The Year's Best SF 13 # 1995

by Gardner Dozois (ed)

  “I don’t like waterfalls,” I warned her.

  “Because you belong to the New Traditionalist movement. I know.” She shrugged her shoulders. “‘Waterfalls are clichés,’ you claim. ‘Life, done properly, is never pretty in simple ways.’”

  “Exactly.”

  “Yet,” Ula assured me, “this is my project.”

  I had come an enormous distance to wage a creative battle. Trying to measure my opponent, I asked, “What do you know about NTs?”

  “You want to regain the honesty of the original Earth. Hard winters. Droughts. Violent predation. Vibrant chaos.” Her expression became coy, then vaguely wicked. “But who’d want to terraform an entire world according to your values? And who would live on it, given the chance?”

  “The right people,” I replied, almost by reflex.

  “Not Father. He thinks terraforming should leave every place fat and green and pretty. And iron-hungry too.”

  “Like Beringa.”

  She nodded, the wickedness swelling. “Did you hear about my little mistake?”

  “About the hot-sap trees? I’m afraid so.”

  “I guess I do need help.” Yet Ula didn’t appear contrite. “I know about you, Mr. Locum. After my father hired you—I told him NTs work cheap—I ordered holos of every one of your works. You like working with jungles, don’t you?”

  Jungles were complex and intricate. And dense. And fun.

  “What about Yanci’s jungle?” she asked me. “It’s got a spectacular waterfall, if memory serves.”

  A socialite had paid me to build something bold, setting it inside a plastic cavern inside a pluto-class world. Low gravity; constant mist; an aggressive assemblage of wild animals and carnivorous plants. “Perfect,” Yanci had told me. Then she hired an old-school terraformer—little more than a plumber—to add one of those achingly slow rivers and falls, popular on every low-gravity world in the Realm.

  “Yes, Mr. Locum?” she teased. “What do you want to say?”

  “Call me Hann,” I growled.

  My student pulled her hair away from her jungle-colored eyes. “I’ve always been interested in New Traditionalists. Not that I believe what you preach … not entirely … but I’m glad Father hired one of you.”

  I was thinking about my ruined jungle. Fifty years in the past, and still it made my mouth go dry and my heart pound.

  “How will we move water without a river and falls?”

  “Underground,” I told her. “Through the porous rock. We can make a string of pools and lakes, and there won’t be erosion problems for centuries.”

  “Like this?” She called up a new schematic, and something very much like my idea appeared before us. “I did this in case you didn’t like my first idea.”

  A single waterfall was at the high end of the cavern.

  “A compromise,” she offered. Enlarging the image, she said, “Doesn’t it look natural?”

  For a cliché, I thought.

  “The reactor and pumps will be behind this cliff, and the water sounds can hide any noise—”

  “Fine,” I told her.

  “—and the entranceway too. You walk in through the falls.”

  Another cliché, but I said, “Fine.” Years of practice had taught me to compromise with the little points. Why fight details when there were bigger wars to wage?

  “Is it all right, Mr. Locum?” A wink. “I want both of us happy when this is done. Hann, I mean.”

  For an audience of how many? At least with shallow socialites, there were hundreds of friends and tag-alongs and nobodys and lovers. And since they rarely had enough money to fuel their lifestyles, they would open their possessions to the curious and the public.

  But here I could do my best work, and who would know?

  “Shall we make a jungle, Hann?”

  I would know, I told myself.

  And with a forced wink, I said, “Let’s begin.”

  * * *

  Terraforming is an ancient profession.

  Making your world more habitable began on the Earth itself, with the first dancing fire that warmed its builder’s cave; and everything since—every green world and asteroid and comet—is an enlargement on that first cozy cave. A hotter fusion fire brings heat and light, and benign organisms roam inside standardized biomes. For two hundred and ten centuries humans have expanded the Realm, mastering the tricks to bring life to a nearly dead universe. The frontier is an expanding sphere more than twenty light-years in radius—a great peaceful firestorm of life—and to date only one other living world has been discovered. Pitcairn. Alien and violent, and gorgeous. And the basic inspiration for the recent New Traditionalist movement. Pitcairn showed us how bland and domesticated our homes had become, riddled with clichés, every world essentially like every other world. Sad, sad, sad.

  Here I found myself with four hundred square kilometers of raw stone. How long would it take to build a mature jungle? Done simply, a matter of months. But novelty would take longer, much to Provo’s consternation. We would make fresh species, every ecological tie unique. I anticipated another year on top of the months, which was very good. We had the best computers, the best bio-stocks, and thousands of robots eager to work without pause or complaint. It was an ideal situation, I had to admit to myself. Very nearly heaven.

  We insulated the ice ceiling and walls by three different means. Field charges enclosed the heated air. If they were breached, durable refrigeration elements were sunk into the ice itself. And at my insistence we added a set of emergency ducts, cold compressed air waiting in side caverns in case of tragedies. Every organism could go into a sudden dormancy, and the heat would be sucked into the huge volumes of surrounding ice. Otherwise the ceiling might sag and collapse, and I didn’t want that to happen. Ula’s jungle was supposed to outlast all of us. Why else go to all this bother?

  We set the reactor inside the mine shaft, behind the eventual cliché. Then lights were strung, heating the cavern’s new air, and we manufactured rich soils with scrap rock and silt from Provo’s own little sea. The first inhabitants were bacteria and fungi set free to chew and multiply, giving the air its first living scent. Then robots began assembling tree-shaped molds, sinking hollow roots into the new earth and a sketchwork of branches meshing overhead, beginning the future canopy.

  We filled the molds with water, nutrients, and nourishing electrical currents, then inoculated them with totipotent cells. More like baking than gardening, this was how mature forest could be built from scratch. Living cells divided at an exponential rate, then assembled themselves into tissue-types—sapwood and heartwood, bark and vascular tubes. It’s a kind of superheated cultivation, and how else could artists like me exist? Left to Nature’s pace, anything larger than a terrarium would consume entire lives. Literally.

  Within five months—on schedule—we were watching the robots break up the molds, exposing the new trees to the air. And that’s a symbolic moment worth a break and a little celebration, which we held.

  Just Ula and me.

  I suggested inviting Provo, but she told me, “Not yet. It’s too soon to show him yet.”

  Perhaps. Or did she want her father kept at a distance?

  I didn’t ask. I didn’t care. We were dining on top of a rough little hill, at the midpoint of the cavern, whiteness above and the new forest below us, leafless, resembling thousands of stately old trees pruned back by giant shears. Stubby, enduring trees. I toasted our success, and Ula grinned, almost singing when she said, “I haven’t been the bother you expected, have I?”

  No, she hadn’t been.

  “And I know more about terraforming than you thought.”

  More than I would admit. I nodded and said, “You’re adept, considering you’re self-taught.”

  “No,” she sang, “you’re the disappointment.”

  “Am I?”

  “I expected … well, more energy. More inspiration.” She rose to her feet, gesturing at our half-born creation. “I really hoped an N
T would come up with bizarre wonders—”

  “Like an eight-legged terror?”

  “Exactly.”

  It had been her odd idea, and I’d dismissed it twenty times before I realized it was a game with her. She wanted an organism wholly unique, and I kept telling her that radical tailoring took too much time and too frequently failed. And besides, I added, our little patch of jungle wasn’t large enough for the kind of predator she had in mind.

  “I wish we could have one or two of them,” she joked.

  I ignored her. I’d learned that was best.

  “But don’t you agree? Nothing we’ve planned is that new or spectacular.”

  Yet I was proud of everything. What did she want? Our top three carnivores were being tailored at that moment—a new species of fire-eagle; a variation on black nightcats; and an intelligent, vicious species of monkey. Computer models showed that only two of them would survive after the first century. Which two depended on subtle, hard-to-model factors. That was one of the more radical, unpopular NT principles. “The fit survive.” We build worlds with too much diversity, knowing that some of our creations are temporary. And unworthy. Then we stand aside, letting our worlds decide for themselves.

  “I wish we could have rainstorms,” she added. It was another game, and she waved her arms while saying, “Big winds. Lightning. I’ve always wanted to see lightning.”

  “There’s not enough energy to drive storms,” I responded. The rains were going to be mild events that came in the night. When we had nights, in a year. “I don’t want to risk—”

  “—damaging the ice. I know.” She sat again, closer now, smiling as she said, “No, I don’t care. It’s coming along perfectly.”

  I nodded, gazing up at the brilliant white sky. The mining robots had left the ice gouged and sharp, and somehow that was appropriate. An old violence was set against a rich new order, violent in different ways. A steamy jungle cloaked in ice; an appealing, even poetic dichotomy. And while I looked into the distance, hearing the sounds of molds being torn apart and loaded onto mag-rails, my partner came even closer, touching one of my legs and asking, “How else have I surprised you?”

  She hadn’t touched me in months, even in passing.

  It took me a moment to gather myself, and I took her hand and set it out of the way, with a surety of motion.

  She said nothing, smiling and watching me.

  And once again, for the umpteenth time, I wondered what Ula was thinking. Because I didn’t know and couldn’t even guess. We had been together for months, our relationship professional and bloodless. Yet I always had the strong impression that she showed me what she wanted to show me, and I couldn’t even guess how much of that was genuine.

  “How else?” she asked again.

  “You’re an endless surprise,” I told her.

  But instead of appearing pleased, she dipped her head, the smile changing to a concentrated stare, hands drawing rounded shapes in the new soil, then erasing them with a few quick tiger swipes.

  * * *

  I met Provo behind the waterfall, in the shaft, his sturdy shape emerging from the shadows; and he gave me a nod and glanced at the curtain of water, never pausing, stepping through and vanishing with a certain indifference. I followed, knowing where the flow was weakest—where I would be the least soaked—and stepped out onto a broad rock shelf, workboots gripping and my dampened jersey starting to dry itself.

  The old man was gazing into the forest.

  I asked, “Would you like a tour?” Then I added, “We could ride one of the mag-rails, or we could walk.”

  “No,” he replied. “Neither.”

  Why was he here? Provo had contacted me, no warning given. He had asked about his daughter’s whereabouts. “She’s in the lab,” I had said, “mutating beetles.” Leave her alone, he had told me. Provo wanted just the two of us for his first inspection.

  Yet now he acted indifferent to our accomplishments, dropping his head and walking off the rock shelf and stopping, then looking back at me. And over the sound of tumbling water, he asked, “How is she?”

  “Ula’s fine.”

  “No troubles with her?” he inquired.

  It was several weeks after our hilltop celebration, and I barely remembered the hand on my leg. “She’s doing a credible job.”

  Provo appeared disappointed.

  I asked him, “How should she be?”

  He didn’t answer. “She likes you, Mr. Locum. We’ve talked about you. She’s told me, more than once … that you’re perfect.”

  I felt a sudden warmth, and I smiled.

  Disappointment faded. “How is she? Speaking as her teacher, of course.”

  “Bright. Maybe more than bright.” I didn’t want to praise too much, lifting his expectations. “She has inspirations, as she calls them. Some are workable, and some are even lovely.”

  “Inspirations,” he echoed.

  I readied some examples. I thought Provo would want them, enjoying this chance to have a parent’s pride. But instead he looked off into the trees again, the stubby branches sprouting smaller branches and fat green leaves. He seemed to be hunting for something specific, old red eyes squinting. Finally he said, “No.” He said, “I shouldn’t tell you.”

  “Tell me?”

  “Because you don’t need to know.” He sighed and turned, suddenly older and almost frail. “If she’s been on her best behavior, maybe I should keep my mouth shut.”

  I said nothing for a long moment.

  Provo shuffled across the clearing, sitting on a downed log with a certain gravity. The log had been grown in the horizontal position, then killed. Sitting next to him, I asked, “What is it, Mr. Lei?”

  “My daughter.”

  “Yes?”

  “She isn’t.”

  I nodded and said, “Adopted.”

  “Did she tell you?”

  “I know genetics. And I didn’t think you’d suppress your own genes.”

  He looked at the waterfall. It was extremely wide and not particularly tall, spilling onto the shelf and then into a large pond. A pair of mag-rails carried equipment in and out on the far shore. Otherwise little moved. I noticed a tiny tag-along mosquito who wouldn’t bite either of us. It must have come from the tundra, and it meant nothing. It would die in a few hours, I thought; and Provo suddenly told me, “Adopted, yes. And I think it’s fair to tell you the circumstances.”

  Why the tension?

  “I’m quite good at living alone, Mr. Locum. That’s one of the keys to my success.” He paused, then said, “I came to this world alone. I charted it and filed my claims and defended it from the jealous mining corporations. Every moment of my life has gone into these mines, and I’m proud of my accomplishments. Life. My metals have brought life and prosperity to millions, and I make no apologies. Do you understand me?”

  I said, “Yes.”

  “Few people come here. Like that freighter that brought you, most of the ships are unmanned.” Another pause. “But there are people who make their livelihood riding inside the freighters. Perhaps you’ve known a few of them.”

  I hadn’t, no.

  “They are people. They exist on a continuum. All qualities of human beings live inside those cramped quarters, some of them entirely decent. Honest. Capable of more compassion than I could hope to feel.”

  I nodded, no idea where we were going.

  “Ula’s biological parents weren’t at that end of the continuum. Believe me. When I first saw her … when I boarded her parents’ ship to supervise the loading … well, I won’t tell you what I saw. And smelled. And learned about the capacities of other human beings. Some things are best left behind, I think. Let’s forget them. Please.”

  “How old was Ula?”

  “A child. Three standard years, that time.” A small strong hand wiped at his sweating face. “Her parents purchased loads of mixed metals from me, then sold them to one of the water worlds near Beringa. To help plankton bloom, I imagine.
And for two years, every day, I found myself remembering that tiny girl, pitying her, a kind of guilt building inside me because I’d done nothing to help her, nothing at all.” Again the hands tried to dry his face, squeezed drops of perspiration almost glittering on them. “And yet, Mr. Locum, I was thankful too. Glad that I would never see her again. I assumed … I knew … that space itself would swallow them. That someone else would save her. That her parents would change. That I wouldn’t be involved again, even if I tried—”

  “They came back,” I muttered.

  Provo straightened his back, grimacing as if in pain. “Two years later, yes.” Brown eyes closed, opened. “They sent me word of their arrival, and in an instant a plan occurred to me. All at once I knew the right thing to do.” Eyes closed and stayed closed.” I was onboard, barely one quick glance at that half-starved child, and with a self-righteous voice I told the parents, ‘I want to adopt her. Name your price.’”

  “Good,” I offered.

  He shook his head. “You must be like me. We assume, and without reasons, that those kinds of people are simple predatory monsters. Merely selfish. Merely cruel.” The eyes opened once again. “But what I realized since is that Ula … Ula was in some way essential to that bizarre family. I’m not saying they loved her. It’s just that they couldn’t sell her anymore than they could kill her. Because if she died, who else would they have to torture?”

  I said nothing.

  “They couldn’t be bought, I learned. Quickly.” Provo swallowed and grabbed the log, knuckles pale as the hands shook. “You claim my daughter is well-behaved, and I’m pleased. You say she’s bright, and I’m not at all surprised. And since you seem to have her confidence and trust, I think it’s only fair to tell you about her past. To warn you.”

  “How did you adopt her?”

  He took a deep breath and held it.

  “If they couldn’t be bribed…?” I touched one of the thick arms. “What happened?”

  “Nothing.” A shrug of the shoulders, then he said, “There was an accident. During the loading process. The work can be dangerous, even deadly, when certain equipment fails.”

  I felt very distant, very calm.