we have been cultivating our individuality for too long. Disturbed people have this tendency to an even greater degree.”

“But we would be vulnerable,” Kaveri said. “And I think you underestimate the driving force of a mad idea deeply held.”

“We would have ample warning. We could defend ourselves, and could station ourselves at such a distance from others that we would constitute no threat.”

“But we could still be attacked,” Dawud said. “Here, at worst, a few of us could survive. In space, we might all …” He held out his hands.

Josepha found herself rising to her feet. Nervously, she surveyed the room. Li Hua turned toward her.