Northern Stars Read online

  The young woman in blue hadn’t moved; neither had the Walker. He seemed to have seen and heard nothing. He was contemplating the Sleeper.

  When Yevgheny, all out of breath, caught up with Rick and Manou, he finished what he was saying: “… and you know what they call those two? Tristan and Isolde!”

  He nearly died laughing. He probably never understood why we systematically avoided him afterward. We had some moral fiber, Rick and I. Small-town greenhorns are better brought up than Baïblancans.

  You know, when you come right down to it, little girl, probably nothing would have happened, or not in the same way, if I hadn’t been so much like her, like my mother. But of course I was. Oh, not physically. But in character. Typically pigheaded. Our reconciliations were as tempestuous as our rows. We had a marvelous time, we two. She told me the most extraordinary stories; she knew everything, could do everything, I was convinced of it. And it was true—almost. A man—what for? (Because one day, you must realize that too, the matter of fathers always comes up.) And at this point I distinctly sensed a wound somewhere in her, deep down, a bitterness, despite her efforts to be honest. (“They have their uses,” she had said, laughing.) But really the two of us needed no one else; we were happy in the big house by the beach. She took care of everything: lessons, cooking, fixing things; and the toys when I was little, made of cloth, wood, anything! Taïko Orogatsu, you see, was a sculptress. I still picture her now, smudges up to her elbows and even on her face, circling her lump of clay like a panther, talking to herself in Japanese. Of course, I didn’t understand any of it. I thought it was magic. She was determined to hold on to her language, but she never taught it to me. It was all she kept of Japan, where she had never set foot. Her ancestors had emigrated long before the Great Tides and the final submersion. She didn’t even have slanted eyes.

  But I’m not going to tell you about my memories of that time, little girl. Perhaps they’re lies. Real memories? Implanted memories? I don’t know. But even if they are implants, she wanted them that way. They must reveal something about her, after all, because I can also remember her faults, her brutal practicality, her impatience, our interminable, logical arguments that would cave in beneath her sudden arbitrary decision: that’s-the-way-it-is-and-you’ll-understand-later. My adolescent whining also was typical. Another series of implanted memories? Impossible to find out, unless I asked her. Did I really go through the adolescent crisis, I-want-to-live-my-own-life-and-not-yours, or do I merely think I walked out slamming the door? Looking back now, however, isn’t it really the same thing? That old-fashioned career as a space pilot, did I want it for myself, or to thwart her? So as not to go into biotronics as she wanted me to? Did I really mean it? In the end, when I fled the Medical Center after the medic’s revelation, what really hurt wasn’t the loss of a future career destroyed before it even began; I didn’t shed any tears about it later either.

  I didn’t cry at all, in fact. For years. It almost killed me. The young lady who’d just found out she was an artifact was furious. Can you understand that, little girl? Beside herself with fury and hate. The Taïko who had done this, who had done this to me, who had made me, she couldn’t be the Taïko of my memories! Yes, she was. But I couldn’t have lived with a monster all those years without realizing it? Yes, I could. She had done this to me so that I would find out like this, go crazy, do dreadful things, kill myself, kill her, anything? It was not possible! Yes, it was. A monster, underneath the Taïko that I thought I remembered. Two contradictory images met in my head, matter/antimatter, with myself in the middle of the disintegrating fire. Infinite emptiness, as the pillars of a whole life crumble.

  Well, the lady was so gutted that she scarcely remembers the weeks that followed, you see. She dropped deep beneath the civilized surface of Baïblanca, into the submarine current of nonpersons. Threw her credentity card into an incinerator! Disappeared, as far as Kerens University was concerned—and the Institute, and the universal data banks. And you know what? It’s extraordinarily easy to live underwater once you’ve given up breathing. The current wasn’t fast or cold; the creatures who lived there were so indifferent that it was almost like a kindness. I haven’t any really coherent memory of it. The shop where no questions were asked. The mechanical work, day in, day out. An empty shell. Automaton. I was never so much an artifact as then. And of course, the nightmares. I was a time bomb ready to explode, I had to become an automaton to protect myself. So as not to begin thinking, mainly, and especially not to begin feeling.

  But one day, quite by chance, the lady encountered the Walker. For weeks after that she followed him around in horrible fascination. He walked slower and slower, and people turned to look at him—those who didn’t realize what he was. And then it happened, in broad daylight. I saw him on the Promenade, walking so, so slowly, as though he were floating in a time bubble. It wasn’t his usual hour at all. And there was something about his face, as though he were … in a hurry. I followed him to Colibri Park where the Sleeper slept, uncaring, in full sunlight. The Walker halted by the bench, and with impossible slowness he began to seat himself beside the motionless woman; but this time he did not simply sit: he curled up against her, placing his head in the crook of the arm on which the Sleeper was resting her head. He closed his eyes and stopped moving.

  And the lady follower sat down beside the Walker now at his final destination, and watched his flesh become stone. It was a slow and ultimate tremor rising from his innermost being, rising to the surface of his skin and then imperceptibly stiffening, while the cells emptied out of their sublimated substance and their walls became mineral. The extinction of life, as lightly as the passing shadow of a cloud.

  And I … I felt as though I were awakening. I stayed there a long time, beginning to think, to feel again. Through the fury, I sensed … no, not peace, but a resolve, a certainty, the glimmer of an emotion … I didn’t know what end had been planned for me—explosion or petrification—but I found that I could bear it after all. It wasn’t so terrible in the long run. (I was absolutely amazed to find myself thinking this way, but that was all right: astonishment also was an emotion.) It was like one of those incurable diseases of which the outcome is at once certain, quick, and curiously problematical. You know it will happen, but not when or how. There were lots of humans who lived like this. So why not me?

  Yes, astonishment was the initial emotion. The idea of revenge only came later. I would not give her the satisfaction of seeing me die before my time. I would not put on such a performance for her. I would not make a spectacle of myself.

  But I still had enough sense of showmanship to sign on as a recuperator.

  No. There were two ways of completely covering one’s tracks. Either go and live in a Zone, or go and hunt in a Zone. The really theatrical thing to do would have been to go and live in a Zone: “I’m a monster, and I’m joining the monsters.” Whereas becoming a recuperator …

  Well, the lady still had a perverse streak, in spite of everything. She was meant to be caught in the net, and instead found herself doing the catching, ready to spring the traps in which she would capture these quasi-humans, these para-animals … these specimens. She could have become very cruel. She could have. But she saw too many sadistic recuperators, fanatics, sick people. And then she inevitably recognized herself in her prey. She was teetering on the razor’s edge between disgust and compassion. But she came down on the side of compassion; this recuperator was not a bogeywoman, after all. On the side of compassion. “By accident,” or “because of adequate programming,” or “because I had been properly brought up.” It comes to the same thing as far as results are concerned, and that’s all that counts.

  That’s what Brutus thought. The only result that counted for him was that I opened the cage and let him go. Brutus. He called himself this because the neoleprosy had only affected his face then, giving him a lion’s muzzle. Quite handsome, as a matter of fact. One finds everything in the recuperators’ cage, little girl, and this
specimen was terribly well educated. There are still lots of operational infolibraries in the Zones.

  “The complete programming of artifacts is a myth maintained by the Institute. Actually, it’s not as simple as that. Implant memories? Yes, perhaps. But mainly, biosculptors who are into humanoïd artifacts insert the faculty of learning, plus a certain number of predispositions that won’t necessarily develop, depending on the circumstances—exactly as it is for human beings.” How strange to be discussing the nature of conscience and free will with a half-man crouching in the moonlight. Because yes, Brutus often came back to see me, little girl, but that’s another story.

  The lady went on being a recuperator … after Brutus, however. Not for the sake of delivering specimens to the far-off Institute, but to help them escape. If absolutely necessary, I bring back plants and animals. But not the quasi-, pseudo-, para-, semi-people. How long will I be able to go on like this? I suppose that will be another story too. Perhaps it won’t be much of a story, after all. The people at the Institute don’t really care. In Australia they’re so far away from our old, sick Europe. They work at their research programs like sleepwalkers, and probably don’t even know why any more. They merely keep on with what they’re doing; it’s a lot simpler.

  And as you can see, little girl, the lady has also kept on with what she was already doing. She’s been at it for quite some time. Thirty-two years old and no teeth missing, when most known artifacts only last a maximum of twenty years in the active phase. So one day, having seen how her fellow recuperators thinned around her—radiations, viruses, accidents, or “burnouts” as the Agency refers to the madness that overtakes most of them—she began to doubt whether she really was an artifact. And she had the tests run again. Not at the Kerens Medical Center, naturally. But one of the axioms of Baïblanca is that everything legitimate has its underground counterpart. In any case, my artifacticity was confirmed! The only reasonable hypothesis was that I wasn’t really thirty-two years old and had only fifteen years of actual existence behind me. My birth certificate was false. And all my memories until the time I left home were implants.

  And it bothers me. Not only because I must be nearing my “limit of obsolescence,” as the second examining medic so elegantly put it while admiring the performance of my biosculptress, just as the first had. But because I wonder why she made me like this, with these memories. So detailed, so exact! I’ve got a right to be a little curious, after all, since I’ve made my peace with the inevitable, up to a point. It doesn’t matter so much now about not asking her anything. I’ll be very calm when I see her. I’m not going there to demand an explanation. It’s past history. Fifteen years ago, I might have. But now …

  You want to know what the lady’s going to do? So do I. See Taïko before she dies, is that all? Because she’s old, Taïko is. Fifty-seven is very old now; you may not live that long, little girl. The average lifespan for you humans is barely sixty, and getting shorter all the time.

  See Taïko. Let her see me. No need to say anything, in fact. Just to satisfy my conscience, liberate it, prove that I’ve really made my peace with myself. (With her? Despite her?) See her. And show her, to be honest. Show her that I’ve survived, that she’s failed if she built me merely to self-destruct. But she can’t have wanted that. The more I think about it the less it fits with what I remember about her—even if the memories are implants. No. She must have wanted a “daughter” of her own making, a creature who’d adore her, not foreseeing the innate unpredictability of any creation, the rebellion, the escape … If I really did escape. But if this is also a pseudomemory, what on earth can it mean?

  Usually, little girl, the lady takes some reading material or music with her when she’s travelling; otherwise she thinks too much. Why didn’t I bring along anything to keep me occupied this time? Because I didn’t want to be distracted on the way north, to the past? Because I’m trying to work up nostalgia for memories that were probably implanted? Come on, Manou, be serious. I might as well go and have something to drink in the dining car. There’s no point keeping on like this, speculating. I’ll ask, she’ll explain. People don’t do what she’s done without wanting to explain, surely. Even after all this time.

  Perhaps you wonder, little girl, how the lady knows that Taïko Orogatsu is still alive? Well, she took the precaution of checking it out. Without calling the house, of course.

  Really, is there any point going? It’s perhaps another kind of cowardice, an admission of something missing somewhere inside me. Do I really need to know why she made me this way? I’ve made myself since. And anyway, I’m going into the Hamburg Zone. I’m not obliged to stop.

  There, the train has finally ground to a halt. Mahlerzee. You see, little girl, the lady’s getting off here.

  * * *

  Try to work up nostalgia? Artificial memory or no, it’s impossible to avoid clichés: flood-of-memories, changed-yet-unaltered scenery. The wharf completely submerged by the high tide, the avenue of statues almost buried in the sand. The terrace with its old wooden furniture, the varnish peeled off by the salt air. An unfamiliar black and white cat on the mat in front of the double doors, slightly ajar to show the living room beyond. Not a sound. The porcelain vase with its blue dragon, full of freshly cut flowering broom. I should call out, but I can’t, the silence oppresses me. Perhaps she won’t recognize me. I’ll say anything, that I am a census-taker, that it’s the wrong house. Or simply go … But, “Hello, Manou,” I didn’t hear her coming, she’s behind me.

  Small, so small, diminutive, like a bird. Was she like this? I don’t remember her being so frail. The hair is quite white, tousled, she must have been having an afternoon nap. The wrinkles, the flabby cheeks, chin, eyelids. And yet her features seem clearer, as though purified. And the eyes, the eyes haven’t changed, big and black, liquid, lively. Try to think: she recognized me, how? Make out her expression … I can’t, it’s been so long that I’ve lost the habit of reading her face—and it’s not the same face. Or it’s the same but different. It’s her. She’s old, she’s tired. I look at her, she looks at me, her head thrown back, and I feel huge, a giant, but hollow, fragile.

  She speaks first: “So, you recuperated yourself.” Sarcasm or satisfaction? And I say, “I’m going into the Hamburg Zone, I’m catching the six o’clock train,” and it’s a retort, I’m on the defensive. I thought we’d chat about trivialities, embarrassed perhaps, before speaking about … But it’s true she never liked beating about the bush, and then when you’re old there’s no time to lose, right? Well, I haven’t any time to lose either! No, I’m not going to get angry in order to stand up to her; I’ve learned to control that reflex. It kept me alive, but it’s not what I need here. I don’t, absolutely don’t, want to get angry.

  She doesn’t make it easy for me: “Not married, then, no children?” And while I suffocate in silence she goes on: “You left to live your own life, you should have been consistent, lived to the full. With your gifts, to become a recuperator! You stopped halfway! Really, I didn’t bring you up like that.”

  I can’t mistake her tone. She’s reproaching me, she’s resentful!

  “You didn’t make me like that, you mean! But perhaps you didn’t make as much of me as you think!” There we go, fighting. It can’t be true, I’m dreaming; fifteen years, and it’s as though I left last week!

  “So you actually took the trouble to find out? If you’d taken a little more trouble, you’d have learned that artifacts are not necessarily sterile. True, the Institute buried the really pertinent data, but with a little effort.… But you didn’t even try, eh? So sure you were sterile! When I think of the pains I took to make you completely normal!”

  I cool down. Suddenly, somewhere, I cross a threshold, and once over it I’m incredulously calm. That’s Taïko. Not a goddess, not a monster. Just a woman set in her ways, with her limitations, her goodwill, her unawareness. I hear myself saying almost politely, “Still, I failed their tests.”

  Apparently s
he’s crossed a threshold of her own at the same time, in the same direction. She sighs. “I should have told you sooner. When you were little. But I kept putting it off. And then it was too late, you were right in the middle of the terrible teens, and I lost my temper. I couldn’t tell you just then, you can understand that! Well, yes, I should have; perhaps it would have calmed you down. I was so furious after you left. I expected a phone call, a letter. I said to myself, at least the Institute can’t find out about her. And in fact they know nothing. The Kerens medic called me first. A nice person, actually. He never told. You were a brilliant student that disappeared without a trace. They offered me their sympathy, you know, Kerens and the Institute. Afterward, I tried to have you found. Why didn’t you call me, you stubborn mule?”

  I’m the one being accused, can you beat that? I stare hard at her. And all of a sudden it’s too much. I burst out laughing. So does she.

  We’re still the same, after all this time.

  “But you came, anyway. None too soon either.”

  After that, a long silence. Embarrassed, pensive? She is pensive. “You ought to try. Having children. There’s no guarantee you’ll succeed, but it’s highly probable. Have you really never tried?”

  Does she realize what she’s saying?

  “What, there’s never been anyone?”

  Rick, the first, yes. And a few others, initially as a challenge, just to see, and after that because it didn’t really matter what I was, thanks to Brutus. But still! I retort that knowing you’re an artifact doesn’t exactly make for harmonious relations with normal humans.

  “Normal humans! I can’t believe my ears! You were born, the fact that it was in the lab down there doesn’t change anything. You grew up, you made mistakes, and you’ll make more. You think, you feel, you choose. What more do you want? You’re a normal human being, like all the other so-called artifacts.”