Seed (24 page)

“We must go, brother,” Sumedha told him.

“Where?”

“To observe Minerva. The graft’s final test.” He smiled. “I left her unguarded. She attempts to escape.”

....

“I wonder if the city was alive when it was like this.” Sumedha’s hand moved over a section of early twen-cen brick, coarse and dead under his fingers, then rode a lip of skin where the living flesh of the new city had subsumed the old wall. Ambient sunlight shone pale through the dome’s translucent skin, backlighting a chaotic lattice of bone and vein overhead. “Maybe it knew itself even then. Maybe it always aimed to evolve.” He tickled the lip of pink flesh, felt the current of life there. “Perhaps it is the city who made the Fathers, not vice versa.”

“She is in the park,” Kassapa said, seeming not to have heard. He stood a few paces ahead of Sumedha, peering around the building’s corner, his shift clean and white against the dark skin of his shoulders. Eight of his landraces stood in a row behind the two Designers, swaying idly back and forth on broad bare feet as they awaited his command.

“What is she doing?”

“Watching a duel.”

“A duel?” Sumedha moved up to peer over Kassapa’s shoulder. Saw Satori children gathered in a square of blue algae-grass the size of an old city block. Landrace varieties, some erect and regal, pale faces symmetrical and blank. Others short and thick, peering from beneath heavy brows. They wore simple cotton shifts, like the Designers, or red robes, or nothing at all. Sumedha’s breath caught.

“They
learn
!”

Two landraces faced off, one tall and thin, the other short and covered in patches of dark fur. They aimed long pieces of rusted rebar at one another, rapier-like. Two deep cuts ran the length of the tall landrace’s muscled chest. He grinned. A female in the crowd barked laughter. Another hooted encouragement. The two landraces went at each other. The rebar clanged. The combatants laughed. Love surged through Sumedha.

“They learn too quickly,” Kassapa said.

Sumedha spotted Minerva standing at the edge of the crowd, wrapped in a simple white blanket, watching. He had left her unlocked, unsupervised. She had run. They had followed.

“This is dangerous,” Kassapa said. Impatience made his words tight, made muscles work in his arms and jaw. “We should take her now.” Sumedha laid a hand on Kassapa’s shoulder.

“Calm, brother. She will not escape.”

“Your improvisation is reckless. You could do this in your laboratory.”

“Not everything in life can be studied under controlled conditions.” Kassapa turned to gaze at Sumedha, his brow flexing with weighty calculations. Sumedha made calculations of his own, and smiled. “You are wrong, brother. I do not take this lightly. I will not let the splice go to the Fathers until I know it is safe. ”

“It is not just this that you take lightly.”

Sumedha watched as one of the dueling landraces lunged forward, slicing downward and drawing blood from his opponent’s face. The bloodied Satori child staggered, grinned, attacked.

“You know of what I speak, Sumedha. You know of
whom
.”

Sumedha laughed. Then shot forward. He took Kassapa beneath the chin and pushed him hard against the wall.

“Pihadassa destroyed our balance when she left us.” He glared into Kassapa’s face, then leaned his head forward until their brows gently touched. His voice softened. “It cannot be put right. There is only acceptance.” He released his brother, stepped back. Kassapa breathed, achieving a coiled stillness. Sumedha swept his arm to encompass all things. “The world is change, Kassapa.”

“You grow wild.”

“I acknowledge what is. Things change and that is all. We must change with them.” He glanced at where Minerva stood at the crowd’s edge, clutching the blanket around her with the newly transplanted arm. “I know Pihadassa. I know she saw something the rest of us cannot. She brought change, and she foresaw its consequences. I do not understand it. But I trust her.” Sumedha held up a hand, flat and empty. “The past is nothing.”

“You risk the Fathers’ plan.” Pain returned to Kassapa’s face, pain Sumedha intimately knew: a puzzle that wouldn’t click. “I do not know you.” Laughter rang once more from Sumedha—something extra for his brother’s calculations.

“The Fathers’ plan…Do you truly not see it, Kassapa?” He searched Kassapa’s face for doubt, for hesitation. Saw none. “If the graft succeeds, the Fathers will emerge, glorious and mutable. A new thing, fit for this world. Made for it.”

“And we would facilitate that,” Kassapa implored. He grew emphatic. “We
serve
them. It is what we are.”

“Yes. And whom do they serve, brother?” Sumedha placed a hand to Kassapa’s chest as though to press understanding straight into his heart. Kassapa’s eyes grew distant. He breathed. Sumedha could almost hear the puzzle shifting in his fellow Designer’s mind. “That’s right, brother,” he said. “See it. They will leave Satori to rot under the sun. Satori will die. Our children will die. We will die.” Cruelty edged his smile. “And then whom will we serve?”

As he spoke, he let the shape of things rise in his own mind. It hung there, a glowing whole, the path clear. A puzzle solved.

“Satori,” he told Kassapa, “would shelter our children. She would shelter us. If she knew herself.” He extended his consciousness. Felt Kassapa’s mind, surging with fear and uncertainty. “The graft would let her know herself.”

He looked into his brother’s eyes, identical to his own, and opened himself. It was like stepping through a mirror. He let Kassapa see everything.

Rebar clashed. The crowd murmured as a hit once again drew blood. Kassapa slowly shook his head. Turned his back, faced the duel.

“They will fight to the death, I think.”

“It is sad.” Sumedha said, and breathed grief through his body. He let his hand fall from Kassapa’s shoulder. “But beautiful. They are beautiful.”

“Yes.”

They fell silent, watching. The tall duelist lunged forward, thrusting his rapier at chest level. The short landrace parried, spun, countered. Then stepped back, admiring his work. His rebar protruded, trembling, from the tall landrace’s chest. The two landraces regarded each other. The impaled duelist grinned. He staggered. He fell. The crowd cheered.

“She does not look well,” Kassapa observed. As they watched, Minerva teetered. She knelt, placed a hand on the ground and vomited. Landraces backed away from her. She rose. “She is moving.”

She meandered, staggering away from a group of statuesque Satori children, making her way gradually towards the dome’s gate.She limped. Her shoulders lurched heavily under the blanket. Then, as the Designers watched, Minerva pulled herself upright. Her shoulders squared. Resolution steeled her face.

She ran.

A burst of preternatural speed, legs flickering as she ducked under the shadow of a fat building the shape and color of a kidney, whose roots clutched the ground like muscular fingers. For long seconds, nothing. Then, a bone-wheeled wagon rolled slowly past, hauled by four squat Satori landraces and piled high with compost. Minerva made for it, rolled underneath, disappeared. The dome’s gate wafted open, admitting a blast of dry air that smelled of the sun-beaten plains. The wagon rolled through, past a dozen wild-born human guards armed with clubs and plastic assault rifles that Sumedha found crude. Soy epoxy breastplates shone white in the sudden sunlight, then grew dull as the gate flexed shut behind the wagon

“Even ill she is quick,” Kassapa said. “We should grab her now before we lose her.”

“If she evades us I will consider that further proof of the graft’s efficacy.”

“You would lose her?”

“We have the graft,” Sumedha said. He smiled as a thought occurred to him. “Perhaps the helix expresses itself through the girl’s desires. Perhaps we should let her go.” The dome’s gate buffeted slightly, the complicated idleness of a living thing. Sumedha thought of the humans in the hot wilds who scavenged for their meals, who fought over their seasonal ration of Satori seed. Humans who had been produced by
mating
, born into the misery of hunger and the elements. Forged by chaos. At their center: the glowing, pristine helix, paring away its own random edges, sharpening itself like a flint spear-point against the stone of predation, disease, war, starvation. It filled Sumedha with wonder. “The helix dances, brother. Perhaps we should allow it room.”

Kassapa’s expression turned grave. “You have become very strange,” he told Sumedha, and Sumedha sensed something cold beneath his brother’s apprehension. “Outsiders could puzzle through her helix, if they caught her. They could discern the Fathers’ plan.”

Sumedha waved the thought away. “Your advocates will find her, if we fail. We should see where she goes. We may learn something.”

….

Minerva emerged from beneath the wagon a half-kilometer south in the lee of the old state capitol building. Sun shimmered off the gold-flecked dome. The Designers watched from across a weed-cracked boulevard as the girl sprang with animal speed up granite steps, taking them three at a time. She disappeared through granite arches at the building’s entrance, blowing past migrants huddled in the building’s shadow. Yet beneath Minerva’s strength and speed, Sumedha sensed weakness, barely suppressed.

“She falters,” he observed. He spun her helix in his mind, searching for the flaw. “It seems she is not a stable platform after all.” Relief ballooned in his chest.

“Do not lose her.” Kassapa motioned for his landraces to fan out. He raced after her. Sumedha followed. Migrants scattered as the two Designers and their entourage of grunting landraces surged up the steps.

They entered the capital dome. The ashes of cook fires littered the cracked marble floor. A fecal stench assaulted them. Muted shapes huddled around them in the hollow darkness.

“There.” Kassapa’s voice echoed in the cathedral space. He pointed. Minerva stood opposite them, watching. Kassapa’s landraces made for her. She bolted up a flight of wide granite stairs. Kassapa followed, face rigid with sudden urgency.

Sumedha watched his brother go. A wet film covered his eyes. He wiped at it. He stared at his fingers, puzzled by the moisture there.

Tears.

He paced slowly across the floor, poked a bare toe at the ashes of a cook fire, saw rat bones and scorched insect husks. Ashes clung to his feet, stained his white shift black. He felt cold.

Landraces reached the floor above, a balcony circling the open capitol floor. Minerva cried out. Sumedha slowly ascended the stairs. Found landraces surrounding the girl. They had her pinned against a crumbling granite wall between rusted femurs of protruding rebar. Kassapa stood a few paces away, face aglow with triumph as he watched.

“Bind her,” he ordered. His landraces brought forth corn-fiber ropes, pressed the girl to the floor, trussed her with rough hands.

The girl abruptly seized, a convulsion working its way in a slow wave up and down her body. She vomited. Muscles violently contracted. Skin split open. Sumedha saw grey tendrils of intestine. Blood poured from Minerva’s nostrils, then her ears. She vomited a second time, and cried out once, then lay still. The two Designers silently regarded the body.

“She is indeed not a stable platform,” Kassapa concluded after a moment. A hint of satisfaction glinted in his eye as he watched Sumedha. “You have failed, brother.”

The landraces stood there, confused. They looked at the body, looked at one another. They parted as Sumedha stepped forward. He bent over the body. Its abdomen had ruptured. Its limbs had filled with fluid. He poked it with a toe, then closed his eyes. Turned the girl’s helix, saw the entropic cascade. He turned and faced Kassapa.

“For now.” His voice was calm, but his hands had begun to tremble. The moment, he realized, had come. “For now the Fathers will remain in their pods. But there is another option. The Tet has revealed a second platform. The correct one, I believe.” He stepped close to his brother. Grief churned suddenly, unexpectedly, in his chest. “But I will not give it to the Fathers. I will keep it for Satori.”

Tears had begun streaming down Sumedha’s cheeks. Kassapa’s wide brow furrowed with questions, then his eyes lit with understanding, and fear.

“Now?” he whispered.

“Now, brother.”

Sumedha gripped Kassapa under the arms. Reached out his mind, let Kassapa feel his love. Then lifted and drove forward with all his strength.

Kassapa shuddered as his body hit the wall—his pain bleached Sumedha’s mind. Together they screamed.

Sumedha stood there for a time, his forehead pressed to Kassapa’s, their minds joined and reverberating with horrible knowledge. Finally he returned to himself and stepped back.

Kassapa hung from the wall, three bloody rebar fingers protruded from his chest. He reached out for Sumedha, eyes wide. Savage empathy drove Sumedha to his knees. He retched. The landraces chuffed, agitated.

“Sumedha?” Kassapa reached out. Sumedha rose, took his brother’s outstretched hand. Felt the life force there, erratic, ebbing. He spoke softly.

“You are not alone.” He closed his eyes, reached his mind out, stroked Kassapa’s ragged consciousness. “You should have joined us, brother.”

“Us?” The word came out jagged, flecked with blood. Sumedha nodded. Kassapa’s face buckled with grief. “Paduma.” His lips parted, emitted a long wail. It echoed in the capitol’s dome. Sumedha regarded his dying twin.

“You were always the slowest of us,” he said.

“I was designed to maintain security. Not to create, the way you were.” Kassapa smiled weakly. “I hope you have solved the correct puzzle brother. I should have supervised the bomb personally.” He glanced down at the rebar protruding from his chest. “It hurts,” and this fact seemed to surprise him.

“Are you ready?” Sumedha asked. Kassapa nodded. Sumedha touched his forehead once more to Kassapa’s, then gripped his brother and pulled. Kassapa moaned, foamed blood as he slid off the rebar.

Sumedha dragged him to the balcony’s edge, held him upright, nodded farewell. Then heaved him over the railing. A long second of silence, followed by a dull crack as Kassapa hit the marble floor twenty meters below. Sumedha looked down, saw blood pooling in the ashes around his brother’s broken body. He sank to his knees and wept.