The Children Star

by Joan Slonczewski

  Geode’s eyestalks twisted quizzically. “She hasn’t taken her eyes off me. What must she be thinking, to go off with such strangers?”

  “What child was not born to strangers?”

  Two of Geode’s limbs began to mold themselves into probes to examine the girl’s health. “I was never born. I was built—to precise specifications. I make fewer mistakes than one byte in a trillion trillions.”

  Rod smiled. “You had to be taught to think.”

  Ignoring this jest, Geode extended a long, slender tendril out of his furry limb toward the girl, who moved back a step. Brother Rod put his arm around her. “Let Geode treat you, child. He will help your stomach feel better. Then we’ll have a good bath, and a good dinner.”

  The tendril wound around the girl’s arm, inserting a microscopic probe which she would not feel. The probe would sample her blood for her own DNA and proteins, as well those of any pathogens. “Her name is ’jum G’hana,” Geode announced, matching the gene sequence with his database.

  The girl blinked at the sound of her name amidst the foreign gibberish. A sharp mind, Rod thought.

  “She was first sampled at approximate age three, upon hiring full-time at Hyalite Nanotech. Father died of ‘creeping,’ mother alive, age—”

  “Her mother’s dead,” Rod corrected. “Creeping” sickness was caused by prions, misfolded proteins that directed normal ones to mimic their structure and accumulate in the motor neurons. Paralysis crept out the limbs and inward. Other types of prion infection were contained in the nervous system, but the dreaded “creeping” prions leaked out in secretions and transmitted readily.

  “She has lice and worms,” continued Geode. “And prions, though not yet irreversible.” So she did have the disease, as Rod suspected from her mottled legs. Even her relatives, had she any, would never claim her. The emigration forms would go straight through.

  The cure for creeping was to inject millions of nanoservos, microscopic servo machines, into the bloodstream to methodically search and reshape the misfolded proteins. It was effective, but expensive. On Prokaryon, the Fold paid to cure colonists, to encourage human settlement.

  “She wasn’t badly nourished, her first three years.” Geode’s infant had done feeding and was now bouncing in one coiled limb. “Maybe she’s not even brain-damaged. Say, ’jum,” the sentient demanded in L’liite, “did you go to school? Can you read?”

  ’jum slowly shook her head.

  “Can you count your factory wages?”

  At that, ’jum did not answer but gave the sentient an intent look.

  “What’s one plus one?”

  She frowned, as if this were a very difficult problem. “Not quite one and a half,” she said in a voice so low that Rod barely heard.

  Geode twined his eyestalks disparagingly.

  “What do you expect? She’s never been to school. Is your workup done? She needs a bath.”

  “Definitely,” the sentient agreed with emphasis. “I don’t know, though. I wonder sometimes if we’re not half-crazy, trying to settle a frontier with starving babies.”

  “It’s the cheapest way,” Rod said ironically, for that was the reason of the Fold.

  “But—look, you know, it’s not just any world, by Torr. It’s Prokaryon.”

  Prokaryon was named for its unique “prokaryotic” life-forms. Animal or vegetable, all Prokaryan cells contained circular chromosomes, free of nuclear membranes—like bacteria, prokaryotes. But Prokaryan cells were ring-shaped as well. And the higher structure of all the multicellular organisms was toroid, from the photosynthetic “phycoids” that grew tall as trees, to the tire-shaped “zoöids” that rolled over the fields they grazed—or preyed upon those that did.

  “And I don’t care what the Free Fold says,” Geode added. “There are intelligent aliens running Prokaryon, somewhere.”

  Rod held the baby tighter in his arm. “Don’t spread rumors, Brother.” Such stories arose whenever a new world was settled, even on Valedon long after it was boiled and terraformed.

  Geode snaked an eyestalk toward him. “Can you explain how Prokaryon has all those rows of forest, one after another, all across the continent? Who tends the garden?”

  “The Elysian scientists have been looking for years. They found no one, and the Fold certified the planet empty of intelligence. Do you want to get our colony evicted?”

  “The truth is what I seek, Brother,” insisted Geode. “You explain how the weather stays the same all year, only raining at night, or a cloudburst to put out a fire.”

  Looking away, Rod placed the sleeping infant gently at the wall, where the nanoplast obligingly molded inward to cradle it.

  “Humans,” Geode added with bemusement. “Will humans ever know an ‘intelligent’ creature, if they find one? They took centuries just to recognize us sentients, out of their own factories.”

  TWO

  Fed, scrubbed, clothed, and medicated, the six new Spirit children endured their week-long journey through the space folds to Prokaryon. Of course, none of them could yet set foot on their new home. Merely inhaling Prokaryan air would expose their unprepared lungs to poison; for the native life-forms had evolved all sorts of things that the ordinary human body was not designed to encounter, much less digest for food. Their triplex chromosomes were mutagenic, their “proteins” contained indigestible amino acids, and their membranes were full of arsenic. Prokaryan cells were not exactly good to eat—unless you were Prokaryan.

  So the children’s first stop was a satellite, the Fold Council Station for Xenobiotic Research and Engineering. “Station” was actually a giant sentient whose brain directed the investigation of Prokaryan life-forms, as well as the transport and lifeshaping of colonists. Station’s lifeshapers would inject the new children with nanoservos, microscopic machines to put special genes into the cells of the liver and intestines. The special genes would teach their cells how to detoxify unfamiliar Prokaryan molecules, and to eat them as food, as easily as they ate the nutrients from their own world. For adults the lifeshaping was slow and inefficient; thus, most Prokaryan colonies depended heavily on sentients.

  Rod often wondered how the rest of the Fold’s worlds would ever have gotten settled, had they all tried to avoid terraforming. Valedon, and all but two of the other worlds, had been boiled off and reseeded with human-compatible life-forms. But today people called that “planetary ecocide.” Rod himself had been skeptical, until he came to Prokaryon and fell in love with its mysterious beauty. He could not imagine terraforming such a world.

  The cylindrical bulk of Station grew until it dwarfed the approaching ship. “All passengers prepare to disembark.” The voice of the great sentient vibrated throughout the ship, as she extended her docking tube.

  Rod always tensed at her greeting. Besides her gene clinic, Station directed scientists from all the worlds of the Fold who came to study Prokaryon’s biosphere and confirm its absence of intelligent natives, a legal requirement for exploitation. Above all, she governed Prokaryan settlement on behalf of the Fold. She set each colony’s immigration quota, and determined when each lifeshaped immigrant was ready to settle.

  Brother Geode crawled out on three of his furry limbs, carrying babies in his other three, while Rod carried two and ’jum gamely managed one. The tube rotated steadily, generating about half a unit of centrifugal force, enabling them to walk while keeping their baggage light. But the sense of weight loss alarmed the babies, for their stomachs told them they were falling, no matter how hard Rod clutched them in his arms. The little bundles stiffened, then emptied their lungs to howl. Overhead, upside down in the cylinder, two or three travelers stretched their necks at this unusual scene. A gorilla face stared down at Rod; a simian hybrid woman wearing a student’s backpack. Rod stared back, for simians were a rarity out here.

  Beneath Rod’s feet the floor shifted sickeningly. That meant the lock had engaged, and they now stood in the innermost ring of Station. The babies sucked in their breaths and
wailed.

  “Brother Geode, immigration officer of the Spirit Colony.” Station’s voice boomed, ever-present within the satellite. “Six new colonists?”

  “Yes, Station.” Geode bounced the three infants in his arms, trying to quiet them.

  “You exceed your quota again.”

  “Yes, Station.”

  It was Rod’s fault that they always pushed the immigration limit. In his days at the Guard, he had always tried to steal one last round of shooting beyond regulations; now, he always took one more dying child. “They’re all healthy,” Rod insisted. “They’ll be productive citizens.”

  “And one is an older child,” Station observed. “Brother Geode, you will see me for consultation.”

  “I will,” Rod said firmly. They always got away with it before.

  “Please sign the release for each.”

  On the wall a bright rectangle appeared, its text scrolling past absurdly fast. Rod had no need to read the contents. The release form required all immigrants to acknowledge that Prokaryon’s biosphere was only partly understood, and its climate not yet controlled, and that the appearance of any plague threatening the Fold might require defensive action—before all inhabitants could be evacuated. Rod despised the provision, and its authors in the Fold Council, who feared another prion plague. Prions arose from human bodies, not from a world where humans could barely live.

  Geode held up his infants to press the document with their toes, and Rod did likewise.

  “Reverend Mother is coming,” said Geode. Sentients communicated by internal radio.

  At the gate stood the Reverend Mother Artemis. Her face was a screen across which her “features” shaped and reshaped in ever-changing colors. Her sapphire star gleamed where a human neck would be. Around her face twined restless strands of nanoplastic “hair,” as if individually alive. Below her neck hung multiple breasts, and her robe revealed skirts full of holographic bears, lions, even flying fish from the Elysian ocean. Children were her life-work, ever since she herself had been manufactured to raise wealthy Elysians. After earning her freedom as a sentient, she had joined the Sacred Order.

  The Reverend Mother’s nanoplastic hand traced a six-point star. “Brother Rod. You return with your nets full.” She took the two little ones, who quieted as they stared.

  Rod returned the sign. “I wish it could be otherwise.”

  “So do we all.” Strands of her hair twisted upward. “We call on the Spirit to hear the agony of the L’liites. But this mystery has endless depth and no shore.”

  “How are the children back home?”

  “All well, thank the Spirit. The phycoids are ready for harvest, and T’kun found a perfect pink crystal in the stream.”

  “Well, we bring you future harvesters.”

  Geode warned in Elysian, “One of them will cost us a bundle.”

  “And which one would that be?” The Reverend Mother scooped up another infant from him. “Which one would you refuse?”

  ’jum was watching her skirt, mesmerized by the rearing bear. Rod squeezed ’jum’s hand encouragingly. “This is the Reverend Mother of the Spirit Colony of Prokaryon. You will be our own child.”

  The Reverend Mother spread her arms and spoke in clear L’liite. “’jum G’hana, are you my little bird singing in the tree?” Her voice had just the right rhythm, as if she had been born and raised in the streets of Reyo.

  ’jum ran to her, immediately to be swept up in the arms and skirt. Mother Artemis was always like that.

  “There, my little bird. It’s too soon for you to talk, isn’t it, but won’t you shape for me?” Mother Artemis stepped over to the holostage.

  Above the holostage a ball of light appeared, as if suspended by magic. Mother Artemis reached to it with her hands and shaped it like a lump of clay. It formed the shape of a flower, with a dozen petals that she pulled one by one, each perfect as a teardrop.

  Then a second ball of light appeared. “It’s your turn, ’jum. Won’t you try? Shape me something from your home.”

  ’jum put out a tentative finger. She poked the ball, and a depression remained. Encouraged, she pulled it into a tall oblong shape and poked more holes in an orderly array, eight across, row upon row, more than a dozen.

  “That’s lovely,” Mother Artemis exclaimed. “Was that your house where you lived?”

  ’jum shook her head. She paused as if in thought. Then abruptly she squeezed the light into an amorphous lump and began shaping again, with precise details. Her sureness suggested that her fingers had shaped such an object before, perhaps many times. It was a box with three prongs at right angles to one another, and two unidentified levers at the side. It looked so realistic, one might pluck it solid from the air.

  “What have we here?” Mother Artemis spoke in a low voice. She trained her visual sensors on the object; her true “eyes,” set at her neckline, rather than her apparent eyes in her face. She called up a vast database from all seven worlds of the Fold.

  Above the three-pronged image, a shape of red light appeared, similar in form to the one ’jum had made. The red shape descended and merged with the white one; it was nearly a perfect fit.

  “It’s a lanthanide extractor,” the Reverend Mother explained in Elysian.

  “Of course,” said Geode. “She must have assembled them at the Hyalite plant—thousands of them.”

  Rod eyed the device sternly. “They’re illegal.”

  “Not their manufacture,” said the Reverend Mother. “Only the use to which some are put.” Lanthanide extractors were used to sort rare-earth minerals from rock. All the inhabited worlds had long ago exhausted their natural supplies of rare-earth elements, prized for many uses in nanocircuitry. So the main place left to use extractors was new planets. But that was against the law of the Fold. A world could be mined only after scientists had established, and the Secretary of the Free Fold decreed, that no intelligent natives had prior claim.

  Still, who could police the universe? The Hyalite House, an ancient and respectable firm based on Valedon, put its assembly plant in a decaying L’liite city where starving six-year-olds would not recognize the device, and no one would ask where it ended up.

  Geode extended an arm. “They can’t use them here.” On Prokaryon, mining was permitted only with macroscopic implements, and only up to one percent of the planetary resource, until the new world gained independence and could choose for itself.

  Mother Artemis turned to ’jum. “You must have made many of those pieces, little bird.”

  “Two thousand five hundred and thirty-one,” the girl murmured.

  “What a number. And you counted every one?”

  ’jum nodded. “It’s a family without children.”

  Mother Artemis nodded. “You like numbers, don’t you. I’ll bet you know all your sums.”

  ’jum lowered her eyes. Then she looked up. “Three plus four is five.”

  At this unaccountable calculation, Mother Artemis paused. “How about three times four?”

  “Three times four is twelve.”

  “Eight times thirteen?”

  “One hundred and four.”

  “What are the factors of three thousand and three?” When ’jum hesitated, she added, “The ‘children’?”

  “Three, seven, eleven, and thirteen. A family of four children.” Then abruptly she burst into tears, crying for her mother. Mother Artemis held her close, knowing she would have a lot more crying to do before she could face a new life. Two of the infants started crying, too.

  “I wonder how she’s adding,” Mother Artemis said in Elysian. “Never mind; she’ll learn as fast as a sentient.”

  Geode’s limbs snaked out to lift and comfort the agitated infants. “At least that part of our job will come easy.”

  “No—much harder,” the Reverend Mother warned.

  “Humans,” groaned Geode, his fifth limb shaking a milk bottle. “How did I ever get into this?” The woolly armed sentient had shepherded Spirit chil
dren for a decade, thought Rod with a smile.

  Mother Artemis was whispering to ’jum. “Geode will take good care of you at Station, until you’re set to join us. You can call me anytime you like, on the holostage. Behold—as one of our family, you have a new name: ’jum G’hana Spirit. And here is your sign.” She pinned to ’jum’s ragged shirt a sapphire, a tiny pink gem one of the children had strained from the gravel bed. A sapphire from Prokaryon.

  The children would stay at Station with Geode, for their treatments. This left the Spirit Colony understaffed, with only Rod, Mother Artemis, and Brother Patella, a sentient physician, to manage the children on Prokaryon. But within a month the babies could come home. What to do with ’jum thereafter would have to be worked out. They could not afford a skinsuit to protect her.

  Before leaving, Rod transferred his holocube of ’jum’s home in Reyo to the brain of Station. Station obligingly shaped a room whose shape and colors roughly matched the shack, plus a comfortable mat on the floor, and the food synthesizer put out an “authentic” L’liite meal. Later the child would have to make do with the same inexpensive food pellets that Rod did, until her lifeshaping reached the point that she could eat native crops.

  As Rod and the Reverend Mother took their leave, Brother Geode had stretched and lengthened three of his limbs and tied them into an elaborate knot for ’jum. “First off, which is my right arm?” He wiggled the three fuzzy ends projecting from the knot.

  ’jum inspected closely, then tapped one end. The entire limb turned yellow throughout the knot, revealing its hidden structure.

  “Right!” exclaimed the sentient. “Now let’s see, how would you undo it?”

  Rod felt proud. A child who learned fast—she might even become the doctor someday, like their own Brother Patella. He had listened well, when the Spirit called him upon that hill.

  To reach the planet, the Spirit Colony leased a lightcraft from Station. The craft, a reconditioned economy model, was not sentient, only programmed to shuttle up and down. Its rectenna had darkened all around, and it bore an acrid smell. Two worn seats held Rod and Mother Artemis. The craft shuddered as it launched, and a small holostage at eye level showed the satellite shrinking away. Beyond in the blackness appeared the neutrino receiver, a giant silver sphere full of water to detect the massless particles carrying signals through the space folds.