Building Harlequin’s Moon

by Larry Niven

  Rachel didn’t answer. She needed to start back soon to get down-spiral to meet Gabriel. “I . . . I don’t know why I came here. It was the only place I could think of to go. I can’t stay long.”

  “You’ve got time. After all they stole from you, you can take a few minutes from them and visit with a friend.”

  “Are you a friend?”

  “You came to find me.”

  Rachel nodded. Treesa squatted on the edge of the roof and reached her hand down to Rachel. Rachel took it, and pulled herself up to sit next to Treesa on top of the shed.

  “What will you do now?” Treesa asked.

  “Gabriel is taking me back to Aldrin tomorrow.”

  “That’s not what I meant. Why do you think Ma Liren left you asleep?”

  Rachel hadn’t thought about exactly who or why. It had been just them—just Council and High Council, as much Gabriel’s fault as anyone’s. Gabriel had been cold when she was; cold when the decision was made. Rachel could believe Liren made the choice. “I don’t know. Gabriel mentioned there were some bad flares on the surface, and we couldn’t do our work, so . . . so they left us . . . left us cold.”

  “What happened?”

  “My friend died. My boyfriend got contracted . . . and had some children.” For an instant that struck her as funny.

  “I know that part. Remember, we watch. Me more than most. I stay awake right now for my birds. I’ve been here all of the twenty years you were dead to us, and I saw a lot. High Council has made changes I don’t think you’ll like. But what changed for you because you were cold?”

  “But . . . I just told you.” What did this half-crazy woman want? Actually, less than half crazy. The twenty years Rachel was cold had been good for Treesa.

  Treesa pursed her lips. “Try again. Tell me how you feel.”

  Rachel closed her eyes. “I’m angry. It doesn’t feel real. When I open my eyes, I know it happened, that all that time passed, but when I close my eyes, I’m not sure it did. I think I’ll open them again, and life will be the way it was. But, Treesa, they really could have left me for a thousand years! Who’d stop them? When I warmed up, how would I know?” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “They could do anything they want with me. I hate them all.”

  “Who do you have to turn to now?” Treesa prodded.

  “G-Gabriel.”

  “Who has power over you?” Treesa cracked her knuckles and ran her fingers through her hair.

  “Council, but they always had the power. They’ve always had all of the power.”

  “So tell me this. Do they have more power now, or less? I mean, over you.”

  “I don’t understand. They have it all. I don’t have any choices, and they just stole the one choice I wanted to make—to be with Harry.”

  “What else do you want?” Treesa prodded.

  “I always dreamed I’d be like Council,” Rachel said bitterly. “That I’d be one of them, in fact.” She’d wanted that as long as she could remember, but it remained always out of reach. Every time she thought she was getting closer to Gabriel, or Ali, or Kyu, it turned out that they weren’t thinking about her after all, except maybe to find work for her to do. Or because they had to, because it was their job. And now that she had done something that only Council did? She’d been frozen. Was she more like them now? What about Gabriel? He had held her last night, and almost ignored her this morning. As she got older it seemed as if he were closer and farther away, all at once.

  “I want them to like me, and I want to do good work.” What else is there to want? Children? Harry.

  “What about the Children of Selene? That’s what you are, you know. The rest of us are Earth’s offspring. We are no better, just older. Just born someplace different.” Treesa paused, searching for the right words. When she started again, her voice was measured. “They can’t let themselves love you. Every one of us left family and power, escaped at a price. They value their dream, and if they stay here, they doom their own children to die. To make you their children, to admit you are their children, is almost impossible. I see some on Selene that balance it out in their hearts, but no one here. Liren fights it, keeps the dream alive, tries to keep us all alive.” Planters lined both sides of the roof. Treesa plucked tiny weeds from a pot filled with basil and mint. “Keep your anger, stay angry, but don’t close your heart completely. Not to anyone. I know the role you have to play—you have to be a bridge for us all.”

  Rachel didn’t know how to think about that.

  Treesa stayed quiet for a while, looking up at Yggdrasil. Then she said, “Some of the knowledge you need is in your relationships with both sets of people. I can’t give you everything, although I can help. Let me see your wrist pad.” Treesa held out her hand.

  Rachel handed her the pad reluctantly; she had just gotten it!

  “I used to run our communications systems,” Treesa said. “I’m pretty damn good with data. Maybe the best on the ship.” Treesa fiddled with the pad, doing things Rachel couldn’t see. While she worked, she asked, “Did you know your mom was a communications tech? She used to work for me.”

  Her mom? Treesa knew her mom? A thrill of excitement ran through her. “I knew she did communications on Aldrin. I didn’t know you knew her.”

  “I didn’t—not well. She worked for someone who worked for me—before I woke up so strange Council wouldn’t give me jobs anymore. But I’m a lot better now. Let me introduce you to someone who helped me—a friend.”

  “I want to hear about my mom.”

  “There’s not much more to tell. She’s cold.”

  “I know that much. How come no one tells me anything? You say you’re my friend, but even you change the subject when I ask about Mom.”

  “Maybe you don’t know what questions to ask yet.”

  What kind of answer was that?

  “Now,” Treesa said, “about that introduction.”

  Rachel looked around. There was no one there, but Treesa sounded like someone could hear her.

  Treesa opened a small data window in front of her. A symbol flashed in the window; someone in a funny white suit with a bubble hat. Treesa said, “Astronaut, can you tell Rachel about yourself, and about learning?”

  “Hello, Rachel.” The voice deep in her ear was shaded masculine, silky, perfectly enunciated. Different from the Library, which sounded neuter.

  “You helped design the Hammered Sea,” Rachel said, interested. “Gabriel told me so.”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you a machine?”

  “I am an intelligence that isn’t human. Not a machine—a system based on information. Like you are based on biology. I live in a machine like you live in meat.”

  Almost everybody except Gabriel acted afraid of Astronaut. Liren, and Ali, and perhaps Kyu, at least a little. Rachel’s stomach fluttered. She was talking to someone the Council feared. “Why do you want to talk to me?”

  “You interest me. You are a slave for the Council, like I am. You and I share some of their goals. Any other choice would be death. But some of our individual goals, mine and yours, are different from Council’s goals. So we have some of the same problems.”

  Astronaut sounded like her dad, talking about Council goals. “A slave?” Rachel asked. “What’s a slave?”

  Treesa answered with a question. “Why did Council cause you to be born?”

  “To help them make Selene into a home.”

  “Doing things that they are unwilling to do, and unwilling to make machines to do. So they had you,” Treesa said.

  “They need to save some of the Earth Born for when they get to Ymir. So they need us.”

  “But what becomes of you?”

  Rachel swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  “Well, what will become of Astronaut when Council gets to Ymir? They needed a navigator. Maybe they’ll keep him for a navigator again, maybe they won’t. No one knows until they get to Ymir. In the meantime, Astronaut and I will be your friends. Astronaut can te
ach you even more than I can. We can show you where you came from, help you decide where you want to go. Gabriel has said he wants you to be a leader. Leaders think for themselves, and they don’t always do what they’re told. They learn, and weigh, and decide. They create the future.”

  Astronaut broke in. “Treesa has asked me to help you find your way through the Library, and to teach you human history. But you must agree to be taught.”

  “Well, of course.” When had she ever turned down a lesson?

  “We are both bound by Council rules. You have to ask me questions. That’s how the rules work for me. Treesa can help you. If you ask broad questions, I can find much that is related to the question.”

  Rachel thought about it, picking at tiny weeds in the pots and noticing how rich the dirt smelled. “So if I ask about how the Earth was made, you can tell me?”

  “That would be a good question. That would start you on history, which is a very broad topic.”

  Rachel smiled at Treesa. “This might be fun.”

  Astronaut kept talking. “If I work with you, can you forget to tell Gabriel how much I tell you? Tell him I’ve contacted you, and don’t lie to him, but omit details. Council doesn’t like me or trust me. Even Gabriel is suspicious sometimes. If Council knows too much, they might act against you.”

  Rachel swallowed. “Like making me cold again?”

  “Or they might act against Treesa.”

  “What risks is Treesa taking?”

  “Council is interdicted against talking with you, except for polite greetings and similar interactions, unless they have permission. That is, everyone except the terraformers.”

  No wonder so many people avoided her. Andrew broke rules, and look what happened to him. But she never did, and she had never seen a Council member break a rule. But Treesa was breaking a rule just by offering to teach Rachel? And Treesa and Astronaut were suggesting that Rachel break rules, or bend them. Treesa was Council, wasn’t she?

  “Who are you, Treesa?”

  Treesa sounded tired, and her voice seemed far away. “Ever hear the term ‘disaffected’?”

  Rachel had heard it—in the argument between the captain and Gabriel that she’d interrupted. Gabriel had associated it with Liren, and the captain had shaken his head, disagreeing.

  Treesa must have seen Rachel’s blank look. “I didn’t think so. It means you’re crazy when you warm up. High Council thinks I’m mildly disaffected, so they tolerate me living alone as long as I do my share of the work. It also means I can get caught breaking rules and not get in as much trouble as others.

  “I stay warm longer than most.” She pulled at her gray hair and grinned. “That means I have time to think about things. Especially since I don’t have as much responsibility as the rest of the waking Council. So I think about what our real problems are.

  “This trip was supposed to save us as a species. That’s much more important than either of us, than any of us. Right now, you think life is hard for you. Well, I don’t feel sorry for you.”

  Rachel flinched. Treesa laughed. “Hear me out. The stakes are more than your personal life, or mine, or any other member of Council or High Council. It’s time for you to grow up.”

  Rachel was damned tired of being lectured by everybody. She turned her back on Treesa and stared out over the garden.

  The old woman said, “You lost your love in your sleep. You lost him because now he’s twice as old as you, and now he loves someone else. That all happened in a day. It seems unreal, right?”

  “Yes.”

  Treesa walked around until she was in front of Rachel. “Well, I’m not disaffected from being warmed. I’m disaffected because of what I found when I woke up. Maybe I’m not disaffected anymore, maybe Astronaut has helped enough that I’m just—disgruntled.” A look of wry pleasure crossed Treesa’s face.

  “I lost my man the same way you lost Harry, only worse. One day I woke up, and we were here. My Harry was named Douglas. Dougie Glass was a crewman for Leif Eriksson, one of our two sister carrier ships. When we ended up drawing different ships we decided not to fight it. After all, it was just going to be a year or two of effective life—a year or two awake and alive, and a lot of years cold and waiting, dead to each other in time we’d never see or feel. But Leif kept going, and probably made it to”—her eyes rolled up in her head, like she was remembering something—”to HDC 212776, and carved the second planet into Ymir. But John Glenn lost its way. Too much radiation, a flaw in the scoop design, and we spent nearly all our antimatter getting here.”

  “Why didn’t Leif Eriksson—”

  “We warned our base near Neptune. They warned Leif not to overuse the ram.”

  “Oh.”

  “Lewis and Clark hadn’t even left yet. They did the fix in Earth orbit. We heard some of this before communications stopped. Best guess is Lewis and Clark got there first, Leif a few hundred years later, and . . .” She trailed off.

  “So Douglas and I lost each other in the time streams.” Treesa stared at the other end of the garden, as if something over there were very important. Rachel wasn’t sure that Treesa even knew she was still there until she continued. “Someday we might find Ymir, and when we find Ymir, we might find Leif Eriksson and Lewis and Clark waiting for us. But Douglas and me, we won’t find each other. We won’t have had the same effective lifetime.”

  Rachel shivered. She hadn’t thought there was anything worse than losing twenty of Harry’s years.

  Treesa continued. “Douglas was a beautiful man, full of wanting to do well, and strong. A good mind, a lot like your Harry’s good mind . . .” Treesa stared off for a minute and then went back to picking weeds. “That doesn’t matter now. Time has left my dreaming behind, so now I think instead. But you still have time. Maybe not time with Harry, not like you thought, but time with family, time with your people. You need perspective, so study your history, Earth’s history. Astronaut will help. And when you come back, find me. There are things an AI can’t teach you. But don’t get caught with Astronaut, it could be edited for that, or flat-out erased. Machine intelligences are more fragile than we are. Sort of.” She seemed to fumble for words or concepts. “Be very very careful. Astronaut is taking this risk because it needs an ally, and it thinks we need it to keep us all safe. It thinks something has to change to keep the ship safe, and Selene safe, and you and me safe. I’m risking this because being human isn’t about avoiding technology, and High Council will destroy us all if they keep making bad choices. Don’t be scared—we’re not asking you to do anything now but learn. We just want you to learn. Can you do that?”

  “Yes.” Rachel thought of her promise to Gabriel and Kyu when she was introduced to the Library. This wasn’t breaking it, not really. Was it?

  As if reading her mind, Astronaut said, “This is Council of Humanity work, Rachel. You must learn about being human. After you learn more, you’ll want to make your own choices.”

  Treesa broke in, “But you should get back to Gabriel soon. He’ll be looking for you.”

  “What about my mom?”

  “She’s cold. She may not wake up while you’re alive. It’s her choice.”

  Rachel looked at her wrist. She was late meeting Gabriel. “I don’t know if I’ll be back,” she said. “I think I’m going to Selene in a day or two.”

  “If you work at it, you may be able to have more of a voice in decisions than you know. One thing we all have is time. There is no hurry.”

  Rachel turned to slide down from the roof.

  “I’ve seen to it that you can message me from Selene.”

  Rachel looked up at Treesa, surprised. “How can I hide that?”

  “I’ll take care of it. Rachel? Try to be happier. You don’t always have a choice about what happens to you, but you have a choice about how you react.”

  “That’s easy for you.”

  Treesa smiled. “Better learn.”

  Rachel jogged down the path toward the cafeteria, and then sl
owed to a walk. How was she supposed to know what action to take? Was she violating Gabriel’s trust? She had worked so hard for it, and now it didn’t seem to matter much. Working hard hadn’t got her what she needed. Ursula’s image floated in her mind, and she bit back tears. She couldn’t turn down lessons, there was too much she had to know.

  She came around the corner toward the cafeteria, and Gabriel was standing near the door, waiting, looking around for her. When he saw her, he said, “You’re late.”

  She said, “I know. I’ve got a clock.”

  Gabriel’s eyes widened, but he shrugged and fell into step beside her, but a distance away. He didn’t ask where she had been. “Are you doing better today?”

  “What were you and the captain talking about when I came in?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Really?”

  “Rachel, it doesn’t matter.”

  Of course it mattered. But now she knew some things he didn’t know she knew. It was scary, but she liked the feeling. After all, what more could they do to her anyway? “What time do we leave tomorrow?”

  “In the morning.”

  “I’ll be ready.” Rachel walked faster, getting ahead of him. She led all the way to her room, and when Gabriel made as if to come in, she closed the door.

  CHAPTER 28

  HOMECOMING

  THEY WERE FLYING home. Finally. Rachel nearly ignored Gabriel as he tried to engage her in conversation. He pointed out several moons, but she could barely pull her eyes away from watching for Selene.

  Gabriel had told her father they were coming. She now had full communications access, but she had decided not to send notes; she wanted to see people. She twisted on her hair braid, now so long it hung below her shoulders.

  As the glittering craters of Selene came into focus, she gasped again at the bright colors. Selene looked even more beautiful from space than the first time she’d seen it that way. Home.