The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [218]
He tried to teach me the art of history.
"I was doing books and scripts about the project before the impact," he said. "You're to carry on the story I began. That will be important to whoever follows us."
Except for the gold plate on her flat chest, Tanya's robot-mother looked like all the other robots, but her holo mother was tall and beautiful, not flat-chested at all. She had bright grey-green eyes and thick black hair that fell to her waist when she left it free.
In the classroom tank, teaching us biology, she wore a white lab jacket. In the gym tank, teaching us to dance, she was lovely in a long black gown. Down at the pool on the bottom level, she appeared in a red swimsuit she used to wear into my dreams. There was no real piano, but she sometimes played a grand piano in the tank, singing songs she had written from her memories of life and love on Earth.
Tanya grew up as tall as she was, with the same bright greenish eyes and sleek black hair. She learned to sing the same songs in the same rich voice. We all loved her, or all of us but Dian, who never seemed to care if anybody loved her.
Dian's holo mother, Dr Diana Lazard, was smaller than Tanya's, with a chest as flat as the grey name-plate on her robot. She wore dark glasses that made her eyes hard to see. Her hair was a red-gold color that might have been beautiful if she'd let it grow longer, but she kept it short and commonly hid it under a tight black tam. She taught Dian French and Russian and the histories of literature and art, and showed the rest of us nearly all we ever knew about the old Earth.
"Knowledge. Art. Culture." Her everyday voice was dry and flat, but it could ring when she spoke of those treasures and her fear they would be forever lost. "They matter more than anything."
In her classroom, we put on VR headsets that let her guide us over the world that had been. In a virtual airplane, we flew over the white-spired Himalayas and dived down to the river that had carved out the Grand Canyon and crossed Antarctica to the ice desert at the pole. We saw the pyramids and the Acropolis and the newer Sky Needle. She guided us through the Hermitage and the Louvre and the Prado. She wanted all of us to love them, and all lost Earth.
Dian did. Growing up in her mother's image, she cut her hair just as short and kept it under the same black tam and wore the same dark glasses.
If she cared for anybody, it was Arne.
His clone father, Dr Linder, had been a muscular giant whose athletic scholarships had paid his way to degrees in physics and geology. Just as big and just as smart, Arne ran every day on the treadmill in the centrifuge. He learned everything our parents taught and wore the VR gear to tour the lost world with Dian and played chess with her. Perhaps they made love; I never knew.
We had no children. As much as most of us might have wanted them, they were not in DeFalco's plan. The maternity lab, as Tanya's mother explained, was only for clones. The robots gave us contraceptives when we needed them.
Tanya did. Our biologist, she understood sex and enjoyed it. So did Pepe. From their teens, they were always together, never hiding their affection. In spite of Pepe, however, Tanya was generous to me.
Once, dancing with her in the gym, I was so overcome with her scent and her voice and the feel of her lithe body in my arms that I whispered a confession. With Pepe glaring after us, she led me out of the room and up to the dome.
The Earth was new, a long curve of red fire slashed across the black and soundless night, lighting the dead moonscape to a ghostly pink. In the dimness of the dome, she stripped to reveal her enchantment, stripped me while I stood trembling with a dazed elation.
In the Moon's mild gravity, we needed no bed. She laughed at my ignorance and proceeded to teach me. Expert at it, she seemed to relish the lesson as keenly as I did. We were a long time there, the dance over and only the robots awake when we went back down. Kissing me a long goodnight that I shall never forget, she whispered that with practice