The Apex Book of World SF 2 (31 page)

Despite the security
guards' repeated instructions, I tended to forget to lock doors. Our camp was
fenced in, we all knew one another, and the savages entered only during working
hours, and then only with permission. How had she sneaked in?

Years of field work
had taught me how to cope with all sorts of situations. "Good morning," I said
to her. I didn't even consider reaching for the button to call the guards.
True, there had been occasional attacks in other camps but, for all sorts of
reasons, there had been none in ours to date. Besides, as I always said, the
people most likely to be attacked were the policemen and the missionaries, not
me, so I had a logical justification for bending the rules a little.

The savage woman
didn't answer me. She leant over to pick something up from the other side of the
desk, and immediately I became afraid. The fear spread rapidly from my legs to
my chest, but my brain kept working. So the rumour was true: they had got their
hands on a cache of old weapons. To them, perhaps we were all alike after
all—policeman or scientist, it didn't matter much from their point of view. But
then the woman turned back to me: she was holding a human larva strapped into a
carrier, which she lay on the table.

"You promised you
wouldn't take our babies from us," she said in the angry, agitated voice so
typical of the Slows. As my adrenaline level fell, it was hard for me to steady
my legs. The savage woman fixed me with her black eyes and seemed to see this. "You
pledged that you wouldn't take them. There are treaties, and you signed them,"
she spat out impatiently. I was always amazed at how fast news reached the
Slows. It was clear to anybody who worked with them that they were hiding
computers somewhere, and perhaps they also had collaborators on the political
level. The nearest settlement of Slows was half an hour's flight away. They
weren't allowed to keep hoverers, and there were no tracks in the region so, to
get to our camp, she must have set out the evening before. It seemed that she
had known about the decision to close the Preserves even before I did.

"Those treaties were
signed many generations ago. Things change," I said, though I knew that it was
silly to get into an argument with one of them.

"My grandmother
signed them."

"Is it your baby?" I
asked, making a point of using their term, as I gestured at the human larva on
my desk.

"It's mine."
Luckily, the larva was asleep. Fifteen years of work had more or less inured me
but, at that hour of the morning and in my condition, I knew that my stomach
wouldn't be able to stand the sight of a squirming pinkish creature.

"Do you have others?"

"Maybe." The female
Slows don't usually give birth to more than three or four offspring. Given the
way they are accustomed to raising offspring, even that many is hard work. This
savage woman was young, as far as I could judge. She might have concealed
another larva somewhere before coming here. There was no way of knowing.

"You can't break the
agreements," she said, cutting into my thoughts. "No. Listen to me. You've
violated almost every clause. Every few years you renegue on something. When
you forced us into the Preserves, you promised us autonomy, and since then you've
gradually stolen everything from us. From hard experience, we've learnt not to
trust you. Like sheep, we kept quiet and let you push us further and further
into a corner. But now I'm warning you. Just warning you: don't you dare touch
the children!"

Many people will
think this strange but, over the years, I've learnt to see a kind of beauty in
the Slow women. If you ignore the swollen protrusions on their chests and the
general swelling of their bodies, if you ignore their tendency to twist their
faces wildly, with some experience you can distinguish between the ugly ones
and the pretty ones, and this one would definitely have been considered pretty.
If her grandmother had really signed the treaties, as she'd said, she might
have been one of their aristocrats, the descendant of a ruling dynasty. It was
evident that she could express herself.

"Will you agree to
have some coffee with me?" Field work often involves long hours of
conversation. With time, I had got used to the physical proximity of the Slows
and, sometimes, when their suspicions subsided—when they accepted that I wasn't
a missionary in disguise—they told me important things. The new decree had put
an end to my research, but I might still be able to write something about the
reaction of the savages to the development. Attentiveness had become a habit
with me and, besides, I was not yet capable of packing up the office.

"Coffee," I
repeated. "Can I make some for you?" Since she didn't answer and just stared at
me with a blurred face, I said, "You've certainly come a long way. It wouldn't
hurt me to have a cup, either. Wait a minute, and I'll make some for both of
us." The Slows had grown used to harsh treatment, so when they encountered one
of us who treated them courteously, they tended to get flustered. Indeed, this
dark-eyed woman seemed confused, and she kept her mouth shut while I operated
the beverage machine.

No doubt the savages
were a riddle that science had not yet managed to solve and, the way things
seemed now, it never would be solved. According to the laws of nature, every
species should seek to multiply and expand but, for some reason, this one
appeared to aspire to wipe itself out. Actually, not only itself but also the
whole human race. Slowness was an ideology, but not only an ideology. As
strange as it sounded, it was a culture, a culture similar to that of our
forefathers. People don't know, or perhaps they forget, that when the technique
for Accelerated Offspring Growth (AOG) was developed, it wasn't immediately put
to use. Until the first colonies were established on the planets, the UN
Charter prohibited AOG. It's not pleasant to think about it now, but the famous
Miller, German, and Yaddo were subjected to quite a bit of condemnation for
their early work on the technique, all of it on ethical grounds. In a society
that had not yet conquered space, AOG was viewed as a catastrophe that, within
ten years, was liable to cause a population explosion on Earth that would
exterminate life through hunger and disease. The morality of the Slows had an
undeniably rational basis under those conditions. We may be revolted by the
thought, but the fact is that Miller, German, and Yaddo had all spent the first
years of their lives as human larvae, not unlike the one that was now lying on
my desk; they, too, had been slowly reared by savage females, just like the one
who was waiting beside me for her coffee.

"We have to talk," she
said as I placed the cup on the desk and glanced for just a split second at the
creature sleeping in the carrier. "There's no reason for you to use power.
There's no point, because you have all the power anyway. We're no threat to
you."

I knew something
that she didn't know because it was a secret that hadn't been publicised on the
networks: in one of the colonies on Gamma, far from the Preserves, there had
been an outbreak of Slowness. This was probably why the decision had been made
to close all the Preserves—to eliminate any possibility of the infection
spreading.

"It's possible to
compromise on all sorts of clauses," the savage woman said, "so why not
compromise with us? We'll die out on our own in a few generations anyway. There
are less than ten thousand of us left."

The problem isn't one of numbers,
I thought, but I didn't say it to her.
The problem is that in many people's
eyes you are not a remnant but a gangrene that could spread and rot the entire
body of humankind. Even I, with my interest in your way of life, can't say for
certain that the politicians are wrong about this.

"We've thought of
all kinds of possibilities," she said. "Since we have no choice, we'll agree to
let your missionaries into our settlements. We'll guarantee their safety and
give them complete freedom to talk to whomsoever they wish. We'll agree that
one parent's consent is enough in order for a baby to be surrendered for
accelerated growth, and we'll make sure that parents obey that rule. What else
do you want? What else can you demand? In the end, without wasting any more
energy on us, you'll get everything you want anyway."

"Not this one," I
interjected, pointing at her larva. A tremor twisted her face and made it ugly.
I drank the coffee and noticed that the larva had opened its eyes. The coffee
was sour. The machine was apparently not working properly again. But there was
no point in calling in a serviceman when I had only a few more days to spend
here.

"Don't take them
away from us," she whispered, and her voice shook. "I need at least a few
years. You must allow us that. Why do you hate us so?"

The ardent
possessiveness that savage parents—especially the mothers—display towards their
offspring is the key to understanding the Slows' culture. It's clear that they
don't love their offspring the way we love ours. They make do with so few and,
at the rate they rear them, at best, they get to know only their children's
children. Whereas even I—who have spent years away from civilisation in barren
camps like this one—have managed to produce seventeen sons and daughters and a
lineage of at least forty generations. Still, they talk constantly about their
love for their offspring, and its glory.

"Hate?" I said to
her. "Hate is a strong word."

The human larva
turned its head and gazed towards the savage woman. In turn, her gaze clung to
it, and her chin quivered. She had pretty eyes. She had put on black and green
makeup in my honour. A week or two of body formation would have made a
good-looking woman of her in anyone's opinion. She trusted me, apparently; and
knowing who I was, having heard about me or made enquiries, perhaps she hoped
that, as a researcher, I would agree to represent her side. She had put herself
in jeopardy by sneaking into my office in this way. Someone else in my place
might have panicked, and an unnecessary accident might have taken place.
Through her grimaces, I could see a face that wasn't at all stupid. She had
certainly taken my well-known curiosity into account, and my composure. She
knew that all I had to do was reach out and press a button and they would come,
chase her away and take the larva from her. I wasn't about to do that, but
sooner or later, no matter where she hid, it would be taken.

In all my years of
work, I'd refrained from saying anything that would identify me with the
missionaries, but now, seeing the tremble of her chin, I heard their words of
consolation coming from my mouth. So be it. In any event, my work had come to
an end.

"I know what you
think, what they've told you. Lots of misunderstandings and rumours circulate
in the Preserves. Listen to me, I promise you that no harm will come to the
children."

"Do you mean that
you won't take them?" the savage princess asked in a soft, strange voice. "That
the decision has been revoked?"

"Decisions aren't my
field. People like me don't make policy. What I want to explain to you is
another matter. Maybe you think that accelerated growth will shorten this
offspring's life. Believe me, woman, that's a mistake. Whoever told you that
was either wrong or lying. Our life span is no shorter than yours. Actually,
the opposite is true: progress gives us a longer life. If your son is
ultimately given over to AOG, he won't lose even a single day. On the contrary,
he can enjoy all the years before him as an independent adult. You'll see your
son's children, and your descendants will inherit the planets."

The savage woman
twisted her jaw to the side. "You think we're stupid."

The Slows have
manners of their own. You can't expect them to behave like us. Still, in her
present situation I would have expected her to make an effort. But the very
fact that she wasn't making an effort held my interest. Perhaps this was an
opportunity for me to hear something new. Usually, they were so cautious when
speaking to us and behaved evasively even with me.

But just at that
moment the larva started to bleat, and the savage woman instantly lost her
impertinence.

"You may do it," I
said to her. "Pick it up. I've been in the Preserves for years, and I've seen
such things."

Without looking at
me, she freed the larva from the carrier and held it to her chest. I observed
six of my offspring during the process of accelerated growth, and the distress
of the first weeks before they reached decent maturity comes back to me every
time I'm forced to observe a human larva up close. There are times in a person's
life that are meant to be private, and the state of infancy is certainly the
most pronounced of these. The larva was silent for a moment, then it started to
bleat again.

"How old is it?"

"Eleven weeks." The
most horrifying human larvae are the big ones that already look like people but
lack the stamp of humanity. At least this one was similar in dimensions to our
offspring. Nearly three months old. He could have been a productive adult already.
Footsteps could be heard outside, and the sound of two people talking. The
savage woman's eyes widened. She put her hand first to her mouth and then to
the larva's open mouth.

"Don't worry. They
won't come in here. They know that I hold interviews." The touch of the woman's
hand on the creature's lips increased its discomfort, and now it raised its
voice, screeching until its wrinkled face turned almost purple. Someone was
liable to enter after all. The savage woman stuck a finger into the larva's
mouth, but it turned its head away and looked for something else.

"Don't you feel
sorry for it?" I asked, but she seemed not to hear me, cradling the larva in
her arms and also turning her head here and there with an unfocussed look in
her eyes.