Sven’s face was solemn, as though he was troubled by the same thoughts. “You’re expecting a lot of us,” he said. “We might disappoint you. We might find out that we’re not so good at raising others.”
“I expect nothing,” Raen said. “I cannot compel you to bring those others to life. That must be your decision.”
Llipel and Llare had returned to the garden; Nita looked up as her guardian seated herself. “We have spoken to our—” She motioned with one hand. “You would call them our guardians. They must return to our home, but Llare and I can stay with you for a time here. We shall help if you wish, or leave this world forever if you choose.”
Raen stood up. Nita got to her feet quickly. “I know why you’re here,” she said. “Now I know why you came back.” She took the stranger’s hand. “You came here to help us, too, to be our new guardian so we wouldn’t make the same mistakes. You do care about us, even if you don’t show it, even if—”
Raen said, “That is not why I am here.”
The hand she was holding was limp, neither welcoming her touch nor recoiling from it; she pulled away. “But you know more than we do. You could teach us so much.”
“You could not understand most of it. Your intensity is disorienting to me—it is a reminder of what we gave up.”
“Why did you come here, then?” she cried, unable to bear this human being’s indifference any longer. “Why did you come back at all?”
“Llipel and Llare asked me to return with them.”
“Is that all?” Sven rose from the bench. “Because they asked you to?”
“They felt you should see what your kind, those of us who survived, have become. They thought that I should see you. I felt some curiosity about you when I learned of your existence, but I am here because they asked me to be here. Now I must return to their home. When I see my people again, I shall tell them what I found here.”
“You know what we are,” Sven said angrily. “That’s the reason you’re not staying, isn’t it? You think we’ll fail again, and you won’t do anything to stop it.”
Raen’s eyes widened slightly. “I have told you what I can. You must choose your own way now. I cannot interfere without taking away a choice that should be yours. This is no longer my world.”
“You don’t care about us at all,” the boy shouted. “Our people left us here and forgot about us. They had their war. They abandoned this world and turned into creatures like you. Now you know about us, and you just want to forget us again. You don’t feel anything for us, do you?”
“I feel a concern. You will not be forgotten.” The visitor glanced at Llare and Llipel. “I should not have come here. They did not need to hear my words. I did not need to see what my people once were.”
Sven raised his stick. Nita grabbed his arm, fearing that he would strike. Raen turned away and began to walk toward the tower.
“I’d rather be what I am than what you are!” Sven called after the visitor. “At least I can feel! If that’s the only way you can live, you might as well be dead— part of you’s already dead, anyway.”
“Stop.” Llare’s hand was on Sven’s shoulder. “You must understand,” his guardian continued. “Raen is not without your kind’s feelings. It is only that, in Raen, they do not run as strong. They cannot, for those people have changed too much in themselves, so that they will never again enter a time for fighting. But Raen will feel a little sorrow at your strong words.”
“Why should you have to explain it?” Sven said. “Why should you have to tell us about our own people?”
“They are not your people now. Your people are here, in the cold room.”
Llipel rose to her feet. “We must say farewell to the others,” she said, “before they leave. We will wait here until you tell us of your decision. If you wish to raise others of your kind here, we shall help until it is a time to return to our own kind.”
“And when will that be?” Nita asked.
“Only a short time from now. We will tell you what we learned in raising you, or, if you choose to keep by yourselves, with no others, we shall help you explore more of this world before we go. The time will come, whatever you decide, when we must leave you to make what you can of this place.”
The two walked toward the tower. Nita stared after them until the door had closed behind them, then sank to the ground.
Raen did not care about her and Sven; the only other human being they had ever seen was more alien than their guardians. Llipel and Llare did not care; she and the boy would become only another memory to share with other aliens. The love and concern she had once seen in Llipel were only an unthinking response to the small girl who had depended on her, and that time was past for Llipel.
Llipel and Llare would not compel her and Sven, or even advise them, because it no longer mattered what they did.
A glint overhead caught her eye. Two ships rose above the tower, shrinking, as if fleeing from her world.
18
Sven entered the east wing cafeteria as Nita was sitting down to eat. He made his way to her table, propped his crutches against the window, then sat down.
“How are you feeling?” Nita asked.
“My ankle’s better.” He rested his bandaged foot on a chair. “I’ll go swimming tomorrow. The mind says that’ll be good for it.”
“Can I get you anything to eat?”
He shook his head. “I’m not very hungry now.”
Sven had been keeping to himself during the past two days, since their return. Usually he was in the library; once, she had found him asking the mind about how the craft outside might be repaired. He had not spoken of their journey and said little about Llare and Llipel. He had not mentioned the decision facing them; perhaps he had already decided what he wanted to do and was not ready to speak of it.
He glanced toward Dusky, who was curled up under one table with her kittens. “I’ve been thinking of keeping Tanj in the courtyard for a while,” he said. “He keeps trying to get at the kittens, and I’m afraid he might hurt them.”
“I’ve noticed—that’s why Dusky’s in here.”
“I wonder if I’d be like that with young ones.”
Nita put down her juice. Most of Sven’s talk now was of the cats, or about what he was reading, or of games they might play on the screens, as though these would be their only concerns. “Tanj is a cat,” she said. “He doesn’t know any better. You wouldn’t be deliberately cruel to a child.”
“They’re Tanj’s kittens, too, but all he knows is that they’re smaller and weaker than he is. They can’t fight him, so he can do as he likes. You think I wouldn’t be cruel, but our people didn’t stop their fighting even when they knew children would die. We might be starting that all over again.”
Was he saying that they might revive others, or that he didn’t want to consider it? “Our people gave up fighting finally,” she said.
“And maybe they wouldn’t have if they hadn’t changed themselves. Look how much it took for them to give it up. Maybe it was only fear that made them stop, not anything good inside them.” He rubbed at the tabletop. “You heard him—her—whatever Raen is. You saw what he was like. They don’t feel anything—that’s why they don’t fight anymore.”
Sven was communicating with her again; she tried to take a little solace in that. “They have some feelings, Sven. Llare said so.”
“They fought,” he said savagely. “They ran away, they hid, they forgot about Earth. Are we supposed to start that all over again?”
Nita gazed out the window. Llare and Llipel were sitting outside under a tree not far from the pool. She was beginning to wish that they had simply told her and Sven what to do instead of leaving this decision to them. This world’s future was in her hands and Sven’s; how could they leave Earth’s fate to one boy and one girl?
She sighed, remembering again that their guardians, by the standards of their people, had little more experience than she and Sven. But at least they were able to return t
o people who could guide them.
She could avoid the decision. She had the cold comfort of knowing that a remnant of their people lived elsewhere, whatever they had become, and that their time for living here had passed. Perhaps it was better to leave things that way. Earth could be left to the beasts of the forest, plains, and oceans. She and Sven could still explore and add knowledge to the mind’s records; they would have that as a purpose, and other beings might come to Earth to gather that knowledge in the far future. Earth would be safe from her kind, and her life would be easy. They would not have to struggle against repeating their kind’s mistakes.
Raen knew about them now, and probably had a way of communicating the news to the other descendants of Earth. She could leave it to them to decide what to do, although she supposed they would be as uncaring as Raen. The decision, at least, would be out of her hands and could be made by those who were wiser, not by two who had never really known anyone except their guardians—and she had not even comprehended Llipel and Llare in the end.
Sven was staring out the window. “We’ll have to tell them something soon,” he said. “They told us they’d be here only a short time.”
“I have a feeling that a short time for them is a long time for us. They might wait for quite a while. Maybe when we’re older—”
He leaned back. “Nita, I don’t know what to do.”
“I don’t either. Maybe we shouldn’t decide now.”
“Waiting isn’t going to make it any easier, and we don’t know how long they’ll stay. Their people may already be planning to leave our sun.”
“We could ask them how long they’ll wait,” she said.
“I don’t know if they’ll tell us. They might not even know.” He folded his arms. “They don’t care. Raen doesn’t care—why should we?”
“It isn’t right to leave this to us,” she muttered. “It’s too much for us to decide. We might not even live long enough to know if what we did was right. If only—”
If only, she thought, she could believe in herself and in Sven. She was all too aware of their weaknesses and their capacity for anger and despair. Their journey had helped them forge a kind of bond with each other, but she did not yet know how strong that bond would prove to be. She remembered how ready they had been to assume that Llipel and Llare might be their enemies. If only she could believe that the good in them could overcome their weakness.
Their people had not left them any examples that might give her cause for hope—only parents who had forgotten them and had not cared if they lived at all, and a visitor who had retreated from all that Earth’s people had been. Perhaps the evil in her people ran so deep that their only choice was to become beings like Raen; it seemed a kind of death.
Sven got to his feet slowly. “I never did go inside the cryonic facility,” he said as he reached for his crutches. “Maybe it’s time I learned who my parents were—not that it makes any difference. Will you come with me?”
“Are you sure you want to go?”
“I might as well. It won’t change anything. It doesn’t matter now if I find out exactly why they never came for me.”
Nita smoothed down the sleeves of her silvery suit, then put on a helmet. Sven’s helmet was already over his head. “Well,” he said; she heard him draw in his breath sharply. “Let’s go in.”
He put his crutches in a corner and leaned against her as the door to the cold room opened. They stepped forward into the vast room.
“Do you wish to choose an embryo to be revived?” a voice said. “If so, it will be conveyed from its container to—”
“No,” Nita said quickly. “We’re not here to revive anyone.”
“Llare came here to revive me years ago,” Sven said. “I only want to know why—who my parents were.”
“You are the boy who was taken from here,” the voice responded. “Your mother was called Ursule Anteliewicz. Your father’s name was Gustaf Svensen.”
“Why didn’t they come back here for me? Why did they leave me here?”
Nita held her breath. Sven’s hand gripped her shoulder tightly; she worried about how he might react when his question was answered. Perhaps she should have talked him out of coming here.
“Other voices fell silent before your parents could return,” the voice said. “I do not know what happened after that, for I was alone then.”
It was the war, Nita thought. She wondered if Sven’s parents would have returned in any case.
“I want to know what happened before then,” Sven said. “Did they speak to anyone in the Institute after they left, before the voices fell silent? Is there any record of why they didn’t come back?”
“There was one last message. It was sent here before the silence, and placed in my records. It was a private communication, but as it concerns you, I may show it. If you wish to view the message, turn toward the screen next to the door behind you.”
Sven was still.
“Do you wish to see the message?” the voice asked. Nita could see Sven’s face through his transparent helmet; he was biting his lip and looking as though he already regretted his question. Her parents had left no message; what could Sven’s have had to say?
She waited. This was his decision to make.
“Yes,” he said at last. “I’ll look at the message now.” They turned toward the door. “You might as well see it, too.”
A face formed on the screen. Nita gazed into a woman’s gray eyes. Two lines were etched on either side of the woman’s mouth, and her dark-brown hair was threaded with silver strands.
“Lisa, I’m leaving this message for you,” the woman said. “Gustaf and I just found out that you’ll be closing the Institute temporarily until this crisis is past. I should have contacted you before now, but our efforts were needed elsewhere, and I suspect that there won’t be time to revive our child before—”
The woman lowered her eyes. This had to be Sven’s mother; her strong-boned face resembled his. Her words were strangely accented; Nita had to listen closely to understand what she was saying.
“As you know,” Ursule Anteliewicz continued, “Gustaf and I had hoped to bring our son with us when we assumed our new duties on Titov II. Our colleagues there have assured us that their nursery is completed and that the embryo could be revived to gestate there, but we’ve decided not to leave Earth at this time. We feel we must stay here for now and do what little we can to avert what might come. I know that many of your people may be joining with us and the other scientists who are trying to use what influence we have to bring about an agreement that could end this madness. You’ll understand why we have to stay.”
Nita glanced toward Sven. She had not expected to hear this sort of message. The woman paused; her eyes seemed to glisten. “It’s my hope that, before too long, we’ll return there for our child. We will, once this is over— I can’t believe—”
The woman looked away for a moment. “It’s very strange,” she murmured. “All these years, we did our work and dreamed of the day when we could continue our research in space. But I suppose we also wanted to escape this world and all the people who seemed intent on misusing or undoing whatever others managed to accomplish. We wanted our son to live among those who would build something new, not with those who prefer to spread misery and anguish. Now it seems as if our place is here, after all, and that we can’t simply run away.”
Ursule Anteliewicz sighed. “I tell myself that we waited too long, that we should have come for our son before, but unless we can make ourselves heard now, we’ll have little to leave him. I wonder what he would think of us if we had come for him and abandoned Earth and had done nothing to help it when we might have.”
Sven’s lips were pressed tightly together; Nita could not read his expression. He lifted one gloved hand and touched the screen lightly.
“If we succeed, we’ll come there for our child, but maybe this madness has gone too far for us to succeed. For years I’ve told my colleagues to speak out, whatever it
cost, but so few listened, and now it may be too late. Some would say I shouldn’t be sending you this message now, as if I could ever see you as an enemy. Gustaf and I will do what we can, but it may be that, if our son ever lives, he’ll have to build on our ruins. I hope he’s able to learn something from that and doesn’t repeat our mistakes. I wish he could find out somehow that his parents struggled against this insanity for as long as they could.”
The woman seemed about to rise, then settled back in her seat. “How solemn I sound. One would think I was saying my last words.” The tiny lines around her eyes deepened as she smiled. “Perhaps we’re making too much of this, Lisa. When this war is averted, and we come there for our son, we can laugh at how panicky we were. If you don’t have time to erase this, at least keep it private—I don’t want my message to cause you trouble. I’m sorry I couldn’t talk directly to you, but there’s no time—we’re already late for a meeting. Good-bye.”
The screen went blank. Sven swayed a little. “She could have escaped,” he said. “My parents could have been safe with those people off-Earth, but they stayed.”
He tore away from her and limped from the room. She caught up with him in the outer chamber. He took off his helmet, set it on the shelf, then leaned against the wall. He was blinking; he closed his eyes for a moment.
Nita removed her own helmet. “They wanted to help,” she said. “They didn’t want to fight, and they were thinking of you. They didn’t abandon you; they would have come back for you.”
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