Marooned on Eden

by Robert L. Forward

  "Yes," said Shirley smugly. "And I've had another idea!" This one had been born of watching the laborious grinding of meal for breads, and utilized yet another of the bountiful streams with which the nearby countryside was supplied. The water mill was so simple to build that no one objected to the effort of its construction, and proved as fascinating for these sophisticated minds to observe as any spectacular technology of the past. Then it was decided it would be handy to have a wheeled cart, to carry various stores about, and once again Shirley was in her element, designing and engineering.

  The small band of explorers, while still scrupulously compiling descriptions and analyses of the plants and animals of their new home, and sending off their recorded results each evening through the penetrator-to-commsat-to-Prometheus radio link, became absorbed also in the joys of furnishing their new home. The more routine tasks, such as keeping track of the whereabouts of tools, measuring the daily tides, replenishing the foodstuffs with just enough for each day's needs, became so automatic that no one actually paid much attention to them.

  Nels walked briskly to the shore, calling to the flouwen hovering nearby, as he counted down the varicolored stones of the tide markers. "Nine . . .ten! Right." He made a quick note on a piece of bark with some charcoal, and turned to talk to the flouwen. How's the water, Little Red?"

  "Water great! Big tide tonight! We'll be far out, come surfing in!"

  "Fine—have fun!" Nels turned, then hesitated. Big tide? He'd better check . . .

  "I've lost track of the days, Jinjur. Is it a triple conjunction tide, tonight? Or one of those big quadruple conjunction ones?"

  Jinjur turned to Reiki. "I've not been paying attention, either. Look it up in your journal, Reiki, will you?"

  Nels's new piece of data was added to those already stored, and the journal then displayed a complex curve that showed the short record of tidal height versus time that had been collected since they started to keep tidal records. The complex curve showed the fifteen hour twice-a-day period of the small Barnard tides, the once-a-day medium-height tidal pulses from Zulu, and the larger pulses from Zouave as it passed in back of them every two-and-a-half days. It was obvious that the three peaks would be occurring near the same time, but the data was so sparse it was hard to tell how close they would be together.

  "It's hard to tell," concluded Shirley after inspecting the record. "What makes it difficult is that although we know that the tides on Eden are predicted to be as large as twelve meters or more, that only applies to an ideal planet with an ideal ocean with no island chains on it. It doesn't take into account the effects of ocean currents, prevailing winds, and local topography. The tides on this beach could be higher or lower than the nominal value."

  Jinjur nodded. "I'll keep watch on i, mysel, tonight, and make sure I mark it at its highest point," she announced. Accordingly, she settled down comfortably in the sand as the slow rise of the water began to grow. It was an unusually calm evening, with high clouds that hid the stars but let the light from Gargantua through to illuminate the beach. She could hear an occasional remark as the others went about the evening's small chores.

  "We're running low on kindling, Shirley. Shall I collect some small stuff tomorrow?"

  "You know, Reiki, it's not hard to cut up these big planks with a sharp-edged rock. They split easily enough, if you'd rather just bring an armload of them down."

  "Very well, but I rather like picking up a big bunch of the twigs and things. Makes use of them, after all. And helps to tidy up the place!" Both smiled, a trifle wryly. After all the years of walking thoughtlessly on immaculate surfaces, they now forgot occasionally, and tripped and stumbled among the debris of the forest.

  "Say, Cinnamon, maybe we could start a compost heap!" Nels was enthusiastic, but Cinnamon's voice was not.

  "Maybe," she said. "But those things are tricky, Nels, especially when we can't monitor the heat inside, or the rate of deterioration. You have to add water from time to time, and keep the whole thing covered, and not dump in just everything . . ."

  "How can it be so tough?" he asked. "Stuff's going to rot, no matter what. Can't we just build a pile . . .?

  "Nels, have you ever been downwind from a real dump?" Cinnamon said, in some exasperation. "Yes, eventually things rot, but the process . . ."

  David's small flute began a tune, and Jinjur listened with more pleasure. A large shadow moved towards her, and John came to sit down nearby, with a sigh of relaxation.

  "My turn to do the washing-up. Using sand for detergent sure gets the fingernails clean—and keeps them filed down at the same time!" He grinned at Jinjur. She looked ruefully at her own hands.

  "I know. I kept mine longer than this, even at boot camp. These grungy domestic jobs! Gives new meaning to the phrase 'galley slave,' don't they?"

  He laughed, and stretched out. "Good thing there's ten of us. It's not so bad when it's not a daily thing."

  Jinjur sighed, and leaned back on her folded arms. "That's right."

  There was a silence. "You know," John said finally, "I never did any camping before. Our family vacations were as organized as the rest of the year, between conventions and campaigns, and once I got to college and began bouncing around between premed and engineering I didn't want to do anything but sleep in my free time. This whole thing is so new to me, I'm still reeling."

  Jinjur was surprised. "I didn't notice," she said. "But then, I guess all of us are still reeling, in our own ways. Did you see Arielle this morning, when she was first up?"

  He shook his head.

  "I was just getting up, myself, and she was down at the shore, with a pot of some kind, and bending over it, and tilting it this way and that, and then finally she dumped it out into the sea and came stamping up the beach. Then she saw me watching her, and she gave me that look, you know, she has when she is truly disgusted, and said, 'Lousy mirror!' " Jinjur chuckled, and sighed again. There was another silence. Then John rose and dusted the sand from himself, and grinned down at Jinjur.

  "But," he said softly, "This actually is tremendous fun!"

  He walked away up the beach, and Jinjur turned her attention back to the rising tide, thinking about the things they'd accomplished today, the prospects for the morrow, all the details of this new life they were leading. As the water touched the ten-meter marker, and began to retreat, she sat up to watch carefully. Unfortunately, because of the high cloud cover, she couldn't see the shadows of the three moons as they lined up on the face of Gargantua. Because Gargantua was just a bright patch in the clouds, she wasn't quite sure of the time, although it was somewhere around midnight. They had all quickly learned to tell time during the night when Barnard was not in the sky, simply by the position of the terminator on Gargantua's face. At sunset one side of Gargantua was in half-moon phase, and at sunrise it was the other half that was illuminated, while at midnight, the entire face of the giant planet was lit. Fortunately, there was little wind that night, so the tidal mark that was reached was due to tidal effects only, with no assist—either positive or negative—from the wind.

  With satisfaction and relief Jinjur got up to dust herself down. All was well, now. If that was the highest the tide would get in this region of the planetoid, and the next quadruple tide would not be for fifty-four days, then she and the others could concentrate again on all the work to be done instead of having to worry about moving their shelter.

  John's words came back . . .Yes, to be honest, this was enormous fun, and as far as Jinjur herself was concerned, their little Eden was made more so by all the challenges still to be met. She'd have been bored without problems to solve!

  That was the trend of Shirley's thoughts, too, as she settled to sleep. Without the use of tools, or James, she had felt continual frustration for days. Now, however, she was relearning the skills of her own hands. As her eyes closed, she was not seeing the straggly thatch above her head, but a fine new roof of smoothed boards, and she smiled.

  David reluctantly put away t
he little flute. The flouwen had been absent this evening, off on their surfing expedition, but he intended to meet with them again at the first opportunity. It had occurred to him to play some of the ceremonial sounds of the Jolly for the flouwen. It might just be that these two very different species of this star system might share some link in sounds. It was an exciting thought, and had only come to him today, as he strove to copy the Jolly's greeting, and remembered. Wasn't this little phrase part of the song Cinnamon and the flouwen had had such fun with, back in the tank on Prometheus? He curled on his side to rest, pleasantly weary from the day's exertions, and began to listen, as always, to the music that waited in his head.

  Next to him, Arielle lay limp as a cat, and as relaxed. Her dark eyes, enormous in the gloom, moved slow and unconcerned over the drowsing camp. It was her watch. No doubt it would be as uneventful as every watch so far had been, but there was no question of not standing watches. With delight, she relived the glorious dives from the rocks she had found today; perfectly poised above the deep pool below, so that for a brief instant she was soaring, free from earth again!

  Carmen and Richard were still talking, idly, by the fire. Both were tired, and were feeling just that little lassitude which makes one reluctant to make the effort to get up.

  "Wonder if the Jolly could use a water mill to grind seeds, like we have?" Carmen said. "I know it doesn't make much power, but . . ."

  "I think they eat what they eat pretty much as is," he said lazily. "Maybe they've some sort of gizzard arrangement. They seem pretty content, whatever."

  "I know," said Carmen. "They do seem peaceful, and serene, and . . .happy." She speculated further. "They manage to keep busy, but they seem to feel they have everything they need, or want, for themselves and their young . . ." She was quiet.

  "Well, of course, they've evolved here. This is their home, no wonder they're content. But for us, this is still howling wilderness. I hope! I like exploring, always did. And the mild weather makes it fun, knowing you're not going to freeze any minute. Kind of natural, to me, living like this . . ." His voice drifted off. A log cracked and fell apart in the fire, and the sound roused the two. Yawning, they stood and walked sleepily to the tattered shelter.

  "Me and the Jollys," said Carmen. "I'm beginning to feel very much at home."

  Almost unconsciously, Reiki's slim fingers pressed the last words into the chordic keyboard of her tiny recorder, and were still.

  Eleven days later, things were not so tranquil. All morning, the wind had been increasing. From being an intermittent flutter of sound, the rattling of the thatch had become a steady clatter, almost obscuring the moan of the high winds in the treetops. Whitecaps foamed in the gathering grayness, lit by an occasional flicker of lightning from the approaching storm. Carmen and Reiki stopped their work at the little mill, and swept the flour and the unground grain hurriedly into waiting containers. Surveying the bending trees around them, they agreed to stow the precious pots right there, in the protection of some nearby boulders.

  "And," said Reiki firmly, "We'll make a Scottish lid for them!" This, it turned out, consisted of several large rocks piled atop the ill-fitting lids, and Carmen approved. Already, the little mill had begun to splash more noisily as the storm moved towards them, bringing rain to the hillside above them.

  Irritated by the racket, Shirley called John to help her, and together they seized and tied down all the fluttering fronds they could reach.

  "If this gets really bad, we may lose this roof, Shirley!" John raised his voice above the noise.

  "Might be just as well," she shouted back. "I've got some ideas for a better one anyway."

  The swirling smoke from the fire made Arielle cough, and she swore under her breath as she stirred the several pots, preparing their lunch, which they scheduled just prior to the mid-day eclipse of Barnard by Gargantua.

  "Hand me bay, and thyme, and marjoram, please, Cinnamon? Damn smoke gets in my eyes!" Cinnamon thought of the song and started to sing, but a look at Arielle's red eyes silenced her and she reached quickly for the herbs. Actually, they were nothing like bay, or thyme, or marjoram, but Arielle had firmly labeled them with old names. "Close enough," she had said, "and those nice names."

  Now she fumbled with the small boxes, and swore again as the dry leaves tried to fly upward with the smoke instead of falling into the pot.

  Jinjur directed Richard, David, and Nels in the methodical securing of all their belongings which might be threatened by storm. Like the experienced commander she was, Jinjur had mentally worked out emergency plans for this camp well in advance, taking every contingency she could foresee into account.

  "Nels, pile some rocks on the table as soon as we've finished with it, after dinner. Get a stack ready to hand. David, collect all the loose stuff you can see, and stow it in the shelter, topped with something that won't blow. Richard, let's move those heavy metal storage chests up there along the sides, they'll keep off some of the flying grit."

  Indeed, the blowing sand was hindering everything they did. Their hurried mid-day meal was hot and good-tasting, but almost uneatable with grit. Cleanup was hurried, and then every utensil had to be packed into the chests. The wind was almost steady now, and blew chillier than anything they had felt so far on this strange world. It made the little crew huddle a little closer under the shelter. Shirley stared out over the dark ocean.

  "Hope the flouwen are enjoying this," she said, "and that the Jollys are battened down."

  Jinjur snorted. "The Jollys are the least of my concern," she said. "They know what's coming, and I'm not real sure. Did the flouwen mention a storm, recently?" No one spoke for a moment. Then Reiki said, "I talked with them two days ago, but that's the last I saw of them. When they left, Little Red was yelling about surfing, but then he frequently does . . ."

  "And no one's seen them since? Well, they're probably well out to sea, where they're safer anyway."

  The fury of the wind increased, and the rain began with a rush that soon turned into a steady downpour. The colors in the sky looked different to the watching eyes.

  "Look at the green, over there in the south," said David. "It's almost a glacier green, unusual for a sky illuminated by a red dwarf star." The strange color was not very apparent to the other humans, but the changing shades were fascinating to them all. They watched in silence, and relative comfort, as the roof above them stood sturdily in the storm. The lightning flashes increased in tempo, and soon the flashing strokes and rolling bangs were nearly continuous.

  Before them, stretching to the horizon, the black ocean roared as loudly as the storm, and the incoming waves broke heavily on the beach, inexorably reaching further and further up the beach with each wave. It was John who said, a trifle uneasily, "Didn't we just have a peak high tide two weeks ago?"

  Jinjur started, guiltily, when she remembered that she had measured that tide herself. "Yes, but it was just eleven days ago. The next peak high tide is not due for weeks yet. The water does look like its coming up pretty high though, doesn't it? I expect it's the storm, churning things up out at sea."

  Nevertheless, they watched a little anxiously, as the frothing waves surged still further up the beach. It started to get even darker as Barnard started behind Gargantua for the midday eclipse. Suddenly Nels stood up, and plodded deliberately out into the pouring rain, heading for the carefully placed marker stones. The others watched as he carefully counted, and then walked quickly back to them through the gathering darkness. He stayed off the cushioning boughs, standing at the edge of the shelter, and his voice was rough.

  "It's up past the ten-meter rock, Jinjur, and still coming! And it's not just the occasional breaker. I think there's something definitely going on!" Minds raced, searching for possibilities.

  Shirley's eyes fell into a blank stare as she searched through her eidetic memory for an image she had seen many weeks ago on a screen on the control deck of Prometheus. With difficulty, for she had only looked at it once, and that brief
ly, she brought up the image and started looking at it carefully. "The triple conjunction tides occur every 18 days, and they line up with the Barnard tide at either exactly midnight or exactly noon to form a quadruple conjunction tide every 54 days, but . . ." here she paused as she looked even more carefully at the image in her memory. " . . .there is a 'false' peak in the tide that occurs 11 days before the true quadruple conjunction at mid-day. It occurs near midnight, but not exactly at midnight."

  "There were clouds in the sky when I measured that last high tide," said Jinjur. "I thought at the time it was midnight, but now I'm not so sure."

  "The slope of the beach becomes shallower here where the shelter is," David reminded them. "A few extra meters in tide height means dozens of meters in additional beach coverage."

  Just as he finished speaking, they were thrown into the pitch black darkness of the noon-time eclipse as the last bit of Barnard disappeared behind Gargantua, not to reappear for nearly two hours.