The Children Star

by Joan Slonczewski

  “Warning,” called an octopod from ahead. “The path has changed. Time needed to retrace.”

  “Very well.” Nibur frowned, irritated at the inconvenience. The old Sharer could wait long enough; it was her own fault for refusing contact. He would make good use of his time, recording the mountainside, the chattering of helicoids, and the more graceful varieties of vegetation, all to be sorted later. He whistled for Banga—where had that pesky dog got to?

  “Curious.” Iras bent down to pluck a leaf. “I thought there were no true ‘leaves’ on Prokaryon, only loopleaves.” She held it out to show him. It certainly looked like an ordinary green leaf, pear-shaped, with branching veins.

  “Warning, warning!” One octopod called, then another.

  To his horror, Nibur saw an octopod dragged off its feet. Its lasers aimed out in several directions, charring the path. But something twined up to catch the octopod by another limb and fling it down the path. Its nanoplast fell apart into blobs that crawled away and lost themselves in the brush. Another octopod followed, landing in the arch of a stunted tree. Half its nanoplast split off and crazily tried to climb, losing itself in the loops.

  Something tugged at his foot. It was a green vine, with the same pear-shaped leaves. “By Torr!” He tried to pull it off, but it held fast. The whole path was crisscrossed with them. The best he could do was to run along with the tugging vine, until it tripped him up and knocked the wind out of him. Sky and mountains lurched around him crazily, as the vine dragged him onward, more slowly now, but still inexorable. Gradually the vines all converged into a huge thicket beside the waterfall.

  The vines met, enfolding him into darkness. Then, just as he was convinced he would suffocate, all the vines relaxed their grip and slunk away.

  In the darkness Nibur caught his breath. “Emergency, emergency,” he gasped. “Bring ten lightcraft with reinforcements, immediately…”

  But no answer came. His cerebral nanoservos had no octopods nor lightcraft to contact. He was cut off. He would rather have lost his arms and legs than his link to Proteus.

  “Nibur?” called Iras from somewhere. “Are you intact, Shonsib?”

  “Of course I’m intact.” Calming himself, Nibur let his breath return to normal. To his right, Banga whimpered for comfort. He was still intact, and Proteus would find him soon. Then, whoever had done this would pay.

  A light filled the cavern. Nibur blinked to adjust, scanning the crystal-studded ceiling of the cave. There stood a naked Sharer with an enormous clickfly perched on her scalp. It was Sarai, the eccentric researcher whose lab he had to relocate. Was this insolence her work?

  “You’re here,” Sarai noted flatly, a clickfly perched on her head. “I would say welcome—but you’re not. Be glad you got less than what you gave the western coast.”

  “You will pay,” he exclaimed hoarsely. “You will pay the cost of my octopods—I’ll put you out of business.”

  “Oh, no,” said Iras, sweeping forward grandly. “I’ll pay the damage. Why, Raincloud would have done the same—and my heart hasn’t raced so in decades. Sarai—it’s you at last! I didn’t even have a holo, but you’re just as I imagined.” Iras stopped, catching sight of a little girl trying to hide behind the Sharer; a L’liite waif. “Blueskywind!” she exclaimed at the waif. “Sarai, your ancestor, Raincloud’s daughter eight generations back, looked very like her.” Iras tossed a holocube to the floor, and the image of another curly-haired waif appeared, playing with a legfish. “You see, you had a Bronze Skyan ancestor. But she grew up and mated a Sharer, Weena of Shri-el, and their daughter Ryushu…” The descendants appeared in succession, each with less hair and more fingerwebs than the last.

  Sarai stared openmouthed at this performance. “Take care, Ushum,” she warned the waif beside her. “Elysians are truly mad.” But when her own mother and mothersister appeared, she paled, her purple limbs whitening from the fingers upward.

  “Oh,” said Iras, “don’t do that. Or the child will have to wake you.” Only a child could safely waken a whitened Sharer. Nibur hoped she died.

  Instead, Sarai caught herself, and the purple returned to her limbs. “The two of you are children enough. They should have kept you in the shon.”

  “Now then.” Iras assumed her business voice. “How much will it take to set up your new lab in Chiron? Will a megacred do, or perhaps ten?”

  “Do you think this planet cares about your megacreds? They are waiting for you. They’ve been trying to reach us for years—and finally we hear them.”

  “Oh yes.” Iras suppressed a yawn. “The hidden masters. And who might they be?”

  Sarai paused. “Whoever they are, they’ve gotten their messengers into humans. I know—I can prove it.”

  “Indeed. Can anyone else?”

  Very reluctantly, Sarai said, “The others haven’t found them yet. They don’t know…about the little diving suits the microzoöids wear, to avoid the body’s defenses.”

  Nibur laughed. “‘Diving suits.’ That takes the prize.”

  “Sarai,” said Iras sympathetically. “You really love this world, don’t you. Though it’s so unlike Shora.”

  “The Sharers of Shora are fools,” said Sarai. “They don’t understand what your kind has done to them.”

  “Sharers understand that no material home is permanent. Someday, every raft falls apart in the storm. I’ve helped many of your sisters find a new home.”

  “After first destroying their old one?”

  “Proteus here,” called the nanoservos inside Nibur’s head. “Coming to pick you up, Master.”

  “Stay well outside,” he warned the calling lightcraft. “We’re coming out. Let’s go, Iras.” He whistled to Banga and strode outside without a glance backward.

  In the sunlight his eyes blinked rapidly. He found himself shaking with anger and delayed shock. That such indignities could befall him, his own person, was intolerable. As he glanced around now, at the mountains full of singing-trees, their aspect took on a cast of malevolence. That this world might trip him up—such a thought had never occurred to him. But now that it had, he would make his preparations, just in case. A plan shaped itself in his mind, and he whispered brisk instructions. Whatever befell himself, Proteus would know what to do. This cursed world would not outlive him.

  At the lightcraft Nibur had to whistle three times before the dog obeyed, reluctant to leave this odiferous place. Nibur grasped his collar and twisted it briefly, to show his annoyance. Iras joined them at last, uncharacteristically silent. As the door closed, their skinsuits opened and crept down off their bodies.

  “I’ve been thinking, Shonsib,” said Iras, as the craft soared toward Station. She did not look at Nibur, but adjusted the folds of her talar after her skinsuit receded. “I’m not so sure that a full cleansing of the continent is really needed. After all, on Urulan, they only cleared the tops of mountains. Here, why not all but the mountains?”

  His eyes narrowed. “The contract is signed. Is this how Bank Helicon does business?”

  “Annihilating unique ecosystems is not good for business. I’ve heard, from back home.” She looked at him. “You haven’t answered my question. Why must you clear every last mountain?”

  “The poisons wash down from the mountains. The more thorough the cleansing, the greater the yield of the land. Besides, the mountains hide the richest ores.” Nibur let his voice soften. “The mountains are important to me, too. But their material existence is nothing. I will create virtual mountains, greater than any on this poor world. They will form my next vision of Proteus. And I will pass the construct on to you—with my compliments.”

  She did not reply. The offer would be hard to refuse, Nibur knew, for his virtual worlds were one of a kind. Still, for a moment he wished he had taken the bid from the Bank of Bronze Sky instead. They had less capital, but were more predictable.

  When Rod returned to the Spirit Colony, he sought Mother Artemis alone. “I can no longer call the Spirit prope
rly,” he told her. “All I can think of is that Elysian, how I wish he were dead.”

  The Reverend Mother’s hair strands knotted and unknotted. “That’s too bad. The Elysian could use your prayers.”

  “If I can’t pray for him, how can I pray for anyone?”

  She thought about this for some time. From outside, the roar of jet transport set the walls vibrating, as it bore equipment for cleansing to sites across the continent. “Keep trying,” she told him. “These things take time. Think of this, Brother Rod: You are being tested.”

  In the meantime, a tumbleround had migrated to visit yet again, nearly up to the nursery window. No one felt like dealing with it; Rod certainly wanted to keep his distance. So he boarded up the window to keep out the whirrs and left the beast alone. What matter—they would soon be leaving. On the holo they viewed the site for their new farmstead in Chiron. The land looked similar to their own, the brokenhearts drooping from their loopstems, the singing-trees stretching alongside the wheelgrass.

  The babies fretted, despite Geode’s attempts to cheer them, while the older children grew quiet and listless without knowing what was wrong. Gaea took to her old habit of following Rod wherever he went. Haemum and Chae were withdrawn, even surly. They kept up their chores, but Haemum avoided Rod’s eye.

  One night Rod awoke to hear pounding at the door. He was up in an instant, knowing it would take Brother Geode and Mother Artemis longer to “waken” from their recharge.

  There stood two octopods, each with a bundle wrapped up in four arms. One bundle was Haemum; the other was Chae.

  “What have you done to them?” Rod threw himself onto the first octopod and tried to pry the arms of the octopod off of Haemum’s face. As his fingers grasped the nanoplast, an electric shock jolted him off. He flew backwards, stunned. Inwardly Rod cursed his own stupidity. His hands and forearms were numb, but with an enormous effort he roused himself to stand.

  “The two shonlings tried to escape.” The octopod opened its arms, releasing Haemum. She was awake enough to raise herself on her hands. By now Brother Geode had arrived, and he helped her and Chae back inside. Each had a pack of water and medicines; they must have planned their break well.

  As Haemum lay exhausted on her bed, Rod found little to say. “It’s not easy, Sister, for any of us. But you must trust the Reverend Mother.”

  Haemum looked up at him. Her eyes were those of a stranger. “What good is Reverend Mother? What good did she do?”

  No definite date was set for departure, but the four-eyes meat was gone, and they were dipping into their emergency supply of dried brokenhearts. Every day now the sky was marred by the transporters of death. Whenever Gaea heard them she ran over to cling to Rod’s legs.

  One afternoon a strange greenish light came in the window. The tint of the sky was somehow familiar to Rod, though he had not seen it in years. He leaned out the window to look.

  Iota Pavonis had hidden behind a cloud, a dense, round cloud shaped like a pancake. The edges of the cloud ruffled, dissolving and re-forming themselves. It was a storm cloud.

  Rod could not take his eyes off the sight. He had seen storms in the mountains, and he had heard of weather putting out fires, but this was the first storm cloud he had seen right here at the colony. Its shape was perfectly symmetrical, not like the misshapen storm clouds that used to chase up the Valan coast.

  As he watched, a large transport vessel sailed overhead, avoiding the cloud. But as the ship neared, the cloud expanded startlingly. Light flashed, illuminating the depths of the cloud, and thunder rumbled. Out of the cloud snaked a long, gray funnel. With a chilling deliberation, the gray funnel wound its way toward the approaching ship.

  Rod ducked just soon enough to avoid the flash in his eyes, as the funnel cloud reached the ship. Above his head the windowpane shattered, and his ears rang. He heard children screaming in the next room. Seconds later, there were muffled explosions as parts of the ship hit the ground.

  He hurried to check the children and the other windows. When at last he looked outside again, black smoke was rising over the wreckage of the ship, dampened by a fine mist of rain. The pancake cloud receded slowly, its edges dissolving and shrinking back until it disappeared in the afternoon sun.

  FIFTEEN

  ’jum watched Sarai hovering over her pods of microzoöids. As she had been taught, ’jum inserted one of the vine tendrils into the pod, to pluck out a microzoöid. It was a tough job, as the microscopic sisterlings had gelled their growth medium and tunneled out little homes to live in. Now the tendril snaked in to find them. The sisterlings always got upset and tried to wriggle away, as ’jum watched their magnified image on the holostage. She selected one, a red-orange ring. The tip of her tendril slithered through the ring hole and captured the sisterling, to be placed under the recorder.

  “Find another one right away, Ushum,” Sarai reminded her. “Sisterlings get lonely; a single one will pine away and die.” Sarai frowned reflectively. “Clickflies don’t get lonely. Loneliness takes some intelligence.”

  ’jum placed another sisterling in the dish, a blue one. Whenever two different-colored sisterlings were put together, their colors immediately shifted until they were the same. Then they flashed very quickly at each other, exchanging bursts of little flashes.

  “It’s some kind of number code,” guessed Sarai. “That’s how the little sisterlings talk to each other. They like talking.” Sarai flicked her fingerwebs absently across her chin. “But what do they talk about?” She gave ’jum an intense look.

  ’jum had finally figured out who this fish-woman was. As she stood at the cave entrance, looking out over Mount Helicon, it came to her, the memory of that day she had stood outside the shack with her mother lifeless inside. For so many days before she had watched her mother change, from the alert forewoman who bossed the other workers at the Hyalite plant and was assigned to quality control, into an invalid at home, her arms and legs wasting, turning white; turning into a form that did not look at all like the mother ’jum knew. And then, all at once, she became completely white and still.

  But that was not the end. Somehow, ’jum knew, her mother had gone on changing. One of the gods had remade her body; not quite right, just as Brother Rod had not always got things quite right, but they remade her just the same, for all her fishlike hands and feet. ’jum’s mother had turned into Sarai.

  ’jum returned Sarai’s hard stare. “Ask them.”

  Sarai called to the holostage. Instantly it filled with numbers in octal, the system Sharers preferred. These numbers the sisterlings had sent to each other, in little bursts. The numbers were disappointingly small, rarely above ten, and there were lots of zeros.

  ’jum frowned. “How do you get ‘zero’ flashes?”

  Sarai clasped her hands. “An intelligent question—how many years since I heard one! You see, Ushum, the bursts come at regular intervals; yet sometimes the sisterling ‘skips’ an interval. I’m betting those are zeros.” She stared fiercely into the lights. “Pattern, pattern, there must be a pattern.” Sarai’s jaw fell open. “Look: zero-two-two. It always shows up when sisterling B-eight is one of a pair. Can you find others such correlations, Ushum?”

  ’jum obligingly went up to the holostage and marked the critical combination with her hand. The numbers set to flashing, wherever they appeared. Sarai clucked her tongue to the clickfly, to record everything ’jum did, not that the girl ever made a mistake.

  “Perhaps the sisterlings have names,” said Sarai. “Like clickflies do. If they name each other, perhaps they can name things in their growth media. Let’s put some fancy molecule in and see what they say. How about anthocyanin? How about some antitriplex antibiotic, at sublethal concentration of course. That ought to get their attention.”

  By now eight of ’jum’s sisterlings swam in the dish of zoöid-phycoid soup. Sarai clucked to a clickfly, who immediately spun a partition across the pod, dividing the group into two groups of four. Into one pod she plac
ed a drop of anthocyanin solution; in the other, the antibiotic specific for microzoöid triplex DNA.

  An hour later, she and ’jum were poring over the numbers. “Look at this,” Sarai exclaimed. “The patterns are completely different. The microzoöids with the antibiotic produce ‘1 0 5 3 0 1,’ over and over again; whereas the anthocyanin…it’s a longer pattern.”

  ’jum stared, as if nothing existed but those numbers in the air. Her lips moved soundlessly. There was a longer number pattern, including an eight and an eleven, but it only came twice. She felt vaguely disappointed that there were few interesting primes. Still…all those zeros intrigued her. What if there were actually a prime series buried underneath?

  “Hey, what’s this?” Sarai peered at the pod. The contents of the half with the antibiotic had liquefied, except for one spot. On the holostage, the four microzoöids had all migrated to one side, leaving a mass of fibers on the other. “That’s where I dropped the antibiotic,” said Sarai. “They walled it off!” She frowned. “This is altogether too clever—even for clickflies. I wonder.” She looked up. “I wonder what their four companions will say, if we ‘play back’ to them the same sequence of light pulses that these little ones made.”

  So Sarai spent the rest of the day teaching her vines to pulse photons, with much clucking to the clickflies to insert their DNA signals into the plants. ’jum watched so closely that she began seeing flashing lights inside her own eyes. She blinked several times and finally closed her eyes.

  The light was still there, inside her eyelids. How curious. It was flashing so fast she could barely make it out, but then it slowed a bit. It came in little bursts of orange, rather like those ringlets on the holostage.

  “At last,” exclaimed Sarai.

  ’jum opened her eyes. Sarai held up two long tendrils of her vine, lifeshaped to produce flashes of light at the tips. The two tips produced the two slightly different wavelengths needed to generate the binary code. These she inserted into the half of the pod receiving anthocyanin, which had remained relatively healthy.