The Children Star (20 page)

There was no question of taking 'jum on a three days' journey to the mountains, leaving Geode to manage alone. They had to call for help fast, in case the L'liites tried to reoccupy the holostage. Diorite's newly sentient lightcraft would have helped out, but instead Rod found himself calling the research lab.

The image of Khral coalesced on the holostage. Rod suppressed his sharp delight at seeing her, afraid she might
see into him. But she greeted him the same as ever. “Oh yes! Rod, are you ready to help out in the field again? We made some fascinating observations of tumblerounds, but the work could go faster.”

Recalling his encounter, he shuddered. “I wish I could, but we're short-handed until the Reverend Mother gets back.” The dreams meant nothing, he told himself. And yet his pulse raced with feelings he should not have. “Those microzoöids that live in the tumbleround—you're sure they can't infect humans?”

Khral shook her head. “Still no sign of that.”

“You will let me know if you . . . find out anything? I mean, if the tumblerounds are dangerous in any way, we ought to know.”

“Of course, I'd let you know. But really, you've had those beasts around for years, haven't you?”

“That's right. But this year, the tumblerounds seem . . . different. As if somehow they've awakened. And their smell can knock you out.”

“Really. Their secretions do contain psychotropic agents, but Prokaryan biochemistry often produces those by chance. Come up and hear the latest, when you can. Quark will be glad to pick you up.”

“Actually, if Quark isn't too busy, he might take us back to Mount Anaeon.”

“To Sarai? Thank goodness,” she exclaimed. “Sarai hasn't spoken to me since I told her we'd gotten the micros to grow. I tried to flatter her as best I could, but she absolutely went berserk. She thinks I stole her data.” Khral shook her head. “Now she'll have to see you. Maybe she'll relent and let Quark give her those strains that finally shipped in from Science Park.”

So the child called 'jum was brought to the brow of Mount Anaeon and left there, within the tunnels of Sarai's laboratory. As Sarai watched the child, she found herself thinking and feeling things she had not felt for many a year. To be sure, the L'liite child was pitifully foreign, not a web between her fingers, and small for her age. But her eyes were bright and keen; they did not miss a nook in the cavern, between the leaves of secretory plants with reagents dripping slowly, nor amidst the touch pads and speaker points of the Valan-built holostage. Sarai's own daughters had once looked the same.

Her daughters, and her beloved Aisha; for a moment the memory was too terrible to live through. Sarai felt herself slip away, into whitetrance. Her fingers turned white first, then her limbs, as the breathmicrobes in her skin bleached white, and her blood concentrated within her critical organs, leaving just enough circulation to keep her alive. Aisha, and their daughters. Long after the day the storm-maddened seas had swallowed them, they dwelt there still, somewhere below the ocean deep. Sarai had fled that ocean; she had flung herself as many light-years distant as she could, even burrowed into stone. Yet the ocean remained, inside.

Now, outside herself, she could not ignore this foreign child, who had shared her will to come. The child was alive in this world and would share her care. So Sarai returned slowly to the world of the living. Slowly she stirred, flexing her fingers and stretching the webs, still pale. It occurred to her that this child might never have shared sight of whitetrance before, living among those ignorant clerics. But the child sat watching, her eyes wide but calm. Sarai regarded her approvingly.

“Ushum,” she whispered, softening the child's name into something the ocean might have spoken. The poor
thing was covered with eczema; whatever were those clerics thinking? Sarai clucked at a clickfly, who called over several of its sisters to alight upon the child and deposit secretions to soothe her skin. “Sit still, Ushum, until the clickflies are done; they will clear your rash.” Her eyes narrowed. “It's about time you came,” she added curtly, afraid of too much tenderness. “I need help with my work; there's so much data to collect. And something tells me you'd be good at counting photons.”

The child nodded. “All the photons in the world.”

Sarai felt her pulse quicken. After so many years struggling on her own, it was a heady experience to find someone who might share the excitement of her work without stealing it. That Khral, for instance, with her tricky sentient friends. What a fool Sarai had been to send them her precious microzoöids. After all the trouble she had gone to, all the mixtures she had tried, Sarai had stumbled by chance on just the right proportions of zoöid and phycoid that her little sisterlings needed to grow. She was sure those stupid scientists would never get it, and would have to beg her for the recipe. Instead, with all their fancy machines, they tried tumbleround flesh—and it worked. And that Khral had the gall to call her and brag about it.

That Rod was a trickster, too. He still looked and sounded like a Guardsman for all that he joined the clerics to raise their orphans. She would not trust him until he bore his own child.

But what terrified her most was the children. All her lifeshaper's instinct and training made her unable to refuse care of a sick child. If the clerics ever found that out, she would spend the rest of her days tending one child or another.

“Well, Ushum, let's get to work. You're not hungry or sleepy now, are you?” Children were subject to such things,
she recalled. But 'jum shook her head and rose expectantly, her small travel bag lying forgotten among the vines along the cavern wall.

Sarai called to her holostage, a machine of no intelligence, only rudimentary interactive powers. The usual column of light obligingly appeared, displaying several ring-shaped objects brightly colored. “I've grown these microzoöids in culture for several months now.” Not from singing-trees—nor from tumblerounds either. From where, Sarai could not yet bring herself to say; she only shuddered at the thought. “In this recording, each cell is magnified a millionfold. They all glow different colors, don't they?”

'jum peered at the magnified microzoöids, her neck outstretched like a hummingbird sipping nectar. One plump little ring was pink, and a pale blue one even rounder, and another one turquoise. “Those two look the same,” 'jum said, pointing to the turquoise, and to a ring that lay farther off across the holostage.

“Exactly! Those two cells are the same color. And now, as time passes, what happens?”

Gradually the colors changed, some greener, others bluer, until at last all the ring-shaped cells were turquoise.

“Now let's replay that sequence, more slowly.” At Sarai's command, the holostage reset the microzoöids to their original colors, with playback rate decreased a thousandfold. On this time scale, the little rings no longer glowed steadily; they pulsed. “You see?” exclaimed Sarai. “They emit little bursts of photons—in prime numbers.”

“Five . . . seven . . . twenty-three,” 'jum counted.

“Those are the easy ones,” Sarai warned. “I've counted up to twelve hundred forty-nine. The numbers must mean words or letters of some sort. My theory is that
the rings share the same color to talk to each other
. Like the little nanoservos we send into your bloodstream to fix your
genes: They have to share signals to coordinate their work, right?”

'jum thought this over. “What is their work?”

Sarai shuddered. “Not like nanoservos—not at all.” How Khral and Rod and all the rest of them would faint if they knew. “We'll find out what they're up to, perhaps too late,” she said grimly. “I'll tell you, Ushum, where I found these sisterlings; but you mustn't tell anyone. They were—”

“Priority call,” interrupted the holostage. “Please stand by for priority call.”

Startled, Sarai glared at the holostage. “How dare you interrupt my work? I take calls when I please. The next time you—”

“Priority call,” the stage repeated. “You refused our calls for two weeks, so a warrant was obtained.”

A deep roaring sound of water filled the air. Above the holostage a wave of ocean rolled, a giant ravening curl of water such as was never seen on shoreless Shora. The curl grew small, reduced to a mere symbol hovering before a massive desk. Behind the desk sat an Elysian creature, whether female or male-freak, none could tell. It faced Sarai, apparently undeterred by her look of cold fury.

“Greetings,” said the creature. “As you recall, I represent Proteus Unlimited, to whom the Fold has entrusted management of your research facility. Your work is most important to the Fold, and Proteus will transfer your project to an advanced, state-of-the-art facility under construction on the southeast quadrant of Chiron.”

“Flying fish turds,”
Sarai exclaimed in Sharer. “You will do no such thing. Get off my holostage. For that matter, get off my planet.”

The creature was unperturbed. “We will provide you with all necessary assistance to preserve valuable equipment.
Our chief executive, Citizen Nibur Lethe
shon
, will personally supervise the operation, along with our species-preservation program. Please prepare for our arrival this week.”

“I said, you will do no such thing.” Sarai reached for the main power switch. “And you can tell your male-freakish master that if he ever sets foot on this world,
he will never leave alive.”

A
s the days lengthened into “summer,” the nightly rain clouds gathered earlier to shorten the day's heat, and satellites reported the usual shift of major wind systems, bringing cooler air farther south. Rod wondered, how did those tumblerounds control the weather? At a safe distance he watched them, but the lazy plant-animals showed no sign. The four-eyes grew more sluggish and spent more time by the river, while in the garden the red loop pods twisted and ripened. Children complained of the heat, though to Rod it felt barely warmer than Prokaryan winter, nothing like the scorching summers of Valedon.

What would “the masters” do when their continent was boiled off?

Rod made himself watch the holo broadcast of the Opening of the “cleansing” of Spirilla. The event was attended by representatives from Valedon, Bronze Sky, and
L'li, and the mysterious Elysian director of Proteus Unlimited, Nibur Lethe
shon
. Resplendent in their ceremonial talars, they offered stirring words and bad music, as their satellite hovered above the first land to be “cleansed.” An island off the western coast, an aerial view showed two stripes of forest. Rod wondered what Elk would say for his singing-trees. And Khral—but Rod could not let himself think of her.

Beside the holostage, Brother Geode saw Rod clenching and unclenching his fists. His eyestalks lowered. “You know, Brother, we don't really have to watch this.”

“It's better to know.” Knowledge was better than ignorance—it was never too late to learn. “We can pray for them.”

Geode began the standard litany of the Spirit.
Love only truth, desire only grace, know only Spirit
. . . . The prayers expanded to include all the zoöids, large and small, and the hapless singing-trees, and, above all, all the participants in this terrible project that unfolded before them.

Above the island, high in the stratosphere, a white whirlwind appeared. It was a tunnel through a space fold, directed from the sun Iota Pavonis. The sun's heat poured through, turning the whirlwind into a swirl of flame. The flames reached downward as a fountain projected from the ocean. It met the fountain with a roar, creating steam that rained down upon the island. Soon the steam enveloped the island, tactfully obscuring the fate of the landscape.

Rod felt his heart pounding; he could barely move. Geode's blue limb snaked around his arm. “Peace, Brother. We've done all we can; it's the will of the Spirit.”