He looked down at the unconscious baby, letting Norma’s voice fade into the background. It had been so long since he thought of Deborah, but when the memory surfaced it was like a hammer blow to his chest. He used to have snippets of her overly excited voice messages and clips of her horse-riding high jumps in his brain amp, but they were wiped off so long ago, he wasn’t sure anymore that the face he conjured in his mind’s eye was his daughter’s real face. It made him angry.
“How diverse is her DNA?” He steeled his voice.
There was a pause. It was a sign of Norma’s decline that she had to take time to calculate the answer.
Yeah, entropy is a bitch.
“She is a seven point two on the scale,” the Sentient Program finally answered.
He made a decision. “Take her DNA and dump a sample of value seven or less. Did you analyse the parents yet?”
“Of course I did.”
Was Norma offended by his comments? Long ago he had stopped caring about who got hurt by his words or actions, but there was something about the baby that woke a long-lost sensitivity in him. He hated it.
“Which one of the parents is more compatible?”
“Both could donate working organs.” This was not a surprise, as all his people were compatible to some degree; he had made sure of that. Norma continued, “The female has much better stamina than the male and a seventeen percent better chance in surviving any medical process, should you not take one of the major organs, of course.”
Ach, the good old days when one could have grown the needed organ in a lab. Nowadays he had to cull the herd.
“How am I doing?”
There was no pause this time, Norma kept a constant tab on him.
“You are functioning seventy-three percent at the moment.”
Seventy-three? He felt less than that, to be honest. He once went as low as forty-seven, and that was hell; he even had to use a cane for months after that. Never again.
He turned his thoughts back to the matter at hand. Killing the mother would mean certain death to the child, that he knew, but even if the radiation purge was successful, it would be a miracle if the child lived to adulthood.
He pondered about what to do as the process continued. When the purge was over he injected the baby with a booster and a vaccine. Not the healthiest mix in her weak condition, but that would have to do.
Her skin was still pale but had lost the yellow feverish hue, and her breathing was definitely deeper. She was asleep when he took her in his arms. Even after all these years, he instinctively sniffed her head, a useless gesture as he had lost his sense of smell long ago.
Deborah …
There was a saying in one of the old religions, he did not remember which one: He who saves even one soul, it is as if he has saved an entire world. Even if this was true, the tab was not running in his favour.
When he walked back outside the sun was already gone and the clouds were heavy with contaminated rain. For the people gathered outside, it would be a long, wet track back to their homes. They would not wait for the second part of the ceremony, where the price had to be paid.
He pinched the baby and she awoke with a startled, healthy wail of complaint. This brought a cheer from the awaiting crowd, and they all went to their knees as he approached. And so, another legend is created, another miracle. A story that will spread from family to family and from village to village, told and retold on those cold, dry nights. With each version, my part will become greater and the price diminished until it’s forgotten. This is human nature in a nutshell.
The baby’s mother rose back to her feet and accepted her daughter into her arms. She was crying with gratitude and relief.
“Take these.” He shoved the wrapped pills into her hand. “Melt one in boiling water, let it cool, and drip it into her mouth after feeding. Do it twice a day for a week.”
She did not dare meet his eyes but nodded her understanding as her husband came to stand beside her. It was now obvious who would pay the price, and he was pale and visibly shaking. Nevertheless, he kissed his daughter on the forehead and briefly lay a hand on his wife’s shoulder. The mood of the crowd grew sombre, but they accepted the transaction. A price had to be paid, that was the rule. At least this farmer did not resist. He walked away with the soldiers without glancing back. By the time he would see him again, the farmer would be strapped to the chair in the clinic. This was when most forgot all about their promise and pleaded for mercy.
Let’s hope, for your wife’s and daughter’s sakes, that you survive. But I need, at the very least, a new kidney.
He turned to follow but, as always, the sight of the Star Pillar looming above the military camp made him pause in wonder. It was several hours drive away but Tarakan’s greatest feat, a true wonder of the world, was so enormous, it felt as if he were standing at the bottom of it.
This is where it all began. I guess this is where it will end.
As he stood, lost in memory, a collective chant rose from the crowd behind him, first a whisper, but intensifying in a long crescendo. They were calling his name, in gratitude, in awe, in submission.
His name was Mannes.
Twinkle Eyes
There is nothing out of the ordinary in waking up, unless you are dead.
My first memory, as soon as I opened my eyes, was of my consciousness rapidly diminishing into black nothingness. Even as I drew my first rapid breaths, I knew, to the core of my being, that I had perished in the City Within the Mountain, and as if leaving this world wasn’t enough, I died in horrible agony. During the last bit of the transition, my body had been shredded by the claws and teeth of Lizards. One never knew what people really felt or thought as they died, since the dead are hardly in a position to talk about it. But now I had the answer, and it wasn’t nice or comforting at all. As my mind was being pulled away from my dying body it instinctively fought to cling to this world and the vessel it occupied, refusing to lose consciousness. I remembered the whole horrid mess of it right until the very end. And yet, my eyes had just opened and I sat up in a soft bed. I was alive. Or was I?
My first reaction was to check myself with my hands. I was dressed in a thin white tunic and pants made of a soft material I had never felt before. I pulled the tunic up and checked my abdomen. It was whole—no sign of the sharp claws that I knew had ripped my skin. The memory flashed through my mind and made me recoil and drop the tunic.
I shook my head to clear the awful images and looked around. I was inside a small room, which was empty but for a small door at the far end and an open window to my right. Rays of light accompanied a soft breeze, and the sound of chirping birds spilled into the room. I got up from the bed and saw tall, sturdy oak trees only a few paces from the open window. The air was sweet, and I closed my eyes and took several deep breaths. That was a mistake. As if waiting for an opportunity, memories flooded my senses. The stench of death and the pain and horror of dying filled my head. It was terrible, and frighteningly vivid.
I stumbled backwards and found myself sitting on the soft bed again, breathing hard, vowing not to shut my eyes for as long as I could. After a while I looked around again and saw that my initial impression of the room being empty was wrong. There was a mirror hanging on the wall. A quick check showed that I was still me, whole and marked with the same tattoos around my eyes that I was born with. Someone must have done an amazing assembly job because I distinctly remembered