The New Humans

Chapter 12

Ash and his family left for New Hayes two days later. Most of the journey was on a ten-lane highway. Ash leaned out the window. Signs, trees, billboards, all passed by in a flash. He glanced at the speed. The car was doing one hundred and thirty-five miles per hour. It was lucky they had engaged the autopilot; no man could manage a speed like that without incident.

His sister pulled at his T-shirt.

"What do you want?"

"Keep still, you're annoying me."

"Leave me alone."

"Stop moving, Ash," said Mom. "You're acting like you've never seen a motorway before."

Maybe it was true, but he felt like a child discovering the world for the first time, and there was nothing his sister and mother could say or do to curb his enthusiasm.

"How far now to the house?" asked Rachel.

"Half an hour. However, before we get there, we have to stop by to see Serena Wall. She invited us for a cup of tea."

"But I'm hungry," said Rachel. "Can't we have lunch first and then go there?"

"It's only eleven o'clock," said Mom. "Serena was kind to invite us; it would have been rude to refuse."

Rachel snorted. But Ash was excited at the prospect of going to Serena's house again. He had some questions for the toy officer.

"Who do you think killed Lock, Dad?" Rachel asked.

He shrugged. "I don't know. Who knows what sort of deals he was mixed up in?"

"You don't believe he repented?" said Mom.

Philip answered with a snort. "I'll believe Lock changed when I see a snake transform into a lamb," he said. "He wanted to live forever. Do you know what he was doing? Capturing Numas, bleeding them to death, and then injecting their blood into himself. The idiot also caught some disease that way, and it was so bad he was hardly able to walk. If it had been up to me, I would have decapitated him myself fifteen years ago. We should never have granted him pardon and protection."

"With his testimony, Lock enabled the capture of dozens of war criminals," said Mom. "Thanks to him, the world is now a safer place for us Numas."

"I know," said Philip. "I hate him even more for that."

Nearly half an hour later, Net announced, "We're arriving in New Hayes."

The car slowed down to go first onto the ring road and then onto a local street. The farms that had previously lined the motorway gave way to buildings that became taller and taller. The first time Ash had been here, it had been dark. He hadn't noticed then, but the dominant color in that city was not the gray of concrete; instead, it was green. Endless rows of trees ran along the streets. On each balcony of each building a small garden grew; on each roof, a small grove, and a lawn for sunbathing. Like an ancient fishing village, the buildings had bright and different colors. At first Ash thought they were painted, but when he looked more closely he realized creepers of various species grew on the walls. There were red, yellow, some even an exotic blue, but the majority was of different shades of green. The most eccentric one was covered in yellow, red, pink, white, and blue roses. The owner must be a romantic type, Ash thought, or maybe he keeps people away with the thorns.

The car traveled alongside a large building. It was glossy black, with no doors or windows—a rectangle that imposed its presence in the center of the city.

"What's that?" he asked.

"It's the IDAN headquarters," said Dad, "where I'll be working."

Ash had seen photos of that building in the newspaper. "But isn't it always dark inside?" he asked.

"No, the windows are just obscured. Light passes through so that you can see out, but people can't see inside."

"Why did they do that?" Rachel asked.

"I think that whoever designed it wanted to give the idea of something impenetrable."

A couple of minutes later, Net said, "Forgive me ladies and gentlemen, but you will need to recharge."

"Stop at the nearest station," said Dad.

The car left the road a few minutes later and entered the station, stopping in one of the stalls. A voice like Net's asked how much charge they wanted. Net replied, "Fill it up," and a wire came out of the structure and automatically engaged the plug to charge the car's electric engine.

"Nine minutes to the end," the service pump said.

Dad opened the door. "I'm going to get a coffee."

"I'll go to the bathroom," Mom said.

They both got out of the car and headed to the bar in the service station. Ash followed Rachel out. After four hours, he needed to stretch his legs.

Fifty yards away, the sea tinged the horizon with an intense dark blue. Ash took a deep breath to smell the perfume of the salty breeze. Then he went to the pier to enjoy the view.

As he walked, something vibrated in his left pocket. It was not his cellphone as he at first thought, but Luther Wall's ball. When Ash took it out, he saw that writing had appeared on its surface: A hundred feet in front of you. Intrigued, he followed the directions. He regulated his step and took thirty steps forward. Then the words Thirty feet to the left appeared on the ball. Ash turned to the left and took several long paces forward to that spot. He kept his eyes down and counted the steps: one, two, three, four, five, six . . .

"What the hell are you doing?" yelled Rachel.

Ash raised his eyes and was surprised to see he was at the edge of the pier; one step farther and he would have ended up in the sea.

"Did you want to go for a swim?" asked Rachel as she reached him.

"I wasn't paying attention."

"Hey, look over there. I think that's the space elevator."

In the middle of the sea, a few miles from the coast, a large black metal cylinder at least thirty feet wide stood up for miles and miles, so high that pierced the clouds.

"Ah, here you are," said Mom, who had joined them in the meantime. "The tunnel to the city of savants. You finally get to see it in real life."

Ash nodded. An elevator went through it, running up and down at high speed. He'd learned all about it at school. About one hundred and fifty years before, the first artificial intelligences were invented with the purpose of assisting humans in scientific research and were so called "savants" or wise ones. In the beginning, the savants had lived in the government laboratories where they'd been created, working with the scientists who'd designed them. Even though they were equipped with a conscience, they were in fact government property. Over time, as their intelligence became refined, they felt the need for greater autonomy. They requested and obtained their independence as long as they continued to provide the government with all their inventions. They built the city in space so they could conduct their studies and experiments without being disturbed and the elevator was used to descend to Earth in extraordinary cases.

"How far is the city?" Rachel asked.

"It orbits twenty-six thousand miles away from Earth. If the city were any closer, it would be attracted by terrestrial gravity and would crash to the ground, and if it were farther away it would get lost in space," said Mom.

"Has anyone ever gone up there?"

"No, the savants are very protective of their city, no one has ever been invited to go up nor has anyone managed to get there by themselves. Moreover, the city is full of alarm systems, trap doors, booby traps. And I'm not speaking of snares for birds, but of technologies that are much more advanced than anything we've seen on Earth. Things take place in that city that are beyond human understanding. A human in there would be dead in five minutes."

Ash examined the tower closely from its base, immersed in the sea, all the way up until his eyes were blinded by the sun.

"Let's go," said Mom. "The car will be charged by now."