Worldmakers

by Gardner Dozois

  “You knew all along; you were just letting me suffer!”

  Suwon laughed and Bik reached down to try to splash her, but he almost fell out of his makeshift raft and found himself teetering on his stomach, getting his face wet with every wave. The situation was so ridiculous that when he finally wriggled himself back to safety, he had to laugh too.

  They were both laughing when the graceful W-shaped aircraft settled into the waves beside them.

  Mabel Beautaux turned out to be a tiny, almost elfin, woman with a discernible African heritage and soft birdlike voice. She seemed to have stopped growing in her early teens, but her archaic name made Bik think she might go back to the early days of the terraforming project.

  He was not, however, quite prepared for how far back she went. As they tied the lines of the aircraft to a simple wooden dock, he asked when she was born.

  “In 1993. I was 135 when the geriatric retrovirus came along; there are only a couple of dozen others that are older. Most of my life, I’ve been a farmer; in Alabama the first century or so, Peary dome on Luna after I got my treatment and degree, then I came here and helped manage the bioforming project, from right after they let the sun back through, ’bout two hundred years ago.

  “What a ride that was! Storms and quakes! Populations of this, that, and the other critter breeding out of control! I worked on fertility retroviruses, and we had a devil of a time playing God, I tell you.” She grinned and shrugged her shoulders. “Now everything’s so settled down they can start giving the land away to whoever comes along. But that’s why we did it, isn’t it? So there!” She hitched the plane’s nose line to a dock cleat. “You’re dealing with a living fossil in her third millennium!”

  “A very beautiful one,” Bik gushed, clumsy with awe.

  “Oh? Well, now, gravity is good for the bones, and I do a fair amount of physical work around here.” She waved a hand at a tidy wood building next to the geodesic dome station building and a clear field surrounded by palms and eucalyptus. There were three—cows. Not obviously penned, just standing there munching grass. One of them looked at him suspiciously just as Mabel asked, “Got any idea of where you two want to settle?”

  “We’re not …” Bik stammered. Would a cow charge, like in a bullfight? Was there something he should do, or shouldn’t? He wasn’t wearing red. “I mean we just met today. Business arrangement.”

  “Oh? Well, let’s see what’s available for you to claim. I’ll slice some chicken squash, and if you’ll grab a few of those tomatoes, Suwon, we can have some sandwiches while we figure it out. We can wash that down with some of my peach wine and then I’ll fly you over to Port Tannhauser to register.”

  Suwon gave Mabel a hug and went to work. Bik, who’d never seen a meal prepared, let alone by human hands, stood around helpless and fascinated. After a feast that somehow tasted better than any home appliance or restaurant had ever given him, Mabel’s computer started to print the latest claim maps. With the maps, however, came a news item that gave Mabel a hard frown.

  “You didn’t tell me they fired you, Suwon.”

  “What!” Suwon was clearly shocked.

  “Says here that the settlement board is taking under advisement the status of people who get transportation outside normal channels and those who aid them. Mentions you in particular, Bik—and cites you for showing unprofessional favoritism, Suwon.”

  “But that’s nonsense,” Suwon protested. “And anyone with guts enough can dive from the CMR! Nothing wrong with that. What do the cybes say?”

  Mabel held up her hand for a moment and concentrated.

  “They say no settlement rules were broken, but fairness issues are a human judgment call.” Her brow wrinkled. “By the time they get a committee to debate that, it will be too late even if you win! I’d say someone clever is out to get you, Bik. But why you, Suwon?”

  “I was warned.” Suwon shook her head, more angry than afraid. “By a lawyer working for someone trying to keep Bik from getting his kid back. He tried to bribe me! Mabel, this is outrageous.”

  Mabel was muttering under her breath.

  No, Bik realized, she was subvocalizing to another built-in radio link.

  She smiled at Bik’s stare. “This old body’s been through so many updates, what was one more? When Suwon showed me her radio a few years back, well, I had to have one, too. Comes in handy when your hands are busy milking cows!” She didn’t quite giggle, but she was clearly amused by her joke. “Now, I’ve been around a while and I know a few people too. I’ve got them injuncted by the cybes from doing anything worse until after the rush. Anything legal, that is. Let’s look at the map. You get three choices. Let’s see what you want.”

  The intelliprint was linked and the colors on the map of the archipelago changed as they watched, white areas growing pink as they filled with tiny red rectangles. The red signified a claimed parcel.

  “Everything near Port Tannhauser has been grabbed,” Suwon observed.

  “Then we’d best get over there.” Mabel raised an eyebrow. “But first, let’s look at this area.”

  She put her finger on the east end of the archipelago and the map expanded in scale to reveal a dozen tiny islands, all white. “Here’s where we are now.” Mabel’s island was the first offshore peak of the range running south from Port Tannhauser, separated from the mainland of Beta Regio by a narrow strait. She moved her finger west toward Asteria Regio. “A polar current comes down this way and wells up between Beta and Asteria.” She grinned at them. “Some of it gets over to us, bringing some fog. But the effects are much more pronounced over there. There’ll be good fishing and lots of moisture near the coast with a north wind, but clear and sunny when it comes the other way.” She pointed to a small group of numbered islands. “Any of these 12-300’s should do.”

  Bik looked at his “partner” and Suwon nodded.

  “Let’s go, then,” he said.

  Port Tannhauser was a controlled riot, its sleepy streets filled with people. They had to anchor Mabel’s seaplane well out in the harbor and raft in. Fortunately, once the cybes confirmed that they were physically present, they were eligible to register their choices at a public terminal.

  Just in time, it turned out. There were still a couple of hours to go for registration, but when they unfolded the map, the entire area was red with claimants except for a pink fringe that included the western islands.

  “We’ll see the sights, have dinner at the Crab House and fly back to spend the night at my place, and fly out there early next morning.”

  “Uh,” Bik asked, “why not just go there directly? Your place is in the opposite direction. All I have to do is touch down and leave an occupancy marker. Then you could leave me at the air terminal on the way back. I wouldn’t have to impose.”

  Suwon looked at the ground, her lips tight. Did she, Bik wondered, have something else in mind for the night? Did she think he was out of line for suggesting something other than what Mabel had suggested? Was she just momentarily tired? Damn his inability to read people—the cybes should outlaw nonverbal communication. But, he thought ruefully, any experienced cybe could probably do better than he did. Kai had complained, gently at first, then with increasing sarcasm and severity, about his lack of sensitivity to her needs. She’d had a point—something always seemed to be going on among other people, some form of communication, that excluded him. But he couldn’t help it; all he had to go on, really, was what people’s words meant; the rest was just too uncertain.

  “I have to get back too,” Mabel declared, and smiled at him. “Don’t forget, I have to claim my place as well. I was allowed to preregister the claim, but that’s all.”

  “Oh,” Bik responded, relieved to have some clear priority, “in that case, I look forward to it.”

  Suwon looked up and smiled at him. He returned an embarrassed grin, still uncertain.

  On the way back from registration, they visited a small museum in the northern section of Port Tannhauser, an ea
sy hike up from the harbor on the randomly corrugated fused sand walkway. The buildings along the way were preciously eclectic, many showing an old German influence to be sure, but really products of their owners’ fantasies. The exterior of the museum itself was carefully authentic, and wouldn’t have been out of place in sixteenth-century Heidelberg.

  Inside, Bik, Suwon, and Mabel browsed through holographic dioramas of Port Tannhauser during the various stages of the terraforming project. The first showed the hellish original surface, and almost glowed. Then came a dark fairyland of carbon dioxide snow. This was followed by a glacier being eaten away by massive excavators on the edge of a starlit liquid nitrogen sea with the arc of the CMR on the horizon. Then came a dramatic stormswept boiling-nitrogen seascape lit by the first rays of the sun allowed through the sunshield. The sight made him shiver. It was followed by a dry desert overlooking a deep empty basin speckled with mining robots. There was another, gentler, storm scene from early in the forty years of rain, showing the half-filled basins and massive waterfalls. Then finally a fuzzy, meadowlike shore covered with the first bioforming grasses.

  There were artifacts as well, ranging from a broken pair of recreational skis used by scientists monitoring the carbon-dioxide snowfall eight hundred years ago, to a comet shepherd child’s duck. That had somehow survived the entry and breakup of a water shipment to be discovered floating on the Port Tannhauser beach. It sat on the museum shelf with a picture of its former owner, now living on a ring colony in the Kuiper belt of the Kruger 60 system.

  Bik, who had only been looking for a home to share with his son, left with a sense of his chance to become part of the history of a new world. To look back over the past twelve hundred years let him see the next twelve hundred, or twelve thousand, more clearly. He could be in at the beginning and contribute his name to legend. It was a chance that few understood, an opportunity that fewer grabbed. Thinking like Suwon, now, he thought wryly. How could someone so completely overwhelm him in less than a day? Yet it was the second time. A second chance.

  Only an hour remained of the registration period when they returned to the seaside and ordered dinner. The light-ringed harbor, except for Mabel’s plane, was deserted; everyone had headed out to their claims to be there at the start of the homesteading window.

  They were well into some fairly tasty handmade Crabe Asteria when they heard what sounded like a muffled thunderclap. They looked out the restaurant window to the harbor, now lit by a bright orange flame climbing up from its center.

  “My plane!” Mabel cried.

  Bik was on his feet and out the door, meaning to grab a fire extinguisher and swim for it. But the local anti-fire utility had what remained of the plane covered in foam by the time he got to the water’s edge. Mabel and Suwon were right behind him.

  Mabel looked grim. “Repro and shipment say it will take three days to replace the plane; too much in the queue just now with all the new settlers. I’m … This is outrageous!”

  “Maybe we can borrow a maintenance vehicle?” Bik hazarded.

  Suwon concentrated, then shook her head. “Everything that can be borrowed has been borrowed. They’ve only got the minimum needed for emergencies. Like that.” She gestured to the flames.

  They stood silently for a minute trying to absorb the disaster. To have come so far, Bik thought, and then this. He was sure the lawyers had something to do with it—what could they do with money, he wondered, that made it worth doing this to someone to get it?

  “I’m sorry, Mabel,” he choked out. “Your homestead … If it hadn’t been for me they wouldn’t have done this. And Bikki … I feel like …”

  “They aren’t going to get away with it,” she declared, her voice a calm, cheerful bell against the gloom. “I’ve already filed a protest saying who I think did it and why. I’ll get my land, and you’ll get yours.” Mabel pursed her lips. “But not before Wendt has your kid on the way to Kalinda station! You think a nice home environment with plenty of elbow room will make that much difference to a custody board?”

  “There’s no telling what a human board will do, but I’m told it will help a lot.”

  “Well, then,” Mabel said, “we have a long hike ahead of us.”

  Bik’s Mercury-conditioned feet and muscles suddenly remembered where they were. “Hike?”

  “First to the land registration office. It’s open for another fifteen minutes.”

  There was a human clerk there, a very tall, dark-skinned woman in a simple blue robe with a bemused smile on her face. She clearly knew Mabel, but simply took Mabel’s hand by way of greeting; the difference in their heights would have made an embrace embarrassing for both of them.

  “Hi Mabel! Good to see you, but I don’t think I can help anyone. Everything’s gone and there’s no transportation anyway. People have to be on the property when the sun rises here, in about twenty-five hours.”

  “Kris. I know. I want to open my island up to registration. Abandon my priority.”

  Suwon sucked in a breath and Kris’ eyes went wide.

  “But … whatever you say. It’s going to come out as two parcels.”

  “Right. Register me for the one with the old station, and Bik Wu, here, for the rest of it. See if you can wriggle the dividing line down to the north beach.”

  Kris concentrated a moment. “You’ve got it.” She handed an intelliprint to Mabel that showed the division. “But how are you going to get there?”

  “Dawn on Venus,” Mabel declared, “is low tide. The strait narrows down to a shallow only a couple of kilometers across. We’re going to hike a dozen kilometers over the hills to South Point, and then swim.”

  Bik’s mouth dropped, and he might have collapsed if Suwon hadn’t put her arm around him.

  The ground trail was easy, the gravity was not. Bik pushed himself until his legs gave out about five kilometers from the coast and he could not stand up. Suwon and Mabel cut down a couple of small trees with the emergency knife in Suwon’s jump belt. Then they made a travois hammock from their clothes. Bik’s jump tights formed the makeshift harness for Suwon and Mabel to use to put the weight of the travois on their shoulders. Mabel donated her green jumpsuit to tie the bottoms of the poles so that they wouldn’t spread apart more than the path width.

  Bik was intrigued to find the women were wearing simple, functional white support halters under their shifts. In Mercury’s lower gravity, most women didn’t bother with support garments, and instead used their bodies to display all kinds of rings, tattoos, and other decorations. But the Venusian women’s bodies were completely bare of any decoration, and Suwon seemed to find Bik’s own utilitarian nipple rings an item of amusement. His intellicard hung from one and a holo of Junior on his second birthday from the other. But he was much too exhausted to care about differing aesthetics as he dragged himself onto the rig.

  They pulled him for two kilometers to the crest of the trail before he told them to stop.

  “It’s downhill now. Let me try walking again,” he suggested. “I can use the poles as walking sticks. They can support my arms and let me use my arm muscles to help support the rest of me. You can have your clothes back. It’s getting cold.” With a light western breeze, it was getting about as chilly as it got in the Venusian tropical lowlands.

  “That’s because you’ve been lying on your back for an hour!” Suwon objected. “I’m sweating.”

  “I’ll take mine, thank you,” Mabel said. “I’m a lot smaller and lose heat faster.”

  Bik grabbed a branch hanging over the path and carefully stood up again. His knees burned and feet ached, but otherwise he simply felt tired.

  They disassembled the travois and cut a meter from its poles. Bik took one in each hand and started out again, half hanging on, half pushing with the poles, while Mabel shrugged into her jumpsuit. Suwon tied the other two jumpsuits together and draped them over her neck. The women quickly caught up to him, but walked behind, letting him set the pace.

  Bik’s calv
es ached on the verge of cramping with each step, but he forced himself to a slow, regular pace, somewhat like a cross-country skier in slow motion. Very slow. Less, he thought, than half a kilometer an hour. Would it be enough? The exertion made him sweat profusely and the waistband of his shorts was beginning to chafe. He was miserable, but he had to continue. Everything was at stake.

  After an eternity of pain, they reached the shoreline and he sprawled in the cool sand. They had a clear view of the western horizon, and it was already a brilliant orange; only Earth and Mercury were still visible in the brightening sky.

  Suwon came over to him, stripped for the swim. She laughed, a bit self-consciously. “Curious?”

  “Oh. Uh, didn’t mean to stare. The fashion on Mercury is to have all sorts of things—” He self-consciously unclipped his intellicard from its ring. “—dyed or clipped on your body. There’s nothing there but, well, you. You’re very—bare.”

  “I like it that way, at least for swimming. Come on, give me your stuff. I’ll stash it under a rock and we’ll pick it up later. If you think those shorts were chafing on the hike, wait until you see what a couple of hours in salt water do.”

  After all this, could he swim for two hours? He was mentally exhausted from fighting unaccustomed aches and pains, but his wind was holding up well and now that he was off his feet, he seemed to be reviving. In the water, gravity wouldn’t matter. Anyway, he had no choice. He removed what remained of his clothes and gave them to Suwon, who bundled them up with hers and Mabel’s and put them under a big rock in from the shoreline.

  Mabel, looking more like some ethereal bronzed nymph than a grown woman, took one side of him and Suwon the other as they waded into the gentle surf. It was cold to start with, but getting rid of his weight seemed to restore his energy. He established a smooth crawl at about two seconds a stroke, breathing on every other left arm, a pace which felt well within his capabilities.