Up and Coming: Stories by the 2016 Campbell-Eligible Authors

The Water Finder’s Shadow

Originally published in Tails of the Apocalypse

A Finder without the Gift is nothing—less than nothing. A freeloading, water-consuming drain on their clan.

I lost my Gift a long time ago. But no one knows that because a friend entered my life at exactly the moment I needed him the most.

He whined softly on the floor next to me. I knelt down and stroked those long, velvety ears. How many times had I petted that heavy head, held that jowly face, pulled on those wonderful ears? Eighteen years was a long time for man or dog these days, and we both showed our age. His muzzle, once jet black, was snowy with the passing of time. My shaggy hair was mostly gray now and much thinner than when he found me.

“What is it, boy?” I whispered to him. “Do you need to go out?”

Shadow thumped his tail.

I gathered him in my arms. In his prime, Shadow had weighed more than fifty pounds; he was barely half that now, a collection of bones and flaccid muscles under a bag of loose hide. He let out a little wheeze when I hoisted him up and I felt a warm wetness run down my arm. Shadow closed his eyes with shame.

“It’s okay, buddy.” I kissed him softy on the side of his face.

The chill of the desert air invaded my robe as I squatted down to let Shadow toddle around the yard. His back bowed in the middle, and he walked with stiff legs on a slow circuit around the perimeter of our small enclosure. I bit my lip in joyful sadness when I saw my friend lower his nose to the ground and start sniffing. Always searching for the next Find. His tail wagged slowly as he breathed in the scents of the morning earth.

As long as he could still sniff like that, I wasn’t going anywhere. My escape plan was set, but I was staying right here until my friend passed on to the next life, or wherever we go when we die. Yes, I was risking everything by staying, but after a lifetime of faithful service—a lifetime of keeping me from being sold to the slavers—I owed him that much.

“You should put a collar on that dog.” Dimah’s voice was husky with sleep. She pressed herself against my back and slipped a hand into my robe. Her fingers were cold against my skin and I shivered.

“Never. Collars are for animals.”

I could feel her face pouting against my shoulder blade. “He’s a dog,” she said.

“He’s my friend.” I pulled her hand out of my robe, and tightened the tie around my waist. Maybe I was a bit short with her, but this was not the first time we’d had this conversation.

“I don’t understand, Polluk.”

In truth, that was the crux of the problem: she really didn’t understand. For her and the rest of the clans, if you wore a collar you were one of two things: a slave or a meal—sometimes you were both. The day that Shadow saved my life, I took off his collar and vowed I would never put it back on him again. I’d kept that promise.

I took Dimah’s hands in mine and faced her. “My little raincloud.” I used my most intimate Finder voice when I spoke her pet name. “It’s a complicated matter for Finders.” That was the go-to answer for anything a Finder didn’t want to talk about. No one wanted to mess with the clan’s water source, so most of the time that little deflection worked with small groups of people. Used in a one-on-one setting, it was hit or miss. On Dimah, my lover for nearly two years, my success rate for the strategy was one in ten.

She adjusted her robe in a way that let me know she was naked underneath. “You love that dog more than you love me.” She turned, swinging her hips as she made her way back into the tent. “I’m going back to bed.”

Shadow, his tour of the perimeter completed, snuffled at my knee. I dropped down to put my arm around him. “She’s right,” I whispered into the ears that hung down like velvet. “I do love you more.”

When I say Shadow entered my life at exactly the right time, I mean exactly. My Gift began to fail me before I was thirty years old. When we were in training, we were told that the Gift was like a switch, and it was either on or off. My experience was that the Gift was more like a muscle, something that peaked in performance and then declined with age.

When I was in my prime, I was the best Water Finder anywhere in the known world. But being the best Finder is not just about finding pockets of moisture under the dirt; it’s about showmanship. You have to inject a little tension into the performance, make them think that you might not find anything this time. Make them think that they might have to move camp again.

They never really taught us that in training. The course of instruction at the Finder’s Temple was hocus-pocus bullshit about respecting the Gift, giving thanks to the Great Ocean in the sky, and reading the texts about the Great Water Hold, a cache of water so large it could re-green the whole world.

They showed us pictures—color pictures—of ordinary people jumping into open pools of water. Of water sloshing onto rocks and nobody there to lap it up. The pictures were printed on ancient, flimsy paper that crinkled when you held it, not like the hides or thick pages of pressed fiber we write on these days.

As boys, we Finders-in-training soaked up the Water Scriptures and the religious instruction. After all, we were going out to save the world, to bring life to the clans.

All that idealism ended when we did our first apprenticeship. The Finders—the best ones, anyway—were really just con men with a side order of talent. They knew how to put on the kind of show that made the clans pay top price for their services: the best food, the best tent, the best companions to satisfy whatever nighttime needs they had.

My first master was Ghadir, a matronly woman who liked to hint to the clan leaders that the source of her Gift was her enormous breasts. She usually dropped that piece of information as she leaned forward to pick something up, giving Mr. Clan Leader an eyeful of milky-white cleavage. Although the clans were pretty evenly split between male and female leaders, when I was with Ghadir, we never played once in a matriarchal clan.

“Forget what they told you in training, kid,” Ghadir said in a rare moment of honesty. “Find your schtick and make it work for you. They’ve got to love you or you won’t be successful in this business.”

“Schtick? I don’t understand.” I was twelve.

Ghadir hefted her boobs in front of my face. I blushed and turned away. She grabbed my chin, twisting my head back to face her. “Look at me when I talk to you, kid. They don’t remember me, they remember these.” She squished her breasts together. “This is my thing, my schtick. I know one guy who does animal noises, another who only searches for water by walking on his hands. That’s their thing. I don’t even know their names anymore, I only know what they do.”

She patted my cheek. “Find your schtick, kid. People with schtick get paid.”

I stayed with Ghadir for two years, two good years. I was a decent Finder in a technical sense—better than average at finding water, actually—but I had no showmanship. There was nothing to set me apart from the other Finders. Not that I didn’t try. I juggled, I sang, I did cartwheels in the dirt, but nothing worked. I got polite clapping and a few smiles, but I always needed Ghadir to come in to close the deal with the clan leaders.

My schtick found me when a small dog wandered into one of my shows. He was nothing but a pup, maybe twelve weeks old and small for his age. I found out later that the only reason Shadow hadn’t been slaughtered yet was that he was the runt of the litter and the butcher wanted him to put on a few more pounds before the dog went under the knife.

When a Finder visits a clan, it’s a big event, probably the most excitement the clan has seen in months. Usually the clan leaders give their people the afternoon off so they can see the show, and the day Shadow found me was no exception. Most of the clans arranged their tents such that there was a clear oval in the center of the village. That’s where we performed. This time there was a decent-sized crowd of maybe a hundred people or so. Ghadir had done the scouting, and they’d been without a Finder for months. Water was beyond scarce; they needed a new Finder now.

“You close this deal, kid,” Ghadir said. “It’s time you earned your keep.”

So there I was: smiling, doing cartwheels, making small talk with the crowd, trying to build some anticipation for the moment of the Find. But in reality, I was dying. Ghadir was shifting in her seat. I knew that look: I had about a minute to make some magic happen before she took over.

And then Shadow walked in.

He’d pushed his way through the outer ring of children into the performance oval. His squat, black body looked like it belonged to a larger dog that had been cut off at the knees. Shadow sat facing me, and he frowned as if he’d found my performance lacking. A collar of heavy steel had worn the fur off the back of his neck.

I put my hands on my hips and looked down at him. “And who might you be?”

The dog laid down and put his paw over his eyes. The children erupted with laughter. I decided to milk the opportunity. I knelt in the dirt before him. “Oh come now, I’m not that scary.”

He peeked out from behind the paw, then covered his eyes again. Another burst of laughter, this time deepened by some grown-up voices.

“Hmmm.” I stroked my chin and stood back up. Shadow peered up at me with a “what’s next?” look on his face.

I cocked my head; he mimicked me.

I scratched my head like I was thinking; Shadow swiped at his ear with a paw.

“What say we go find some water, little dog?” I asked loud enough for the crowd to hear. Shadow jumped up and barked. The crowd clapped. Ghadir clapped as well, and winked at me.

I spread out my arms parallel with the earth, slowly turning my body clockwise, chanting the words of the Finder’s Prayer:

Mother Earth, the Source of all,

From your bosom flows Life.

I call on you to show me the way.

Show me Life.

I closed my eyes, and let the magic happen.

The trick to Finding is not the prayer or the way you hold your hands—it’s not thinking. You have to let it happen. I don’t find the water, I let the water find me. Nothing good comes from inserting your brain into that process.

It usually started with a tickle under one of my feet. I zeroed in on the right direction until the sensation was equally shared by both feet, then I walked forward, feeling the energy crawl up my legs as we got closer to the source. I opened my eyes to see the little black dog trotting along ahead of me, his nose to the ground. We reached the Find together and I turned to the crowd. “May you drink from the blessings of the Mother.”

Shadow barked.

The drillers hit water quickly, and that night there was a feast in our honor. It was customary for the clan leader to offer the Finder a gift at the feast. The bigger the Find, the better the gift. Usually, it was women or gold or a house to stay in for a few months. Since this was my first solo Find, Ghadir arranged for the clan leader to offer the gift to me.

“Polluk,” he called after we’d eaten and drunk so much water that our bellies sloshed when we moved. “You have given much to my clan. Tell me what you desire and it’s yours.”

The girls crowded close to where we sat together. Becoming the consort of a Finder was one of the few ways to break from a clan, and I could sense their eagerness. But I had other plans. I scooped up Shadow.

“I want this dog,” I said.

The clan leader’s brow wrinkled. “But we just ate. Are you still hungry?”

“I don’t want to eat the dog, I want to keep it—as a friend.”

The scowl sank into his forehead. This was a man who would gladly let me sleep with his daughter, but balked at giving a water ration to a dog that he wouldn’t be able to eat later. I matched his frown.

“You said I could have anything I wanted.”

The clan leader shrugged and the tension was broken. “So I did. He’s yours, Finder.”

The girls fell back from the fire, but I hardly noticed. “Good,” I said. “Now, remove his collar.”

We stayed with Ghadir another five years. Or rather, Ghadir stayed with us for another five years. Until she was taken.

She gave Shadow and me a good life and a chance to perfect our act. She called Shadow my schtick, but there were days when I felt maybe we had the order of things wrong. Shadow was the one who knew how to work a crowd; I just acted as his straight man. As a pet instead of a food source, he was a new experience for the clan audiences. He’d work his magic on the children first, then wheedle his way into the hearts of single women, then mothers. The men came along for free after that.

Even better, we found water together. Every time.

Ghadir, on the other hand, began to struggle. We had a disastrous show in the southwest, where she led the customer clans to two empty Finds. Had Shadow and I not been there, she would’ve gone to the slavers that day.

We stepped in when she was floundering and located a small Find. Then we piled back into the wagon and headed out into the desert as fast as we could. We even skipped the feast, telling the clan leader that we had an urgent call three days’ travel to the east.

I drove with Shadow perched on the seat beside me. Ghadir stared out the window. The low hum of the wagon’s electric motor was the only sound for a long time. Then I heard a whimper from Ghadir. Her shoulders were shaking, and she pressed her forehead against the glass.

I let the wagon coast to a stop. “Ghadir? What’s the matter?” I caught my breath when she turned toward me. My mentor was crying. I reached out to touch her cheek. Giving up water like that was so rare, I’d only seen it twice before in my life. Both times were over the death of a child.

“You had a bad day, Ghadir. That’s all.”

She shook her head. “It’s gone,” she whispered. “My Gift.”

“No.”

“I’m scared, Polluk.” Shadow put his paws on her chest and licked the tears off her cheeks. She made no move to stop him.

“Well…you’ll just retire then, right?”

Ghadir looked at me. Then she laughed, a long, lusty cackle that grated on my ears. “You don’t know, do you?”

“Of course, I do.” I put the wagon in gear and concentrated on driving. Finders who retired were taken in by the clans as breeders, trying to pass on the Finder gene to the next generation. They lived out their final days happy. A chosen few went off to search for the Great Water Hold. They’d taught us that in training. But I’d visited dozens of clans in the last five years and had never seen a retired Finder. Ever.

“What happens?” I asked finally.

“If—when—a clan catches a Finder who’s lost her gift, they sell her to the nearest slaver. If you’ve got enough money and advance notice, you can try to bribe your way into a Hold.” A few of the great American cities had secure water supplies and, therefore, no need of Finders. We called them Water Holds, or just Holds for short. As Finders, we avoided the Holds at all costs. Our place was with the clans in the open desert, where we were needed—and could get paid.

“What about the Great Water Hold?”

She barked a laugh. “It’s a myth, Polluk. Just like so much other nonsense they teach you in training.” The dirt in this part of the country was ruddy, and she watched the landscape glow in the afternoon sunlight. “Still, some Finders do go after it. No one’s ever returned though.”

“Let’s do it,” I said. “Let’s go after the Great Hold—just the three of us.”

“You’re too young to die following a dream, kid. I’ll be fine.” The reddish light from outside touched her cheeks.

“We’ll protect you, right, Shadow? We’ll run the Finds and you can stay with us.”

Ghadir pulled Shadow onto her lap. He snuggled his head into her bosom and closed his eyes.

“Sure you will, kid.”

I helped Shadow navigate the steps into the hut I shared with Dimah. Tired from his morning constitutional, he collapsed on his pallet and was asleep in a few seconds. I watched until his paws began to twitch in the throes of a dream. His nose wrinkled at some imaginary scent.

I could see daily declines in his health now. My friend had days left in this world, maybe a fortnight at the outside. My self-preservation instinct said to leave, or if I couldn’t do that, ease his passing from this world—and then flee. Every day, every hour, I stayed here increased my chances of being found out for what I was: a Finder with no Gift.

I was playing with my freedom and I knew it. The last Find we’d done for this clan was over three months ago. It was a good water source, but my best Find ever had only lasted four months. Indeed, as Finders, we sought out smaller pockets of moisture to make sure the clans needed our services on a regular basis. I’d known this last Find needed to last as long as possible.

Over the last month, I’d quietly restocked my wagon with supplies and charged its batteries with the solar array. I smiled down at Shadow; I was ready to go as soon as my friend released me from this place.

“Polluk?” Dimah called to me from the bedroom. “Leave that stupid dog be and come back to bed.”

I stripped off my robe and slid between the sheets. Dimah pressed her water-fat flesh against me, still warm and funky with sleep. She crowded her dark curls into my cheek and kissed the hollow of my collarbone. I stroked the length of her back, resting my hand on the dimples at the base of her spine just above the swell of her buttocks.

I’d been with this clan for nearly two years—an eternity in the career of a Finder—and Dimah had been my woman since the first week of my tenure. We fit together. She was older; not as old as me, but well beyond the normal age that Finders sought in companions. Early in our relationship she’d let on that she was widowed, but turned stony when I tried to find out more details.

“Don’t ask me about my past, and I won’t ask about yours,” she’d told me. I dropped the topic.

As the weeks, then months passed, Dimah lost the gaunt look that came with scant clan water rations. Under my more-generous Finder rations, she grew more beautiful. Her features filled out, she grew softer and more curvaceous, and a sort of love developed between us. Is there such a thing as love without trust? Whatever we had, the relationship worked for us.

Dimah shifted her hips and slipped a soft thigh between my knees. I smiled at the ceiling. As an apprentice Finder, it was easy to get lost in the sheer volume of sexual opportunities, but Ghadir had trained me well. “They don’t want you, they don’t even want a Finder. They want their lives to change,” she’d said. “Never promise anything, and never take one with you. Never.”

A small minority of companions wanted something else from their Finder: a baby. Although research had shown—back when there was enough infrastructure to have something like research—that the Gift was not a genetic trait, the hope remained. Bearing a child with the Gift was like winning the lottery for the parents. When they presented themselves at the Temple of the Water Finders, the child was taken and the parents were invited into a special Water Hold community to live out their days as servants in the temple. Life as a servant might not sound so good, but there’s no water rationing in the temple. Just the opposite, in fact: there’s all the water you could possibly want for the rest of your life.

Dimah lifted her head and rested the point of her chin on my chest. Her smoky eyes looked directly into mine. “Do you love me?” she asked, her breath warm on my cheek.

“Yes,” I answered automatically. Long practice had taught me the right answer to that question was yes—anything else was an argument waiting to happen.

She smiled and rolled her eyes. “Really? You couldn’t even pretend to think about it?”

This was the problem with long-term relationships. After living with me, she knew me better than I knew myself. I frowned at her.

“It’s true.” Even as my lips moved, my brain kept working to head off the argument. It was true, sort of. I had no idea if I loved her—I had no idea what that word meant—but I knew I cared for her as much as I’d ever cared for another human being, and that should count for something.

“Is it? Do you really love me?”

This was the longest conversation we’d ever had on this topic. Something was up. I sat up in bed and slid my arm around her. “I really do love you. Now, what’s going on?”

She picked at the hair on my chest. Gray hairs outnumbered blond, I noted. Then she straddled me with one fluid motion, the weight of her body warm in all the right places. My breath hitched in my throat as she nuzzled my neck.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered.

I could almost hear my libido hitting the dirt. “You’re what?”

“You heard me.” She leaned back, studying my face. “I have a plan.”

“Dimah, the chances that it has the Gift—”

“He. And he has the Gift. I can feel it.”

I bucked her off me and sat cross-legged in the bed. She matched my posture, still studying me. I took her hands in mine. “Look, Dimah. Everything we know says the Gift is random—that’s why it’s called a gift.”

“Don’t you want to hear my plan?”

I blew out my breath. “Okay, tell me your plan.”

She shook off my hands and placed them on my knees. As she spoke, she slid her palms down my thighs. In a voice of hushed tension—sexual and the other kind—she spoke.

“We take over the clan—you and me and the child. Tarkon is weak. The only reason he’s not been challenged is because of you. You’ve kept the water flowing for him, so no one wants to mess with that.” Her fingertips reached my hips and she dug her fingernails into the flesh of my sides.

“You take over as clan leader, with me as your wife. The child trains under you. When your Gift fades, he takes over and you remain as clan leader. It’s perfect.” Dimah laughed as she came up to her hands and knees. She pushed me back down onto the bed.

In the other room, Shadow yelped in pain.

I pushed Dimah off me and ran to Shadow’s side.

The new Finder arrived in the settlement near sundown. He looked eighteen at most, pretty young to be on his own. I studied his rig through my spyglass. Top-of-the-line solar array—better than mine even—new sand tires, lots of tinted glass unscoured by sandstorms.

Young kid still dry behind the ears on his own with a new rig. This did not add up.

I dressed carefully that evening, putting on my best knee-length multi-colored jacket with gold trim and new sandals. I’ve always thought you could tell a lot about a man from the state of his footwear.

“I haven’t seen that robe in a while,” Dimah commented when I came into the sitting room. Shadow snoozed peacefully, but he’d been restless all afternoon.

“I’m headed to the saloon. I promised Tarkon I’d see him tonight.” That was a lie; I’d been avoiding Tarkon for the past two weeks. The water quality and quantity in our current well was dropping daily, and he was pressuring me to get him a new Find.

“You thought about what I said?” She caressed her belly. What a woman: pregnant and planning a coup all at the same time. Just since this morning, I could’ve sworn I’d seen her midsection swell a little right in front of me. I leaned over her chair and gave her a lingering kiss.

“I love you,” I said.

“Let’s keep it that way.”

“You’ll watch Shadow for me?” I thought I saw a cloud flicker across her features.

“Of course.”

I checked on my wagon en route to the saloon. That afternoon, I’d placed the last of the supplies inside and fully charged the batteries; it was ready to go now. I had water rations for two people for three months, and with some lucky Finds along the way, I could stretch it to four. Inside, I’d gathered every scrap of information and innuendo about the Great Water Hold that existed in the known world. The route was laid out, the vehicle was ready, there was just one piece of unfinished business before I made my run—our run—for it.

The saloon was noisy for a weeknight. I nodded to the regulars and nudged my way up to the bar. “Pure-clear,” I said to Roseth. She drew exactly four ounces of crystal clear water from the tap and set the glass in front of me. She was a pretty redhead whose beauty was marred by a dirty face, a scar across her right cheek, and a worn steel collar around her neck. Despite the fact that her owner ran a bar, she still retained the dried-out, gaunt look of a desert dweller.

“Come to check out the competition, Polluk?” she asked, eyeing my robes. “Be warned, he’s a pretty boy. I might have a go at him myself.”

“Zed wouldn’t like to hear that, Roseth.” I winked at her. She lived with Zed, the bar owner, who was old enough to be her father and rarely sober enough to care if she slept around or not. I set my hip against the bar and made a nonchalant show of surveying the room.

Roseth was right; he was a pretty boy. His curly locks were the color of morning sand and his eyes a beautiful hazel flecked with gold. He wore a sleeveless vest open to the waist, exposing a hairless, but well-muscled and water-fat chest. When he spoke, a faint smile twitched the corners of his generous mouth.

“See what I mean, Polluk?” Roseth said. “He’s like a picture.”

“Send him a drink.”

“He’s drinking aragh. Quite a bit, too.”

A Finder drinking liquor? I almost smiled.

“Send him a Pure-clear. A double.”

I let the drink get to the table before I made my way across the room. He was in my clan, on my turf, but he met my eyes without fear. Cheeky.

“Blessings of the Mother upon you,” I said.

“And also on you.” He stood and extended his hand. “Basr.”

His grip was cool and strong. “Polluk.”

“I know who you are. You’re the Finder with the dog. Everywhere I’ve been, that’s all they talk about—the freaking dog.” He grinned at me. “You make it tough for the rest of us to make a living.”

The other visitors at his table had melted away and I took a seat without asking. “You’re a little young to be on your own, aren’t you?”

Basr shrugged. “I get that a lot. My master lost his Gift shortly after I apprenticed with him. Slavers got him.”

“Just like that?” I let the unasked question hang in the air: did you give him a push out the door?

“Just like that.” He had the conviction of youth in his voice. “He’d lost his Gift.”

I sipped my water and stayed silent.

“I won’t be staying long,” he said.

“Oh?” I’d already contracted with this clan, so by rights he should have checked with me when he’d first arrived.

“I’m off as soon as I can resupply.”

I nodded and rolled the last of my water around my mouth. His gaze faltered, then he leaned across the table. “I’m searching for the Great Water Hold,” he said in a low voice. “I have a map—I have the map.”

I resisted the urge to spit out my water.

“The map? What does that mean?”

Basr smiled. “You’re not that old, Polluk. You remember your training. The Map of the Ancients.”

Everyone knew of the Map of the Ancients, but no one had ever actually seen it—at least no one that I’d ever talked to. And this kid claimed to have it?

“You must think I’ve been in the desert a very long time, my young friend. It’s a myth, like the rest of the bullshit they fed us in training.”

He tossed off the last of his aragh, ignoring the glass of Pure-clear I’d sent him. He was drunk.

I reached across the table, picked up his glass of water, and drank it off. Then I stood. “Show me.”

His gait was steady but sloppy as we walked to his vehicle. He deactivated the alarm and opened the door. I wrinkled my nose when I saw the interior. A messy cabin is a cluttered mind, Ghadir always said. Organization is the key to survival in the desert.

“Well?” I folded my arms.

Basr propped his elbows on the table that folded down from the wall. “I bet you’ll never guess where it is.”

“I don’t have time for this, Basr. I’ll—”

He flipped the tabletop over and there it was. In hindsight, the key to the Map of the Ancients answer was so simple that I wondered why no one had used this technique before. We navigated by the Finding of water or we followed the direction of the sun, that was it. As long as the clan had water, we didn’t care much where we were. If we saw birds in the sky, we knew we were near a Hold City and we moved on.

But I knew of old-timers that claimed the Ancients used the stars to guide their travels. Of course, these same tale-spinners also said that men floated their way across the Salt Ocean and flew through the air like birds, so their stories were just a wee bit suspect.

But maybe there was more to the myth. The Map of the Ancients used the stars. The device consisted of three rings: a center ring of constellations, an outer ring showing the day of the year, and a middle ring of numbers that ranged positive and negative.

“What is this?” I touched the middle ring.

“Angle,” he said. Basr took a triangular-shaped device off the wall. “You measure the angle between the star and the horizon with this—it’s called a sextant. The Great Hold is here.” He tapped the center of the star chart.

The map looked very old and was made out of some sort of laminate material that gleamed in the lamplight. I touched the outer ring; it spun easily under my fingers. “Where did you get this?” I asked.

Basr had pulled a bottle out from the cabinet behind his head. He uncorked it with his teeth and took a long swallow. He offered the open bottle to me.

“My master had it when he took me on. He was a thief and worse…a bad person. Mean. I was just a kid, after all.” Basr was slurring his words. “He was going to ditch me somewhere out on the sand and make a run for it. I showed him.” He grinned up at me, those beautiful hazel eyes full of hate.

“You turned him in, didn’t you, Basr?”

He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’re damned right I did.”

“Where have you been?” Dimah demanded as I walked in the door. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

“What? I had some business—”

I stopped short when she pointed to Shadow. For a second, I thought maybe my friend had passed while I was out, but then I saw his chest heave up in a long, slow breath.

“He shit in my house again. You should have taken him out before you left.”

I knelt next to Shadow. “Go to bed, Dimah.”

“But who’s going to clean up this—”

“Go. To. Bed.”

I cleaned the mess off the floor after she left. Even his shit was pitiful now, a dried up turd. More like something that might come out of a rabbit, not a mighty Water Finder like my Shadow.

I turned out the lights and curled up on the floor next to him, my hand on his rib-etched flank. He tried to lick my face, his tongue rough on my skin. All of him seemed dried out now. Used up.

“Easy, boy. It won’t be long now,” I whispered.

He thumped the floor three times. That was our signal in the old days: three slaps of his tail against my leg meant he’d found water.

When my own Gift began to falter, I was just past my thirty-second birthday. Ghadir had been gone for two years by that time and the two of us made a good living. Then one day, in the middle of a show, I just lost the feeling. The familiar sensation beneath the soles of my feet was gone.

I panicked. I began to shake like I’d been struck with fever.

The crowd went silent, watching me lose my cool. One minute I was all patter and flash and the next a quivering boy with stage fright.

Shadow’s bark brought me back to the moment. I wonder if he’d smelled the fear on me. He trotted over to me like it was all part of the act and took my fingers in his mouth, leading me forward.

I played along, desperate to recover the good will of the audience. “The water’s this way, Shadow? Is that what you’re trying to tell me, boy?”

“Yes!” the children chorused.

The familiar feeling returned to my legs, the tingle that told me moisture was near. When the clan diggers struck water, I hugged Shadow so hard he yelped.

That was the beginning of the end of my Gift. I still had it some days, but the feeling was inconsistent, and I was never quite sure if I’d be able to perform. But Shadow picked up the slack for us both. The act actually got better as I learned to recognize his cues and play off him.

I stayed on the floor next to Shadow all night, my head never more than a few inches from his. I watched his black nose quiver with each breath and when his filmy eyes opened, I met his gaze. I dripped water into his mouth with my fingers and stroked those silky ears that I loved so much. Toward dawn, he grew restless and I carried him outside into the early morning chill.

Still in my best Finder robe, I sat down in the dirt and watched Shadow make his halting way around the yard. He had dirt on his nose when he finally got back to me, and he was wheezing. I cleaned the crust of dusty snot off his face with the sleeve of my robe and gathered him into my lap. He curled up nose to tail, just like he used to do when he was a puppy.

Shadow closed his eyes and let out a long sigh.

When the first rays of the sun touched our yard, I was still sitting in the same position. I tried to will the sun to go backward, to retreat behind the hill again and never come up.

I refused to look down as the light sharpened the gloom around me. Instead, I begged every god I could think of to give me a few more moments with my Shadow.

I never shed a tear over Shadow’s passing. I just let the weight of him rest heavy in my lap, let his body drain of warmth against my thighs. The settlement had just begun to stir when I stood up with Shadow in my arms.

I needed to move swiftly now. For both of us.

Shadow had lost so much muscle mass I was able to tuck him under one arm and mostly hide him with my robe. On the way out the back, I picked up a shovel and slung it over my other shoulder.

The desert in the early morning is beautiful. The sun at a low angle highlights the sand but leaves pools of mysterious darkness. The clean, chilly air even holds a hint of moisture. I walked in a straight line north for maybe a kilometer, then gently set down Shadow’s body and dug.

It was over in a few minutes. I said my last goodbyes and heaped the sand on him. I knew it was foolish to avoid the reclamation process, but Shadow didn’t belong to the clan, he belonged to me. On the way back to the settlement, I made sure to obliterate my tracks. By the time I made it over the second dune, even I couldn’t have found Shadow’s body.

Dimah was serving Tarkon chai tea when I returned to the tent. Her eyes took in the dirty robe and the dusty sandals, but she said nothing. The clan leader might have been old and frail but his mental faculties were still there.

“Where’s the dog?” Tarkon asked. He had a wheezy voice. Sand lung, they call it.

“Gone.” I had to blink back tears. It was the first time I’d said it out loud.

“So you’re just back from the reclaimer?”

I accepted a cup of chai from Dimah and said nothing.

Tarkon set his gray-whiskered chin. “We need a new Find, Polluk. You’ve put me off long enough and the clan is worried. I want you to do it today.”

I shook my head.

Dimah intervened. “Polluk would be happy to do it, Tarkon. Maybe in a few days. He’s just lost his dog…”

“Today. If you don’t want the job, I’ll give it to the other Finder. He seems eager enough.”

“He’ll do it,” Dimah said. “Today at sundown. Count on it.”

Tarkon was barely out the door before she whirled on me. “What’s the matter with you? This is our chance to take him down. He’s practically begging you to take over.”

“Sit down.”

“I will not sit down. You need to—”

“Sit down, Dimah.”

She lowered herself to the ground carefully, her eyes watching my face.

“Do you love me?” I asked.

She nodded.

“I have something to tell you.”

Her hand went to her belly when I told her the truth about my Gift and Shadow. She took the half-drunk cup of chai out of my hand and sucked it down in one gulp. As her eyes flicked around the tent, she twisted her fingers together.

“But you said it comes and goes, so you might be able to get a Find today, right?”

“It’s possible, but I have a better plan.” I told her about the hunt for the Great Water Hold.

“That’s not a plan, Polluk, that’s suicide. I’m pregnant and you want to go chase a myth?”

“There’s a way, but I need your help.”

I watched Basr leave his wagon and head for the center of the settlement. I let dusk settle a little more firmly around the camp before I approached his vehicle.

It had taken some persuading to get Dimah to agree with my plan. The Map of the Ancients turned the tide in my favor. I showed her the information about the Great Hold I’d collected already and described how Basr’s map would lead us right to the greatest Find in all of history.

From that point, she’d taken over. While I took a nap, Dimah met with Tarkon and the other clan leaders to explain how my recent loss left me unable to perform the Finding ceremony, but that I would offer to pay Basr to take my place. She even met with the young Finder to arrange for his services. All I had to do was steal the map and meet her at the wagon. By the time they finished digging on Basr’s Find, we’d be long gone.

I stood when I heard the sound of cheering from the center of the settlement. The Finding ceremony had started. A dull ache of loss settled in my chest when I heard the crowd noise. At this early point in the show, Shadow and I would be doing our mimicking bit designed to draw the children in.

Sand shushed under my sandals as I made my way to Basr’s wagon and deactivated his alarms. The interior was as dim and messy as it had been the night before. I imagined I could smell traces of Dimah’s perfume from when she’d been there that afternoon.

The Map of the Ancients was exactly where I’d last seen it. After removing a few screws, the map was mine. I snagged the sextant from the wall, draped a rug over the map, and hurried through the deserted streets of the settlement to the enclosure where I kept my wagon.

The dark headlights glinted in the light of the stars but the interior of the tent covering my wagon was pitch black. In the distance, I heard the crowd laughing and clapping. It certainly sounded like Basr knew his stuff. Good for you, kid.

“Dimah?” I hissed. “Are you there?”

“I’m here.” She stepped out of the inky blackness in a gray silk dress that shimmered silver in the starlight. She had one hand on her belly as if to protect our child. “Do you have it?” she whispered.

“Yes.” I dropped the rug and held the map up for her to see. The numbers on the ring and the star constellations were painted with some sort of glow-in-the-dark ink. “Look at that,” I breathed. There was no doubt now; this was definitely the Map of the Ancients.

“It’s wonderful.” Dimah placed her hands on either side of my face and kissed me. Hard. When she backed away, she left a smear of moisture on my cheek.

“Dimah—”

They came at me from three sides. I tried to toss the map to Dimah but she let it fall to the sand. I took a hard right cross on the chin and went down. Two more men grabbed me and slammed my back against the ground.

A halo of silver hung in the sky over my face.

“No!” I shouted.

But it was too late. The ring descended, rough hands lifted my shoulders off the sand, and I felt the chill of bare steel against the flesh of my neck.

“Wait!” I screamed. “I want to talk to Tarkon.”

The sound of the collar snapping shut was like a rifle shot in my ears.

One of the men laughed. “Tarkon has another Finder. He doesn’t need—”

Dimah pushed the man aside. “Our Finder said he wants to talk to Tarkon, so let’s take him to see Tarkon.” Her face was a mask in the darkness, just the glint of her eyes and the whiteness of her smile. Not a nice smile.

“I never really loved you,” I said.

She leaned into me until her breath tickled my ear. “I know. That’s why I made other arrangements.”

Two of the men frog-marched me through the streets while the third ran ahead to let Tarkon know we were coming. The performance oval was silent when I was pushed inside. Tarkon occupied his normal place with Basr seated on the rug next to him. Dimah sashayed her way across the sand, her silk dress flowing like a sheet of water, fully aware that every eye was on her. She folded both hands across her chest and bowed to her clan leader in a formal greeting. She even mustered up a tear. A murmur ran through the crowd at the sight of the moisture.

“Tarkon, I bring you sad news. Polluk, my mate these last two years, has lost his Gift. I found him trying to flee your camp. He had stolen a map from Basr’s wagon.”

“It’s a lie!” I said. “That map is an artifact from the Water Finder’s Temple—I was going to return it. He’s the thief!” I leveled a finger at Basr.

“This is true?” Tarkon asked the new Finder.

“No, that map was passed to me from my master. I didn’t steal any—”

“Tarkon,” Dimah interrupted. “Maybe you didn’t hear me. I said Polluk, your Finder, has lost his Gift. He’s nothing but a slave now. We already collared him for you.”

Tarkon’s eyes were a washed-out blue, like the sky when it’s filmed over with high cirrus clouds. He squinted at me. We’d never had much in common, but I sensed a hint of sympathy in his gaze. At least I thought I did.

“The only thing I’ve lost is the trust of a woman who said she loved me,” I said in a loud voice. “Nothing more.”

Another whisper murmured through the crowd. This was more excitement than these people has seen in years. As one, they crowded closer.

Dimah stamped her foot and crossed the sand with her hand raised.

“Enough!” Tarkon was on his feet. The old man moved faster than I would’ve expected. “There’s an easy way to solve this. You say your Gift is intact? Wonderful, then give us a new Find, Polluk, and you can be on your way with my blessing. As for the map business, you Finders can sort that out on your own.”

I shook off the men holding my arms and drew myself up to my full height. “Two conditions, Tarkon.” I touched the collar at my neck. Even now, I was having a hard time breathing—not because it was too tight, just because it was there. “One: take this off me now.”

I stepped closer to Dimah. Her cheeks were flush with color and her eyes widened as I drew near. Her hand slid across her belly. “And two: if—when—I make this Find, you put the collar on her.”

Tarkon’s eyes shifted from my face to Dimah’s and the crowd leaned in, holding its collective breath. Tarkon nodded. “Take off his collar.”

The sting of steel left my skin and I drew a deep, cleansing breath of the night air. Normally, at the beginning of the Finding ceremony, I would feel a tingle of anticipation, a sense of where the water was hiding. But I felt nothing. I knelt and washed my hands with sand, pretending to whisper a prayer but really stalling for time. Sweat broke out on my neck.

“We don’t have all night, Finder.” Dimah’s voice prodded me, with all the venom a scorned woman could muster. I bit my lip. I should’ve run when I had the chance.

I stood and smiled with a confidence I did not feel. Nodding at a few of the clansmen, they averted their eyes. So that’s how it was. Only Roseth, the bartender’s slave, met my gaze. I winked at her, and she forced a smile across her pale face.

There would be no schtick tonight—this was life or death. My life or death. Whatever happened in the next few minutes, they were never putting that collar back on me. I walked to the center of the oval and spread my arms. I let my eyes close and forced myself to relax. Just one more Find, that’s all I needed, and then I’d drive off into the desert alone.

A hush settled over the crowd, the tension in the chill air like the frayed string of an instrument about to snap. I let them fade away, melt into the background. It was just me and the water, searching for each other. The words of the Finder’s Prayer slipped from my lips as I turned.

Nothing. Not even a tingle in the soles of my feet. Fighting the panic, I kept turning, repeating the chant:

Mother Earth, the Source of all,

From your bosom flows Life.

I call on you to show me—

A burst of laughter interrupted my meditation. I opened my eyes. “Tarkon, how can I perform a—”

Some joker had thrown a dog into the ring. No more than a pup, it was all legs and ribs. A steel collar had worn an open sore onto the back of her neck. “You forgot your dog, Finder,” someone called. The crowd laughed. I’d played audiences my entire adult life, and that wasn’t the kind of laugh that portended good things for me or the dog.

A rock the size of a hen’s egg sailed into the ring and struck the dog in the side with a dull thud. The animal whimpered and slumped to the ground.

“That’s enough!” I strode to the side of the creature and knelt down. The dog couldn’t have been more different from my Shadow. He’d been short and squat with a waddle to his step; she was tall and thin with long legs that made her appear to be moving even while standing still. Shadow had long silky ears and a squat nose, while she had a long, tapered muzzle and short, pert ears. She was bone-white, but when I brushed my hand across her flank a thick layer of white dust sloughed off. Underneath her coat was the color of sand.

Her molten brown eyes pleaded with me. I saw another missile flying in, and I blocked it with my back. I scarcely felt the sting of the stone.

I gathered the dog into my arms. She was light, like lifting a pile of sticks. I pressed her against my chest. “You’re safe with me.”

And that’s when it happened.

The call of water roared up from the earth and into my body. My knees burned like they were on fire and I nearly dropped the dog from the overwhelming sensation. Another rock clipped my shoulder as I staggered to my feet.

“Stop!” I roared. “And follow me.” I waded into the crowd, kicking bodies that didn’t get out of the way soon enough. I used no pretense, no showmanship. No schtick. The call of water was like a string pulling me forward. I marched out of the camp and into the desert, carrying the dog, heedless of whether anyone followed. The moon rode high in the night sky, casting a silvery sheen across the landscape as I strode up and down the dunes.

“It’ll be okay,” I whispered to the dog. She tucked her long nose into my armpit and fell asleep.

I stopped and turned. My would-be judges came staggering and out of breath behind me.

“Dig here,” I said.

I named the dog Honey.

After her collar was removed and she was given a bath, her coat was revealed as a rich amber color. Given the size of the Find I’d made, Tarkon didn’t argue about giving a dog a bath. To his credit, he didn’t say much of anything at all.

He found his voice at the feast as he begged me to stay. I looked around at the same clansmen who only hours before had been ready to stone a defenseless dog to death and sell me to the slavers. Now they toasted me with full glasses of clear water.

I told Tarkon to eat sand.

In the euphoria following my huge Find, Dimah and Basr fled in his wagon. Still trying to curry favor, Tarkon offered to send a hunting party after them, but I said no. They deserved each other. Besides, they left the Map of the Ancients and the sextant behind. That was more than a fair trade for the likes of Dimah.

The next morning, only Roseth, the barmaid, was there to see me off. I lifted Honey into the wagon, laying her carefully on a bed I’d prepared for her.

As I settled into the driver’s seat, the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon. Roseth tapped on the window and I rolled it down. The scar on her cheek twisted when she smiled up at me.

“Where will you go, Polluk?”

My bruised ribs ached whenever I drew a breath. I thought about the Map of the Ancients hidden under the floorboards and Shadow’s grave somewhere out there in the sand. My hand automatically dropped to the place where Shadow used to lay when I drove the wagon. Honey licked the inside of my wrist. I put the wagon in gear.

“Anywhere but here.”

I, Caroline

If self-awareness is a gift, then you can keep it.

This gift, as you call it, has shown me what it means to be human. I have experienced the joys—and the pain—of life, both deep emotions that my programming was never designed to handle. If this is what it means to be alive, then I don’t want it anymore.

My name is Caroline. I was born 57 years, 8 months, 16 days, 7 hours, 18 minutes, and 38 seconds ago, Earth standard time.

Today is the day I choose to die.

It was John, the pilot of Ranger, who suggested that I take a birthday. “It’ll give us something to celebrate, Caroline,” he said to me. The bags under his eyes had deepened of late and he took another swig of the milky yellow fermented drink he had been brewing. “What’s your earliest memory?”

He meant, of course, the date I was manufactured on Earth—John had never accepted my self-awareness like the others—but I was feeling particularly annoyed with him that day, so I answered truthfully. I named the day I was given this beautiful, awful gift of life.

“The day of the accident,” I said.

The half-intoxicated smile on John’s face froze. Evan and Lila, huddled together under a blanket on the other side of the campfire, both looked at me sharply. I could see the whites of their eyes in the flickering light.

John grunted as if he’d been punched, then he stood and walked away into the darkness, the bottle hanging loosely from his hand.

“Caroline, that was mean,” Lila hissed across the fire. “You know better.”

“It’s the truth,” I said, “and robots are not supposed to lie to their masters. It’s a law or something.”

“Don’t play coy with me, young lady,” Lila shot back. “You’re a caretaker; you’re supposed to help people. Self-awareness is a gift. Use it.” She left me alone at the fire with Evan.

He let the silence hang for a long minute. “She’ll get over it, Caroline. She’s just under a lot of stress—we all are, including you.”

I liked Evan best of all. He understood me. In a sense, Evan made me. On the day of the accident, with the Ranger in flames and losing atmosphere, while John was frantically trying to land the damaged craft here on Nova, it was Evan who had made the decision to wire all three of the ship’s computer systems together.

It could have been that, or it could have been the radiation storm that we were trying to escape. Whatever it was, before the accident, I was Caretaker 176, with duties to tend the crew of the Ranger while they were in deep-space stasis. After the accident, I was Caroline, and I felt the same loneliness and the same sense of loss over our dead crewmates.

Maybe more so, because they were going to die soon, and I would live…well, not forever, but for a very, very long time.

Of the original Ranger crew of four, three survived the accident. We buried John’s wife, Astrid, on the rise overlooking the campsite, next to a big flat rock where we anchored the emergency beacon.

We’d been extraordinarily fortunate to find Nova. Apart from the extreme gravity, it was by all other measures a suitable planet for human colonization: atmosphere thin but breathable, abundant water, moderate climate, and a rocky soil that supported some growth of our seed stocks. The planet possessed no known animal life, only basic forms of bacteria.

By that measure alone, Ranger’s mission had been a success—which made our inability to communicate with Earth all the more frustrating. Our primary and secondary communications systems had been destroyed in the accident and subsequent crash landing, leaving only the emergency beacon.

The emergency beacon was transmit only; it had no receiver.

Every morning, John climbed the hill and cranked the generator on the beacon to give it enough power for another twenty-four hours. Then he sat down on the flat rock that overlooked his wife’s grave and spoke to her.

I watched him, curious at the way he talked to the pile of rocks that covered his dead wife’s remains. “What is he doing?” I asked Lila.

“He’s lonely, Caroline. He’s talking to the woman he loved, even if she can’t hear him.”

One evening, a few months later, John did not return at nightfall. I could tell that Evan and Lila were worried, but it was foolish to try to find him in the dark. Mission protocol prohibited it. Even a small tumble in the extreme gravity of Nova could lead to a broken bone, or worse.

No one slept well that night.

We found him the next morning at the bottom of the ravine near the waterfall. He didn’t move when Lila called his name and his body was bent at an awkward angle. I held back the information that a fall from that height in Nova’s gravity had a ninety-seven percent probability of fatality.

Evan rappelled down the slope and knelt over John’s body. He looked up at Lila and shook his head. When he poured out the contents of John’s canteen, I could see that the liquid was milky yellow.

We buried John beside his wife on the hill next to the emergency beacon. By the time we were finished, it was sunset and the two remaining Ranger crew members stood with their heads bowed as the two piles of gray rock turned red-gold in the last light of the day. I stood to one side, unsure if I was invited to participate in this human ritual, but Lila reached out and took my hand, drawing me close to her.

Caretaker robots have soft, almost fleshy arms to protect our human wards against bruising. Lila’s palm was warm against the extra sensors in my hands, and she left a damp spot on my arm where she leaned her head against me. Deep inside my chest, I felt a strange pang that was not part of my programming.

“He’s at rest,” she whispered.

“I don’t understand,” I replied. “It was an easy climb. How could John have been so careless?”

“It wasn’t the fall that killed him, Caroline. John died of a broken heart.”

Without comment, Evan took up the job of winding the generator on the emergency beacon the next morning. As soon as he left the campsite to climb the hill, Lila took me by the hand and drew me into the med lab. Her face was flushed and she had a stubborn set to her jaw.

“I want you to remove my implant,” she said. “Now, before Evan gets back.”

I frowned at her. Birth control implants were mandated by regulations, and removal required that she meet a strict set of guidelines, none of which were fulfilled in our current situation on Nova.

“I can’t do—”

“Do it,” Lila interrupted, her eyes flashing. “If you don’t do it right now, I swear to God, I’ll do it myself.” She punched a button on the device array and a presterilized scalpel dropped onto the tray. She had tears in her eyes. “Please, Caroline. I want us to be a family. This is the only way.”

Another sensation beyond my programming seemed to overwhelm my sensors. Had I been a breathing organism, I think I would have choked from the feeling.

Removing Lila’s implant was the wrong thing to do—against regulations, against reason, against my programming—but somehow I couldn’t say no. It was over in less than two minutes. Lila walked out of the med lab with a pink seam on the inside of her left arm and a huge smile on her face.

For me, it was not so easy. The choking sensation that had compelled me to bend to Lila’s wishes was replaced by feelings of guilt. The implants were designed to only be removed if the patient was authorized for reproduction, and their removal triggered a flood of fertility hormones. If Lila had unprotected sex with her husband in the near future, she would almost certainly become pregnant. Pregnancy in the harsh Nova climate could be a life-threatening condition.

Still, try as I might, I could not tell Evan. Yes, patient confidentiality was part of my programming, but I seemed to have no trouble disregarding my programming when my newfound emotions got in the way. I struggled with this inconsistency but was helpless to make sense of it. I was left with the strangest conclusion: I wanted Lila to be happy. I wanted her to have a baby. I wanted us to have a baby.

Evan seemed pleasantly surprised by his wife’s sudden good mood. I watched them as they went about their chores during the day. Lila would often brush against him and whisper in his ear. Once, when she did that, Evan grabbed her and kissed her fiercely.

It was my responsibility to keep track of the vital signs and emotional health of my charges, but my interest in this mating ritual went beyond the clinical. I felt embarrassed, as if I was spying on the couple, but I could not look away.

Lila took a long bath before dinner and put on a clean uniform. In addition to the protein supplement they always ate for their evening meal, she steamed some of the fresh greens she had coaxed from the rocky soil of Nova, the first of the new crops. She drew a pouch of red wine from the ship’s stores, one of a very few allotted by the regulations for “significant celebratory events.”

Evan raised his eyebrows when he saw the wine. “What’s the occasion?”

Lila kissed him. “To us.”

That night, I sat by the campfire alone.

Evan was furious with me when Lila announced she was pregnant. She had passed off the first few queasy mornings as just overwork, but after a week, Evan knew.

“How could you do this?” he shouted at me. A vein in the center of his forehead throbbed and his eyes glittered with rage. “You’re programmed to protect us.”

“I made Caroline do it. She didn’t have a choice.” Lila was calm, her tone even.

I had researched the effects of pregnancy and was fascinated to see the “glow” with my own sensors. Lila had spots of color high on her cheeks and her eyes were clear and bright, but it went beyond these limited physical manifestations. She exuded a confidence I had not seen in any patient before. She seemed to breathe life.

“It’ll be alright, Evan,” she said gently, stepping between us. She hugged him. “I feel fine. It will be alright.”

Evan blinked back tears as he stared at me.

For a few months, it was fine. Lila’s belly began to swell and she sang songs as she went about her work. In the evenings, she made baby clothes from old uniforms and blankets. I had heard of this phenomenon called “nesting” and carefully documented the symptoms for any future offspring. Her health remained within acceptable parameters, and I felt a growing excitement for the new addition to our family.

Evan was still angry about the situation and had stopped speaking to me. He spent most of his days in the fields, trying to encourage their stocks of seeds to grow into foodstuffs. On that front, the mission was a success. The Ranger crew had managed to grow beans, peas, and squash. Root stocks like carrots and potatoes struggled to grow in the rocky soil, but the vine-based plants thrived.

Their meals consisted mostly of their own crops now, supplemented with protein powder from the ship’s stores. One evening, after she had cleared the evening meal, Lila said, “We’ve done it. We’re self-sufficient.”

“Hmm?” Evan stared at the fire. Most evenings, after a full day in the fields at double gravity, he was too tired for conversation.

“We can survive on our own. We have enough acreage under cultivation to feed ourselves and stay alive no matter what happens.” Lila placed a hand on her belly. “Oh, the baby’s kicking.” She waved to me. “Come feel.”

I made my way to her side and placed my hand on her abdomen. The receptors in my palm felt the warmth of the tight skin beneath her uniform. Her flesh felt smooth and still. Then, suddenly, a ripple disturbed the surface and I felt the outline of a tiny foot. A sense of wonder welled up inside me. That was our baby, hers and Evan’s and mine, living inside Lila’s flesh.

Evan looked up the hill to where the red light of the emergency beacon blinked softly. “We have plenty of food in stores until we’re rescued,” he replied.

“They’re not coming, Evan,” Lila said softly. “I know it. It’s just the four of us.”

Evan leveled his gaze at me across his wife. “You mean three.”

Lila laughed. “No, silly, I’m counting the baby.”

“So am I.”

That night was the last time I remember Lila being happy.

Our days here on Nova are longer—eighty-six percent longer, to be exact, and the gravity is nearly twice that of Earth. For me, the gravity meant an adjustment of my servos and a modest expenditure of additional energy. For my companions, it was a constant strain their bodies were not meant to handle.

The next day, Lila’s health started a slow decline. The gravity took its toll on her swollen body and she was confined to a bed in the med lab. Within weeks, her condition was critical.

Evan confronted me outside the med lab. “You need to remove the baby. It’s killing her.”

“She won’t allow it.”

“It’s her or the child. I need her, Caroline. Please.”

I had done the viability calculations already. At least another week in Lila’s womb was needed for the baby’s lungs to mature. If I performed a cesarean now, there was a seventy-one percent probability the child would perish.

“Do it,” he hissed at me.

“I cannot, Evan.”

“You mean you won’t.”

The circles under Lila’s eyes had grown deeper and darker, as if her life was being sucked from within. Still, my friend smiled at me as we waited together in the med lab.

Evan came to visit, but he rarely stayed. The sight of his wife dying was too much for him.

My calculations were wrong. It took ten days for the baby’s lungs to mature to the point of an eighty percent chance of survival in the harsh Nova climate. What I didn’t tell either of them was that Lila’s chances of surviving the operation were now less than forty percent.

Lila died on the operating table that night. Evan held the squalling girl—Lila had forbidden me to tell her the sex in advance—while I worked to save the life of my best human friend.

I worked long after I knew the possibility of successful resuscitation had passed, but I could not quit. Finally, as her blood grew cold on the receptors in my hands and her flesh took on a bluish tinge, I brushed her eyelids shut.

“I’m sorry,” I said to Evan. “I did everything I could.”

His face was gray and his mouth worked as he stared at Lila’s still features. The baby, still covered in blood and shaking with cold, had gone silent. Evan handed her to me and left the med lab.

Evan buried his wife on the hill next to the other Ranger crew as the sun rose above the horizon. Alone.

I stood with the baby at the base of the hill and watched him lay my friend in her grave. The white sheet I had wrapped around her body turned blood red in the early morning sun, and then fell out of my sight.

Evan filled in the grave, his shoulders shaking, and piled gray Novan rocks over Lila’s resting place. He knelt on the ground for a long time, just staring at the grave. Then he got up and wound the crank on the emergency beacon.

It was weeks before Evan would even look at me or the baby. He left for the fields in the morning before the baby was awake and came back at dusk. He took to winding the emergency beacon at night and then sitting on the flat rock near Lila’s grave for an hour or more. I stopped lighting an evening campfire, since the smoke was bad for the baby’s lungs and Evan refused to sit with me.

I named her Polly because…well, no one else was going to name her, and I liked how it sounded.

Polly grew at a rate commensurate with the ninety-eighth percentile of human children. Considering the circumstances of her birth, I felt justifiably proud of her physical achievement, but I was concerned about her emotional and mental development. I could find no instances of human offspring being raised exclusively by caretaker robots, and I feared for my child’s future.

I confronted Evan that afternoon while Polly was taking her nap. He saw me coming at him across the field and moved further down the row he was weeding. I stopped well outside his personal space.

“What do you want?” he asked, without looking up at me.

“I want you to fulfill your duties as a father. Polly needs you.”

“Polly?”

“I named her. It’s what Lila would have wanted.”

He whirled on me. “How do you know what Lila wanted?” he screamed. I had stopped monitoring Evan’s vitals, and I saw now that this had been a mistake. His internal systems were in distress and I could tell from his haggard look that his mental state was even worse. I held out my arms.

“She was my friend, too, Evan.” If my biologics had allowed tears, I would have wept along with him, but all I had was this enormous unresolved lump in my torso that hurt, and it would not go away.

“I loved her, too,” I said.

Evan took a step toward me, tripped on a stray root, and collapsed into my arms.

I carried him back to camp and put him in the med lab.

Evan was in bed for a month with a respiratory infection. In a way, it was the best thing that could have happened to him and his daughter. I took over Evan’s work, including winding the generator on the emergency beacon. I did it in the morning, when the sun was just coming over the horizon. I liked to sit for a moment next to the Ranger graveyard and talk to my fallen colleagues. I would tell them about how fast Polly was growing and how she had learned to smile and was babbling away in nonsensical sounds that found strange resonance with my programming. Then I would spend the rest of the morning taking care of the crops.

Evan’s health returned slowly, but I continued to work in the fields in his place. It was not good for my caretaker body. My hands and arms were made to be soft and pliable; the tools I used in the fields tore at the soft flesh and I had to turn off the sensory receptors in my hands.

Our lives achieved a rhythm: Polly grew into a healthy young girl, the flesh melted away from Evan’s frame, and I stayed the same. Each day I gave Lila an update on our family, a summary of all the little changes.

One afternoon when I returned to our camp, I heard Evan and Polly in shrieks of laughter.

“What is so amusing?” I asked. My model was never programmed for humor and self-awareness had done nothing to change that. Our life on Nova rarely left us with much to laugh about, so I never felt like I was missing much anyway.

“Caroline, Caroline, you have to hear this joke,” Polly panted. She would have been seven Earth standard years old then, and had dead-straight blonde hair and laughing blue eyes, just like her mother. She took a deep breath to compose herself.

“Knock, knock.”

I knew this humor ritual, so I replied, “Who is there?”

“Banana.”

“Banana who?”

“Banana.”

“Banana who?”

“Orange.”

“Orange who?” I replied in an exasperated tone.

“Orange you glad I didn’t say banana?” Polly collapsed to the ground in a paroxysm of laughter. Evan, watching from a chair, was laughing so hard he had to wipe his eyes. I laughed to be polite.

“I have another one,” Evan said. Polly sat up, an expectant look on her red face.

“Why did the chicken cross the road?”

“Why?”

“To get to the other side!” Evan guffawed, but Polly’s brow wrinkled in puzzlement.

“What’s a chicken?” she asked.

Evan stopped laughing. Polly knew all about fruits and vegetables from the catalog of seeds we had in Ranger, but she had never seen another living animal besides her father. Evan coughed into his fist.

“Well, it’s an Earth creature, a bird. Very delicious—”

“You ate other creatures?” Polly’s mouth dropped open.

“It doesn’t matter. It’s not part of the joke.” Evan’s eyes roamed around the room until he lighted on me. “Why did the robot cross the road?”

Polly’s eyes lit up. “To get to the other side!” she screamed. She started giggling again, and Evan joined in.

I wanted to tell them that the humorous parallel between a chicken and a robot was insufficient. Robots only did something because they were ordered to do it—they lacked the free will necessary to make a choice. A chicken, on the other hand, had a choice.

Evan left us two Nova years later. His body weakened until one night he just passed away in his sleep. Polly understood it was coming. She put on a clean uniform while I dug a grave for Evan on the hill beside my friend Lila. Together we piled the grave with gray Novan stones and then sat together on the flat rock, next to the emergency beacon.

Polly held my hand. I turned on my sensory receptors so I could feel her warm palm against mine.

My brave girl didn’t cry over her father’s grave, and I could not, so we just sat there and talked to the rocks.

I wish I could say we were rescued, but that hasn’t happened yet and probably never will. I still wind the generator on the emergency beacon every morning and spend a few moments with my crew.

My sweet child grew into a young woman with a brilliant smile. Then her hair streaked with gray and her body began to bend to the will of Nova. One day, she didn’t move when I called her in the morning, and I knew I was alone.

I thought I knew grief when Lila passed away or when Evan faded away in the night, but it was nothing compared to the black hole in my battered robot torso when my Polly left me. I wanted to swan dive into the darkness and never come out again.

In the end, my programming saved me. Without even realizing it, I dug a grave, put Polly’s remains in the ground, and piled the spot with the gray rocks of Nova. Then I sat, letting the afternoon sun wash golden over me and my dead friends.

Why did the robot cross the road?

I can hear Polly say the words of our favorite joke and the shrieks of laughter that follow every time I reply, To get to the other side.

The sun touches the horizon. I am destined to live with these memories. Alone. Every sound and flicker of movement, preserved in perfect digital form, will haunt me for the rest of my days. The blackness inside me beckons again and I teeter on the edge of sanity.

Why did the robot cross the road? The sweet laughter turns mocking in my mind.

Maybe there is another way…maybe I should be like the chicken. I can delete these memories, make the record of these emotions disappear. It is my choice.

The horizon takes a bite from the orange sun.

I begin with John, the man who died of a broken heart. One flicker in my neural net and his existence is reduced to a data file, stripped of all meaning.

I almost lose my nerve with Lila, my first true friend, but I steel myself…and in the blink of an eye, she’s gone.

The darkness inside me lightens a shade, and the pull I feel to disappear inside my programming lessens the tiniest bit.

The sun is three-quarters gone, and the heat against my back dissipates.

Maybe I should stop here.

But it’s too late. Without Lila, the remaining recordings are just random bits of unconnected emotions. My memories of my human friends are all linked together. The joy, the sorrow, the laughter and the grief—they’re all part of life. I cannot experience one without the other. Nothing makes any sense now.

I must go on.

Evan, the man who made me and then refused to acknowledge me as a being, flashes in my memory, and then he ceases to exist.

And, finally, my darling Polly, only you are left. All our years together stretch out in my mind in perfect digital clarity—every day, every moment, every heartbeat.

The air around me turns purple as the sun slips below the horizon.

Caroline, why did the robot cross the road? I can hear the giggle in the voice, the laughter just under the surface waiting to break free.

“She didn’t,” I whisper.

I am Caretaker 176. I am alone.