Darwin’s Paradox

Three

Gathering her lower lip in her teeth, Julie peered over the ledge of the gorge. She could just make out the tree that had saved Angel’s life, its gnarled branches stretching out from a crevasse about ten meters down. She firmed her lips with determination and tied the rope to a pitch pine tree behind her. After pulling on her gloves and looping the rope through her belt buckle as a makeshift caribiner, Julie flung the remaining line over the edge. She’d have preferred to use a caribiner to rappel down the cliff but Aard’s zeal to carry out her command to conceal climbing equipment from Angel had backfired on Julie. She couldn’t find her own equipment either. So, the belt buckle had to do and she’d have to rely fully on the strength and balance of her limbs to climb down. She was just using the buckle to train the rope close to her body. It wouldn’t help break a fall but she didn’t intend to fall . . .

She eased herself down, bracing herself against the craggy cliff face and finding cautious foot holds. She soon reached Angel’s tree and made the mistake of looking down. After taking in a sharp breath she continued her descent. Let’s settle this mystery once and for all, she thought. The sun beat down on her back. Sweat dripped down from her hair into her eyes. She blinked it away and felt the strain on her legs and arms. Her arms started to tremble.

“Terrific,” she muttered, stopping for a break. “Not in as great shape as I thought I was.” The breeze wicked the sweat off her neck and invigorated her. She pushed on, taking care to go slowly, testing each foot and handhold. Part of her muscle tension was from exertion, certainly, but most of it she recognized came from apprehension and excitement. What awaited her below? Those strange sounds and lights . . . No, not northern lights nor dry thunder and lightning. Certainly not ~

She yelped in surprise as her left foot suddenly gave way with a clattering of loose rock. Pay attention! She clung to the wall and tried to regain the foothold when her right foot slipped. NO!

She fell several meters before she was able to grasp the rope with enough force to stop. She bounced hard, hands burning and arms splintering with pain as they supported her swinging body. She looked down at the gorge below her and her stomach cramped with fear. There was absolutely nothing but air between her and the yawning gorge a hundred meters below.

Her arms and shoulders flamed as she desperately held on. Great, Julie. This was pretty stupid. No one knew she was here. A quick check, she’d thought. She’d return with some early-season blueberries and no one would be any wiser. Except she wasn’t going to return.

Then she saw it, just below her ~ an opening in the cliff. A cave! If she could just loosen her grip a little to allow herself to descend a little more, then swing into the cave . . .

She wrapped her legs around the rope to support some of her weight and lurched her body forward then back to initiate a swing. When she was close enough to the rock face, she kicked herself off into a wide swing with her feet then eased her grip. She slipped ~ a little too fast! She saw the cave mouth rush up and swung forward with her legs then let go. She tumbled onto the cave ledge and felt the sharp pain of the impact.

When she looked up, she inhaled sharply and stared. She was in a hanger with a fairly large air vehicle. Julie scrambled to her feet and pulled off her gloves to wipe her clammy hands on the back of her leather shorts, ignoring the rope burns. She wandered closer to the ship. It reminded her of the small one-man skyships the Enviro-Center used for reconnaissance jobs when she lived in Icaria. So much for heat lightning. This was what Angel had heard and seen. Julie warily circled the ship, confirming that it was empty. She proceeded to the back of the hanger past a well-equipped workbench and chair to an open door, which led into a lit room.

She entered cautiously, giving the room a sweeping gaze to find no one inside. The room housed a set of lockers, a table and chairs, a fridge and a desk with a fully functional vee-com. As if to verify her suspicions, she recognized Aard’s faded jacket draped over the back of the desk chair. But where was Aard? He sure had a lot of explaining to do, she thought with mixed emotions. This was the result of much more than a few “foraging” trips back to Icaria. What was he doing with a skyship?

She opened the fridge and found it well stocked with bottles of a recreational drug and packaged nano-food. Hunting and gathering indeed! When she opened a locker door, she sucked in her breath and stared at the standard-issue Pol’s laser gun on the shelf. What on Earth was Aard doing with one of those? Heart racing, Julie pulled open a drawer and found several pairs of folded and freshly laundered black jackets and slacks. Her chest pounded as she examined the clothing. The material was high quality durafabric, standard Pol issue. Her hand felt something hard tucked underneath. She pulled the clothing away and gasped at what she saw. A Pol helmet!

Abruptly the chittering murmurs in her head rose to a shrill chorus and she spun to face the door, seizing the laser gun. Aard stood at the hanger door, his shoulder leaning against the door jam, arms crossed, and eyeing her with cautious curiosity. “What are you doing here, Julie?” His voice was edged with annoyance.

“I could ask the same of you, Aard.”

“Curiosity kills the cat,” he smirked.

“Which one? Felix the cat or the . . . Pol-cat?” she asked, pulling the gun into view with a half-cocked smile of her own. “Yours?”

The smirk disappeared. “So you found . . .” he trailed off as she pulled out his Pol uniform with her free hand then threw it back.

“In pretty nice condition too.” Her voice grew sharp, “Who exactly are you?”

He shrugged. “Just another Icarian trying to survive.”

“A Pol? In the heath?” She gave him a mocking incredulous look. “Try again, buddy boy.”

He compressed his lips. “So, you want to know how I got here?” He gazed past her, eyes focused on the past. “I was a no-good drunk. Couldn’t keep a job. Never had a problem getting one because of my superior cognitive abilities. But every time I messed up. It always seemed to end with me slugging someone, because they called me a ~” He broke off, pursing his lips and stealing a strange glance into her eyes for a moment. “I ended up wandering the inner-city, drunk and useless until a man named Victor came along, cleaned me up, believed in me. He gave me a job in the Pol force and gave me this mission.”

Something he’d said nudged a memory to the surface. It finally drifted up and she stared at him, seeing the resemblance to that scruffy fifteen-year old SAM had shown her on its database years ago. “You’re a veemeld too. You’re Isaard Henigen.” His stunned look told her she’d guessed right. “I researched you when SAM and I were trying to find Prometheus, the test case that started the whole Darwin mess,” she explained. “We found that there were only a few of us, like Prometheus, who scored perfectly on the STAT-LOG exams. Before I discovered that I was in fact Prometheus, I thought you were.”

“Yeah, it was you who brought me to Victor Burke’s attention, with your research on Prometheus. So, now you know everything.”

“Except why someone like you is living out here.”

“I’d have thought that someone with your enhanced cognitive abilities would have figured that out by now.”

“Okay.” She firmed her lips and narrowed her eyes at him. “They sent you here to watch us . . .” He raised a brow. She amended, “to watch me.”

“Very good,” he nodded, ankles crossing as he continued leaning against the door in a relaxed pose. Deceptively relaxed, she thought, noticing that he kept his hand in his pocket. Probably on a concealed weapon.

“And the reason would depend on who sent you.” Was it Victor Burke, the mayor of Icaria-5 when she left?

“Right.” He nodded, not offering more.

“So, what do we do now, Aard? Now that I’ve blown your cover.” She gave him a crooked smile. “And I have your gun.” She didn’t exactly aim it at him, but held it loosely in his direction. Its grip brought back dark memories of other times she’d held such a weapon.

“Well, you do ask the hard questions, Julie.” He pushed himself from the door jam and pulled his hand from his pocket, gripping a small laser pistol, which he aimed at her abdomen. She tightened her grip on the gun and tracked it toward his chest. To her surprise he lowered his weapon. “Well, I suppose now that we’re stalemated, I’ll just have to leave,” he said.

She blinked, stunned. “You don’t mean that. Just pack your bags and leave, give up your surveillance?”

“I have my orders. And they don’t include taking you prisoner ~ at least not now, anyway.” Her stomach squirmed at his inference. She’d fled Icaria accused of murder and sedition. If he brought her back it would be as a prisoner. “And, like you already said,” he went on, “You’ve blown my cover.”

Suddenly drained, Julie lowered her gun. “Before you go, can you at least tell me why you’ve been watching my family and me? You owe us that much, Aard. After we trusted you all this time.”

He put his gun back in his pocket and sighed. “You’re right. And I’m going to miss Angel. She’s a beautiful girl, Julie. You should be proud.” He scratched his beard absently and frowned. “I only made contact with you six years ago but I’ve been out here since you left the city. Do you think they’d have just let you go? You’re Prometheus. The only person on Earth who could talk to your A.I. in your head without Interact-SYM.” He studied her for a moment and sighed. “Surely you don’t think you actually escaped. Burke let you get away. He has the most sophisticated surveillance system in the world. He always knew where you were, inside or outside of Icaria. I was sent to keep an eye on you, make sure you ~ and any of your offspring¾ remained safe. For possible future needs.”

She fought the involuntary shudder that ran through her at his mentioning her offspring and ominous possible future needs.

“I’m one of Burke’s carriers,” Aard explained. “Everything I see, hear . . . feel . . . he can too.”

“Brain implant?”

“Yeah.” He nodded. “When you had Angel, I was supposed to make contact once she was five.”

The magic number five, she thought, swallowing down bitter memories of when her life had irrevocably changed at that age. She balled her hand into a fist as a fierce protectiveness for her daughter burned inside her. The number of times she’d left Angel alone in Aard’s company . . .

“I was also instructed to train you in survival and combat techniques.”

“In addition to reporting on my developing abilities, no doubt,” she said, eyes narrowing slightly.

“Yeah. They keep getting better, don’t they?”

“You’d know,” she retorted, recalling how he’d frequently tested her enhanced vision, hearing and reflexes like a scientist. There was a moment of silence. “And not just me,” she breathed, starting to understand the scope of it all.

He nodded, pursing his lips in a tight frown. “Yeah, Angel too.”

She bridled a surging fear and searched deep into his eyes. “Why, Aard?” Part of her didn’t want to hear his answer. A vision of Gaia’s brooding face slid like an oil slick into her mind. Gaia was easily the most beautiful ~ and most dangerous ~ woman Julie had ever met. Like the treacherous Venus Fly Trap, she’d lured too many prey into submission with her sweet nectar: striking midnight hair that shone like silk, eyes the colour of an enigmatic sea and a voice as dark and rich as coffee. Then she struck them dumb and ate them with her sharp wit and cruel design. Gaia had relinquished her mayorship of Icaria-5 to one of her underlings, Victor Burke, to serve North Am’s governing body, the Circle. What she never told Burke was that she’d continued to run his town through her gestapo, the Secret Pols. Was she still?

The woman’s nefarious plan to rule Icaria through a cadre of trained veemelds, capable of communicating with the A.I. network through Interact-SYM and immune to the disease devastating the rest of Icaria, was a scary thought. Plainly, it was controlled genocide she had in mind. Then there were her specific plans for Julie ~ the only veemeld who didn’t need Interact-SYM to talk to her A.I. Plans for the DP, that awful place no one ever came out of. The reason Julie had to stay away.

Aard smiled grimly. “I think you know why. Let’s just say that some would rather you didn’t exist and will do anything to make sure.” Like the rest of Icaria, she thought miserably. “Hence me, your bodyguard.”

She couldn’t seem to get away from bodyguards, Julie thought bleakly, recalling the awful scene in the Den. Frank, the Pol she’d foolishly become infatuated with, had scornfully revealed to her that the only reason he’d hung out with her was that he’d been assigned as her unofficial body guard, and was secretly looking to avenge what her father had done to his.

“As for who, I can’t say,” Aard continued. “But you’re a smart woman and you can probably guess that too.” He stepped past her to his storage locker and gathered up his Pol uniform and other equipment into a pack, then came beside her and reached for the laser pistol.

She glanced down at the weapon, warm in her sweaty hand, and was about to hand it to him, then twitched it out of his grasp. Their eyes met. “Collateral,” she said with a lopsided smile, pointing the gun at him again. “Good bye, Aard.”

He frowned but nodded. “There’ll be someone else, you know,” he said, closing his backpack and hoisting it over one shoulder. “There’ll always be someone, Julie,” he said over his shoulder as he turned and left the room for the hanger. She followed him into the hanger bay. “They’ll never leave you alone,” Aard went on, turning to face her again with a pointed look. “Not Prometheus and her gifted daughter.”

“It’s a pretty big planet, Aard. They’ll have to find us first.”

“Well, I wish you luck,” he said, not sounding convinced, then turned to enter his ship. He stopped and fished something out of his pack. “Here,” he said, brusquely nodding his head toward her and tossing her a small package. “Laser cells. You might need them.” Then he studied her briefly with what looked like regret. “Watch your back, Julie,” he added and climbed into his vehicle.

Standing where he’d left her, she watched him enter the cockpit. Within moments he’d started its rumbling engine, made the necessary adjustments, then he nodded gravely to her and brought the vehicle with a shudder off the ground. The ship threw itself out of the hanger with a blast of hot air that stifled her breath and sent her hair flying behind her. She stared out at the disappearing shuttle for several moments then let herself collapse on the workbench chair and exhaled slowly.

As she had quietly feared all these years, it had started again. No, she amended her thought: it had never ended, it just finally caught up with her.

The safety net that Daniel had so assiduously built around his family had torn. And she’d done the tearing. She’d lured Icaria’s spies and murderers out here and put her family in danger just by being who and what she was ~ something Daniel refused to even consider. How was she going to tell him?

Perhaps she wouldn’t, Julie decided recklessly and felt the thrill of anxiety knot inside her. She’d watch and see what happened. And if she had to, she’d do something about it, Julie thought, with a glance down at the gun.

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