Meru, page 15
“I’m only doing this to pass the time,” she said. “Hamsa said my design was too risky and prone to failure.”
“Maybe Hamsa was wrong.” Vaha pushed a cup of bhojya toward her and sat down at the table with one of zir own. “Sometimes the people who love us most can be the greatest obstacles to our success.”
“He encouraged me for many years first,” she said. She told zir how she’d developed an interest in genetics because of her own unique situation. As the only human in centuries to have sickle cell disease, Jayanthi had wanted to understand why she existed. Hamsa had designed her, and he’d been happy to teach her what he could and point her at the resources to study on her own. The more she’d learned about tarawans, the more she dreamed of serving as one. “He never told me it was impossible until our last time together. I thought that if I produced a design that was innovative enough, it would create a circumstance so exceptional that TESC—the Tarawan Ethics and Standards Council—would certify me as the world’s first human tarawan. I failed miserably, and then Hamsa said he would rather I focus my efforts elsewhere, but . . . I can’t let it go. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I do have AAD.”
“I’ve known alloys who are far more destructively ambitious,” Vaha said.
She didn’t voice the response that came to mind: I’m not an alloy. Your standards don’t apply to me. Vaha hadn’t intended to hurt her with zir comment, and she didn’t want to throw zir kindness back in zir face.
“Without Hamsa’s simulator and access to parts of the Nivid, you can’t effectively create a viable design. Do I have that right?” zie asked.
She nodded and took a sip of the bhojya. “Anise and saffron. What a lovely combination.”
“It’s my favorite.” Vaha paused and said, “I realize I’m ignorant on this subject, but would my womb be of any use? It has a limited genetic database, and I think it can run simulations.”
The offer gave her a sense of vertigo. She’d never expected that zie would simply allow her to use zir womb with nothing in return. Had she said something to hint at her desire? She reviewed their conversation and decided that she hadn’t. Vaha had a generous heart. She was learning that daily. This was another example of it.
Before the silence dragged on too long, she said, “Yes, I could use it to help with my work.”
“You should’ve said something sooner. All the weeks in transit—you could have made so much progress!”
“I felt awkward about it,” she admitted. “Presumptuous. It’s your womb, and the research I’m doing isn’t important to anyone except me.”
“That’s all that matters,” zie declared. “I have some time this morning. After we’re done eating, let’s go over there, and I’ll show you how to operate it.”
“Vaha . . . I don’t know. What if it comes to nothing?”
“You had faith in my abilities when we arrived at Meru. Let me return the favor, please.”
Zie placed a hand over hers, and a tiny thrill passed through her. Vaha’s palm was warm, dry, and reassuringly solid. Zie had offered her exactly what she wanted, so why didn’t she leap to accept it? It’s a gift, and perhaps zie doesn’t realize how special a gift it is. She was scared that she might disappoint zir. That she cared so much about how zie felt had ramifications, but rather than give voice to those, she thanked zir.
Vaha walked her over to the womb after they finished breakfast. They entered the vestibule where she’d found zir and waited for their eyes to adjust to the dimly lit interior.
“Can you believe it’s only been two weeks since I met you here?” Jayanthi asked. “I feel like I’ve lived two months on Meru.”
Vaha removed zir helmet. “Does that mean our year together is equivalent to a lifetime for you?”
“Only if we can pack a life’s worth of experiences into it.”
“I’ll do my best.” Zie smiled.
Was zie flirting with her? She didn’t have much experience at that kind of thing with her own people, much less someone like Vaha. Did alloys flirt? By the Nivid, stop! Zie isn’t human, so it’s pointless to wonder.
Vaha removed zir gloves and indicated for Jayanthi to do the same. She tucked hers into her helmet and set it on the floor. The vestibule was structured almost like an airlock, with an interior door facing the entrance. They passed through it into a chamber twice the size of their tent house. Large enough to birth a pilot. As her eyes adjusted to the gentle bioluminescence that illuminated the space, she could resolve the equipment and tanks along one wall.
Vaha walked her over to it. “When I spoke to the womb’s constructed mind, the CM said that tarawans use this equipment to manipulate physical samples. I’ve never seen the inside before. I usually interface to the womb through my emchannel and the external umbilical.”
“I only have theoretical knowledge,” Jayanthi confessed. She could identify some of the interfaces from immersives that Hamsa had given her: intakes for drawing and depositing blood, dishes to culture cells or simple organisms, printers to make biologics and synthetics.
She received a request to thought-share from the womb’s CM and accepted it.
“I’ve asked the CM to give you access to the womb’s tools and database,” Vaha sent via emtalk.
A menu of options appeared in Jayanthi’s visual field.
“The womb has a limited amount of supplies here at Meru, so you might not get to run any experiment you want, but I hope it’s enough.”
Vaha’s generosity overwhelmed her. “It’s more than enough. I don’t know how to thank you.”
“You can solve your design problem and prove Hamsa wrong, that’s how.” Zir phores glowed mauve with smug satisfaction.
Jayanthi smiled. “I’ll do my best.”
“One more thing,” Vaha said. “Give me your hand.”
Zie guided her finger onto a flat gray panel.
“This will collect some cells to verify your identity. I’m going to give you full-use permissions so you can enter the womb while I’m away.”
“Are you sure?”
“I trust you. I want you to have access.”
Vaha stood beside her, zir hand pressing gently down on hers. She became acutely aware of zir arm against hers, zir hip grazing her leg, zir dark curls catching highlights of red and green from the walls.
“Then I think it’s only fair that you have the code to my bodym,” she said. “You’re looking after me, and I trust you with it, as you have with me and your womb. I think you should have all of me—have access to me—it.” She stopped before she dug her linguistic hole any deeper.
“Jayanthi.”
The huskiness in Vaha’s voice made her freeze.
“Where I come from,” Vaha said quietly, “sharing your bodym—well, it’s like how you felt when I showed you those images. I’m not sure it’s appropriate. Bodym access is a sign of a deep commitment, and when it happens between adults, it’s usually part of a romantic proposal.”
“Oh.”
Vaha’s expression held a mix of hope and concern. In the dim light of the womb, the phores on zir cheeks glowed with violet and seafoam green. They stood so very close to one another.
“Do you . . . have romantic feelings for me?” zie asked.
Her heart hammered. What should she say? Confess her foolish human desires? Lie and say she wanted nothing more than friendship? Why had Vaha asked her the question at all?
“Because I think I might,” zie said. “For you.”
Jayanthi felt ten times lighter. “You do?”
Zie nodded. “At first I thought it was because of the incarn, but even in my true body, I feel the same way. If you don’t, though, I’ll ask the womb to modify my incarn’s—”
“No! I mean, please don’t.” She took a breath. “I do. I have very romantic feelings for you.”
Vaha’s phores saturated with purple. “This is the part in human stories where two people kiss on the lips, right? May I?”
“Yes,” she said, answering both questions.
Zie reached out and traced one finger along her cheek. Jayanthi shivered. She could feel zir breath warm on her face. Zir deep-violet eyes were centimeters from hers. Then zie closed them, and she closed hers, and their lips met.
Jayanthi tried for the fifteenth time to focus on the genetic data in front of her. Her mind kept looping back to Vaha, Vaha, Vaha, on infinite repeat. They spent their days doing all the required tasks, grinning like fools, and stealing kisses at opportune moments. They’d both had prior romantic entanglements—Jayanthi with humans and Vaha with pilots—but with each other, intimacy gained a new dimension. Zie took infinite care with every touch, as if uncertain what would cause pleasure and what might cause pain. She attended to the glow of zir phores as much as the sound of zir sighs. They could speak through emtalk while their lips were busy elsewhere. Concentrating on anything else proved hard.
In spite of that, she’d made more progress in the previous ten days than she had in ten months on Earth. The womb had a simulator every bit as powerful as Hamsa’s. It didn’t have a full genetic database—that kind of capacity existed only in the Nivid—but it had far more examples than Hamsa had given her. She’d reached a 93 percent chance of viability with her latest hybrid design.
According to the womb’s constructed mind, it could use a genome that had a 96 percent chance or better to make a test embryo. At that point, real-time tweaks to gene expression produced better results than simulations. If she failed to reach that level of viability, she would have other ways to occupy herself. There was Vaha, of course. With the desire to spend more time in each other’s company, Vaha had invited her to assist in the greenhouse. The seedlings had taken root and sprouted leaves. They’d built an extension to make room for berry bushes and herbs. In the mornings, she practiced phoric and taught Vaha to sing. Their excursions had increased in range, and they made a habit of watching the sunset together every day. Vaha’s joy in discovering life on a planet made her see it all through fresh eyes. How ironic if I learn to let go of ambition here.
She saved her work, closed her emchannel with the womb, and called out to Vaha. “How about a walk to the lake? I bet you’ve never seen someone skip stones,” she said.
Zie emerged from zir bedroom. “I don’t know what that means, but yes, the forecast is clear today. Let’s go.”
They covered the short distance to the lake at Jayanthi’s fastest pace yet. Unlike the endless churn of the sea, the pool of water stood almost as still as a mirror. Jayanthi searched until she found a small, flat rock, its surface worn smooth from the lapping of gentle waves. She crouched low, angled her head, and sent the stone flying. Ripples broke the surface as the rock skipped once, twice, thrice, and sank.
Vaha grinned. “Let me try.”
She handed zir a similar-size disc. Zie mimicked her posture and flung the rock, which arced outward and sank with an emphatic splash.
Jayanthi laughed at the dismay on Vaha’s face. “It’s harder than it looks. Here, let me show you.” She wrapped herself around zir torso, making no attempt to minimize the contact, and guided Vaha’s arm through the motion. “Right about here, you let go.”
She stood back and observed as zie practiced, again and again, with the same tenacity that zie must have learned from zir struggles as a pilot’s child. After a while, she skipped stones alongside zir, trying to see how far she could get while zie struggled to learn the art. They both exclaimed in delight when Vaha finally got one bounce.
They lay back and stared at the polished amethyst bowl of Meru’s sky. Vaha’s hand crept into hers. Jayanthi marveled at how relaxed her body felt. The near-constant aches that had accompanied her for as long as she could remember had faded to the occasional twinge. Is this how everyone else on Earth feels? So . . . lightweight? So full of energy? What would her childhood have been like with that kind of life?
“My parents used to take me to a lake like this,” Jayanthi said. “I’d lie in between them and we’d pick out shapes in the clouds.”
“I’d give anything for a memory like that.”
“Maybe you can make one with your own child. Not by a lake, of course, but the equivalent in space.”
“I don’t know if I’ll have children. My maker wasn’t much of a parent, and I worry that I’ll be equally terrible.”
She rolled on her side and faced zir. “You’re a good person, Vaha. One of the kindest people I’ve ever known. I think you’d be an amazing parent.”
Vaha said nothing for several seconds. Had she gone too far? They’d known each other for three months, a short time even by human standards. Lying there beside the lake, she felt as comfortable as if she’d known Vaha all her life, but what if zie didn’t return the sentiment? Or perhaps she’d overstepped some alloy boundary, as she had with her bodym.
Vaha turned. Unshed tears glimmered in the afternoon sunlight. “Thank you. And what about you? Do you dream of raising a family one day, maybe here on Meru?”
Relief slowed her racing heart. She could only imagine what zir maker had done to make Vaha tearful at her words.
“I don’t know.” She sat up and watched the wind ripple the water. “If all goes well with my health, the next stage of Hamsa’s research proposal is to have a small group who raise children here. It would make sense for me to take part in that. Back on Earth, I never considered having a child. My sickle cell disorder would make pregnancy challenging, and I don’t know if anyone would agree to have a baby with me. Random mutations are one thing, but deliberately reintroducing a genome like mine is another. Humans get taken care of no matter what, but people still carry those old biases.”
“If I were human, I’d take that chance.”
She half smiled. “We could live on Meru and teach our child to skip rocks and swim and row a boat.”
“It’s an impossible dream, isn’t it? Even if Meru opens up to human settlement, the CDS would never allow an incarn like mine on the surface.” Zir phores glowed with the setting sun, the color of regret. “What a pair of thrice-made fools we are.”
“Now you sound like me that day at the cliffs.” She poked zir gently. “It’s too soon to be sad about our theoretical future.”
But she couldn’t entirely shake the melancholy, and judging by Vaha’s phores, neither could zie. Zie stood and held out a hand to help her up. She didn’t let go as they started walking back home. She wasn’t sure exactly when she’d started thinking of their tent that way, but at some point they’d both stopped calling it “the landing site.”
The smallest boulders turned into giants with their long shadows. Jayanthi had adapted to the range of the land’s reddish browns to where she could see subtle differences in color. They were bright and cheerful in midday, jewel-toned in the late afternoons, and subtly glowing at sunrise or sunset. She had run out of adjectives to capture them in the notes she’d written for her friends and family. She could smell differences, too, with the tang of iron more prominent on a warm sunny day than a cool and rainy one. She knew the feel of dry sand, damp silt, and wet mud under her boots. Meru was her home now, as familiar as the well-worn path she’d taken to Mina’s house. She had made so many wonderful memories with Vaha already.
Our child.
The concept rooted itself in her mind as surely as the tomato plants in the greenhouse. Back on Earth, she’d worked out a solution for a human child who could thrive on Meru. That had been a far easier problem to solve than the hybrid. But what if I put the two ideas together? What if Meru got populated by hybrids rather than humans? An idea blossomed in her mind. She could start with her human DNA—as she had before—and instead of combining it with an alloy’s, she could use Vaha’s incarn’s. It would be a smaller evolutionary jump, but she could then map out a series of step changes, from one generation to the next, until she arrived at the hybrid she wanted. Play the long game. Avoid the destructive leaps that people made in the Human Era. Hamsa hadn’t mentioned taking that kind of approach. Tarawans had no need to with alloys. If a design failed, they could remake the person. She didn’t have that luxury. But would her approach work? Only one way to find out.
“Vaha, would you mind if I used your incarn’s genome as part of my project? I think it could help me.” She explained her idea in more detail and said, “Your chromatophores would be a great first addition. Later generations could gain features that eventually result in second stomachs or solar wings.”
“And the other DNA would be yours?”
“Yes, because a Meruvin child would need my sickle cell genes.”
“Would the result be half and half, human-style?”
Jayanthi’s ears warmed. “It’s all theoretical. At most, I’d grow some embryos to six weeks for a better test of viability. TESC regulations would prevent the womb from going further without permission from a tarawan, and you’d need a fully grown baby to determine the influence of epigenetic factors, symbiotic organisms, diet—and a lot of other variables. Life is complicated. Even if the Meru settlement project gets to stage two, they couldn’t use my genetic design without that data.”
“I see.” Zir phores glowed with a mix of colors that she couldn’t interpret.
“If you’re not comfortable with it, I’ll ask the womb to develop an incarn from a different alloy’s genome. I just thought, since we already had yours—”
Zie held up a hand. “I’d be honored to have you use mine.”
VIRUDDHA—CONTRARY
A few days later, Vaha stood inside the womb and watched Jayanthi extract some of her blood. Zie had already given a sample of zir own. Her radiant smile brought Vaha a warm joy that zie had never known in zir life. No one had needed zir help for anything before. Kaliyu would have scoffed at zir finding satisfaction from helping a human being, but zie didn’t mind. This particular human had wrapped herself firmly around zir heart, and her happiness was worth more than zir ego.
