“Go on, Pathori, you don’t want to miss that!” Claude laughed delightedly, and looked at the argala. “God, it’s amazing, isn’t it? What a beauty.” His eyes were dewy as he shook his head. “What a fucking thing.”
Without answering Paul crossed the room to the balcony. The argala seemed to have forgotten all about them. It stood with one leg drawn up, staring down at the empty courtyard, its topaz eyes glittering. As he drew near to it its smell overwhelmed him, a muskier scent now, almost fetid, like water that had stood too long in an open storage vessel. He felt infuriated by its utter passivity, but somehow excited, too. Before he knew what he was doing he had grabbed it, just as Claude had, and pulled it to him so that its bland child’s face looked up at him rapturously.
Afterwards he wept, and beside him the argala crooned, mimicking his sobs. He could dimly hear Claude saying something about leaving, then his friend’s voice rising and finally the snick of the door sliding open and shut. He grit his teeth and willed his tears to stop. The argala nestled against him, silent now. His fingers drifted through its thin hair, ran down its back to feel its wings, the bones like metal struts beneath the breath of down. What could a bird possibly know about what he was feeling? he thought fiercely. Let alone a monster like this. A real woman would talk to you, afterwards.
To complain, he imagined his father saying.
…never enjoyed it, ever, his mother’s voice echoed back, and Father Dorothy’s intoned, That’s what’s wrong with it, it’s like a machine.
He pulled the argala closer to him and shut his eyes, inhaling deeply. A wash of yellow that he knew must be sunlight: then he saw that ghostly image of a house again, heard faint cries of laughter. Because it was a woman, too, of course; otherwise how could it recall a house, and children? but then the house broke up into motes of light without color, and he felt the touch of that other, alien mind, delicate and keen as a bird’s long bill, probing at his own.
“Well! Good afternoon, good afternoon…”
He jumped. His father swayed in the doorway, grinning. “Found my little friend again. Well, come in, come in.”
Paul let go of the argala and took a few unsteady steps. “Dad—I’m sorry, I—”
“God, no. Stop.” His father waved, knocking a bottle to the floor. “Stay, why don’t you. A minute.”
But Paul had a horrible flash, saw the argala taken again, the third time in what, half an hour? He shook his head and hurried to the door, face down.
“I can’t, Dad. I’m sorry—I was just going by, that’s all—”
“Sure, Sure.” His father beamed. Without looking he pulled a wine jelly from a shelf and squeezed it into his mouth. “Come by when you have more time, Paul. Glad to see you.”
He started to cross to where the argala gazed at him, its huge eyes glowing. Paul ran from the room, the door closing behind him with a muted sigh.
At breakfast the next morning he was surprised to find his mother and Father Dorothy sitting in the twins’ usual seats.
“We were talking about your going to school in Tangier,” his mother announced, her deep voice a little too loud for the cramped dining hall as she turned back to Father Dorothy. “We could never meet the quotas, of course, but Mother pulled some strings, and—”
Paul sat next to her. Across the table, Claude and Ira and the twins were gulping down the rest of their breakfast. Claude mumbled a goodbye and stood to leave, Ira behind him.
“See you later, Father,” Ira said, smiling. Father Dorothy waved.
“When?” said Paul.
“In a few weeks. It’s nearly Athyr now”—that was what they called this cycle—“…which means it’s July down there. The next drop is on the Fortieth.”
He didn’t pay much attention to the rest of it. There was no point: his mother and Father Dorothy had already decided everything, as they always did. He wondered how his father had ever been able to get the argala here at all.
A hand clamped his shoulder and Paul looked up.
“—must go now,” Father Dorothy was saying as he motioned for a server to clean up. “Class starts in a few minutes. Walk with me, Paul?”
He shook his mother’s hand and left her nodding politely as the next shift of diners filed into the little room.
“You’ve been with it,” the tutor said after a few minutes. They took the long way to the classroom, past the cylinders where vats of nutriment were stored and wastewater recycled, past the spiral stairs that led to his father’s chamber. Where the hallway forked Father Dorothy hesitated, then went to the left, towards the women’s quarters. “I could tell, you know—it has a—”
He inhaled, then made a delicate grimace. “It has a smell.”
They turned and entered the Solar Walk. Paul remained at his side, biting his lip and feeling an unexpected anger churning inside him.
“I like the way it smells,” he said, and waited for Father Dorothy to look grim. Instead his tutor paused in front of the window. “I love it.”
He thought Father Dorothy would retort sharply; but instead he only raised his hands and pressed them against the window. Outside two of the HORUS repair units floated past, on their interminable and futile rounds. When it seemed the silence would go on forever, his tutor said, “It can’t love you. You know that. It’s an abomination—an animal—”
“Not really,” Paul replied, but weakly.
Father Dorothy flexed his hands dismissively. “It can’t love you. It’s a geneslave. How could it love anything?”
His tone was not angry but questioning, as though he really thought Paul might have an answer. And for a moment Paul thought of explaining to him: about how it felt, how it seemed like it was showing him things—the sky, the house, the little creatures crawling in the moss—things that perhaps it did feel something for. But before he could say anything Father Dorothy turned and began striding back in the direction they’d come. Paul hurried after him in silence.
As they turned down the last hallway, Father Dorothy said, “It’s an ethical matter, really. Like having intercourse with a child, or someone who’s mentally deficient. It can’t respond, it’s incapable of anything—”
“But I love it,” Paul repeated stubbornly.
“Aren’t you listening to me?” Father Dorothy did sound angry, now. “It can’t love you.” His voice rose shrilly. “How could something like that tell you that it loved you!? And you can’t love it—god, how could you love anything, you’re only a boy!” He stopped in the doorway and looked down at him, then shook his head, in pity or disgust Paul couldn’t tell. “Get in there,” Father Dorothy said at last, and gently pushed him through the door.
He waited until the others were asleep before slipping from his bunk and heading back to his father’s quarters. The lights had dimmed to simulate night; other than that there was no difference, in the way anything looked or smelled or sounded. He walked through the violet corridors with one hand on the cool metal wall, as though he was afraid of falling.
They were leaving just as he reached the top of the spiral stairs. He saw his father first, then two others, other researchers from the Breeders Project. They were laughing softly, and his father threw his arms around one man’s shoulders and murmured something that made the other man shake his head and grin. They wore loose robes open in the front and headed in the opposite direction, towards the neural sauna. They didn’t see the boy pressed against the wall, watching as they turned the corner and disappeared.