"Is that baby going to be another Ollie?"
"You know he can't. Why?"
She screwed up her face and thought. "He's GY something and Ollie's AO. He's not even an Alpha."
"That's right. That's exactly right. You're very smart."
She liked to hear that. She fidgeted.
"You know, you were born in that room, Ari."
She heard that again in her head. And was not sure maman was not teasing her. She looked at maman, trying to figure out if it was a game. It didn't looklike a game.
"Maman couldn't carry you. Maman's much too old. Maman's been on rejuv for years and years and she can't have babies anymore. But the tanks can. So she told Mary to make a special baby. And maman was there at the tank when it was birthed, and maman picked it up out of the water, and that was you, Ari."
She stared at maman. And tried to put herself in that room and in that tank, and be that baby Mary had picked up. She felt all different. She felt like she was different from herself. She did not know what to do about it.
Maman held her hands out. "Do you want maman to hold you, sweet? I will."
Yes, she wanted that. She wanted to be little and fit on maman's lap, and she tried, but she hurt maman, she was so big, so she just tucked up beside maman on the rock and felt big and clumsy while maman hugged her and rocked her. But it felt safer.
"Maman loves you, sweet. Maman truly does. There's nothing wrong at all in being born out of that room. You're the best little girl maman could have. I wouldn't trade you for anybody."
"I'm still yours."
Maman was not going to answer/maman was, so fast a change it scared her till maman said: "You're still mine, sweet."
She did not know why her heart was beating so hard. She did not know why it felt like maman was not going to say that at first. That scared her more than anything. She was glad maman had her arms around her. She was cold.
"I told you not everybody has a papa. But you did, Ari. His name was James Carnath. That's why Amy's your cousin."
"Amy's my cousin?" She was disgusted. People had cousins. It meant they were related. Nasty old Amelie Carnath was not anybody she wanted to be related to.
"Where is my papa?"
"Dead, sweet. He died before you were born."
"Couldn't Ollie be my father?"
"Ollie can't, sweet. He's on rejuv too."
"He doesn't have white hair."
"He dyes it, the same as I do."
That was an awful shock. She couldn't think of Ollie being old like maman. Ollie was young and handsome.
"I want Ollie to be my papa."
Maman made that upset-feeling again. She felt it in maman's arms. In the way maman breathed. "Well, it was James Carnath. He was a scientist like maman. He was very smart. That's where you get half your smart, you know. You know when you're going on rejuv and you know you might want a baby later you have to put your geneset in the bank so it's there after you can't make a baby anymore. Well, that was how you could be started even if your papa died a long time ago. And there you waited, in the genebank, all the years until maman was ready to take care of a baby."
"I wish you'd done it sooner," Ari said. "Then you wouldn't be so old."
Maman cried.
And she did, because maman was unhappy. But maman kissed her and called her sweet, and said she loved her, so she guessed it was as all right as it was going to get.
She thought about it a lot. She had always thought she came out of maman. It was all right if maman wanted her to be born from the tanks. It didn't make her an azi. Maman saw to that.
It was nice to be born where Ollie was born. She liked that idea. She didn't care about whoever James Carnath was. He was Carnath.Ugh. Like Amy.
She thought when Ollie was a baby he would have had black hair and he would be prettier than August was.
She thought when she grew up to be as old as maman she would have her own Ollie. And she would have a Nelly.
But not a Phaedra. Phaedra bossed too much.
You didn't have to have azi if you didn't want them. You had to order them or they didn't get born.
That, for Phaedra, who tattled on her. She would get August instead when he grew up, and he would be Security in their hall, and say good morning, serato her just like Security did to maman.
She would have a Grant too. With red hair. She would dress him in black the way a lot of azi did and he would be very handsome. She did not know what he would do, but she would like to have an azi with red hair all the same.
She would be rich like maman.
She would be beautiful.
She would fly in the plane and go to the city and she would buy lots and lots of pretty clothes and jewels like maman's, so when they went to New Year they would make everybody say how beautiful they all were.
She would find Valery and tell him come back. And sera Schwartz too.
They would all be happy.
Verbal Text from:
PATTERNS OF GROWTH
A Tapestudy in Genetics: #1
"An Interview with Ariane Emory": pt. 2
Reseune Educational Publications: 8970-8768-1 approved for 80+
Q: Dr. Emory, we have time perhaps for a few more questions, if you wouldn't mind.
A: Go ahead.
Q: You're one of the Specials. Some people say that you may be one of the greatest minds that's ever lived, in the class of da Vinci, Einstein, and Bok. How do you feel about that comparison?
A: I would like to have known any one of them. I think it would be interesting. I think I can guess your next question, by the way.
Q: Oh?
A: Ask it.
Q: How do you compare yourself to other people?
A: Mmmn. That's not the one. Other people. I'm not sure I know. I live a very cloistered life. I have great respect for anyone who can drive a truck in the outback or pilot a starship. Or negotiate the Novgorod subway, [laughter] I suppose that I could. I've never tried. But life is always complex. I'm not sure whether it takes more for me to plot a genotype than for someone of requisite ability to do any of those things I find quite daunting.
Q: That's an interesting point. But do you think driving a truck is equally valuable? Should we appoint Specials for that ability? What makes you important?
A: Because I have a uniqueset of abilities. No one else can do what I do. That's what a Special is.
Q: How does it feel to be a Special?
A: That's very close to the question I thought you'd ask. I can tell you being a Special is a lot like being a Councillor or holding any office: very little privacy, very high security, more attention than seems to make sense.
Q: Can you explain that last—than seems to make sense?
A: [laughter] A certain publication asked me to detail a menu of my favorite foods. A reporter once asked me whether I believed in reincarnation. Do these things make sense? I'm a psychsurgeon and a geneticist and occasionally a philosopher, in which consideration the latter question actually makes more sense to me than the first, but what in hell does either one matter to the general public? More than my science, you say? No. What the reporters are looking for is an equation that finds some balance between my psyche and their demographically ideal viewer—who is a myth and a reality: what they ask may bore everyone equally by pleasing no one exactly, but never mind: which brings us finally to the question I expect you're going to ask.