Ghosts in the Machine (The Babel Trilogy Book 2) (13 page)

“Bicameral two loaves of bread thing,” Kit said. “You are saying the Architects made us that way? So this is like, creationism? My mother is geneticist, you know. I warn you, if you say that she is having like a total cow.”

“Oh, I don’t think they
created
us. I find evolutionary science entirely persuasive on that point. My guess is, they showed up at a certain point in our development and saw our species as
promising
—for their purposes. You know: going in the right direction, but in need of a push.”

“They redesign us, you mean?”

“We do it to other species routinely. Ancient Mexicans, for example: they discovered a completely useless plant called teosinte; in next to no time, they used selective breeding to turn it into corn.”

“So we are like that? We are domesticated species, you are saying?”

“Well, I don’t think the Architects are
farming
us—you know, the hungry-alien hypothesis. Though in another sense that is what they’re doing; it’s just that they’re not interested in our
bodies
. The crop was, and is, consciousness. For reasons that remain unclear, they seem to want our feelings, our memories, our experiences.”

“But don’t you think the Bronze Age Collapse is evidence that something went wrong with the plan?” I said. “That they couldn’t fully control what they created?”

“Frankenstein!” Kit said.

I thought maybe she’d noticed an especially ugly driver in the next lane. It seemed kind of a mean thing to say. But there was no other car nearby.

“What are you talking about, Kit?”

“God creates Adam, right? Out of clay or something, and puts in spark of life. Zap.”

“Close enough,” I said. “According to Genesis, God made us out of dust and breathed our souls into us through our nostrils.”

“OK, God breathing up the nose is good enough, I guess, if he cleaned teeth recently. Maybe he didn’t—that could explain a lot. Anyway, we do
Frankenstein
in school, in Russian. You have read of course?”

“Never,” I admitted.

“You amaze me, Majka. I am thinking you know everything, have read everything, and then you are total know-nothing about somethings you should know all about. Almost you are sometimes like normal person!”

“Thank you.”

“No, is good. Too perfect is pain in the butt. So. Mary Shelley writes this book when she is nineteen or something. Our teacher, big fat Siberian guy, very intense, he says, kids, this is the original science-fiction story, and the plot is so ultraspecial, so completely wow, that it is pretty much only plot anyone ever uses again. Clever scientist makes creature, robot, android. Scientist loves his creature, it is his creation, he is proud like father with baby. But creature is not just a baby. It grows up, is powerful, gets own ideas, wants freedom. Scientist is super-scared now, like crap-in-trouser scared, and thinks maybe he has to kill this thing he created because it is too dangerous. Has big moral thing, what do you say—”

“Dilemma.”

“Big moral dilemma, yes, like, do I have to kill my own child? But while he’s sharpening knife maybe, and thinking about this, creature says, no way, José, hasta la vista, baby. Kills scientist, escapes. Crazy terrified stupid mob, big fight. Blam blam, end of creature. Or, creature kills mob, escapes again, end of civilization. In which case, last shot is maybe scientist’s daughter lying in ruins, and we think she is dead, but her hand twitches, big cliché, now we know she will be hero in sequel.”

“Or else the last shot is the creature crying because everyone is dead, even its own father, and now it’s lonely,” Partridge said. “Which suggests it was more human than the humans who tried to destroy it.”

“Yah. I think that maybe is Mary Shelley’s point. But now think of Bible again, and Architects again. In Genesis story, who is it makes creatures out of mud—”

“Dust.”

“Stop interrupting, Majka. Who makes creatures, and breathes life into them through nostrils? God, yah? So God is original Victor Frankenstein, and we are original monster. God brings us to life, is happy he succeeded. Like, wow, look how cute! But we are too much clever, too much independent, so we start to grow up and want to disobey. Eve and Adam in garden, all woman’s fault of course, blah blah, give me break, and God is now crazy angry. You are saying Architects tried to make us the way they want, and make us obedient, but they failed. Same story also, yes?”

“What are you saying?” I asked.

“Architects want obedient slave, but they need also clever, thinking slave. Self-conscious slave, because it is our minds they want. And this is problem, because clever slave does not want to be slave. Clever slave is nothing but trouble, like duh. I think clever slave found out how to invent its own languages, which was like, mental jailbreak. Freedom from their influence. Why the Architects are not predicting this? Maybe they also should have read the book.”

All that time you’d been sketching furiously, page after page. More jungle scenes. Your parents’ house. Ararat. A waterfall. Rows and rows of symbols that looked sort of like the ones on the Disks but weren’t. A group of what looked like bald cavemen in front of a cave, holding spears. Now that you had our attention, you began to rip the drawings out and deposit one in my lap, one in Kit’s, one in Derek’s even—and then another and another. All the ones you handed to us were variations on the same theme: a building in flames.

One of them included a mark in the corner that I couldn’t make sense of at first. It was just three lines: two of them almost vertical and leaning against each other, with a third forming a loop near the top.

The Space Needle.

“You are trying tell us something, Daniel?” Kit asked.

“Natazscha,” you said to her. “Natazscha.”

“What about her?”

“She’s—she’s OK.”

All three of us turned to look at you, Partridge included. At the same moment Kit’s phone dinged. “Shits,” she said.
Sheets.
“My mother is text. Library on campus burn this morning.”

“Which one?” But I was looking at your first sketch again, and I knew. Should have got it right away. The page was nearly all flame, the building nearly all consumed, but the shape behind the flames was clear. “It’s Odegaard, isn’t it?”

“Odor Guard?” Partridge asked. “That sounds like a brand of deodorant.”

“O-de-gaard. It’s the main undergraduate library. Right next to the Institute.”

Kit’s phone rang. After a conversation in Russian so rapid-fire I couldn’t follow it, she said, “She is OK. Working in lab all night of course, like, why would person need to sleep? Says she was taking nap under desk this morning when library goes up, like whoosh. Big big fire.”

“ISOC is right next door—is she all right?”

“I think so—”

“Good,” I said. I ought to have meant
Good, I’m glad she’s safe
, but the truth was, I meant
Good, we don’t have to waste time dealing with that, and we can stick to plan A, which is getting straight back to the Eislers’ house and the Disks
.

“But she says to come straight there, quick as possible.”

I wanted to scream. Another delay? I looked out into the gathering dark and thought about the Disk images sitting on the computer at the Eislers’ house. I had no interest in rubbernecking at a fire scene.

“Why?” I said. “What’s the point?” The obvious answer—that making sure she was OK was the nice thing to do, at least if you weren’t an emotionally challenged language nerd fixated on your own issues—seemed to hang in the air between us. For a moment I thought from Kit’s silence that I’d seriously hurt her feelings. But she was texting again.

“She say, she has been working on something she wants to show us, and now she is worried they will close down the whole campus before she can get us in.”

“All right,” I said, trying hard to keep the exasperation out of my voice. “You’d better tell Ella to meet us there.” I turned around in my seat to look at her, and squeezed her hand, trying to make up. “Are
you
OK?”

“Da. Yes. Maybe.”

“Seraphim,” you said, to no one in particular.

At least Kit hadn’t lost her sense of humor. She looked at you and lifted one eyebrow. “Burning down university library, you mean? Girl Scouts, I don’t think.”

Despite the new urgency, Brunhilde slowed to forty or less as we climbed back among the peaks of the Cascades, and her engine sounded like a sewing machine being drowned in a bucket. Partridge spoke to her in an affectionate mess of English and German. “Come on, old girl. You can do it. Es ist nicht so schlimm. Nur ein paar kleine Berge. Sea to shining sea and all that. Wir sind fast da.” And to me: “Her first time on the West Coast! I don’t think she thought she’d ever live to see it.”

We staggered to the top of the pass just as it began to rain. Amid the rusting remains of the old ski resort, an abandoned chair lift was swinging in the wind. You turned and looked intently at it.

“Iona,” you said, and stabbed your finger at the glass, almost as if you’d spotted her on the empty brown slopes.

“Aye, she taught you to ski here, didn’t she? When you were little. You told me about it.”

“Iona Maclean.” You looked away and dropped your hand into your lap as if you’d made a mistake. “She’s not here.”

“No.”

“She’s here,” you said, picking up one of the sketches. And the tone of your voice was edging toward hers again. “Waterfall. Tall and thin. Beautiful solitude.”

“This is the waterfall in New Guinea,” I said. “Isn’t it? The one at the edge of the Tainu’s territory, where Iona went looking for the I’iwa?”

“She’s alone. But—but not alone.”

“You know what this is about, Majka?” Kit asked.

“I think Daniel is somehow channeling Iona’s memories from when she visited us in New Guinea.”

“Maybe Iona just tells him about it,” Kit said.

It was a reasonable explanation, almost. But the voice and the sketches made it all too perfect for that. I remembered Rosko philosophizing: How could memory even work, if tasting a lemon was an experience so completely different from
remembering
tasting a lemon? And I thought, no, you weren’t remembering something Iona had said about her experience. You were
experiencing her experience
.

“At the waterfall,” you said. “Being watched.”

As we crossed the floating bridge over Lake Washington, there was just enough light in the west for a pillar of smoke to be visible, gray on gray, above the University District. It reminded me of Ararat. Natazscha had told Kit to meet us at the north end of the university campus, but we got stuck behind a bus at the freeway ramp, and the streets into the University District were gridlocked. The sidewalks were nearly as bad: serious faces picked out by the headlights under wet hoods and umbrellas. Partridge opened his window to wipe the mirror, and the sour-sweet aroma of charred building flooded in, as if a cook had set fire to a batch of caramels and put out the flames with vinegar.

We stop-started our way around to the north side of campus and came into quieter side streets full of shuttered fraternities. Natazscha was waiting by her car as promised, and Rosko was already with her. No sign of Ella. After waving and circling the block twice, Partridge gave up looking for a space and simply stopped next to her.

“Delighted to meet you again, Professor Cerenkov. That’s right, yes. Amsterdam, about five years ago—Bill introduced us. Look, I’ve got Morag and Daniel and your delightful daughter here. But I can’t find anywhere to park, so I’m going to hand them over and find my hotel, if that’s all right? I think I can find my way. Best of luck. I’ll be in touch tomorrow, shall I?”

Natazscha opened her mouth as if to protest, but then seemed to give up, unable to make the effort. As I climbed out, I was shocked by the way she looked—the word
deranged
came to mind. She was in her usual high-fashion outfit: an old jacket that didn’t fit and that she hadn’t bothered to zip, despite the rain, over a vaguely peach-colored house dress. No big deal. But her hair was greasy, the dress crumpled and stained, and there was a big smudge of soot on one cheek. With her moon face and cheap, wet, scuff-toed flats, she looked less like an A-list scientist than a Russian peasant, setting out to sell the last half kilo of potatoes on some godforsaken street corner in Chelyabinsk.