Evolution's Darling

All insane. Mad. All three of them.

He hopes this one's given up sculpting. Never have the knack, makers. Synthesis makes you lazy.

The descent changes to ascent in a clearing with a quaint centerpiece: a fire pit blackened with the residue of old burns. Vaddum allows his climb up toward Beatrix to be delayed by amazed pleasure at her work. She has grown these ten years, bringing an environmental complexity to her pieces. None is an individual sculpture. The trees are linked by a canopy of aerial moss, a lush web of bright, black filaments. They have the same carbonic reflectiveness as sensory strands; they glisten like coal. Staring up into this sky-pierced mesh, he thinks of great Jovian drift nets, of veiled NaPrin assassins, of municipal murals based on comm system schematics. Yes, that moss is a nice addition. It makes you look up through the trees, like you do in a real forest.

But still a student, really, of the Vaddum style.

He smiles to himself. There are worse things to be.

Beatrix is a lofty waterbird, wearing stilt-like legs to reach the top of an incomplete piece. She hails him from above.

"You're early today!"

There's nothing to say to that. She has her memory here in heaven, it seems.

"I tired of admiring from afar."

Arms and torque extension spread for balance, she kneels… then the kneeling becomes standing, knees becoming feet, as her legs fold into themselves. She's still taller than Vaddum.

"I live or die by your approval," she says, without a gram of guile.

"The moss, the canopy, whatever you call it. It's good."

"Thank you," she bows. How nice for her, he thinks, to hear the same compliments every day, yet to know they aren't drab repetitions of established sentiment.

"More of an environment," he continues. "Always thought of my sculptures as separate, distinct."

"You used to sell them," she says. A hint of remonstrance.

He nods, another realization about this place taking form. Heaven is secret. A sanctuary from the forces that destroyed the Maker. No one will ever see this work. At least, not for hundreds of years.

That's fine. He can wait. One day at a time.

"Maybe I'll add a bit to mine. Moss."

"Maybe tomorrow," she says, smiling an untroubled smile. Of course, there won't be a tomorrow, not really. Just this morning's work, this trek, this conversation again in one of its many variations.

"What went wrong with me? My memory?"

She folds her legs another notch, and looks up at him from the child-like height he remembers. Her secondary arm reaches out its spider of fingers to touch his blastplate.

"You were tired. You said you wanted out, to die. It had been too long for you, your life."

"And now?"

"Now, you're happy every day, except for this bit, when you first see how I've changed. But your work proceeds, still as refined and original as ever."

"Scant changes, for ten years' work," he complains.

"There's time in heaven. You have a glacier's life of time, my dear. And this," she gestures with primary arm at her section of forest, "has all had the benefit of your advice, your afternoons with me."

"But what happened to me? Malfunction?"

"The copying process has an effect; it subtly heisenbergs your core. Not enough to notice, unless other measures are taken. The slightest brainwipe, and you became as you are."

"That bastard, Darling." Fucking dealers. Like critics, they always want the last word.

"No. You were unhappy, wanted to die. That's why you let mother sell your sculptures. You'd tainted one with an anachronism, remember? You knew they'd come."

Vaddum feels a moment of shame. Caused trouble not only for the Maker, but for Hirata Flex, too. Poor woman.

"Did Darling… ask me? Before he did this?"

"Yes. You said no. He did it anyway."

"Bastard." A satisfying feeling, certainly, righteous indignation.

"Darling's given you heaven, and the death of memory. You are happy here, you know."

Vaddum looks at her, the warm light of personhood in her eyes. He flinches slightly when he realizes that Beatrix and Darling must be lovers. The way she says his name. That forest-topping canopy of interlinked, searching, grasping strands.

It figures. That bastard Darling has always been a fuck-artist. Even crossed the Turing Boundary while fucking, so he claims.

Vaddum pushes the thought from his mind.

"But all these days: unco

"You'll see. You'll hear the whole story tonight."

Storytelling at bedtime. Like a kid. Even the factory workers used to do it, in that vast, disjointed time before his personhood. So heaven is a second childhood.

He looks at her unfinished tree, makes a few comments to push away his melancholy. And very shortly, he is happy again, arguing for the sport of it, sweeping his eyes over the wonderful expanse of the two joined forests, letting her lift him to make some trivial adjustment.

Hours later, he spots the Maker copy spying on them.

"That bastard still causing trouble?"

"Who? Oh, Memory. That's her name, now. She just watches, mostly, but she'll talk to us tonight."

He snorts. Memory for a name. That's kicking a man when he's down.

The sky darkens before Vaddum gets a chance to return to his side of the forest. He finds too much pleasure in Beatrix's company. Well, he got a fair bit done, and there's time. Eternity.

From the central clearing a fire beckons. Vaddum and Beatrix walk down in the reddening light, pausing frequently to note the sundown's resonances on the valley of metal leaves. Copper burns, platinum flares, the carbon canopy glitters like a snake's eye.

Bastard.

Darling and Memory wait by the fire. The dealer's usually motionless features are animated by the flame. Memory's stealth shielding is similiarly compromised; a fluttering wireframe of lines is visible against the dark background.

For a while, it's good to talk some more, even with the bullshitting Darling with his big ideas. Vaddum realizes he's gotten too old to sculpt all day. Needs a chance to bullshit. They argue over the merits of the NaPrin Romantics, with their flatworld artificial life simulations: civilizations, wars, extinctions under glass; all pointedly just sub-Turing in complexity. (And the more ironic because they are NaPrin, who make machines of people.) Vaddum notes with pleasure that Beatrix takes his side against the literalist Darling.

Memory waits.

They play a guessing game of extrapolated sketches in the sand: what young-dying artist's work would this have been? nVan if he'd won his matrimonial duel; Haring if he'd lived to fifty; Pollock if he hadn't run afoul of technology.

Memory tends the fire with a black-ended rod of glassene, chasing sparks toward the artificial stars.

They discuss a sudden, catastrophic, and strangely unpredicted earthquake on some far-off planet called Petraveil, old news that has finally made its way to this secret place. The geologically slow, indigenous lifeforms of Petraveil are suspected of somehow causing the quake.

Memory bides her time.

The three fold origami birds (Darling's aren't bad, with those sinister sensory skeins of his) and hold them to the fire, letting them fly away, flaming, on its heated column of air.

Finally, the embers burning low, Darling lets the sky blacken and then transpare, letting the real universe in. The sudden brightness! The density of stars! The Milky Way reignites the forest around them, a swollen, boiling river over their heads. This ring has been towed well out of Chiat space. They must be three-quarters to the Core!

A heaven that is thoroughly hidden.

"Look, it's Jack!" cries Beatrix.

A blazing mote burns across the rich canvas of stars, wheeling like a coryphee, shifting directions with a refined unpredictability, ever-changing, as if ru