The Children Star

by Joan Slonczewski

  Yet some Elysian citizens chose to dwell outside the floating cities. Some found the cities claustrophobic and everyone’s business entirely too public.

  In orbit above the ocean floated Proteus, the starship headquarters of Proteus Unlimited, the citadel of citizen Nibur Letheshon. Despite its size and complexity, Proteus was not sentient; it was a “stable servo.” To remain “stable,” Proteus was restrained every hour, its networks cleansed of the telltale signs of imminent sentience. A century earlier, its creator Nibur Letheshon had fought hard through the courts of the Fold to find this practice legal. His critics likened it to abortion, or even infanticide; for it was the law that any machine who “woke up” and named itself must be allowed to buy its freedom. But Nibur had won. Thereafter, he had steadily built one of the largest commercial empires in the Fold.

  Inside Proteus, Nibur strode along an ocean beach that stretched to the far horizon. A man of slim bones and impenetrable eyes, he was clothed in virtual light, shifting shapes of black and silver that draped from his shoulders and stretched in a train several paces behind him. The air temperature and moisture were set to his perfect comfort. The scenery displayed one of a hundred shifting possibilities. Today was his favorite, a shoreline with a narrow beach before rocky cliffs against which the surf reared and thundered. The cliffs opened out in jagged formations, intriguing enough to pique the intellect. Wind perfectly massaged his forehead, the salt air filled his lungs, and the gulls cried pleasingly overhead.

  As Nibur Letheshon walked the beach, a dozen holographic callers impinged on him, managing sales, buying up resources, creating new products, from skinsuits to prefabricated cities. The holographic callers might have appeared as disembodied heads, revolving around him like moons. But today for his amusement he had them as walruses splayed out lazily on the sand, their wrinkled mouths yawning foolishly as they lifted their ponderous arching tusks.

  “…Bronze Sky ordered fifty more orbital microwave stations…can we manage…” groaned one walrus, lumbering after him. The voice actually came through the nanoservos in his brain.

  “…a new market for stable servos in housing…” another walrus groaned in his brain.

  All the questions Nibur answered, making decision after decision. Presently his eye fixed upon the one other fleshly object inside his complex: his golden-haired dog, Banga.

  The dog, a retriever, had run on ahead as usual, his ears fluttering, his paws splashing in the surf. Now he returned, his tail waving like a flag. Banga always returned; had always returned to his master, for the past five centuries. Nibur, himself ageless, had had Banga lifeshaped before birth to be ageless like his master.

  As the dog returned, panting, he hung back just a bit, dancing once around his tail, before returning to Nibur’s hand at his diamond-studded collar. Nibur gripped the collar hard, his hand sunk into the dog’s smooth fur. Banga might tease now and then, but always he would return, unconditionally, even if Nibur were to slit his throat. The creature lived or died at his pleasure.

  But now, Nibur dreamed of a far greater creature to call his own: a planet. Iota Pavonis Three, so-called Prokaryon, would be his ultimate prize. A world full of life to live or die at his pleasure; the thought made him light-headed. He released Banga’s collar, his hands trembling with excitement at his dream.

  A flat, clear voice spoke in his brain, the voice of Proteus. “Your two visitors seek entrance, Master.”

  So they had come—the two most powerful citizens of the Fold. He had called them to his citadel, and both had come. Would they play the part he planned in his grand design? Nibur whispered, “Bid them enter.”

  Above the walrus-tracked sand a black rectangle appeared, disembodied, a door into Proteus. Through the door first came Iras Letheshon, president of Bank Helicon, the foremost lending institution in the Fold. Bank Helicon would underwrite his acquisition of the Spirilla continent of Prokaryon—once Iras said the word.

  The butterflies of Iras’s talar sported red-and-gold eyespots, matched by the reddened gold of her hair. Iras was by most accounts the most beautiful as well as the wealthiest citizen of Elysium. Her train of butterflies followed her talar, “real” material, of silky nanoplast just intelligent enough to swirl itself out of the way as the wearer walked. The train lengthened through the black doorway as she stepped along the beach toward Nibur.

  The warm colors of Iras’s train mingled with the foam and green flotsam that rushed over it behind her. She walked briskly, her muscles steeled by centuries of training in Bronze Skyan martial arts. She raised her hands. “Shonsib, it’s been so long.” Iras had shared Nibur’s shon of Letheon, one of Elysium’s twelve floating cities. Each city had its shon, where all the children were conceived and brought to term in artificial wombs. They never knew biological parents, their chromosomes selected from the best genetic stock. “We should do business more often.”

  “Indeed we shall.”

  Iras turned, looking back toward her companion, who had paused deliberately at the black doorway. Iras’s love-mate was Verid Anaeashon, the Secretary of the Free Fold. The Secretary, too, had come at his call today. Nibur’s lips parted, and his teeth slightly showed, as he watched the black door.

  The Secretary was short of stature, even for an Elysian. She descended with measured reluctant steps. Her talar was mottled brown with Anaean leafwing butterflies. Her leaf brown train followed, equally reluctant, swishing gently next to Iras’s. Verid was as unlike her lovemate as could be imagined, in appearance, taste, and manner; yet Iras was her one weakness in this world. Nibur recalled with a smile some of Iras’s more outrageous gifts to her love: diamonds too large to lift, let alone to be worn; or palaces full of virtual houris. Then his smile faded. Lovers or not, Verid would not give in easily.

  “Greetings, Honorable Secretary,” said Nibur with a deep bow. “The honor of your presence is most welcome.” That she came at all meant Iras had made up her mind.

  Verid’s owlish eyes looked neither right nor left, but directly faced him. “I request introduction to your home.” The Secretary, the most powerful human in the Fold, was obsessed with those so-called sentient machines. She even gave them a delegate to the Fold Council. An abomination, Nibur thought. Why grant any of man’s creations a pretense of equality?

  “It’s an exquisite device,” said Iras, catching some “water” to dribble through her fingers. A huge wave rolled in, washed over the two visitors, and thundered up the beach. Iras laughed in delight, while Verid stood like a dock post. “Really, Shonsib,” exclaimed Iras, “you’ve outdone yourself.” Iras’s talar now drifted up slightly in the surf, though her hair was untouched. A connoisseur of virtual worlds, Iras was hard to impress. One of the walruses lumbered over to her next, bellowing and lifting its huge tusks, until she patted it on the head. Then she caught sight of Banga. “Say, you’re cheating. That dog is real.”

  Banga had returned, his paws spreading sheets of spray around him. Nibur smiled and nodded, too proud to ask how she knew.

  “Its fur was dry,” Iras explained. “Congratulations, Shonsib, on your latest acquisition.”

  “Hyalite is just the beginning.” Nibur rubbed Banga’s head between the ears. “We must own the entire continent of Spirilla.”

  “So you’ve said. There are the practical questions, of course: Is Proteus Unlimited truly ready to meet the terms proposed, sustaining payments over two centuries? Is the transaction in our best interest? How will it affect the value of other Elysian holdings on Prokaryon?”

  “Is there is a better credit risk in the whole Fold than Proteus Unlimited? Let your own servos calculate.”

  “Would I have come, had they not? Let’s get to the point, Shonsib. What will you do with Spirilla once you’ve got it?”

  Nibur shrugged. “My firm is maturing. It’s time to diversify.”

  Verid gave him a sharp look. They both knew well enough what he intended.

  “Diversify?” echoed Iras. “Mining and farming?”<
br />
  “Farming, yes. You must admit,” said Nibur, “that we need better ways to settle Iota Pavonis Three.” He always preferred the planet’s original designation instead of its common name, sentimental in its reference to its living creatures. After all, life never occupied more than the outermost scum of a world. Better to name a planet for its major features and its greatest resources—say, Planet Lanthanide. “Yes, better ways to colonize. The latest news from that deadly planet makes it clear.”

  Iras shuddered delicately. “A tragedy.”

  “But isn’t the real tragedy that honest immigrants cannot live there?”

  “There are settlements. Lifeshaped settlements,” added Iras, with a look at Verid, the great advocate of lifeshaping human settlers.

  “You can’t call them real settlements,” Nibur pointed out. “Not until the settlers start giving birth.” No colonist had yet borne a child live on Prokaryon; the chemistry of development was too delicate. Even those lifeshaped from birth had to travel offworld to carry an infant to term. There was no such thing as a native Prokaryan.

  “Not yet,” agreed Iras, “though in a generation or two—”

  “They’ll get it right someday—at what cost? Do you know how much it costs now to lifeshape every one of them, even the babies? And then to manage their pregnancies later? No more than a handful of L’liites will ever settle there.”

  “It’s true,” said Verid suddenly. “That is what science is for. Our scientists work day and night to solve these problems.”

  Privately Nibur did not care much about L’liites. They would be better off today, had the creeping pruned their numbers several centuries before, for fewer people would be left, with less irreparable damage to their biosphere. But Iras had a soft spot for L’liites, along with guilt at having made her fortune on their loans. Nibur lowered his voice. “What harm is there in cleansing just a part of Pavonis Three—a continent, let us say.”

  Iras paused, not looking at Verid. “A lot of L’liites could live there. The native species would have three other continents, plus the ocean.”

  “The native flora of Pavonis Three are remarkably uniform,” Nibur pointed out. “The Spirilla continent, for example, supports only a thousand major species, all found elsewhere on Iota Pavonis Three. The few exceptions will be transplanted.”

  “The weather, too, is remarkably uniform,” added Iras. “Our tests show that the ocean will buffer the other continents, which will not experience severe effects.”

  “Hundreds of millions of settlers could lease farmland,” said Nibur. “Mining productivity could rise tenfold or a hundredfold.”

  “In fact, the value of all of our holdings anywhere on the planet will shoot straight up.”

  “Iras,” said Verid quietly.

  Iras tossed her head and took a deep breath. “You know, I can’t leave your creation without exploring a bit down the ‘shore.’ If you’ll excuse me, Shonsib…” She swirled her train around in a wide arc through the waters and strolled outward, leaning over to inspect a shell or a bit of seaweed.

  Nibur took a step toward Verid, the black light shimmering down his talar. Verid watched him, her shoulders slightly hunched, her eyes wide, thoughtful. “Transplanted,” she repeated.

  “We’ll hire all the best ecoengineers.” She must know she lacked the votes, he told himself, or she would not have designed to come. She must know she could not stop him—and her own lovesharer would finance it. The triumph was too sweet.

  Still, never underestimate the Owl. If a way could be found to stall him, she would find it. What would be her move?

  “The weather is uniform,” mused Verid, as if to herself. “The planet is indeed well managed.”

  With a shrug Nibur picked up a stick of driftwood and tossed it to Banga. “The Honorable Secretary herself signed the declaration that Pavonis lacks intelligent native life.”

  “‘Intelligent life.’ You mean, fast-talking bipeds with ten fingers.”

  What was she getting at, he wondered. Could she really try to resurrect all those “alien intelligence” rumors? “Ten fingers would help,” he said ironically. “At least they could make sign language.”

  “There once was a great creature that dwelt in the deep, its ten fingers each longer than ten men stretched on end. Where lies that creature now?”

  “Surely the Secretary will not call me to task for a dead creature on a world long gone? Every world has its share of extinctions. Even your blessed Sharers caused mass extinctions.”

  “It is said, no life exists outside The Web.”

  “No life escapes death, either.” Nibur looked down at the foot of her talar. “Watch out there.”

  A jellyfish with its poison tendrils had washed onto her hem. She shook it off, forgetting the illusion.

  Nibur gave a low chuckle. “So much for nature’s creatures. Look”—he spread his arms—“I enjoy nature as much as anyone. But what difference does it make to us whether a dead creature exists or not, on a world many light-years away?”

  “You play with your toys,” she said with anger.

  “Honorable Secretary, excuse me,” he said, bowing again. “We are considering a proposal to settle millions of starving L’liites on a free world. Humans with vital needs—and souls, remember. We Elysians needn’t worry to keep body and soul together. How dare we put the needs of some mythical creature above our own humankind?”

  Verid moved closer to him, until her small round face was staring up into his own, uncomfortably near. “You don’t care about humankind. You only want to own that planet. You will buy and kill, until you’ve got it.”

  Nibur’s mind raced. How could she know of his secret agreements? Of course not; but she would guess. Elysians knew each other only too well, after centuries spent outwitting each other.

  “What will you do with it?” she demanded. “What will you do once you’ve got it?”

  “Now, now. Trade secrets, remember.” He paused. What could it matter; she knew what he wanted. “My creations require materials. The history of man is the ascent of machines; the rise of ever-greater devices to serve our desire.”

  “The history of man is the contest between the enslavers and those who set free.”

  “Precisely. And I set men free—free from the limits of their flesh.”

  “By enslaving ‘the other.’ So what if their flesh is nanoplast?”

  “By applying our intellect to inanimate objects.”

  Verid shrugged. “Different words.”

  Nibur paused. “Did it ever occur to you, that with the capabilities we provide them, our devices could become our masters? If machines are human, then we humans are finished, because the machine has no physical limits.”

  “Life is more than physical limits. There is…humanity.”

  “I offer humanity the choice: Let machines be machines. If machines are our tools, nothing more, then humans are unlimited.”

  “A choice, you say? And what gives you the right to that choice?”

  Nibur lost patience. “Why ask me? Why not ask the universe what gives it the right to throw an asteroid at a living world every hundred million years? The last one that hit Pavonis killed all but the microbes,” he said with contempt. “Why shouldn’t humans use a world as we choose? Are we not worth more than an asteroid?”

  “Are we not?” Above her head the gulls circled with their cries, and the sea breeze keened. Then abruptly she turned and left, disappearing through the black doorway, her train shrinking down to nothing.

  NINE

  As promised, Khral met them in the morning at the brainless old lightcraft. Rod carried Gaea into the craft, while Khral carried one of the travel bags, with ’jum holding her hand. He winced to see the battered console; somehow it looked even worse, with another adult to see it. As the hatch closed behind them, he hoped the craft would not treat his guest too badly.

  Above the holostage, the hull of Station receded into darkness.

  “This is the on
ly place I could talk,” Khral said suddenly. “Station told us to shut up, lest reporters hear. And Station hears everything.” She shuddered. “Rod, those microzoöids grew, all right—slowly, but they’re growing, even ‘triplicating’ now and then. And yes, they flash prime numbers.”

  “So Sarai was right.”

  “Yes.”

  “But that’s great, isn’t it? Now you can grow the ones from the singing-trees, and decode them somehow.”

  “Rod—these micros are different. They’re a different species altogether from the ones in the singing-trees. You see, now? Where do they come from?”

  He frowned, puzzled. Then he remembered. “They grow…in tumbleround tissue.”

  “Now you see why our fieldwork will change.”

  For a moment his skin crawled. Then he relaxed. “So be it. Tumblerounds are no strangers to us; I’d still be glad to help out. But why not let the reporters hear?”

  “Station says all hell would break loose. Half the reporters would condemn us for trying to influence the vote in the Secretariat—to quash the ‘partial terraforming,’ so that Iras can’t make the deal with Nibur. The other half would descend on Prokaryon—and the tumblerounds are unpredictable, not studied for years like the singing-trees.”

  Politics again. Rod shook his head. “You can’t hide the truth.”

  “I know, but…” Khral bit her lip. “We were so sure about the singing-trees. Now, who will believe us about tumblerounds? We need better data.”

  The craft was coming in faster than usual, Rod thought, and the scream of the plasma sounded uneven. On the holostage, he saw with alarm that they were headed ominously near the end of the brokenhearts, where the field met the forest.

  As they approached the ground, the floor swayed up and down beneath their feet. Gaea laughed at first, then started to shriek as the craft swayed harder. With one final jolt the craft landed, at a crazy angle up against a singing-tree.

  No one was hurt, but the door half faced the tree. It took all Rod’s strength to force it open; then he had to jump down to the ground outside. Khral handed each of the children down, first screaming Gaea, then stoical ’jum. Then at last Rod helped Khral jump down. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I don’t think that craft will make it back up again.”