The Children Star (36 page)

It was a burst of starshine to have the children climbing over him. T'kun clung to his neck, nearly smothering him, while Pima and Pomu clamored to show him their drawings on their lightpads.

“Brother Rod,” piped Gaea, “when are we hunting zoöids again?” The Prokaryan sapphire danced eagerly beneath her chin.

There was 'jum at last, grown taller since she left for Sarai. The girl skipped over to see him; he knelt and caught her shoulders, meeting her dark eyes. “Are you all right, 'jum?”

“My name is one-oh-two-oh-oh-seven-one,” she told him. “The Dancing People are going to dance to the stars.” Then she skipped away again.

Rod stared after her, astonished.

Geode wrapped all six arms around him. “Our prayers are answered—You're home again, Rod.” As if that were all in the world that mattered.

“What's got into 'jum?” Rod asked.

“She finally made some friends—her ‘sisterlings' inside.”

Mother Artemis kept her distance, as if she somehow knew that he could not face her. Rod looked away. What did it matter, he thought; only another day more of this forsaken world. He whispered to Geode, “Do the children know?”

“Only Haemum and Chae.” The two blue limbs entwined. “Mother Artemis let them return to Prokaryon.”

“Welcome home, Rod,” said the Reverend Mother at last. Her face that was not a face held a strange, unrecognizable expression, and her snakes of hair twined tortuously. “I am ashamed to have done so little to protect our children.”

“You did all that could be done.”

“Why is the Spirit inscrutable? Yet, if it is written in the stars that our time has come to join
Architeuthis
in the deep, let us lift our arms in prayer.”

That night the ceiling darkened, lit only with stars. Rod half expected the evening rain. The Spirit Callers led their evening prayers. Somehow Rod felt awkward wearing his old robe again, especially aboard Station. The children jostled and squirmed, worse than usual, with no room to run. 'jum kept on dancing, weaving her strange patterns of the Dancing People, while the other little ones tried to follow her.

To Rod's surprise, they were joined by several human visitors, including Elk and Three Crows, and even Diorite. The miner shook his hand heartily. “Brother, I didn't expect to see you again. I said a few prayers for you.”

“Thanks, friend.” He sketched a starsign for him. “I'm sorry you got caught here; I thought your crew got out.”

Diorite shook his head. “I stayed on, to look after my investment. Truth to tell, I was betting on things turning out
different—if they had, you see, those who stayed would make out big. But now—” He shrugged. “I guess we're all in the same boat with those L'liites, the ones that escaped down there. Still beats me that we never found them, though we got close, I'm sure.”

Rod swallowed hard. “I'm sure you did.” He would never forget that ship crashing in the Prokaryan hills. But even if the passengers had lived, the micromen would only have turned them into llamas.

There were two more visitors whom Rod did not know. Elk caught his arm and whispered. “They're ‘carriers.' “ Elk introduced them, one a starship attendant who knew Three Crows, the other, a servo engineer from Valedon.

The servo engineer, a woman with blond curls, wore beads of opal and sardonyx. “You're from Sardis, too,” Rod told her.

“The Sardish branch of the Hyalite House.” She grinned at him. “A fellow exile, Brother.”

Rod looked away. “I'm sorry you had to . . . share our fate.”

She shuddered. “It was bad enough dealing with
them
inside. I feel like I died a dozen times.”

“You said it,” agreed the starship attendant. He leaned forward. “They say it's my meditation training that saved me. Is that true?”

“Same here,” said the woman. “It's the one thing we have in common.”

“Maybe.” Rod was not inclined to speak of himself. “How are your . . . I mean, are you feeling okay?”

“Our little ‘friends,” you mean.” The starship attendant laughed. “Mine are incurable tourists. They want to see holos of every nightclub on every planet. I could have taken them anywhere—and look where we got stuck. No offense,” he added.

The engineer adjusted her beads. “Mine are chemists. They want to know what everything is made of—and tell me how to make it better. Just think what they could teach us about nanotech. We'd leap forward a hundred years.”

Rod's heart skipped a beat. “Did you tell the Secretary?”

“Yeah, I told her.” Her face drew in, and her brows knotted. “Politicians,” she spit at last. “They'll be the death of us.”

“True, but . . .” The man studied the floor. “Remember, some carriers weren't so lucky. The ones who ended up, like, lobotomized—I'd rather die than be them.”

“And how many others are out there?” she demanded. “You think
all
the carriers came back here? Some weren't so foolish as us.”

Geode was rushing back and forth, his arms full with squirming toddlers. “They know something is up—they just won't keep still.”

Mother Artemis spread her skirt, and the beautiful squid leaped out of the rolling sea. The children hushed and stared, their mouths half-open.
On the first world of the first mothers and fathers, in the first ocean there ever was, the creature of ten fingers swam down to the dwelling place of the great Architeuthis
. . .

Letters flashed before Rod's eyes; of all times, he told himself, much annoyed. WHY ARE YOU SAD? the micromen wanted to know.

“Because we're doomed,” Rod whispered back.

NOT FOR A GENERATION OR MORE. A LOT CAN HAPPEN IN A GENERATION.

And the ten-fingered one said to the ten tentacles, “Of all things great and fearsome, the greatest and most fearsome of all is the human being. I alone sail the skies, and I sell the stars. My machines plow the earth and build jeweled
dwellings taller than mountains. I conquer all knowledge, and my progeny people all the worlds.”

SOMEDAY, WE, TOO, WILL PEOPLE ALL THE WORLDS. WE WILL RAISE A GREAT TEMPLE TO YOU, OUR GOD.

Rod could only shake his head.

“Of all things deep and dreadful,” warned the long-dead Architeuthis, “the deepest and most dreaded am I. For I plumb the depths and devour the fallen. My tentacles consume whales and comb the abode of giant clams. I ruled the deep for eons before others crept upon land, and my being will outlast time.”

At last all the children were in bed; it felt like old times, tucking them in. Rod tried to sleep, but he felt restless. He could not stop thinking of the one person who had not come: Khral. He knew why she had not come, and she was right. And yet—why should she be alone, on this of all nights? Of all of them, she had done her best to let Prokaryon live. And she had touched something in him; he could not deny that. Something in him had come alive in her arms, and now they had so little time.

In the darkness of early morning he got up, hurriedly pulling on the travel clothes that he usually wore on Station. A pale light appeared in the ceiling; he waved at it to go away. It grew dim, just enough to get by. Hurriedly he dressed and left the quarters of the Spirit Family.

He found Khral in the laboratory, with Quark's eyespeaker perched on her shoulder, amongst the culture vessels and samplers. Sarai was there, too, busily sealing up some kind of samples in little seed pods, her fingerwebs snapping as they flexed. Khral looked up from her data
that streamed across the holostage, and she managed a smile. “It's you.”

“For better or worse.” He caught her hand and held it. Turning to Sarai, he added in her native tongue, “Share the day, Sister.”

Sarai did not look up. “The day be cursed. I knew I should never have let that devil off my planet. Now it's too late, for us—but not for
them.”
She held one pod up to the light. “I've sealed up several packages of 'jum's sisterlings; dried out, they can last forever. I'll launch them, in the direction of the nearest planet-bearing stars. They'll land, someday. And they'll remember.”

“Crazy Sharer,” muttered Quark. “Do you think Station will let you launch them?”

Station did not answer. Rod wondered what the great sentient satellite thought of her own imminent demise. But he felt Khral's hand, his blood rushing.

Khral nodded at the holostage. “I keep trying.” She sounded alert as ever, despite the sagging around her eyes, her face more gorilla-like than usual. “It's our last chance—maybe anyone's last chance for a long time, to study them, to learn what they're about. Whatever data we find will outlast us.”

“A career's worth of data,” said Quark, “in the days we have left.”

Rod watched them curiously. “Is it so important, your scientific data? Was it worth giving your lives for?”

There was silence. Khral said at last, “There must be something those micromen can do for us. We still have a chance to find it.”

“Like what?” said Quark. “A better way to make azetidine? Face it—nobody cares. Look, Khral, I hate to point this out, but you're a human, and you're running down
for lack of sleep. Leave me here to run down the last list.”

With a nod, she took the eyespeaker and set it on the counter, then she and Rod left together. In the corridor, Khral pointed to a viewport. “Look, do you see that tiny starship? It's Sharers, come to witness. Their ship is very small, but they could take three of your children, if you put them out in a lifeboat.”

Which three, he wondered bitterly.

They reached her room, and the door sealed behind them. They fell into each other's arms. This time they made love more slowly, exploring every inch of each other, for there was time, perhaps the last time ever. When at last they were satisfied, they lay together, half sleeping.

“It can't be,” Khral whispered. “It can't be over, just when life got to be worth living.” She raised herself on her elbow. “Rod . . . did you ask them? You're sure there's . . . nothing they can do? Microbes have always done for humans—leavened our bread, brewed our beer, made our vitamins.”

He shook his head wearily. “They call me a god, and can't imagine what I would need from them.”

“How odd. That's not how they talked in the beginning. They offered—”

“Never mind.” Rod shuddered. “They evolved.”

“They got too tame, that's what. All the ones in the carriers have been domesticated for generations. Could a dog tell why his master needs him?” She got up and reached for her clothes. “We need fresh ones, that's what. Station,” she called, “tell Quark: We're going back to Prokaryon.”

V
erid awoke early in the morning, her mind still running over the options. Never in all her centuries of public life had she found so few. After all the Elysian children she had raised, as director of the
shon
, now she had to leave children to their death. In any office she had ever held, as guardian of Helicon, as Prime Guardian, now as Secretary of the Fold—never had she left a world to its destruction.

“Station?”

“Yes, Secretary.”

Beside her in bed, Iras still lay asleep, her hair flowing over the pillows, as beautiful as the first day they met, ten centuries before.

“Station, I'm sorry.”

“It was my choice,” Station assured her. “I took the risk from the start. All the colonists knew what they signed.”

“Even the infants?”

“All the children admitted were on the verge of death when they came, death by disease or starvation. At least I will assure them a death without pain.”

Barbarity, though Verid. No matter how far we advance, always we revert to barbarity, in one civil guise or another.

Iras stirred and stretched, and her eyelids fluttered open.

Verid smiled for her. “Dear, are you well enough to leave?”

“The sooner the better. Is our ship here?”

Station said, “The ship is here. The ship awaits your call.”

Verid slowly rose from bed, and very deliberately dressed and checked her clothes and nanoservos. All the while her mind was running full speed. What could she do? She could postpone the hearing, by a technical maneuver; but that would gain a day or two, and only earn her censure.

“The ship wishes to address you,” reminded Station.

“Very well, put him through,” she muttered.

The bridge of the ship appeared on the holostage. The ship, an outsized sentient like Station, introduced itself with all the usual formalities. “By the order of the Fold Council,” the ship intoned, “I am hereby directed to secure your passage to Elysium. Be advised, Secretary, with all due respect, that full precautionary measures will be taken. You will wear a skinsuit and remain in quarantine. Be assured, nothing will hinder your official duties.”