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  PRAISE FOR THE WRITING OF PAMELA SARGENT

  “Sargent is a sensitive writer of characterization rather than cosmic gimmickry.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “One of the genre’s greatest writers.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  “Pamela Sargent is an explorer, an innovator. She’s always a few years ahead of the pack.”

  —David Brin, award-winning author of the Uplift Saga

  “Over the years, I’ve come to expect a great deal from Pamela Sargent. Her worlds are deeply and thoroughly imagined.”

  —Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

  “Pamela Sargent’s cool, incisive eye is as sharp at long range, visionary tales as it is when inspecting our foreground future. She’s one of our best.”

  —Gregory Benford, astrophysicist and author of Foundation’s Fear

  “If you have not read Pamela Sargent, then you should make it your business to do so at once. She is in many ways a pioneer, both as a novelist and as a short story writer. … She is one of the best.”

  —Michael Moorcock, author of Elric of Melniboné

  “[Sargent is] a consummate professional [who] exhibits an unswerving consistency of craft.”

  —The Washington Post Book World

  Alien Child

  “An excellent piece of work—the development of the mystery … is well done. Ms. Sargent’s work … is always of interest and this book adds to her stature as a writer.”

  —Andre Norton, author of the Solar Queen series

  “Count on Pamela Sargent to write a science fiction novel that is both entertaining and true to human emotion. I wish I had had this book when I was a teen because all the loneliness, all the alienation, all the apartness I felt from my family would have made more sense.”

  —Jane Yolen, author of The Devil’s Arithmetic and Cards of Grief

  “This story of Nita, a girl growing up in an insulated environment where she gradually comes to realize that she might be the last person left on Earth, has conflict and suspense from the beginning. … Vividly depicted.”

  —School Library Journal

  “This finely crafted work never falters with false resolution. … An honest and compelling examination of ‘What if …?’”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An engaging narrative in Sargent’s capable hands. An essence of otherworldliness is present in the gentle guardians, and since Sven and Nita are raised solely by the two aliens, there is a freshness in their perceptions of their own species. … Clearly and simply presented—thoughtful—a worthy addition to any SF collection.”

  —Voice of Youth Advocates (VOYA)

  “Sargent does not lower her standards when she writes young adult fiction. Like the best of young adult writers, her artistic standards remain as high as ever, while her standards of clarity and concision actually rise. … The intelligence and resourcefulness she showed in The Shore of Women are undiminished in Alien Child.”

  —Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

  “Thoughtful, serious, and written without condescension, the novel contains all of the qualities we have come to expect from this author.”

  —Science Fiction Chronicle

  The Golden Space

  “Pamela Sargent deals with big themes—genetic engineering, immortality, the ultimate fate of humanity—but she deals with them in the context of individual human lives. The Golden Space reminds me of Olaf Stapledon in the breadth of its vision, and of Kate Wilhelm in its ability to make characters, even humans in the strangest forms, seem like real people.”

  —James Gunn, writer and director of the film Guardians of the Galaxy

  “Clearly, The Golden Space is a major intellectual achievement of SF literature. It will not be possible for any honest story of immortality hereafter to ignore it; it is a landmark.”

  —The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “Brilliantly handled—all of us have got to hand an accolade to the author.”

  —A. E. van Vogt, author of The World of Null-A

  “Sargent writes well, the many ideas are fresh, and their handling is intelligent to the extreme.”

  —Asimov’s Science Fiction

  “What next, after universal immortality becomes a fact of life? Pamela Sargent’s brilliant book, The Golden Space, shatters the imaginative barrier that has held stories about immortality to a simplistic pasticcio of boredom, degeneration, and suicide.”

  —The Seattle Times

  The Mountain Cage

  “[Sargent] is one of our field’s true virtuosos, and in The Mountain Cage: and Other Stories she gives us thirteen stunning performances, a valuable addition to a repertoire that I hope will keep on growing.”

  —James Morrow, author of Only Begotten Daughter

  The Shore of Women

  “That rare creature, a perfect book.”

  —Orson Scott Card, author of Ender’s Game

  “A cautionary tale, well-written, with excellent characterization, a fine love story, as well as much food for thought … An elegant science fiction novel.”

  —Anne McCaffrey, author of the Pern series

  “Pamela Sargent gives meticulous attention to a believable scenario. … A captivating tale both from the aspect of the lessons that the author tries to impart and from the skills she has used to tell it.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  “How many perfect science fiction novels have I read? Not many. There are at most three or four such works in a decade. Pamela Sargent’s The Shore of Women is one of the few perfect novels of the 1980s. … Her story of a woman exiled from a safe high-tech city of women, the man ordered by the gods to kill her, and their search for a place of safety, is powerful, beautiful, and true.”

  —The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction

  “A compelling and emotionally involving novel.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “I applaud Ms. Sargent’s ambition and admire the way she has unflinchingly pursued the logic of her vision.”

  —The New York Times

  Ruler of the Sky

  “This formidably researched and exquisitely written novel is surely destined to be known hereafter as the definitive history of the life and times and conquests of Genghis, mightiest of Khans.”

  —Gary Jennings, bestselling author of Aztec

  “Scholarly without ever seeming pedantic, the book is fascinating from cover to cover and does admirable justice to a man who might very well be called history’s single most important character.”

  —Elizabeth Marshall Thomas, anthropologist and author of Reindeer Moon

  Child of Venus

  “Masterful … as in previous books, Sargent brings her world to life with sympathetic characters and crisp concise language.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  Cloned Lives

  Pamela Sargent

  For my parents

  That father without mother may beget, we have Present, as proof, the daughter of Olympian Zeus: One never nursed in the dark cradle of the womb; Yet such a being no god will beget again.

  —AESCHYLUS

  The Eumenides

  “The chemical or physical inventor is always a Prometheus. There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god. But if every physical and chemical invention is a blasphemy, every biological invention is a perversion.”

  —J. B. S. Haldane

  DAEDALUS OR SCIENCE AND THE FUTURE

  “Good reasons
in general for cloning are that it avoids genetic diseases, bypasses sterility, predetermines an individual’s gender, and preserves family likenesses. It wastes time to argue over whether we should do it or not; the real moral question is when and why.”

  —Joseph Fletcher

  THE ETHICS OF GENETIC CONTROL: Ending Reproductive Roulette

  “In view of the likelihood of such disagreements on standards for what changes in man are desirable, the simplest solution might seem to be a laissez-faire system in which society took no position on this at all. For several reasons, I believe this would be a very dangerous course to take. It would almost certainly lead to an immense proliferation of types of man, differing in much more substantial ways than the present races do…If we wish to avoid the interference involved, it may be necessary to renounce the modification of man through biological engineering altogether, which does not seem a likely development to me.”

  —Gerald Feinberg

  THE PROMETHEUS PROJECT

  1

  Paul: 2000

  AS the jet approached the Dallas—Fort Worth Regional Airport, Paul Swenson saw the nearest of the circular loops which made up the huge, monotonously efficient structure. There were thirteen circles, although Paul could not see them all from his seat, each of them more than a mile in circumference, each containing six sub-terminals, stretched in a row across the Texas plain. The circular loops were connected by a spine running through their centers; a row of roads connecting the airport with Dallas and Fort Worth.

  The airport had been designed for ease, with decentralized terminals and underground trains linking the loops. It had one purpose—to move passengers in and out as quickly as possible. Paul remembered the brown concrete and unending repetition of the structure, the same no matter where one turned, and he wondered who would care to linger. The architect had made no aesthetic concessions. Yet from the air it was still an awesome sight, giant hieroglyphics carved out of the brown dusty land.

  “I still think I’m right, Paul,” Morris Chang muttered. Paul glanced at his young companion. Chang slouched in his seat, running a hand through red hair that contrasted sharply with his dark almond-shaped eyes. “I just gave my paper too soon. I may not have all the evidence I need but I feel as though I’m close to the truth.” He stared ahead glumly.

  Paul had been listening to these comments, with slight variations, ever since their sub-orbital flight from Brussels. When they had transferred to the local jet at the Kennedy Space Center, Chang had lapsed into silence, then began ordering double scotches from the stewardess a few minutes after takeoff. Paul had finally persuaded his friend to have some coffee. Chang’s sober depression was a contrast to the alcoholic gaiety he had displayed throughout most of their flight, a gaiety cut short by a husky steward about an hour ago.

  The jet began to circle over one of the loops below.

  “I think Irina Rostova was the one who actually finished me,” Chang said. “I just couldn’t handle her questions. After that I was too demoralized to answer anyone else’s.”

  “Look, Morris, this was your first time, giving a paper before a group like this. Rostova’s been going to these conferences for years. She knows how to find the holes in anyone’s work. A valuable function, I suppose, but I have yet to see her present anything of her own that isn’t trivial. She never risks the kind of treatment she hands out to other astrophysicists.”

  “I don’t know,” Chang said sadly. Paul sighed. He had encouraged the young man to present his paper. Chang was working out a theory of stellar evolution that would account for and include pulsars, quasi-stellar objects, “black holes,” and other such phenomena.

  “Look,” Paul said, trying to cheer his friend up, “you’re working out something pretty important and difficult. You’ll patch up the holes, I have no doubt about that. I told you how excited Marcus was. He’ll be writing to you about some of the problems, he thinks he can help. You know perfectly well you were ready to present the outline of your theory. You’re just upset because you’re not used to giving papers yet.”

  “You’re probably right,” Chang looked a little happier.

  Paul remembered a similar conference twenty years ago. He had been twenty-nine, Chang’s age, ready to present his first important paper to an international gathering of scientists. His paper had also been greeted with some skepticism. He had started to succumb to his nervousness and fear, regaining his confidence only when Eviane began to defend him strenuously, buzzing furiously at the others in the room.

  The thought of Eviane draped a shroud of sadness over Paul. She had been dead for almost six years and he still could not accept that fact. Even now he would find himself turning in his seat, expecting to find her next to him. He would begin to speak to her and then remember that she was gone.

  He had met Eviane when they were both twenty-eight. He was working at Mount Palomar and had just arrived at the observatory, anxious to use every minute of his alloted time. There was no one in the observatory except a tiny blonde who looked about sixteen years old. He wondered what had happened to his assistant.

  The blonde girl was pacing in front of a desk, chewing on her nails. She stopped and looked at Paul speculatively. Her eyes should be blue, he thought. Instead they were as black as the nighttime skies.

  “I wish they allowed smoking in here,” she said loudly. “I’m having a fit. Are you Swenson?”

  “Yes, I’m waiting for my assistant. I was told someone would be here to help with my observations.”

  “I know. I’m the assistant.”

  Paul tried not to look surprised.

  “All right, Swenson,” she went on, “I know you didn’t expect a ball of blonde fluff here but that’s what you’ve got. I have a degree in mathematics, I have a doctorate in astrophysics, I’ve published a couple of papers. Maybe you read them. I’m Eviane Fosserier.” She glared at him defensively. “I knew a guy once who said he couldn’t take people under five feet, two inches seriously, they were just too damned small. I hope you’re not like him.”

  He was feeling a bit ashamed of his six-foot height. “I didn’t say anything,” he said.

  “You were thinking it, Swenson. Let’s get to work. We’re wasting time.”

  He had married her three months later. They had always worked together, combining their abilities. They had criticized and advised each other even when working on separate projects. There had been no room for children in their life, and Paul never regretted it until Eviane died. Now he had nothing of her except her papers and his memories.

  She was a small bird, fluttering nervously through the rooms of their house, obsessive in her desire to organize her nest, always coming to rest in his arms. Don’t ever fly from me, Eviane. But she had at last, stricken by a peculiar disease that would not allow her to absorb the nutrients her small body needed. She had grown thinner and weaker, unable to sustain herself. She had weighed only forty-eight pounds at her death.

  Time, Paul thought, is supposed to make these things easier to bear, soothe the pain. Time had not worked for him, just as it had never eroded his feelings for Eviane during her lifetime.

  The jet approached its runway and began to land, a giant metal eagle shrieking for its prey.

  “So what are your plans for the immediate future?” Chang asked.

  “I thought that I’d just take the train to Dallas and get a hotel room. I think I can use some rest before I head home.”

  “Rest!” Chang chuckled. “You must be suffering from time lag. Don’t you know what tonight is?”

  “No, at least I don’t think...” Paul paused. “Wait a minute, it’s New Year’s Eve, isn’t it?”

  “New Year’s Eve, 1999,” Chang said. “I just want to head home and lock my doors. I sure wouldn’t want to be in Dallas.”

  “I don’t know how I could have forgotten.” Paul looked at the other man. “Do you really think it’ll be that bad? I mean, I know New Year’s Eve isn’t exactly quiet, but I figured I could
lock myself in and ignore it.”

  “Well, Paul, I don’t know how it is in your Midwest, but Dallas has been close to hysteria recently. It was like that when I left after Christmas. After all, this isn’t just New Year’s. This is a new millenium.”

  “Properly speaking, the new millenium doesn’t start until next year.”

  “Try telling that to the Apocalyptics, or the ones who expect to see Christ reappear.” Morris Chang sighed. “I’d better put you up at my place. We can ride the local train through Dallas and you can catch your train tomorrow.”

  “I don’t want to put you to any trouble.”

  “It’s no trouble. Joanne would love to meet you.”

  “All right. I suppose you know what you’re talking about.” Chang lived outside Dallas in a security-conscious suburb. Armed guards patrolled the community and no one could enter without a resident or guest pass. Paul had never felt at ease in such places, knowing that their very existence was an admission of social failure. Many potential disrupters were shut out, but the citizens were also shut in. He had seen them glancing fearfully at every strange face that passed through their streets. Such carefully guarded suburbs were luxurious garrison states.

  The jet had landed. Paul unfastened his seat belt and straightened his suit. Chang’s talk about the Apocalyptics had reminded him of his discussion with Hidehiko Takamura before leaving for Brussels. Hidey Takamura had been insistent. He would have to make a decision soon.

  For now he put Hidey out of his mind and prepared to leave the jet.

  Ideally, there should have been no waiting at the Dallas—Fort Worth Regional Airport. One had only to walk about a hundred feet from the plane to the terminal, pick up one’s luggage, and walk another hundred feet to an underground magneto-train station.