Read Singularity's Ring Online
Authors: Paul Melko
Singularity's Ring (18 page)
“It’s very important for you two to find some friends, especially if it were a group of three.”
“Why?” Corrine asked.
Dr. Yoder had sat back, the one of him who always spoke to them, and touched hands with the rest of him.
“Do you know where the children go when they leave the First State?”
“Second State!” Manuel said, proud that he remembered what some of the older kids had been talking about.
“That’s right. Second State. And you can’t go to Second State until you have a group of friends to go with.”
“Can’t Corrine and I go together?”
“Of course you can! But it would be even better if you were part of a group of five.”
Corrine crossed her arms and shook her head.
Dr. Yoder sighed. “All right. All right.”
But later that week he came back again and told them they were going to stay at a new creche. They’d be leaving Gorton for Blue Haven that day.
Even though they hadn’t a lot of friends there, Gorton Creche was the only home they knew, and they cried and hugged Matron Reddinger and Matron Isitharp and even Matron Ulysses, all three of her, even the tall gangly one who never spoke and never looked at you. They even hugged the janitor robot, which all the children called Uncle Millions.
Blue Haven was so much bigger than Gorton, with a huge fenced-in playground and a tall oak tree in the middle of it. There were just two groups of kids there, a group of four and a group of five.
Manuel and Corrine liked the four more than the five.
The five kept to themselves and didn’t talk to anyone. They just held hands a lot and smirked.
The five kept to themselves and didn’t talk to anyone. They just held hands a lot and smirked.
“They’re going to Second State soon,” one of the four—Meda—said. “They think they’re better than the rest of us.”
Meda was one of the four and one of twins just like Manuel and Corrine were twins. But Meda and Moira were identical twins, while Manuel and Corrine didn’t look identical, just very similar.
They were sad to have left Gorton, but their new friends made Blue Haven so much nicer. And the Matron, Mother Redd, was very nice too.
On the first day, Manuel and Corrine showed the four how they could hang upside down by their feet. And then Strom showed them how strong he was. And Quant recited pi to one hundred digits. And Meda and Moira laughed at it all. That night they all slept in the same room—all six of them—and it felt right to be there. They hardly thought of Gorton at all after that.
Soon, the six of them became inseparable.
Once, when they were playing with the computer in the library, he heard Meda say, though she didn’t move her lips,
Let’s work on a puzzle.
Let’s work on a puzzle.
Moira had replied, speaking out loud, “Okay.”
After that, Manuel started to hear the others speak, just like he sometimes heard Corrine speak. Just like he had sometimes heard the kids at Gorton speak, but then it had been a horrible babble that he’d tried to shut out. But with these children, he was happy to hear them think.
They heard him too. Often when they slept together, they dreamed together.
Dr. Yoder was still their doctor, but now they had another doctor, Dr. Khalid. Dr. Khalid was a quartet, and he came every other day to see them and the other group of
children. He was a silent doctor, who examined them three at a time.
children. He was a silent doctor, who examined them three at a time.
He didn’t get along with Dr. Yoder, and the group heard them arguing one day in the courtyard. The children were in the back, playing, and what had started as an inaudible conversation slowly turned into a yelling match, with three of Yoder yelling and two of Khalid.
“What are they arguing about?” Meda asked. She jumped, not quite reaching the top of the wooden plank fence that surrounded the creche playground. Strom threaded his fingers together and lifted her up.
Manuel scrambled up the wall easily enough, and he and Meda saw the two doctors arguing, but couldn’t quite make out what they were saying.
“I can’t hear them, but they’re going something awful,” she said.
Manuel stood on the thin edge of the fence, walked along it as if he were on solid ground until he could reach up into one of the oak trees that surrounded the front driveway. A thick bough hung over the playground, casting a shadow where the children often played Eco Disaster. The branch was thicker than his torso.
“Be careful,” Corrine called, but he waved her off.
He walked to the trunk. There he took off his shoes and stuck them in a crotch of the tree. His toes caressed the rough bark, finding footholds. Grasping the trunk, he climbed up and around it one hundred eighty degrees to another bough that hung out over the driveway.
He crawled up, careful not to rustle the leaves, until he was directly above Dr. Khalid’s interface, but still hidden in the green leaves and acorns.
“There are no viable sixes,” Khalid said. “We’re jeopardizing the program by trying. My sources say quintets are the optimal size.”
“But twins, Abdel! Two sets of twins. No one’s tried with twins,” Yoder replied.
“Then one of the singles will sheer off,” Khalid yelled. “Which one do we sacrifice! I tell you, this is dangerous.”
Another of Yoder spoke. “But the four are nearly pod bonded. If the new twins can take, we have a sextet, the first ever.”
“Or we have a quartet and a duo, and no one from our labs in the space program. It’s folly, Yoder, folly!”
“Folly is having this opportunity and failing to take it! And what of these mysterious sources you call on as deus ex machina? Show me the peer-reviewed journal.”
Khalid was silent for a moment. “If you wish, we can take it to Cahill. Cahill knows my sources.”
Yoder sighed, then one of him shrugged.
“We must separate one of the twins,” Khalid said. “And we must do it soon.”
Yoder groaned. “Give me a month. They’re young enough yet. Let me try.”
“It’s time for State Two consensus training,” Khalid said. His groundcar appeared through the gates of the creche. One of him opened the door and the rest of him climbed in. “You have until the end of the week to decide which one it is.”
Yoder watched Khalid drive away, then shook his head. Manuel waited for the doctor to disappear into the creche door before running back down the bough to the fenced playground. He almost fell as he dropped down onto the fence.
“What were they yelling about?” Meda asked. She almost always was the one who asked questions of the children or the Matrons.
“Us,” Manuel said.
Corrine caught his look, and she frowned. Manuel
realized that she knew he meant her and him as well as the six of them together.
realized that she knew he meant her and him as well as the six of them together.
“What about us?” Meda asked.
“Yoder and Khalid don’t agree on when we should start consensus training,” Manuel said, knowing Corrine caught the half-lie.
It wasn’t until that night after dinner, when all the children were playing in the upstairs reading room that Manuel could speak with Corrine alone. The other four seemed to have been hovering too close all day.
“They want to take one of us away,” Manuel said. “They want to make a quintet.”
Corrine said, “They can’t do that! They should take one of the others away.”
“You and me should be together, a duo,” Manuel said.
Corrine frowned, and Manuel realized that she didn’t want to be just a duo. She didn’t just want him.
“Quant should go,” Corrine said. “She never talks.” It was true. Quant seemed in a world of her own, and sometimes Manuel caught a thought of it: tallies of every item, forks, spoons, toothpicks; numbers of things today and yesterday; the speed of the wind instead of the feel of it on her face.
“Dr. Khalid said the four have already pod bonded,” Manuel said.
“Then—” But she stopped herself before she said anything more.
“Can you go get us cookies, Manuel?” she asked.
“Okay.” Manuel ran downstairs for a handful of cookies that Mother Redd had baked. When he returned to the reading room, it was empty.
“Corrine,” he called, but she didn’t answer.
He ran to the bedroom. No one was there.
He ran to the computer room, then the toy room.
He didn’t want to cry, but tears were wetting his cheeks.
Then he heard giggling, and he found the five in one of the other bedroom closets.
“Don’t be a crybaby,” Corrine said. “We were just playing hide and seek.”
Manuel offered the cookies to her.
“We don’t want cookies now,” Corrine said, though Strom took two as he followed Corrine. They all seemed to be following Corrine. Manuel followed too, but when they got back to the reading room, Corrine organized a game of Eco Disaster for just five of them.
“You can play the next game, Manuel,” she said. But he fell asleep before the first was over.
The next day, Dr. Yoder came to speak with Manuel alone. As soon as one of Dr. Yoder had shut the door, Manuel blurted, “I think Corrine should be the one. I’ll go back to Gorton!” Tears ran down his cheeks.
“How do you know about this?” Dr. Yoder asked gently. “Do you all know?”
Manuel nodded. “Corrine really wants to be part of the quintet.”
“I see.” Dr. Yoder touched palms, and the room smelled funny for a long time.
“Do you like the other four?”
“Yeah …”
“Don’t you want to be part of their pod?”
“Corrine wants it more. And she’ll be much better at it.”
“Manuel, why don’t you go back to the library?”
He kept away from Corrine and the four that day. He knew he was leaving. Instead of facing them he climbed up and down the oak trees in back, trying to climb higher and higher each time, until the trunk itself bent under his weight.
From there he could see the University where Dr. Yoder and Dr. Khalid worked. He’d been there a couple of times for games. He could also see the airbuses coming in for
landings at the airport. Mother Redd had told them the contrails were just clouds of water vapor, not smoke or poisonous gas. They seemed like bars crisscrossing the sky.
landings at the airport. Mother Redd had told them the contrails were just clouds of water vapor, not smoke or poisonous gas. They seemed like bars crisscrossing the sky.
Gorton would be fine for him. He’d find some other friends, and maybe he’d see Corrine. Maybe she’d come to visit.
After dinner, before bed, the four and Corrine—the five, the quintet—were playing games again, but Manuel just read about sharks in the library, and before long he dozed off.
He awoke with a start, the smell of fear in his nose. The sleep snapped from his eyes, and the book fell from his hands. The small lamp at his shoulder was the only light on in the room.
Corrine!
He knew it was she who was in trouble. Not trouble, she was in terror.
He ran from the library into the dark hall.
The bedroom was silent. The four slept softly, gentle snores from Strom, vague dream thoughts in the air. He heard a sound.
Someone on the stairs!
He ran, saw dark shapes at the foot of the stairwell. He took the steps, three at a time, his feet gripping the edge of each step, launching himself to the next, catching himself with his fingers in the spokes of the banister.
Corrine!
Manuel!
“She’s bleeding pheromone!”
“We should have knocked her out.”
Manuel plowed into a dark shape holding Corrine.
“You oaf!”
They went down in a pile, Corrine, Manuel, and two other pods.
“Something came down the steps.”
A light came on, and Manuel blinked. Dr. Khalid and Dr. Yoder were there. They’d come to take Corrine away.
“It’s the brother,” Dr. Khalid said.
“I
told
you they were strongly pod-bonded!”
told
you they were strongly pod-bonded!”
Manuel crawled over to Corrine and hugged her tightly.
Dr. Yoder frowned, then one of him knelt next to them.
“Listen, children,” Dr. Yoder said. “I’ve told you from the beginning that I wanted you together, but I’ve also told you that you might have to go to separate pods. Do you remember?”
Manuel nodded, but Corrine’s face contorted. She pulled away from Manuel.
“Now is the time for you two to go to separate pods. Do you understand?”
“Yes!” Corrine shouted. “But why am I the one who has to leave? Why can’t it be him?”
Manuel recoiled.
Dr. Khalid leaned down and picked her up. “Exactly,” he said. “So you won’t be spoiling my pod with your petty jealousy.”
“Khalid!” Dr. Yoder said.
“Let’s go.”
“The boy!”
One of Khalid turned, while the rest took Corrine through the door. He solemnly picked up the boy and walked him up the stairs to the bedroom where the four still slept.
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