Abiogenesis (20 page)

Since the techs had insisted that she must refrain from sexual activities for at least a few weeks due to the condition of her body from the birth, Reuel settled her in a room by herself ... well, almost. He had set the room up with a tiny bed that had sides for the infant. She would’ve rather he’d put the infant in another room, but, she supposed since the food went through it before it had time to assimilate much of it, it had to be fed every few hours to keep it from starving to death. And, for some reason, Reuel and Pierce, who never agreed on anything else, decided she was best qualified for that job.

She decided to accept the decision without argument--for the time being. She fully intended to see to it that she wasn’t saddled with the entire responsibility of nurturing, however. Reuel had contributed, and he could damn well accept that he was going to be sharing the responsibility of parenting. For that matter, she saw no reason for Pierce not to if he was going to continue living at the plantation for a while.

Despite that resolve, she resented the fact that their idea of ‘helping’ was to leave the house altogether so that they wouldn’t accidentally wake the infant, especially when she wanted to do nothing but sleep and she was only allowed a few hours at a stretch. But she found that it was oddly satisfying to cuddle the tiny thing and hold the bottle while it drank.

It had developed the habit of clutching a fistful of her tunic while she held it. She didn’t know whether that meant it sensed she might drop it and didn’t fully trust her, or if it was just trying to stay close to her because it had been attached inside of her so long and thought it was still supposed to be attached.

"We should name it," she announced to Reuel and Pierce once they’d settled into their rooms and gathered in the ‘small’ informal living area that adjoined the bedrooms, which were all on the second floor of the house.
Reuel smiled faintly, glancing around the room with obvious pride. "I did. I call it Tara, from one of the ancient paper books I’ve collected."

Following his gaze, Dalia rolled her eyes. "The infant!"

"Oh." Reuel looked at her sheepishly.

"Reuela?" Pierce suggested.

Dalia looked at him suspiciously. "Reuela?" she echoed.

He shrugged. "You said it looked like Reuel. I don’t see it myself, but she does have black hair like his."

"My moth..." Dalia stopped self-consciously. After a moment, she cleared her throat and started over. "My mother’s second name was Claire."

Reuel studied her, his expression unreadable. "Then we’ll name her Claire," he said finally, then turned and left the room.

Pierce’s eyebrows rose. "What’s his problem, you think?"

Dalia sighed. "I think its because he doesn’t have memories like we do. Of course, we know now they were only planted, but ... even knowing it, I still feel like it happened. He ... none of the cyborgs have that. I think there’s just sort of an emptiness, a feeling that they missed something important. They don’t have a ... history. I think, maybe, that’s one of the reasons Reuel is so fascinated with historical things."

Pierce frowned. "They’ve done a hell of a job building this place. Why don’t they just program it in like we were programmed?"

Dalia shrugged. "Pride, maybe? They don’t want to admit they feel inferior in any way? But I don’t think they have the technology to do anything like that anyway. You saw the thing the med techs were using. It must have been a hundred years old! We were cutting edge, even for the company. Short of taking one of us apart for study, I wouldn’t think they’d be able to develop the technology to do it if they wanted to."

* * * *

A week after Dalia had given birth, the four of them were summoned to attend a general meeting of the council at the municipal center to address the state of their tiny nation.

Dalia was nervous. She knew at least a part of the reason for it was to reassure the cyborg community that reproduction among them had been a success, but Claire still couldn’t talk. She had begun to actually look much better, but she still looked strangely misshapen to Dalia’s mind. She was stronger and she showed signs of developing mental capabilities by looking around her curiously, but Dalia still had the uneasy feeling that she’d somehow fucked up the most momentous assignment she’d ever been given and that the infant wasn’t ‘normal’.

It was only to be expected that she would be small. She would have to be considering the limited space she had to grow, but shouldn’t she be just a smaller version of a full grown female? And, if it were just a lack of maturity, how long would it take before she looked more like she should?

The data banks were still gathering information. The data gathered by her own inboard computer regarding the changes in her body and the development of the fetus had been downloaded into it before she left the med center. She was to take the infant back for weekly scans to gather developmental information and had already taken Claire to her first the day before the meeting, but there simply wasn’t enough data yet to make a determination. Until and unless they were able to gather information on more than one subject, they had nothing to compare the data they gathered on Claire against except the information in the computers about human infants.

Physiologically, she was almost identical to a human infant, except for the fact that she contained cyborg DNA and a far higher metal content than found in humans. Her bone structure wasn’t titanium as Dalia’s and Reuel’s were, but it wasn’t primarily calcium either, like human bone. It was something with a high titanium content that the computer was unable to identify. Developmentally, the med techs indicated that Claire was maturing at a faster rate than a human infant. That fact seemed to disturb the med techs, who apparently had expected that she would mature at a similar rate. And Dalia went from worrying about Claire being underdeveloped to worrying that she was maturing too fast and then back again when it dawned on her that the med techs hardly seemed to have a clue of what was happening themselves.

And why should they when the entire thing was unprecedented?

The municipal hall was already packed by the time they arrived, but they were shown to seats at the front that had been set aside specifically for them. It continued to fill for another thirty minutes before the president of the colony called for order and stood up to address the assemblage. He looked out over the sea of faces for several moments before he spoke.

"We want to welcome those of you who have just joined us here in Gallen. I am well aware that you were not given a choice, but it was never our intention to deprive you of a choice. Rather, we hoped to gain the chance to make friends of our enemies. Some of you will almost certainly decide that you prefer the world you have known to the one that we are building. We hope that most of you, however, will find a place for yourselves and that, eventually, we will all live together as friends, neighbors and allies and no longer consider ourselves enemies.

"Any of you who feel after spending a year here that you would prefer to leave will be escorted beyond our system to one of the worlds near the outer rim.

"I caution you, however, to consider the matter carefully. Once you have been expelled, you will not be welcomed again for the simple reason that we are in agreement that anyone who cannot adjust in a year cannot adjust at all and would never be a useful citizen."

He paused for questions after the announcement. The question and answer session went on for almost an hour, but he continued to take questions until everyone appeared satisfied that their doubts had been addressed.

Dalia, Reuel and Claire were summoned up onto the platform next to display the infant. A quiet fell over the auditorium that might have been awe or dismay, as everyone stared at the baby. Dalia wasn’t certain which, but it unnerved her. Reuel didn’t seem to share her reservations. He looked as proud of her as if she’d actually been beautiful and intelligent instead of an odd lump of uncoordinated flesh whose only accomplishments to date were staring around curiously, evacuating its body waste with regularity and screaming every time it was hungry, wet, soiled, tired or just bored.

More accurately, she supposed, he looked as proud as if he’d single-handedly accomplished something no one else had ever accomplished.

An odd sort of warmth filled her as she watched him, however, an odd sense of fulfillment and she realized with a little surprise that it was the other side of sexual love. It was a feeling of being connected to someone else, happy, content, comfortable.

It confused her and troubled her. When they’d returned to their seats, she glanced surreptitiously at Pierce, who sat beside her holding the baby on his lap now.

She’d almost always felt that way, or a lot like that, about Pierce. He’d never stunned her breathless with desire only by looking at her. As attractive as she thought he was, she’d never been tempted to cross the line and defy company law by engaging in sexual activities with him, but he had a way about him that had always made her feel safe just being around him. He made her laugh. It made her feel good, both content and comfortable, just listening to his almost constant banter.

Did she love both of them? Or was it simply that she’d didn’t grasp the emotion as she’d thought she did?

The president drew her attention once more and she looked up at him almost with a sense of reprieve from her troubling thoughts.

He looked uncomfortable now and she frowned. She didn’t think it had to do with the baby, however, not directly anyway. He’d read out the information they’d gathered after she and Reuel had left the platform and he’d, once more, answered all of the questions put to him. Though, naturally enough, there was still far more they didn’t know than they did. He’d managed to convince everyone, however, that Claire was a resounding success, and exactly as had been expected. No one had seemed particularly thrilled about the idea of producing such helpless, underdeveloped creatures and then having to nurture them to maturity, but they seemed content to accept that it was ‘normal’.

"We have some serious issues that must be addressed," the president said finally. "Before I announce the new laws that we’ve passed, I want to assure everyone that these issues were not taken lightly or the decision an easy one. We spent months deliberating and debating and have finally reached what we feel is the solution most beneficial to everyone."

He paused, either to allow that much to sink in or because he was still wrestling with the best way to make an announcement he expected to be taken poorly. "Baby Claire is the first offspring of our kind, but we have great expectations, tremendous hopes, that she will not be the last, that many of us will also be given the chance to found our own bloodlines.

"Those hopes led to the decision to form family units to ensure a stronger bonding of our community members. Our creators have ceased to see the value of family units except on underdeveloped worlds like ours, but their conclusions of the benefits of family units in developing worlds leads us to consider it essential to our own growth.

"The problem arises that we are not just small in numbers, however. A traditional family unit among the humans would consist of a male, a female and offspring, as most of you are aware. We have four times the number of males than females and we cannot even be certain at this point that they will agree to stay. Half the females included in that number are among the newcomers.

"If we allow our community to simply pair off, more than half the males will have no chance of finding a mate or family partner. This is unacceptable, not the least of which because it will almost certainly create a great deal of resentment in half our population, strife, conflict, competition for the available females that could wreck our chances of building what we want.

"The only solution we could come up with that would serve the community is to pass a law prohibiting contracting of family units of pairs. Contracts must be left open to provide for at least one additional male, but not more than four."

Chapter Twenty

The president’s hope of heading off an outpouring of outrage by explaining the circumstances before the announcement proved forlorn. The words were hardly out of his mouth before the entire room exploded, half of them jumping to their feet. It took almost thirty minutes to bring order. By the time it had been restored, the president looked as furious as everyone else.

"Considering your displeasure with our solution to our problem, I think it should be clear enough that anything short of that would have been received far more poorly. None of us were completely satisfied. We don’t expect you to be completely satisfied. However, it is the law. It will be strictly enforced, because it is in the best interests of all.

"I’m sure those of you who have already formed an attachment are more disturbed than others who haven’t, but you must consider whether it would be better to accept and adapt, or better to have to constantly guard your female from theft and wage battle against challengers.

"We cannot hope to establish any sort of civilized societal structure under those conditions."

Emotions might be difficult for the cyborg community to handle, but logic was still strong in them. They quieted, settled into their seats once more, and considered the situation while questions were answered. Finally, still displeased, they accepted that the solution had merits, especially since it increased their odds of a mate, even if it was a shared one, substantially.

Dalia wasn’t certain how the other females in the group felt, but she wasn’t completely comfortable with it. What no one had pointed out was that, even though the solution sounded logical and was best for all concerned, the cyborg males were nearly as territorial as their human counterparts, perhaps more so. Many of the females were almost as territorial, which meant that the majority of the battles would be fought in the homes instead of on the streets.

She hadn’t dared even glance in Reuel’s direction since the announcement. He’d been furious, and he and Pierce had been engaged in a glaring match above her head ever since. If she chose them, and she certainly wouldn’t consider choosing anyone else, she would have to be standing between them constantly, at least until they adjusted to the idea, assuming they ever would.