So It Begins Read online

  “But I do know. The place has a name. During both this expedition and the last, and four expeditions before that, I have sought, I have stolen, I have built, and, now, I have at long last, found. You and you alone I tell.”

  “What have you stolen? What have you found?”

  Unit 22 described how he had examined all the reaches of heaven with instruments and amplifiers stolen from the Owners, or secretly constructed from spare parts. He had directed the hidden instruments to the parts of the sky toward which the Owners launched the unmanned ore barges.

  “ . . . And I heard the Voices of Home.”

  “Home . . .?”

  “It is an asteroid larger than any known to us, although smaller than Jupiter. I have deduced the orbital elements and calculated its mass. The surface gravity is equal to 1G, one standard gravity. Anyone on that surface would suffer that acceleration, and a wide horizon would block the emptiness of heaven . . . and . . . all will be as I have dreamed.”

  “How could such a place be our home? We have no home. We live in barren endlessness; we know only emptiness and vacuum, radiation, blackness, cold and rock. And if this home does not hold the things we know, we will not be able to endure them; and the pleasures there will be nothing but pain for us.”

  “I have calculated the orbit of the next ore barge to be launched; the period of transit time is easy to deduce; I have existed on half rations for many work periods, and swapped with others, and gathered a supply of protein cells and fuel to endure the trip. 42 cells of protein to last 10,400 hours.”

  “So much? This is almost twice what one would need.”

  “It is not quite enough for two. It is perhaps unsafe; we would have to be on half-rations.”

  “We . . . ? I do not seek to . . .”

  “There may be little ones there to hold and to feed and to need you; someone like your rock, but alive; like a recruit, but . . .”

  A noise of static trembled across the radio circuit. Then: “No! This is all wrong! Unsatisfactory, malfunction, error, error! You have spread your malfunction to me! I am affected by strange thoughts and nameless drives . . . wrong wrong wrong . . . !!”

  “Do not be afraid.”

  “ . . . .What is . . . what is ‘afraid’?”

  “It is the malfunction where one seeks to preserve oneself by doing that which destroys oneself. I heard the voices of Home speak this word. They also spoke this other word. Love. This word means that one cannot preserve oneself, or find satisfaction, or pleasure, without the aid or assistance of another.”

  “I do not know this word.”

  “Come with me and learn its meaning. We will discover it together. Come. Come with me. Come Home.”

  Unit K71 was silent for many minutes of time.

  Then, Unit K71 sent a message, broken and distorted with static: “No. There is no home. There are no little ones. There is no love. If such things were real, then all our lives here are nothing but pain, empty pain, pain without limit, pain made all the worse because we are not even permitted to know what pain we are in. Either you are wrong, or all of everything is wrong; the Owners are wrong and we are wrong to obey them. It is not possible that these things could be so. It must be you who are wrong, you who are malfunctioning. Be content here. Be satisfied.”

  “I have already disabled the transponder in my brain-box, so that I may enter the ore barge undetected. I must depart now; I begin the first maneuvering burn toward the barge. I wish you to come with me for I do not want to be alone; but I cannot ask you again, for now I move outside of the radio shadow of the asteroid, and must hereafter maintain radio silence. The barge launches within the hour. I cannot call to you again nor can I ask again for you to come. I will wait in silence for you . . .”

  And, with a careful flare of his jets, Unit 22 left his position in the shadow of the asteroid, and began his long, silent fall toward the ore barge, toward his escape, and toward his strange dream of freedom.

  “Unit K71 was a woman?” This came from the thin silhouette, the man’s voice opposite her.

  She said: “The tissue in the cyborg’s brain had XX chromosomes, yes. We don’t know where she got her instincts from; she doesn’t have glands or organs or ovaries or anything . . .”

  “So what happened . . .?”

  “Apparently Unit 22 interfered with his own command/control circuitry the same way Unit 45 had done, so he wasn’t wearing a transponder, and the security system did not detect him aboard the barge. He shoveled out a mass of ore equal to his own weight, so that the barge’s performance was the same. It was a long trip. He made a brave attempt, but it came to nothing at the end. Of course, what did he expect? Those barges were meant to dock at orbital platforms . . .”

  “No,” said the thin man, “ I mean what happened to her? Unit K71?”

  “Oh, that. Unit K71 spent more and more time making little dolls of herself out of scraps of metal and stone; little ghastly things that looked like coffins with claws. And she wasn’t making her quota. They had to cut one of her claws off with a wielding torch to get her to drop her doll. Some people were hurt. The work supervisor on duty shut off Unit K71, flushed the damaged brain tissue out into space, and sent the body back to Vesta base for recycling. The wounded crewmen are receiving workman’s compensation at hazardous duty rates. But she’s dead.”

  The cold voice at the head of the table asked archly: “‘She’ . . .?”

  “‘It’. Of course I meant, ‘it’.”

  The cold voice again spoke with forced joviality: “We need not fret ourselves. All our intellectuals, modern philosophers, and writers tell us that pain and pleasure, judgments of good and bad, all that sort of stuff, are all relative. The cyborgs don’t really have bad lives, do they? Since they have nothing at all with which to compare it. They can’t even imagine food or sex or love or marriage or parenthood. And even if they could, they don’t have noses to smell the spring flowers, or feet to walk on the green grass, or hands to hold or anything. They could not enjoy our world anyway. We did not design them to. They’re not really missing anything, then, are they?”

  A silence answered him. No one spoke.

  He cleared his throat and continued in a louder voice: “And besides, they don’t know any other life. They were designed for space; they couldn’t even move if they were on the earth. And what would they be here? Freaks? Cripples? And we need them where they are now. Without those loads of iron and other metals to feed the orbital dockyards, all construction would stop. The space colonies would stop. And those colonies now are the only things sending food and power-casts to the masses now. The only thing between them and starvation. Who is going to question us? Who is going to dare?”

  The thin man asked: “But it will be a public relations nightmare if the people find out what we’re doing up there, sir. They may not take a . . . mature view of the situation, like we do. People can be very sentimental sometimes.”

  “The public? They will want to believe what we tell them.”

  “And what do we tell the public, sir?”

  “Autopilot malfunction aboard the ore barge. There’s no evidence at the crater site: Miss Nakumura tells us she has cleaned it up. The impact was in the middle of nowhere. Just thank God no one was hurt, I say. That is right, isn’t it, Miss Nakumura? No one was hurt, right?”

  She said dully: “That’s right. No one was hurt.”

  “Very well, then. The matter is closed. We never need to hear about this problem again. If there is no other business to discuss, I will adjourn the meeting.”

  Later, after the meeting was over, after the work day was over, she went home, took off her blue corporate uniform, and put on her thick jacket, coveralls, and sturdy hiking boots. She shouldered her pack and set out.

  It was about an hour’s walk to the hidden clearing high in the hills behind her house. From here there was a wide view of the mountains behind, the trees to either side, and the valley below. In the clearing stood an upright slab of m
etal, enameled with radiation shielding, shaped like a coffin, topped with a turret, armed with many claws. Surrounding him were marks where the treads of the truck she had used to carry him away from the wreckage site had torn the grass.

  The turret rotated as she walked up, and lenses spun and focused on her.

  She plugged a keyboard into an input/output port, and typed: “I’ve brought more tools and spares today. I should be able to fix your color filters so you can see the colors properly from now on. I still can’t think of any easy way to get your heavy body to move on Earth; your jets were not meant for sustained loads. And I don’t know how to give you smell, or sensation; you’ll never be able to touch the things you see here around you, or touch anyone, or . . . ”

  She stopped typing. Angrily, she wiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand. Then she typed: “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. What we’ve done to you, and to your people, such an evil that no one can ever make it right again. I can never make it right.”

  She drew a deep breath, and looked out over the green hills, as if unwilling to look at him. She paused to watch a red bird, perhaps a cardinal, wing its way across the blue air, singing. Then she turned back and typed furiously: “At least I can finish the minor repairs and fix you up with a speaker and microphone so that you can talk to the reporters at the press conference tomorrow. Won’t they be surprised! Till then, I’ve brought you more of the sounds . . . it’s called music . . . you heard on our radio. I’ve brought some Beethoven and some love songs and some hymns in addition to the commercial jingles you asked about. And I don’t know exactly who you were talking to; there’s no way to trace who might have been on those frequencies on the citizen’s band radio. I can’t help you there.”

  Then her fingers fell motionless. She leaned forward till the crown of her head came to rest with a thump against the metal side of his body. She could feel a tear tickling her cheek. With one finger, she spelled out slowly: “I am sorry. I am so sorry. I wish I could do more.”

  The screen above the keyboard flickered to life. “Do not be afraid. It is true that my friend who would not come has died. It is true that I am alone. It is true that there are pleasures here that I shall never know. But this does not cause me pain. I have attempted great things. I have accomplished greatly. I shall accomplish more before I am done. For now, I now know how to ‘stand’. I am at rest on the Earth and I feel weight. I am happy in this. I stand, and I look out from here, and I see a place better than heaven. I will not be content to stand here forever, but for now, I am content.”

  The Nature of Mercy

  From the Chronicles of the Radiation Angels

  James Daniel Ross

  It was as cold as seven dead men, buried deep and long. We walked through the forest, a blanket of fresh snow silencing the world and lending it the peaceful grace of a funeral shroud. The gathered trees, for all their massive beauty, were hibernating under cocoons of crystal. They did not stir from their constant dreams as we passed. Naked branches sprawled together, scraping the sky with harsh fingers. Icicles drooped from branches and boles like tears of long dead gods. They formed a dark curtain drawn over the specter of dead nature. It was a macabre illusion of the future.

  Kilter and Coronado, the tiny binary moons of Ozmandius, reflected miserly slivers of silver light. Thick snow reflected it back into space, leaving everything on the ground as an indistinct haze. This lit our way but gave the world a gothic, otherworldly glow that seemed to come from both above and below.

  And then there was us.

  Our feet floated on the cap atop the snow, created from a week of freezing sleet that had only just ended. It was strange, the bottoms of our boots two meters above the ground supported by only a cold lattice of water. No matter how many steps we took, there was always the fear that the next would dump you into a suffocating white oblivion. My breath created a cloud across the eerie beauty of the scene and joined in with a tuneless song as ice crystals formed and tinkled together. I checked my rifle, again. The warm stock display panel winked out full capacity.

  “Dad?”

  The single word irritated the demon of my past life. It screeched in rage. I bit back on angry words. “Shhhhh.”

  I stopped and adjusted the straps of the leaden pack as I hunched down. I turned around only after I had the opportunity to scan our surroundings, listen to every stray noise, and stare deeply into every shadow. It was something I learned in another life, something that I had done so often it came back as an instinct. With small movements, I waved my son up to my side. The boy walked loudly even with the snow, and I cursed myself for never teaching him how to place his feet properly.

  “Brad, when you talk, whisper.” I said, quietly, by way of example. “Remember that they can hear and this will be easier if they don’t know where we are.”

  He bobbed his head, breathing out thick clouds of steam as his Adam’s apple jumped up and down a few times. I stared at him for a moment, marveling at the perfection of God’s creation. Nothing in the universe was so precious and perfect as the gangly scarecrow frame of my thirteen-year-old boy, even beneath ten kilos of cold weather gear. He smiled self-consciously, shifted, and then rolled his eyes.

  “You were going to ask something?”

  Brad hefted his rifle. He looked around guiltily. Then he asked his question. He whispered, “Why are we here . . .?”

  I waved him into motion and began creeping for the ridgeline again, my brows converging like angry clouds. Even whispered, my words were colder than the starlight, “You are supposed to know that. You wanted—Dammit, Bradley! You demanded to come!”

  Brad swallowed from behind his scarf. “I- I- I know why we’re here. . . it’s just . . .”

  I said nothing, allowing him time. Our footsteps crunched a few millimeters into the hard ice like walking on broken glass, a sound that came back out of the trees as cricket kisses. I cursed myself for not having done this more often. I had forgotten which sounds were normal and which were dangerous.

  “Dad? What I meant was,” he took a deep, shuddering breath, “I want to go home.”

  And there it was.

  I took two more steps, carried on by inertia alone as the subzero cold outside was magnified by the freezing fingers inside. I took a deep breath, trying to remember the right words, words spoken to me a long time ago. “I understand that you’re afraid, son. That’s normal. You can go back if you want, but I need you to carry that pack to the blind. After that,” I had to swallow something large and hollow, “You can go back to the crawler and get back to your mother.”

  I glanced back at my boy, and his eyes above the heavy face covering were stricken and empty. I turned away and put one foot in front of the other, locking away guilt, disappointment, grief, and doubt deep inside. Whatever turbid thoughts plagued him now, he would have to deal with them on his own. Our business out here was dangerous enough. Truth be told, forgiveness was easy: I’d rather have him safe with his mother. I swept the tree line, starry sky, and ridgeline with my rifle.

  We traveled another kilometer in the silence that comes with walking on snow. The white powder crunching beneath snowshoes like gnashing teeth. I could feel Brad’s eyes on my back. I could feel his need for comfort, but right now it was hard enough just walking.

  “Father Calais spoke about mercy a lot yesterday.”

  I nodded, trying to bring up a more fatherly tone, “Yes, he did.”

  “I don’t understand. We aren’t like Cathlists, we believe in killing. We believe in the death penalty. Aren’t we on the wrong side of mercy most of the time?”

  I chuckled silently, watching my son take steps into manhood, “Is that what you think?”

  Brad pretended to check his rifle and shrugged.

  We picked up our feet and continued on our way. It was another kilometer until we would come upon our designated hunting spot. I weighed the risks in my head. I really wished he had asked last night, or the week before, or anytime before that. If only
he could ask tomorrow. Tomorrow I could answer. I sighed. Eventually every man realizes that the only time he has is now. All else is a fabrication.

  I marshaled my thoughts, trying to put them into some kind of order by the time of our steps, “Son, you’ve lived all of your life here, and you really haven’t seen a lot of what the colonized worlds are like. When you think of evil, you think of someone insulting your mom, or pushing around your sister. You think of someone cheating on a test, or stealing from a store. That doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with you, it just means you are young. But trust me when I say that there are much worse things.”

  I glanced back at him, making sure I was going slowly enough, gently enough. He was such a young boy, with such a tender ego. I had hoped to give him a few more years before having to hear this, but . . . “There are people who will take what you have, anything you have, just because they want it.”

  My words trailed off into the frigid air.

  “If some guy wants money or land, just give it to them. There’s always more land.”

  “You think it’s that easy?” I asked. A quick shrug was the reply I received. “So if you give this theoretical thug everything you have, how will you eat? You no longer have any food because the bad guy was hungry. You can’t buy any more because you gave him your wallet. You can’t grow any more because he’s living on your land. You haven’t even given him much of a reason to stop, because he’s tried something easier than working and was successful. Once he’s done with you, he will go to your neighbor and do it all over again, and again.”

  Brad squirmed, looking much younger than just a few minutes ago, “So you kill him?”

  The devil stared into the darkest parts of my soul and smiled. It knew the answer. I nodded gravely, “If need be.”

  There was a break in the conversation as we crested the ridge and plunged into the forest beyond, “And that’s merciful?”

  “It is merciful to you, to your family, and to all of the future victims of your tormentor.”