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John
The love of my life is a horrible liar.
Her fading footsteps echoed from the hall. My hospital room was blindingly white. The sheets, the walls, the floors, and ceiling blurred together in my drugged state.
Hours ago, we’d been 100,000 years in our past and were attacked by Neanderthals. I’d been skewered. We’d entered the pod, been transported home, and I’d been saved. Yet Hana was lying. Why?
“Hana!” I called, trying to throw my legs over the bed. My knees banged against the guardrail. Pain, muted and fuzzy, crawled through my consciousness. I closed my eyes. God damn, sober up!
The footsteps in the hall slowed. Then stopped. “Just a minute,” Hana said, her footsteps returning, sharp and clear. Haiiro rose and went to the door, body wagging, despite his chest full of bandages. Hana entered a moment later, a look of relief on her face. They’d given her new clothing: a silvery white suit, too large and long for her slender frame.
Coming to my bed, she said, “John?”
More footsteps followed, heavier, but just as fast. The man that had declared himself her clone with a Y chromosome appeared in the doorway. He looked like her: taller, but with a frame that was slender for a man. His dark, short brown hair threatened to curl at the tips. His eyes were the same orange brown as Hana’s and shielded by wide wrap-around glasses that had no frame. They were so unobtrusive I hadn’t noticed them before.
Where the Hell were we? Most countries banned unauthorized cloning.
His face was blank, the way Hana’s face could be. “Dr. Morgenstern—” he said.
“Hey.” I cut him off. “We have had a day.”
“More like three days,” Hana whispered.
I kept the shock off my face and said to Clone Boy, “Could you give us a moment?”
Clone Boy’s expression—or lack thereof—didn’t change. I tensed, waiting to see how this would go. He wanted Hana, but I was putting him in the position of being impolite. Without an instinctive feel for situations, Hana hanged on politeness. If he was like her …
He bowed his head. “Of course.” Turning to Hana, he said, “But we have questions for you.”
“We won’t be long,” I said in a booming voice. Scowling, he backed out the door.
Hana sank into the chair beside me, put her hands on mine, and dropped her forehead. She was afraid but had lied to protect me.
“Hey,” I said, sliding my fingers between hers. Despite months of welding and soldering, her fingers were still softer than mine, at least between the callouses. Women’s hands are so small and so soft and … I struggled to keep my drugged brain from running away from me.
“We’re alive and home,” I said. “That’s more than you hoped for, right?”
“We’re on Dawkin’s Planet,” she answered. “In the city of Twilight.”
That sent a jolt of sobriety through my system. I’d chided Hana for her lack of faith in the pod. She’d said from the first we were never going home. I’d never believed her. My heart skipped a few beats, and the full weight of that sank in. Despite what she had known, she’d taken a chance.
She’d taken that chance to save my hide.
Glancing at the brilliant blue outside the window, I whispered, “Dawkin’s Planet isn’t a different Earth by any chance?”
She shook her head. “No, it’s bigger than Earth. I haven’t asked for exact dimensions, but you can see it if you look at the horizon. And John … I think it is all water … fresh water.”
A weight settled on my shoulders. Another hope blown. Staring at our hands, I whispered, “I’ve never heard of Dawkin’s Planet.” It wasn’t the planet where our station was located, not with fresh water and the brilliant blue sky filling the room’s window.
“Me either,” she whispered.
I forced a wry smile. “They all have five fingers and toes?”
Her fingers moved against mine. “Haven’t seen toes,” Hana commented, “but five fingers and they didn’t comment on your toes.”
“How did we get here?” I asked. “To this hospital?”
“We landed in the ocean. Our pod set off their scopes,” she said. “They are very interested in it.”
I nodded. A faster-than-light craft of any kind would be interesting to anyone. Even if they had similar tech themselves.
“And they picked us up without question or quarantine?” I asked.
She wiped her eyes. They were bloodshot and ringed by dark circles. “No quarantine, but they took samples of my blood and hair, and Haiiro’s, too.” She leaned close. “And after I used the bathroom, I heard a nurse say something about having a urine sample.”
“Better than pissing in a cup,” I said.
Her brow furrowed. “Yes. But they didn’t ask.”
“Do you know …” I whispered. And then I switched to the tribe’s language. “When?” Had we mucked up the timeline, like what happens in sci-fi novels? Created a new technologically advanced society by advancing the adoption of atlatls, bows and arrows, introducing steel, and waterwheels early?
Her fingers stopped their path between mine. Her body got tight, and I swore she vibrated with tension. “I don’t know,” she whispered.
I had to know. “Where’s the call button?”
Hana straightened. “I don’t—”
“Nurse!” I shouted. “Nurse!”
Hana’s eyes went wide. I gripped her fingers tight.
Footsteps came from down the hall, and a different man entered. I estimated he was in his mid-twenties. He wore scrubs like any healthcare worker in the States might wear, and the same nearly invisible wrap-around glasses Clone Boy wore. He was shorter than Clone Boy, his proportions not as slender, but he wasn’t fat, just broader in the shoulders and hips. A guy who could put on muscle fast if he hit the gym. Haiiro growled at him, and he exclaimed, “Wow, a puppy!” and I swear, bounced with glee … which I think confused our valiant pint-sized protector, because Haiiro backed off.
Smiling at the nurse, I said, “Hey, what day is it?”
He blinked. “Day?”
“Year?” I suggested.
He blinked again.
I made a show of sighing—a painful show in my condition—and spoke with as much charming country drawl as I could manage. “I just woke up after expecting to die from a gut wound—”
His brows drew together. “We’re all wondering how you got that. We’ve seen nothing quite like it.”
I winced. “Long story. But now that I’m not dead, I’m wondering how long our trip was. Hours? Days? Years?”
He came closer, looked over his shoulder, and then whispered to us, “They’re saying you came in a faster-than-light craft?”
I noted that wasn’t a far-fetched idea for him, but still exciting.
I whispered back, “Well, if we don’t know what year it is, we don’t know how much faster, you know?”
He leaned closer. “Did you come all the way from Earth?”
“Yes,” said Hana. Which was true enough.
His brow furrowed. “On Dawkin’s Planet, our days are about two hundred Earth days, and it takes four local days to orbit the sun.”
My brain boggled.
“The night-side of the planet must be under ice,” Hana surmised.
Nodding at that, the nurse said, “Yes, it’s uninhabitable.” He tapped the left side of his wrap-around glasses, twice in rapid succession, and they darkened. “I need to consult my ocular.” A green light winked on in the corner, and he said, “What year is the date, Earth standard?” I could just make out his pupils scanning side to side.
He said a date.
I shrank back into my pillows, a lump forming at the back of my throat, and a chill spreading through my body. I was distantly aware of my fingers going limp, and Hana squeezing my hand.
His glasses became translucent again, and he stared at us, wide-eyed and expectant.
Forcing myself to smile, I lied, “Instantaneous,” and forced myself to stay calm. Two centuries. It had been two centuries since I left the station.
Hana sat still as a statue. Gaze distant. All the gears in her noggin probably spinning.
I squeezed her fingers. “How ‘bout that, honey? It worked.”
To the nurse, I said, “We’re a little surprised ourselves.”
He grinned. “Well, it’s a first, right? We’ve been hoping for faster than light since … I’m so glad you came to Dawkins.”
I shrugged nonchalantly. “Could you give us a moment? It’s a lot to digest.”
“Sure, sure,” he said, backing away. “I’m Nando, by the way.” He pointed to a name tag on his scrubs. “Call me if you need anything.”
I barely heard him. I thought of Lo and Kim, my best friend and commanding officer. When I’d gone after Hana, I’d thought I’d see them again. They would think I’d died. Maybe even committed suicide. God damn, I’d let them down. My heart rate picked up. I knew PTSD when I felt it, and I didn’t have time for it. Hana and I were alive. We were together. That was a lot to be thankful for.
At just that moment, Clone Boy entered the room. “Dr. Morgenstern, we have to go.”
I wished I had my “boomstick.”
Hana
Haiiro’s claws clicked on the floor beside me as Dr. Hoshino led us down the hospital’s hallway. Haiiro hadn’t obeyed my command to stay with John. That wasn’t my deepest concern.
Dr. Hoshino had lied.
Hoshino had told John that he was my clone. But when Hoshino had met me, sitting outside the operating theater thirty-six hours ago in the too-large clothing they’d loaned me—my own had been bloodstained—he’d said, “We are the clone of the same person.”
I’d blinked at him, too numb to respond. I’d been shocked to be alive, disoriented by the leap from prehistoric to modern, and consumed by John’s survival. His words hadn’t landed.
He’d cocked his head. “They gave you Dr. Morgenstern’s full name, too.”
It had been too much to think about with John, possibly mortally wounded. John was invisible to me somewhere beyond the steel doors and white walls. I hadn’t had Haiiro then, either. The veterinarian had come, sedated Haiiro, scanned him, and taken him away, promising, “Some bone fractures. We’ll utilize rapid bone regeneration. He’ll be fine in a few days. Really excited to help!”
To Hoshino’s question, I’d said the only thing I could manage. “I can’t think about this right now.”
Turning to the same doors I stared at, he’d asked, “Who is he?”
“John Miller.”
For once, he’d been silent. Respectfully, blissfully silent. But it hadn’t lasted. Eyes still on the door, he’d said, “We want to discuss your ship.”
“Can’t it wait until I’m sure he’ll recover?” I’d snapped.
His pause was too long. “I guess that will give us time to verify who you really are.”
It was a taunt, a challenge to my identity. I’d been too worried about John to care.
Now, as Haiiro and I followed Hoshino toward the elevator, that challenge lingered. The cloned version of me—not me, exactly, but close enough to unsettle—walked in silence.
“Wait!” Nando’s voice broke through my thoughts.
I spun, alarmed. Nando jogged toward us, smiling. “I was just given permission to give you an ocular.” He handed me a pair of the strange glasses he and Hoshino wore. “You can use these to talk to Mr. Miller and learn more about Dawkins.”
Pressing the elevator call button, Hoshino cleared his throat. The sound carried weight—authority. Nando’s smile faltered, and he hurried back toward John’s room.
I wanted to follow him, to be with John, but I stepped into the elevator anyway, slipping the ocular on. The frames were too big, like the clothes they’d loaned me. The glasses slid down my nose.
When they’d given me the clothes, they’d said, “We don’t have a spare in a woman’s size.”
Did they not have oculars in women’s sizes either?
I hadn’t seen a single woman since arriving. My mind flicked to the research I remembered from Earth—mice embryos created from two Y chromosomes, artificial wombs for cloned livestock. Did they even need females anymore?
I shook the thought off. Paranoia.
Or maybe not. John had just asked when we were. Why not try that honesty myself? “Why did they make you with a Y chromosome?”
“Because males have superior mathematical and spatial abilities,” Hoshino replied without missing a beat.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. And it wasn’t untrue, on the average. But averages hide individual outcomes. John, for instance, had taught himself to read as a boy—something girls do more often than boys. And while I struggled with languages, he collected them.
When men tell me about male superiority in mathematics, I find it amusing. Almost pitiable. Why not just announce, “I am insecure”?
But Hoshino wasn’t insecure. He was something else entirely, and that made me uneasy.
Hoshino’s gaze traveled upward. “It was believed I could finish the research you—our Primary—had started, and we’d finally achieve faster-than-light travel.”
Without thinking, I responded, “I wasn’t as good at math as some of my peers. But I’ve always believed that being less narrowly focused—and a little more curious outside my field—led to my greatest discoveries. I was fascinated by chemistry and time, especially water and time. Time flows inexorably through space like water, wrapping itself around matter—space is its vessel.” My advisors hadn’t shared my fascination, but with the help of people who were admittedly better at math—not all of them male—I had found the numbers to support the idea.
“You’re not Doctor Hana Morgenstern,” he said.
My body went cold. Which was more dangerous—letting him believe the lie or telling him the truth?
Hana
Haiiro’s claws clicked on the floor beside me as Dr. Hoshino led us down the hospital’s hallway. Haiiro hadn’t obeyed my command to stay with John. That wasn’t my deepest concern.
Dr. Hoshino had lied.
Hoshino had told John that he was my clone. But when Hoshino had met me, sitting outside the operating theater thirty-six hours ago in the too-large clothing they’d loaned me—my own had been bloodstained—he’d said, “We are the clone of the same person.”
I’d blinked at him, too numb to respond. I’d been shocked to be alive, disoriented by the leap from prehistoric to modern, and consumed by John’s survival. His words hadn’t landed.
He’d cocked his head. “They gave you Dr. Morgenstern’s full name, too.”
It had been too much to think about with John, possibly mortally wounded. John was invisible to me somewhere beyond the steel doors and white walls. I hadn’t had Haiiro then, either. The veterinarian had come, sedated Haiiro, scanned him, and taken him away, promising, “Some bone fractures. We’ll utilize rapid bone regeneration. He’ll be fine in a few days. Really excited to help!”
To Hoshino’s question, I’d said the only thing I could manage. “I can’t think about this right now.”
Turning to the same doors I stared at, he’d asked, “Who is he?”
“John Miller.”
For once, he’d been silent. Respectfully, blissfully silent. But it hadn’t lasted. Eyes still on the door, he’d said, “We want to discuss your ship.”
“Can’t it wait until I’m sure he’ll recover?” I’d snapped.
His pause was too long. “I guess that will give us time to verify who you really are.”
It was a taunt, a challenge to my identity. I’d been too worried about John to care.
Now, as Haiiro and I followed Hoshino toward the elevator, that challenge lingered. The cloned version of me—not me, exactly, but close enough to unsettle—walked in silence.
“Wait!” Nando’s voice broke through my thoughts.
I spun, alarmed. Nando jogged toward us, smiling. “I was just given permission to give you an ocular.” He handed me a pair of the strange glasses he and Hoshino wore. “You can use these to talk to Mr. Miller and learn more about Dawkins.”
Pressing the elevator call button, Hoshino cleared his throat. The sound carried weight—authority. Nando’s smile faltered, and he hurried back toward John’s room.
I wanted to follow him, to be with John, but I stepped into the elevator anyway, slipping the ocular on. The frames were too big, like the clothes they’d loaned me. The glasses slid down my nose.
When they’d given me the clothes, they’d said, “We don’t have a spare in a woman’s size.”
Did they not have oculars in women’s sizes either?
I hadn’t seen a single woman since arriving. My mind flicked to the research I remembered from Earth—mice embryos created from two Y chromosomes, artificial wombs for cloned livestock. Did they even need females anymore?
I shook the thought off. Paranoia.
Or maybe not. John had just asked when we were. Why not try that honesty myself? “Why did they make you with a Y chromosome?”
“Because males have superior mathematical and spatial abilities,” Hoshino replied without missing a beat.
It wasn’t anything I hadn’t heard before. And it wasn’t untrue, on the average. But averages hide individual outcomes. John, for instance, had taught himself to read as a boy—something girls do more often than boys. And while I struggled with languages, he collected them.
When men tell me about male superiority in mathematics, I find it amusing. Almost pitiable. Why not just announce, “I am insecure”?
But Hoshino wasn’t insecure. He was something else entirely, and that made me uneasy.
Hoshino’s gaze traveled upward. “It was believed I could finish the research you—our Primary—had started, and we’d finally achieve faster-than-light travel.”
Without thinking, I responded, “I wasn’t as good at math as some of my peers. But I’ve always believed that being less narrowly focused—and a little more curious outside my field—led to my greatest discoveries. I was fascinated by chemistry and time, especially water and time. Time flows inexorably through space like water, wrapping itself around matter—space is its vessel.” My advisors hadn’t shared my fascination, but with the help of people who were admittedly better at math—not all of them male—I had found the numbers to support the idea
“You’re not Doctor Hana Morgenstern,” he said.
My body went cold. Which was more dangerous—letting him believe the lie or telling him the truth?
Hana
We exited the hospital through automatic sliding metal doors onto stairs made of a sort of metal mesh grid. The gaps in the grid were only a few centis, but Haiiro raised his paws suspiciously at first.
From there, we stepped onto a pedway made of the same material. Beneath us echoed the lap of waves. The air was cool, but humid. The scent of mildew hung in the air. Hoshino charged ahead, but my ocular darkened, and I hesitated. Words flashed across the lens. Call from John Miller. Accept? There was a link for Yes and one for No … and a separate link for The Daily Dawkins, whatever that was.
I focused on Yes. My ocular brightened, and John’s familiar rasp whispered in my ear. “Hey, baby, where are you? Can you talk?”
At his words, my lens darkened again, and the words Show John your current location? scrolled before my eyes. Focusing on Yes, I whispered, “I don’t know if I can talk.” The lens lightened. I looked for Hoshino and saw him dozens of meters ahead. I hastened to catch up, jogging after him, Haiiro beside me.
“Want me to stay on the line?” he asked.
“Yes!” I said, closing the gap with my clone. I’d almost reached him when Haiiro decided to lift his leg and pee.
“Nice timing, Haiiro,” John said.
“Wait!” I called to Hoshino. He stopped. Turned. I gestured at our cub.
Hoshino stood as still as a statue.
The pause gave me a moment to observe the city. Metal skyscrapers towered around us, their gleaming surfaces reflecting the dark blue sky. Hovercrafts whizzed between the buildings, and small drones moved up and down their sides, polishing them.
“Shiny.” John whistled. And then he said, “Are the buildings repurposed spaceships?”
My lips parted. They had too many windows for a journey through space, and they were too clean—reentry takes its toll on ships, and space isn’t just vacuum. In a long journey, there was bound to be dust—but looking at them closer, I saw the familiar gleam of time bands—though not enough for vessels of their size.
“Oh, hey,” John said. “My ocular says they are. Handy.”
My ocular hadn’t, but I hadn’t asked the question, either.
I looked down at Haiiro. His leg was still lifted.
“Poor guy must have been holding it,” John said. “I hope he isn’t marking anything important.”
I gazed beneath Haiiro’s feet. A few meters below the mesh, watery reflections rippled.
John asked, “Did you check out the Daily Dawkins link? It’s a kind of local news site … it had a link to general Dawkins information … I wonder. Is this a floating city?” He answered his own question almost immediately. “Nope … according to my ocular, it is a crawling city.”
“Crawling?” I asked, surprised.
“Yeah. The whole place is mobile, rolling on giant buttresses. They keep it close to the night-side of the planet, to balance temperatures. That could never work on Earth, but with 200-day rotations? It’s amazing engineering.”
Haiiro, at last, put down his leg. I hurried after Hoshino. I was afraid to talk to John, and afraid if I didn’t, he’d hang up. But John chatted on excitedly, “Creating a city suspended above the sea floor wouldn’t be a first choice for a colony. Let alone one that rolls. Is there no viable land … or is it just that no land is consistently above water?”
It was a question I was asking myself.
There was a pause, and then John answered it. “Nope. According to my ocular, there’s no viable land. Just ice on the night-side, and water on the day-side. Huh. Plenty of water, nice temperature, nice gravity, excellent atmosphere. Considering all the planets in the galaxy that are freezing cold or boiling hot, with poison atmospheres, no atmosphere, or G that’s too high or too low for health … this is actually sort of paradise.”
I almost laughed aloud. Having John connected to me was like having an AI in my ear, guessing my questions and answering them for me. I smiled and wished that I could share the comparison—John had sometimes called me a robot. But, at that point, I was skipping to keep up with Hoshino, striding briskly toward the day-side of the city. Haiiro hopped beside me, still lifting his paws high, as though he wasn’t sure the mesh was safe.
“Haiiro-chan, the sidewalk isn’t lava!” John chided.
I stifled a laugh and tried to stifle my misgivings. John was with me, emotionally if not physically. He was going to live, and so was I. The day was humid, but glorious.
“The city is amazing,” John said.
I looked up, trying to catch some of his wonder for myself. The buildings and their buttresses were both sleek and imposing. Railings lined the pedway, and I noticed life preservers locked in metal cages at regular intervals. “Those must be for crazy waves,” John observed. “But it looks easy enough to open in an emergency.”
The sidewalk on one side gave way to a canal filled with water lilies in various stages of blooming. Small robots hovered over the water, collecting the flowers, probably for cooking. Colorful fish poked their heads up as we passed. Haiiro raced along the side of the canal, tail wagging, nose snuffling.
“Koi,” John whispered, “and water lilies.”
“They grow here?” I asked. Earth plants weren’t supposed to grow in alien soils. Plants require symbiotic relationships with bacteria and fungus to survive. An alien planet wasn’t supposed to have them. A planter box above the waves, filled with soil prepared with Earth organisms, I would understand, but the boxes for the lilies were submerged. That native organisms did not destroy them in the water was a wonder.
Hoshino guessed my real question. “They needed no genetic modifications.”
“Hey, he doesn’t look angry for once,” John commented.
Unaware of John’s commentary, Hoshino continued, “The Founders thought we’d need genetically modified plants and fish to survive, but there was no need. Earth organisms have adapted well. There were no multicellular organisms when we arrived, and the few native single-celled species are harmless and sometimes beneficial.”
“He sounds awed,” John said. Which I hadn’t noticed. I doubted an AI would have noticed, either.
Pushing his ocular up his nose, Hoshino resumed walking. I skipped after him. Up ahead, past the buildings, the ocean stretched across the too-wide horizon, only interrupted by a few silver shapes. “Buoys?” I asked. Hoshino didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t hear. His right hand was on his earpiece as though he was listening to someone, just as I was.
John responded, “Not buoys. They only look small because of the distance. Those were ships sent ahead of the original colonists. They’re …” He exhaled. “Enormous, Hana. They dwarf any giant ocean liner on Earth. They’re used for growing food. It’s all genetically modified for indoors and high yields.”
I thought of the food I’d had since arriving. Every meal but one had been some sort of fresh-water fish—koi, perch, or tilapia—a starch, usually a type of potato, and a vegetable. It had been bland, but that might have been my worry about John. I hadn’t been able to eat much.
John continued, “The ships grow food in the sunlight, while the city stays in the twilight zone where the temperatures are perfect.”
Hoshino froze. His head moved side to side, as though he were reading something. I waited. A gust of wind swept from the city to the sea, crisp and cold.
Hoshino’s ocular became transparent again, and he stared down at me, his jaw hard. Ripping off his ocular, he stared down at me. “Who are you?” he demanded.
My heart raced. Before I could react, he shoved past me, hitting my shoulder with bruising force. I stumbled, watching as he stormed back the way we had come.
John
“Did he hit you?” I asked, watching Hoshino’s retreat through my ocular. My scar prickled. Through the narrow field of my ocular, I thought I’d seen his shoulder colliding with hers, knocking her sideways.
Hana didn’t respond. Which was a response.
Grabbing my bed’s guard rails, I slid myself down to the edge, got my feet on the floor, sat up … and went blind with pain.
Growling and shaking the bright white of pain blindness from my eyes, I pushed myself to my feet and caught my breath. Standing my body straight up, it didn’t hurt as bad.
My vision returned. In my ocular, Hana still followed her clone and still hadn’t answered.
“Hana?” I asked.
“Daijobu,” she said. It means, I’m fine, in Japanese. Which wasn’t a direct answer to my question but was an answer. She lapsed into Japanese whenever she was upset. Heat rose in my chest. I don’t like men hitting women.
“John, if Hoshino’s me, he might not have even noticed.”
No, that was something you noticed. Rock or Nahbey, men from our pre-historic tribe, would have noticed.
I exhaled. And realized I was at the door to my room. I closed my eyes. What was I going to do? Run after her?
I looked up at the ceiling. I could imagine Hana bumping into someone and not noticing. “Any idea what that was about?”
The words, please clarify the question appeared on my ocular screen. I almost ripped the thing off, but when I touched the lens, the words disappeared.
“I’m not sure,” Hana said, following Hoshino around a corner. “He thinks I’m also a clone of the original Dr. Hana Morgenstern.”
“But you are—” I caught myself. To believe she was herself, he’d have to believe in time travel. Hana hadn’t believed she had traveled through time until she’d seen concrete proof. I tried to rub the bridge of my nose and couldn’t because of the ocular. “I get it,” I said. My lips twisted. “He’s not really a clone of you, not with a Y chromosome.”
“It was supposed to make him better at math, so he could finish the work I had begun and help develop faster-than-light travel.”
I narrowed my eyes at Hoshino’s back. I’d heard the occasional sexist comment directed Hana’s way and swear they made me madder than they made her. “And yet he didn’t. You did. Guess his fancy Y chromosome didn’t count for much.” Feeling a bit of Schadenfreude on her behalf, I smiled grimly.
“Hmmm …” Hana said. “Maybe.”
Before I could ask what she meant, she said, “John, I don’t think I can lie. I am not good at it.”
I touched my earpiece. The ocular weighed nothing. There was no CPU that I could detect. Unless there’d been a phenomenal decrease in circuit size since I’d left Earth, it connected with a server somewhere. Even if no one was listening in at this minute, I suspected this conversation was being recorded.
Even if we knew enough about Earth in the current time to create a believable lie—one that would have to explain, among other things, pictures of Neanderthals on our scrolls—what a pain in the ass it would be to maintain it, possibly for the rest of our lives.
And as I’ve mentioned, Hana is a terrible liar.
I took a deep breath. Hopefully, what I was about to say wouldn’t get us both put in padded rooms. “Don’t lie, then.”
Hana
“Don’t lie, then.” John’s whispered words swept over me like a balm. I wouldn’t have been able to lie if he told me to, but it was good to be on the same page.
I rubbed my shoulder as I followed Hoshino. He left our previous path, turning left between two more sparkling skyscrapers. “It’s cleaner than Tokyo,” John whispered in my ear.
It was, but it was also too empty. Tokyo wasn’t all crowds when I lived there. There were side streets that cut between towers of apartments that were almost vacant much of the day. But every street in this water-world city had been empty or next to it—the only sounds our footsteps, the lap of waves, and hum of machinery. Perhaps it was just the path Hoshino had chosen?
A door whooshed open somewhere, and children’s voices echoed between the buildings. Haiiro took off toward them, but then there was the whoosh of a door closing. Their voices vanished, and Haiiro came back, bending his nose to the mesh again.
Hoshino turned ahead, and I skipped to catch up. He’d gone to the edge of another canal, this one filled with floating planters with vegetables in various stages of growth. The canal ran toward the ocean and the day-side of Dawkins. Closer to the dimmer heart of the city, the plants were smaller. Nearer the day-side, they were more mature. This canal had a stairway that led down to the water, and then a narrow boardwalk perhaps a meter wide that ran along the water’s edge. Hoshino tread down the stairs and sat down at the bottom. Resting his elbows on his knees, he put his head in his hands.
Nose to the ground, Haiiro followed him to the bottom of the steps, and then began tracing the edge of the boardwalk. Metal panels, not mesh, formed the stairs, creating a barrier against the waves. I could hear the waves lapping on the other side, but the canal water remained as calm as a koi pond.
For a moment, I thought John had left me, but then, as though reading my thoughts, he whispered in my ear, “I’m still here.”
Humming in response, I sat down beside Hoshino on the steps. Closer to the water, the scent of damp was thicker, and I caught sight of algae along the edges of the floating beds.
Hoshino blurted, “They gave you a gene for Gaucher’s Syndrome.” Shaking his head, lip curling, he said, “Why would they do that?”
I blinked.
John made a noise deep in his throat.
I knew I had one copy of the autosomal recessive gene that causes Gaucher’s Syndrome, so that wasn’t a surprise, but his disgust—if that was disgust I saw on his face—confused me. Two copies of the Gaucher’s gene would have caused me to have difficulty metabolizing certain lipids—that difficulty would have resulted in bone and lung disease, anemia, an enlarged liver and lungs, and difficulty in clotting. Among Ashkenazi Jews, Gaucher’s Syndrome is fairly common. It was a moot point, though. I only had one copy of the gene.
I peered at him. He still hadn’t put his ocular back on. He had a hand over his nose, as though he’d caught a whiff of a foul smell. I remembered his comment on the superiority of men in mathematics and smiled wryly. “I’m surprised that you don’t have it,” I said. “Having a single copy of the Gaucher’s gene is linked to high IQ and mathematical ability.”
“Really?” he asked, dropping his hand.
“Yes,” I replied, gazing out at the ripples in the water. John had told me that. He’d gone on “research bender” when he’d arrived at the University of Chicago because, as he’d said, “So many of the professors and students are Jewish. I wanted to learn why. Seems a combination of a culture that encourages education, debate, and chutzpah, low rates of divorce and single motherhood, and maybe a genetic tendency toward high IQ … but does the former create the latter, and if so, how much?”
His open curiosity was … endearing. The reasons behind it … a little frightening.
John’s life with his father and stepmother was nothing like mine, but it was mostly healthy. His stepmother encouraged his reading habit; his father, John’s love of machines. But John had told me stories about before he lived with them, when he’d lived only with his mother, stories that were supposed to be funny, but horrified me. A scar from a cigarette burn on his arm that one of her boyfriends had given him. Shoveling drugs down a toilet when the cops came. Who would he have been without that initial trauma? I knew he was desperate not to repeat it, hence the “research bender.” He wanted to know how to create a healthy family.
My mother said people with childhoods like John’s don’t recover. She’d said, “Don’t fall in love with him because you feel sorry for him.” But I never felt sorry for John, and I fell in love with him because he brought me coffee in the cold, was funny, and told me what was wrong, so I never had to guess. Unlike present company.
“You have Dr. Morgenstern’s mtDNA, too.” Scowling, Hoshino shook his head. “But neither Dr. Hana Morgenstern nor her mother donated any of their eggs.”
Cloning requires a donor egg. The DNA of the cloned individual is inserted into the donor egg’s nucleus. But mtDNA is in the cell’s mitochondria, outside the nucleus, and is passed down from mother to child. Unless the donor egg was from the same maternal line, you wouldn’t have a true clone.
I suppressed a smile. My mother and I had our differences, but neither of us wanted a clone.
I blinked. “Why can’t they insert mtDNA into the egg’s mitochondria?” I wondered aloud.
John cleared his throat. “mtDNA can be swapped—or even printed—and inserted into mitochondria. However, there are on average about seventy-five mitochondria in a human egg. It would be a lot of swapping. A lot of potential for problems.” I could hear him blushing when he added, “I only know that from Carmela.”
Carmela was a friend of ours. She was Lo’s wife and had a Ph.D. in biology. Although her main focus was terraforming, she would know about cloning, and John was the sort to absorb random knowledge unrelated to his own particular field.
Hoshino continued, “Dr. Morgenstern’s mother had no sisters—”
“No, just a brother. Uncle Hiro,” I said. I liked Uncle Hiro. He was a bit of an eccentric. I sometimes thought my mother had been so proper and conventional to make up for him, although she did marry a foreigner.
Scowling, he said, “Your DNA and your mtDNA are too perfect. Even if a donor egg was taken from Dr. Morgenstern herself, there should be subtle changes between yourself and her.”
“So, what do you think that means?” I asked him, because I did not know what to say.
He glared at me.
“Good, let him figure it out for himself,” John said.
Hoshino’s teeth ground. Turning away, he said, “We were so close. The experiments we’ve been doing have shown such promise.”
John huffed. “He is jealous.”
I only half heard. A jolt of understanding rocked through me, and my heart beat so fast in my chest, it was as though a hummingbird were trapped within me. I looked down at the water, sparkling in the sunlight. My fingers danced on the mesh seat beside me.
Slipping his ocular back on, Hoshino stood up. “We have to go.”
I heard his words as though from far off. It had to be … the odds of us coming here … Maybe it was the answer, the way to control for the uncontrollable …
And then John shouted in my ear, “Hana, go!”
John
Leaning against the window, I focused on my ocular, and through it, the scene surrounding Hana. She was staring at the reflections on the water.
A siren went off. I could hear it in the hospital, and I could hear it in the earpiece. It sounded like the air-raid siren test that blasted in Chicago every first Tuesday of the month at 10 AM, like clockwork. Was it a scheduled blast like that?
Springing to his feet, Hoshino said to Hana, “We have to go,” his voice vibrating with tension.
Hana’s gaze did not shift. If anything, she leaned closer to the ripples, as though looking for something in the water.
I stared, dumbfounded. Air-raid siren plus city guide jumping to his feet, and Hana kept gazing at the water.
And then I understood. She was in mathland. If I could see her hands, the fingers of her left would be dancing, as though she were playing a piano.
“Hana, go!” I shouted.
The picture in my ocular jerked up. “John?”
“You’re in danger. Go with Hoshino,” I said. The skin at the back of my neck felt hot and sticky, and I realized that a vent that had been pumping air into my room had shut off.
“Haiiro!” she said, gaze swinging wildly, left and right. “Haiiro!” This time she shouted.
Our cub leaped from one of the planter boxes to the mesh boardwalk. Something too large to be a mouse, but too small to be an adult rat, dangled in his jaws.
“Haiiro, come,” she said. He must have heard the desperation in her voice, because he came, rat and all.
“What is he—” Hoshino began, and then said, “Ugh.”
Hana had turned away, but I didn’t have to see the scene to know Haiiro had swallowed it whole. Even back then, not fully grown, he did this thing where he flattened small critters with his jaws and then tilted his head back and sucked them down like a snake, fur or feathers, bones and all.
Making a choking noise, Hoshino said, “This way,” and he, Hana, and Haiiro raced along the canal to the main walkways that threaded between the city’s gleaming starship buildings.
The air-raid siren thing hadn’t stopped blasting.
“What’s happening?” Hana asked.
“It wasn’t scheduled for today,” Hoshino said, by way of answer.
Definitely not practice. Pushing my ocular lower, I gazed over the lens at the sky. It was beautiful and blue.
And then I felt a distinct reverberation in the soles of my feet. Time bands firing up. I touched the wall and felt it there, too. If the alarm hadn’t been sounding, I would have heard it as well.
“John,” Hana said. “Do you know what it is?”
“No, baby, but they’re turning on the hospital’s bands.”
Her ocular bobbed as she followed Hoshino toward a building where a woman stood in a doorway gesturing frantically with one hand … to whom I couldn’t see. As though I was with Hana, I strode across my room. Well, I shuffled, anyway. Walking hurt. You use more of your gut than you’re aware of when you walk, and I was aware of every tug at my abdomen just then.
I made it almost to the door when Nando came in. “Mr. Miller, what are you doing out of bed?”
Hana’s jog slowed. “John, are you all right?”
“Run!” I said to Hana. “I’m fine.”
“Get into bed,” Nando said.
“Get in bed, John,” Hana said, footsteps slowing. I stood riveted to the spot, watching the world around Hana. Nando grabbed my shoulders. “Mr. Miller—” He tried to push me, but I held my ground. I wanted to bolt out of the doorway and find her.
Hana’s gaze swept to the walkway. “John, are you—?”
My brain caught what my figurative gut had not. She’d stopped because of me. And I was too far away and too broken to do anything. I ground my teeth in frustration. “I’ll get into bed,” I promised her. “Just go.”
Her gaze lifted, and she ran. I exhaled, and tension left my body. Another nurse dashed into my room and lowered the guard rails of my bed. “What’s happening?” I asked Nando.
Pushing me backward, Nando said, “Tidal wave. A piece of the night-side ice shelf broke off. It wasn’t expected.”
“Did you hear that, Hana?” I asked.
“Hai, tsunami,” she replied in Japanese. Through her eyes, I saw the same open doorway, but now I could see the complete view. The woman was gesturing to a group of women in brightly colored clothing dashing around on a walkway, their paths chaotic. The view was so brief, I almost wondered if I’d imagined it. And then Nando said, “Sit,” and pushed me down onto my bed.
Pain like an electric shock ripped through me. My vision flashed white. Hana, Haiiro, and the women were gone. My back was on the mattress, my legs were hanging over the edge, and I was staring at the ceiling, my ocular askew.
“I have to strap you in,” Nando said. “The building may shake.” He grabbed my legs, swung them up, and an instant later, belts were going over me.
“My ocular, I need it—”
I tried to reach up, but the belts trapped my arms.
“We have to go,” Nando said. “But you’ll be fine. Please stay in bed.”
“My—”
He readjusted the ocular for me with more gentleness than he’d shown a moment ago, but I only saw my hospital room.
Hana was gone. And the siren still wailed.
Hana
John Miller disconnected.
The words scrolled across my ocular lens, while the word tsunami echoed in my mind.
Something John had told me also played in my mind. “When danger is highest, act fast, but stay calm.”
We’d entered a crowd of people. A crowd. I hadn’t seen one since we’d begun our walk. What’s more, every single person in the crowd was a woman or a child. The first I’d seen since our arrival on Dawkins. The women wore loose clothing in jewel tones. They dashed around the courtyard, chasing after small children, ushering them into a building. Or trying to. Most of the kids were gripping a long rope, walking in an orderly line toward the stairs leading to the entrance, but their legs were short, and their pace was glacial. A half dozen kids lagged behind, peering into the canal and making fish faces. Four other little boys were running around, their fingers miming pistols, shouting, “buzz-buzz!” As soon as a woman got hold of one, another slipped free. And while the women were busy, a child on the rope line dawdled, slowing everyone ahead and behind them.
I stared in dismay, but Hoshino ran past the women and children to the open doorway. “Dr. Morgenstern!” he called.
“We have to help them!” I shouted, going after a girl dropping stones into the mesh and shouting, “Splash!”
My ocular darkened, a light blinked, and a message scrolled at the bottom. I couldn’t read it, and then near my ear a tinny, too-smooth voice said, “Call from John Miller. Accept?”
I almost didn’t, but then I imagined him going on the warpath if he thought I was in danger, and I called out, “Yes!”
John’s voice sounded in my ear. “Hana?”
“I can’t talk,” I said, grabbing the hand of the little splasher and flailing for the jacket of one pretending to “buzz” someone with his finger gun. “There are children. We’re trying to round them up and get them inside.” My heart beat fast. And where was Haiiro? I craned my neck around. He was sticking his snout into the mesh where another little splasher had just deposited a rock. That little splasher and the girl I clutched stared at our cub. So were the other children—those holding the rope and not. Some of the little ones holding the rope let go and—
Hoshino materialized beside me. “Dr. Morgenstern, I have to protect you—”
“Haiiro!” I called. Haiiro lifted his head and bounced toward me. I released the little girl, but she didn’t run off. She stayed rooted to the spot, staring at the cub. Dropping low, I caught Haiiro, swung him into my arms, and shouted, “Who wants to see a puppy?”
The little girl beside me piped, “I do! I do!”
A pair of girls staring at the fish spun. “Puppy?”
The children still on the rope line began to jump up and down. Striding to the entrance, Haiiro in my arms, I shouted, “Everyone inside! Come see the puppy!”
“They let them make a puppy!” a woman said. “Doesn’t everyone want to see?”
The chain gang of toddlers surged after me. Even the misbehavers who’d been zipping around with all the predictability of electrons shouted, “Yes!”
To make sure I kept their interest, I raised Haiiro as high as I could to make sure they could all see. Panting, Haiiro wagged his tail at this exciting new game.
John’s chuckle tickled my ear. “If I tried that, he’d bite me.” It was true. Haiiro wasn’t a puppy, he was a wolf cub, and he wasn’t “friendly.” Haiiro accepted John as part of his pack, but he snapped at him, growled at adults in general—men in particular—and was opinionated, though he had special rules for children.
“Fuzzy tail!” screamed a small child.
“Dr. Morgenstern—” Hoshino said, putting a hand on my shoulder—and Haiiro twisted in my hands like a dust devil. Growling and snapping at my clone, he slipped from my grip.
Hoshino backed off.
I caught Haiiro just before he hit the ground, and said, “In,” and pushed him inside. He needed no more urging, and the children needed no urging to chase him. I followed with the other adults. The doors whooshed shut behind us with such completeness, my ears popped, but the siren still blasted from somewhere within the building.
John said, “That was quick thinking, honey,” while Hoshino said, “Dr. Morgenstern, you cannot endanger yourself in that way.”
I stared at Hoshino, my disbelief so deep my mind went blank.
John growled … which made me remember Haiiro. Haiiro had never snapped at a child, but I couldn’t see him in the crowd. The building’s windowless lobby took up an entire floor. A central column occupied the center with an elevator and two ordinary doors on either side of it. For a moment, I panicked, and then Haiiro charged around the column, a pack of toddlers chasing him. Slowing, he let them almost touch his tail, and then he bolted forward. He’d played the same game with children 100,000 years ago.
A lump formed in my throat.
“Are you safe?” John asked, voice just audible over the din of tiny feet, gasps and shrieks of “puppy!” and the echoes of everything.
I glanced at my adult companions. Hoshino stood a few steps away. The women in their brightly colored clothing were no longer in motion. They stood at the edges of the lobby, watching the children chase Haiiro, some cradling their bellies in a way I’d seen in our time, and Haiiro’s time. They were pregnant. On less rushed inspection, I realized almost all of them were even the ones who appeared older than my mother. I blinked.
“Hana?” John asked.
“I think we’re safe,” I said, but although a spaceship would be airtight when the city flooded, a tsunami would deliver enough force to knock it over.
“The time bands on?” John asked.
I could barely hear my own thoughts, but I concentrated and felt gentle reverberation in my feet. “Yes.”
And then I understood. Force equals mass times acceleration. Acceleration is equal to the change of velocity divided by the change in time. Time bands reduce the stress of time. “They’re using the time bands to counteract the force of the waves,” John said.
I couldn’t answer. A child, disappointed by his inability to catch Haiiro, burst out in a wail. As though it was a cue, other children joined him. The metal walls, floors, and ceiling of the lobby echoed the cries. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and I hunched over, my ears splitting.
Hoshino leaned over and half-spoke, half-shouted, “Dr. Morgenstern, we should go somewhere more comfortable.”
I almost agreed with him.
And then the lights went out. The building shook and swayed. I fell to my hands and knees just as a woman shouted, “Sit down.”
I stayed on the floor while the world shivered and shook. Miraculously, the wailing stopped. Softer hushes of assurance and muffled sobs replaced it. A red emergency light flickered on, illuminating the barest outlines of the lobby’s occupants. In the cramped darkness, even if the world hadn’t been shaking, I wouldn’t have been able to move without accidentally crushing someone.
“Everyone, stay still,” a woman said in a voice pitched like she would say, “Let’s all play a game.” Perhaps intimidated by the darkness, or simply in shock, the children did. Haiiro, surer footed on four legs and with better night vision, continued to race around the lobby, claws clicking. The pace, the way he went one way, and then the other … it almost sounded like he was excited.
“Dr. Morgenstern, are you all right?” Hoshino asked.
“Daijobu,” I said, forgetting and slipping into Japanese. The floor bobbed and jiggled, and I felt like jello. I almost laughed. After being attacked by Neanderthals, the jello jitters, the darkness, and crouching on a dry floor in a perfectly temperature controlled former spaceship was nothing.
Sitting back on my ankles, I took a breath. And that was when I noticed the faintest whiff of sewer. I took another breath, and it was stronger.
A child’s toy squeaked to my left. A second squeaked to my right. And then there was a chorus of squeaks. The click of Haiiro’s claws seemed to come from several directions at once. The stink of sewage grew stronger.
“What smells?” a small child asked.
Haiiro’s claw clicks became frantic. Pressing my hand to my mouth, wishing I had my handkerchief, I tried to find Haiiro’s form in the darkness. Something soft and wet brushed past my free hand. There was the scratch of claws on metal close by. “Haiiro-chan?” I asked, but at that moment, I found his shadow in the darkness, darting forward and back, and then pausing where the bathroom door was.
The hairs on the back of my neck rose.
Something slithered past my leg.
A child close to me said, “I felt the puppy.”
Another said, “Ouch,” and cried, “It bit me.”
Haiiro’s shadow, nowhere near the bitten child, darted forward again. The stench intensified. I swallowed bile. A woman near me heaved.
Another child’s toy squeaked. The hair on my neck was already on end. The hair on my head tried to join it. “Something is in here with us,” I whispered.
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