Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors by Original (pdf) (no david read aloud txt) 📕

— you could ask the cybernex where to find one.’

Bernheddin stood. ‘Would you like something to drink? Wine,

fruit juice, coffee — I’m afraid I do not know your Earthian

customs . . .’

‘We will take wine,’ said the die, ‘the local — Santorin.’

He still stood. ‘The Desousa Body, did they say anything else?’

‘They wished us to tell you that your former position has been

filled.’

‘Ah, the common good is served, the world-organismal life goes

smoothly on . . .’

‘It was a position of some importance, I understand?’

Clouis said proudly, ‘Only four individs in the whole world were

above him.’

As Bernheddin left the room, walking beneath narrow round

arches, he felt a pang of isolation. He was a cell, now quite excommunicated from the parent body, he was a drone without a hive. A minute or two later he called, ‘I cannot operate this dispenser.

Perhaps there is something wrong.’

Ilena came into the dim kitchen, leaving Clouis talking to Lord

za Amzon. Bernheddin leapt upon her as she passed the archway,

wrapped one arm tightly round her waist, grabbed her breast

through its negligible covering, looking into her eyes which were

subtly unlike any eyes he had seen. They were silent. She did not

seem surprised. H er breast under his exploring fingers was rubbery, a curious deformity of the chest. He saw that by the tilt of her head she was offering to kiss him, which he accepted. It was a

friendly gesture, like the wet nose of his dog against his nose, but it

stirred no shadow of lust in him.

He stepped back and was silent, unable now to face her; she

should have cried out, struck him.

‘Bernheddin?’

‘I am sorry.’ He turned away.

‘Don’t worry. Bernheddin, is it all right with you? There are

places where groups of people live together, villages. You would be

welcome to enter such a community.’ As an afterthought she said.

Time andflowers

35

‘O f course, your people might come . .

He glared at her, yet not from hostility. ‘They will come. They

will come. They talk of themselves as just “Desousa”, one being, a

single world-organism. Its claims are absolute. Thank you, thank

you for thinking about the village. But I must have come to Earth

for isolation.’

‘But you attacked me.’

‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry . . . ’

‘I didn’t mean that.’

‘It was an experiment. On the spur of the moment . . . ’

‘It failed?’

‘It failed.’

She was friendly, she was sensible, as they mixed Santorin red

and water in four tall glasses. Returning to the others Bernheddin

glimpsed Clouis’s lilac lids and lightly mascaraed lashes fluttering

for the Earthian lord.

‘I was just saying,’ the tiny cube still spoke for za Amzon, ‘how'

different you two actually look, considering that your whole people

was cloned from a single individual.’

‘Yakob Desousa,’ said Bernheddin. ‘But there have been many,

many generations, and some lines of mutation are encouraged.’

They talked away the afternoon, comparing Earth and Desousa

culture, comparing the colours of sky and sea on their different

worlds, comparing the fauna and flora. They had moved out onto

the terrace and watched the steam plume rising lazily across the

bay. ‘Perhaps we will move tomorrow,’ said Bernheddin. The

presence of the Earthians relaxed him, so that he was sorry when

their flyer sighed up into the early evening sky.

Clouis turned and said, ‘What a disgusting creature!’ Bernheddin demurred, defending Ilena, the female of the human species, but to Clouis she was inexcusable. W hat would either he or

Bernheddin want with such a beast? Was she really human?

Though reason indicated that for hundreds of thousands of years

females had been vital to the continuance of humanity, reason

merely annoyed Clouis. They were relevant no longer, he argued,

had not been for generations and generations. When Bernheddin

pointed out that Desousa society was exceptional, Clouis

demanded, ‘Then what do you see in her? W hat is she to you?’

‘Nothing, nothing,’ Bernheddin shook his head slowly, ‘nothing.’

‘Didn’t you stay out there talking to