Later, Gaewha, shaking a little, asked Kelenli what was wrong with the angry man. Kelenli laughed softly and said, “He’s Sylanagistine.” Gaewha subsided into confusion. We all sent her quick pulses of reassurance that we are equally mystified; the problem was not her.
This is normal life in Syl Anagist, we understand, as we walk through it. Normal people on the normal streets. Normal touches that make us cringe or stiffen or back up quickly. Normal houses with normal furnishings. Normal gazes that avert or frown or ogle. With every glimpse of normalcy, the city teaches us just how abnormal we are. I have never minded before that we were merely constructs, genegineered by master biomagests and developed in capsids of nutrient slush, decanted fully grown so that we would need no nurturing. I have been … proud, until now, of what I am. I have been content. But now I see the way these normal people look at us, and my heart aches. I don’t understand why.
Perhaps all the walking has damaged me.
Now Kelenli leads us through the fancy house. We pass through a doorway, however, and find an enormous sprawling garden behind the house. Down the steps and around the dirt path, there are flower beds everywhere, their fragrance summoning us closer. These aren’t like the precisely cultivated, genegineered flower beds of the compound, with their color-coordinated winking flowers; what grows here is wild, and perhaps inferior, their stems haphazardly short or long and their petals frequently less than perfect. And yet … I like them. The carpet of lichens that covers the path invites closer study, so we confer in rapid pulse-waves as we crouch and try to understand why it feels so springy and pleasant beneath our feet. A pair of scissors dangling from a stake invites curiosity. I resist the urge to claim some of the pretty purple flowers for myself, though Gaewha tries the scissors and then clutches some flowers in her hand, tightly, fiercely. We have never been allowed possessions of our own.
I watch Kelenli surreptitiously, compulsively, while she watches us play. The strength of my interest confuses and frightens me a little, though I seem unable to resist it. We’ve always known that the conductors failed to make us emotionless, but we … well. I thought us above such intensity of feeling. That’s what I get for being arrogant. Now here we are, lost in sensation and reaction. Gaewha huddles in a corner with the scissors, ready to defend her flowers to the death. Dushwha spins in circles, laughing deliriously; I’m not sure exactly at what. Bimniwha has cornered one of our guards and is peppering him with questions about what we saw during the walk here; the guard has a hunted look and seems to be hoping for rescue. Salewha and Remwha are in an intense discussion as they crouch beside a little pond, trying to figure out whether the creatures moving in the water are fish or frogs. Their conversation is entirely auditory, no earthtalk at all.
And I, fool that I am, watch Kelenli. I want to understand what she means us to learn, either from that art-thing at the museum or our afternoon garden idyll. Her face and sessapinae reveal nothing, but that’s all right. I also want to simply look at her face and bask in that deep, powerful orogenic presence of hers. It’s nonsensical. Probably disturbing to her, though she ignores me if so. I want her to look at me. I want to speak to her. I want to be her.
I decide that what I’m feeling is love. Even if it isn’t, the idea is novel enough to fascinate me, so I decide to follow where its impulses lead.
After a time, Kelenli rises and walks away from where we wander the garden. At the center of the garden is a small structure, like a tiny house but made of stone bricks rather than the cellulose greenstrate of most buildings. One determined ivy grows over its nearer wall. When she opens the door of this house, I am the only one who notices. By the time she’s stepped inside, all the others have stopped whatever they were doing and stood to watch her, too. She pauses, amused—I think—by our sudden silence and anxiety. Then she sighs and jerks her head in a silent Come on. We scramble to follow.
Inside—we cram carefully in after Kelenli; it’s a tight fit—the little house has a wooden floor and some furnishings. It’s nearly as bare as our cells back at the compound, but there are some important differences. Kelenli sits down on one of the chairs and we realize: This is hers. Hers. It is her … cell? No. There are peculiarities all around the space, things that offer intriguing hints as to Kelenli’s personality and past. Books on a shelf in the corner mean that someone has taught her to read. A brush on the edge of the sink suggests that she does her own hair, impatiently to judge by the amount of hair caught in its bristles. Maybe the big house is where she is supposed to be, and maybe she actually sleeps there sometimes. This little garden house, however, is … her home.
“I grew up with Conductor Gallat,” Kelenli says softly. (We’ve sat down on the floor and chairs and bed around her, rapt for her wisdom.) “Raised alongside him, the experiment to his control—just as I’m your control. He’s ordinary, except for a drop of undesirable ancestry.”
I blink my icewhite eyes, and think of Gallat’s, and suddenly I understand many new things. She smiles when my mouth drops open in an O. Her smile doesn’t last long, however.
“They—Gallat’s parents, who I thought were my parents—didn’t tell me at first what I was. I went to school, played games, did all the things a normal Sylanagistine girl does while growing up. But they didn’t treat me the same. For a long time I thought it was something I’d done.” Her gaze drifts away, weighty with old bitterness. “I wondered why I was so horrible that even my parents couldn’t seem to love me.”
Remwha crouches to rub a hand along the wooden slats of the floor. I don’t know why he does anything. Salewha is still outside, since Kelenli’s little house is too cramped for her tastes; she has gone to stare at a tiny, fast-moving bird that flits among the flowers. She listens through us, though, through the house’s open door. We all need to hear what Kelenli says, with voice and vibration and the steady, heavy weight of her gaze.
“Why did they deceive you?” Gaewha asks.
“The experiment was to see if I could be human.” Kelenli smiles to herself. She’s sitting forward in her chair, elbows braced on her knees, looking at her hands. “See if, raised among decent, natural folk, I might turn out at least decent, if not natural. And so my every achievement was counted a Sylanagistine success, while my every failure or display of poor behavior was seen as proof of genetic degeneracy.”
Gaewha and I look at each other. “Why would you be indecent?” she asks, utterly mystified.
Kelenli blinks out of her reverie and stares at us for a moment, and in that time we feel the gulf between us. She thinks of herself as one of us, which she is. She thinks of herself as a person, too, though. Those two concepts are incompatible.