The Octagonal Raven (5 page)

Fledgling: Yunvil, 416 N.E.

I took a long hot shower in the fresher, the kind that made Father frown. Then I dressed for dinner, in a dark blue semiformal singlesuit with a cream half-jacket, the one both Amelya and Ertis had liked. I kept thinking about the comments made by the youngsters at the tennis Club, except they had really been our age, even if Gerrat and I were nearly a third of a meter taller.

I left my room and started down from the third level, almost catching Gerrat at the bottom of that flight.

“Still worried about losing?” Gerrat wore a dark green singlesuit, with a pale green jacket. Somehow it went with his white-blond hair. He could wear anything, do anything, say anything, with elan. There were times, especially around the girls, that I wished I had half that much flair and charm. But then, Gerrat would never know how anything
really
worked.

We were standing in the upper hallway. That was right by the Meraal sculpture of a young woman star-surfing star clusters in the block of darkness that rose from the pedestal. Father had already declared that the sculpture would someday go in the UniComm Art Museum.

That was fine with me. I had my eye on the more traditional Hui- Lui painting in the salon, the one of a dark-haired woman standing by an open sunlit gate.

“That match is done. I’ll get you the next time,” I answered. “And if you want to think about taking a real beating, just wait till the next time we go to the islands. I’ll make you swim all the way to the point—in rough water.”

“It’s not about the tennis.” Gerrat shook his head. “You still have that thoughtful look.”

He was right, as usual. He could read people, but he was always analyzing things when he should have been acting. “Do you think pre-selecting genes is that good an idea? What if we select wrong?” I mused.

“You’ve been listening to Mertyn again.”

To Gerrat, now that he was working at UniComm, old Master Rosenn was Mertyn. Sometimes, Gerrat acted like Father. I ignored the superior mannerisms. “What if I have? It’s still a good question.”

“If we select wrong, then that selection doesn’t get to the next generation. We all see to that. All we’re doing is speeding up evolution,” answered Gerrat. “We know the parameters. That’s why we don’t have three meter giants or dwarves…or huge braincases.” He stopped short of the archway to the family dining room, since the room was empty.

We stood, waiting for our parents.

“Why us?”

Gerrat laughed in his irritating, older-brother way. “Because we value pre-selection and because we can afford to pay for it and for augmentation.” He gave me that too-perfect smile. “You don’t like being considered a modern god? That’s a compliment. They just wished they could be that good.”

“They can’t. They never will be,” I pointed out.

“Look…younger brother…they’ve got baseline nanitic protection that ancient emperors would have killed for. They can invest in their own children’s selection. And if we stopped genetic upgrading this moment, and returned to totally natural breeding, nothing would really change that much, except that the rate of human evolution would slow down. Elites have existed in every human society, and always will. Our elites are based on ability, not on inherited position.” He laughed again. “And if we do inherit, we have to have the ability to keep it.”

I couldn’t deny that. No one could.

“Do you see rampant poverty anywhere—except perhaps by choice among the netless or the faithies? Do we have starving children anywhere in the Union?”

“Starving children?” came a stern voice from behind my shoulder. “Don’t tell me that one of your instructors is dragging out that moldy lemon?”

Gerrat smothered a smile as we turned to face Father.

“No, sir,” I replied. “That was Gerrat’s phrase. He just said that starving children are something of the past.”

“You wouldn’t think so the way some of the edartists attack UniComm.” Father snorted. “Or the way the naturists whine about pre-selection.”

“What a surprise.” Mother’s bright tones filled the hallway. “All my gentlemen waiting for me. That hasn’t happened…in…” She smiled at the three of us. With her slender figure and youthful face, she almost could have passed for our older sister.

“Since last night,” I suggested.

My father’s eyebrows furrowed, and he no longer looked like an older brother, at least not his eyes.

I half-bowed to my mother.

“That’s all right, Daryn. I appreciate the humor. Your father’s just hoping you maintain a certain decorum once you head off to The College.”

“Longer than that, dear,” confirmed my father, the most honorable Henson Gerrat Alwyn. “Much longer than that. Young fellow has the family to think of.”

“They won’t think much of us,” my mother said with a gentle laugh, “if he doesn’t have a sense of humor.”

We stepped through the golden wooden archway from the upper hallway into the family dining room. The table was set for four, since Elora had already taken the suborbital shuttle from the Bay and was on her way back to Mancha. She never stayed long.

Father had never been totally pleased when she had decided against taking a position with UniComm. She’d told him she’d never work in the family business until she proved she could operate someone else’s operations—better than anyone else he had. She was an ops-manager for NEN—NordEstNet, and from what Gerrat had gathered and passed on in his first year with UniComm, she was actually taking accounts from UniComm.

“What’s for dinner?” asked Gerrat.

“Coq-au-vin.”

“Straight from the replicator?” I asked.

“No. The uncooked bird was, but it’s a new recipe for Naria,” Mother replied.

That made sense. The replicator could only replicate. Original prepared food was always different, and Father and Mother prided themselves on always serving something original at their dinners, sort of like a uniquery, if more private. We, of course, tasted them first, and until they were perfected.

Gerrat eased out mother’s chair, and then we all sat down. Naria carried in the platter with the pheasant, and Father prepared to carve in the dignified old-fashioned style that was making a resurgence.

Dinner would be good. It always was.

Raven: Vallura, 458 N.E.

I sat in my study, before the holo scene that cloaked the east end of the room. Then I pulled on the headset, and put my fingers on the small oblong keyboard that controlled the vyrtor, my wrists on the flat table.

For a moment, I watched the net scene—a golden eagle swooping down on a raven as both crossed a canyon—green junipers clinging to steep walls of red Navaho sandstone. Usually, I just watched the East Mountains, but it had been raining all day, and so, before I got back to work, I called up a scene of sunshine, except, of course, just like on the net itself, the holo sunshine was without warmth—largely because of the energy costs for most people, especially norms. I suppose I could have programmed in directional heating units, but what was the point of adding one simulation on top of another?

Some methodizers direct their vyrtors verbally, some with visualization, but I found I was more precise with the keyboard or the pointer. When he wanted to needle me, my brother Gerrat claimed that was because I was a throwback. Compared to him, I probably was.

The sorting and re-sorting of lists, and the additional searches, had yielded little beyond the first rough cut of the week before, and no real pointers as to which or if any of the multis might have actually been involved. The name search hadn’t done much better, since the permutations of names based on the two lines of the Arabic physician’s name had turned up more than ten thousand possibilities. At some point, I’d have to rethink that—in my copious spare time.

All that wasn’t progress, but at least my lungs didn’t burn with every breath. Every really deep breath, there was a touch of a stinging sensation, but even those had gotten milder, and my sense of smell and taste had returned, and I could again access the nanite monitors of my health.

After looking blankly at the eagle’s pass at the raven, and the single black feather that remained, slowly twisting downward toward the Virge River that lay below the bottom of the image that seemed to hang before me, I banished the holo scene. Some day, if I ever had time, I wanted to reprogram the scene so that the raven won. Ravens were smarter than eagles, but everyone except me, it seemed, found ravens unattractive. I’d always preferred the intelligence and the way of the raven.

Lions roamed in prides; geese clustered in gaggles; but ravens? Ravens together merited the term “unkindness of ravens.” While I liked the intelligence of ravens, most cultures in human history had identified with eagles. Because of the eagle’s raw power? Because intelligence unchecked is always suspect? Or because humans were still hardwired from a million years of hardscrabble existence to respect strength?

I took off the headset to readjust it, then looked to my right, out through the window into the late rainy afternoon, and the featureless gray clouds that hung barely above the lower hill on which perched my modest villa. The clouds had brought mostly a light drizzle, and swirling winds, but little real moisture to either the lower Hill, or to the valley below.

Klevyl should have zapped me the revised environmental specs package to go with the first cut that I’d already received, but when I touched the comm plate, the only message that tingled in my head was:
You have no new messages
. I’d already left fullface messages everywhere Klevyl might access, and there wasn’t much else I could do on his project without the latest parameters. I wasn’t about to guess and then have to redo everything, especially since I’d taken on his work freelance, and in addition to the OneCys contract.

My lips quirked into a smile as I eased on the headset and my fingers called up the latest edart piece, the unfinished one I’d started after the Holst piece. I hadn’t posted the Holst piece, either. I’d made more revisions, but it still didn’t feel right.

So I listened to my newest set of words as they scrolled down one side of the projected holo, with the images of hungry and wide-eyed children burning their way across the foreground of the display area.

I nodded at the recreated image of the hollow-eyed children scrabbling toward the smiling woman extending some form of ration packs—a woman flanked by uniformed soldiers in the antiquated mottled green and brown camouflage fatigues with rifles leveled. Then came the scenes of the bombed out cities, and the broken bridges, and then the smoldering ruins of Hylanta.

I froze the image, and the words. How could I make the transition? After a moment of indecision, I moved ahead to the next section, letting those words roll past me as the holo image depicted an aerial view of a pleasant town, not Vallura or Cedacy, although it could almost have been either.

The next image set depicted a tall and lithe couple, intelligence radiating from their eyes, poise from their movements as they walked down a set of steps outside the municipal building at Porlan. Then that image shrank into the left half of the projected viewing area, and a second couple appeared, set against the same backdrop. While they were also well-dressed, they were nearly a head shorter, and their movements appeared hesitant by comparison, their eyes duller, their carriage subdued.

I frowned. The idea was good, but it wasn’t even close to being ready, and I wasn’t sure I had the insights yet to finish it. Then, I hadn’t finished the Holst piece, either. Was it because I worried about Elysa…or what she represented? Or the fact that I couldn’t figure out why someone wanted me dead?

There was also the cost aspect. Commercial posting cost creds, and posting something incomplete or not up to my standards would be costly in more ways than one.

So I called up the VR that showed Elysa. What Kharl had sent showed her walking in his front entry, talking to him and waiting. She looked like a natural redhead, just like the silver and jade combs in her hair appeared natural, and the deep muted green gown accentuated her color. The image swirled on transitions, but nothing seemed to have been edited as the system marked my entry. When we had walked into the great room, the view switched to a panorama of the entire room. I switched the focus to Elysa and to me, and the resolution got fuzzier, but what happened was exactly as I recalled it—except that the VR switched once more when we had stepped onto the terrace. I watched that closely again. I couldn’t see Elysa do anything except talk to me, no hidden hands, no tube, no nothing. I staggered, and tottered toward the door. Elysa watched. Once I collapsed in the great room, she turned and walked quickly away from the house, into the darkness, her image fading away as she left the scanning field.

What was surprising to me was that there was essentially nothing that I had not already remembered—nothing at all. I turned off the VR and let my eyes rest on the East Mountains as I thought.

I suppose Kharl and I could have gone to the Civil Authorities, but what good would that have done? We couldn’t even prove anything for the CAs, not from what I knew. I’d had a supra-allergenic reaction after stepping onto a terrace with a strange and beautiful woman who claimed to be a distant relative. There was no physical or visual evidence that showed she had done anything. That was attempted murder? Kharl had only been able to find a few strange nanites, and they didn’t even cause harm to norms.

I shook my head.

For a short time I sat, then called up the accounting on the edart pieces—for some sort of inspiration. The most popular one had been a fluff piece on the struggle between the established Snoma vineyards for credit as the oldest…with my own sardonic outtakes about why no one seemed to be able to prove who was the oldest or the best. Then there was the one on the terraforming of Venus—the three hundred year project that was already entering its seven hundredth year.

My favorite of the older pieces had been the one I had done on the forerunner Gate, only about two years before. I’d hesitated to touch on that until the newsies and other commentators had, although I’d known about it as soon as anyone had, and that had been years earlier, back when I’d been in Federal Service.

Calling up the forerunner piece, I watched and listened, hoping I could capture the feel of what had made it so popular.

The first image was that of darkness. Then points of light appeared—stars—bright, but with just hints of color, the way they really looked in deep space, not with the false color enhancement that remained so popular. The music was from Jetecayst’s
Deep Space Suite
, low and lonely, with a single oboe just slightly louder than the rest of the orchestra, not quite plaintive, nor complaining…but suggesting a separateness.

The image shifted to show a Gate—a human Gate—and a ship passing through it at the moment of incandescence that preceded translation.

The stars jumped, and another star-field appeared, and in the foreground loomed a dull octagonal shape, re-created as well as I could recall.

Next came a close-up of an exterior black octagonal airlock door, and with the octagon-within-octagon lock control panel.

I flicked off the image, my thoughts back on the present and incomplete edart composition about differences, trying to focus on what it was about differences that seemed to draw humans into conflict.

What about some phrases on skin color…or background tests? I cleared my throat and began to speak.

I paused. The transitions weren’t right, and some logic was missing. But I saved what I had and released the VR images before my eyes went back to the window again. The clouds had darkened and dropped lower over the valley. I still didn’t have a finished edart piece or the specs I needed from Klevyl—or the feedback from Myrto. Either way, my income would suffer if I didn’t finish one or the other soon…and the time I’d lost to Elysa’s nanites had scarcely helped.

It wasn’t so much the creds, but the pride. I’d been able to survive, even prosper, without touching the funds from my inherited interests in UniComm. Part of that was from my early retirement from Federal Service, but the pension was far from enough to cover my expenses. I didn’t want to touch the UniComm assets, but unless I got the specs soon, or could put another edart piece on the nets, I was going to be severely tempted. Although the number of viewers and the royalties from their viewing were growing, I needed the continuing methodizer contracts. The royalties from sysnet subscribers from all my past presentations still amounted to less than a third of my annual income, and they tended to sag if I didn’t keep producing.

I looked from the valley to just outside the study window. There, below the shimmering tube that was the bird feeder, a handful of juncos scrabbled across the stone looking for the few seeds that the feeder dispersed nearly randomly. The old verse that had once crystallized a part of who I was came to mind as I watched.