by Larry Niven
“Well, I told you to do what you have to do to make Three reliable.”
“And I did.”
“Okay, okay, so now where’s the biggest problem?”
“Getting Cassandra down while we still can.”
“Yeah,” Carlos said. “I know. Toad will go up and get her now we have a working Minerva. Other than that, I mean.”
“Microprocessors,” Jason replied without hesitation. “The thrust controllers are big special chips. We’re not even close to being able to manufacture them.”
“How far are we?”
Jason seemed to mull the question. “If we went all-out, we might do it in two generations. Doubtful even then. It means putting a lot of effort into making the machines that make the machines.” Carlos had certainly heard that before. Cassandra had warned them. Hell, he’d thought it himself just a minute ago. “And frankly . . .” Jason continued, “nobody is pushing that hard. It could be four generations, or never.”
“Never?”
“Never,” Jason said. “Look. The original plan for this colony was that we would get here, find an island, secure it, and then explore the mainland for resources. Breed.”
“My favorite part.” Twyla hip-checked him, secure in her knowledge that she was the sexiest grandmother on the planet.
A knocking at the door, followed by a creak. The smiling face of the colony’s first mayor appeared, followed more slowly by the rest of his rather ungainly body. Again, time. “Hi, Zack. Alone?”
“It’s just me. Rachel sends her regrets. She didn’t feel up to it.”
“A lot of us First Gen don’t feel up to much,” Carlos said. “Jason’s telling us we have to get cracking or we’ll never get back to space.”
“Hello. Well, I was just saying. Didn’t we plan to get the colony going, create a foundation for our children and then take Geographic onward to the stars? Camelot was supposed to be the beginning.”
“And instead of that, it was very nearly the end,” Zack said softly.
Carlos nodded gravely. “Very.” He held up thumb and index fingers half an inch apart. “Those bastards came that close to wiping us out. Really wiping us out. We had thought it was safe here after we killed the adult grendels, and we brought down a great deal of stuff that we needed. A lot of embryos, too. Most of that, embryos and all, was destroyed when big samlon turned into little grendels. We were just one mistake away from extinction.”
Jason nodded. “I think there is a memory of that . . fear, self-satisfaction . . something. Something got broken in all of us. If I wanted to talk genetics, I’d suspect that the bravest and most adventurous of the first generation died in the Grendel Wars.”
“Leaving just us cowards?” Carlos grinned as he lifted a file.
“That’s not what I meant. But I do mean that the most successful breeders were not necessarily the most genetically fit.”
“Nature or nurture, right?” Carlos asked.
“Not a debate I’m diving into,” Twyla said.
“Agreed,” Carlos replied. “Let’s just say that we’ve remained within the scope of our competence. Within the known. Which gives the kids the illusion that they are smarter and tougher than they really are.”
“Hey!” Jason said. “We push them damned hard!”
Twyla rolled her eyes. “Right. We have Grendel Scout overnighters. And that’s not bad. Probably the best we can do.”
Carlos shook his head. “What would you want to do? Kill one in ten if they don’t max their scores?”
Jason was giving that due consideration. “Maybe one in fifteen . . hey, I’m kidding!”
Zack looked horrified. “We were almost defeated. But dammit, we won.”
Carlos said, “Nah, I see. I do. We can’t show them the truth, or push them hard enough, without being cruel. But we could never be crueler than reality.”
“You sound like Cadmann again,” Zack said.
“And with that, the conversation comes full circle. Wondering what the colonel would say.”
“He’d say that if you wait long enough, something bad will happen,” Zack said. He went over to the cabinet and fished out a bottle of local wine, pouring himself a healthy drink.
That, Carlos knew, was their secret fear. That everything was breaking down, and that the kids just didn’t understand the situation well enough to care. That the kids believed themselves to be more competent than they really were.
And that, down the road, might well be the end of everything.
♦ ChaptEr 6 ♦
trudy
Trudy woke slowly. First there were dreams, of freezing, of being chased on the ice by great white monsters, not polar bears but nightmare versions of those animals, red of fang and claw. With that thought consciousness returned.
She saw steel and aluminum. At first she thought she was in the vast training facility, the floating Godson island off Brazil where she had spent so many years preparing for this journey. It took long moments to realize she was in the ship. The ship hospital. That was strange.
“Gertrude. Gertrude Hendrickson.” An unfamiliar voice, male and older than she.
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m Doctor Mandel.” A narrow, kind, but intense face. Wire-rimmed spectacles perched on an angular nose. “I expect you’re wondering where you are.”
“I know where I am, sir. I just don’t know why.”
“Oh. Astute of you. Yes, you’re still on the ship. I expect you thought you wouldn’t wake up until we’d orbited Hypereden.”
“Something like that, sir.” She felt strong vibrations. “But I feel gravity. We are still accelerating! We haven’t got to our star! Why wake me now? There won’t be any children.”
“Huh? Oh. Yes we have. That’s deceleration you feel. We’re slowing fast to get into orbit around Tau Ceti IV. Yes, yes, that’s a change of course. A lot has happened you don’t know about yet. Anyway, we’re going to Tau Ceti IV where the Geographic expedition went, and matching orbits with their ship in orbit there. I gather that’s rather tricky piloting.”
That took some processing. “Yes, sir. My thinking is slow. Sir?”
“Yes, Gertrude.”
“I’m usually called Trudy. Sir, you seem very pleased. Weren’t you expecting to see me wake up? Is that it? Something was wrong, and—”
“No, no, no. No! You’re fine. Here, see.” The doctor held a comm tablet at her eye level.
It was very hard to move, more like she’d forgotten how than that she was unable. A queer experience. Sensory Motor Amnesia. That was the term.
It took a while to focus on the tablet, then on the numbers. Body temperature, 34.44. Low. She remembered it should be 37. She also remembered that 34 wasn’t fatally low, just unusual. As she watched the numbers changed. 34.45. Point 46. Climbing slowly but climbing. Pulse rate sixty. Fast for her, very fast for resting heart rate for anyone with her athletic training. Blood pressure, 115 / 75. Good. Arteries were still flexible. “Reasonable, given I was frozen,” she said. “But I’m slurring my words.” She saw her pulse rate rise even as she said it. Nerves, she thought.
“No problems. You’ve been asleep for eighty Earth years. Really, you’re in fine shape. I wouldn’t have let them wake you up in these facilities if you weren’t. The Speaker asked for you. By name. I don’t know why.”
Speaker? But the doctor was cheerful, no stress in his voice. Trudy was trained to notice things like that, and she was sure. He wasn’t worried about her. She was sure of that, too. They must not be waking many up. He was wondering why she was chosen. She tried to smile, just a little smile, enough to make him feel better. “Not to worry. I don’t know why, either. Doctor, I’m confused. I don’t know what a Speaker is.”
“Oh. Of course you don’t. Speaker Augustus speaks for the Prophet. He’s First Speaker of the Messenger expedition, and that makes him chairman of the council.”
“And the Prophet?”
“He’s back asleep. He might not wake up, or wh
oever wakes up might not really be the Prophet. Hibernation instability. It’s dangerous. One of the messages we got from the old Avalon colony had a lot about that. People waking up with half their mind gone.”
He’s serious, Trudy thought. “Should I be worried?”
“You? No. Not at all. We learned a lot from the Avalon broadcast. We have new wakeup techniques, much slower than we’d been using. And once awake, you stay awake. No going back to sleep.”
“But you said the Prophet—”
“I did. It’s a long story. Here, you lie back and rest, I’ll tell it to you. Let me fluff that pillow.” He checked the temperature readings in a tablet window. “Warming up nicely.”
A lot of fuss, she thought. Nurse work, but he’s a doctor. I don’t know him. She smiled. “Thank you.” She lay back, cooperatively, and concentrated on listening.
“It was the Prophet’s original plan to sleep until we reached an inhabitable planet, so that he would be at his highest capability when he took charge.” Trudy nodded, understanding perfectly. “But the captain went mad.”
“Mad?”
“Oversimplification, but that’s the short of it,” Dr. Mandel said.
He was less nervous now, still worried but less so. Why was he worried about her? But it was obvious to her trained mind that he was.
“The council all agreed that the captain was no longer rational, but they were afraid to denounce him. So they woke up the Prophet. Against the master’s orders, but they thought the crisis was both desperate and urgent, so they did it. They were right, too. The captain was changing course. We don’t know what he thought he was doing. The Prophet deposed him a little too late.”
“What did the master do to him?”
“Sent him into cold sleep, of course. He’ll be awakened when it’s safe. But one of the things we learned about hibernation instability is that the chances of a bad outcome are much greater the second time you wake, and exponentially higher every time after that.”
He waited as that sank in. “So—” Trudy felt a thrill of horror. “So the Prophet didn’t dare go back into cold sleep. He might wake up an idiot! That would—”
“That would be a disaster. So the Prophet stayed awake. Eventually he was tired. But he knew that was coming, and he prepared. He had a young cadet awakened, and trained him for forty years to be his Speaker.”
“Speaker Augustus—”
“Actually, that’s his name, not part of the title.”
“Oh. Augustus. Glass? Gus Glass?”
“Yes. Did you know him?”
“Sort of. How long before I can get up?”
“I see. You did know him. Of course you won’t say more.” He paused for a moment to look at her bedside tablet. “Couple of hours, but you’ll be in a wheelchair your first day. Get out of that and you can ask the Speaker himself. He’s asked to see you when you’re able. Here, time for more warm plasma. This will hurt just a little.”
The ship’s vibration continued. Almost soothing. There wouldn’t be children, not on a ship about to go into orbit, so they wouldn’t want her as a mother in a crèche.
“You’re waking warriors up, aren’t you? Sir.”
“Yes.”
“So that’s what they want me for.”
♦ ChaptEr 7 ♦
landing day
Every year for the last four decades, Earthborn Carlos Martinez had put creases in his dress shirt and pants, shaved and combed his thinning white-streaked hair, and assumed as festive an air as he could manage in celebration of what they called Landing Day.
Landing Day was the hundred and fortieth day of Avalon’s year, in the middle of Camelot’s summer. Usually a fine day with crisp mornings and balmy afternoons, and today was no exception. Carlos thought the weather similar to spring in São Paulo, vacation times he still remembered fondly, still dreamed of on those festive occasions that drew homesteaders from across the island, as well as Second and Third Gens from the mainland.
Of the approximate twelve hundred human souls on the planet, over a thousand of them were right here, right now, in Camelot Town.
The mingled aromas of roasting pork, beef, Katmandu quasi-mollusks and farm-bred samlon made his mouth water as the grendel scouts demonstrated their shooting skills on stationary and rotating targets.
Some celebrated memories of distant Earth with cultural songs or dances. The Samoan Twins demonstrated a traditional Haka war dance, complete with blue tongues, and a rainbow-hued Riverdance team won appropriate (and slightly rote) applause. The mood grew more somber as they lauded the fallen and departed: the roll call of the dead since landing day. Some taken by violence, some by the prion plague twelve years past, some of natural causes, or ice on their minds. Two hundred and four souls in all, and every one of them a personal loss to Carlos.
Carlos’ daughter Tracy was winding up her five-year stint as mayor, but still looked fresh and enthusiastic as she welcomed them to the gathering. “And here it is, our fortieth landing day celebration! Today we unveil a new mural—”
The beige curtain covering the recreation center’s west walldropped to the ground, triggering “ooh”s and “ahh”s. Lunging grendels and heroic colonists challenged one another in profiled tableau. For the last two months Evie Queen and Jaxon Tuinukuafe had labored beneath a sheltering tarp to stoke the mystery. The final result was worth the wait, a blend of Polynesian ceramic mosaic and Italian Renaissance perspectives, Picassolike abstracted human faces and exquisite shadow play.
Tracy’s voice always conveyed a natural theatricality, she deliberately heightened that now with intense gestures and narrowed eyes. “Never had human beings faced such danger. Savage, carnivorous, aggressive, and faster than skeeters. But look at them now!”
To cheers and a few mocking catcalls, seven kids between the ages of twelve and fourteen executed precise group-targeting maneuvers against holographic horrors.
Carlos glanced at Zack Moskowitz, whose snowfrosted Groucho mustache drooped unimpressed. “You don’t like this?”
“Nope,” Zack said. The colony’s first elected mayor, and still leader emeritus, Zack rarely used, and never abused, that social capital. When he spoke, the colony listened. He whispered now, barely moving his lips. “And I know I’m being a spoilsport, but I still have nightmares.” He paused, glancing at Carlos until he nodded me, too. “All this is just pretend. Pretend. They weren’t some kind of toys, or games, or pets. They are not to be lampooned or played with. I don’t even like farming the damned things. As far as I’m concerned, we should kill them to the last egg.”
“You do eat them though.”
The corners of Zack’s mouth ticked up. Samlon were the best dish on the planet, flavorful and just a little speedy, like sushi with caffeinated wasabi. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Isn’t that a contradiction?”
“I contain multitudes.” He said it piously, but his smile broadened. Good. This was a time for celebration, remembrance of the sacrifice and struggle that had yielded security at last. “Shhh.”
After the demonstration and the speeches that followed Mayor Tracy took the stand again to make her comments. “And there is no better day for this next announcement. Daddy?”
Carlos hugged his eldest child and took the stand, smiling out at the sea of upturned faces. “Thank you. Forty years ago today, we landed on this new world. At great cost, through days of toil and fear and nights of grief, we survived and conquered.”
“Avalon threw everything she had, and couldn’t break us!” Zack called up, leaning heavily on his slender shamboo cane. The Mayor Emeritus didn’t get out and around much anymore, but had yet to miss a Landing Day.
“Grendels, bees, disease . . .”
The kids shuffled their feet, looked at each other instead of to the stage. Discomfort masquerading as boredom. Carlos repressed his urge to blurt out his news. “And other things dogged us. And one of the most terrifying was . . loneliness.”
“We’ve got
plenty of people!” Rachel Moskowitz yelled. She leaned on a cane too, Carlos saw. He didn’t need that support . . yet. They were all getting older.
Better than the alternative, he supposed.
“Yes. But we’ve been alone with each other for forty years. When we left Earth, we thought others were coming. No one has followed. Not a single ship. We’ve heard nothing from home.”
“This is home!” Jaxon called.
“What’s the best theory for that?” Evie asked.
“Something wrong with our communications array. Grendel damage, that’s the usual reason for things not to work. Some breakdown on Earth.” A shrug. “We just don’t know.”
“Sucks,” Little Shaka muttered, followed by grumbled agreement.
“Yes. But it’s about to change. Perhaps.” That quieted them. “Toad?” he asked.
The squat little man they called “Toad” took his place at the podium. Marvin half-closed his eyes, perhaps scanning mental notes. “Two days ago, at five thirteen central Avalon time, we received a message from Cassandra. A large object of artificial origins is heading on a course that will place it near Geographic in the same Avalon orbit. It is estimated to arrive in three months, and currently seems to be decelerating from what we estimate to have been at least two percent of light speed.”
The announcement was followed by silence, wide eyes and not a few open mouths. Then a murmur. Sylvia Weyland seemed incredulous. “Best Geographic ever got was one point zero eighty two. That implies something. Is it . . human?”
Toad cleared his throat uncomfortably. “When we ask Cassie, this is the only answer she gives: quote: ‘I have no information to give you.’ That phrasing is odd, to say the least. But no matter how we ask, all she’ll convey is the direction of the approach and the physics of its deceleration. It’s a deuterium-tritium fusion flame, a little brighter than Geographic’s—”
“Leading you to believe it is of human origin?” Evie asked, eyes wide.
