Asimov's Science Fiction: October/November 2013 (29 page)

Brenda's training served to tamp down but not utterly eradicate a fear that threatened to swell to panic if she should divert her will for a second. Her zip-tied wrists and ankles ached. Everyone she could see, from the male fighters to the women and adolescents, was heavily armed with Chinese weapons. Everyone, in short, except for Brenda and a very charming naked boychild of three. Oddly enough, the neglected toddler, ignored by the chattering, flustered, and hyperactive adults, had gravitated instinctively to Brenda, eventually falling asleep against her cramped side while, numb, nervous, hungry, and stinking, Brenda awaited rescue.

Within a few hours of the geo-stabilization of her transponder-chipped person, and following an undetectable UAV survey of the scene, AFRICOM softly deposited a Bee Hive in the middle of the village.

From the armaments package emerged hundreds of lethal thumb-sized aerial drones, rocketing on burst chemical propellants. The pack of angry discriminating bees promptly drilled straight through the skulls of all the belligerents before their fingers could even compress a trigger, leaving Brenda and the little, suddenly wailing boy the only living inhabitants of the carnage.

When the AFRICOM forces came for her, Brenda thought she was fine.

But that didn't explain why she insisted irrationally on squeezing the lone young survivor tight to her chest and refusing to be parted from him, while issuing mad threats of physical assault against her comrades, even while she was being carried on a stretcher into the waiting copter.

Kioga Matson often rehearsed this chapter of his autobiography. He recalled nothing genuine of the fateful incident, but had heard the tale so many times that he had developed vivid false memories of it. Yet oddly enough, they were all channeled from his mother's POV. He saw himself clutched to her chest as if in some Nollywood biopic of Brenda's life.

Kioga's adoption into an upper-middle-class American family ensured that, barring some grand personal failure of character, ill health or a suite of implacable vices, he would slide effortlessly into the meritocracy. He failed to encounter even a whiff of racism in the exclusive enlightened realms through which he sailed as a boy and teen and young adult; developed his propensity for economics and science into expertise in the field of industrial metabolism—the discipline of charting and optimizing how raw materials and energy were turned into products and waste; and his departure from graduate school at the laudable age of twenty-three found him firmly placed in the Science Park network, earning an admirable salary and feeling generally fulfilled.

His engagement to Mallory Sloper, powerful witch of the carbon-sequestration wizard clan, whom he had met three years ago at an epochal gathering in Migdal HaEmek, Israel, only reinforced his feelings of good fortune and gratitude.

He hoped he had thanked his mother often enough for giving him this wonderful life, so far above the global norm and so far above his lot at birth. There would be no more such filial opportunities to render gratitude and love. After her exemplary stint as a grunt, Brenda Matson had graduated into the spectral ranks of international spookdom, and just last year had gone missing in the mountains of Khövsgöl, Mongolia, on the track of a subversive group calling itself Lex Talionis.

Turning away from the dresser mirror, Kioga once more affirmed his own happiness with how his life had developed.

And yet—and yet—there was one wordless part of him, buried deep, and generally ignored, that still dwelled in prelapsarian bliss on the simple shores of his natal lake.

Kioga forwent another dose of Ailurexant and yet got a surprisingly solid natural nap. He awoke at noon—the presentation was scheduled for two PM—and, refreshed and wearing a trig new Buddy Cheetah smart suit in fawn and aurora orange, ambled to the commissary.

The air here in vegetation-rich, manicured Parque Arví was wholesome and fragrant. No noise penetrated the pastoral campus from the city of five million people—rich and poor, struggling and well-off—that stretched away in all directions from the base of the lofty enclave, extending also in ramshackle vertiginous barrios halfway up the mountainside until the squatters encountered the lethal perimeter of the Science Park.

An energetic conversational knot occupied the lobby of the dining hall, and Kioga was startled to spot Mallory thoroughly engaged with a host of fellow savants, some of whom Kioga recognized, others not. He came up behind his fiancée and gently clasped her elbow.

"Oh, hello, dear, how are you?" She pecked his cheek. "Stuart and I got so busy on the flight talking about the latest exciting work out of Biorecro that we just couldn't break away. They've increased the uptake in their transgenic poplar trees by 15 percent!"

Stuart Holliston, tan and swimmer-fit, bestowed upon Kioga a smile dangerously close to a smirk. "Your lovely woman has some great notions about how to monetize this, Matson. If you're not careful, she's going to make you both filthy rich."

"Oh, I'm decidedly high-maintenance, Stuart. A regular luxury sink. I'll spend her money faster than those poplars suck up CO
₂
."

Kioga waited a moment for Mallory to break off and accompany him to the table, but she showed no signs of wanting to flee present company. So he simply said, "I'm very hungry, so I'll see you after the presentation."

He walked into the dining hall feeling crestfallen.

But the sight of Jimmy Velvet seated at a table and surrounded by seemingly every waitress in the commissary cheered Kioga immensely. He strode over.

Jimmy familiarly held the hand of one young uniformed woman, a native beauty, and chattered in rapidfire Spanish that caused her to grin and nod. Finished, he kissed her hand and she departed, giggling, with her fellow refectory angels.

"Ky, my ligand! You're just in time! I've only now promoted a bottle of Valdivieso 2035 from that brilliant lass. What a peach! And that gorgeous rump! As for the wine, it's a trifling Chilean Champagne. Undoubtedly inferior to the Veuve Clicquot you regularly bathe in, but needs must. Not on the menu, but the Director has a private stock. Join me, lig, join me!"

The wine arrived in a homeostatic chiller, along with two giant bowls of steaming ajiaco soup, with succulent avocado on the side. Kioga realized then just how famished he was. He forked up the floating encobbed corn from his bowl and stripped it clean in well under sixty seconds. Jimmy matched him, bite for bite. The cold bubbly went down smoothly and seemed not to interact badly with Kioga's meds, leaving him feeling buoyant and vivid. And if necessary, he could always pop a tab of Nullborracho for business purposes.

Their hearty soup finished, awaiting the dessert of bocadillo and panelitas (guava and panela candy), Jimmy dabbed neatly at his lips with a cloth napkin. "So, I see Mallory is networking up a storm while she's here. And we've got the presentation in an hour or so. Does all that leave any time or spirit whatsoever for a little mattress gymnastics? Or will you be debating candied almonds versus cocktail wienies until the wee hours of this splendid, moon-kissed tropical night?"

Kioga winced. He felt he had to defend Mallory against the very charges he himself had been harboring a little while ago. "Come on now, Jim, she's not at all like that. You're being much too harsh on the woman I'm going to spend the rest of my life with."

"Better I speak now than when the matrimonial saddle is fully cinched."

"I'm certain the orgiastic noises spilling from my quarters tonight will shock the entire staff."

"Hrm. Well, if you find yourself at loose ends this evening, be advised that I and some others are heading into the city. The Zona Rosa, Poblado hood. The Parque Lleras district, to be precise. Many, many square blocks of wanton women, inveigling intoxicants, hip-oiling music, and fingerfoods of the gods. Or so I've been promised."

"Thanks. But I know I'll be extremely busy with my own exclusive amorous affairs."

"Your phone knows my phone, lig. Hey, look at the time! We're due a mile away a week ago! What are they using for personal transport here? Not those cheesy little Tata PicoPods! Oh, my word. My spine will never be the same...."

Kioga tried to spot Mallory as they rushed out, but she was nowhere to be seen.

Large yet somehow intimate, with its reconfigurable walls and fixtures, the conference room already held all the expectant and highly polished Mercosur representatives when Jimmy and Kioga arrived. Kioga felt pleased that he was not the last braintruster to show up. In fact, Mallory and Stuart kept everyone waiting till a whole ninety seconds past the scheduled start of the presentation. His fiancée smiled hastily at him, squeezed his shoulder in the manner of a sports teammate in passing, then settled down at her assigned seat.

The group presentation went well, thought Kioga, although, truth be told, he gave only half his concentration to the speeches, even including his own part. The only slight glitch occurred when Jimmy, explaining the efficacy of the new options for seabed mining, his specialty, likened the process to "hoovering vomit off a Scotsman." But aside from that gaffe, the Mercosur suits seemed well pleased with the valuable new insights and profit-enhancing technologies presented to them.

When the meeting broke up, the time was almost seven PM. Kioga hastened to Mallory's side, intent on cutting her out of the herd.

"Oh, Ky, so wonderful to be together at last. I've missed you so!" She fussed with her phone. "Step over here a minute with me, please."

Mallory guided Kioga behind some slowly repositioning panels she had requisi tioned that pivoted and angled, butterfly-gentle, to enclose them in a privacy alcove. She gazed at him with her limpid driftglass eyes and Kioga felt his heart get the whim-whams.

"Ky, dear—I've just realized what's truly important in our relationship."

Kioga could hardly believe his ears. "Yes, dearest?"

"We need to make babies. Several of them. Just as soon as we're married."

This urgent procreative game plan was the last thing Kioga had been expecting to hear. Naturally, he was disconcerted, so much so that he had trouble composing a response. But Mallory filled in the conversational gap.

"Have you been following the newsfeeds lately? Something clicked inside me today. I had the most startling revelation. Life-changing, in fact. It
jumped
out at me when I was talking with the others at lunch. I realized that despite everything the Science Parks have been doing, this world is still in dire shape. Just look at those weird
things
breeding in the Pacific Garbage Patch—my god! Oh, of course we've made great progress. Essential stuff got done just in time, and is continuing to get done, thanks to our kind of people. We've halted the planet's tragic slide over the past twenty years. Without us, and people of our cadre, there would have been nothing but chaos and suffering, mass die-offs, and one unending catastrophe after another.

"But the idiocracy is outbirthing us! Nine billion humans right now, with another two billion to come before population growth is finally halted. More and more marching morons to fuck things up, every minute! Now, I know we don't have to match their numbers one for one. We have brains and talent and money and organization and virtue and character on our side. But still, it's a race to the finish; which element in the equation will determine the outcome for the planet. Will it be our smarts, or their animal fecundity? Can we possibly save the breeders from themselves?"

Mallory gripped both of Kioga's hands and gazed imploringly and sincerely into his eyes. He could not doubt her sudden passion for the topic.

"And here I was, worried over the trivialities of our wedding, when I should have been focused on blending our superior genepools to produce the next generation of global saviors. Cognitive homogamy, to ensure our future security."

Cognitive homogamy? Next generation of global saviors? Suddenly Kioga felt like the Virgin Mary. Or was Mallory Mary and he the Holy Ghost?

"That's why I know you'll understand, Ky, when I explain that I have to leave right away tonight. Stuart has presented me with a rare chance to earn a solid nestegg for our future family. But I've got to jump on it immediately. We want to give our children the best start in life, don't we? Of course, I knew you'd agree! So kiss me quickly now, and I promise you that there'll be no more foolish talk of seating arrangements. We're going to get married as simply and quickly as possible, once we're together again. I've consulted my schedule, and that appears to be at Instituto Butantan, Sao Paulo, three months from now. And then we can start raising our superior brood."

Mallory was pressing her lips efficiently against Kioga's, and before he knew what was happening, the wings of their little shelter had parted, and she was gone.

Outside the conference building Kioga found Jimmy Velvet waiting for him. Jimmy mantled Kioga's shoulders with a comradely arm and said, with lateral, soreness-deflecting tact, "As Omar the Goofy Sufi once remarked, 'I often wonder what the punters buy one half so noxious as the stuff they swill.' Let us conduct our own field trials, my lig!"

The nighttime, OLED-lit, club-dense, numbered streets around the small Parque Lleras throbbed with roisterous humanity. Kioga found himself so instantly and immersively swept up in the weekend carnival of flesh and frolic that all the hurt and confusion surrounding Mallory's absurdly sociological treatment of their love dwin dled down to a tiny, almost totally ignorable kernel of disappointment and unease, located, as best as Kioga could tell, midway between his navel and groin.

Jimmy started the liquid part of the night's menu by ordering mojitos made with maracuya passion fruit. Apparently it was illegal for the drinks to be served in any container smaller than liter-sized plastic tumblers. Toting his beverage through the happy crowd gyrating to ambient music—some kind of chutney-fado melange, at once hip-shaking and mournful—Kioga marveled at the scads of beautiful women sauntering arm-in-arm. Apparently, Colombia produced nothing along the XX lines but gorgeous females ranging the spectrum from pixieish waif to Junoesque Amazon. He felt lubricious stirrings all throughout his body that promised to drown, at least temporarily, the radioactive kernel of regret Mallory had implanted.