The Mother Code Read online

  Taking the twig from her hand, Kai nibbled at it tentatively. It tasted terribly bitter, its dry surface adhering to his cracked lips. He pulled his blanket tight around him, staring vacantly out at the blinding white-gray of the rocky field where they’d made camp. Despite the cold, they were too parched, too exhausted to go exploring. “You sure you don’t want to eat something else?”

  “Yes . . .”

  He was worried about Sela. At the depots they’d reached, they’d found only scant supplies. No stored water, and the towers were bone-dry. They’d relied on harvesting the runoff from high-elevation snows, but the past winter had been milder than usual, the scant snowmelt already evaporated from the highest visible peaks. The few rivers they’d come across were shallow and drained. With the excuse that they needed to conserve the water they used for cooking, Sela had taken to eating less and less. He could see the bones of her shoulders, poking up under her tunic. And the girl who had once delighted in leading him on merry chases through the sky, her Mother whirling and diving as they carried out one of their many “missions,” seemed to be losing her way. Was she, like he, afraid of what they might find next?

  Sela was looking at Alpha in that way she did when she and her Mother were talking. Her brow was furrowed, and Kai could tell that the conversation wasn’t a pleasant one.

  “What’s the matter?” he asked.

  “Even if we wanted to, Alpha says we shouldn’t be flying so much.”

  Kai remembered Rosie’s voice now, the warning she’d issued to him the night before as he slept. “Particulates?”

  “There’s more dust in the air than there used to be. She’s having a harder time clearing it from her engines.”

  “But we need to keep moving . . .” Kai looked up at the sky, the brilliant light of the sun dispersed as though by a haze of fine crystals. It had been like this for weeks now, the distant mesas almost invisible. He willed himself to stand up. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Let’s see what all we’ve got.”

  “What?”

  “Rosie says it’s my birthday today. I’m eight. We should have a birthday party!”

  “Yes . . .” Sela said. “I’ll be eight tomorrow.”

  “Let’s give each other gifts.”

  “Gifts? But I don’t—”

  “I’ve got some stuff I haven’t shown you yet. I’m sure you have some things too . . .”

  Scaling Rosie’s treads to search his cocoon, Kai rummaged through his meager collection of belongings, looking for something Sela might like. Then, cradling his treasures in his arms, he shambled down to arrange them on the ground. A plastic rectangle wedged inside a rubberized case. “An old tablet, for playing games,” he said. “I couldn’t get it to work.” A small, plastic musical instrument that Rosie called a ukulele. “It’s supposed to have strings,” he explained. A brown leather hat with a broken brim. “A cowboy hat,” he said, placing it squarely atop his mop of tangled hair. “Good for keeping the sun off.” Grinning, he pretended to strum the stringless ukulele, humming off-key. Then, with a flourish, he took off the hat and gave it to Sela.

  But Sela just looked at him with a blank expression. And suddenly he felt silly. What had he been thinking? It was all stupid, just junk . . .

  Then she rewarded him with a grin. “I’ve got something better than all that,” she said. Retreating into Alpha’s hold, she soon emerged with a large pink bag strapped to her shoulder. Adorned with a comic book picture of a smiling cat, the bag had one main compartment and three small side pockets, each held closed with shiny metal snaps. From one of the pockets she produced a necklace made of polished stones the color of the sky, strung on a silver chain. “Turquoise,” she said. Then from the main compartment, she removed something fashioned from what looked like thin wooden sticks, woven together.

  “What is it?” Kai asked, coming close.

  “It’s an airplane,” Sela said, her eyes glowing as she held it up to show two sleek wings attached to a center fuselage. “Like the ones in the old vids. But this one has no engine. It’s a glider.”

  “Can I hold it?”

  “Yes . . . But be careful. I made it myself, before we met. It took me forever to figure out a way to keep it together. The frame is made from tumbleweed, and the rest is dried grass. It’s all in the weaving.” Gingerly, Sela offered up the plane. Kai balanced it on the tops of his two index fingers, one finger under each of its wings. “Alpha taught me about weaving. And about airplanes. She knows a lot about those things. She says that one day, I can build a glider big enough to fly in. She says that gliding is the most amazing way to fly—all quiet, like a bird.”

  Kai looked at her incredulously. “Is it . . . for me?”

  Sela offered him a small smile. “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean for you to think that . . .” Taking the airplane back from him, she replaced it carefully into her bag. “But here, you can have this.” She reached into a second side pocket, then opened her fist to reveal a small, glistening object.

  Hesitantly, Kai took the thing in his palm, a silver case in the form of a flat cylinder. Through its clear cover, he could see a delicate needle, hovering hesitantly over the letter “W.”

  “A compass,” Sela said. “It’s so great. It tells you which way to go.”

  “Thanks, but don’t you need it?” Kai made to hand the compass back to her.

  “No,” Sela said. “We’re together now, right?” From the third side pocket, she removed an oblong snippet of paper and placed it in his upturned palm. “And then there’s this.”

  Kai rubbed his thumb over the smiling, laminated image of a towheaded girl in a red dress. A woman with long brown hair surrounded the little girl’s shoulders with one protective arm. Behind them, an expanse of blue water shimmered under a cloudless sky. “They look happy.”

  “Yeah . . .” Sela gazed thoughtfully at the picture. “Where do you think this was?”

  Kai shook his head. By an ocean? A lake? Except for on Rosie’s screen, he’d never seen such a place.

  “We need to go there. To a place like that. Where there’s lots of water, lots of plants . . .” Sela said.

  “Do you think maybe our Mothers can take us there?”

  Sela stared disconsolately back at her Mother. “So many times, I begged her to fly me there. But Alpha says she doesn’t have the coordinates. She won’t go unless she can evaluate the risks . . .”

  Sela didn’t have to finish her thought. Kai knew. Rosie had told him the same thing—she wasn’t programmed to take him just anywhere. She needed data, proof that the destination was safe. It was why, over the past year, they’d done nothing more than travel between one near-empty depot and the next. Still . . . “There must be a way—” Suddenly he saw a light in Sela’s eyes, that mischievous glint he’d only just realized he missed. He stared at her. “What?”

  Sela leaned toward him, cupping her hand around his ear. “If our Mothers won’t take us somewhere, it doesn’t mean we can’t go,” she whispered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “The dirt bike. We should go back and get it. We could fix it up, make it work. Then we could go anywhere we want!”

  Kai nodded. The RV. Just a few days ago they’d found it. But as with yesterday’s destroyed bot, he’d been trying not to think about it.

  The RV had been huge, with sleek metallic flanks and a bright orange stripe painted along each side. It had its own kitchen and even a little bathroom. As he took in the sheer bulk of it, he’d allowed himself to dream. Even before the Epidemic, Rosie had told him, no one really lived out here. But there had been campers, people who came to spend a few weeks in the desert. They had what used to be called vacations.

  Kai sighed. It would have been a great place to live. But there had been skeletons inside, two big ones lying on a wide bed and a smaller one tucked into a cot nearby. He could never live i
n a place where the victims of the Epidemic still lay in their beds. He couldn’t imagine moving them. And, unless it was food or water, he couldn’t imagine taking what had once been theirs. The RV had been bereft of nonperishable food. After draining the water tanks of their stale contents, they’d left the place behind.

  “It’s okay, Kai.” Sela was grasping his arm now, her eyes pleading. “All we need is the bike. And it’s outside.”

  He looked at her. He couldn’t resist. It was the happiest, the most hopeful, he’d seen her in a long time. “Sure. But how will we find it again?”

  “I’ll take you there.” It was Rosie. “I have stored the coordinates in my flight database.”

  Kai glanced at Sela, who was nodding toward her Mother. “It’s a go,” she said, smiling.

  Soon Kai was watching the site from the air, the weighty vehicle still parked off a dirt road by the side of a wide canyon, a tattered American flag fluttering from a bracket by the side door. The bike was still leaning against the back fender.

  They landed a few hundred feet away, so as not to disturb this hallowed ground. But Sela couldn’t contain herself, dashing full tilt for the bike as if for freedom itself. As Kai came up beside her, she was running her hand over the glimmering handlebars. “Alpha says she can charge it up,” she said. “We can modify the footrests and handlebars to fit us better.”

  Kai scratched his head. “Why do you think our Mothers are letting us do this?” he asked. “Wouldn’t we be safer traveling inside our cocoons?”

  Once more, a cloud came over Sela’s face. “Alpha says it’s a matter of risk.”

  “Risk?”

  “We have to keep moving, to find water and food—maybe, if we’re lucky, we’ll find another child. But right now it’s safer to do that by land, so long as we wear our masks when we’re on the bike,” she said.

  Kai remembered the particle masks, stored in a compartment under his seat in the cocoon. He’d never had to wear one before. But Rosie had told him the same thing: The fine desert dust was no better for his lungs than it was for her engines.

  Sela pulled the bike’s charger from its plug on the side of the RV and handed it to her Mother. “I suppose they don’t call it a dirt bike for nothing,” she said, kicking a shelf of sand from its rear tire guard.

  11

  MAY 2052

  IN THE LATE-AFTERNOON gloom of her Presidio office, Rose McBride sat back, massaging her temples with her fingertips. New Dawn. At times, she wished she’d never heard of it. Because hearing of it meant knowing everything else.

  In one way or another, she’d been involved with this project since December of ’49. But she’d been on the outside, with no possibility of seeing in. Over a year spent tracking mysterious microbes, followed by nine months negotiating the relocation of the nongovernment occupants of the Presidio, hadn’t prepared her for the truth she’d learned at that first Los Alamos meeting six months ago. She’d learned that human life on earth was facing annihilation. She’d learned that it would be her job to imagine what would happen afterward. And she’d learned that if her projections about the inexorable spread of infected archaebacteria were true, this would be her final mission.

  The proper way to train military robots to care for newborns in a postapocalyptic world hadn’t been part of the course curriculum at Princeton. The whole idea was preposterous, a herculean undertaking, a project of ever-expanding scope and difficulty. But given everything that was happening—the rapid spread of the infection, the failure so far to develop a working antidote that might save more than a few souls—it had somehow begun to make sense.

  She remembered the news report she’d watched as she’d sipped her coffee earlier that morning: “A widespread outbreak of a ‘flu-like illness’ has decimated the population of Kandahar over the past few weeks,” said a frightened-looking reporter, a military chopper stationed close behind him. “Doctors in Pakistan’s border cities are beginning to report similar symptoms. We have no idea whether the recent American military activity in the region bears any relation to this current health crisis, but we have continued to observe massive burn operations during recent flyovers.” She had to admit it—the robotic option had to be considered. And Rick Blevins had been right in choosing her to develop the program. For she couldn’t stop thinking about it, imagining it.

  She called it the Mother Code, a computer code meant to embody the very essence of motherhood. The challenge of the code had lifted her from her moorings, plunged her headlong into uncharted waters. She herself had never been a mother. She didn’t know the first thing about caring for a child, let alone a newborn. She was dogged by fear—fear that if it ever had to be used, her Mother Code would fail the ones who needed it, defenseless children in a new world. But she knew that she would never give up.

  Unlike her, most of the project’s participants knew nothing of its full scope. To her collaborators at MIT, it represented a chance to participate in a fascinating and well-funded government project in artificial intelligence. And apart from their supervisor, Kendra Jenkins, the flock of robotics programmers at Los Alamos was under the same misguided impression. Before being promoted to security chief at Los Alamos, Kendra had supervised the compilation of the base operations code for the robots, the code that governed their motion. Rose’s Mother Code needed to be carefully integrated with this—a complex program that governed not only the how but the why of every action.

  It hadn’t taken long for Rose to come to a realization: Her Mothers would need “personalities.” But she couldn’t invent these from thin air. She’d need models to work from. Who better than the biological mothers of the children they might one day care for?

  Her wrist phone buzzed. “Captain McBride?” came the voice of the receptionist from the lobby below. “Your next appointment is here.”

  “Tell her to come on up.” Straightening her collar, Rose sat forward, her eyes on the door.

  The woman who entered was of middle height, perhaps five feet seven. Her mahogany-brown hair was pulled back into a tight bun. Her gaze steady on Rose’s, she carried the serious, clipped demeanor of the trained fighter pilot that she was. “Lieutenant Nova Susquetewa,” she said.

  “Have a seat,” Rose said, indicating the small chair on the other side of her desk. She found herself adjusting her own posture as the young woman sat down, her spine stiff as a rod. “Have you been briefed on our program?”

  The lieutenant stared around her at the untidy office that was definitely not that of a doctor. “I was told that this is one way I can preserve my eggs? For later?”

  “That is one of our purposes,” Rose said carefully. “But there’s more. There’s the personality profiling aspect . . .”

  “Yes,” Nova said. “Yes, of course. My base commander told me I’d be subjected to some pretty intense scrutiny before I deployed.”

  “Yes.” Rose nodded. “You’ve been assigned to a sensitive mission. Secrecy will be paramount. And your mission is high-risk . . . We need to be sure you’re ready.”

  “I am,” Nova said, sitting forward eagerly. Then her gaze softened, almost imperceptibly. “I am,” she repeated, almost to herself.

  Rose sat back, remembering her script. “You’ll be given a battery of tests over the next few days,” she said. Then, noticing the crease that formed in Nova’s brow, she added quickly: “Nothing difficult. We’re just . . . trying something new. We’re gathering data for a long-term study relating certain . . . personality traits . . . to subsequent reaction to stress in the battlefield.” She watched Nova’s face for a reaction but found only a mild perplexity. “We’ve notified your commander. You’ll need to go to Boston for the tests. MIT. They’ll conduct a series of taped interviews, followed by a few more physical tests.”

  “And then you’ll collect my eggs, right?” Nova asked.

  “Correct. That part of the protocol will be done at the VA me
d center in . . .” Rose leafed through the file on her desk. “Phoenix, right? Near where you’re currently stationed.”

  Nova shifted in her seat. “Captain McBride, may I be honest?”

  “Of course.”

  “Don’t get me wrong, I want to go on this mission. But I . . . I’m worried about it. I’d be crazy not to be, right?”

  “Of course. I understand.”

  “If my . . . worry comes out in these personality tests . . . will they hold me back?”

  Rose made eye contact with the young officer, offering her a reassuring smile. “It’s perfectly normal to be concerned about this mission, under the circumstances. But . . . is there something special that’s bothering you?”

  Nova kneaded her hands together in her lap. “Not really. Well . . . my mother . . .”

  “Is she ill?”

  “No, she’s strong as a bull. It’s just that . . . she really doesn’t want me to go. She didn’t even want me to join the air force. She says . . . it’s not the right time.”

  “It’s never the best time, I suppose.”

  Nova blushed. “I should explain . . . I’m Hopi. My family lives in Arizona, on the mesas where the Hopi have always lived. My father passed away over a year ago now. But when he was alive, he was a priest.”

  “A priest?”

  “Not like a Catholic priest . . . A kind of shaman, I guess you would call him. It was his job to keep us all connected to the past. And to see things—things that might be coming in the future. This is why my mother doesn’t want me to go—my father told her that something was coming.”

  Rose sat forward, her pulse quickening. “What is coming?”

  Nova frowned. “I should tell it from the beginning.” She gathered in a breath. “I’ve known this story since I was little,” she said. “It happened when I was eight years old, on the day of the annual midsummer Niman ceremony in my village. The ceremony marks the return of the katsinam, spirits who’ve been on the earth since the winter solstice, to their homes in the spiritual world. When they reach home, these spirits are supposed to tell the rain people that the Hopi are living well and ask them to reward the farmers with rain.” Again, Nova blushed. “I know, it sounds crazy. But these cycles are very important to my people.”