Darwin's Paradox (16 page)

The
Café de Fleurs was nestled in a huge natural park in the middle of Darwin Mall. Angel sat with a gleeful smile, facing Gaia across the table, who was obviously enjoying Angel’s appreciation of the strawberry drink in front of her.

“Do you like it?”

“Oh, yes,” Angel responded cheerfully. “It’s very refreshing. I’ve never tasted anything like this before.”

“It’s made from fresh strawberries and has
ambrosia
in it. It’ll make you feel good.”

“I already feel good,” Angel said, giggling and taking another big slurp. Realizing that she hadn’t thought of her dead father or missing mother for sometime, Angel looked up from the delicious thick drink and asked, “Do you think you’ll be able to find my mom?”

“Yes,” Gaia said. “It may take awhile but I have many resources at my disposal. If she’s here we’ll find her.” She took a sip of her coffee then looked at Angel with eyes that glinted like gems. “So, tell me more about your conversations with Proteus. What do you talk about?”

“We don’t actually talk,” Angel explained, pleased that Gaia took an interest in her personal affairs. She slurped down some of the frothy sweet drink and licked her lips. “Proteus just lets me talk to my mom...well it used to, that is,” she quickly corrected herself when she noticed Gaia’s stunned face. “But I think Proteus is interfering now for some reason.” Gaia remained silent and Angel shrugged. “Its chirping sounds also give me a danger sense.”

“You mean it warns you if something is about to hurt you?”

“Yup,” Angel said, taking another gulp of the wonderful frothy drink. “By chirping more excitedly.” She enjoyed these talks with Gaia, who was so interested in her and so understanding. Gaia spoke to her like Angel was her equal. Not like her mother, who still treated her like a child.

“And what about the machine voices?”

“Oh, yeah. They came when my dad and I got here. My dad explained it to me. My mom could hear them too. She’s a veemeld, you know. Aard told me.”

“So are you, Angel,” Gaia said, placing her arms on the table and leaning forward.

Angel gasped. “Really? Just like Carl and Manfred? How do you know?”

Gaia smiled gently. “Well, because I knew your mother. The trait for veemelding is passed down genetically; and because Carl just confirmed it.”

“Wow!” Angel exclaimed. Those three kids Manfred talked about were obviously veemelds, then. Like their parents. Was there a connection between being a veemeld and being able to hear Darwin inside their heads? But then she recalled what Manfred had said about the two Darwin veemeld mothers not being able to hear Darwin, even though their Darwin children could. And why was it that only she and her mother could hear the machines in their heads? Or talk to one another through Darwin? Her brows furrowed thoughtfully. “But what exactly is a veemeld?” She remembered that neither her father nor Aard had ever answered her question.

Gaia folded her hands together and gave Angel a vague smile. “You are the destiny of Icaria,” she answered cryptically. Just as Angel was about to press the matter, someone caught Gaia’s attention in the crowded mall.

He was the same tall man Gaia had talked to at the Games room in the Rec-Center. He was about her dad’s age, with a wrinkled brow and a shaved head and was approaching them with the confident steps of purpose. He stopped several meters short of them and stood expectantly, hands at his side, face deadpan.

Gaia nodded to him and said to Angel. “Speaking of one of my resources, excuse me for a moment, please, Angel. Mr. Dykstra is a busy man—I better speak with him while I can.” She stood up and the two of them walked a little further into the crowd, obviously to get out of Angel’s earshot.

Angel let her gaze wander the mall but found it drawn back to Gaia and Dykstra. She knew somehow that they were discussing her. She could feel Dykstra watching her without actually looking at her directly and it felt creepy. Without thinking, she focussed on blocking out the other sounds of the mall and strained to hear their quiet conversation.

“She’s remarkable, Brian,” Gaia was saying. “Perhaps more gifted than her troublesome mother. And potentially far more useful.”

Dykstra gave Gaia a cold smile. “Then why bother with Crane if we have this one? Crane’s a virus in our side. Let’s dispose of her and—”

“You fool!” Gaia cut him down with a glacial look. “We still need her. Only she can shut down the A.I.-core. Once she does—”

“
If
she does.”

“
When
she does,” she snarled. “I never lose.” She hiked a brow for punctuation. “She’ll do it, and for the right reason—to save Icaria. Ironic, really, how in her brave action of honor in killing her friend, SAM, she’ll be erasing the last shred of evidence against me and ensuring the success of my plans. She’ll be ridding me of that rebellious contingent and initiating the first step of our new system in one fell swoop. The people will be devastated, aching for some order and a resumption of their happy routines. They’ll welcome our new paradigm using the combination of Darwin and veemelds with open arms.” She smiled tightly and patted Dykstra, who was scowling, on the shoulder. “But you’re right about the girl. She’ll satisfy us better than Crane. After Crane completes our little task we may re-evaluate our need of her. She may yet serve us best in the land of chaos after we extract what we need at the DP.”

Shock seized Angel’s muscles. Gaia knew where her mother was all along and was playing her like a bobcat with a field mouse. Angel had no doubts that this land of chaos was not a good place. How had Gaia convinced her mother to sabotage this A.I.-core and kill someone? Gaia had hinted at a friendship with her mother. Perhaps that was how she’d convinced her mother. But their friendship obviously meant nothing to Gaia, who remained poised to betray Angel’s mother at a moment’s notice when it suited her. And who was this friend, Sam, her mother was going to kill? Angel almost burst into tears at the thought and grabbed her drink with a shaky hand. Gaia had mentioned bravery and honor. Surely there was little bravery or honor in killing a friend, Angel thought.

The treacherous words Gaia had spoken with such casualness...she’d completely betrayed Angel’s trust and taken advantage of her desperate situation. Angel stopped listening and grasped at one thought like a drowning sailor would a dangling piece of rotting rope: at least it meant her mother was still alive...for now.

When Gaia returned to her seat and smiled across at her, Angel forced herself to smile back. “Did he have any information about my mom?” She felt a slight mocking tone emerge in her voice.

Gaia didn’t seem to pick it up. “Sadly, no,” she said, lying through that slick apologetic smile.

As she gazed into those iceberg blue eyes, Angel recognized how this beautiful woman had so easily veiled her true intent. She’d fooled Angel with an understanding smile and a hug. Given her just what she’d wanted: a mother.

Angel snapped her eyes away and felt her face flush with anger and some shame at her own naïve part in the deception. Gaia misunderstood and patted her hand. “Don’t worry, Angel. I know you’re anxious and impatient. We’ll find her. I guarantee it.”

Sure you do,
Angel thought.
You’ve already got her
. She studied Gaia carefully and said with provocation in mind, “Will you use the A.I.-core to look for her?”

Gaia’s faint smile stiffened and her eyes flared briefly in a frown. “Who told you about the A.I.-core of the city?”

“Manfred mentioned it to me,” she lied. “What is it?”

“The central repository of the artificial intelligence community that runs Icaria,” Gaia answered flatly. “Think of it as a huge interactive digital library.”

“Wouldn’t it be useful?” Angel persisted. Her mind raced with what her mother was supposed to do.

“Yes. But I have better resources available to me,” Gaia said rather smugly. “Shall we go?” Gaia got up from her chair, ignoring Angel’s unfinished drink.

“Sure,” Angel said curtly and got up. She didn’t want any more, anyway. She’d lost her taste for it and this place. Not sure why, she willingly let Gaia take her hand as they negotiated the crowd toward the tube-jets. She suddenly felt very small and alone. And realized just how much she missed her mother and father. It ached inside her chest and cloyed inside her stomach.

She grew giddy as the intoxicating images and sounds enfolded her in a dizzying embrace, shattering her with waves of staccato impressions, a jangle of disjointed noise and movement. Her senses were overloaded and she flinched at every bark of sound, stumbled and wavered with every brushing movement against her. She wanted to bolt, scramble away and pound out of this place, back to the heath. Then she felt a jolt of pain in her belly and the sudden urge to throw up gripped her. Without warning, she coughed up thick, pink vomit all over Gaia’s sparkling dress.

Trying
to keep her mind focused on her task, Julie strode quietly along a Com-Center hallway to a lower level stairway. Mike Aubry, a Core Technician Supervisor and a veemeld, had filled her in on the set up. She’d been to the core once before. But that was over twelve years ago, shortly after she’d met SAM and he’d given her a tour of his physical home. Back then, apart from the regular security for entering a level-one classified environment, there was nothing to keep her from entering.

The changes that Mike had described included several physical barriers, the first of which was the door to the outer core. Mike had given her the necessary procedures and codes to get through, so she wasn’t worried about these physical barriers. The A.I.s still permitted limited access to a select group of technicians: all veemelds were trusted by their A.I. symbionts, therefore, she’d received a new, temporary identity, thanks to a little nuergery on her palm. She’d refused to get a full treatment despite Mike’s insistence, so, for today, she was Rachel Drake, veemeld Core Technician, even though she didn’t look anything like her.

As Julie punched in the code of the day and pressed her newly code-impregnated hand on the sensor plate, she considered what she dreaded most: the A.I. firewalls. No, she reconsidered, stepping through the door that had just whisked open for her, it was encountering SAM that she most dreaded. She hadn’t talked to him since that disastrous day in Zane’s lab, and she didn’t want to—not for anything in the world, especially now that she was violating his home and about to ‘murder’ him.

She flinched as the door whisked shut behind her and she realized she was shaking, though the air was warm. She found herself in a large utility room, equipped with a dozen state-of-the-art holo vee-coms and Interact-SYM units. The set of doors in front of her on the far side of the room led to the inner core, where SAM and all the bodiless A.I.s ‘lived’. The knot in her stomach twisted tighter. Through the sensors monitoring the room, they’d figure out pretty damned fast that she wasn’t really Rachel—

“Identify yourself,” a tinny voice reverberated in the room, making her jump. “You do not match the physical description of Rachel Drake.”

Julie recovered herself quickly and said back to the room in a slightly haughty voice, “I got a nuyu treatment. This is what I now look like. Take note.”

“Submit to a retinal scan and veemeld. If you are the real Rachel Drake your A.I. will know.”

Julie thought quickly. “I drank too much ambrosia so I can’t veemeld. Besides, I didn’t come here to veemeld. I need to get into the inner core to—”

“That is illogical. Only veemelds who are Darwin hosts are affected this way.”

Julie couldn’t help raising her eyebrows at this new piece of information. She’d never known that! She’d always thought that since she was affected...

“And Rachel Drake does not have Darwin,” the room finished.

“Maybe I have it now. Because I tell you, I can’t veemeld,” Julie said sharply, directing her rising panic into an expression of frustration. “It might have to do with a little problem we’ve detected.”

The room seemed to consider. “Is this the business you have in the core?”

“One of the Interact-SYM linkages appears to be malfunctioning. We traced it to the core. Mike thinks it’s the AX-7 matrix. Needs one of us—a human. You can’t fix it.” She was sweating now, but stood with glacial calm as the room went quiet for what seemed an inordinate amount of time.

Then, to her relief and fear, the door to the inner core opened. “Proceed...” the room said “.…ulie Crane.”

Julie flinched at the mention of her name. The core knew! “How did you...?”

“You are the only veemeld who would not know that the effect of drugs on preventing one’s ability to veemeld is linked to Darwin, because you left Icaria just before this discovery was made by Zane Nakita.”

Thanks, Zane. While he’d revealed
delilah’s
role in aggravating Darwin, he’d left out that little fact about veemelding.

“Once alerted to this, we confirmed your appearance in our files.”

Of course, Julie thought as she stepped lightly toward the door to the inner core. They were letting her in anyway. She wasn’t sure why.

As if to answer her, the room explained as she reached the door, “You are the chosen one, Julie Crane. You were SAM’s veemeld, responsible for our present community. You did not need to resort to deception. You needed only to have identified yourself and the core would have allowed you access. Our trust in you is complete.”

Julie passed through the door into a dark hallway and flinched again as the door hissed shut behind her. She felt an incredible weight on her shoulders. She would have preferred the klaxon of alarms, other firewalls and the A.I.s shouting down at her to this awful compliant silence. It only vilified her actions more in Julie’s eyes.

She ran her hands through her tangled hair and walked the long, sterile hall toward the massive cylinders and holo consoles of the A.I. core. With each step forward, her heart ached more, now strangling her chest with the raw pain of guilt. This was too easy, she thought as she reached the stack of vertical cylinders that was SAM’s home. They towered some twenty stories above her and Julie tried to see their summits high up in the core but the effort made her dizzy and she traced the cylinders down to the holo consoles that were the key to the network. She reached out and hesitated, hands poised over a console. Her hands trembled.

She’d tried to stay out of veemeld, but somehow her unbalanced emotions sent her mind sliding into it and SAM came leaping in—

[Julie! What are you doing here in the A.I. core?]

Julie sensed suspicion in SAM’s otherwise casual male voice. J
ust doing a routine check
, she assured SAM.
During her last shift, Rachel Drake detected a flaw in the core’s secondary Interact-SYM linkages. Mike sent me because I’m a veemeld who doesn’t use Interact-SYM and I know the AX-7 matrix so well,
she lied and winced at her resorting to deception. It seemed to satisfy SAM, who remained silent.

Julie pulled in a ragged breath and started the sequence of commands that would override security walls and shut down the entire A.I. core network, SAM’s cherished community. His family. Her face pinched tight as she fought back burning tears. She’d known this wasn’t going to be easy but the agony still hit her as shards of memories from previous conversations with SAM drove into her mind like knives twisting inside her. Memories of love, laughter and friendship...

[Julie, what’s happening? What are you doing? I don’t feel well...]

I’m sorry, SAM.
Her throat closed as she blinked back the tears. She madly punched the series of commands through a blurry film, trying to ignore the trembling in her hands and the part of her that wanted to cry.

I’m—this’ll just make you go to sleep for a while, SAM. Just like I do every night...

[Julie, I don’t want to die.]

She exhaled deeply. Of course SAM saw through her foolish artifice. Once off-line SAM would never return again; at least not as SAM. He deserved the truth.
SAM, Proteus made you sick
. She felt herself panting with conflicting emotions, hands racing through the sequence as if chased by a storm.
You’re hurting people and I have to stop it. Shutting you down will shut down Proteus’s main vehicle of communication and action. Or so the theory according to Zane went. This’ll give you a rest and give us a chance to figure out how to deal with Proteus. I’m...sorry, so sorry...

[Please tell me a joke.]

The tears burst out like a tidal surge.
Oh, SAM...
During their relationship twelve years ago, whenever Julie was troubled, SAM had always resorted to jokes, usually bad blonde jokes, thinking this would cheer her up.
Funny,
she thought,
how it actually had
.

[It’ll be okay, Julie.]

Julie laughed in spasms through her tears. She was killing SAM and his whole family and SAM was comforting her. Instead of lashing out at her, instead of defending himself, SAM was quietly submitting. Like the hero he was.

[
Tell me a joke. Please.]

Julie searched madly for a joke, any joke. SAM had told her so many during their years together but now she couldn’t remember a single one, when she needed it most. Then, it came to her:
Okay, here it is: what did the blonde say when she saw her first strands of grey hair...? ‘I’m gonna dye’...
She felt a sudden flush of anger at herself for the inappropriateness of the joke.
It’s the spelling...D-Y-E...get it?
Fool!

SAM’s tinny yelp in her head froze her hands briefly. It took Julie a moment to realize that it was SAM’s version of a laugh and she choked down her grief.

[I understand the clever use of a homonym. Thanks, Julie. That was funny...and very appropriate.]

You’re...welcome
. Her face constricted with mortification. She was almost done.
I love you, SAM.

[
I—I feel strange, J-j-j-julie-e-e-e-e.
]

The lights spattered off then on as the lower order, secondary non-AI system kicked in. The machine voices in her head grew chaotic with what she imagined were desultory shrills of confusion, then they receded into a dark infinity of nothing.

[D-d-d-d-d-d-d-dying’s n-n-n-n-not so ba-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-ad-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-d. It’s j-j-j-j-just-t-t-t-t-t like going to the mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-n-n-n-n]

SAM’s staccato ceased abruptly in her head, leaving her ears ringing in the dead silence, and she knew SAM was gone for good. Julie bowed her head over the console and wept. She hoped desperately that she’d done the right thing. Why did she still feel like a murderer?

[Now it is only you and us, Julie Crane.]

What? It can’t be! How are you—we’re not even joined?

[Communication with you has arisen despite not joining, Julie Crane, through the long co-existence of our parent selves with you.]

But...but...
She realized she was blubbering, thoughts thickening like glue.

As if reading her mind, Proteus answered,
[SAM has shown us how to join our population in veemeld. We no longer need SAM.]

Julie flinched out of veemeld with a gasp and jerked back, nearly losing her balance. Her stomach clenched as the chirping sounds returned. Proteus was still there, inside her. It didn’t need SAM after all. She hadn’t changed anything. She’d killed her best friend for nothing! She balled her hands into fists. “No!” She smashed her fist against the control pad. “No! No! No!” she shouted until her throat was raw and continued to pound. Zane’s uncanny words to her when he tried to convince her to kill SAM scudded in. They’d appeared ridiculous at the time. Now they sounded prophetic, his allusions to Proteus resonating at a microscopic level with her and its surroundings in silent and insidious communication.

She sank to the ground, exhausted, as a realization struck her, hard.
How naïve she’d been! They didn’t care about SAM’s link to Proteus. No one, except Zane, considered Proteus a problem.
Their concern was the A.I. pests taking over Icaria especially SAM, their ringleader. He’d gotten out of hand, become unruly. She’d listened to Zane’s equivocal arguments like a child seeking revenge, a jilted lover prying Proteus and SAM apart. It was possible that Zane was genuinely convinced in his false argument, but it was equally possible that he was acting on another’s orders. Zane did what was good for Zane.

She had no idea how long she lay there as disgrace and betrayal raged through her like a plague. Then, slowly, she pushed herself up off the floor and turned away from the console.

Frank stood five meters from her with several Pols behind him. A humorless smile twisted on his face. “That wasn’t so bad now, was it?”

She flinched. Couldn’t he see how much it hurt her? Was he still that callus about people’s feelings? She straightened and pulled her shoulders back, forcing a glacial calm. “I’ve carried out my end of the bargain,” she said in a surprisingly unfaltering voice. “Now it’s your turn.”

His smile twisted into something else. “I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“What?” She blinked.

“It was never our intention to let you go.” He shrugged at her stunned face. “Face it, Julie, you’re too valuable.”

“But you...promised...” she trailed. “You gave me your word.”

“I lied.”

“No,” she murmured, glancing down at the battered hands that had done so much damage for nothing. “No, no, it can’t be like this...”

She hardly heard him as he barked a command to his men. Two Pols moved forward to restrain her. “Let’s go, Julie,” Frank urged her with a sigh.

She twitched out of their reach and backed into the console, glaring at Frank. “I won’t co-operate,” she snarled. “I refuse to help you. You’ve broken your word.”

He shook his head at her. “You’re still so naïve after all this.” He tipped his head to one side and sneered. “But if that’s the way you want it, then perhaps we’ll find someone who will co-operate. I hear you have a daughter with your capabilities. Her name’s Angel, isn’t it? Perhaps we can persuade her to—”