The Phoenix Code (35 page)

That decision isn't yours to make. It's his.
And he had already chosen.

"Yes," she said. "I will be your wife."
 

Megan sat on the hill next to Raj, savoring the sunshine. The extensive grounds of the Pearl Estate spread around them: rolling hills, lush trees, flowers in vibrant colors. The mansion itself was visible only as a turret lifting above distant trees. She gave a silent thanks to the donor who, twenty years ago, had left this estate to MindSim as a research institute. It provided a far more pleasant site for the Everest Project than NEV-5.

About half a kilometer down the slope, a lake shimmered, blue and silver in the sunshine. Ander was jogging on the path that circled it, a twenty-kilometer run. He loped along in an easy stride, the sun bright on his gold hair.

Megan felt a debt of gratitude to Major Kenrock's committee for giving them a second chance with Ander. Arizonix had been less fortunate with Grayton, the Phoenix android. Although they had tried to salvage as much as possible, in the end they'd had to wipe out his code and redesign most of his body.

"I haven't seen Ander stumble once," Raj said.

"He's doing well," Megan said. Ander's progress in the past six months had gone better than expected. MindSim attributed it to the work she and Raj were doing with him, but Megan suspected another cause as well.

She thought back to her childhood, when she had sworn loyalty to her best friend. They had nicked their thumbs and mixed their blood while vowing eternal friendship. Blood sisters, blood brothers.

So Raj and Ander had joined, in a field of grain, when they thought their lives might soon be destroyed. Instead of blood, they had mingled knowledge, each downloading the code that defined his essence into the mind of the other.

Raj had given Ander the Phoenix Code, and it forever changed the golden-haired android. He became more contemplative, less disconnected from his emotions. In taking the Phoenix Code, he absorbed how Raj felt about his life. So he kept Raj's secret. It had become his own. Ander would never be human, but he was complete within himself.

The therapist described him as a marginal autistic, because he still sometimes lacked full emotions, he tended to hold himself aloof, and he avoided physical contact, never having come to understand why humans liked to touch. But Megan doubted the diagnosis. It assumed a human standard applied to Ander. And it didn't. He defined himself.

Unlike Ander, Raj didn't simply incorporate his brother's code. He first did an extensive rewrite, to blend it with his own personality and desires. Because of that, it changed him less than the Phoenix Code changed Ander. But Megan still saw differences. Raj's already intense emotions deepened even more. It surprised her at first, given Ander's lack of affect. Then she realized that in coming to understand Ander, Raj better understood himself. He and Ander had different views of what it meant to exist. Raj wanted to be human and took every measure to preserve his identity. Ander didn't care.

Ander never contemplated his emotions. He just wanted to exist on his terms. It meant no spy work, no pretending he was human, no pledges. The ethics board convened by MindSim and the DOD agreed he had a right to make that choice, as a sentient being. But they could take no chances with him or his safety. In the end, they found a compromise Ander could accept; he could live as he wished—but he could never leave the grounds of the Pearl Estate.

Megan leaned back on her hands, looking at her husband. Raj's curls blew back from his face and laugh lines showed around his eyes. Yes, she loved him. At times she even forgot the truth. The baby grew inside of her, the genetic son of the Raj Sundaram who had died in the Phoenix explosion. But in all the ways that mattered, her child was the son of this man who had walked out of the fires after that explosion.

The DNA tests had also given them a gift; their son hadn't inherited the form of Alzheimer's carried by his father and grandfather. He would never suffer the pain that had devastated Raj's life.

Ander had left the path and was walking up the hill, cooling down from his workout. When he reached them, he flopped onto the grass and stared out at the lake.

"Did you enjoy your run?" Raj asked.

"Yes," Ander said.

They sat together, watching the sun glisten on the water. After a while Ander said, "I made a map of the estate today. I coded it according to type of plant."

"Will you download it to the computer?" Megan asked.

"I don't know." After thinking, he said, "For you, I will." He rolled onto his stomach and laid his head on the grass, closing his eyes. "I want to map all the world someday. All the plants. I might be able to do it from here using satellite data."

"A lot of scientists would be in your debt," Raj said.

"Why do you like maps so much?" Megan asked.

He gave her a deadpan look. "They're sex."

"They are?"

He closed his eyes again, for all appearances a healthy young man dozing in the sun after a good workout. "A voluptuous use of knowledge bases."

Megan suspected he was teasing her. She smiled, doubting she would ever fully understand his sense of humor.

As the breezes played with her hair, she felt the life kick within her. She laid her hand on her stomach.
You will be born into a world altered beyond recognition. It isn't obvious yet, but the changes are coming. We share it now with another sentient species, one that we made faster, smarter, and more durable than ourselves.

Raj lay on his side, apparently drowsing, like Ander. She knew neither was sleeping. Their minds kept going, always calculating, never resting. Would humanity someday find a way to put that speed and memory into the minds of human beings, becoming more like androids while the androids became more human?

She shivered despite the warm air. Throughout history, every advance had left in its wake an obsolete technology. Tools replaced claws. Electricity replaced steam power. Computers replaced brute mental force. If they didn't find ways to improve their own minds, the human race itself would become obsolete.

But if they evolved with their creations? It promised a symbiosis unlike anything they had yet seen.
Perhaps our two species will find in each other a completion neither has alone.

She hoped so.
 

Catherine Asaro grew up near Berkeley, California. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Physics and MA in Physics, both from Harvard, and a BS with Highest Honors in Chemistry from UCLA. Among the places she has done research are the University of Toronto, the Max Plank Institut fur As-trophysik in Germany, and the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. She currently runs Molecudyne Research and now lives in Maryland with her husband and daughter. A former ballet dancer, she founded the Mainly Jazz dance program at Harvard and now teaches at the Caryl Maxwell Classical Ballet, home to the Ellicott City Ballet Guild.

She has written numerous books, including the most recent,
The Veiled Web
and
The Quantum Rose
. Her work has been nominated for both the Hugo and Nebula, and has won numerous awards, including The Analog Readers Poll (the AnLab), the Sapphire, the UTC Award, and the HOMer. She can be reached by email at [email protected] and on the web at http://www.sff.net/people/asaro/. If you would like to receive email updates on Catherine's releases, please email the above address.