War Surf (32 page)

“Where were you born, Shee?”

We were walking together along a downtown street in Nordvik, on one of those rare nights when I let Sheeba draw me out of my cozy tower. She’d persuaded me to attend a film festival. The tickets were expensive and hard to get, molto fashionable. And Shee was bubbling over, telling me about the actors, quoting movie reviews verbatim. She couldn’t simply walk at my side. She had to jiggle and dance and play chase with the adversects buzzing around us like bright laser butterflies. Her peals of laughter rippled through the conditioned evening air.

As we walked hand in hand along the central mall, audio messages tinkled around us, and shop windows projected enticing scents. The condo towers sparkled high above like dark, smoky crystals. Traffic was light. A few cyclists and blade boarders. Aircars streaked overhead. Hardly any other walkers were out. This was an executive section, no protes allowed. As a rule, we execs preferred to take exercise under professional supervision.

“So where, Shee? In America?”

My question changed her mood. She grew quiet and tense. Could my Sheeba be sulking? For several meters, we walked in silence, swinging our linked hands, and I racked my mind trying to understand how I’d upset her. I was just about to walk into a shop and buy her an apology gift when she spoke again.

“I wasn’t born, beau. I was gestated.”

Her bitter words stopped me. She turned away and rapped her knuckles against a plastic lamppost, again and again, as if she meant to leave dents. What had sparked this sudden fit of temper? Sheeba wasn’t the moody type. She was sunny, effervescent, carefree. That’s what we all liked about her.

“Execs don’t bear children,” she continued, punishing the lamppost. “My parents were anonymous donors. They probably never met. Bank of America designed my zygote as an investment, to meet a projected shortage of physical therapists.”

“Ah.”

“I’m still paying off my nurture loan. Twenty-five years to go.”

“Ah.”

I tried to think of something cheerful to say. Well, it was no secret that most executive infants came from DNA banks these days. With our lengthening years, we execs no longer needed heirs in the same way as before, and the nuclear family had gone out of fashion. Live childbirth was anathema. What executive woman would submit to that indignity? When well-heeled execs wanted progeny, they consigned the gestation to a private crèche, then farmed out the offspring to specialized training facilities. That happened rarely though. Most executive young were brought to term by commercial banks as speculative investments, to meet gaps in the skill pool.

Sheeba and I left the mall and wandered into an arboretum. Tiny white lights winked among the artificial trees, and animatronic birds pecked at the turf.

“I’m a replacement part. Machines could do what I do. But senior execs like to get their rubdowns from pretty young girls of their own class.” She kicked the base of a fountain. Then with a grimace of pain, she dropped to the sidewalk and rubbed her toe.

Before that night, I had never seen her sulky. An impish smile almost always lighted her face. But in the shadows of that park, her eyelids creased with weeping. She snuffled and rubbed her nose and made awful sounds. I stood by, unsure what to do. Her behavior left me dumbfounded. Finally, I sat beside her on the unsanitary public sidewalk and put my arm around her shoulders.

“Shhh. Everything will be all right. You’re a very good physical therapist.”

That made her cry even louder. Ye icons, how does a man of my years comfort a weeping young girl? In lieu of a better plan, I talked at random.

“What does it matter how you were born? You’re alive, right here, right now, in the present moment. Seize it, Shee. Ride the adventure. Look at this cheesy fountain, these plastic trees, this bench with the fake birds. It’s an absolute comedy. Let yourself be amused. Every instant is like gold spilling through your hands. Spend it, Shee. Forget the past. Make yourself up as you go.”

Sheeba buried her face in my tunic and squeezed me so hard, my spine popped. What she said then, I forgot for a long time. Just a few words muttered indistinctly into the folds of my tunic. I put the phrase from my mind. You might say I edited the memory. But now and here on this last night of my life, Sheeba’s words come back clear and full.

“Nasir, I wish you were my dad.”

In the anteroom to sick-ward, the four ceiling globes are beginning to flicker. That means Heaven is rising from behind the Earth, and the first rays of sunlight are warming Juani’s generator, sending a trickle of power through the grid.

So, finally, the time has come. This is my last dawn, this feeble electric burn. I would not have chosen this fetid anteroom to spend my last four hours. I wait here because Sheeba asked me to. She’s in sick-ward, caring for her patients, and she said she might need me. But I’m growing restless. Anticipation crackles through my nerves. Minutes (epochs) pass, the emergency fluorescent tube shuts off, and a blessed incandescence warms the air.

Quietly, the door to sick-ward opens, and Shee pokes her head through. “The power’s back up.”

“I see.”

“You can still change your mind. No one will blame you.”

“Shhh. It’s time.”

All through the night, I’ve been donating blood steadily, and though the glass man replaces my life-fluid at record speed, I still can’t give more man one liter an hour. When Vlad channels my sanguine juice into the hydroponic vat, it merges at once with the liquid nutrient and ferments into a rich violet wine, as dark as ichor. And it literally teems with bioNEMs. Shee and Vlad have used it to immunize thirty people here.

But other youngsters are falling sick. I can’t give blood fast enough to save everyone. So my inevitable solution falls into place. Yes, I’m the one who chose this, not the glass man. He’s a figment, a convenient metaphor, not a reasoning soul. I feel very sure of this.

Geraldine stomps in from the ladder well. Her handsome brown face twists in a sneer, and she turns her back on me. Her right arm flops in its sling. Kaioko stands beside her, and there’s a bit of anxious whispering. It’s clear the young married couple has rehearsed some scene.

With a sigh, Geraldine wheels around and scowls at the wad of gauze taped inside my elbow. “You not as slimy as I thought.” Then she shakes her head at Kaioko and stomps out. Her apology makes me smile. Kaioko grins and waves, then follows her husband.

As they leave, Juani squeezes through the door, kneading a ball of sticky-string between his palms. A white bandage encircles his head. “Blade, you keep cutting both sides, sooner later, you get dull.”

I laugh. “Wise words.”

His eyes narrow to slits, and his furry unibrow bunches over the bridge of his nose. “Can Gee go borrow your space suit? She got more leaks to patch on the hull.”

“Why didn’t she ask? She was just here.”

Juani rubs his shoulderblades against the doorjamb, scratching some itch. I have a hunch it’s not Gee who wants the EVA suit. Despite his vertigo, the boy still dreams of spacewalking.

“Sheeba,” I say, “isn’t there some drug to prevent spacesickness?”

“Yeah, procyclizine, but we don’t have any,”

“Next time you talk to Chad, tell him to send some. Charge it to petty cash.”

Juani plays with his ball of sticky-string, pretending not to hear, but I notice the dimple in his cheek. Before he leaves, he gives me a jovial, palm-to-palm slap, the prote style of handshake. “Be calm, Nass. We recycle. You’ll see.”

“Are you ready?” Sheeba says.

‘Funny, after 248 years, I still want one more minute.”

Sheeba glances back into sick-ward, where her despondent young patients lie on their mattresses, refusing food and water. Indecision furrows her golden brow.

I push up from the floor and stagger against the work counter. My legs have gone to sleep, so I shake them to stop the pins and needles of returning circulation. “I’d like to go up to the garden for one last look. Is there time for that?”

“Sure.” Sheeba kneels beside me and rubs my stiff legs till the pain goes away. “We’ll be here when you’re ready.”

“How will you do it?” I gaze down at the top of her hair. Her dark roots are crowned in shining gold.

When she realizes what I’m asking, her face tilts up, and her eyes brim with moisture. “It won’t hurt, I promise. Vlad will synthesize a gas like they use in the—you know—the chamber.”

“The euthanasia chamber,” I say.

She drops her head and continues to massage my legs. “He says it’ll be like going to sleep.”

“That’s fine, Shee.”

“I hope your bioNEMs don’t resist the sedative—”

“They won’t fight”

I say this with absolute certainty. The glass man desires this solution. Deep urges stir, reassuring me. For the NEMs, this will be transubstantiation. When my body is liquefied to feed the garden, the NEMs’ crystal lattices will branch outward in brave new fractal veins of symbiosis. They’ll multiply through every leaf and flower, every root and seed, every living cell. As long as this satellite orbits Earth, the glass man will thrive, and his silicon bloom will glow in the healthy faces of all the people here.

I know this future. My entire organism yearns for it. But—how curious—I still want one more minute, one last look around, one final chance to gather my thoughts. Because for Nasir Deepra, this is the end.

“Thank you, Shee. I can walk now.”

Her arms encircle my knees, and she clings to me.

“Shhh.” I loosen her fingers. “We’ve talked this out. You understand my reasons.”

Sheeba weeps. “I’ll miss you so much.”

“Let go of my legs. That’s right Let go.” I speak to her tenderly, a father to his daughter. Then I lift her face in my hands and absorb her image—as if, by trying hard enough, I can forge memories mat will survive the obliteration of my neurons. Pushing her away feels like letting go of my last handhold. But this is no parting. I am not saying good-bye.

Deck Five is deserted. They’ve moved the youngsters back to Deck One, where the Earth-normal gravity will help their bodies grow strong. I knew this before, but still it saddens me not to see them playing. Juani and Gee are occupied in the solar plant Kaioko and Vlad tend the sick. Liam stands guard on the hull. Everyone has a task to perform. Soon, I will, too.

But for now, I spring from the deck and fly through the near weightlessness, catch a tree limb and whirl in a playful arc. The mister nozzles come alive, wetting my skin, and I dance with the rainbows. In this perfumed air, I feel free and young, strong enough to live for centuries. I bound and leap through the vines and pick a waxy flower. Then I rest on a branch to gaze at the blossom’s interlacing petals.

The kids should build a treehouse here. It would be fun. Yes, I should tell them about the treehouse my brother and I built in Calcutta. A private club for our friends. High above the world, we drank Coca-Cola and spied on Mrs. Vajpee next door. I should draw a sketch so they’ll know how it looked…

But they’ll invent their own designs.

Dr. Bashevitz’s portrait glimmers at me from the algae-stained sheathing of his vat. In the changing light, his mad green eyes seem to smile. He’s here, Juani said. We recycle. I reach into the vat and slide my fingers among the wet roots.

Old age is not defined by physical years. It’s a perspective. As long as we see choices ahead and time to correct our mistakes, we remain young. It’s when our choices are complete and our mistakes beyond correction that we understand what a lifetime is. I have never felt mat until now.

But there is someone raking leaves. I hold still and listen. Through the mesh of greenery, I see him cleaning one of the vats. It’s for my funeral. That must be Juani performing one last duty in my honor. Should I disturb him and risk the awkwardness or quietly back away?

Loneliness urges me to push through the flora and say, “Good morning.”

But it’s not Juani. It’s him, the chief of thugs. “Nasir, I thought that was you.”

The humidity has driven him to strip out of the white EVA suit. It’s hanging near the vat, and he bends to his work in a cutoff prote uniform, unzipped to his navel. A thin, pale, haggard young man with a match of tawny chest hair.

This isn’t who I wanted to see. “I thought you were outside.”

“I was,” he says. “The gunship’s gone. But there’s another ship. The markings say
Deuteronomy
.”

“That would be the repair crew.” I perch on a tuft of emerald moss near the vat. “Chad hired them to fix your hull.”

He nods, skimming heavy black clumps of plant debris from the vat. His untidy braid keeps falling forward, and he has to fling it behind his shoulder. A roving solar beam outlines his hawkish profile. “How long your friends keep their promises?”

“I don’t know.”

He nods and scowls at his work. Raised in the bitterness of Heaven, he has no trust in the future. He’s still too skeptical to hope. Sheeba will change that.

I say, “You want the truth? The Agonists are fickle. They enjoy this game for now, but at some point, they’ll grow bored. My assistant Chad will stick with you though. I feel pretty certain about him.”

“The only thing certain is dying,” Liam mutters.

“Maybe. I used to think so.”

For once, he breaks out in a long speech, and his proud baritone startles the leaves. “We living here in a crumbly old tank, circling a planet we can’t live on. Got no air but what we make, no water or food but this garden. Killing sun on one side, killing cold on the other. Our sensors don’t work. How we have any future? We can’t even see where we are.”

“But that’s a good sign. My friends are maintaining the Net blockade for your protection.”

He doesn’t like that. I can tell from the hard set of his mouth, he’s growing impatient with this talk. He lifts another rakeful of leaves, and black drops fly away in the minimal gravity. His muscles strain to catch them and guide them back to the bucket at his feet. Soon, with the glass man’s help, he won’t have to strain over work like this. It almost makes me laugh to think what a legacy I’m leaving this twentysomething punk.