Architects of Emortality - Brian Stableford [25]
In spite of all this, Magnus knew that he must somehow have faith in the assertion that what surrounded him, as he slept beneath the stars, really was a part of the authentic soul of the world. He had to believe that the gene banks had merely been a phase in an evolutionary story that stretched back from the present to the magical day when life had first ventured forth from the littoral zones of the primordial ocean to embrace the land.
Like all good Gaeans, Magnus preferred to think of that adventure as an “embrace”; he had always hated to hear it described as a “conquest.” Had he not been assailed by such troublesome doubts, Magnus would not have been delighted to receive an unexpected visitor—but it happened that he was assailed by doubts on that particular night, and that his visitor brought welcome relief.
When Magnus first heard the noise of the newcomer’s approach, he could not help the reflexive twitch of his hand which impelled it toward the place where his dart gun lay hidden, but he suppressed the impulse readily enough. Within the dome, he was invulnerable to attack by any creature which had only teeth and claws to use as weapons. When he saw that the approaching figure was a human woman, however, a different set of reflexes was immediately invoked, and he tumbled from his bed with indecent haste.
By the time the woman had come through the protective undergrowth, Magnus had framed his protests, but they were halfhearted, motivated by shame that she should have come upon him naked in a transparent tent rather than by annoyance at the violation of his privacy.
“You shouldn’t have come,” he said when he had let her in—having partly clothed himself, although he still felt more than a little exposed. “It’s dangerous to walk through the forest by night.” “I was lonely,” she said. “My dome’s only a couple of kilometers from yours, and it seemed foolish to endure the loneliness when company was so close to hand. By day, the nature of our work confines us to our own tracts, but that’s no reason why we can’t get together in our own time. There is a track, after all—it’s not as if I had to hack my way through thorny bushes and sticky creepers with a machete. I would have called to tell you I was coming, but that damned silver of yours wouldn’t let me through. You really should instruct it to allow a few exceptions.” Magnus didn’t have the heart to tell her that if he had been disposed to file a list of people exempted from the silver’s stalling strategy, her name would not have been among them. She was undeniably lovely—her eyes were perfectly delightful, her flowing hair absolutely magnificent—but he hardly knew her. He had never seen her at the base, nor had he even noticed her name in any of the documents that flitted across his busy screens. Had she not taken it into her head to begin making these mercifully infrequent journeys from her LSP tent to his, he would probably never have become aware of her existence, let alone made love to her. But even in the depths of his beloved forest he could take comfort from genuine human warmth, and she did seem genuine, in that naive fashion that only the authentically young could manifest.
They talked for a while, as they always did. She liked him to talk and never thought him pompous or foolish.
She was not a Natural, but she was one of the committed ones, one of those who understood—or was, at least, capable