The Children Star (5 page)

Someone was kicking him beneath the table. It was T'kun, managing to eat with his left arm. “T'kun, remember your manners,” Rod warned. “The Spirit is watching.”

A commotion erupted at the far end. A helicoid asleep on the ceiling apparently had fallen onto someone's plate. The children were shrieking; Mother Artemis calmed them, while Rod released the helicoid outdoors. Looking upward, he saw two more helicoids hanging by their suckers from the rafters, their propeller rings turning idly. The hall really needed cleaning out.

Returning to his place, he found that T'kun had crawled under the table because he did not like the pudding for dessert.

“Come out and sit down,” Rod warned, slightly raising his voice.

T'kun dutifully emerged. “I
am
sitting down.”

Mother Artemis came over and leaned by his ear. “Rod, I've just heard from Station. Patella can't recover here—he must ship back to Elysium.”

His last hope died. There was nothing they could do for the injured sentient except ship him back across the Fold to Elysium. Poor Patella. “What will we do?” he whispered. It was hard enough with just the two of them managing here, until Geode brought the babies home; but even then, they needed a doctor. It would take some searching to find either a sentient willing to come, or a human physician willing to be lifeshaped, with two years in the gene tank before she or he dared set foot here without a skinsuit.

Mother Artemis said, “The Reverend Father will find someone.” The Most Reverend Father of Dolomoth, a large Valan congregation, had founded their colony and was ultimately responsible for it. “Meanwhile, I could take on a medicine module. It would overload my processor somewhat and slow my reactions, but—”

Rod shook his head. “You can't do that. You have to keep alert around here—you don't want to . . . to get hurt like Patella.”

Mother Artemis thought a moment. “There's always Sarai.”

Sarai was a Sharer lifeshaper. Sharers were a human race who had settled the ocean world of Elysium ten millennia before the “immortals” did, shaping their own genes for aquatic life. Sari, however, was a rebel among her kind.
She had left her ocean home for Prokaryon, to dwell deep within the rock of Mount Anaeon. Rod frowned. “Sarai is hard enough to reach.” And not usually receptive to visitors.

“She is as skilled as any Elysian doctor, and she would help the children.” Mother Artemis added thoughtfully, “More contact with fellow humans will be good for Sarai.”

Rod prayed the children stayed well.

Commotion erupted again, this time from Pima and Pomu, who were attempting to rise from the table. Under the table T'kun had tied their shoelaces together.

After dinner everyone gathered outside. The sun was just setting beyond the distant singing-trees. The llamas groaned at the sun, their regular habit in the evening.

Mother Artemis stood, and her nanoplastic hair waved above her head as if charged by an electrical storm. She spread her robe, and her skirts came alive with bears and lions. Strange story figures shimmered and stepped out around her; the nearer children tucked in their feet and hitched back a bit. The colors deepened to violet, in waving shades of water. Suddenly out leaped a wonderful flying fish. The fish spread its fanlike wings, and began to speak in an otherworldly voice, telling the Sharer tale of how the first fish came to fly, and why their souls were haunted, never again to rest at peace in the sea.

The children were spellbound through tale after tale, legends from Valedon and Urulan and every known world, until at last the younger ones dozed off. Rod put the twins to bed, and Haemum took T'kun. The sun was down now, but the soft remains of light diffused through the gathering clouds. A light rain was falling, as it nearly always did at
this hour, as if Prokaryon's “hidden masters” were in charge. The smell of ginger increased as the soil released its fragrance. The voice of the distant singing-trees abated.

Rod was dead tired, but somehow his mind would not yet let him sleep. He strode restlessly outside the compound, letting the raindrops cool his face and sink into his robe.

He found Mother Artemis walking with him. “How was L'li?”

There was too much inside him to tell. The very edge of certain thoughts made his stomach contract. “Those who had money still have it. But some have the creeping, too—and the cure does not work on advanced cases.”

“Yes,” she nodded, her darkened robe swishing. “But you did not spend your time among the rich.”

“The lightcraft are still running; for how much longer, I don't know. A power blackout downed several. Next time I may not even be able to reach Reyo.”

She nodded again. To the east the clouds parted, revealing a large red moon whose glow filled Mother Artemis's restless snakes of hair. The moon glowed red from the sentients melting out its iron for the insatiable factories of Valedon. Prokaryon's moon had no known life, and by the next decade it would be mined down to nothing.

“The village I visited last year is deserted now,” Rod continued. “The hill I climbed this year will be empty next year.”

Mother Artemis kept walking.

“I gave the beggars what bread I had.”

“I'm sure you gave them everything.”

“My watch, and my leftover credits.” The colony's own cash was scarce. “But not my pocket holostage,” he added remorsefully. “They could have sold that.”

“They could,” she agreed. “Was that the worst thing?”

His stomach tightened unbearably. “There was a woman outside the orphanage,” he forced himself to say. “She tried to make me take her baby.” He could not accept children of living parents, lest the nationalists accuse him of ethnic abduction. “Otherwise, she said, she would take it to the market, rather than see it starve.” It was not a slave market.

Suddenly he retched, and his stomach finally gave up. “That was foolish,” he said, wiping his mouth, thinking of the wasted food. “I must get to sleep.”

“Yes, you must. Even though you want to go back and save all of L'li.”

“I do,” he said with a touch of anger, at the universe and at himself. “It's appalling, and we all just—live here.”

“You saved six children this time; isn't that a great privilege? How many people live their entire lives without saving one soul? And the Spirit should grant you a world?”

He stopped and looked closely at her. Was she laughing at him? “Yes,” he said, his mouth smiling despite himself, “the Spirit should grant me a world.”

At last, finishing his nightly meditation, Rod found himself in bed. Patella came to mind, and he missed him terribly. Then came the face of his father on Valedon, reproaching him: What did you do with all your expensive schooling, to join a bunch of clerics raising orphans at a distant star? Then nameless faces and hands arose until his mind cried out.

There was a tap at the door.

“Brother Rod?” It was T'kun. “My arm hurts.”

Rod pulled back the covers. T'kun was supposed to
have outgrown sleeping in bed with him, but he would make an exception. The boy snuggled under the covers, his little head a miracle of softness. In an instant Rod was asleep.

T
he next day Rod awoke with a sore shoulder, a muscle pulled from hauling the giant tumbleround the day before. Nonetheless, he felt well rested, and the sight of the cloud-cloaked mountains always brought him peace. He spent the first hour with Gaea dragging herself after him and wrapping herself around his leg at every opportunity. The Spirit callers cared equally for all, but despite himself Rod had favorites.

Haemum and Chae rose early to go uphill and dig gravel out of the mine, an old streambed rich in corundum. They sifted the gravel through water in a fine-mesh screen, allowing the denser crystals to sink to the bottom. Then they dumped each screen over onto a table, where the younger children sorted out the crystals. Most of them were clear and not of particular value, but a few were tinted blue, yellow, or even pink; the better ones, when cut, might fetch enough to feed the colony for a week. Even Gaea
picked out her share, although most turned out to be quartz.

After the midday meal, Mother Artemis treated and cut the stones, training Haemum on the lap wheel. The younger children painted little dioramas of four-eyes and singing-trees, or strung necklaces of helicoid propeller shells. Rod and Chae worked on the garden, collecting ringed pods and fruits, and replanting the rows gouged out by the visiting tumbleround. In the western field the brokenhearts were ripening fast; how would they ever get them harvested without Patella?

Chae brought back a bushel full of greens to cook up four-eyes stew for the two tables of children, all swinging their feet and twirling the vegetable pods around their fingers. Afterward, as the little ones cleared up, Mother Artemis said, “I sent the Most Reverend Father a neutrinogram.” Neutrinos brought word across the space-time folds, resisting the extreme electromagnetic distortions at the connection holes. The signal was crude, never of holographic quality, but it was the fastest way. “I told the Most Reverend Father we need another brother or sister with medical training, at least until Patella returns.”

“What will we do in the meantime?” It could be weeks or months before help arrived.

Mother Artemis watched the nightly rain outside, her hair twining into knots and untwining again. “We'll manage. Haemum and Chae will help with the harvest. Between the two of them, now, they bring in as much as Patella did.”

Rod frowned, vaguely uneasy. “They are growing up.”

“Exactly.” She gave him a questioning look.

“Well—I guess I've been more on the infant end of things here. I'm not sure what the Reverend Father has in mind for the older ones, as they grow into adults.”

“When I was a nana in the
shon
, I raised Elysian children
for Elysium. Now we raise Prokaryans. They'll grow up to maintain the colony.”

“But they're also citizens of the Free Fold.” He took a deep breath. “What if they choose to emigrate?”

She considered this. “If the Spirit so calls, so be it.”

“But how will they ever know enough? How will they know, without—education?”

“Education is the right of every citizen,” said Mother Artemis firmly. “We educate all our children. We meet the standards.”

“The formal standards are too low.” This was one area where Rod felt a disconcerting gap between human and sentient. “Human education takes years, even decades. We can't just plug in a new module. When I was Haemum's age, my father sent me to the Guard Academy. But it was more than soldiering—it was history, literature, mathematics.”

“And your father, was he pleased with the result?”

“He was horrified.” By leaving to follow the Spirit, Rod had dashed his father's hopes of continuing the family tradition in the Guard. “That's the point of education: to free a child to make choices that horrify her parents.”

“So, should we send Haemum to the Guard?”

Rod smiled at the thought. “No, but she can attend school by holostage. Who knows; she might become a doctor someday. Look at how she set T'kun's arm.”

“I know those programs,” said Mother Artemis. “The better ones would take up most of her waking hours. But if it's time, so be it.” She looked up, and her hair stretched toward him. “Thanks for making the point. You're such a good father, Rod.”

Rod looked away, his face warm.

As the children napped or did lessons, Rod checked the
holostage to see if he could reach Geode and 'jum, but he found a call waiting. “Return call,” he told the holostage.

“Which caller?” asked the machine. Servo machines were intentionally built to as low a sophistication as possible, to avoid the chance of their “waking up” sentient, in which case they had the right to earn freedom.

“Diorite, of Colonial Corundum.” Diorite was the shipping agent for Colonial Corundum, a firm that worked commercial deposits in the foothills. His figure appeared on the holostage, tall and lanky, and tanned even darker than Rod. He wore a Valan talar, hung with strings of his pale green namestones, and a wide-brimmed hat for shade. “Rod, you're back,” he exclaimed. “I heard about your brother. My sympathies—that ravine's treacherous.”

Rod nodded. “Thanks.” He traced a six-point for blessing.

“Why didn't you call me? We could have brought Reverend Mother home, and had your brother up to Station in no time.”

That was generous; Rod would never has asked such a favor. “Thanks, I'll remember.”

“Anytime. Say, I see your old craft's still out there—you'll be shipping back soon?”

“I left six new children at the clinic. Besides, I have a load to ship.” There was a sizable cargo of sapphires for Valedon, plus the craft items the children made for tourists.

“You can help us out,” said Diorite. “A small package to deliver—the usual terms.”