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.
About the Author
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.
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Catherine Asaro, The Phoenix Code
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