Damien Broderick - Strange Attractors

are others
— 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