The Children Star

by Joan Slonczewski

  Station said, “That is why I make the rules here—because humans lack common sense. You will remain in confinement until further notice.”

  The Sharer took a deep breath. “You bring back that door, or we’ll teach them to eat you alive!”

  Sarai’s voice cut off oddly without reverberating, as if not even sound could escape. There was no response. Around them rose four gray walls as square as azetidine, but with no distinguishing corner. The walls joined a ceiling with an indistinguishable floor, creating a pallid gray cavern.

  The only spot of color was purple Sarai, crouching on the floor. But her fingertips were turning white. “’jum, I can’t take this. You know what I must do. I will be all white and cold; don’t be afraid, I will gain wisdom from my ancestors. Khral will come for you soon enough; she won’t let you go without dinner.”

  ’jum watched as Mother Sarai whitened, the purple breathmicrobes bleaching out, while the veins appeared through her skin. She wondered how Sarai managed such deep concentration. She herself had no breathmicrobes, but perhaps she could learn to concentrate, and better hear the little sisterlings. So she sat on the floor, like Sarai, her legs crossed and her back straight. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath and relaxed.

  1 0 2 0 0 7 1, said the sisterlings again. Let’s travel.

  Where do you want to go? ’jum wondered. She wished she had her light pipes. Her hands flexed as if she still held them.

  1 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 8. The sisterlings spelled out an answer, as if they had heard her anyway. As if they heard now, in her brain, what she was trying to signal. The number they made in response had appeared before, when ’jum looked out Station’s observation deck. 1 0 0 0 0 0 9 0 8, the stars.

  The stars. Will you take us?

  The stars. That was where ’jum had always wanted to go, and Brother Rod finally took her there. She would go again if she could. But just now, she couldn’t go anywhere.

  Never mind, said the sisterlings. If my generation doesn’t get there, my children will.

  On the holostage in Rod’s room stood Geode and Three Crows, each with a plump baby in one arm. The scrawny infants from Reyo had grown into crawlers eager to get down and scoot across the stage. Geode extended an eyestalk to Rod. “We’re all praying for you,” Geode told him. “May the Spirit heal you soon.”

  Rod made himself smile. What did “healing” mean anymore, he wondered. The death of a million microbial aliens, to save his own life? “Do the children have what they need? Is T’kun getting his medicine?”

  Three Crows shifted Qumum from one arm to the other. “I wish I got what I need,” said the tall Bronze Skyan. “Another four arms, like your brother here.”

  Rod traced a starsign. “You were just what we need, a gift from the Spirit.”

  “The children are fine,” said Geode, “but they all hope you’ll come home soon.”

  “What home?” The words slipped out before he thought.

  Geode’s eyestalks reached around in a circle. “Wherever we all are, that’s home.”

  “Wherever Mother Artemis is,” said Three Crows. “Tell Elk I’ll call him, after the kids are in bed.”

  That evening, Elk joined Rod in his room for supper. Rod clasped his arm gratefully. “It’s so good of Three Crows to help us out.”

  Elk shrugged. “He needed something to keep going. He’s in quarantine like the rest of us.” The scientist watched his dinner appear out of the wall, his large fingers flexing pensively. From the foot of the bed the cell sorter bleeped, spouting lines of data to Station.

  “Has the infection spread through the ship?” asked Rod.

  “Not since Station tightened all her air filters. Only whirrs can spread the micros outside a host, and now not one can get through. Station has shipped out most of the colonists, except for carriers we couldn’t clear, and those who…chose to stay.”

  Rod tried to swallow his own food, barely knowing what he tasted. “Have any of the other carriers…seen what I have?”

  “Several have seen signs,” said Elk. “They happen to be trained in meditation of one sort or another—as you are. It must help you ‘connect’ with the micros.”

  “But other carriers are ill. Why do some sicken worse than others?”

  “We don’t know. We’ll try to treat them, as we did the Elysians.” Elk avoided Rod’s eye. Little good the “treatment” had done him.

  “What about ’jum?” Rod asked suddenly.

  “’jum’s micros behave differently from yours. They don’t make threats.” He brightened with a sudden thought. “You know, it’s like different human cultures on different planets. ’jum got the Sharer micros, whereas you got the Valans. No offense.”

  “But what if hers change? How can she resist them?” Tossing aside the covers, Rod swung his legs over and stood up.

  “What are you doing?”

  “’jum is my child. I want her cleared and returned to the colony.”

  “But—Rod, you can’t just…”

  He reached the wall and pressed it with his palms. There was no door, and none formed. The clear, blank expanse faced him, suddenly terrifying.

  Station said, “You’re ill yourself, Rod.”

  His hands became fists, digging into the wall. A curse went unspoken, then he withdrew his hands. The indentation reshaped itself smooth, while Rod returned to sit on the bed, which had already remade itself. “I will pray for ’jum.”

  Elk looked down, unable to speak, his face deeply creased. Then he thought of something. “We just heard—Secretary Verid will be here tomorrow. The Council voted to test the micros for sentience. So the planet’s safe from cleansing.”

  Rod pushed his meal back into the wall. “The Secretary will first have to convince those microzoöids that we’re even worth talking to. Maybe the Elysians were right; if we don’t wipe out the micros, they’ll make llamas of us all.”

  Elk’s large hands shook and he put down his fork. “I don’t know. I’m a plant person; I stayed away from medical training, never wanted to work on people. And now—” He stopped.

  “How’s Khral?” Rod asked softly.

  “She thought you wouldn’t want to see her again.”

  “I wanted to apologize.”

  “As for me, I’m with you, Rod. I wouldn’t want to be the slave of some microbe.”

  After dinner Rod lay on the bed with his eyes closed. Sleep would offer respite from this nightmare; but what would the invaders do to his brain as he slept?

  He heard the sound of a door puckering open, and a breath of air reached his face. His eyelids fluttered open, and he saw someone walk in. In the doorway stood Khral, hesitating.

  Rod sat up quickly. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I shouldn’t have—”

  “Bother. It was stupid, what I said.”

  “You were right. Obedience is a virtue.” A virtue he had cultivated for years, first at the Academy, then with the Spirit Callers.

  Khral came to sit by the bed. Rod wished he had had a chance to freshen up first. “Obedience to what is good,” she said, “not the blind obedience of a slave. My grandparents were the children of Urulite slaves. They scraped a living out of a patch of hillside, saving enough to educate their children. My parents left Urulan for Bronze Sky, where they founded the Simian League. Their speeches were on every holostage—I think they expected me to marry a gorilla, God knows. But I just wanted to be me.” She looked wonderingly at her hands. “The secret of life; it always fascinated me. I look at myself and think, I’m an animal, and yet a human being. It’s extraordinary.”

  “Any of us could say the same.”

  Khral looked at him. “That’s exactly what I mean. You always understand, Rod.”

  He touched her hand. An infinite sympathy seemed to pass between them. He burned with longing, and despair. How could the Spirit let him care so much for a halfbreed student?

  Something brushed past Rod’s face, a tiny insect. It sounded like a whirr.

  Khral ca
ught sight of it. “How did that whirr get in here? Station,” she called. “Better check your filters.”

  “I will,” called the voice, steady as always. “I will recheck all my filters, and decrease the pore size again.”

  Withdrawing her hand, Khral reached upward and scooped the whirr out of the air. “We’ll see what these ‘sisterlings’ are up to.” She dumped it into a collecting vial.

  Astonished, Rod stared at her bare hand with which she caught the whirr. How brave she was. He himself was infected and had no choice, but she chose to keep up her science when she could have kept herself safe. He doubted he would have done the same.

  TWENTY

  Late at night Rod awoke. The room was dark except for the faintly glowing button on the blood monitor. But in his eyes, the lights were blinking again. The microzoöids were up to something.

  ANIMAL. MEN READY. YOU MUST GO.

  Rod watched the letters shape themselves. No, he thought back as hard as he could. He would not be a beast of burden for these rude creatures.

  MEN MUST GO HOME. GO HOME NOW.

  That sounded hopeful, Rod thought. Go ahead, leave. Let the whirrs come and take them all.

  YOU TAKE US HOME, NOW.

  Rod opened his mouth to call Station for help—but no sound came out. He could not speak.

  GO HOME NOW.

  The first twist of pain entered his head. He could not cry out. What would the microscopic tormentors control next? He reached out and felt for Station’s deadly tablet on the shelf by the bed. At last his hand found it.

  He prepared his mind just in time to meet the full wave of pain, searing, tearing every fiber of his body. Before his eyes arose the image of the old master of the Guard, a Sardish colonel with a beard as sharp as his epaulets. Resist, the master commanded. You will resist, or die. The hypnotic impact of that image held him above the pain. Centuries seemed to come and go, and still the pain burned. When the master’s image faltered, Rod’s hand closed around the tablet.

  But then another shape arose—Mother Artemis. Live, she called to him. You shall live. Just like the day he first saw her, meditating in the park outside the Academy, where Rod had wandered out after a particularly dissipated weekend. Her look that day had touched a place in him that even the Sardish master had never reached. Follow me, and you shall live. He had followed, and never looked back. Now, despite the torment, his hand loosened; for the Spirit yet called him across tens of millennia, called him to live through the worst extremity.

  When the pain did not seem as if it could possibly get worse, it did. Again the master’s image returned, ordering resistance; and then again, Mother Artemis called for life. Always one or the other, until the pain would shatter his head into a thousand fragments.

  Then, after eons of torment, the pain died. Rod sat up, drenched with sweat. The tablet remained in his hand, and he still had not yet squeezed the death out of it. He had actually beaten the microbial masters—this time. There was silence, and darkness, his eyes at peace. Slowly he let himself back down on the mattress, his breathing returning to normal. Nothing was so welcome as lungfuls of air without pain.

  ANIMAL GOES HOME. The infernal letters returned. ANIMAL GOES; WE REWARD.

  Rod did not deign to reply.

  Then slowly his limbs filled with pleasure, more intense than he could ever have imagined. Too late he tried to cry out, for he had no defense. He could only drink it in, like a plant drinking water from the soil, grateful and despairing. Nothing in his own miserable existence could compare with what the microzoöids gave, none of those he loved, not even the highest communion with the Spirit.

  It was gone all too soon, leaving him sick with craving. He turned restlessly, until the covers fell off. He found himself thinking of the lightcraft, and how to get back down to Prokaryon, while another part of his mind screamed at his madness. He had no intention of getting up, yet he found himself swinging his legs down over the side. He told himself, getting up for a moment would do no harm.

  The pleasure began to return. Then he realized that he would do anything the microbial masters demanded, even sell his own children. He groped frantically for the tablet, which had slipped from his fingers. At last his hand caught it and squeezed hard.

  Gradually Rod awakened, to a room filled with morning light. Confused, he wondered where he was and what had happened. His head turned, and he saw someone seated nearby. With an effort he focused his eyes and saw Mother Artemis.

  The shock chilled him. “How am I still alive?”

  “Did you think Station would let you come to harm?”

  So that was it. Tricked by that lying sentient. But the Reverend Mother must know that he had tried to end his own life, the worst of sins. He turned his head to the wall. “Mother, I am not worthy to face you.”

  “Brother Rod, you are forgiven absolutely. Think of it no more.”

  “I am not forgiven. I am better off dead.”

  Mother Artemis paused. Rod could imagine her behind him, her all-to-familiar face screen with its compelling gaze. “Once, Rod, you asked the Spirit to grant you a world. Do you remember?”

  He shuddered. “I am not the man I was.”

  “Now, all the worlds of the Fold depend on you.”

  Rod swallowed hard. “’jum can help you better.”

  “’jum has entered some kind of trance. Not whitetrance, like Sarai, but she will not communicate.”

  So much for “Sharer” microzoöids, Rod thought bitterly. Who could tell what they were doing to poor ’jum. Far better had he left her that day on Scarecrow Hill.

  “There are other carriers, but none as advanced as you. Please, Rod—won’t you try again? Secretary Verid has arrived to talk with them.”

  “It’s too late,” he whispered. “There is nothing I can do. Please, leave me.” No need for her to see what the microzoöids could do to him.

  He lay there facing the wall, for hours, perhaps days for all he could tell. Drained of emotion, all he could do was to think of nothing, neither pain nor desire, and hope the tormenters within kept quiet.

  A faint swishing sound came from the wall, and a breath of air touched his neck. Someone must have opened a door to look in on him. Rod listened hard, but did not hear the door close. The minutes ticked by, and he wondered, had the visitor left, or were they still there? At last he turned his head, just far enough to see.

  A small woman in a leaf brown Elysian talar sat near the door, her back toward him. He frowned, wondering why she looked familiar. Then her head half turned, and her profile leaped out at him from a thousand holocubes.

  Hurriedly he sat up straight. “Honorable Secretary.”

  “Brother Rod.” Her voice sounded at once familiar, yet extraordinary, to be addressing him in person instead of from a newscast. “Brother Rod, how can I face you. You, who offered your own brief lifetime that my Iras might enjoy centuries more.”

  Taken aback, Rod shook his head. “Whatever they’ve told you—I’m just a very sick man.”

  “And here come I, a cupbearer for murderers. I am covered in shame.”

  Rod blinked, wondering what to say. “You have all the humans of the Fold to speak for. What do I know of that?”

  Secretary Verid turned toward him, and he faced her owlish eyes. Suddenly Rod realized what the Guard and the Spirit Callers had always shared: They taught disdain for politics. Obey your commanding officer, or your Reverend Father or Mother, and forsake the slimy machinations of the world. But here was someone who made the world her business.

  “What you know may save countless lives. Shall we proceed?”

  Rod swallowed. “What do you want of me?”

  “We have seven days to convince the Council of the Fold that we can deal with the…alien intelligence. If we succeed, they will suspend the planet’s destruction.”

  He looked away. “I’m no longer sure that’s wise.”

  “Indeed. Explain.”

  How could anyone know what he had undergo
ne? He shuddered. “The microzoöids make us helpless. They can control us absolutely.”

  “You seem in control right now.”

  “They leave me alone, then attack at their whim.”

  The Secretary thought this over. Even she, with her thousand years’ experience, what could she know of these alien creatures too small to see? “How long has it been since their last attack?” she asked.

  “Since last night.”

  “Half a generation, for them. Did they get what they wanted?”

  He considered this. “Not yet.”

  “Not yet, indeed. I can imagine what they’re going through—accusations and recriminations, shifting the blame, ‘who lost the human,’ and so on. They must have sacked half their staff.”

  Despite himself Rod smiled. “Whatever comes next, though, will only be worse. They can’t even think of us as people—they call us ‘animals.’”

  “And what do you call them?”

  Rod frowned, puzzled. “Microzoöids?”

  “‘Little animals.’”

  “Well that’s what they look like.”

  “Just as you always looked like a llama, to them. Let’s call them what you would like to be called—a man.” Seeing his look, she smiled. “‘Micromen,’ if that’s easier.”

  Rod shrugged. “As you wish, Secretary.”

  “Now tell me, what is it the ‘micromen’ want?”

  “They want to go back to Prokaryon.”

  Her eyes widened with astonishment. “Back to Prokaryon? Isn’t that what you’d want them to do?”

  “Certainly. But they want me to take them. And Station says we need to study them here, to help cure those infected.”

  “Ah, I see.” Verid sighed and shook her head. “What a tangled web we weave. Well, I think now we’re ready to talk. Can you contact them?”

  Rod stiffened all over. “I can try. If I have to.”

  “It’s absolutely crucial.”

  Taking a deep breath, Rod let his mind empty, as he had done so often for the Spirit. He wondered how long it had been since evening prayers. Now he prayed, out of a place of despair he had never known before. Whoever is out there, help me now.