"No. My initiative. It seemed to create a distinction down here— apart from regulations. I apologize, sir."
In public. In front of the others. He took a grip on himself. "It seems," he said, "a good idea on that basis." He looked beyond them, and about him— at the last load coming off the last shuttle flight, his personal baggage and less essential items, and the last few techs. He let his eyes focus on the mountains, on the whole sweep of the land.
On the far bank of the river rose grassy mounds, abrupt and distinctive. He pointed that way. "Those are the neighbors, are they?"
"That's the caliban mounds, yes, sir."
He stared at them. At uncertainty. He wished they had not been so close.
He scanned the camp, the tents which stretched row on row onto the plain at their right… azi, above forty thousand azi, a city in plastic and dust. The earthmovers whined away, making more bare dirt. Permanent walls were going up in the center of the camp, foamset domes, obscured by the dust of a crawler. "What's in?" he asked Beaumont. "Got the hookup?"
"Power's functioning as of half an hour ago, and we're shifted off the emergency generator. We're now on the Newport Power Company.
They're laying the second line of pipe now, so we'll have waste treatment soon. Hot water's at a premium, but the food service people have all they need."
He walked with them, beside Beaumont, gave a desultory wave at workers who had come out with a transport to carry the baggage to camp. He walked, electing not to use the transport… inhaled the dust and the 61
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strangeness and the unfamiliar smell of sea not far distant. In some respects it was like Cyteen. There was a feeling of insulation about him, a sense of unreality; he shook it off and looked about him for plant life that might prove to his senses that he was on an alien world— but the earthmovers had scraped all that away. There were only the azi tents, all of them in neat lines stretching away into the dust; and finally the camp center, where earthmovers dug the foundations for more plastic foam construction, where dome after dome had already sprung up like white fungus among the tents, one bubbled onto the next.
They were thirty six hours into the construction.
"You've done a good job," he said to Ada Beaumont, loudly, amends for the scene at the ramp, in which he had embarrassed himself. "A good job."
"Thank you, sir."
There was caution there. In all of them. He looked about him again, at the entourage of department heads who had begun to follow them, at others who had joined them in their walk into the center of the camp. "I'll be meeting with you," he said. "But it's all automatic, isn't it? Meetings aren't as important as your building and, your job schedules. So I'll postpone all of the formalities. I think it's more important to get everyone under shelter."
There were nods, murmurs, excuses finally as one and another of them found reason to move off.
"I'd like to find my own quarters," Conn said. "I'm tired."
"Yes, sir," Beaumont said quietly. "This way. We've made them as comfortable" as possible."
He was grateful. He squared his shoulders out of the slump they had acquired, walked with her and with Bob and Gallin in that direction. She opened the door of a smallish dome bubbled onto the main one, with a plastic pane window and a door sawed out of the foam and refitted on 62
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hinges. There was a bed inside, already made up; and a real desk, and a packing mat for a rug on the foamset flooring.
"That's good," he said, "that's real good." And when the company made to leave: "Captain. Can I talk to you a moment?"
"Sir." She stayed. Bob Davies and Pete Gallin discretely withdrew, and the reg who had brought some of the luggage in deposited it near the door and closed the door on his way out.
"I think you know," he said, "that something's wrong. I imagine it bothered you— my not being down here."
"I understand the procedure calls for the ranking officer to stay on the ship in case—"
"Don't put me off."
"I've had some concern."
"All right. You've had some concern." He took a breath, jammed his hands into his belt behind him. "I'll be honest with you. I reckoned you could handle the landing, the whole setup if you had to. —I'm feeling a bit of strain, Ada. A bit of strain. I'm getting a little arthritis. You understand me? The back's hurting me a bit."
"You think there's a problem with the rejuv?"
"I know I'm taking more pills than I used to. You use more when you're under stress. Maybe it's that. I've thought about resigning, going back to Cyteen on a medical. I've thought about that. I don't like the thought. I've never run from anything."
"If your health—"
"Just listen to me. What I'm going to do— I'm going to take the command for a few weeks; and then I'm going to step down and retire to an advisory position."
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"Sir—"
"Don't sir me. Not here. Not after this long. I just wanted to tell you the stuff's failing on me. That's why we have redundancies in the system, isn't it? You're the real choice, you. I'm just lending my experience. That's all."
"If you want it that way."
"I just want to rest, Ada. It wasn't why I came. It's what I want now."
"There's still that ship up there."
"No."
"I'll take care of things, then." She put her hands in her hip pockets, blinked at him with pale eyes in a naked-skulled face, showing age. "I think then— begging your pardon… it might be a wise thing under the circumstances— to take a joint command and ease the moment when it comes."
"Eager for it, are you?"
"Jim—"
"You've already started doing things your way. That's all right."
"The staff has wondered, you know— your absence. And I think if you talked to them frankly, made it clear, your health, your reasons— you really are a figure they respect; I think they'd be glad to know why you've suddenly gone less visible, that it's a personal thing and not some upperlevel friction in command."
"Is that the rumor?"
"One's never sure just what the rumors are, but I think that's some of it.
There's a little bit of strain."
"Troopers and civs?"
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"No. Us and Them. The visible distinction—" She rubbed her shaved scalp, selfconsciously returned the hand to her pocket. "Well, it solved an immediate problem. People get tired and they get touchy; and I went and did that on the spot, that being the way I knew how to say it. And the rest of the staff followed suit. Maybe it was wrong."
"If it solved the problem it was right. I'll talk to them. I'll make everything clear in my own way."
"Yes, sir." Soft and quiet.
"Don't respect me into an early grave, Beaumont. I'm not there yet."
"I don't expect you to be. I expect you'll be around handing out the orders.
I'm your legs, that's the way I see it."
"Oh, you see further than that. You'll be governor. I think that'll suit you."
She was silent a moment. "I considered it a matter of friendship. I'd like to keep it on that basis."
"I'll rest a bit," he said.
"All right." She tended to the door, stopped and looked back. "I'll warn you about the door— you have to keep the door closed. Lizards have discovered the camp. They'll get into tents, anything. And the window—they come in windows if you have the lights on and the windows open.
We try not to carry any of the flitters back to the camp, but a few have made it in, and they'll make a nuisance of themselves."
He nodded. Loathed the thought.
"Sir," she said quietly, left and softly tugged the thick door shut. He lay down on the bed, his head pounding in a suspended silence— the absence of the ventilation noises and the rotation of the ship and the thousand other subtle noises of the machinery. Outside the earth
movers growled and whined and beeped, and human voices shouted, but it was all far away.
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The arthritis story was real. He felt it, wanted a drink; and tried to put it off— not wanting that to start, not yet, when someone else might want to call.
He had to hold off the panic, the desire to call the ship and ask to be lifted off. He had to do it until it was too late. He had never yet run; and he was determined it would not be this time, this last, hardest time.
ii
Day 03 CR
That evening (one had to think in terms of evening again, not mainday and alterday, had to learn that things shut down at night, and everyone slept and ate on the same schedules)… that evening in the main dome, Conn stood up at the staff mess and announced the changes. "Not so bad, really," he said, "since there's really a need for a governing board and not a military command here. Headquarters and the Colonial Office left that to our discretion, what sort of authority to set up, whether military or council forms; and I think that there's a level of staff participation here that lends itself to council government. All department heads will sit on the board.
Capt. Beaumont and I will share the governorship and preside jointly when we're both present. Maj. Gallin will take vicechairman's rank. And for the rest, there's the structural precedence in various areas of responsibility as the charter outlines them." He looked down the table at faces that showed the stress of long hours and primitive conditions. At Bilas, with a bandage on his shaven temple. That had been bothering him: the thoughts wandered. "Bilas— you had an accident?"
"Rock, sir. A tread threw it up."
"So." He surveyed all the faces, all the shaven skulls— commissioned officers and noncoms and civs. He blinked, absently passed a hand over his thinning, rejuv-silvered hair. "I'd shave it off too, you know," he said,
"but there's not much of it." Nervous laughs from the faces down the table.
Uncertain humor. And then the thread came back to him. "So we've got the power in; got electricity in some spots. Camp's got power for cooking and freezing. Land's cleared at least in the camp area. We've all got some 66
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kind of shelter over our heads; we've done, what, seven thousand years of civilization in just about three days?" He was not sure of the seven thousand years, but he had read it in a book somewhere, how long humankind had taken about certain steps, and he saw eyes paying earnest attention to what sounded like praise. "That's good. That's real good.
We've got excuse for all of us to slow down soon. But we want to do what we can while the bloom's on the matter, while we're all motivated by maybe wanting a hot shower and a warmer bed. What's the prospect on the habitats? Maybe this week we can start them? Or are we going to have to put that off?"
"We're looking," Beaumont said, beside him, seated, "at getting all the personnel into solid housing by tomorrow, even if we have to take crowded conditions. So we'll be dry if it rains. And we're putting a good graded road through the azi camp, to help them under the same conditions.
We're clearing and plowing tomorrow; looking at maybe getting the sets in the ground for the garden in three more days; maybe getting general plumbing out at the azi camp."
"That's fine," Conn said. "That's way ahead of schedule."
"Subject to weather."
"Any—"
"Hey!" someone exclaimed suddenly, down the table, and swore: people came off the benches at that end of the table. There was laughter and a man dived under the table and came up with a meter long green lizard.
Conn stared at it in a daze, the struggling reptile, the grinning staffer and the rest of them— Gutierrez, of the bio section.
"Is that," Conn asked, "a resident?"
"This, sir— this is an ariel. They're quick: probably got past the door while we were coming into the hut." He set it down a moment on the vacated section of the long table, and it rested there immobile, green and delicate, neck frills spread like feathers.
"I think it better find its own supper," Beaumont said. "Take it out, will you?"
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Gutierrez picked it up again. Someone held the door for him. He walked to it and, bending, gave it a gentle toss into the darkness outside.
"Been back a dozen times," Bilas said. Conn felt his nerves frayed at the thought of such persistence.
Gutierrez took his seat again, and so did the others.
"Any of the big ones?" Conn asked.
"Just ariels," Gutierrez said. "They get into the huts and tents and we just put them out. No one's been hurt, us or them."
"We just live with them," Conn said. "We knew that, didn't we?" He felt shaky, and sat down again. "There are some things to do. Administrative things. I'd really like to get most of the programs launched in our tenure.
The ships— leave in a few hours. And we don't see them again until three years from now. Until they arrive with the technicians and the setup for the birthlabs, at which point this world really begins to grow. Everything we do really has to be toward that setup. The labs, when they arrive, will be turning out a thousand newborns every nine months; and in the meanwhile we'll have young ones born here, with all of that to take care of. We've got azi who don't know anything about bringing up children, which is something Education's got to see to. We've got mapping to do, to lay out the pattern of development down to the last meter. We've got to locate all the hazards, because we can't have kids running around falling into them. Three years isn't such a long time for that. And long before then, we're going to have births. You've all thought of that, I'm sure."
Nervous laughter from the assembly. "I think it's going to go well. We've got everything in our favor. Seven thousand years in three days. We'll come up another few millennia while we're waiting, and take another big step again when the ships get those labs to us. And this place has to be safe by then. That's all I've got to say."
A glass lifted: Ilya Burdette, down the table. "For the colonel!" All the glasses went up, and everyone echoed it. "For the captain!" someone else yelled; and they drank to Beaumont. It was a good feeling in the place.
Noisy.
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"What about beer?" someone yelled from the second table. "How many days before beer?"
Tired faces broke into grins. "Ag has a plan," a civ yelled back. "You get us fields, you get your beer."
"To beer!" someone shouted, and everyone shouted, and Conn laughed along with the rest.
"Civilization," someone else yelled, and they drank down the drinks they did have, and the sweat and the exhaustion and the long hours seemed not to matter to them.
iii
Venture log
"Departure effected, 1213 hours 17 minutes mission apparent time. En route to jump point, all systems normal. US Swift and US Capable are following at one hour intervals. Last communication with ground base at 1213 hours indicated excellent conditions and progress ahead of schedule: see message log. Estimate jump point arrival at 1240…."
iv
DAY 07 CR
Jin stepped forward as the line moved closer to the small makeshift table the supervisors had set up among the tents. He wore a jacket over his coveralls in the morning chill. The air was brisk and pleasant like spring on the world he had left. He remained content. They were clean again, besides the dust that he had to rub off his face and hands, that ground itself into his clean coveralls. They had the pipe laid, and the pumps set up, bringing clean water up to the camp, so that they had been able to shower under a long elevated pipe with holes in it— bracing cold, and there was no soap, but it had been good all the same. They could shower, they had been informed, anytime they came offshift, because there was plenty of 69
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water. There were bladed razors they could shave with, but they could let their hair and brows grow again. Faces had their expression b
ack—almost. His head would be darkening with hair again, although he had not seen a mirror since Cyteen. He could feel it, and more, he had seen a sib or two about the sprawling camp, so he knew: he looked better.
And he tingled with excitement, and was hollowed by no small insecurity, because this line they were standing in, early in the morning, had to do with final assignments.
It all went very quickly. The comp the supervisor used was a portable. The born-man plugged in the numbers as given and it sorted through them and came up with assignments. Some azi were turned aside to wait longer; some went through without a hitch. The man in front of him went through.
"Next," the born-man said.
"J 458-9998," he said promptly, and watched it typed in.
"Preferred mate."
"P 86-687."
The man looked. One could never see the screens, whatever the operators knew, whatever the screens gave back. The machine was full of his life, his records, all that he was and all they meant him to be.
The man wrote on a plastic square and gave it to him. "Confirmed. Tent 907, row five. Go there now."
The next azi behind him was already giving her number. Jin turned away— all his baggage in hand, his small kit with the steel razor and the toothbrush and the washcloth: he was packed.
5907 was no small hike distant among the tents, down the long rows of bare dust and tents indistinguishable except for tags hung at their entries.
Other walkers drifted ahead of him, azi likewise carrying their white assignment chits in hand, in the early morning with the sun coming up hazy over the tents and the small tracks and serpentine tailmarks of ariels in the dust. An ariel wandered across the lane, leisurely, paying no heed at 70
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all to the walkers, stopped only when it had reached the edge of a tent, and turned a hard eye toward them. There were more than twenty thousand tents, all set out to the east of the big permanent domes the born-men had made for themselves. Jin had helped set up the tents in this section, had helped in the surveying to peg down the marker lines, so that he had a good idea where he was going and where number 5907 was. He met cross-traffic, some of the azi from other areas, where other desks might be set up: it was like a city, this vast expanse of streets and tents, like the city he had seen the day they went to the shuttle port, which was his first sight of so great a number of dwellings.
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