The Children Star (11 page)

The expedition included Elk, carrying an eyespeaker for Station, as well as Khral carrying for Quark. The two humans looked freshly lacquered in their paper-thin skinsuits.

Quark brought them all down to a singing-tree forest far to the south of the continent. “Look there, in the wheelgrass,” Quark called as he descended. “Tumblerounds—masses of them. It must be a mating convention.”

Sure enough, the enigmatic phycozoöids were gathered in a group of fifty or more, their long blue tendrils crossing each other like cobwebs. Quark hovered closer for a better look. The tumblerounds had extended their reproductive tubes into each other in all directions, in a massive orgiastic mating.

“How curious,” said Elk. “I wonder how they locate each other. Pheromones?”

Khral said, “You're right, Rod, we should look more closely at tumblerounds.”

They landed in the forest in late afternoon. The air breathed of ginger and phenolic scents that Rod had missed. Two giant sentient lifters awaited the scientists, hired out for the day from local miners. Each long lifter arm extended a lozenge-shaped passenger seat. Rod and Khral took their collecting bags on board and ascended through the canopy.

“Keep your head down,” warned Khral. “You don't want to get hung on the loopleaves.”

Rod caught his breath; he could see for many kilometers, all the way to the next band of singing-trees. Even there, in the distant canopy, sparks of light appeared. “They could send light signals from band to band,” Rod exclaimed. “I never thought of that.”

“That's why fieldwork is so important. I could have studied light pods forever at Science Park; but out here, it's the real thing.” Khral's voices was softened by the air filter
at her mouth. “The light signals could be sent from one band of trees to the next. We're testing that hypothesis now: Elk is going to send light signals from the next band of forest, then see if these trees respond.” She reached out and pulled back one of the giant loopleaves of the singing-tree. A light pod could be seen, a luminescent half-moon shape pulsing pale blue. “My job is to collect light pods, to study their microzoöids. Here's how you can help. Each pod you collect, read the wavelength with your photometer,” she explained. “Quark will record the results.”

Rod hesitated. “If singing-trees really are the ‘hidden masters,' how do they feel about having their pods plucked?”

“That's a good question,” Khral watched her photometer. “The trees never seem to mind. Their loops grow thousands of light pods. Maybe it's like having a bit of hair clipped.”

The sun was sinking rapidly below the horizon, flooding the forest and plain with an orange glow. Even the surface of Khral's skinsuit twinkled prettily. Silhouettes of helicoids whirled past. Then a breeze arose, and the singing-trees hummed. The canopy was a sea of colored lights now, winking on and off among the loopleaves.

Rod pulled back a loopleaf, several meters long. It had trapped a pool of water in its pocket below, where little hydrazoöids swam. He reached for the light pod, which pulsed yellow-green. It felt surprisingly cool to the touch.

The photometer whispered, “Five hundred sixty-four nanometers.”

Khral nodded. “That's about the right wavelength.”

He plucked it gently, offering a silent prayer that the great tree was not really hurt, as Khral had said. Perhaps, he thought, it really did not matter which creature was the “master” here, so long as we treat each one with infinite respect.
In the pod, the color slowly faded. Rod went on collecting, the plucked pods gradually piling beside him.

To the east, the nightly rain clouds were moving in. The singing-trees keened more deeply, their song rising and falling like a wave. Then from the west, where the purple sky deepened, there came a low whistle that did not sound like the trees. Rod paused, suddenly alert.

The whistling grew to a scream. Out of the corner of his eye, Rod caught a bright flash. Reflexively he dropped to the platform below the rail, pulling Khral down with him, though it would be little help at the top of the lifter.

The shock wave from the distant explosion shattered the stillness. The sentient lifter commenced a distress call, but its arm held steady. Cautiously Rod and Khral raised themselves and looked up over the rail, but the horizon was dark. Rod silently thanked the Spirit for their own safety, and wished the best for those who had fallen.

“It must be a ship,” exclaimed Khral. “But whoever would sail in low like that?” Starships always docked in orbit.

Quark reported, “A L'liite ship full of illegals just came in and crash-landed.”

“Illegal settlers,” Khral whispered. “How could they? Don't they know?” Even if they survived the crash, they would only die a slow death—unless rescued soon.

T
he ship of L'liite emigrants had evaded Prokaryon's sparse security satellites and crash-landed on the western curve of Spirilla. Survivors were seen running off into the singing-trees. Station's medics did not try too hard to find them.

Rod confronted Station. “You can't let them die,” he told the omnipresent voice in his cubicle. “We'll take them in. If you treat them, we'll feed them.”

“You know better, Brother Rhodonite.” The mind of the Station seemed to close in on him. “I haven't the facilities, much less the funds, to treat a hundred adults for the next decade. It's time you faced the truth, Spirit Caller. Your own colony's immigration is suspended, until your last child leaves the clinic.”

Rod clenched his fist. How many babies would they lose because of the extra costs from 'jum, the older child?
Yet how could he have left 'jum on that cliff, he wondered for the hundredth time. The Spirit does not count lives in credits.

He turned to the holostage and called the colony. “Those L'liites—they're human beings out there, untreated. They'll die within days. Can't we do something?”

Geode extended his eyestalks. “If only the Spirit Fathers could raise funds to lifeshape them.”

Mother Artemis looked down, her snakes of hair twisting and untwisting futilely. “Alas, our order is hard-pressed just to maintain our own colony. But I will send our Reverend Father a neutrinogram.”

Rod frowned. “That will take another two days. The Fold ought to do something.”

“The Fold, indeed.” Geode's eyestalk twisted into a rude gesture. “They've turned their backs. But Diorite's taken a crew out to track down survivors.”

“Good for him. Perhaps they'll get found before it's too late.”

“Yes,” agreed Mother Artemis. “And Feldspar has done a world of good for us. He got most of our harvest in.”

“And he has such good taste in literature,” added Geode.

“How are the children?” Rod asked.

“Haemum has found a medical-education program,” said Mother Artemis. “She is making such progress—thanks to you, Rod.”

He looked aside. “The Spirit called us well. And the others?”

“T'kun has an earache and Chae has some kind of rash. But we can manage.”

What was she thinking, he wondered. They could not bring every sickness to Sarai, that mad lifeshaper on the
mountain. How could he have left little Gaea to her treatments? The fifth week of her treatment had passed, with no word.
If the stem breaks, she will die
.

Diorite's crew tracked the fallen L'liites for two weeks, but the few survivors had vanished, preferring death to recapture and repatriation. Rod thought of them lost in the singing-tree forest with nothing to eat but poison. Their souls troubled his dreams. Late at night he would toss the covers off his bed and get up, taking some comfort from watching 'jum fast asleep, her mouth and eyes tightly wrinkled shut in a childish look, so different from her seriousness when awake.

One morning Sarai appeared on the holostage. “This child,” she said without preamble. “Come and get her.”

“What's wrong? Is Gaea all right?”

“She's as well as a two-year-old ever gets,” Sarai grumbled, “and then some. She's tearing up my lab.”

Gaea healed—the thought burst upon him like sunlight through clouds. Rod hurried to find Khral in her laboratory, culturing microzoöids out of light pods. He hesitated to disturb her, but she looked up with a smile, her hands and arms gloved in transparent nanoplast. The tabletop holostage showed the microzoöids magnified, ring-shaped cells with occasional buds on one side.

“Could I borrow transport from you?” he asked. “I have to pick up Gaea from Sarai's mountain, and our own lightcraft isn't precise enough.” It would probably try to land atop the arch of a singing-tree.

“I can't leave right now,” Khral said, “but Quark will take you down.”

“What about 'jum?” he remembered suddenly. After
three months of treatment, 'jum had still not been cleared for her first exposure to Prokaryon.

Khral's simian brow wrinkled. “Elk's mate can't take her; he's sick with some bug or other, must have caught it on his last passage. Wait—'jum can borrow my skinsuit and go with you.”

Rod felt overwhelmed. “You are too generous.”

Khral wrinkled her face in imitation of Sarai. “Bother all that.”

So, with some coaxing, 'jum had her skinsuit put on. It started as a thick disk of nanoplast placed upon her head. The disk thinned itself out, its edge traveling down around 'jum's scalp, setting the filter at her mouth, while the rest of the material traveled downward and outward around her limbs, fusing at last. On her head a light blinked to show the covering was complete. The girl took it well, only shuddering once or twice.

“What a trouper,” said Khral. “I was worried that a child wouldn't stand for a skinsuit.”

“ 'jum has endured many strange things in her life,” Rod pointed out. “Just think, 'jum—you'll see Prokaryon for the first time.”

Quark soon set them down on the trail by the waterfall; a big improvement over two days' journey, Rod thought, suppressing a touch of envy.

“My eye, please,” Quark reminded him.

Rod placed the eyespeaker on his shoulder, where the nanoplast immediately molded to fit. Then he let 'jum take a look around outside. “It's cold,” she observed. “It's a much bigger mountain.”

He smiled with a hint of sadness, recalling the wretched hill above Reyo. “No apartment windows to count, either. But you'll see someday, where we live at the colony is much
warmer and flatter.” He led 'jum down the ledge to Sarai's door, which was wide-open for once. They walked into Gaea's chamber. There, the remains of the leafy calyx lay dried out on the floor, while little Gaea was running—running from one wall to the next, then bouncing off with a whoop and running again.

Sarai shook her head. “She came out running and hasn't stopped. She never learned to walk.”

Seeing Rod, Gaea ran straight to him and bounded into his arms. “Zoöids, Brother Rod—let's go see zoöids!”

The joy that Rod felt was indescribable, a feeling that he could not remember for ever so many years before. He felt the child all over, her fuzzy head, her wiggling arms; it was too much to be true. “Sarai, I don't know what we can ever do to repay you.”

“Bother.” Sarai turned to 'jum. “What's wrong with this one? The plague? I can't treat someone through a suit.”

“This is 'jum Ghana, our last Spirit Child to come home from Station,” Rod explained. “She loves numbers.”

“Really.” Sarai eyed her more closely. “Name two squares that add to a third square.”

'jum said, “Fifteen squared adds with one hundred twelve squared. And fifty-one squared adds with one hundred forty. But my favorite is . . .”

Sarai stared openmouthed. Rod had never seen her look actually surprised before. “That's no child,” she exclaimed. “It's a sentient.”

“. . . sixty squared adds with ninety-one squared,” jum finished. “But I can add regular, too,” she said defensively. “Five thousand and twenty-three plus nine thousand two hundred and eighty-seven makes fourteen thousand three hundred and ten.”