by Larry Niven
Rachel poured Beth a glass of water, and sat down by the edge of the bed. “I’m so happy this worked. You’re walking great.”
Beth’s brows tugged together in a frown. “I want to go home.”
“Just be happy you weren’t iced. They’ll send us home when they’re ready. We don’t control the Council.”
“They seem to listen to you.”
Rachel threw back her head and laughed. “Less than you know.”
Ali stepped into the room, smiling. “How are you?”
Beth repeated, “I want to go home.”
Ali raised her eyebrows in mock surprise. “And miss seeing the mysteries of John Glenn?”
“How do I know you didn’t ice me? How do I know my friends are all still my age?” Beth pleaded.
“I can show you.” Ali tapped some commands into the display above Beth’s bed. “Let’s go. I’ve just cleared you for an hour in a magic room.”
Beth’s eyes lit up. “A magic room? Rachel told me about those. Really? You’ll take me to one?”
Ali laughed again, clearly in a good mood. Beth and Rachel followed her. It was Beth’s first trip outside Medical, and she flinched from the moving pictures on the walls. Shifts in gravity confused her. By the time they got to the magic room, sweat beaded her forehead and her breath came in fast gulps.
They settled into the chairs, and Ali did the same trick Gabriel had used on Rachel her first time here, floating them in a sea of stars. Beth clutched the edge of her seat and giggled nervously. Rachel started pointing out constellations, and Beth and Rachel shared their names for them with Ali: the Tree, Two Viaducts, and Children Playing. Next, Ali brought up a bird’s eye view of Aldrin on the wall in front of Beth.
“Show me my family.”
Ali brought a second data window, consulted it, and selected a camera. The view centered on the path outside the child care center, where Gloria held Beth’s younger sister, Miriam. Sound came up. Miriam cried into Gloria’s shoulder, and Gloria patted her child’s head, saying, “I know, I know. You’ll like our new home too. I promise. It’ll be okay.”
Miriam’s sobs intensified, and the camera angle showed Gloria’s face almost head-on. A tear streaked down her cheek. She turned, and carrying Miriam, started home.
Ali left the camera in place, frowning.
“What did she mean?” Beth asked.
Rachel knew. “They’re moving us. Everyone. Because of the fire, and because of the Refuge project.”
“They’re making us leave Aldrin?”
Ali spoke. “It has to happen. We built Aldrin a long way from the Hammered Sea because we didn’t know how stable the crater would be; we were worried about drowning our new city. But Refuge will be in the Hammered Sea—we’re calling it the Sea of Refuge now—and it’ll be a safer place. Refuge will keep everyone safe from flares—the water in the sea will be a shield.”
New implications hit Rachel. Her attention had been on her mom, and on Beth, and the Council. “What about the groves? Teaching Grove? The First Trees? Almost half are left.”
“I don’t know,” Ali said.
Rachel frowned.
Ali kept talking. “You’ll be there before they actually move. You’re going back in three days.”
THE NEXT MORNING, Rachel found a message from her mom: “I’m sorry for being rude. Will you meet me for breakfast in the garden cafeteria at ten?”
Rachel’s stomach fluttered. She was still angry with Kristin, but she wanted to understand. Needed to understand. She hadn’t seen Kristin since she woke in Medical, but their conversation had turned over and over in her mind. If only she had been kinder.
“I’ll be there,” she sent back. She checked her watch—time to go.
Rachel found Kristin sitting at a table with a bag in front of her. Kristin looked up as her daughter entered and smiled softly. “Remember how I used to take you on picnics? I thought we’d go sit by the garden wall and share a picnic.”
Rachel smiled. She remembered the picnics. “Okay, let’s go.”
They spent the walk up-spiral talking stiltedly about inconsequential things like how Kristin felt after waking (fine) and how Rachel was doing (she’d stopped helping Ali for now, spending time showing Beth around the ship).
They settled on the lawn, and Kristin took her shoes off and ran her bare toes through the grass. She set out bread, juice, bananas, and protein bars. The air was heavy with the scent of blooming honeysuckle that wound up the river wall across the path from them.
“I thought, perhaps, I should tell you my story,” Kristin said. “You told me how you felt when I left you, but you don’t really know me. You were seven.”
Rachel nodded, peeling a banana. “All right.”
“You know why we left? How scary Earth was becoming for humans?”
Rachel grimaced. Every Council member she met wanted to tell her about Sol system.
“You can’t really know, though,” Kristin said. “It’s like yesterday for me. It was only eight years ago, as far as I remember. The sixty thousand years in between was ice time for me, and so I still remember how the AIs ran things, how people died right and left. Or got locked up. My older sister disappeared and never came back. They took her for ‘attempting to destroy an intelligence.’ I have no idea what she did, and neither did my parents. That’s why we came here—why we left. I barely made it. My family had money, and Ma Liren wanted Mom’s medical skills so much, she got Rich to take me on as an assistant communications tech.” Kristin’s voice trailed off, and she took a bite of bread, looking at her bare feet and wriggling them in grass.
“Go on,” Rachel prompted, intensely curious. “Was it hard to leave home?”
“Home was scary. We wanted to leave. The AIs and the augmented were trying to pass laws to keep us from leaving, and we were demonstrating—oh—that doesn’t matter. We left, and I was so glad to get a berth at all I didn’t care that my parents were on Leif. I was the youngest Colonist they took—I was only thirty years old.”
Kristin looked at her toes again, then at Rachel. “This is the hard part—the part I need you to understand. Can you try to pretend you’ve been jerked away from everything you knew? That you had plans that got—stopped—before you knew it? Didn’t something like that happen to you when you were frozen?”
So her mom must have talked to someone about her. Probably Ali.
Kristin said, “For you it was an accident.
“We take orders from Council. We all do. We’re alive because of them; we got away because they financed this trip. Imagine you got an order to go live someplace you hated, and to share your bed with a man you didn’t know, who didn’t share any of your experiences or history. Your dad was only nineteen when they contracted us—younger than you are now. And I was thirty. I was awake—thawed—in the wrong place, separated from everyone I loved by too many years to count. My sister—her name was Rachel—I named you after her. I still don’t know if they killed her, or changed her, or just locked her up somewhere, or sent her somewhere . . . but no matter—she was long dead by the time I woke up. And my parents were gone too—far away, maybe still iced, waiting to help terraform Ymir, but more likely warmed and long dead. Doesn’t matter. I knew then I’d never see them.”
Tears ran down her mom’s face, and Rachel reached out and put a hand on Kristin’s shoulder. Kristin shivered, but didn’t take Rachel’s hand.
“Let me finish. I need . . . I need for you to understand. What you said, when I woke up in Medical, it made me think about how you must have felt.”
Rachel squeezed her mother’s shoulder.
“They ordered us to contract. They ordered us to have children. I didn’t want to. I wasn’t ready. There was supposed to be a new world waiting for me. A place where we could be truly human, could build a home, like Earth, but where we didn’t have to make the same mistakes. We’d learned. We know . . . how dangerous the toys we make can be. That’s what it all was at first, stuff that did an
ything we told it to . . . until our creations outgrew us. Instead of waking at Ymir, a new paradise, I woke to a pitted moon! It’s nothing like Earth, Selene. It’s a struggling and sickly garden in a harsh place. Nothing to do—no proper games, no 3D video, no social life, no universities, nothing. We left the technology we loved too . . . of course.
“I hated being ordered around. But we’re alive because of Council. We signed on without any rights. There’s a contract we all signed . . .”
Kristin stopped for a minute, took a drink of juice. Rachel said, “You’re enslaved.”
“Yeah. Living on Selene was like living in jail. So when I could, I left. I wanted to be iced again, and not wake up. Since I was doing what they wanted—they wanted to save us for Ymir—Council said it was okay. Can’t you see how much I wanted that?”
Kristin looked beseechingly at Rachel. Rachel didn’t know what to say. Kristin’s abandonment had hurt. Now she understood that her mom too had been left alone.
Finally Rachel said, “Maybe we can start over. We are family.”
Kristin’s mouth drew into a thin line. “I don’t want to go back to Selene.”
“We can send messages. Maybe I’ll come back soon. I’m leaving in two days.”
“I know,” Kristin said. “That’s why I asked to see you. I don’t even know you—even though you’re my daughter. Maybe there will be time . . . maybe some time. But right now, I just want to do what I need to do to keep Council happy. I’ll stay here, and be a good communications tech.”
“All right, Mom. Maybe I’ll send you messages anyway.”
“I might not answer them.” Kristin put her head in her hands. “I don’t know.”
“I hope you do.”
“Do you forgive me?”
“Not yet. But maybe I understand better.”
Kristin reached up and took Rachel’s hand.
CHAPTER 46
LEAVING
JOHN HUNTER AND Gabriel sat in Gabriel’s room, watching the first of the shuttle runs to the surface. Rachel was on that ship, and Beth, and Mathew and Dena, who would finally free Star and Shane for a much-needed rest.
Gabriel had taught Rachel to call the new captain “Captain Erika,” and the old one “Captain John.” He found it helped him too; using John Hunter’s first name erased some of the formality, since he now had no more authority than Gabriel himself.
“Can you make this project fun?” Captain John asked.
“Huh?”
“Well, you’ve been entirely too serious. Every time I’ve seen you, it’s been to adjudicate some life or death situation, or work out a problem. Now that I don’t have to be your captain, I intend to have some fun with you. I’m tired of being so serious. I’m tired of the politics here, and I’m too old to be useful at Ymir anyway.”
“It’s possible none of us will see Ymir,” Gabriel said.
John Hunter looked startled. “I never expected to hear that from you.”
“I’m sorry,” Gabriel said. “I remember when I never doubted. I’m still working to get us away from here.”
“Well, I might do more toward that goal on Selene than here. It seems like I haven’t done much good shipside. What good is a captain with a marooned ship?”
“I can use the help,” Gabriel admitted.
“So would there be harm in enjoying ourselves?”
Gabriel didn’t feel cheerful. His relationship with Erika was completely changed, and he could not read the final outcome. Gabriel doubted he’d like it. Ship’s captains tended to marry their ships, and Erika showed every sign of doing that. Still, it would be an impolite thing to say to the man who’d caused the change. “I’ll do my best, sir.”
“Just John now, thank you.”
“All right. Just John. Mind if I play a bit?”
“Please.”
Gabriel pulled from its case a crystal-clear guitar with bright silver strings and frets that seemed to float on air. He began to play, starting with an old blues song. Just John knew the song, and he had a good voice. They sang for nearly an hour, watching the stars and feeding on data flow, preparing to head down to the surface of the tiny moon they’d helped make together, and perform yet another engineering miracle.
John Hunter had planned this world. At last he would see it firsthand.
PART IV: WATER
60,299 John Glenn shiptime
CHAPTER 47
COMING HOME
RACHEL AND BETH bolted down the ramp and stepped onto the surface of Selene. Early-morning mists hugged the ground. The nip of cold after the absolute temperature control on John Glenn felt wonderful.
Mathew—the newly warmed Council member coming to replace Shane—grunted as he misjudged Selene’s gravity and bounced high after his first step, tangling his feet. He reached for Rachel’s hand to steady himself. “Wow—I forgot what a world is like.”
Rachel returned his laughter. “I forgot it’s your first time on Selene. I have the same experience on the John Glenn.”
“Hey look!” Mathew pointed up, and Rachel followed his finger to see the lopsided lens of Refuge, a large bright spot winking in the early daylight as if it were a star, following the bright dot of John Glenn.
Rachel and Beth helped Mathew guide the thirty newly warmed onto the surface. Star gathered them into a loose line. They stood, shivering and whispering among themselves, blinking in the double light of the sun and the gas giant. The two Council members led the Earth Born toward Aldrin. Rachel watched them go, mist swirling gently around their feet and shoulders. How many of them were like her mom, and hated being here?
She heard her name called. Familiar forms stood at the edge of the landing strip, faces still indistinct in the mist. Rachel picked Harry and Gloria out of the crowd, then Nick. There was Frank at the edge of the crowd, surrounded by Rachel’s half siblings: Jacob, Justin, and Sarah. She ran to hug her father. “Not so long this time, Dad,” she murmured, “just a few weeks.”
Gloria and Harry stood rooted, watching Beth approach the crowd. It was as if they couldn’t really believe she walked toward them. Walked. Gloria broke first, and ran up to Beth, holding her, standing back and looking, and holding her again. Harry followed, beaming.
Watching through her family’s point of view, Rachel realized how much better Beth looked. Her legs, of course, but even such a short time among Council on John Glenn had added poise. As she walked between her parents to meet the others, wearing shorts, she flashed unblemished and perfect thighs. A huge smile filled her face with light.
Rachel saw awe in Moon Born faces as they watched Beth. She had never doubted Council could heal Beth if they chose to. Rachel ran up to Beth and whispered, “The meadow . . . let’s stay under open sky.”
Beth’s eyes flashed approval. “Yes, let’s. I’m sick to death of being closed in.”
The hulk of the ruined spaceship rested where Gabriel had left it, bright in the warming sunshine. The name “Water Bearer” adorned the hull, in blue paint. A charred smell stung Rachel’s nostrils, but new green grass sprouted through dark burned spots. As the mist thinned, sunlight painted the new grass blades a brilliant greenish yellow.
Beth and Rachel scrambled onto the dais, and their families gathered around, standing close in the damp morning.
They all looked the right ages. Rachel shivered, excising the ghosts of her last return. “Thank you for meeting us this morning. How did you get away?”
Jacob grinned at her. “We were pests.”
Justin poked him. “He’s not telling the whole story. We had to work extra shifts to get this morning off. They told us two days ago, and we didn’t want to miss seeing you first.”
Sarah came up to Beth and touched her legs. “How did they do this? Make you well?”
Rachel smiled at her little sister. “It’s the same technology that keeps them young.” She cleared her throat, looking at the expectant faces watching her. “Gabriel saved Aldrin, and made sure that Beth was healed too.”
Justin looked puzzled. “Rachel? If they can stay young forever, and heal Beth’s broken back and legs, why can’t they keep us young too? Why does their power work for them and not for us?”
It was the same question she and Harry had asked each other before her first trip to John Glenn. “I dont know for sure. There’s stuff on John Glenn it would be wonderful to have here. I’m trying to understand Council’s communications, medicine, and ways of making things. But in two trips to John Glenn, I’ve learned how much I don’t know.”
“But why don’t they make these things available on Selene?” Jacob took up his brother’s question.
Astronaut fed her an answer. Rachel said, “They require power sources that only work on John Glenn.”
Sarah spoke up. “Why can’t more of us go to the ship?”
“That’s Council’s decision. I don’t know.”
Jacob frowned. “They needed us during the fire. Why don’t they give us antimatter now?”
Rachel pictured John Glenn’s antimatter containment, and said, “Because it’s hard to handle. Gabriel told me it isn’t very safe. They have to build special containers to make it safe.”
“Why can’t they make those here, now? They’ll need them sooner or later.”
Rachel licked her lips. She listened for an answer, but Astronaut was silent. She filed it away as a question to ask. “They plan to build a collider, which makes antimatter, here. I’ll see what I can learn.”
“So why don’t they treat us better after the fire?” Jacob returned to his original argument. “Sure, Gabriel was the big hero. But we worked too. Without us, the fire would have been in Aldrin before Gabriel got here. And for that, we get told to pack up and move.”
Nick’s voice rose from the back of the group. “I’d like to hear questions that these two can answer. Tell us more about John Glenn.”
Rachel grinned at Nick, grateful for his help. She squeezed Beth’s hand. “Beth, why don’t you tell them?”
Beth leaned forward, excited to be able to tell her story. “You can see Selene from space—there’s a—”
