The Breeding Pair

By: Ben Bielert

Consciousness came back slowly and painfully. Rama’s flesh felt light and dry as a fallen leaf. He clutched the edge of his cryogenic pod and tried to steady himself; the exertion of lifting his dried-out husk from prone to sitting proved to be excruciating.

Damn the ship’s artificial gravity field.

His wasted muscles strained painfully with the task. Excruciating minutes later, he managed to sit himself up and gaze about.

“Hello, Rama and Ianka, you have been in stasis for 312 years, 4 months, and 18 days relative time, when adjusting for time dilation due to velocity, 358 years, 2 months and 21 days have passed,” the computer’s voice said. It was a lyrical woman’s voice with the same warm intonation of a human voice, a perfect imitation. “We have passed beyond the Oort Cloud of Andanor 212, your selected destination.”

Not more than two feet away was the other pod, the only other stasis capsule, and he could see the wraith-like fingers of Ianka slowly finding their way to the lip and curling about as she tried to right herself as he had. He would have helped her, but he was already panting from exertion, his head pounding. Although he had slowly begun the exit of his pod, managing to get one dangling leg over the edge, he was in no position to assist anyone. His heart strained to pump his too-thick blood about his body.

Ianka slowly rose to a sitting position, her gaunt face more closely resembling a desiccated mummy than the cherubim beauty she had been when they were placed within the pods many years earlier.

“We made it?” she croaked.

“Nearly.” His vocal cords pained him, and it sounded like he had gargled battery acid.

The use of her voice must have been equally painful; Ianka simply nodded and set to exiting her pod.

The next day was spent in a state of near-complete dysfunction. Each struggled to their respective restoration bunks and then spent hours in semi-conscious and unconscious senescence. The IVs full of liquid nutrient and saline solutions pumped non-stop into their parched veins, slowly filling them up like water balloons. 

By the end of 24 hours, they were hardly recognizable next to the walking skeletons that had awakened. They were still thin, but their tissues had greedily drunk all that was provided, the lines and wrinkles on every square inch of their bodies had filled out and sprang back to some semblance of health and normalcy. The world about them came back into crisp focus, no longer the hazy perception of those just barely clinging to life.

They swept through their spacecraft, running their hands over the smooth metallic and composite surfaces. She was called the Nymea. Like all Pip class craft, she was not large; 800 square feet of interior space at most. The vast bulk of the interior space of the craft was dedicated to their fabrication plant. The fission reactor located midship was largely inaccessible, and together with the propulsion system made up most the ship’s mass.

Come the second day, they sat in the long-unmanned seats of Nymea’s bridge and assessed their position. The view outside through the quartz windows was dotted with points of light, blurred only slightly with their slowing pace. Andanor 212 was brighter than any other point of light in that inky darkness but still fainter than their sun. They were getting close, it should have been bright, not this dull orange light.

“It looks like the second planet is the best bet,” Rama said, tapping away at the interface and reading.

“Andanor 212 b, then?”

He swept a finger along the touch screen and nodded. “Yes, no other catalogued name. Catchy little moniker.”

She smiled slightly. “I guess it could be worse. We’ll have to name it something better.”

“Do you think we have the right?”

She snorted. “If not us, then who?”

“Our offspring maybe, the first Homo sapiens to live on the world?”

“We’re close enough. Homo fecundus will have to do,” she said, with a smirk.

“Nymea, how long until we arrive?” he asked.

“We’ll arrive in 2 days and 16 hours at our current rate of deceleration, Rama,” the ship’s computer said.

“Three days and then it all starts. Are you ready?” Ianka asked.

Rama nodded. “It’s what we were made for, isn’t it?”

***

He could have hidden his bloody knuckles, but the split lip had given him away.

“Rama, have you been fighting?” his father asked.

He was a tall man, with broad shoulders. His skin was still light despite being tanned, and his green eyes rarely missed anything.

 He looked entirely unlike Rama, even long after he was that 9-year-old boy.

Rama was always short in stature and slight compared to his peers. His skin was naturally the colour of a well-toasted marshmallow, his eyes an amber brown.

Rama hid his hands behind his back and sucked in his bottom lip, the sting of it making his eyes water. He tasted copper as it split anew. “No.” He lied, tonguing the split, and feeling the slick blood under the little cord of muscle.

“How did you split your lip then?” Daneel demanded.

His eyes fell to the floor of their habitation unit, a practical confession of guilt. “I… I fell down.”

“Rama,” Daneel said, crouching down and placing a hand on Rama’s shoulder, “you don’t have to lie to me. In fact, I’d rather you didn’t. Tell me, son, how’d you split your lip?”

Rama shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, then looked up at those imploring green eyes. “I… I got in a fight with Wicklow.”

Wicklow was a boy in his class. He was tall with a great hooked nose, and he sneered often.

Daneel looked angry for a moment and then concerned. They were standing in the living room of their home, and he went over to the couch and sat, patting the cushion beside him.

Rama walked over to the couch and stood by it but did not sit.

“Does Wicklow have a split lip?” Daneel asked.

Rama shook his head, recalling the fight and balling up his fists. “No, but I hit him in that big nose and punched him in the stomach.”

“Why would you do that?” Daneel asked.

“Because he said that you weren’t my father, he said that us Adams don’t have any fathers or mothers. He said I was stupid to think so. But I know we do. You and mom, you told me that even though I’m not yours by blood, we’re family.”

Daneel sighed and hugged his adoptive son. “Yes, that’s how we have raised you, but it’s not how most Adams and Eves are raised. The way Wicklow’s caregivers are raising him, as guardians not parents, that’s how the Offearth project officially recommends we raise you.”

When Daneel had leaned back again Rama’s lip was quivering. “So, is it true then? We don’t have any family?”

“Some don’t think you do, but whether they say we should or we shouldn’t act as though we are, whether you’re born of my flesh, or you come from someone else, it doesn’t matter. Your mother and I love you, Rama. Because of that, we’re family. Nobody can change that. Family is about what’s in your heart.”

“But you’re not really my dad,” Rama said, his voice cracking slightly.

“Rama, do you remember what I told you about where Adams and Eves come from, how you were born?”

Rama sat down on the couch and looked forward, avoiding Daneel’s eyes. “We come from altered embros.”

“Embryos, son,” Daneel said.

“Right, em-bree-ohs. From eggs and sperm that are made special in a lab. We’re given different powers that make us different than most people.”

Daneel smiled and shook his head. “You’re given abilities, different qualities from normal people.”

“Because someday they’re gonna send us to the stars, right? That’s what teachers and caregivers always say.” Now he dared a glance at his dad and found him looking back and smiling.

“That’s right, to distant worlds around the stars, and when you get there, you will be paired up with a lovely woman, an Eve to match you and to help you create a whole new race of humanity.”

Rama looked down at his hands. “I know, I remember.”

“Right, but I want to remind you about it, because you and that special Eve that you get paired up with, you’re going to have children when you get there.”

Rama stuck out his tongue and covered his eyes. “Dad, c’mon, that’s embarrassing.”

“Well, it is now, but when the time comes, you’ll see it as something normal, and important.”

“Okay, okay, I know,” Rama said shaking his head and uncovering his eyes.

“But my point, son, is when you have those children, because of the way they made you in the lab, they’ll be like you are to me. They won’t be your genetic progeny.”

“What does that word mean… progeny?”

“It means offspring. Genetic progeny are your descendants, sharing your DNA. You see, they won’t be your biological children, son. You’ve been altered in a way that each child you father will be as though fathered by a different man. You can create enough different people on a new world, that they can have a new population of humans without worrying about the issues that come from inbreeding.”

Rama sighed and ran his hands over his face groaning. “I’ve heard this stuff before in class, it was boring then too.”

“Okay but hear me out.” Rama blinked and tried to pay attention. “If you are like some people and you treat these children like they’re only your wards, you treat them like they’re just a job and nothing else, then I don’t think that will mean good things down the line, Rama.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that at the end of the day, I think it’s important for children to be loved. They can still grow into good people if they aren’t, but I think that it can cause a lot of unnecessary trauma.”

“Why do you think that Dad, if a lot of the other caregivers and the people of the project don’t?”

“Well, they argue that it isn’t necessary and might complicate family relationships down the line, but I argue that there’s plenty of evidence that it is necessary.”

“Like what?”

“Well, there was once a scientist named Harry Harlow, and he experimented with baby monkeys.”

“With monkeys? What does that have to do with anything?”

“Well, you see, monkeys are pretty closely related to humans, so the way the monkeys behave is thought to give insight into what matters and is important in human development too.”

“Okay, so what did he do to the baby monkeys?”

“Well, you see, the experiment was called The Wire Mother Experiment, and in it, he took baby monkeys from their mothers, and he gave them two different monkey dummies to act like mothers to the monkeys instead.”

“Why’d he do that?”

“He did it to see what was more important to a developing infant, son. You see, one monkey dummy had warm milk connected to a rubber nipple, but the monkey itself was cold and made of metal wire. The other monkey dummy he gave cloth for fur and made it softer and to feel more like a real monkey, but it had no milk to give.”

Rama scratched his head. “What happened?”

“Well,” Daneel said, clearing his throat, “time and time again the baby monkeys preferred the mother with no milk. They would gravitate to the mother who more closely simulated touch, even though that meant that they went hungry. Do you know what this means?”

Rama grinned. “That monkeys are pretty dumb?”

Daneel threw his head back and laughed. “No,” he chuckled, “Rama, it proved that the need for contact and comfort outweighs the most basic need for sustenance. The monkeys would feed at times from the wire mother, but they would always return to the one that could provide comfort. You see, when raising children providing for their most basic of needs extends to more than just food, water, and shelter. Contact, comfort, and love is a base need, and it’s just as important in healthy development as adequate sleep and food.”

“So, I have to worry about doing that right too?” Rama asked.

“All I’m saying is in the long run for the good of the new world you help colonize and the people there, it will be for the best if you treat your wards like I treat you.”

“You just act like my dad.”

“That’s right, son,” Daneel said, mussing up his hair. “That’s all you have to do.”

“Okay, I’ll try,” he said. “Am I in trouble for fighting with Wicklow?”

Daneel grinned. “Let’s tell your mother I gave you a stern talking to, lectured you endlessly.”

“Well, the last part’s true,” Rama bemoaned.

Daneel laughed. “And don’t fight with the other Adams again, okay? Even if they say that your mother is a hamster and I smell of elderberries.”

“You’re so weird, dad,” Rama said, “but I love you.”

Daneel wrapped him in another hug. “And I love you too, son.”

***

Some worlds that breeding pairs were sent to were more hospitable than others. Some, it was said, were lush paradise worlds of plenty. The world Rama and Ianka had been sent to was not such a world.

The first time they set foot on Andanor 212b, Ianka was able to name the little desert world.

“Isn’t this a lovely little home away from home?” she joked; the air so dry that it practically choked her. “I think the name Aridus would be perfect.”

They stood just outside their craft surveying the spot they had chosen to settle, one of the best in the entire world. They’d landed her in a flat expanse of ground near the flood plain of a dried-out riverbed. Scrubby plants grew here and there, and a scant forest of proud cacti and gnarled trees ran along to the East and nearer the highly saline sea. To the south, a rocky hillside protected from some of the winds and allowed for the buildup of sediment and vegetation.

“That just means dry,” Rama replied.

The wind blew from the north, buffeting them. A strand of Ianka’s hair came free and whipped across her face. They both squinted to keep the sand and sun out of their eyes.

“And this world sure as hell is,” she said.

Before they’d been there for a month, Rama’s skin felt like jerky. In the years that came, he would think it more and more like leather, and the resemblance would become uncanny. His skin cracked and peeled. He couldn’t keep it from drying out, and even in the dull and warm sun, it burned and then kept on burning. He would put on sunblock, but the wind burned as easily as the sun.  He wore what he could to protect himself, hats, face coverings, long-sleeved shirts and long-legged pants, the ship could make nearly anything he might need. Regardless of what he wore, the elements of Aridus found their way to him and punished him for being there.

The dry and barren land could provide nothing for them, but the Nymea could provide all, for a time.

There wasn’t any point in planting; they’d just waste their seeds. Wasn’t any point in making a move, yet. The ground was so dry and cracked, and the dust and sand that blew up got in everything, in the ship, in eyes and ears and noses. It caked at the corner of their mouths and gathered in the crooks of their elbows. The unrelenting drought pressed in on them, but they waited. To act too soon would certainly hurt more than help. They needed to wait. They knew they needed to wait for just the right moment to spend their effort. But every day they were filled with nervous energy, a pent-up, squirming, uncontrollable sort of thing.

Sitting still would have driven them crazy or made them jump the gun and start putting seeds down in the parched earth. So, they prepared.

For the first three months, Rama and Ianka worked sundown to sunup, using the ship’s fabrication bay to prepare for the rainy season and their rut. First thing was first, the Nymea was invaluable, set down where she was and her generator thrumming away, her fabrication bay able to whip up all sorts of things, but she wasn’t a home. She wasn’t a place for them to be able to live. By the end of the short time they’d spent awake, they had both been stir-crazy. The first thing they set the Nymea’s fabrication bay to making was the modules for a homestead.

Their initial home started as a single module, one room that was to be their common area.

They couldn’t plant the fields, but they could ready them. There was plenty that could be done to those fields beforehand, and that’s what they bent their wills to do.

They fenced in a hundred acres to keep out any unwanted wildlife.

The wild creatures were adapted to the arid lifestyle and although not overly diverse, they were there in surprising numbers. Ianka and Rama entertained themselves by cataloguing them.

There were the scampering grabbits, a name Ianka devised. A small reptilian herbivore that resembled a rabbit and possessed the ability to perch on hind legs and use the hands on their forelimbs to manipulate objects.

Most abundant were the bugs; big fat brownflies the size of baseballs, didecipedes with their many legs and long segmented bodies, springstrikers with their strange and terrifying combination of a scorpion stinger with limbs vaguely reminiscent of a grasshopper and serving in a like fashion. Springstrikers could launch themselves at you and strike, thankfully their venom turned out to be only painful and not lethal.

There were numerous lizards and snakes. Some were a dull reddish brown to match the sand and dust, but others came in a dizzying array of bright blues, greens, and yellows. Those more splendidly polychromatic were often, as Rama suspected and discovered, venomous. The colouration served them as it did creatures on Earth, as a warning to would-be predators.

The orniosaurs were gigantic flying reptiles that were carrion feeders. If you saw orniosaurs, flying in a circle just like regular vultures, you knew there was the body of some poor grabbit or maybe a giant toad below.

Then there were the kangayotes. Rama named them because of what they reminded him of. They were like facultatively bipedal dogs, bounding quickly and easily, moving alarmingly fast, but with keen senses of smell and mouthfuls of sharp and deadly teeth. They had no hair, and Rama would have classified them as reptilian if pressed, but nothing here followed the exact classifications of Earth animals.

Piece by piece, they put together machinery for their work: a tractor and a plow, a post pounder, halfway through the second month, they were each taking their turns having their teeth rattled, first one driving their setup and then the next.

They were so occupied with familiarizing themselves with their new world and with preparing for the wet season, that when the rut finally struck them both, they were completely swept away by the rush of hormones and the need that came with it.

***

“Do you think they’re in there?” Rama asked, turning on the bed and reaching towards her belly.

She backed away, for the last few days they had gone at each other like wild animals. Now, she could instantly feel the drive of the rut dissipating, a telltale sign that they had been successful.

The rut was a fever, a frenzy that she couldn’t control when it took hold, most akin to extreme hunger. Now that she had satisfied the need though, she felt like one after glutting themselves on food, the very thought of more practically repulsing her.

On Earth, she had been required to birth two broods before and had passed through the rut four times.  This was done to make sure that she would have little issue once she was off world. Her body worked with a clockwork precision that humans didn’t have. She knew the perfect time for fertilization and could tell the exact moment of ovulation. Sometimes she thought that she could practically count the number of eggs released.

If someone were to ask her this time, she would have bet that there were six. She was more sensitive to these things than her future daughters would be if you could even call them that.

“If not yet, then soon enough seed will meet ova and they will be.” She tried to smile, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Rama smiled at her warmly, but she didn’t feel warmly toward him any longer, she just wanted him to be away.

“You’re sure you’ll become pregnant?”

“I would be surprised if I didn’t,” she said, hand on her belly and stroking it absentmindedly.

He smiled. Her brow furrowed and she got up from the bed. She walked over to her small dresser, the one they had fabricated from the ship’s bay and looked at herself in the modest mirror mounted to the top of it. She was built solidly and shapely. Her hips were wide, and her body had a small amount of extra weight that was almost impossible to lose. She combed through her wavey blonde hair and tied it back into a ponytail.

“As many as eight children,” Rama mused.

“None truly ours,” she whispered, “but I will carry them, gestate them, and birth them. They will be my own in that sense at least.”

“They’ll be ours,” Rama said, rising and going to stand beside her. She slipped away before he could place a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll help raise them and do anything you ask of me while pregnant. They will be ours.”

“If that’s what you think,” she said, sadly.

“Yes,” he said, shaking his head and shivering despite the night’s warmth, “not biologically. But they’ll still be ours in every other sense.”

She sat in quiet contemplation for a time and then began to clothe herself.

“Born of us, cared for by us, but not truly of us,” she said. “Not our genetic progeny.”

When she peered over her shoulder, she saw that Rama was trying not to stare at her, playing with the knob on one of her dresser drawers.

“That’s only part of what dictates family,” Rama said.

“I never had a family,” Ianka replied, she had dressed and walked back to the bed, sitting on the edge of it.

“Well,” Rama said, reaching for her, she drew away, “you will now.”

She looked contemplative for a moment, her eyes staring forward but unseeing.

She shook her head. “Or perhaps I never will.”

***

The skies remained clear and with a yellowish tinge; there were no clouds to be seen. For four months following their rut, they worked the fields, built perimeter fences, and prepared an aquifer system, but the rains did not come.

Ianka grew too large and had to abandon heavier duties, lest she endanger the children. Eves did not carry children as long as their human counterparts, and she was nearing the end of term.

Rama continued his work, redoubling his efforts.

One day, Rama was working on the latest catch basin for the rain. All about the compound, he had placed basins like this one, ten of them scattered about the land he’d managed to etch out as his own.

He had built a large reservoir of eight basins for the main reservoir and connected them directly in tandem. This made the eight in effect one volume, everything within it easily exchanged. This reservoir he had constructed within a shed that possessed a catchment system where all the rain that fell onto its roof would be channelled into the system. He had connected the system through a series of pipes and then connected irrigation to the fields and set it so that if there were water the fields would be watered periodically. It was perfect, it would work seamlessly, and now all it needed was rain.

He was just putting the finishing touches on the basin, connecting the tank’s reservoir to the lines that would make its water supply part of the system at large. Then he heard her calling. Ianka was calling his name. Methodically at first, that’s why he hadn’t noticed it, but as the cries became more and more urgent, they caught his attention. He dropped the wrench in his hands and started running.

He completely forgot about the ATV he had ridden to work on the basin, it was overlooked in instantaneous panic, but it was just as well. He would have had to get off and open several gates to drive the ATV, the speed at which he leapt over the fences and pelted across the dusty fields was as quick if not quicker than he would have been on the little quad.

He ran for the house full tilt and was going so fast he almost couldn’t stop when he got to the homestead building. He leapt up the stairs, shouldered the door roughly, and stumbled across the threshold.

“Ianka!” he shouted, his head whirling and his voice coming out with far more tremble than he’d hoped.

If his voice was nothing but nerves and adrenaline, hers was a cool evening breeze and sleep lazily clinging to the corners of eyes. Her words came laboured, panted and spoken with some exertion, but calm.

“I’m in here, Rama,” she called from her room.

He went to rush in all at once, but before he could reach the door she spoke again.

“There are some clean clothes, a bucket of warm water, a bottle of cool water, and some painkillers in the galley. I meant to bring them in here, but things happened so quickly and time got away from me. Can you bring them?”

He stopped in his tracks and steadied himself. Taking shaking breaths that rattled his ribs like he was a box kite, skin as thin as paper strung over sticks, he walked into the galley and gathered what he’d been instructed. He forced the tremor at bay when he spoke.  “Is there anything else you need?”

“Not for now,” she said with the slightest whimper, “just those things, and for you to come be with me.”

Rama smiled. “You want me near?”

“I don’t want to be alone,” she admitted.

***

Their first brood came quickly, and the strain on Ianka was considerable, but she managed.

She had cried a little, screamed more, and cursed like a sailor. She had bled, too. Rama began to worry, but she told him, “I’ve bled worse than this before. Help me staunch it and get me some antibiotics.”

Rama voiced worries about how they would fare, but Ianka knew she would survive.

She knew what she was doing.

More importantly, the children survived, and would seemingly thrive. Sixty fingers and sixty toes, and everything where it was supposed to be. It wouldn’t always work out quite so perfectly, but there were 3 healthy boys and 3 healthy girls. In the future, they would make up 3 families, the beginnings of a colony.

They had stopped the bleeding and Ianka had taken so many antibiotics to stave off infection that the treatment itself had made her sick. The misery of the experience and the recovery dragged on for weeks after, but she did recover. She had succeeded, had performed her primary purpose.

All the planning and work it had taken to get her and Rama to the world they were on, the countless efforts and players to make that seemingly simple thing occur, and now here were six distinct human lives on a far distant world. That world was largely inhospitable perhaps, but it was capable of sustaining human life and human life had made it there. The seed of civilization had been planted against all odds in one tiny semi-fertile plot in a nearly endless hostile sea of space.

In one day, the population of Andanor had quadrupled and their little kernel had begun to take root.

***

“We will starve if the rains don’t fall,” Rama confessed in his report one day. He tried to make one every day. The transmissions would be sent back to Earth, from a small dish pointed heavenward on the outside of the Pip. The transmissions wouldn’t be sent daily, that would be a waste of energy.  Directed pulses would be sent on a course for Earth when their celestial position was ideal, about every six months or so. It would take these pulses over 52 years to arrive, the time the radio waves took to cross the expanse between the two planets. There was nothing anyone back home could do about anything he told them, but eventually, someone back home would hear him.

So far, he had tried to remain upbeat. To provide a positive spin to the challenges they were facing, but as the days wore on, and he saw the tightening noose, he needed to tell someone.

He couldn’t tell Ianka. He wouldn’t show her that he was concerned, she knew the situation as well as he. Voicing the concern would give it more life, and that would cause her stress. He quite literally couldn’t do anything that he thought might harm the children.

“We have been relying more and more on the ship to synthesize food from other matter. Of course, the most abundant source of nitrogen and hydrogen is our waste. I know the bonds are broken, it’s stripped down to an atomic form and then reassembled, but I’m grossed out when I think of it. I can’t wait until I’m feeding mulch and garden waste into it instead.”

He cleared his throat and raked his fingers through his hair, looking at the camera. “If I’m ever able to feed mulch and garden waste into it. I can’t grow anything in this dusty clay and sand right now.”

He thought for a minute, not speaking, leaving the log recording for a time as he sat in silence.

He spoke again. “It all comes back to the water. Maybe we could tighten our belts and live on a limited diet, the sun would provide enough through the ship’s solar panels so we broke even, but goddamnit, the water. We’re making it ourselves right now, and it’s consuming energy. It’s so dry here, I need to drink at least a couple of litres a day, and I would gladly have more. I make Ianka drink three litres, she needs it for the children.”

He thought he heard Ianka walking in the common space outside his room, he turned his head, so that he could hear better. Perhaps he was wrong.

“I wish that you could send me something to help, fissile fuel or condensed hydrogen even. From what I’ve heard you might not care much for the Adam and Eve Pips anymore, but I’m pretty close to begging.” He sighed and gave a side-look to the camera. “But by the time you get this, I’ll be an old man and this worry will be far behind me, or I’ll be a dried-out mummy. Either way, it’ll be too late.”

He wrung his hands together and gave a pressed-lip smile to the camera. “I guess I better just be prepared for a rainfall then. Long-range analyses of this planet indicate that there is a rainy season that occurs annually in this region. I dug through fifty years of data, before that it’s pretty fuzzy.”

He heard something for certain outside his door now, and he pulled up the homestead cameras. Ianka lounged on a seat in the common room, drinking tea and scrolling through something on her interface.

He leaned in towards the microphone on his computer, whispering, “The problem is, the annual rainfall misses on some years. It’s not exactly periodic either, more of a random convergence of factors, if there is a pattern, I couldn’t make it out.”

He looked pointedly at the camera. “I have some backup plans in place, but if this isn’t a rainfall year… well,” he straightened up, tried to put on a brave face, and smiled, “let’s just hope this is a rainfall year.”

***

The new mouths were not truly eating, not yet. Ianka ate more than Rama now, but she had in the final days of her pregnancy as well. Ianka did, without a doubt, require more water than before, it was up to another two litres a day, but Rama somehow always managed to provide her with what she needed. The milk she provided demanded these things, and he wouldn’t see the children go without.

A brief 5 months in utero was all that was required for the children to fully develop. It was a short gestation, a modified one, a streamlined and quickened process compared to the original length of 9 months. Just one more difference in Adam and Eve breeding pairs, unlike the people that had come before, or those that would come after.

Their children would need 9 months just as before. Only the breeding pairs were anomalies.

Their children were ordinary, and they would not share any of the unique features they had. Adams and Eves were a tool, a connection between the people of Earth and those of the far distant worlds they tried to colonize. A link connecting the chain, but a placeholder and not a true part of the chain.

Ianka tried to drive these thoughts from her mind. She knew that they were no good, but she found them impossible to prevent.

Once the children had been born, her life was all about them and little else. Life came to be focused almost entirely on those six squalling lumps. Rama seemed eager for his time with them, always smiling and cooing, but it was nothing compared to the time she had to log.

Rama reached for them eagerly when he came in covered in a film of dust, it seemed to coat him, cling to him somehow. She would point him to the washroom and tell him to, “knock the dust off.”

He would grin sheepishly, wave to the children and coo or tell them he’d be back, and then he’d practically run to the sonic shower.

Once he was clean, Rama played with the children until they slept. Bouncing them on his knee, cuddling them, singing to them. He loved them, loved them as his own. So, why didn’t she?

She hated him for loving them, for being able to. She found herself scowling often, fighting for breath whether from the frequent smells, or simply because the whole ordeal was suffocating.

There was something wrong with her, she knew. She kept these thoughts to herself.

Sunup to sundown she cared for them, feeling more like a machine than a living thing. She had always felt like chattel, something bred and created for a purpose, but now she felt like an automaton, a whirring collection of gears and algorithms. She cared for the children because she was hardwired to. Ramped-up parenting instincts drove her to, impelled her. But there was no softness there, no sentiment.

She had synthesized the small phial with its dropper cap and its contents on the ship. She had needed to overcome a system safeguard or two to do so, but she had gotten it.

She stood over their bassinettes one night, the homestead quiet, Rama snoring distantly. The children all slept in her room, each with their eyes closed, looking so peaceful. Only Daneel, skin so dark he blended with the night, was giving little fitful kicks and making faint noises, his dream must have been more vivid than the rest.

She stroked their little cheeks, the skin as soft as fine sand, warm as the sun. She smoothed an orange curl on Jina’s forehead, and it sprang back instantly. The sight of these beautiful babes could have set any mother’s heart aflutter.

She felt nothing.

She walked over to her bedside table and groped silently in the dark for the phial.

She tried to, wanted to love them, she looked at them, reached down into the well of her emotions, and nothing came back. She didn’t want her life. She didn’t want to be a broodmare to pump out child after child and do little else.

She walked to the end of the row of bassinettes and looked down at Lanka. Of all the children, Lanka looked the most like her, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, white but with a darker eastern European complexion. She ran her hand along her back, she was warm and her back rose and fell with the breath, she stirred ever so slightly and opened her mouth twice making the faintest smacking sound and a little squeak.

Nothing.

She only needed several drops of the potent neurotoxin.

She felt the faintest stirring to scream or cry, to shout, but truly she didn’t want to do any of it. She didn’t feel compelled enough to, she wasn’t even truly outraged at her coldness. She unscrewed the top and pinched the bulb of the dropper, filling the glass pipette below. Certainly, they would all be better off without her, and she would not, could not, keep living a life like this.

Then, she heard the faintest sort of ticking sound. It became quicker, more persistent. She lowered the phial which she had raised closer to her lips, and she now sat head cocked, listening. The ticking was a pattering, a sound that Ianka had not heard for many long waking months, and many more years spent in torpor. She looked out her window, confirming the fact that her mind had managed to piece together, it had begun to rain.

***

Rama filled their reservoir and rain barrels eagerly. He got soaked as he rushed around to make sure each basin was catching all it could and laughed at the luxury of having that much moisture on his parched skin. It hurt, it stung in spots where the desiccated flesh expanded eagerly. Even still, he couldn’t help but laugh and hold his open mouth up to the heavens while catching sweet raindrops on his tongue.

For two days the hard rains came, and then they petered out for light smatterings for a week until they returned to the same yellow haze they had been in since they arrived. In two more weeks, one would have never been able to tell the rain had fallen at all. Except they had managed to catch nearly one hundred thousand litres in their basins, enough to keep them and their crops adequately supplied for a long time.

They sowed and watered their fields as best they could.

The plants grew rapidly, like the children, and bore fruit as readily as Ianka and Rama had. There was little wonder they did. The plants, like the breeding pair, had been designed to thrive.

“So far so good,” Ianka said, feeding the children as she tried to shovel a spoonful of her dinner into her mouth.

They ate a hearty stew of pantatoes, meatplant, and carrots, all grown from their gardens. The rolls they had along with it were made with rice flour from the ship’s fabricators, but these weren’t a necessity, and the cost was minimal. 

Rama was contending with the two youngest, strange how they drew this distinction when it was a matter of minutes, Jina and Habari, but still managing to sneak a spoonful of the stew here and there. Jina was as white as a lily petal, but Habari had skin the colour of red cedar. “If by so good you mean that we didn’t starve or die of thirst.”

“Do you think that could have happened if the rains didn’t come?”  she asked, concern flashing on her face. How could she not have seen the danger? Perhaps he had done well in making her feel safe.

“No, I would have fired the ship up and taken us to the nearest body of fresh water had it gotten that bad,” Rama lied. He knew such an act would have been damning, and any freshwater would likely have needed purification.

“Wouldn’t that have used a lot of the ship’s remaining energy to fire up the drive again, from completely cold? We would have just been prolonging death then, wouldn’t we?”

She was more aware than he gave her credit for. “Cost or no, better dead tomorrow than today. But if you would have been stubborn about it, I would have used our images of the world to figure out the nearest large body of water and then taken the rover.”

The rover was a large land vehicle, able to carry a tank or cargo, he could have gathered 20,000 litres or more and brought it back.

“That would have been dangerous,” she said. “Especially on the return trip with the extra weight behind you.”

He looked down at Jina, fussing in his arms and cooed to her. “If it was the difference between life and death for you and them, I wouldn’t think twice. I’d walk if I had to.”

She laughed at him. “Okay, I get it, you’re a big tough man.”

He didn’t laugh at all, he stared back with a look that was as steadfast as stone. “It’s not just pride or an ego thing. I would do anything for you and the children. I have a biological imperative, a programmed compulsion, to provide and protect you and any children we have.”

This saddened her a little. “So, you don’t do it because you want to?”

He thought for a minute. “I do, but I also can’t help myself.”

“How can you be sure?”

“Because that’s how I was raised. My father, who was a great man, taught me that family isn’t always blood. I would do anything for you not just because I’m supposed to, or some scientist in a lab made me so I was driven to, I would do anything for you all because I love you.”

For a moment she sat in shock. Love was not a luxury she had ever been afforded in her life, not something she knew how to receive, much less how to give.

“Anything that I asked of you?” she asked, glossing over his declaration of love.

Before he could answer one of the infants spit up a bit and for the next minute, they worked as a team to handle the mess. When all was well again and each had their assigned young ones and were able to sneak some bites of cold stew, the conversation resumed.

“I mean what I say,” he said.

She smirked. “How about building a bit of a bigger homestead here? Things are a little cramped now.”

Now Rama laughed. “Didn’t take long for that to translate into more work.”

“Would you rather it the other way?” She asked, tilting her head. “We are growing here, so there will be work to be done, it is only when things are stagnating or dying that there is time for idling. If the children had been stillborn, we wouldn’t need to expand.”

He looked visibly pained at the mention of the children stillborn, his face screwing up in momentary agony.

“Point taken,” he said, “I should count myself lucky that there’s work to be done.”

“Yes, you should. Count your callouses with appreciation.”

“I will, as long as you do me a favour,” Rama countered.

“And what is that?” she asked.

Rama crossed his arms and eyed her. “Stop calling our children the children, start counting them as your own.”

***

The habitation unit was modular. Each module was constructed from the ship’s fabrication bay. The fabrication bay consisted of a wall of 3D printers which could construct parts for any of thousands of plans. Rama punched in the work requests and left the bay to do its work, checking on it every so often to clear completed parts and allow the next task in the queue to commence. The parts were manufactured in a few days.

Assembly was a little harder.

Rama continued to work the fields, a process that had become largely passive once they were planted and irrigation was in place. In the time that remained, he and Ianka worked on the new modules.

Together they built a new nursery for the children, a secondary lavatory, and an expansion of the kitchen. Rama spent time with their children whenever he was home, and this gave Ianka a reprieve he had noticed that she desperately needed.

“Are you sure?” She asked.

“Yes, go, I can handle all six at once, two are sleeping for crying out loud.” he said, ushering her into her quarters for some time alone.

“Well, okay,” she said, blushing a little, “thanks.”

“Don’t mention it, they’re mine too.”

She nodded. “Yeah, they are yours.”

“They’re ours,” he said, patting her on the arm.

Rama played with them, made up games, did funny voices, and sang songs, but soon it was obvious that they needed more. He fabricated toys for them. All sorts of things, trains and dolls and blocks and jack-in-the-boxes.

“They can play games on the interfaces,” Ianka complained, worried that they were using too many resources on frivolities.

“Children need to play,” Rama replied. “They need real, visceral experience where they are touching physical items, testing out the parameters of their world and their abilities. The toys don’t cost much, it’s resource well-spent.”

“I never had many toys growing up,” Ianka said. “My foster parents said that I needed to focus on my studies, so they let me have books instead.”

“Books are useful too,” Rama agreed.

“But they can certainly use the interface for that,” Ianka said. “They can read anything in the computer’s library if they want to.”

Rama nodded thoughtfully. “True, you can certainly look at them on a screen, but this,” he said, smiling and pulling out Green Eggs and Ham from behind his back, the cover an electric orange, the pages full of vibrant and bright illustrations, “this is so much better.”

Ianka’s eyes lit up. “Where did you get that?”

“I made it in the ship’s fabricators yesterday. It wasn’t even that difficult, we had a blueprint in the system.”

“May I?” Ianka asked, reaching tentatively for the book.

Rama handed it to her.

She took the book and allowed it to open but facing down. She carried it gingerly like it was a wounded bird. Slowly she turned it over in her hands and turned the pages gently.  She rubbed her forefinger and thumb together on the corner of a page, the smell of the pages and the feel of the paper fibre were familiar and welcome.

“Do you want to come read it with me to the children?” Rama asked.

She did, she had been reluctant to do too much with the children, had felt a disconnect and loathed her duties to them, but this, this that was not a necessity or a duty, but a simple luxury, even an extravagance. She wanted this. She looked at him, her vision wavering a little as she felt tears building that she fought to keep from falling, she nodded.

He smiled, and took her hand, letting the book dangle in the other one. Together, they went and sat and read to the children, arranging them in a semi-circle in the nursery.

The children were nearly half a year old at that time and had no idea what was going on, but they were still enraptured by the colours and by their father. Rama read aloud and in a clear sweet voice, the children smiled and giggled at the tone and the funny voice he did for Sam I Am. They scowled and were taken a bit aback by the stern voice he used for Guy Am I, but the beaming smile of Rama kept them happy. The bright pages caught their eyes, and they all sat together as a family as he read.

Rama made them a new book every day thereafter.

Every time, Ianka would sit and read too, and so after about five days, Rama replicated her a book. He gave her Of Mice and Men, and she read it in less than a day. The second book was Frankenstein, then War of the Worlds and then The Time Machine. After that, she asked to choose a book and picked one called Wildseed by Octavia E. Butler. She loved it, finishing the entire series to which Wildseed belonged within the week.

She had so desperately wanted to run and stared endlessly across the rolling sand and dunes, but the question of where she would run to had constantly dogged her. Where could she run to? Perhaps that had bought enough time, that simple limitation because more and more she found herself accepting her role and loving the small luxuries Rama insisted on. Her lot was set, but at least every day she could escape for a time to other times, her place was there, but she could go to other places, her life was one of duty and responsibility, but for at least a time, she could live other lives.

***

They read often, ate heartily, laboured endlessly, and found pleasure where they could.

“That was nice.” He said, flopping down on her bed afterwards.

She nodded. “It was.”

It had been enjoyable, but not the hungry hormone-addled lust of rut. She knew this was too soon, they’d been there nearing two years, and it was too early for another heat to be upon her. She was not ovulating, and yet, she wanted him. Maybe it was because Rama cared about her pleasure and was attentive to it. She had never known an Adam to act like that. He managed to make her enjoy herself more and more, and she found herself engaging in the act, not just for him and his constant need, but because she wanted it as well.

“Do you think you are pregnant again?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Not this time.”

“I guess we’ll have to try again then… some time.” He said with a grin.

“Yes,” she said nodding and smiling a little herself, “some time we will.”

They were laying in the bed in her room again, they had arranged a module between his and hers which served as a nursery for the children. The nursery also worked as a passageway, connecting their rooms directly. Before, her room and his had been on far sides of the homestead, one either had to go outside or through a handful of modules and connections to get from one to the other. Now the large nursery module connected them, all six of their children were sleeping with hardly a coo coming from the room.

Rama went to get out of bed, heading for the nursery and his quarters beyond.

Ianka caught his arm. “You don’t have to go,” she said.

He looked at her, his gentle eyes weary with exhaustion. “I have to be up early. There is plenty of work to do in the morning. I need to sleep.”

“Well, why don’t you sleep here, with me?” she asked.

That stopped him dead. They engaged in couplings because he needed them, and now more and more for their mutual pleasure, but never had they slept in the same bed. This was an act of intimacy she had never welcomed. “You want me to?” He asked.

She did, she realized. Very much so. She couldn’t stand another night, fingering the phial of poison. The thought had come to her just before their home had begun to be filled with books. She considered it often, what she could do. In the silence of the night, when she was alone, the thought pressed in on her. What she would be willing to do just to be free.

“Well, you are the father of my children,” she said, pushing her dark thoughts to the edge of her consciousness again and forcing a smile.

He smiled back. “That’s right, I am.” And, thankfully, he crawled back into bed with her.

***

By the time the children were a year old, Ianka became pregnant again. This time she was carrying five children, she was almost certain of it. Five more children to bind her to this life all the more ardently. But the internal screaming had grown quieter as she’d allowed herself to love Rama.

He made it easy to love him.

He plucked flowers from the garden and brought them to her, he fabricated books for her daily and wrote inscriptions in them telling her how she was the light of his life and he needed her, he would kiss her gently, and hold her when the night grew cold. He didn’t allow the darkness to come to her. He said she was his light, but he had begun to be hers.

When the children stirred and she was submerged in the depths of sleep, he would rise from the bed and tend to their needs. For these and so many more reasons she found herself loving him as she had never loved another, as she had never allowed herself to love another.

The growing season on Andanor was very much static, with the location of their homestead and farm being near the equator and having days and nights of nearly equal length the year round. So, their life had settled into a certain easy regularity. Their rhythm and routine were predictable, and every night Rama would come into the homestead covered in dust and dirt and yet smiling widely to see his family.

Rama came to dinner one night when her belly had already begun to swell, and his easy smile was replaced by a tight-lipped one. Furrows of worry creased his forehead.  He washed quietly and forced his features to contort into a smile that she found more frightening than if he had frowned.

She tried to cheer him, to joke with him, and he smiled half-heartedly. He pushed his food about the plate. When their daughter, Yumiko, came up to him and held her hands up to be picked up, he took her up to his lap for a moment and bounced her on his knee, but quickly set her back down to play with her siblings.

When the children were tucked into bed, she went to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. He had been deep in thought and jumped at her touch.

“What’s the matter?” She asked him.

He shook his head. “It’s nothing, nothing to worry you with anyway.”

She reached down and gently placed her fingers on his chin, guiding his eyes up to hers. “Rama, what’s the matter?”

He tried to look away, but she would not let him. He looked to the side, but whenever he looked back, she was there. She unfalteringly stared at him, searching his eyes for answers, and whether he gave them willingly or not, she got some from him. Something was indeed very wrong.

“I… I received a transmission from Earth today.” He admitted.

“What did our distant home have to say?” She asked, coming to sit in a chair beside him but turning it so she could hold one of his hands in both of hers and look at him.

“They… they said that they had to issue a warning.” He said, and he looked at her with pain in his eyes.

“A warning? Whatever for?”

“It was a warning for all the members of the Adam and Eve project. Particularly for the Adams.”

“For the Adams?” She asked, tilting her head. “About what?”

He took a great shaking breath. “As you know, there are many of us scattered throughout the galaxy. Some had closer targets and have reached them long ago.”

She nodded. “Yes, but what does that have to do with us?”

“They have arrived at their targets so long ago now, that their initial transmissions have had time to make it back to the Earth, and also then the Earth has been able to send out transmissions which have had time to make it here.”

“Okay, so we know what has happened with some of them then? But what does that have to do with us?”

“We are all fairly similar, Ianka. The women, the Eves, were raised much like you. In a foster situation with no true family. They have similar genetics to you, based on a similar design, the same is true of the men, us Adams.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“We have similar upbringings and genetic backgrounds; it means we’ll likely act the same as the others. There’s a high probability that we’ll do what they did.”

“What did they do?” She asked in a hushed tone.

“It’s not what they did, it’s what the Eves did, Ianka.”

Now she truly was scared, her stomach dropped, and she realized what he was about to tell her. “What did they do?” She asked.

“Filicide and suicide, Ianka. Nearly every single one of them. They gave birth to their first brood, and then they killed them all. They killed themselves shortly thereafter, sometimes their respective Adams.”

She shook her head. “No, they wouldn’t.”

“Wouldn’t they though? In the last year, you never thought about it?”

She shook her head. “Rama, I would have never.”

“Tell me you never thought about it,” he demanded.

She bit her lip. “I had post-partum, there was something wrong with me, I didn’t love you then, but…”

He had begun to cry. “You would have killed them? Jina, Habari, Yumiko, Lanka, Daneel, Kama? You could have brought yourself to… to kill them?”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so, but I would be lying if I didn’t say that I felt trapped, I felt like this life had been chosen for me. There were terrible thoughts; I didn’t act on them.”

“But they did,” he hissed. “The other Eves, so many of them, Ianka. How could you have not when they did?”

He had pulled his hand away and was vibrating now. She couldn’t be sure if it was anger or sorrow that caused this. She reached for his hand again, and when he wouldn’t let her take it, she placed a hand on his cheek.

“I can’t help what they did, Rama. I can only control what I did, and what I do. I thought about it, yes, but then something changed. I began to love you. What was different for me compared to them? I can’t say for certain. Maybe I was predestined to be a monster, but something changed that path Rama, and the only thing I can think of that pulled me back from that brink, the only thing that could have made any real difference and has made this life seem like something other than duty and pain is you.”

He looked at her, eyes angrier than she had ever seen them. Those golden-brown eyes that reminded her of pools of liquid honey, now reminded her of flame, burning with rage.

“Was it only thoughts? You never took any steps towards action?”

“I…” She began and faltered, her lip quivering a little and tears beginning to gather at the corners of her eyes.

“Ianka, did your thoughts ever manifest into action?”

She thought of the phial of the tetrodotoxin, she had long ago tucked it away deeply at the back of her closet, but it was still there. Could she destroy that little damning vessel without him knowing? Probably. She could have lied to him, but she was so tired of lying to him. She looked at Rama and mouthed the words “I’m sorry.” The tears began streaming down her face. “It was more than thoughts, Rama.” She admitted. “It was nearly more than just thoughts, I… bypassed the fabricator’s safety protocols and synthesized a small bottle of potent poison. I will not lie to you about that. Not anymore.”

He shook his head sadly then. “I already knew, but I needed to hear you say it. I checked the ship’s computer. The fabrication log told me that you’d made 200 millilitres of tetrodotoxin, pufferfish poison, at a concentration of 1 mg/mL, which would be enough to kill me and the children three times over. Why Ianka?”

“I hated this life,” she said, her voice cracking.

“A life as the mother to an entire race of humanity!” he shouted.

“I know, Rama, I know. I’m sorry. I was wrong.”

“How do I know you won’t change your mind? Won’t try something again?”

She bristled now. “I didn’t try anything in the first place.”

“You made the poison,” he said. “You had it and were going to use it. Something stopped you, but you made it that far.”

“Do you have any idea what it was like to be me? What it must be like for most Eves?”

“Oh, so only you suffer? We all suffer. You think that I enjoy working every single day labouring from sunup to sundown? Worrying for the first year that we may all die from starvation or thirst, bearing the brunt of that on me.”

“Eves are raped, Rama,” she said, bluntly. Not trying to soften the blow of her words, hoping that they would hurt him. “We enjoy sex, but the sick part is, we are designed to need it. The rush of hormones released in the rut makes us so we can’t control ourselves. We cannot give consent, the answer is a forced yes, a desperate yes. They could have come up with a different design, made us so that we might develop a bond to the Adams we are mated to, but they decided instead to make us slaves to our biochemistry.”

He said, “You could have told me that, made me understand. If you couldn’t say no, then maybe I could have.”

“Could you have? You’re more of a slave to your urges than I am.”

“You could have at least told me. You think you had a choice stripped from you, what about my choice? You should have at least told me so that I could make the decision and tried to do better.”

“And had you succeeded in resisting? What then? We let down an entire planet, an entire race of humanity as you called it.”

He gritted his teeth. “And the other Adams and Eves, did they not let down their worlds? I would have taken the risk and tried to do things better. I never would have if I had known how you felt.”

“In the end, it didn’t matter. We succeeded where others failed, why must you focus on what might have been?”

“I… just thought you were someone else.”

“I am someone else, that person, the woman I was when we came here. She was someone else, this world, what we’ve built together, what has grown between us. Goddamn, if you can’t see that this has all changed me, changed us, then I don’t know what to tell you, Rama.”

“Tell me that you would have never hurt them,” he whispered.

“I can’t,” she answered. “I never would now. You made me see that this isn’t just some mission, some obligation. You changed what we’re doing here. You made me believe that we were a family.”

He placed his head in his hands. She thought he might cry but he didn’t he simply shook from side to side.

She shook her head and reached for him, placing her fingers gently on his arm. He looked up at her, anguish warping his features in a way that made her feel as though someone had stabbed her with a hot poker, twisting the burning metal in her entrails.

“Please,” she whispered, her eyes shimmering. “I did grow to love you; I do love you. You did the right thing, but how many Adams didn’t? They did the wrong thing, and they were set up to do it, the Eves, did the wrong thing too, but they shouldn’t be blamed either. The project was doomed from the beginning, designed with an inherent flaw. Don’t hate them for it.”

“I don’t,” he said.

“And me?” she asked.

When he looked at her, she could see his pain, but she could also see him doing as she had seen so many times. She could see him rationalizing it, compartmentalizing it, and soaking it, for the benefit of his family.

“If you had hurt them, then I could hate you,” he said with a shaking voice. “But you resisted where so many failed. I don’t hate you, Ianka.”

She smiled sadly. “It’s okay if you hate me a little. I do sometimes.”

He shook his head. “No, it isn’t. I don’t, and neither should you.”

“It certainly deserves retribution,” she said, a glint of hatred in her eyes. “I don’t blame the other Adams or the Eves. I blame our creators. They were the ones who set these wheels in motion. They’re the ones responsible, and now they have blood on their hands too. If anyone should pay for this, it’s them.”

He sighed placing his hand over hers and gently taking it up in his and kissing her fingertips. “You can’t end a cycle of pain with more pain, it just doesn’t work like that. At some point, someone, somewhere, must be willing to soak that pain in and find a healthy outlet for it. Someone needs to be the one to take that pain and release it, otherwise, you just propagate the cycle… besides, they’re long dead now, every one of them. The people who worked on the Adam and Eve project… they died hundreds of years ago.”

The realization hit her. For over 300 years they had travelled in space. Of course, they were dead. Even if they weren’t, what could they do from where they were?

“But what they did was wrong,” she said.

“Yes,” he admitted, “what they did was wrong. But we can’t punish them for it and holding onto the desire to do so will only poison what we’ve built here. We might be one of the only surviving colonies, Ianka. Haven’t you grown happy with me here?”

She nodded. “I have, against all odds.”

He dared to smile. “Then let it go, Ianka. We can’t change what’s been, only what might be. So let it go before it poisons you.”

He stood and walked to one of the circular windows on the dining module, he stared out over their land, the small patch of the world that they’d managed to wrestle away from the relentless desert and fill with green and life. This little microcosm of Earth represented years of hard labour for him.

“Okay,” she said, her voice little more than a whisper, “I will try, Rama.”

He took a deep breath and turned to her. “I don’t expect it to be perfect, but can we please try to build something better from now on? I will leave the past in the past, I can forgive you, can you forgive the wrong that was done to you?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know, but I’ll try.”

He kissed her, gently. “I hope you succeed.”

He slept for the first time in months in his room that night. Leaving her to her room and her thoughts. She cried silently, lying on her bed, and clutching herself. She cried until her body ached and her eyes ran dry. She felt like there was nothing left in her, she was just empty.

She had been forced to display a part of herself to him that she had come to hope she could hide. A part she had almost convinced herself wasn’t there, but now it was laid bare in the light of day. He said he could forgive, but would he forget?

Would he still love her the same now that he knew? Could she live with it if he didn’t?

On shaking legs, she got to her feet and stumbled over to the closet. She fished the phial out from its hiding place and looked at it, running her thumb over the glass. She popped the cap off and held it. She could be free of the guilt, free of the loss of Rama’s love. One of the babies growing inside her gave a little kick and reminded her that this escape would not be only her sacrifice.

She concealed the phial and went outside. The night air was warm, a gentle breeze blowing and rustling her hair. The air was so dry that she instantly felt thirsty. She licked her lips, salty from tears that streamed down onto them. That little phial looked so like water, and she smacked her lips looking at it, it would be a mouthful, maybe two, and it would end her pain in such a short time.

She dug a hole in the sand beside their home and poured the liquid into it, the dry earth was the only one to drink the poison. It drank it greedily and she covered it with the loose sand once again. Then she threw the phial as hard as she could over the fence and into the wild beyond.

When she turned to go back inside, there was Rama, looking at her through a window and nodding knowingly. His lips were a straight line, but his eyes, she could have sworn his eyes were smiling and even in the low light they had returned to their usual warmth.

***

The two didn’t speak that night, or much the next morning. Rama rose with the sun and was out in the field while she busied herself with the children. She tried to be extra energetic with them, despite her growing belly.

When Rama came in that night to eat, he was quiet, and ate his meal with a simple, “Thank you.”

She didn’t press him; she just cleaned the dishes while he played with the children. He lifted them, tossing them in the air, flying them about and making whooshing sounds. He put Daneel and then Habari on his shoulders and ran around with them. He lifted Lanka and Yumiko to his shoulders, one on each side and chased the others about making laser noises while all of them giggled and squealed. He read a book to all of them before bed and tucked each in, kissing them gently as sleep curled its fingers about them and they drifted off to dreamland.

Ianka was sitting at the table, reading. She didn’t look up, and eventually, he spoke in little more than a whisper. “I saw you last night.”

“I know,” she said.

“I’m not fool enough to think that’s the end of it, but I’d like to think we might be going in the right direction now,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ve been thinking all day about some of the things you said. We can’t change the past, Rama.”

He took her hand and nodded.

“But we can change the future. We still have work to do here, but the Pips haven’t all reached their destinations.”

Rama spoke, “What are you thinking?”

“This tragedy will continue to unfold, and only a handful like us will be able to avoid this catastrophe,” she said.

“Maybe sending out the transmission as they did, maybe that will warn some of them, change the outcome,” he said.

“Maybe, or maybe it will just lead to even worse things. Maybe some of the Adams will just lock up their Eves and not let them be anything other than breeding stock. Maybe it will make things even worse,” she replied.

Rama’s eyes widened. That was exactly what was likely to happen, he realized. “No, they…”

“What might you have done if you had received that transmission fresh out of cryo?”

He shook his head. “Not that, certainly.”

“Can you say for certain?”

He shook his head. “No, it’s impossible to say. My upbringing was different from most Adams as well, so it’s hard to say exactly what they might do, they think differently from me.”

“Do you think I may be right then?” she pressed.

“It could certainly happen in a few cases at least,” he admitted.

She shook her head and went to him. “We have to stop this, Rama. You were right, someone has to break the cycle. Not blame others for how we got here, or wallow in self-pity and self-hatred. We need to change how this plays out.”

He looked perplexed. “What do you suggest?”

She took a deep wavering breath. “We send a transmission back to Earth, we can tell them how we succeeded here, get them to tell the others.”

“No, by the time the word got home and then to those other worlds, it would be far too late. It takes too much time,” Rama said.

She thought for a moment, and then it hit her. It was obvious, why hadn’t she thought it before? “Why do we have to send it home first?”

“What?” he asked.

“We can send transmissions directly to the other worlds.”

“And what will we say?”

“We will say that we found a way, a way around this terrible scenario. We found a way to build a family, and if they want to succeed, they’ll need to follow our example.”

He shook his head. “We don’t know that ours is the only way.”

“No, we certainly don’t, we don’t even know that it can be repeated for certain, but we do know it is a way, and we owe it to the others to share our experience.” She said, and she took his hand. “The other Adams need to copy you because right now it’s the only thing we know of that might avoid this tragedy.”

He looked down at her hand for a time, and then he squeezed it, and he looked up and smiled.

The parts had taken a good week to fabricate and another for him to assemble, but the oscillating dish would send their transmission on a continual pulse for the next few weeks. He had set up the communication dish at the top of a tower, a polymer frame to lift it nearly 100 meters off the ground and sustain any buffeting winds. The message would get out to the others.

They had put everything they could think of about their experience in the message, about how they had struggled, how they had felt, how close they had come to tragedy, and their final triumph.

Ianka waddled out to the tower, the children clinging to her skirt and the little troop making its way slowly.

Rama ran to meet them and scooped Habari, Yumiko, and Jina in his arms, growling at them and pretending to bite them. They laughed and the others eagerly shouted, “me, me!” or “up, up!”

Rama exchanged them out as they made their way to the tower and then set them down once there.

“This is it,” he said, “the moment of truth.”

“The suspense is killing me,” Ianka said. “Flip it already, before I go into labour from the stress.”

He laughed. “You could go into labour any moment just because.”

“All the more reason to flip the switch,” she countered.

He nodded and complied. The lights on the tower lit up, and a row of blue illuminated one side softly even in the yellow haze of the day. The dish began to spin.

“Is it working?” Ianka asked.

Rama looked at the interface on the control panel and nodded. “Yes, we’re transmitting.”

“I hope that it will make a difference,” Ianka said.

“All we can do is try,” Rama said.  

© Benjamin Bielert, all rights reserved