No rain fell as yet, though massive storm clouds hung overhead like an unvoiced question. Allison snapped the pod open and held it upward until the contents had evaporated. The volatile compound was a unique signal for Ghareshl; if the Fraction detected it, she would come when she could. Its effective range was at least a hundred kilometers, but she couldn’t have traveled a tenth that far since yesterday.
As Allison turned back to the house she nearly collided with Dave as he rushed out the door, dropping a schoolbook. “I’m late, Mom,” he called as he retrieved the book.
“Well, don’t miss your exams. Did you feed Rufus, and the chickens?”
“Sure, Mom.”
“And don’t draw any more portraits of your uncle in your notebooks.”
“No, Mom. Don’t forget your Fifth Query!” He skipped on down the hill.
The Fifth Query called for “simplicity in speech…” Allison sighed and wondered whether anything would ever be simple again. She reentered the kitchen and caught sight of that curious wristband on the counter; the “credometer,” Kyoko had called it. She fingered it reflectively. The credit figure, now about fifty thousand, had dropped by about five percent overnight.
Seth was rinsing dishes in the sink; he turned to stare at her. “You’re not going to touch that again, are you?”
Allison frowned and twisted the band into a figure eight. “I want to know how it works. I’ll give the Tech Center folks a look at it.”
Allison sat at the terminal and tried to concentrate on the numbers as they spewed across the screen. The Mawrford Mine ore location analysis had turned out to be a devilish problem. The results were crucial, since precious time and energy might be wasted if the predicted deposits failed to show up. She massaged her aching forehead as she lost her place on the screen.
She heard the outer door open and wet rubbers squeak in the corridor as her coworkers approached the computer room.
“Hi, Allison,” called Noreen Connaught as she shook out her curls and hung up her raincoat. She was joined by Bill Daniels, the machinist who had welcomed with enthusiasm the arrival of the space visitors.
“Allison,” Noreen exclaimed, “how can you possibly go back to that stuff when the whole world’s changed overnight?”
Allison’s lips tensed. “Work goes on; we still need iron, you know. Bill, take a look at that.” She nodded toward the decwriter.
Bill picked up the printouts. “Test runs on the drill bits for Blydentown?” He scratched his chin.
“Right. The abrasion resistance doesn’t look so hot.”
He nodded. “I feared as much. That module is a fossil, anyhow. Maybe our new frog-suit friends will replace it for us.”
Allison stood up, her features taut. “No, that’s not the attitude we need around here. They’re not to replace anything, do you understand?” She rose and walked quickly to the window by her desk, where she forced open the creaking frame. The gust of fresh air helped clear her head, though it still reeked of wet moss. Rain was falling now, lightly but steadily. Allison shivered, for she disliked rain, the implacable flood from the sky; rain swelled rivers and washed away homes and dreams.
Noreen walked over. “Allison, what’s the matter?” she whispered. “Just a suggestion.”
Allison said nothing at first. Then she turned and raised her left arm. “Can you guess what this is?” she asked.
Noreen blinked, then peered at the object. “It looks like an antique watchband, to me.”
“Close—not a chronometer, but a ‘credometer.’” She half smiled. “It’s from the ship.”
“Really? A ‘credometer’—what does it measure, your faith?”
“For all I know. Let’s see; it measures ‘work performance,’ whatever that means, and medical state—heartbeat, body temperature, the works. It all feeds into their System, somewhere.”
Bill’s face lit up at this. “That’s got to be the best emergency setup I ever heard of. You could relay everything right back to Doc Frances at the Medical Center.”
“Well, now,” Allison wryly observed, “don’t wish any emergencies on us just to try out your skill.” Frances had insisted on training one of the Tech Center staff as a paramedic, after the lightning fire on the hill last year.
A buzzer rang from the hallway. “Who could that be?” Noreen wondered. “Nobody stops at the front door around here.” The three of them went to see.
Allison’s jaw dropped. On the doorstep stood Kyoko and two other citizens—and each of them wore a precisely tailored version of Allison’s own beige suit, which she had worn at the landing site just two days before. The outfits matched hers in detail, down to the brownish moss stain on the left pants leg.
“…and we have come to install your Shosa-five transcomm,” Kyoko was saying. “Is something wrong? Is our apparel appropriate for Foxfield? I hope we haven’t missed something important.”
Allison collected her thoughts and shook her head, avoiding the eyes of her coworkers. “I guess we don’t usually, er—that is, we don’t produce clothes like machine parts here. Besides,” she added, “it might help my reputation if you let me launder my things before you copy them.”
Now it was the citizen’s turn to look sheepish. “So sorry. Shall we go back and—”
“No, never mind. Now, what’s this item you’ve brought?” she asked guardedly.
“A transcomm, as Silva promised, so that you can communicate with anyone in UNI.”
They walked out across the soggy hillside to see the structure which the citizens had somehow deposited from the sky. It was shiny and round, like an ice mold inverted from a bowl. There was no apparent entryway.
“How do you get inside?” Allison asked. “Call-in ‘Open Sesame’?”
A panel slid aside and a set of stairs extended to the ground.
“Just ‘Open’ will do well enough,” said Kyoko, “if you wear a ‘credo.’ Let’s check that everything’s in order.”
One assistant monitored the side of the transcomm with some sort of instrument, though Allison could not imagine what she might be checking. Kyoko led the Foxfielders inside; the interior looked similar to the place which Allison had seen on the ship. Kyoko issued commands which caused the lighting to fluctuate; then a luminous cylinder sprang up around the chamber. As if by magic, numerals appeared one by one on the curved surface.
Bill and Noreen were entranced. “Talk about Belshazzar’s feast,” Bill muttered.
“The System is the ultimate university, or information center,” Kyoko explained. “You will soon be using it to learn all about our modern world; for instance, you’ll discover all the applications of slipton technology…”
Then holographic models appeared in succession: space-lattice interactive transmitters, matter transporters which emitted gravity waves, even gravity converters which tapped the peculiar forces of neutron stars. But the most breathtaking sight was the stratogeyser, which drew energy from the solar surface and funneled it into a reservoir on planet Earth. As the transcomm walls receded, the stratogeyser appeared in the distance; its collector tower dominated the sky like a giant silver chalice.
Allison remembered something. “Stratogeyser—was that what exploded on Earth, according to your newscast?”
Kyoko frowned. “Yes, partial thermolysis occurred. A solar flare overloaded the collector; it shouldn’t have happened, the engineers were at fault. Now I’ll get ‘credos’ for you, so that you may call the System yourselves, no?”
A compartment opened in the seamless chamber surface, spitting out wristbands for Noreen and Bill.
“Questor Lu Ting-yi,” stated the System voice, “from China Sector, Terra, requests bimodal interview with Foxfield citizens. Accept call?”
Allison looked uncertainly at Kyoko.
“Well,” Kyoko said, “do you wish to talk to a Terran, or not?”
“Sure, why not?” said Noreen. “Accept the call.”
The image of a woman appeared and flickered for a mom
ent, then became steady. “Hello, is Allison Thorne there? I’m so pleased to be able to talk with you at last; we’re all so curious about you people…” She wore a straight-cut robe of pale violet which struck Allison as exotic, but reassured her in one sense; it was good to see that not all UNI citizens stuck to frog-suits.
“Please tell us,” said the woman, “how do you people feel, now that civilization has returned to planet Aurora?”
“Aurora? I don’t understand,” Allison said.
A few seconds of time lag passed before her face showed comprehension. “Oh, I’m sorry; that’s what we call it, because that’s what your planet looks like whenever we—” The image flickered once more. “The transmission is poor; you don’t yet have local storm control. How do you manage to keep your community together, without a System network? How do you communicate?”
“Well,” said Allison, “we visit each other. We have Meetings to talk about things.”
“You mean physical translocation? How brave you must be, to rely on that.”
Bill added, “We do have telephones.”
“Telephones!” The citizen smiled and shook her head. “You must be accustomed to harsh circumstances. We’ve even seen satellite transmissions of women on Foxfield who bear children alive, as ‘floaters’ do; is that routine, for you?”
Allison and Noreen exchanged incredulous glances. “Well, how else do you do it?” Allison demanded.
“In foetal incubators; they’re so much safer. But of course,” she hastened to add, “the natural process is reasonable in your case.”
“It’s not perfectly natural, with us,” Bill qualified. “There’s artificial insemination with a gene bank from Earth. Otherwise, we’d see genetic drift in no time.”
“Oh.” The citizen seemed puzzled. “In that case, why have you reproduced males, in your struggle for survival?”
That left the Foxfielders speechless. Before anyone could come up with a response, the citizen shot a quick look at her credometer. “Excuse me,” she said, “I’m near my limit; the Adjustors still keep a high credit barrier on Foxfield calls. Thank you so much for—” She disappeared.
The Foxfielders pounced on Kyoko with their questions. “Are there really no more men left?” Noreen exclaimed. “What’s a ‘floater’?” Allison wanted to know.
Kyoko held up her hands. “Wait, it’s too much at once. That’s why the credit is steep—to prevent cultural shock from a deluge of calls.”
“If there aren’t any men left,” said Bill, “I’d just as soon know right away.”
“Of course there are men; you met Casimir yesterday, no? It is true that Terrans tried to terminate the male sex after the Last War, because they blamed traditional male values for the history of violent conflict which led inescapably to disaster. Psychosynchrony, however, invalidated this belief—in part, at least.”
“Thank goodness for that. What is a ‘floater’?” Allison repeated.
“Floaters are not registered citizens and don’t wear credometers. It’s hard to keep track of such stray people, among hundreds of millions. But foetal incubation is so convenient; the System can tell you all about it.”
To keep track of people, of hundreds of millions; was that what credometers were for, Allison wondered. Then her thoughts returned to the workload at the Tech Center, and she gave her coworkers a meaningful look. “I suggest that we tear ourselves away from this feast of technology, for now—at least until the Blydentown order gets done.”
Outside the transcomm, the rain fell steadily. Nonetheless a group of determined onlookers huddled together in mackintoshes and umbrellas, at a respectful distance. A couple of commensals were there, too, standing like inside-out umbrellas with their coronas cupped to receive the cleansing moisture.
“Hello there, Friends,” called Allison’s aunt from across Georgeville. “I hiked all the way up here just to come see your blessed outer-space telephone.”
“Well—” Allison wished the news had not gotten out so fast. But Kyoko said, “Go on inside and take a look. The assistants will take care.”
“Much obliged. Do take my umbrella, now, you’ll need it,” the Foxfielder cheerfully added.
Kyoko declined, however. “I have a rain shield,” she explained. Sure enough, the beige suit was bone dry.
Allison squinted at the commensals and recognized one of them. “It’s Ghareshl!” she called out, and she ran forward, ignoring the rain. “Where from, Ghareshl?” she signaled.
“Forest; colder place. One seeks conjoin-mates.” The commensal’s outer fronds had thickened and turned deeper shades of green, sure signs that she would conjoin soon, as Seth had indicated. “Fraction here seeks you,” Ghareshl went on. She brushed against her companion, a commensal who was visibly shorter than she but had longer foliage. “She shares memory.”
Kyoko asked, “Did she say, ‘shares memory-like’?”
Allison shook her head. “Their interpretation of objects is confusing. The One seems to use adjectives, mostly, so that objects are ‘substantiated’ adjectives. A ‘thing’ in our terms would be considered a ‘vessel’ or a ‘wave’ of substance.”
“I see.”
“If they share memory, they must share ancestry several conjoins back,” said Allison. “What name?” she signaled.
“Thiranne,” signaled the newcomer. “From jungle by ocean. You are blood-sharing wave-form Hand?”
Allison paused, uncertain.
“Al-lis-on-thorn,” corrected Ghareshl.
Thiranne’s signals contained unusual nuances characteristic of the far region from which she came. “One remembers cold place,” she went on, “by river; sweeping over land. Brown hand reaches out; five fingers, blood-sharer’s hand. It pulls one out of rushing water.”
Allison’s scalp prickled. “My hand?” she asked. “How do you know?”
“Scent is of you.”
“Your scent,” Ghareshl echoed. “This Fraction recognized it,” she added with an almost human ego emphasis.
“Amazing,” said Allison aloud as she wiped the streaming rain from her face. “That must have been half a dozen conjoins past, at least. They do it every two or three years, each Fraction, and their identities mix. I don’t remember her name, just now, but it was a predecessor of Ghareshl whom I pulled from the flood of the Sixth Settlement.” After Dave was safe, she had helped others; but some had never been found.
“Her ancestor, too,” added Ghareshl.
Taken aback, she reminded herself of these creatures’ perception. They picked up human words at times, whether by sound or by lip-reading she was never sure. She watched them sway in the rain, as though to hidden music. At one point they both folded up their coronas.
“‘One exists, you exist, world exists,’” they signaled formally.
“‘Existence affirmed,’” Allison responded correctly.
The fronds relaxed.
“You travel far, Thiranne.”
“Yes. All go north for seeding.”
“Of course. Best wishes for your seeding. Any news from the Dwelling?”
“Great excitement over new blood-sharers from the sky,” signaled Thiranne. “You,” she added, indicating Kyoko. “You come from the sky, though frog-skin not visible.”
Allison squirmed at this reference which she knew was derived from conversation with Friends.
Kyoko merely nodded, and signaled, “Wear underneath.” She unbuttoned her jacket, and the dark suit appeared, snug against her neck.
“Don’t you get hot in your long underwear?” Allison asked.
“Only if the thermostat breaks down.”
“No rain falls on you,” observed Thiranne. “Why? Energy-wave generation?” she shrewdly suggested.
Ghareshl quickly added, “Don’t blame rain! Disgusting wave frequencies. Interfere with …”
“Too sensitive…” Thiranne began.
Allison said, “I think they’ve gone back to chemisense exchange. If Seth were here, he migh
t be able to pick up some of it—he’s practiced ever since he was little. But it’s beyond me.”
Without further comment the two commensals flowed off across the tangled ground moss.
Sheets of rain fell, and fiery skeletons crossed the horizon, though the rain poured so hard that its sound nearly drowned out the thunder, Allison raced back to the computer room and rummaged for a towel. There was none, so she wrung out her hair in printout paper.
“Just don’t use my latest output,” Noreen warned.
Kyoko came in to point out ways in which the System might coordinate services with those of the Tech Center. Allison watched her delicate fingers gesturing as she spoke while her credit number flashed. Noreen’s arm also bore a credometer now. As the three women stood together, Allison was reminded briefly of the triplet of figures which had crowned Rodin’s “Gates.”
“For one thing,” Kyoko was saying, “we’ll be able to divert inconvenient thunderstorms, once we’ve got the feel of Foxfield weather patterns—”
An alarm sounded. Allison checked the master plan above her desk; a light was blinking for the Multiform room. “Excuse me,” she muttered and hurried out to the manufacturing complex. Water was seeping into the corridors, and in the main room the rain poured through a jagged gash in the ceiling where the roof had caved in. Two of the shop workers were trying to rig a temporary covering, but one lay silent on the soaking floor strewn with solar panel splinters.
Bill looked up. “A piece of glass half sliced Ruth’s leg off. I don’t know if we can move her—”
“Well, we’ll have to try, won’t we? We can’t do much for her here.” Allison’s hands clenched and she grew cold as she saw the blood seeping out into the turbid pool. She called the other workers to help drive the victim down to the Medical Center if possible.
Still Forms On Foxfield Page 6
