The Synthesis and the Animus (The Phantom of the Earth Book 3) (2 page)

*Candidates who do not receive a bid at the Harpoon Auction are sent to the Lower Level.

**As of 367 AR, 180,776,206 candidates have been sent to the Lower Level since the inception of the Harpoon Auction in 186 AR.

***Data from 368 AR to 400 AR is estimated.

Source: Department of Communications and Commonwealth Relations.

Solar System’s Population

*Years based on a combination of the Gregorian and Livellan calendars.

**Data from 368 AR to 370 AR is estimated.

Source: Campanian Consortium.

Solar System’s Population: Before and After Reassortment

*Years based on the Livellan calendar.

**Data from 368 AR to 370 AR is estimated.

Source: Campanian Consortium.

Solar System’s Population: After Reassortment

*Years based on the Livellan calendar.

**Data from 368 AR to 370 AR is estimated.

Source: Campanian Consortium.

For clearer versions of the maps, settings, and charts, please visit:
http://www.raedenzen.com/

Beimeni City

Phanes, Underground Central

2,500 meters deep

“You ready for this?” Brody said.

Damy’s heart hummed. Her instinct was to say no, but her obligation to the commonwealth forced her words. “We’ve wanted this for so long, how could I
not
be ready?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Brody kissed her forehead.

They stood before the opaque doors to Medical Center One. Damy couldn’t bring herself to step inside. She thought of her parents, Rose and Martel, who had surely taken a similar trip to this same medical facility in Phanes. They’d worked as zeropoint engineers for the Dunamis-based digital consortium Grey Wolf, in Beimeni City, prior to their transfer to the RDD, prior to their deaths in the arctic during a surface excursion gone wrong. She wondered what they’d really thought of their decision to give her up. Had her mother felt like she did now?

Damy felt the sudden impulse to run, to shake her lover’s grasp and escape to an oasis where her unborn child would be her own. She had an urge to tell them they couldn’t take her baby.

A traitorous urge.

“What is it?” Brody said.

“Do you remember your real parents?”

“I remember the days they died.”

“I’m sorry.”

Only she wasn’t. A knot formed in her throat, a guilt-ridden, jealous nexus, for although Brody’s parents had died by the time he turned ten true years old, he must’ve spent more time, more real time, with them than she had with hers, due to her development.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Brody said. Phanes’s Granville sun reflected off his bronze skin, and Damy longed for him to say it, to tell her that he’d whisk her and their family to Underground North, territories she’d heard from Minister Sineine, in confidence, might one day seek separation from the commonwealth. “We’re going to miss out.”

“This is how it has to be.” Damy could run with Brody, but what life would their child have as an illegal? “All citizens must be registered.” She echoed the Fifth Precept for Marstone’s benefit as much as Brody’s. She pressed her hand to the opaque entrance and it cleared. “After all … we Beimenians are one.”

“Aha, come, come,” the medical bot said. Its yellow eye slit glowed brighter when it spoke, and though it was made of an alloy, it moved as if it were transhuman. Letters on its upper-right breast plate read TIM.

The bot led Brody and Damy through an entryway labeled REPRODUCTION AND REGISTRATION and into an oval elevator that moved diagonally down through the medical center. The elevator slowed. On the other side of its clear walls, medical bots streamed from crib to crib.

“Aha, we’re here,” Tim said. “Level 15, diagnostics.”

In a room surrounded by alloy as bright as polished gold, the bot stood at a workstation. “Please, Miss Damosel,” Tim said, “put on the gown and lie on the bed.”

Damy followed the instructions. A ceiling panel slid open, and a tube with a bright tip descended.

Brody kissed her hand.

“Aha, yes, yes, yes,” Tim said. Damy’s internal organs materialized in holograms above the bot’s workstation. “I see the fetuses.”

“Oh,” Damy said, “more than one?”

“Aha, we’ll be delivering twins. What a delight.”

The light above Damy dimmed, and the bot manually activated a Granville sphere upon a pedestal next to the workstation. Round pages turned, one after another. Tim stopped at DELIVERY SCHEDULE. He perused the days of the year, lit by boxes, and gave the Barãos a few options.

“My gods,” Damy said, “you’re talking less than ten days. I don’t know if I can handle that.” To Brody, she said, “What do you think?”

“Is this normal?” Brody said to Tim. “Years ago, acquaintances of ours had to wait at least twenty-five days. What’s changed?”

“Conversion, conversion, conversion,” Tim said, smacking its alloy hands with each repetition. “Synthetic enzymes and hormones have improved at an exponential rate, and we’ve been delivering babies in as few as eight days this year. Soon, I’m told, we’ll be down to a few days and, if one is to believe Supreme Scientist Nasha Ele, a number of hours. Imagine the glory of walking into a medical center in the morning and providing your chancellor with an heir by nightfall. What a delight.” Tim perused another set of data. “And with the addition of your twins and other heirs today, we’re looking at another record registration in the Harpoons! What a delight!”

Something about this didn’t jive with Damy. She’d worked with too many organisms, seen too much in the fermentation centers and in her research center in the Nicola Facility to believe that she could go from having two fertilized eggs to two babies in such a short time; transhumans weren’t the same as woolly mammoths or other prehistoric fauna or flora she’d resurrected. But then, she’d been pregnant since the first trimester of the Livellan calendar and should have notified the commonwealth sooner. She shouldn’t push this. The bot might report her.

“What about another twenty-five days?” Damy said.

Tim provided a new option.

Damy did the simple math.

The new day of delivery would leave thirty days for their children’s development for the Harpoons—the exams that would ultimately determine their place in the commonwealth. Damy’s own development in House Summerset, she recalled, had lasted four years. That was prior to the onset of trimester registrations for the Harpoons, but it seemed unfathomable to her that development had advanced to a tighter time frame.

She stared at Brody and noted his worried expression. “Tim, I’m afraid that Brody and I haven’t been involved with heirs or the Harpoons in such a long time that we require a refresher on what’s required by the precepts and the normal timing for such events.”

“Aha, you should feel comfortable asking me anything,” Tim said. “We’ll customize the injections to fit a range within your targeted delivery date. Your twins will require assignment to a developer’s house. You can designate yourselves, if you want, a new option being offered by the Office of the Chancellor. In our parlance we call that
home developing.
This has become more and more common with costs rising and fewer subsidies from the commonwealth in recent years. Although the preparatory stages and composition of tests within the Harpoons have changed drastically since your classes, the results are the same. The candidates are ranked based on valuations formulated by the market traders in Navita City, then they’re auctioned to the highest bidders.”

It was the first time Damy had heard of home developing, and it sounded so right that she wanted to declare it so—that she and Brody would develop their twins on their own. Then she recalled the eighteen-hour days, the constant injections, the endless data feeds, the physical training, the mental exercises, the sleepless nights of her own development.

We can’t do this
, she thought,
we can’t develop our twins better than the pros
.

The only thing worse than not seeing her twins tall and strong and intelligent as fully developed transhumans would be to live knowing that her selfishness had led to their service in the Lower Level.

“How much for the Variscans?” Damy said.

“Let me see,” Tim said. “A frequent request is House Variscan.”

“Cost won’t be an issue,” Brody said. To Damy, he said, “They’re worth it.”

“Oh, so sorry, sorry, sorry, but they’re already booked. Was there anyone—”

“That’s all right, Tim,” Brody said. He waved his hand. “I’m a close friend of Lady Eulalie and Lord Rueben of that house and I’ll see to it they take our twins. What’re the fees?”

“Captain Barão,” Tim said with a grin, “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. The precepts of your chancellor govern heirs and the Harpoons, and once there has been an assignment to a house it cannot be undone. House Variscan cannot exceed its limit. You can choose another developer. I do have House Adao available—”

“Absolutely
not
,” Brody said.

“Lord Pierre’s a good person,” Damy said. “He’s talented and well connected. He worked with Verena—”

“That was before he prepared you-know-who, and I will not be placing our twins with someone who has ties to that man.”

“What about House Summerset?” Damy said.

Tim flipped through the pages. “Oh, yes, yes, yes, that house
is
available. Shall I place your permanent reservation?”

Damy could tell by the way Brody contorted his face that he wasn’t sure. “The Summersets developed me,” she said, putting her hand on her chest. “They’re as good as anyone in the West.”

“My love,” Brody said cautiously, “the exams are built in the Northeast, we’d be better with someone from Palaestra. And … the lady’s temper …”