Axis

cadence of his breath. Often she dreamed—more fiercely and deeply than she had dreamed since she was a child—and in her dreams she was in a different desert, where the horizon was close and the sky a dark and penetrating blue. In this desert there were rocks and sand and also a number of brightly-colored tubular or angular growths, like a madman's hallucinations come to life. And of course there was the boy. Not Isaac. The other boy, the first one. He was more frail than Isaac, his skin was darker, but his eyes, like Isaac's, had become gold-flecked and strange. He was lying where he had fallen in a stupor of exhaustion, and although Sulean was in the company of a number of grown men she was the first who dared approach him.

The boy opened his eyes. He could not otherwise move, because his legs, arms, and torso had been bound with pliant ropes or vines. The strange growths had pinned him there, and some of them had pierced his body.

Surely he must be dead. How could anyone survive such an impalement?

But he opened his eyes. He opened his eyes and whispered, 'Sulean —''

* * * * *

She woke in the chair next to Isaac's bed, sweating in the dry heat. Mrs. Rebka had come into the room and was staring at her.

'We're having a meeting in the common room,' Mrs. Rebka said. 'We would like you to be there, Ms. Moi.'

'All right Yes.'

'Has his condition changed?'

'No,' Sulean said. Thinking: Not yet.

* * * * *

It wasn't really a coma. It was only sleep, though a profound one that lasted many days. Isaac woke from it that evening, and when he did, he was alone in his room.

He felt… different.

More alert than usual: not only awake but more awake than he had ever been. His vision seemed sharper and more focused. He felt as if he could count the dust motes in the air, if he wanted, even though there was only the light of his bedside lamp to see by.

He wanted to go west. He felt the attraction of what was out there, although there was no word for it, no word he knew. A presence, rising; and it wanted him, and he wanted it, with an urgency akin to love or lust.

But he wouldn't leave the compound, not tonight. Isaac's first and purely instinctive long walk had come to nothing—apart from the discovery of the rose—and there was no use repeating it. Not until he was stronger. Still, he did need to get away from the narrow confinement of his room. To smell the air and feel it on his skin.

He stood, dressed, and walked downstairs past the closed doors of the large central room from which emanated the solemn voices of adults. He went out to the courtyard. A guard had been posted at the far gate, presumably to keep him from wandering away again. But he stayed on the other side of the houses, in the walled garden.

The air was cool tonight and the garden was lush. He stepped in among the plants, following the gardener's cobbled path. The night-blooming succulents had put out blossoms, richly colorful even in the faint moonlight.

Other things, small things, stirred in the soil where the ash had been driven down by the rain.

Isaac put his hand palm-down on a bare patch of earth. The soil was warm, retaining what it had conserved of the day's heat.

Overhead, the stars were crystal-bright. Isaac looked a long time at the stars. They were symbols hovering on the brink of intelligibility, letters that made words that made sentences he could almost (not quite) read.

Something touched his hand where it rested on the rich garden loam, and Isaac looked down again. When he pulled his hand away he saw the earth swell and crumble minutely—a worm, he thought; but it wasn't a worm. It wasn't anything he had ever seen before. It shrugged itself slowly from the soil like a knuckled, fleshy finger. Maybe some kind of root, but it grew too quickly to be natural. It extended itself toward Isaac's hand as if it sensed his warmth.

He wasn't afraid of it. Well, no, that wasn't true. Part of him was afraid of it, almost paralyzed with terror. The everyday part of him wanted to recoil and run back to the safety of his room. But above and enclosing the everyday part of him was this new sense of himself, bold and confident, and to the new Isaac the pale green finger wasn't frightening or even unfamiliar. He recognized it, although he couldn't name it.

He allowed it to touch him. Slowly, the green finger encircled his wrist. Isaac drew a curious strength from it, and it from him, he suspected, and he looked back at the sky where the stars which were suns glimmered brightly. Now each star seemed as familiar as a face, each with its own color and weight and distance and identity, known but not named. And like an animal scenting the air, he faced once more to the west.

Two things were obvious to Sulean as she entered the common room. One was that much discussion had taken place in her absence—she had been called here to testify, not to deliberate.

The second obvious thing was an atmosphere of collective sadness, almost mourning, as if these people understood that the life they had created for themselves was coming to an end. And that was no doubt true. This community couldn't exist much longer. It had been created for the purpose of birthing and nurturing Isaac, and that process would soon be finished… one way or another.

The majority of these people must have been born before the Spin, Sulean thought. Like other Terrestrial Fourths, a large percentage of them had come from the academic community, but not all; there were technicians who helped maintain the cryogenic incubators; there was a mechanic, a gardener. Like Martian Fourths, these people had separated themselves from the general community. They were not like the Fourths among whom Sulean had been raised… but they were Fourths; they stank of Fourthness. So glum, so self-important, so blind to their own arrogance.

Avram Dvali, of course, was chairing the meeting. He waved Sulean to a chair at the front of the room. 'We'd like you to explain a few things, Ms. Moi, before the crisis proceeds any further.'

Sulean sat primly erect. 'Of course I'm happy to help in any way I can.'

Mrs. Rebka, who sat at Dr. Dvali's right at the head table, gave her a sharply skeptical look. 'I hope that's true. You know, when we took on the task of raising Isaac thirteen years ago we faced some opposition—'

' Raising him, Mrs. Rebka, or creating him?'

Mrs. Rebka ignored the remark. 'Opposition from other members of the Fourth community. We acted on convictions not everyone shared. We know we're a minority, a minority within a minority. And we knew you were out there, Ms. Moi, doing whatever work you do for the Martians. We knew you might eventually find us, and we were prepared to be frank and open with you. We respect your connection to a community far older than our own.'

'Thank you,' Sulean said, not concealing her own skepticism.

'But we had hoped you would be as frank with us as we were with you.'

'If you have a question, please ask it.'

'The procedure that created Isaac has been attempted before.'

'It has been,' Sulean admitted, 'yes.'

'And is it true that you have some personal experience of that?'

This time she wasn't quite so quick to answer. 'Yes.' The story of her upbringing had circulated widely among the Terrestrial Fourths.

'Would you share that experience with us?'

'If I'm reluctant to talk about it, the reasons are largely personal. The memory isn't pleasant.'

'Nevertheless,' Mrs. Rebka said.

Sulean closed her eyes. She didn't want to recall these events. The memory came to her, unbidden, all too often. But Mrs. Rebka was right, as much as Sulean hated to admit it. The time had come.

The boy.

The boy in the desert. The boy in the Martian desert.

The boy had died in the dry southern province of Bar Kea, some distance from the biological research station where he had been born and where he had lived all his life.

Sulean was the same age as the boy. She had not been born at the Bar Kea Desert Station but she could