Chosen twelve, p.15
Chosen Twelve, page 15
“Relax, man,” Phi said. He kissed her cheek. “You’ve got this.”
Lambda poked him squarely in the chest. “We’ve got this.”
“Right,” he said. “We’re a team.”
If Lambda wanted to put on a good show, this was the place to do it. In her somewhat biased opinion, her home was the most impressive on the island. She’d used all her knowledge from her five (or was it six?) times through Edubot’s college curriculum to design the most mathematically perfect dwelling she could imagine. The best feature was the mud brick-lined drainage channel. Alpha supplied the bricks, and Phi had carefully laid them in place. Lambda had been impressed by his attention to detail. Their home stayed perfectly dry, even on those rare occasions when the sudden lightning storms were accompanied by rain. The water drained into an underground cistern that supplied them with drinking water. It was a modern marvel, not by the technologically advanced standards they’d left behind on Comus, but by the Stone Age ones they lived under now.
Those stones continued to move. Much had been built in the year since half the island banded together to fight off the massive dentopus attack while Upsilon gave birth. The golligs now had a corral made of chest-high rock walls to keep them safe at night. Gamma refused to put them in it because he said it was a death trap once a predator got inside, but it looked nice all the same. There were a dozen new dugouts spread out across the island where a runner could briefly hide from the lightning or passing sea monsters. Beta requested and got an observation post on top of Finger Rock. Lambda designed it for him and Sigma joined Beta for much of the labor when she wasn’t off on one of her solo outings. Omicron continued to tend her own herd near Rho’s Bay, which everyone else still avoided. Pi hosted a few gollig roasts and helped with construction when he could. Alpha made her pitchers and Theta made his rounds. They both seemed happy enough. Theta was confident the dentopuses were gone for good, having virtually vanished in the year since their grand assault. Delta, meanwhile, thought they were regrouping for their next attack and continued to work on whatever it was she did in the fortress. She hadn’t produced anything new from the cloner in the last year, all while wasting precious food to run it. The others grumbled, but the jerky supply was still good, so nobody confronted her. They had their own lives to worry about.
That was especially true for Upsilon and Gamma, who now had a healthy toddler. Eve was something of a tourist attraction for a while. No one had seen a kid that age since they were all twelve-month-olds themselves, which wasn’t exactly a phase they remembered. Lambda made frequent visits for a while, but things between she and Upsilon had become tense when Upsilon found out Lambda was pregnant. Neither one of them said it, but they both knew about the future crisis that Lambda planned to resolve tonight. Upsilon still made wool clothing, but not as much as before. Gamma spent less time with the herd and made fewer visits to the fortress to see Spenser. After Beta, he encountered Delta the most often of anybody, even if that wasn’t very often at all. Lambda had pressed them both for details about their fearless leader’s mood and mindset these days. Both men had been less than helpful. Nobody knew what Delta was thinking except for Delta herself.
Lambda rocked on her heels. She checked the table one more time.
“Do you think we should have gotten more jerky?” she asked.
Phi adjusted a green leaf on the rock slab. “This is our full ration, plus the leftovers we’ve been saving for days. It’s fine.”
Fine wasn’t good enough. It had to be great. Marvelous. Transcendent. Their child’s life depended on it.
Tonight, she would ask the question that had been on her mind ever since she’d learned Upsilon was pregnant. It had existed before then, too, but it used to be strictly theoretical. Lambda planned to have her baby first. She cleared her child through official channels. The twelfth immortality shot rightly belonged to Starlight.
That was if the shots could even sustain twelve people, of course. When Rho was alive, they were all still aging slowly, even with regular doses. Lambda thought that was over now. She’d often been surprised by how different the others looked after she hadn’t seen them for a bit. Gamma in particular had shocked her when, seemingly overnight, he no longer looked like a twelve-year-old. Those dramatic transformations seemed to be done for good. She couldn’t think of one noteworthy way anyone had physically changed over the last year, other than Upsilon and Gamma understandably looking more tired than before. Lambda’s hair wasn’t getting any more gray, and Phi wasn’t getting any more handsome. Thank goodness. She couldn’t handle it if he did. All the evidence Lambda could see suggested the microbes in the immortality tank were once again strong enough to hold twelve people in a static state. That’s what the island’s rumor mill said, too. Then again, rumors said a lot of things, including that Lambda was a shriveled-up old hag who could never bear a child. She proved those rumors wrong, even if it took her eighteen weeks longer than Upsilon. None of those hurtful words mattered now. The only opinion of any consequence was Delta’s. She controlled the lander.
Lambda and Upsilon both wanted the twelfth immortality shot for their respective kids. What mother wouldn’t? Upsilon argued that Eve deserved it since she’d been born first. The birth order part was true, but Eve wasn’t authorized or planned. Delta couldn’t possibly legitimize that level of chaos. Lambda, on the other hand, had followed the proper protocols when conceiving Starlight. The twelfth shot rightfully belonged to him.
“Hey,” Delta said.
Lambda jumped.
“You scared me!”
It wasn’t an exaggeration. Her heart was beating faster than ever, but not because she was startled. She was scared for her child’s future. It all came down to tonight.
She picked up Starlight, who was playing with rocks on the ground. He hadn’t eaten any or shoved them up his nose this time. That wouldn’t have helped Lambda’s cause.
“You remember Starlight,” Lambda said.
“Of course,” Delta said.
The entire island had been on hand for two full days when Lambda was in labor. No one wanted a repeat of the surprise attack at Eve’s birth. Not a single dentopus showed itself. Starlight’s life was blessed from the start.
Getting pregnant wasn’t as easy as Lambda had hoped, not that Phi minded all the attempts. He’d found out relationships weren’t always such a bad deal after all. Lambda had only had one injection of serum, even though she’d asked Delta for more. The effects must have lingered, because she’d finally conceived months after the initial injection. Now, she had a robust baby boy who was already sitting up. Those were the kind of high-quality genes that deserved to stick around. This beautiful child was her entire world. If she lost him, even decades from now at the end of his natural lifespan, she couldn’t bear to go on. She felt it in her soul.
Lambda tried to pass Starlight to Delta. Delta held up a hand like she’d been offered a snot clam.
“I’m good,” she said.
Delta had never struck Lambda as the maternal sort.
“I’m starving,” Phi said, motioning toward the table. He folded his legs and sat down. Lambda and Delta joined him.
In front of them lay the jerky and the almost edible greenery, a veritable feast by the island’s standards.
“The cups!” Lambda said. How could she forget those? They were the most impressive part. She carefully placed Starlight on the ground and rushed down the carved steps. She reemerged a moment later with three cups and a pitcher. Starlight couldn’t be trusted with one of his own. Each was handcrafted with her finest work: a perfectly symmetrical flower inlay courtesy of Alpha. The island didn’t have a currency, so Lambda had bartered for them. She’d designed a cistern for Alpha, with Phi once again providing the labor. Alpha made her own mud bricks. Even accepting favors here took a lot of work.
Lambda filled the cups with cool water fresh from her own cistern. The drinkware on the boulder pretending to be a table made for an impressive display. This would almost have passed for a civilized meal in another time on another planet.
Delta went to drink. She stopped.
“Is it supposed to smell like that?” she asked.
Lambda looked in her own cup. The water was covered in a greenish film. She thought she had taken care of that. Without chemicals to eradicate it, she skimmed the gunk out of the cistern every morning until the water finally stayed clean on its own. The algae had chosen this moment to make a dramatic reappearance. Lambda silently cursed everything about the island.
She grabbed the cup out of Delta’s hand and dumped the water on the ground.
“The meat is better without water, anyway,” she said. “You can really taste the… dryness.”
Delta nodded slowly.
They chewed the jerky in heavy silence. This was not the dinner party Lambda had envisioned.
“Thank you for inviting me,” Delta finally said.
“It’s our pleasure,” Lambda said. “The truth is, we’ve been trying to get you over here for a while.” The truthier truth was that Delta had been actively avoiding them for just as long. Beta supplied the fortress with gollig jerky, sparing her the need to abandon whatever she was working on in there. Lambda had only managed to get her here by purposely spreading the rumor-that-wasn’t-a-rumor to everyone on the island that Delta was ducking them. She finally had to make an appearance to save face.
Gamma already had undue influence with Delta. He was the only one besides Beta allowed near the fortress, even if his duties as a dad and a shepherd mostly kept him away. His occasional visits with Spenser gave him the queen’s ear, or the appearance of it. Who knew what he was telling her? Lambda did, or could at least make an educated guess. Gamma all but had immortality locked up for his daughter. Lambda had to act now if she didn’t want to one day watch her own child die.
This would be the most difficult and important conversation of her life. It required the lightest touch.
Phi shoved a big chunk of jerky into his mouth.
“So we want that shot for our kid,” he said.
“Excuse me?!” Lambda and Delta said at the same time.
Phi looked at Lambda, hurt.
“I thought we were on the same team,” Phi said. “This was your idea.”
He had seemed so aloof and mysterious when they were dating. Lambda missed the days when she’d had to wonder what he was thinking rather than listening to him blurt it out.
“I didn’t mean like this,” Lambda said. “Forgive him, Delta. He’s been working very hard in the sun today.”
“Not really, man,” Phi said. “I mostly just walked around picking this green stuff we’re not even going to eat.”
“Garnishes,” Lambda said. “For the last time, it’s called garnishes.”
“I don’t know why we have to put on this big production,” Phi said, putting another piece of jerky in his mouth. “Delta is smart. She knows why we invited her here.”
Lambda and Delta shared a look. Judging by Delta’s face, Lambda had already lost.
“We’re actually worried you’re getting too close to Eve to make an objective decision,” Lambda said.
“I’ve only seen Eve a few times,” Delta said. “I don’t treat her like a beloved pet like the rest of you do.”
Delta doesn’t just lack a maternal instinct, Lambda thought. She lacks a human one.
Starlight cooed happily on the ground. Lambda picked him up.
“I should be going,” Delta said, standing up. “Thank you for dinner.”
“You can’t leave yet,” Lambda said. “You must have walked for hours to get here.”
“Thank you for the exercise,” Delta said.
“Seriously?” Phi said. “I spent, like, four hours collecting these garnishes.”
Surprisingly, Delta sat back down.
Okay then, Lambda thought. They hadn’t lost just yet.
“We have to make a decision on this eventually,” Lambda said. “Right now, we’re just doing eleven shots. We should be able to stretch it back to twelve.”
“Why not stretch it to thirteen?” Delta said. “Or fifty. We’re just going to have this conversation over and over again every time someone has a kid. Eventually, it won’t be immortality at all. It might not even be life-extending.”
“How would we know?” Lambda asked.
Delta shrugged. “When one of us dies, I guess.”
“One of us already did,” Phi said coldly.
“When one of us dies of old age,” Delta clarified.
“You gave that fertility serum to me,” Lambda said. “My kid was chosen.”
“I tried to give it to Alpha first because that’s who SCASL chose,” Delta said.
“But she refused, and I got it, so my child was chosen second-hand.”
Lambda’s heart sank. She was doing a terrible job making her own case. She couldn’t think. Her heart was pounding out of control.
Delta put a piece of garnish in her mouth.
“Mmm,” she said, making eye contact with Phi. She chewed reluctantly.
“It’s not about what we need,” Lambda said. “It’s about what civilization needs. I’m the smartest, and Phi is the biggest and strongest. Starlight will have the traits we need to preserve.”
“Wow,” Delta said. “That doesn’t sound arrogant at all.”
“It’s true,” Lambda said. “I always had the highest math scores, and Phi… Well, look at him.”
Phi smiled shyly. “Want me to flex or something?”
Delta made the same face as when Lambda had offered her Starlight. “No, thanks.”
“The point is, we’re a good genetic pairing,” Lambda said. “To be blunt, civilization is going to have a better chance of surviving long term if my son is with it the whole time.”
Starlight shoved a rock in his mouth.
“I can see the brilliance already,” Delta said.
Lambda used her finger to fish out the rock.
“I have nothing against Eve,” Lambda said. “Or against Upsilon and Gamma. I’m just stating facts.”
Delta discreetly spit the garnish into her hand and stood up.
“And what if you have another kid?” she asked.
“What?” Lambda asked.
“Are you going to have just one?”
She looked at Phi. “I don’t…”
“If you have two kids, or three or four or five, which one do you want to be immortal?” Delta asked. “Are they all going to be the saviors of civilization, or just your first rock-eater?”
Lambda barely registered the insult. An expression of terror slowly spread across her face. No matter what she did, she would watch some—or all—of her future children die. Unless she gave up her own immortality. Even then, it would only save one more kid. There just wasn’t enough to go around. It was a fact she knew, but never really knew, until that moment. For the first time, the reality of the situation crystallized in her mind.
Delta made her goodbyes again and left. This time, Phi didn’t try to stop her. Lambda didn’t notice. Starlight slept on her lap as she watched the sky late into the night.
Chapter 25
Gamma practically skipped on his way to the dwelling. He was about to talk to his favorite person in the world.
“How are you doing, Eve?”
She giggled. She was always happy to see him.
“Oh, you’re here,” Upsilon said.
“Yeah,” Gamma said. “Right when I said I would be.”
That was an exaggeration. Meeting times on the island were a guess at best.
Upsilon pushed past Gamma and attempted to smooth out Eve’s hair. It was always tangled, no matter how often they attacked the rats’ nests that spontaneously formed on her head. To help, Alpha crafted a beautiful comb from a gollig bone. The first time they’d used it, the comb had snapped in half. The tangles were too strong. Gamma and Upsilon were too embarrassed to ask for another one. It must have taken Alpha dozens of hours to make it. They’d been using their fingers to comb Eve’s hair ever since.
“Did you talk to her?” Upsilon asked.
“Him,” Gamma said. “Spenser is a ‘him.’” That categorization was absurd, of course, since bots had neither a sex nor a gender. But the humans had always assigned genders to them on Comus based on the bot’s tone of voice. Spencer mostly spoke in vacuum, which was hardly precise on pronouns. At some point, Gamma had decided those deep, hearty whirrs were distinctly masculine. Spenser never corrected him, and that was that.
“Did you talk to Delta?” Upsilon said.
Gamma bent down to help with Eve’s hair. The job required all the fingers they could muster. Eve whimpered. Gamma hated hurting her, but he couldn’t let her go around looking like that. An actual rat might decide to live there. Spenser Island’s version of one, anyway. That meant it would be two meters long and spit poison.
“I almost never see her,” Gamma said. “On visitation days, she normally puts him in his old vacuum body and leaves him outside the walls before I get there.”
“Visitation days?” Upsilon said. “It’s like he’s Delta’s prisoner.”
“More like her co-worker,” Gamma said. “It’s complicated. Our conversations aren’t really that specific.”
Gamma had shared more information with Spenser than with any other being, mechanical or otherwise, and Spenser had reciprocated. Yet their communications were based on generalities, leaving much unsaid. True best friends could always fill in the gaps.
