Chapters Sixteen and Seventeen

Penitence wouldn’t be a problem; I felt like scum.  I hadn’t seen Lu or made even a half-hearted attempt to get in touch for weeks.

I stood outside her studio, running through my opening lines one last time.  I would tell her I was sorry—she was a good friend and deserved better.  I would explain I had been out of the loop because of a complicated research project.  That explanation had two things going for it:  Number one, it had happened before; and number two, it was true.  Figuring out who I was had to be the ultimate research project.  I only hoped Lu wouldn’t try to pump me for details.  If she did, I would lay down the best smokescreen I could and cut the visit short.

She probably won’t ask, I told myself, as I pressed my thumb to the scanner.  Then the portal slid open and my carefully rehearsed strategy went up in smoke.  “By the Sage, Lu!  You look—”

“—awful.  I know.”

She would get no argument from me.  Half her hair was caught in a heavy, untidy knot skewered by two crossed six-inch paint styluses.  The other half had straggled out of confinement to trail down her neck and frame her face, which, for probably the first time in her adult life, was devoid of makeup.  Puffy, bloodshot blue eyes and chipped nail polish—a shocking pink that clashed viciously with her wrinkled pumpkin-colored smock—completed the train-wreck effect.

She tucked a long black lock behind her left ear and waved me inside.  “Come in, Kai, it’s been ages, hasn’t it?  I’m sorry I’ve been out of touch; I’ve been working.”

That was supposed to be my line, I thought, following her in and sweeping a quick glance around. “So I see.”

Lofty and well-lit, Lu’s studio quarters usually seemed more like a gallery than a place to live.  The hardwood floors gleamed; everything showed to its best advantage under specially designed soft-white lighting.  Carefully chosen accent pieces were artfully placed:  the cryptic, egg-shaped pewter sculpture on the coffee table; three coiled Navajo wedding baskets, each larger than the next, hanging in a row over the sofa; against the bulkhead, a four-foot high, wide-mouthed ceramic urn swimming with bright red tropical fish.  Color exploded off the far bulkhead—deep amber, orange-red, yellow-white, and traces of pale blue leaping from a massive canvas labeled Creative Fire:  A Self-Portrait.  The studio had always reminded me of Lu:  a flare for both drama and whimsy, an unerring sense of style, and minute attention to detail.

The studio still reminded me of Lu—it was a mess.  Twenty or more digital canvasses littered every available surface—they were propped against the off-white bulkheads, perched on easels, cradled by the stubby red arms of the sleek, square sofa.  A good many lay scattered across four wide white work tables at the near end of the room.  Among the paintings on the tables were two apple cores; four brightly colored ceramic mugs, insides brown-black with coffee dregs; paint styluses in assorted sizes and colors; and a half-empty bottle of shocking pink nail polish, lying forlornly on its side.  Of course, once I focused on the paintings, everything else faded into the background.  Something had changed:  I could actually recognize people I knew in these paintings.

Up until now, Lu had limited herself to abstracts.  What I knew about abstract art could be summed up in four very short sentences:  One, most scholars set the birth of abstract art in the early twentieth century.  Two, it’s also known as non-representational, non-figurative, or non-objective art.  Three, the artists in question aren’t interested in faithfully reproducing their subjects; they want to communicate what they see as the subjects’ essential natures.  And four, there have been nearly as many schools of abstract art as there have been artists.  Needless to say, that pitiful knowledge base didn’t exactly equip me to be an educated connoisseur.  I had always tried to understand Lu’s work, but more often than not, I would hmm and ah, then give up and ask her to explain exactly what I was looking at.

I remember one painting in particular—a large wash of pastel grays and gray-blues, black and terracotta—arranged in heaps, curves, whorls, and slashes.  I liked it, felt its raw power, but didn’t have a clue as to what it meant.

“Hmm,” I said.  “Ah.”  Long, bewildered silence.  Then finally, “What is it?”

“A sea shore,” she had explained patiently.  “Like back on Earth.  See?  These are the rocks, and here are the waves crashing against them, exploding into spray, showering droplets.”

“Ah-hah.”  I still didn’t see it, but I could feel it.  “I like it.”

Once I asked her why she didn’t just paint things the way they looked.

“I paint things the way they look inside,” she said.

But the paintings littering her quarters now were different.  “Na’weh,” I murmured, drifting over to stare at the nearest canvas.  “This is Na’weh.”

Actually, it was some kind of multi-faceted … vision of Na’weh.  Luana had layered three portraits like sheer film transparencies.  In the central portrait Na’weh was serene and dignified: high forehead unlined beneath close-cropped hair; black eyebrows delicately arched over wide almond-shaped eyes set in a flawless, light-golden-brown complexion; oval head erect on a slender, graceful neck.  The flowers on her purple-blue tunic threaded ghostly light-blue tendrils through her features into a purple background haunted by deep-blue musical notes.  Superimposed on that image was another.  Here the amber gaze was heavy-lidded and sensual, the lips full and ripe.  The third image was faint, only a whisper—Na’weh with downcast eyes and an ironically lifted left eyebrow.

My gaze shifted to another canvas.  Dark eyes alight with an otherworldly fire, Zivon’s face was superimposed on a pale blue background swimming with figures.  I picked out Plato’s divided line, representing the four levels of existence; a pale gold key inscribed “Wisdom;” the yin and yang; and the chiseled, hawk-like profile of the Great Sage, painted in one continuous, deep-blue line.

There were others:  Gregor Sterling adrift on a yellow-green sea of galaxies and nebulae; Kiril Garan in shades of orange—determined, paternal, commanding—layered atop the smaller, more spectral figures of the Council.

“These are absolutely amazing,” I breathed, and looked at Lu.  “It’s like you saw their souls or something.”

“Hmm.”

“Don’t these represent quite a departure in style for you?”

“Among other things.”  She turned abruptly, striding toward the kitchenette.  “Would you like some tea?  I have a wonderful Vietnamese Oolong.”

“Sure.”  Intrigued by the instant let’s-change-the-subject vibe, I followed her across the studio.

Since brewing tea and opening wine bottles pretty much constituted the extent of Lu’s culinary interests, her kitchenette was roughly the size of a walk-in closet.  The color scheme changed almost as often as Lu changed her clothes.  Today the diminutive space was a study in black and white with touches of red—apples in a white ceramic bowl, a spray of cherry-colored napkins in a fan-shaped, zebra-striped vase.

I leaned against the archway, watching Lu fill a gourd-shaped yixing zisha clay teapot with warm water.  She scooped tea leaves into a round mesh infuser and carefully arranged two delicate porcelain Japanese cups on a black lacquered tray.  If her level of concentration was any indication, making tea ranked right up there with rocket science.

I wasn’t about to let her off the hook that easily.  “What other things?”

“Hmm?”

“You said the new paintings represented a departure in style ‘among other things.’”

“The tea’s ready,” she announced after a short, charged silence.  She removed the dripping infuser from the steaming pot and replaced the lid.  Setting the pot next to the cups, she picked up the tray and turned to face me.  “Let’s sit down, Kai.  I’m not sure I can explain, but I’ll try.”

I cleared a spot on the sofa and we sat, bodies angled toward each other, knees almost touching.  The iridescent white cup she passed me felt small, hot, and fragile in my hand.  I inhaled the light, sweet aroma of tea laced with jasmine and waited.

“I went to the archives,” Lu began, gazing into her tea as she slowly rolled the cup between her palms.  “I wanted to revisit my work.  It’s all there, you know—every digital canvas since before we left Earth, miniaturized for storage.  It took me a week to restore and look at all of them, but I wanted to be sure.”

“Sure about what?”

“Sure my memory wasn’t playing tricks on me.  It wasn’t.”  She nodded toward the canvases.  “I’ve never painted pictures like these before.”

“So it is a new style.”

A troubled furrow creased her brow.  “Yes.”

“You act like that’s a bad thing.  Don’t a lot of great artists go through different phases … uh, periods?  Experiment with new styles?”

“Uh-huh.  As you grow, you explore new modes of expression, new techniques, new subject matter.  When I say I’ve never painted like this before, I’m not talking about style … exactly.”

“Okay.  What are you talking about … exactly?”

“Something deeper, more important than style.  Something inside me.  It’s … changed.”

I subdued a sudden urge to reach up to see if my hair was standing on end.  Don’t jump to conclusions, Kai. I sipped tea, trying to appear sympathetic and thoughtful while I willed my lightly racing pulse to slow.  “What makes you say that?”

“You said it yourself.”

“I did?”

“Yes.  You said it looked like I had seen their souls.”

I glanced toward the coffee table at the painting of Zivon.  “It does.”

“Well, there you go!  Don’t you see, Kai?  All my life, my paintings have reflected what’s inside me, my reactions to the things I paint, my interpretations of them.  My soul.  My art has always been utterly ….”

“Subjective?”

“Yes!  Subjective.  I was browsing through the library database a week or so ago, when I found this book by a painter named Robert Henri.  Back in the early twentieth century, he said something about … well, basically, he said as far as the artist is concerned, people and things are whatever that artist imagines them to be.  The actual subjects aren’t important in art; the sensations they arouse in the artist are.”  She paused.  “But he also said there would be moments when we see beyond the usual to reality.  I think that’s the way I’m seeing now, or trying to.  I used to paint to express myself, always looking inside.  Now I look outside … almost like I’m searching for ….”

“Reality?”

She gave a dainty, self-deprecating grimace.  “No, as silly as it sounds, I think I’m after something even deeper than reality.  Truth.”

I didn’t get it for a second or two.  Weren’t reality and truth the same thing?  Maybe not always, I mused.  The Colony was a case in point.  The majority were still firmly convinced they could and should exercise what they saw as their sovereign right to immortality.  They believed it, and they lived it, forging a historical reality by sheer force of will.  But it was a reality built on presuppositions disastrously, diametrically opposed to the truth.

Well, the truth had more or less smacked at least four of us in the face.  Now Luana seemed to be waking up to it.  While five newly-aware people wouldn’t amount to a groundswell in anybody’s book, a tide of awareness did seem to be rising, and that struck me as weird, now that I stopped to think about it.  For hundreds of years everything aboard the Janus had gone according to plan.  Now, all of a sudden and for no apparent reason, an assortment of individuals come to one and the same radical conclusion.  Why?  And why now?

I didn’t know.  What I did know was this was the most exciting “revival” imaginable.  And like any true convert, I was overjoyed by the fact that one of my best friends seemed well on her way to joining us—might, in fact, be one of us already.

Heroically resisting the urge to shout Hallelujah!—or words to that effect—I assured Lu she didn’t sound silly at all.  “Do you think you found any?  Truth, I mean?”

Something like alarm flew into her gaze just before it darted down and away.  “I don’t … that is, I’m not sure I’m ready to talk about that.  Not yet.”

Since that same desperate, yearning-but-hunted note had colored my own voice a few weeks back, I could empathize.  And because I could empathize, I wanted Lu to know she wasn’t alone.  “Come on, Lu, you can tell me.”

She hesitated before shaking her head.  “You’ll think I’ve lost my ever-loving mind—or worse.  And I would have to agree with you.”

I wondered fleetingly what mental state Lu considered worse than insanity.  Whatever it was, I quickly dismissed it as beside the point.  I was almost sure I knew what she needed to hear.  “Listen, Lu, it’s a well-known fact that only sane people worry about going crazy.  Crazy people don’t give it a thought; they think everybody else is nuts.”

She fixed me with a wide-eyed, earnest-yet-hopeful gaze.  “Really?”

“Absolutely.  Trust me, the very fact that you’ve entertained doubts about your sanity is indisputable evidence your ever-loving mind remains fully intact.”

“Oh.”  She looked vastly relieved.  “I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that!  I’ve been afraid to confide in anyone.  That was foolish, wasn’t it?  Why, I could have been talking it over with our friends all this time and—”

“Whoa!”  Raising my voice and throwing up a hand were instinctive.  “Back up a minute!”

That was the thing about Lu, she was either feast or famine, stop or full-speed-ahead.  I had a quick, nasty vision of her running out to proclaim her newfound, life-changing truth to all and sundry, ready or not.  Among the Quingenti, life-changing anything was tantamount to heresy; but if her truth even remotely resembled the revelation currently making the rounds ….

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here,” I counseled.  “We’ve agreed you aren’t crazy; that doesn’t mean everyone else is ready to hear what you have to say.  Why don’t you try it out on me first?”

“Well, all right.  If you think that would be best.”

“Trust me again, Lu, that would definitely be best.”

“Okay.”

“Now where were we?  Oh, yeah.  I asked if you thought you had uncovered any truth.”

“Right.  Well, I didn’t uncover anything right off, of course.  When I started this new series of paintings, I was completely focused on experimenting with a new mode of expression.  I certainly didn’t expect my voice to change.”

“Your voice?”

She nodded.  “My visual voice.  That personally unique element that runs through every work in an artist’s portfolio, regardless of medium or technique.  When you work, you send currents—spiritual currents, I guess—into your project.  Shades of who you are, hints of what’s important to you, subtle traces of your outlook on life.  Does that make sense?  I can’t really define it any better than that.”

“You’re doing great,” I murmured, entranced.  Who would have guessed Lu could be so eloquent?

“Your voice isn’t something you try to put into your work, it simply flows from your being through your hands onto the canvas.”

“Kind of like your speaking voice.”

“Pardon me?”

“Your speaking voice.  You don’t try to sound like Lu, right?  You open your mouth, and the air passes over your vocal chords, and there’s your voice.  It’s part of you.”

“Why … yes!  Yes, it is like that!  There’s some variation, of course.  Sometimes a certain tone is modulated, sometimes sharp and insistent.  But bottom line, it’s still your voice, flowing directly out of who you are.”

“So, if your voice has changed ….”

“Exactly.”  Again the troubled frown.  “Except … that’s impossible.”

“Is it?”

“Isn’t it?”

“You tell me.”

She hesitated, biting her lip as her eyes searched mine.  Then she offered hesitantly, “I read something else in Henri.  I can’t seem to get it out of my head.”

“What’s that?”

“He wrote that before a man tries to express anything to the world, he has to recognize himself as an individual, new and different from anyone else.  And, Kai?  I’m beginning to think he was right.”

Hallelujah!

# # #

“So, did you tell her about the rest of us?” asked Eran.  It was two in the morning, the noise level in Tarrazu was a couple decibels above deafening, and my eyes felt almost as scratchy as my throat.  None of that mattered, because I was still flying high.

We sat side by side in a back booth, because we didn’t want anyone to overhear.  Still, I leaned toward him to answer the question.  “Well, it took me a while to convince her of the wisdom of discretion.  I wanted to make sure she was on board with that before I named names.”

“Good thinking.”

“Then I told her.”

“And?”

“She was slightly miffed at first.  Said we should have trusted her enough to confide in her.”

He looked troubled.  “Do you think she was right?”

“Honestly, Eran?  Confiding in Lu never crossed my mind.  Not because I don’t trust her, I do.  It’s just that she ….”

“Has her own unique way of looking at the world?  Seems to sail along on the crest of her emotions and displays habitually random, unpredictable thought processes?  Tends to be easily distracted, less inclined to meditate on life’s deeper issues?”

I nodded.  “But, you know, after Lu and I got past the hurt feelings, we talked for hours, and I’m here to tell you, we’ve seriously underestimated that lady.”

“How so?”

“Listen, once she got used to thinking of herself as a brand-new, unique individual, she moved right along to the conclusion that, whether they know it or not, everyone else is unique, too.  She decided her new paintings—and you’ve got to see them, Eran—reflected her attempts to see beyond her preprogrammed ideas about others, beyond even their preprogrammed ideas about themselves.  She says her art has become a kind of ‘reaching-out’ … her words … a way to try to connect with people.  People like they are right here, right now; because those people will never be again.”

He smiled faintly.  “Well said, Luana!  So, where is she?  I would have thought you would drag her willy-nilly into the fold.”

“That’s what I had in mind.  And believe you me, she’s anxious to be dragged.  But she said she had to take care of ‘a few critical details’ first.”

“Like what?”

Trying not to laugh, I ticked them off on my fingers.  “Hair, facial, manicure.”

“Ah.  Right.”  He tilted his head, eyes amused.  “Well, brand-new Luana or no, that hasn’t changed, has it?”

“Not yet.”

Ω

Chapter Seventeen

From the Personal Journal of Kai-Lee Fox Delta

You could have knocked me over with a feather!  I still find it hard to believe.  Wait.  Did I say hard?  Make that almost impossible.

Ke-Ling Yan—as in Councilman Ke-Ling Yan, the Quingenti’s lead geneticist and one of the Colony’s few absolutely indispensable members?  Well, that same Ke-Ling Yan is now one of us!  Talk about unexpected developments!  By the Sage!  We were stunned when Eran told us—I’m talking jaw-dropping, eye-popping, thunderstruck—and not one of us, including the messenger, has recovered from the shock.

Tonight started innocently enough.  Jordi, Lexi, Lu, and I were sprawled comfortably on the twin divans in my quarters, drinking wine, nibbling tree-ripened pears, and speculating about where Eran might be.  Dinner had originally been scheduled for six, we had finally eaten at eight, it was going on nine-thirty, and we still hadn’t heard from him.

“All I’m saying ….” I paused to lick  pear juice off my fingers before continuing, “All I’m saying is, if he’s up to his eyeballs in equal signs, parentheses, Xs, and superscripts, you can kiss tonight good-bye.  We’ll be lucky if we see him next week.”

Lu nodded, daintily wiping her now impeccably manicured fingers on a yellow linen napkin.  “I’m afraid she’s right.  That is the most calculating man!”

Jordi shot me a quick wink, turned to Lu, and said in mock seriousness, “I hope you mean that in the mathematical sense.”

“What?  Oh, of course!”  Hands fluttering delicately in distress, she started to explain.  “Goodness gracious, I certainly didn’t mean to imply—”  When he grinned, she caught on, her flustered expression easing into good-humored chagrin.  “Oh, you!”

“Ignore him,” was Lexi’s advice to Lu.  “Be nice, you impossible man,” she murmured to Jordi, sliding him a warm glance.

Warm glances, secret smiles, and fleeting touches are becoming increasingly common between that pair.  I’ve never seen two people so wrapped up in one another.  I’m no stranger to physical intimacy—mixing is practically a national pastime among the Quingenti—but Jordi and Lexi are taking intimate to a whole new level.  I mentioned that fact to her yesterday.

“Is it so obvious?”  Judging by the Mona-Lisa smile, she wasn’t particularly disturbed by the possibility.  “It’s taken us both by surprise, I admit.  We didn’t expect our decision to change things between us so drastically.”

“What decision?”

“Monogamy.”

I stared at her in disbelief.  “Monogamy?  Are you serious?”

“Afraid so,” she said with a lopsided smile.

I held up my index finger.  “So, okay, let me get this straight.  You’re saying—”

“I’m saying Jordi and I agreed:  no more mixing.  From here on out, for the rest of our lives, it’s just the two of us in the bedroom.”

I slowly shook my head.  “By the Sage, Lexi!  That’s illegal … not to mention … kinky.”  In a strangely titillating way.

She shrugged.  “So?  Everything the five of us are doing is illegal, not to mention kinky..”

Okay, she had me there.  “So … do you like it?”

Her eyes narrowed pensively.  “It’s sometimes very … intense, and not always comfortable.  Plus, we’ve discovered monogamy is hard work.”  She grimaced.  “The hardest.  Take arguments, for example.  Jordi and I are well known for exchanging words.  The difference is, now there’s no running off to someone else to get our needs met until things between us cool down.  We have to work together to settle our differences.

“But the positives far outweigh the difficulties.  We’re learning to give more, take less.  We’re also getting to know and love one another in a more profoundly personal way.”  Her eyes filled with something like wonder.  “I’ve worked closely and mixed with that man all my life, Kai-Lee, but did I ever really know him?  Did I know the depths of his gentleness or appreciate his kindness?  Did I know his secret uncertainties?”  She shook her head.  “No.  And I think, for me, that’s one of the most beautiful things of all—trusting one another enough to reveal our vulnerabilities.  You can share your strengths with anyone; but you only dare expose the trembling, unprotected places of your heart to someone who loves you deeply, someone who has pledged to stay with you, come what may.”  She tilted her head.  “So, do I like monogamy?  Yes, I do.  I like it very much.  The exclusivity, the commitment, the merging of two lives, even those exasperating challenges.  It all makes our relationship seem more important somehow.  Meaningful.”  She paused.  “It feels … right.”

“—another?”

I realized with a start that Jordi was talking to me.  “Sorry, I zoned out for a minute there.  What did you say?”

“I asked if you wanted another pear.”

“No thanks, I’ve already had thr—”

The soft bong of the visitor alert was followed by the computer’s affable announcement, “Eran Symon would like to be admitted.”

“Well, it’s about time,” I groused as I popped off the sofa and started toward the portal.  “Open,” I said.  Then, the minute the portal slid open, “Where have you been?  Dinner was—  Eran?  What is it?  What’s wrong?”

His wide-eyed face didn’t have an ounce of color.  That would have worried me enough, but when I took his hand, it was cold and clammy.  Then he swayed on his feet.  That did it.

A second later, we were clustered around him, tugging him toward the nearest divan, questioning, diagnosing, and generally making it impossible for him to get a word in edgewise.

“Are you ill?”  Lexi laid a hand on his forehead.  “No fever.  How’s his pulse?  Someone should take his pulse.”  Lu grabbed Eran’s free wrist, laid her fingers on it, and frowned in utterly clueless concentration.

Eran tried to disengage.  “No, I’m not—”

“Something happened,” I decided, urgently latching onto his forearm.  “Did something happen?”

“The man needs a drink, of course.”  Jordi raced over to the coffee table to snatch up the wine.  “Here,” he said, proffering the half-full carafe as the rest of us manhandled Eran onto the divan, “drink this.  You’re obviously in shock.”

“ENOUGH!”  Our “patient’s” roar instantly quelled the hubbub and captured our complete attention.

“He doesn’t sound sick,” Lu whispered, but fell silent under his green-eyed glare.

Eran drew a deep breath.  “That’s better.  Now, if you’ll all just SIT DOWN and remain QUIET, MAYBE I can explain.”

We sat, Lu and I on either side of him, the other two on the divan opposite.  Jordi silently re-offered the carafe, Cabernet Sauvignon sloshing gently.

“No, thank you.  In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit under the influence already.  Enough to be unsteady on my feet, anyway.”

“Oh.”  My relief was short-lived.  “So that’s where you were?  Out drinking?  The least you could have done was let us know, Eran.  We waited—”

“Kai-Lee ….”

Drawn-out warning tone, dangerous gleam in the eye ….  “Never mind.”

“Right.  Now, to answer your questions:  Yes, I’ve had a few drinks, but they were more medicinal than recreational.  Yes, something happened, and I’m definitely in shock.  As will the four of you be, once I tell you.”  He grimaced and scrubbed his jaw.  “Providing you believe me.  Bloody hell!  I barely believe it myself, and I was there.”

The others glanced at me.  I shrugged lightly, shook my head in bewilderment, then turned to face him.  “Believe what, Eran?”

“Ke-Ling knows the truth; he’s become one of us.” I swear, if someone back on Earth had dropped a pin on a cotton ball, we would have heard it.  We gaped at him, unanimously speechless.  Eran nodded.  “That was my first reaction as well.”

Here’s the story just as he told it to us.

* * *

I had been in the garden, sketching.  It had gone rather well, and I was anxious to show the four of you what I’d done.  I also wanted to revisit a discussion on form and composition I recently had with Lu.  So, anticipating a good meal, stimulating conversation, and a possible boost for my emerging artistic ego, I started back with a sprightly step.

A funny thing about sketching.  I’ve always considered myself observant, but since I started drawing … well, I seem to be developing a sixth sense.  Or it might be more accurate to say I’m learning to see below the surface.  I can’t really articulate it any better than that.  I only mention it at all, because but for that new awareness, I’m not sure I would given it a second thought when I saw Ke-Ling standing alone outside the Gen-Lab, gazing in, hands clasped behind his back.  At first glance, nothing seemed out of the ordinary:  He was impeccably groomed, his white lab coat perfectly creased, his shoes shined to a high gloss.  But there was a subtle air of bereavement about him that caught my attention.  Before I knew it, I was standing beside him, asking if he was all right.

He turned his head slowly and gazed at me for the longest time, his eyes dark and unreadable.  “Yes,” he said finally.  “Why do you ask?”

Why, indeed?  “I, ah, thought you looked rather like a man struggling to make sense of a badly tangled theorem,” I improvised.  “Heaven knows, I’ve seen that expression in my own mirror often enough!”

“Struggling to make sense of a badly tangled theorem?  Yes,” he murmured, more to himself than me.  “Yes, you could say that.”

Well, naturally, I clapped him on the shoulder, cheerfully prescribed a break as the surest remedy for what ailed him, and impulsively invited him up for a drink.  Much to my surprise, he accepted.

For the first hour, he drank steadily and silently, while I chattered like a magpie, trying to take his mind off whatever conundrum was eating him.  Can’t remember what I talked about—physics mostly, I guess.  I had all but decided my humanitarian effort was unproductive—was, in fact, getting ready to make my excuses and join the rest of you—when he looked me dead in the eye and announced, “The Known Span cannot be breached.”

My mind ground to an immediate halt.  I stared at him for a full minute before responding with a strangled, “Pardon me?”

“The Known Span cannot be breached.  I am convinced.”

And what in bloody hell was I supposed to say to that?  I tossed back my second bourbon and poured another—a double, as it happened—buying time to think of a suitable reply.  Fortunately, Ke-Ling didn’t seem to require a response.

“For more than five hundred years,” he began, “the geneticists on board the Janus have labored to identify the mortality factor.  If death’s biological trigger could be pinpointed, there was every confidence it could be short circuited or, better yet, eliminated entirely.  Many possible causes had been already eradicated through genetic engineering long before the Quingenti left Earth:  telomeric degradation, somatic mutation, restricted transcription, glycation, and so on.   But the team wanted to verify previous findings to be sure nothing had been overlooked.  So everything was rechecked, using powerful, state-of-the-art equipment designed by the Quingenti specifically for this research.  The review uncovered no surprises.

“Now the group was free to forge ahead.  New and exciting inroads led to the development of sophisticated technology and techniques to segregate, examine, and assess cytoplasmic structures and processes.  Progress was steady, finally yielding a comprehensive understanding of cytosol, ribosomes, endoplasmic reticulum, mitochondria, Golgi apparatus—everything.  The unspeakably complex mystery of the cell gradually became an open book.”  His lips curved sardonically.  “But the book had a surprise ending.”  He drank deeply, brushed the back of his hand across his lips and continued, “This exhaustive research indicated no breakdown in biochemistry.  To the contrary, the findings demonstrated conclusively human cells and DNA no longer age, mutate, or degrade, but function as flawlessly on every level at the end of a given lifespan as they do at birth.   In other words, there is no biological reason for human beings to die.”

“But they do,” I protested, demonstrating a stunning grasp of the obvious.

“Yes.”  He finished his drink, held out his glass, and I refilled it.

“So where does that leave us?”

He belched quietly.  “In my opinion?”  I nodded.  “In my opinion, it leaves us with an external influence governing mortality—one neither biology nor science can control.”

The conversation was getting more surreal by the minute.  “For example?”

“For example, a physical force.  As a physicist, you are very familiar with forces—gravity, dark energy, magnetism, and so on.  These forces, visible only in their effects, exert tremendous power throughout the universe.  Heavenly bodies and even space-time itself are in thrall to them.”

“Yes, they are.”

His head bobbed loosely.  “And so, perhaps it is not too far fetched to hypothesize that another, as-yet-undiscovered irresistible force acts on the human body in some manner.”

“Not impossible, I suppose.”

“Of course, you and I are only theorizing.  The Known Span, however, is fact.  For all intents and purposes, it operates like a fundamental physical constant, as unchangeable as the Boltzman constant or the speed of light in a vacuum.  The universe is bound by a collection of these fixed values—the Planck constant, the Faraday constant, a constant for atomic mass, and so on.  Why not a longevity constant?”

Chalk it up to blood-alcohol content, but I was beginning to wonder if he didn’t have a point.  “You may have point.”

“I am gratified to hear you say so.”  But his beaming professorial approval was short lived.  His face fell as he concluded in a voice flat with futility, “I have spent my entire life searching for a way to breach an impregnable boundary.”

“Look at it this way, Ke-Ling.  If you’re right, but for your efforts you and your colleagues—and by extension, the rest of us—might never have discovered the Known Span can’t be breached.”

“My colleagues?”  He lifted his glass and stared into the amber liquid, smiling sadly.  “I am afraid my colleagues disagree with me.  They attribute my insight to passing discouragement and are determined to continue the search.  They are quite sure a new avenue of approach will present itself.”  He drank.  “They are wrong.  But when I try to tell them so, they politely suggest I seek professional help for my depressed state.”

“Maybe a new avenue will present itself,” I offered doubtfully.

“No.  We have exhausted the human cell’s possibilities.  Nothing remains hidden from us.”  He sat his glass on the table and got unsteadily to his feet.  “I consider myself a rational man.  I have always taken great comfort from the fact that our universe functions on rationally comprehensible physical laws.  Granted, there are phenomena we do not yet understand.  Nevertheless, we know there is an underlying order to the cosmos, naturally occurring limits to everything.  Without them, there would be chaos.  It would seem life, too, is limited.  I, for one, am prepared to accept it.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” I said, deciding to play devil’s advocate as I stood to accompany him across the room, “but popular wisdom would beg to differ.  Everyone who left Earth aboard this vessel has outlived the Known Span.”

We stopped at the portal, both of us listing slightly.  He shook his head.  “Generations have died.”

“Physical bodies, yes.  But bodies are replicated every day.  As long as the genome and consciousness continue absolutely intact, the individual lives, right?”

He fished a handkerchief out of his pocket, dabbed at his forehead, and said, “My friend, there is no such thing as absolute fidelity in replication, phenotypically speaking.  Another phenomenon we cannot conquer, even with our now-exhaustive knowledge of genetics.”  Clumsily re-pocketing the kerchief on his second try he continued, “Apparently, nature abhors repetition and a vacuum with equal vehemence.”

“Yes, but—”

“I am ashamed to admit this, but Colonial geneticists have never even attempted to chart variations among replicants.  We simply chose to deny differences existed—a dishonorable, highly unscientific course of action born of a desperate desire to achieve immortality and made possible by the fact that no two generations have ever gazed into one another’s eyes.  I find I can no longer be a part of the deception.”

“But … but …” I sputtered.  “Bloody hell, Ke-Ling!  You’re a member of the Council, an official guardian of the Prime Tenet.  They’re not going to let you just opt out!”

He nodded.  “My position does present certain difficulties.”

“Difficulties?”  I was incredulous.  “It’s a nightmare waiting to happen!”

“I disagree.  The Council is composed of reasonable, highly intelligent men and women.  They can be made to see.  We are genetically identical to our Alpha donors.  Yes, by all means.  However, each one of us is also individually unique, and none of us will live forever.  It is high time we conducted ourselves accordingly.”

My head was spinning so badly, I had to brace one hand against the bulkhead.  “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if one limited life is all each of us has, should we not make the most of it?”  And then he was gone.

* * *

We sat slumped against the cushions, shaking our heads in mute astonishment.

Lexi finally broke the silence.  “In my wildest dreams, I would never have imagined it.  Ke-Ling, of all people!”  That pretty much said it all.

I guess I thought setting down this episode in black and white would lessen the sense of sheer improbability somehow, but it hasn’t.  I haven’t tried my hand at fiction, but if I did, I doubt I could come up with a plot twist this fantastic.

What next, I wonder?

Ω

© 2010, Kathy DiSanto, all rights reserved