The Apex Book of World SF 2 (3 page)

Alternate Girl
wished she had the courage to run up to Mechanic.

"Please," she would
say. "Please spare Father."

But she already knew
his answer.

"Our duty is to the
original creators of the monument," he'd told her once. "It is our task to harvest
the bodies and to store the memories of the gone-before. It is all for the
greater good, Alternate Girl. We all have our duties to perform. Your father
understands his place in all of these."

 

Memory, its storage
and the passing on of it, is essential to the inhabitants of Metal Town. What
function does the Remembrance Monument have, if not to store the memories of
the gone-before? At the heart of Harvest is the preservation of the spirit that
is Metal Town.

 

—excerpt from
A Celebration of Memory
by Sitio Mechanics—

 

 

Father was silent.
He dragged his feet when he walked and complained about his joints. She tried
to cheer him up, but all the while her mind circled around the question of
escape.

 

"They'll be coming
for me soon," Father said. His speech slurred and he sat down and leant his
head against the back of the chair.

"Mechanic wants to
create a partner for you," he whispered. "He wants someone created in your
image. An alternate man designed to fit the perfect housewife."

"Father," she knelt
down beside him. "If I told you we could get out and not have to come back,
what would you say?"

He laughed.

"Don't you think
anyone has tried that before? Why do you think the monument keeps growing, AG?
Our masters created us to stay in Metal Town, but there were always those who
tried to escape. Everyone comes back to Metal Town, even those who leave with
the Mechanic's blessing."

"But there's a road
out of here," Alternate Girl insisted. "If we leave, at least we'll have a
choice."

"They'll always
catch you," he whispered. "Metal Town allows no exemptions, AG. Right now, you
are one of a kind, but what's been made before can be made again."

He closed his eyes
and leant back in his chair. She could hear the slow whirr of his heart, and
she felt more frightened than she had ever been.

"Why did you make me
this way?" she asked. "You could have made me a drone, if this is all the life
I'm meant to have."

"Do you think a
drone's life is of less value than yours?" Father asked. "Memory and hope is
all that lies between you and the life of a Numbered Man. We come home when our
time is at end. To be joined to the original dream of our creators is a
privilege, not a curse."

"I'm sorry," she
said. "I'm sorry, Father. I didn't mean for it to sound that way. But please,
please, won't you at least try? Without you, I might just as well be a Numbered
Man."

"Escape is never
without price," Father said.

But she only heard
the capitulation in his voice.

 

Copy of Memo as
lifted from Mechanic's desk:

 

Received: 23.11, Remembrance Monday

 

Re: circular number: 792-A-1B3Rae

 

Release Request: Alternate Girl

 

Status: Under consideration

 

 

They left Metal Town
early in the morning. In the quiet dark, the thrum of the Equilibrium Machine
was magnified a hundred times. Avoiding the street lamps, they kept to the
shadows as best they could.

 

"I'll slow you down,"
Father had said.

But she wouldn't
leave him behind. And so they crept along behind the piles of junk and strip
metal.

Their feet slipped
on smooth steel and made clunky sounds in the silence. They waited, but when
no-one came, they slid on forwards until they reached a surface less finished
than the one they'd left behind.

"We're almost there,"
she whispered.

She could hear his
joints creak in the silence, and she reached out a hand to help him.

"I'm fine," he said.

And then they were
out in the open. Beyond them, the road opened up and curled southwards to where
the rift in the barrier had expanded.

The rising sun cast
a golden glow over Father's face, and it seemed as if he were made of light.

They were headed
towards the rift when from behind came the sound of pursuit. The roar of the
Mechanic and the clunk of boots on the hard surface of the road.

They raced down the
blacktop as the sun made its journey to the apex. Alternate Girl ran, propelling
Father onwards with a fresh surge of energy. The earth shook, and Alternate
Girl slipped and lost her footing.

"Get up," Father's
voice whispered in her ear.

"Run," Alternate
Girl gasped. "I'll slow them down."

"I'm not letting
them take you," Father said.

The Equilibrium
Machine shrieked, and Alternate Girl cried out, as Mechanic loomed before them.

 

"What did you think
to gain?" Mechanic asked.

 

What did I hope for?
Alternate Girl wondered.

"Let her go," Father
said. "I will do as is required of me. Only let her go."

"Do you think you
still have the power to intervene?" Mechanic asked. He kept his gaze locked on
Alternate Girl.

"No," Father said. "I
realise there is no forgiveness for what I chose to do. Still…"

Mechanic raised his
right hand in a silencing gesture.

"Forgiveness is not up to you to decide," he said. "Whatever follows lies in the hands of this girl
you have created. She is ready to leave this place, and I am sure she will be
an asset to the Expatriate Programme."

 

Building bridges and
abolishing barriers is central to the Expatriate Programme. Ignorance leads to
misconceptions and stereotypes, hence the lumping together of certain groups of
expatriates. It is hoped that the Expatriate Programme will give rise to mutual
understanding and acceptance of each other's differences.

 

 

Participants to the
Expatriate Programme are given the freedom to appropriate what they deem
necessary in order to achieve the central goal of total integration.

 

—
Understanding the Expatriate Programme
, Mackay and Hill—

 

 

She'd found her
partner on the other side of the gate. It had seemed simple enough to follow
him home and to allow herself to be embraced and joined to him. That union made
it possible for her to slip seamlessly into the pattern of his everyday life.

 

All the knowledge
fed into her came to good use, and their lives entwined as if by rote. She
became the housewife, and he, her model mate.

How he spent his days was a mystery to her. She imagined him spending all day behind a desk in
an office somewhere. She thought of him lost in a maze of paperwork, one of the
hundreds of thousands of Numbered Men wearing the same coloured shirt, the same
suit from the same local haberdashery, the same haircut from some local barber,
the same coat, the same tie. She imagined all of them, working together towards
the same goal.

How many numbers have you added up today?
That's how Alternate Girl imagined their conversations went.
How many more numbers
before you meet your quota?

 

"If I do as you
wish, will you return Father to me?" she asked Mechanic.

 

"Already, his body
is good for nothing but the harvest," Mechanic said. "But I can give you the
essence of him. How you choose to restore him lies within your grasp."

She turned the chip
over in her hand. For all that it seemed small, it contained the entirety of
Father's memories as well as the history of their lives.

"A simple matter to
appropriate a body," Mechanic's words whispered in her head. "You won't even
need to tell him what you're doing. Let him fall away into an eternal dream, so
Father may return."

"Won't he feel pain?" She asked.

"A relative thing," he said. "Such things are unimportant and the outcome relies on your ability to
do what must be done. You have done well, AG. Allowing you to regain Father is
a small reward."

The chip felt hard
and hot in her hand. She'd made sacrifices working towards this goal,
subjugated her will in order to build a life beyond the shadows of the
Remembrance Monument. Already, she couldn't remember the name of this man whom
she'd shared a bed with for one hundred weeks.

Should she feel
regret or remorse for what she was about to do?

She had no answer to
that question. All she could think of was Mechanic's admonition, she could only
hear his voice telling her that she was free to do as she chose. If she chose
to erase her partner's life for the sake of regaining Father, it wouldn't
matter if she could no longer return to Metal Town.

She listened to her
partner's key turning in the front door, listened to the sound of his footstep
in the hall, listened for the familiar creak of his joints, and turned to
welcome him home.

 

Mr Goop
Ivor W. Hartmann
 
Ivor was born and raised in
Harare, Zimbabwe. He publishes
Story Time
, an online magazine of African
fiction, and co-edited the anthology
African Roar
. He won the Baobab
Prize for
Mr Goop
.

 

Tamuka hated Mr Goop; it wasn't
as if it was really his anyway. He had the unfortunate distinction of being one
of those kids. The ones with poor parents who could not afford to buy their
children Geneforms of their own. Just this morning before class, in the
translucent, dome-sealed playground, Tamuka had yet again been a victim. Well,
at least he had not been alone this time: two younger kids and their inherited
family Geneforms had also endured the playground circle of laughter and cruel
taunts.

 

Mr Goop stood
motionless outside the classroom; Tamuka could see its vague shadowy humanoid
outline through the frosted glass wall. The adult-sized Mr Goop was too big to
be allowed in the classroom. While everyone else in his class had their
small—and very cute—Geneforms dozing on their desks or sitting quietly on their
shoulders, he had Mr Goop standing outside.

Mr Goop. Tamuka
shuddered at the name given to the Geneform by his grandfather, Manenji
Zimudzi. A bad joke, Tamuka had been told when he had asked him. One that
Grandfather had made when he had first bought it in better days, long before
Tamuka's father was even born, about it being a genetically manufactured lump
of goo, which became a walking Mr Goop. And the name had stuck. It would
respond to no other, no matter how hard Tamuka had tried to train it.

Tamuka then thought
of Grandfather, alone on that mountain top in Nyanga where they had buried him
last year. Tamuka wondered if Grandfather was lonely up there, and vowed to nag
his mother into going to visit him. The truth was that he really missed
Grandfather; he was the one person who always had time for Tamuka, no matter
the hour or the problem. But during all the commotion that had surrounded
Grandfather's death—Mother in floods of tears, Father being strong for
her—no-one had bothered to ask Tamuka how he felt about it all.

"Tamuka, what is the
name of the English Isles' capital city?" asked his teacher, Mrs Mudarikwa,
breaking the spell of memories that surrounded Tamuka.

"London," blurted
Tamuka.

The class around him
erupted in laughter. Mrs Mudarikwa, a wizened old lady whose wrinkles probably
outnumbered the dunes of the seaward deserts, motioned for silence. But then
she gave him that look, the subtle one reserved for her brighter students that
showed a slight disappointment, that always left Tamuka feeling very
disappointed with himself.

"No, Tamuka that
used to be the capital until… Who can tell me?" Mrs Mudarikwa asked, once the
laughter had subsided. A dozen eager hands shot up and she chose Tiny, of all
people. Tamuka groaned inwardly. Tiny really was a small lad, not that it
stopped him from becoming the ringleader in Tamuka's Geneform circle of
humiliation.

Tiny glanced at
Tamuka, a smirk plastered on his pixie face, then he turned a solemn face back
to Mrs Mudarikwa, "The great floods of 2040, Ma'am, forced the permanent
relocation of the English Isles' capital city from London to Birmingham."

"That is correct,
and can you tell me why the Great Floods occurred?" asked Mrs Mudarikwa.

"In 2040, due to the
exponential runaway effects of global warming," Tiny replied promptly, "the
entire continental western shelf of the Antarctic caved into the South Ocean
and melted. This created, in addition to the 70-metre rise by 2020 from the
melting of the Arctic and Greenland continental ice shelf, a total 90-metre
rise in global sea level and the loss of over 1,710,000 square kilometres of
the Earth's low-land seaward areas." Tiny smiled proudly. And at that moment,
Tamuka couldn't decide who he hated more, Mr Goop or Tiny.

 

As Tamuka crunched his way home between the disused railway tracks, he fiddled with his oxygen
mask. Mr Goop followed silently behind him, and of course it didn't need a
mask, gene-tailored as it was for the Earth's current environment amongst other
things.
Like being able to virtually live forever
, Tamuka thought
irritably. As with all Geneforms, Mr Goop was of limited intelligence, but it
certainly knew enough to sense Tamuka's moods, and remained a constant five
metres away. Tamuka could feel Mr Goop's quiet presence behind him, as he had
his entire life. He could not, in fact, imagine what life might be like without
Mr Goop. Tamuka had no brothers and sisters, nor would he ever, with the
one-child family law.

 

In the low late afternoon sun, the rusted railway tracks shone like two lines of spun gold. On
either side, Tamuka could see through their transparent domes and into the rear
of the rich suburban houses of this area. From where he walked, they all looked
to him like big bubbles housing other dimensions of existence, which could only
ever be glimpsed by peeking over high walls, and through bright laser security
systems. From behind a row of thorny acacia trees that jutted from a dome to
his left, he could hear the sound of splashing water and children's laughter.
Unable to help himself, he leapt from the tracks, down into the thick
vegetation that thrived in the high carbon dioxide and low oxygen environment.
He battled his way to the plastic-steel wall, leant against it and listened
carefully.