Authors: Paul Melko

Singularity's Ring (6 page)

BOOK: Singularity's Ring

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Strom took a defensive posture by reflex, his foot mashing a tomato plant. I noted it, and he corrected his stance, but the man had seen it too, and he frowned. “What the hell!”

We lined up before the man, me at the head of our phalanx, Strom to my left and slightly behind, then Quant and Manuel behind him. Moira’s spot to my right was empty.

“Stepping on my plants. Who do you think you are?”

He was young, dressed in a brown shirt and tan pants.
His hair was black and he was thin-boned, almost delicate. I assumed he was the interface for his pod, but then we saw the lack of sensory pads on his palms, the lack of pheromone ducts on his neck, the lack of any consensus gathering on his part. He had said three things before we could say a single word.

“We’re sorry for stepping on your plant,” I said. I stifled our urge to waft conciliatory scent into the air. He wouldn’t have understood. He was a singleton.

He looked from the plant to me and to the plant again.

“You’re a fucking cluster,” he said. “Weren’t you programmed with common courtesy? Get the hell off my property.”

Quant wanted to argue with the man. This was Baskin land. But I nodded, smiling. “Again, we’re sorry, and we’ll leave now.”

We backed away, and his eyes were on us. No, not us, on me. He was watching me, and I felt his dark eyes looking past my face, seeing things that I didn’t want him to see. A flush spread across my cheeks, hot suddenly in the shade. The look was sexual, and my response …

I buried it inside me, but not before my pod caught the scent of it. I clamped down, but Manuel’s then Quant’s admonition seeped through me.

I dashed into the woods, and my fellows had no choice but to follow.

The undertones of their anger mingled with my guilt. I wanted to rail, to yell, to attack. We were all sexual beings, as a whole and as individuals, but instead, I sat apart, and if Mother Redd noticed, none of her said a word.

Finally, I climbed the stairs and went to see Moira.

“Stay over there,” she wheezed.

I sat in one of the chairs by the door. The room smelled like chicken broth and sweat. We had gengineered antibodies
for cholera and hepatitis, but no one had found a better solution for rhinovirus except rest and tissues.

Moira and I are identical twins, the only ones in our pod. We didn’t look that much alike anymore, though. Her hair was close-cropped; mine was shoulder-length auburn. She was twenty pounds heavier, her face rounder where mine was sharp. We looked more like cousins than identical sisters.

She leaned on her elbows, looked at me closely, and then flopped down onto the pillow. “You don’t look happy.”

I could have given her the whole story by touching her palm, but she wouldn’t let me near her. I could have sketched it all with pheromones, but I didn’t know if I wanted her to know the whole story.

“We met a singleton today.”

“Oh, my.” The words were so vague. Without the chemical sharing of memories and thoughts, I had no idea what her real emotions were, cynical or sincere, interested or bored.

“Over by the Baskins’ lake. There was a cottage there …” I built the sensory description, then let it seep away. “This is so hard. Can’t I just touch you?”

“That’s all we need. Me, then you, then everybody else, and by the time school starts in two weeks, we’re all sick. We can’t be sick.” Moira nodded. “A singleton. Luddite? Christian?”

“None of those. He had an aircar. He was angry at us for stepping on his tomato plants. And he … looked at me.”

“He’s supposed to look at you. You’re our interface.”

“No, he
looked
at me. Like a woman.”

Moira was silent for a moment. “Oh. And you felt …”

The heat crept up my cheeks again. “Flushed.”

“Oh.” Moira contemplated the ceiling. She said, “You understand that we are individually sexual beings and as a whole—”

“Don’t lecture me!” Moira could be such a pedant, one who never threw a stone.

She sighed. “Sorry.”

“’Sokay.”

She grinned. “Was he cute?”

“Stop that!” After a pause, I added, “He was handsome. I’m sorry we stepped on his tomato plant.”

“So take him another.”

“You think?”

“And find out who he is. Mother Redd has got to know. And call the Baskins.”

I wanted to hug her, but settled for a wave.

Mother Redd was in the greenhouse, watering, picking, and examining a hybrid cucumber. She had been a doctor, and then one of herself had died, and she’d chosen another field instead of being only part of the physician she had been. She—there had been four cloned females, so she was a she any which way you looked at it—took over the farm, and in the summer boarded us university kids. She was a kind woman, smart and wise, but I couldn’t look at her and not think how much smarter she would have been if she were four instead of just a trio.

“What is it, sweetie? Why are you alone?” asked the one looking at the cucumber under the light microscope.

I shrugged. I didn’t want to tell her why I was avoiding my pod, so I asked, “We saw a singleton over by the Baskins’ lake today. Who is he?”

I could smell the pungent odor of Mother Redd’s thoughts. Though it was the same cryptic, symbolic chaos that she always used, I realized she was thinking more than a simple answer would warrant. Finally, she said, “Malcolm Leto. He’s one of the Community.”

“The Community! But they all … left.” I used the wrong word for it; Quant would have known the technical
term for what had become of nine tenths of humanity. They had built the Ring, built the huge cybernetic organism that was the Community. They had advanced human knowledge of physics, medicine, and engineering exponentially until finally they had, as a whole, disappeared, leaving the Ring and the Earth empty, except for the fraction of humans who either had not joined the Community or had not died in the chaos of the Gene Wars.

“This one was not on hand for the Exodus,” Mother Redd said. That was the word that Quant would have known. “There was an accident. His body was placed into suspended animation until it could be regenerated.”

“He’s the last member of the Community, then?”

“Practically.”

“Thanks.” I went to find the rest of my pod. They were in front of the computer, playing virtual chess with Willow Murphy, one of our classmates. I remembered it was Thursday night, Quant’s hobby night. She liked strategic gaming.

I touched Strom’s hand and slipped into the mesh of our thoughts. We were losing, but then Murphy was good and we had been down to three with me running off alone. Was that a trace of resentment from my fellows? I ignored it and dumped what I had learned from Mother Redd about the singleton.

The chess game vanished from our thoughts as the others focused on me.

He’s from the Community. He’s been in space.

Why is he here?

He missed the Exodus.

He’s handsome.

He’s been in space. On the Ring.

We need to talk to him.

We stepped on his tomato plant.

We owe him another.

Yes.

Strom said, “We have some plants in the greenhouse. I can transplant one into a pot. As a gift.” Strom’s hobby was gardening.

“Tomorrow?” I asked.

The consensus was immediate.
Yes.

This time we knocked instead of skulked. The tomato plant we had squashed had been staked, giving it back its lost structure. There was no answer at the door.

“Aircar’s still here.”

The cottage was not so small that he couldn’t have heard us.

“Maybe he’s taking a walk,” I said. Again we were out without Moira. She was better, but still sick.

“Here, I think.” Strom indicated a spot at the end of the line of tomato plants. He had brought a small spade and began to dig a hole.

I took out paper from my backpack and began to compose a note for Malcolm Leto’s door. I started five times, wadding up each after a few lines and stuffing the garbage back in my bag. Finally I settled on “Sorry for stepping on the tomato plant. We brought a new one to replace it.”

There was a blast, and I turned in a crouch, dropping the note and pen. Fight or flight pheromones filled the air.

Gunshot.

There. The singleton. He’s armed.

Posturing fire.

I see him.

Disarm.

This last was Strom, who always took control of situations like this. He tossed the small shovel to Quant on his right. Quant threw the instrument with ease.

Malcolm Leto stood under the cottonwoods, the pistol
pointed in the air. He had come out of the woods and fired the shot. The shovel slammed into his fingers and the pistol fell.

“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, hopping and holding his fingers. “Goddamn cluster!”

We approached. Strom faded into the background again and I took the lead.

Leto watched us, looked once at the pistol but didn’t move to grab it.

“Come back to wreck more of my tomato plants, did you?”

I smiled. “No, Mr. Leto. We came to apologize, like good neighbors. Not to be shot at.”

“How was I to know you weren’t thieves?” he said.

“There are no thieves here. Not until you get to the Christian enclaves.”

He rubbed his fingers, then smirked. “Yeah. I guess so. You bunch are dangerous.”

Strom nudged me mentally, and I said, “We brought you a tomato plant to make amends for the one we squashed.”

“You did? Well, now I’m sorry I startled you.” He looked from the cottage to me. “You mind if I pick up my gun? You’re not going to toss another shovel at me, are you?”

“You’re not going to fire another shot, are you?” The words were more flip than was necessary for the last member of the Community, but he didn’t seem to mind.

“Fair’s fair.” He picked up his pistol and walked through us toward the cottage. He didn’t understand how rude it was to walk through another human, but to him, we were all individual humans. He had no idea.

When he saw the last tomato plant in the line, with the fresh dirt around it, he said, “Should have put it on the other end.”

I felt exasperation course through us. There was no pleasing this man.

“You know my name. So you know my story?” he asked.

“No. We just know you’re from the Ring.”

“Hmmm.” He looked at me. “I suppose the neighborly thing to do is to invite you in. Come on.”

The cottage was a single room, with an adjoining bathroom and kitchenette. The lone couch served as Leto’s bed. A pillow and blanket were piled at one end.

“Suddenly crowded in here,” Leto said. He put the pistol on the table, and sat on one of the two kitchen chairs. “There’s not enough room for all of you, but then there’s only one of you anyway, isn’t there.” He looked at me when he said it.

“We’re all individuals,” I said quickly. “We also function as a composite.”

“Yeah, I know. A cluster.”

Ask him about the Ring. Ask him about being in space.

“Sit,” he said to me. “You’re the ringleader, aren’t you.”

“I’m the interface,” I said. I held out my hand. “We’re Apollo Papadopulos.”

He took my hand after a moment. “Who are you in particular?”

He held my hand and seemed to have no intention of releasing it until I answered the question. “I’m Meda. This is Quant, Strom, and Manuel.”

“Pleased to meet you, Meda,” he said. I felt the intensity of his gaze again, and forced my physical response down. “And the rest of you.”

“You’re from the Ring,” I said. “You were part of the Community.”

He sighed. “Yes, I was.”

“What was it like? What’s space like? We’re going to be a starship pilot.”

Leto looked at me with one eyebrow raised. “You want to know the story.”

“Yes.”

“All right. I haven’t told anybody the whole story.” He paused. “Do you think it’s just a bit too convenient that they put me out here in the middle of nowhere, and yet nearby is one of their starship pilot clusters?”

“I assume you’re a test for us.” We had come to assume everything was a test.

“Precocious of you. Okay, here’s my story: Malcolm Leto, the last, or first, of his kind.”

BOOK: Singularity's Ring

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