Lethe Read online

  Katrin was the head of the terraforming team. Davout led its research division. Between them, raining nano from Sarpedon’s black skies, they nursed the planet to life, enriched its atmosphere, filled its seas, crafted tough, versatile vegetation capable of withstanding the angry environment. Seeded life by the tens of millions, insects, reptiles, birds, mammals, fish, and amphibians. Re-created themselves, with dark, leathery skin and slit pupils, as human forms suitable for Sarpedon’s environment, so that they could examine the place they had built.

  And-unknown to the others-Davout and Katrin had slipped bits of their own genetics into almost every Sarpedan life-form. Bits of redundant coding, mostly, but enough so that they could claim Sarpedon’s entire world of creatures as their children. Even when they were junior terraformers on the Cheng Ho’s mission to Rhea, they had, partly as a joke, partly as something more calculated, populated their creations with their genes.

  Katrin and Davout spent the last two years of their project on Sarpedon among their children, examining the different ecosystems, different interactions, tinkering with new adaptations. In the end, Sarpedon was certified as suitable for human habitation. Preprogrammed nanos constructed small towns, laid out fields, parks, and roads. The first human Sarpedans would be constructed in nanobeds, and their minds filled with the downloaded personalities of volunteers from Earth. There was no need to go to the expense and trouble of shipping out millions of warm bodies from Earth, running the risks of traveling for decades in remote space. Not when nanos could construct them all new on site.

  The first Sarpedans-bald, leather-skinned, slit-eyed-emerged blinking into their new red dawn. Any further terraforming, any attempts to fine-tune the planet and make it more Earthlike, would be a long-term project and up to them. In a splendid ceremony, Captain Moshweshwe formally turned the future of Sarpedon over to its new inhabitants. Davout had a few last formalities to perform, handing certain computer codes and protocols over to the Sarpedans, but the rest of the terraforming team, most fairly drunk on champagne, filed into the shuttle for the return journey to the Beagle. As Davout bent over a terminal with his Sarpedan colleagues and the Beagle’s first officer, he could hear the roar of the shuttle on its pad, the sustained thunder as it climbed for orbit, the thud as it crashed through the sound barrier, and then he saw out of the corner of his eye the sudden red-gold flare…

  When he raced outside, it was to see the blazing poppy unfolding in the sky, a blossom of fire and metal falling slowly to the surface of the newly christened planet.

  There she was-her image anyway-in the neo-gothic armchair: Red Katrin, the green-eyed lady with whom he in memory, and Old Davout in reality, had first exchanged glances two centuries ago while Dolphus expanded on what he called his "lunaforming."

  Davout had hesitated about returning her call of condolence. He did not know whether his heart could sustain two knife-thrusts, both Katrin’s death and the sight of her sib, alive, sympathetic, and forever beyond his reach.

  But he couldn’t not call her. Even when he was trying not to think about her, he still found Katrin on the edge of his perceptions, drifting though his thoughts like the persistent trace of some familiar perfume.

  Time to get it over with, he thought. If it was more than he could stand, he could apologize and end the call. But he had to know…

  "And there are no backups?" she said. A pensive frown touched her lips.

  "No recent backups," Davout said. "We always thought that, if we were to die, we would die together. Space travel is hazardous, after all, and when catastrophe strikes it is not a small catastrophe. We didn’t anticipate one of us surviving on Earth, and the other dying light-years away." He scowled.

  "Damn Mosheshwe anyway! There were recent backups on the Beagle, but with so many dead from an undetermined cause, he decided not to resurrect anyone, to cancel our trip to Astoreth, return to Earth, and sort out all the complications once he got home."

  "He made the right decision," Katrin said. "If my sib had been resurrected, you both would have died together."

  Better so Davout’s fingers began to form the mudra, but he thought better of it, made a gesture of negation.

  The green eyes narrowed. "There are older backups on Earth, yes?"

  "Katrin’s latest surviving backup dates from the return of the Cheng Ho."

  "Almost ninety years ago." Thoughtfully. "But she could upload the memories she has been sending me… the problem does not seem insurmountable."

  Red Katrin clasped her hands around one knee. At the familiar gesture, memories rang through Davout’s mind like change-bells. Vertigo overwhelmed him, and he closed his eyes.

  "The problem is the instructions Katrin-we both-left," he said. "Again, we anticipated that if we died, we’d die together. And so we left instructions that our backups on Earth were not to be employed. We reasoned that we had two sibs apiece on Earth, and if they-you-missed us, you could simply duplicate yourselves."

  "I see." A pause, then concern. "Are you all right?"

  No "Of course not," he said. He opened his eyes. The world eddied for a moment, then stilled, the growing calmness centered on Red Katrin’s green eyes.

  "I’ve got seventy-odd years’ back pay," he said. "I suppose that I could hire some lawyers, try to get Katrin’s backup released to my custody."

  Red Katrin bit her nether lip. "Recent court decisions are not in your favor."

  "I’m very persistent. And I’m cash-rich."

  She cocked her head, looked at him. "Are you all right talking to me? Should I blank my image?"

  No. He shook his head. "It helps, actually, to see you."

  He had feared agony in seeing her, but instead he found a growing joy, a happiness that mounted in his heart. As always, his Katrin was helping him to understand, helping him to make sense of the bitter confusion of the world.

  An idea began to creep into his mind on stealthy feet.

  "I worry that you’re alone there," Red Katrin said. "Would you like to come stay with us? Would you like us to come to Java?"

  No, thanks "I’ll come see you soon," Davout said. "But while I’m in the hospital, I think I’ll have a few cosmetic procedures." He looked down at himself, spread his leathery hands. "Perhaps I should look a little more Earthlike."

  After his talk with Katrin ended, Davout called Dr. Li and told him that he wanted a new body constructed.

  Something familiar, he said, already in the files. His own, original form.

  Age twenty or so.

  "It is a surprise to see you… as you are," said Silent Davout.

  Deep-voiced, black-skinned, and somber, Davout’s sib stood by his bed.

  "It was a useful body when I wore it," Davout answered. "I take comfort in… familiar things… now that my life is so uncertain." He looked up. "It was good of you to come in person."

  "A holographic body," he said, taking Davout’s hand, "however welcome, however familiar, is not the same as a real person."

  Davout squeezed the hand. "Welcome, then," he said. Dr. Li, who had supervised in person through the new/old body’s assembly, had left after saying the nanos were done, so it seemed appropriate for Davout to stand and embrace his sib.

  The youngest of the sibs was not tall, but he was built solidly, as if for permanence, and his head seemed slightly oversized for his body. With his older sibs, he had always maintained a kind of formal reserve that had resulted in his being nicknamed "the Silent." Accepting the name, he remarked that the reason he spoke little when the others were around was that his older sibs had already said everything that needed saying before he got to it.

  Davout stepped back and smiled. "Your patients must think you a tower of strength."

  "I have no patients these days. Mostly I work in the realm of theory."

  "I will have to look up your work. I’m so far behind on uploads-I don’t have any idea what you and Katrin have been doing these last decades."

  Silent Davout stepped to the armoire and
opened its ponderous mahogany doors. "Perhaps you should put on some clothing," he said. "I am feeling chill in this conditioned air, and so must you."

  Amused, Davout clothed himself, then sat across the little rosewood side table from his sib. Davout the Silent looked at him for a long moment-eyes placid and thoughtful-and then spoke.

  "You are experiencing something that is very rare in our time," he said. "Loss, anger, frustration, terror. All the emotions that in their totality equal grief."

  "You forgot sadness and regret," Davout said. "You forgot memory, and how the memories keep replaying. You forgot imagination, and how imagination only makes those memories worse, because imagination allows you to write a different ending, but the world will not."

  Silent Davout nodded. "People in my profession," fingers forming irony, "anyway those born too late to remember how common these things once were, must view you with a certain clinical interest. I must commend Dr. Li on his restraint."

  "Dr. Li is a shrink?" Davout asked.

  Yes. A casual press of fingers. "Among other things. I’m sure he’s watching you very carefully and making little notes every time he leaves the room."

  "I’m happy to be useful." Irony in his hand, bitterness on his tongue. "I would give those people my memories, if they want them so much."

  Of course "You can do that."

  Davout looked up in something like surprise.

  "You know it is possible," his sib said. "You can download your memories, preserve them like amber or simply hand them to someone else to experience. And you can erase them from your mind completely, walk on into a new life, tabula rasa and free of pain."

  His deep voice was soft. It was a voice without affect, one he no doubt used on his patients, quietly insistent without being officious. A voice that made suggestions, or presented alternatives, but which never, ever, gave orders.

  "I don’t want that," Davout said.

  Silent Davout’s fingers were still set in of course. "You are not of the generation that accepts such things as a matter of course," he said. "But this, this modular approach to memory, to being, constitutes much of my work these days."

  Davout looked at him. "It must be like losing a piece of yourself, to give up a memory. Memories are what make you."

  Silent Davout’s face remained impassive as his deep voice sounded through the void between them. "What forms a human psyche is not a memory, we have come to believe, but a pattern of thought. When our sib duplicated himself, he duplicated his pattern in us; and when we assembled new bodies to live in, the pattern did not change. Have you felt yourself to be a different person when you took a new body?"

  Davout passed a hand over his head, felt the fine blond hair covering his scalp. This time yesterday, his head had been bald and leathery. Now he felt subtle differences in his perceptions-his vision was more acute, his hearing less so-and his muscle memory was somewhat askew. He remembered having a shorter reach, a slightly different center of gravity.

  But as for himself, his essence-no, he felt himself unchanged. He was still Davout.

  No he signed.

  "People have more choices than ever before," said Silent Davout. "They choose their bodies, they choose their memories. They can upload new knowledge, new skills. If they feel a lack of confidence, or feel that their behavior is too impulsive, they can tweak their body chemistry to produce a different effect. If they find themselves the victim of an unfortunate or destructive compulsion, the compulsion can be edited from their being. If they lack the power to change their circumstances, they can at least elect to feel happier about them. If a memory cannot be overcome, it can be eliminated."

  "And you now spend your time dealing with these problems?" Davout asked.

  "They are not problems," his sib said gently. "They are not syndromes or neuroses. They are circumstances. They are part of the condition of life as it exists today. They are environmental." The large, impassive eyes gazed steadily at Davout. "People choose happiness over sorrow, fulfillment over frustration. Can you blame them?"

  Yes Davout signed. "If they deny the evidence of their own lives," he said. "We define our existence by the challenges we overcome, or those we don’t. Even our tragedies define us."

  His sib nodded. "That is an admirable philosophy-for Davout the Conqueror. But not all people are conquerors."

  Davout strove to keep the impatience from his voice. "Lessons are learned from failures as well as successes. Experience is gained, life’s knowledge is applied to subsequent occurrence. If we deny the uses of experience, what is there to make us human?"

  His sib was patient. "Sometimes the experiences are negative, and so are the lessons. Would you have a person live forever under the shadow of great guilt, say for a foolish mistake that resulted in injury or death to someone else; or would you have them live with the consequences of damage inflicted by a sociopath, or an abusive family member? Traumas like these can cripple the whole being. Why should the damage not be repaired?"

  Davout smiled thinly. "You can’t tell me that these techniques are used only in cases of deep trauma," he said. "You can’t tell me that people aren’t using these techniques for reasons that might be deemed trivial. Editing out a foolish remark made at a party, or eliminating a bad vacation or an argument with the spouse."

  Silent Davout returned his smile. "I would not insult your intelligence by suggesting these things do not happen."

  Q.E.D. Davout signed. "So how do such people mature? Change? Grow in wisdom?"

  "They cannot edit out everything. There is sufficient friction and conflict in the course of ordinary life to provide everyone with their allotted portion of wisdom. Nowadays our lives are very, very long, and we have a long time to learn, however slowly. And after all," he said, smiling, "the average person’s capacity for wisdom has never been so large as all that! I think you will find that as a species we are far less prone to folly than we once were."

  Davout looked at his sib grimly. "You are suggesting that I undergo this technique?"

  "It is called Lethe."

  "That I undergo Lethe? Forget Katrin? Or forget what I feel for her?"

  Silent Davout slowly shook his grave head. "I make no such suggestion."

  "Good."

  The youngest Davout gazed steadily into the eyes of his older twin. "Only you know what you can bear. I merely point out that this remedy exists, should you find your anguish beyond what you can endure."

  "Katrin deserves mourning," Davout said.

  Another grave nod. "Yes."

  "She deserves to be remembered. Who will remember her if I do not?"

  "I understand," said Silent Davout. "I understand your desire to feel, and the necessity. I only mention Lethe because I comprehend all too well what you endure now. Because"-he licked his lips-"I, too, have lost Katrin."

  Davout gaped at him. "You-" he stammered. "She is-she was killed?"

  No. His sib’s face retained its remarkable placidity. "She left me, sixteen years ago."

  Davout could only stare. The fact, stated so plainly, was incomprehensible.

  "I-" he began, and then his fingers found another thought. What happened?

  "We were together for a century and a half. We grew apart. It happens."

  Not to us it doesn’t! Davout’s mind protested. Not to Davout and Katrin!

  Not to the two people who make up a whole greater than its parts. Not to us. Not ever.

  But looking into his sib’s accepting, melancholy face, Davout knew that it had to be true.

  And then, in a way he knew to be utterly disloyal, he began to hope.

  "Shocking?" said Old Davout. "Not to us, I suppose."

  "It was their downloads," said Red Katrin. "Fair Katrin in particular was careful to edit out some of her feelings and judgments before she let me upload them, but still I could see her attitudes changing. And knowing her, I could make guesses by what she left out… I remember telling Davout three years before the split that the relationship was in
jeopardy."

  "The Silent One was still surprised, though, when it happened," Old Davout said. "Sophisticated though he may be about human nature, he had a blind spot where Katrin was concerned." He put an arm around Red Katrin and kissed her cheek. "As I suppose we all do," he added.

  Katrin accepted the kiss with a gracious inclination of her head, then asked Davout, "Would you like the blue room here, or the green room upstairs? The green room has a window seat and a fine view of the bay, but it’s small."

  "I’ll take the green room," Davout said. I do not need so much room, he thought, now that I am alone.

  Katrin took him up the creaking wooden stair and showed him the room, the narrow bed of the old house. Through the window, he could look south to a storm on Chesapeake Bay, bluegray cloud, bright eruptions of lightning, slanting beams of sunlight that dropped through rents in the storm to tease bright winking light from the foam. He watched it for a long moment, then was startled out of reverie by Katrin’s hand on his shoulder, and a soft voice in his ear.

  "Are there sights like this on other worlds?"

  "The storms on Rhea were vast," Davout said, "like nothing on this world. The ocean area is greater than that on Earth, and lies mostly in the tropics-the planet was almost called Oceanus on that account. The hurricanes built up around the equatorial belts with nothing to stop them, sometimes more than a thousand kilometers across, and they came roaring into the temperate zones like multi-armed demons, sometimes one after another for months. They spawned waterspots and cyclones in their vanguard, inundated whole areas with a storm surge the size of a small ocean, dumped enough rain to flood an entire province away… We thought seriously that the storms might make life on land untenable."