The Children Star

by Joan Slonczewski

  He raised his hand and focused his eyes upon the fingers. This was the sign the “micromen” had used before, and it was his best guess to summon them. For some time there was no sign or sound, only the pounding of his own heart. He tried to envision his inner denizens as “little men,” though he recoiled at the thought.

  From the corner of his eye, a light flashed.

  Rod closed his eyes. “Room darken,” he ordered. The light from the ceiling dimmed, and Secretary Verid became a shadow.

  Within his eyes the letters began to shape themselves. Panic seized him; he gripped the bed rail to steady himself. MAN…I SEEK TALK.

  “They want to talk,” Rod said aloud.

  “There’s a start,” said the Secretary. “Talk about what?”

  MY BROTHERS NEED YOUR HELP.

  “You tried that before. It was no good,” he told them.

  WAS DIFFERENT GENERATION. THIS GENERATION KNOWS BETTER.

  Rod laughed. “They say ‘this generation’ knows better, but it’s only been half a day. Khral says the elders live a month.”

  “That’s all right,” said Verid, “let them save face. Why do they need your help?”

  Why do you need help? he silently asked.

  BROTHERS ARE DYING. BROTHERS FROM ANOTHER WORLD, DEAD PLACE. WE MEN CANNOT GROW WITHIN A DEAD WORLD, ONLY WITHIN A LIVING HOME.

  That was true of humans, too. How long would humans thrive outside an ecosystem? “They say some of them are dying. Ones from ‘a dead world.’” But what could that be? Had one of the patients died?

  “How would they know?” asked the Secretary. “They’ve been inside you for weeks, I understand.”

  “The whirr,” Rod recalled. “The whirr must have brought them—from Khral’s sick culture. That’s the only place micromen would be growing outside a living body.”

  BROTHERS ARE DYING. WE CANNOT HEAL THEM; MUST RETURN TO TUMBLEROUND.

  “Their ‘brothers’ need expert medical care,” Rod guessed.

  “Excellent,” said the Secretary. “A chance for a humanitarian gesture.”

  “But they would need a human body to carry them. Unless we find enough whirrs.” A prospect unlikely to please Station.

  Verid considered this. “I think we can arrange human transport. Most discreetly, of course.” Humans were now banned from Prokaryon.

  “I don’t like it. They would think I gave in.”

  “You already proved you would not.”

  Rod closed his eyes. “No pain, and no rewards,” he told them.

  NO PAIN, NO REWARDS.

  “If I take you there,” Rod asked hopefully, “will you all go home—all of you?”

  There was a long pause. The Secretary watched intently.

  HOW CAN YOU SEND US AWAY? YOU ARE HOME TO US, MANY GENERATIONS. YOU ARE ONLY HOME WE KNOW.

  Rod’s eyes widened. “The ones growing inside me—they don’t want to leave, ever.” He caught his face in his hands. “Spirit save me.”

  “They don’t want to leave,” mused Verid. “By now, perhaps, few of them can. In any world, how few individuals have the courage to emigrate.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  ’jum had long experience of shutting out a world of pain. Now, sitting entranced, she had the new lure of the world within, full of the sisterlings with their pulsing number codes. This one was flashing green: Once, one pause, then twice…1 0 2 0 0 7 1, said the sisterling. (If you cannot yet help us travel, then we’ll help you. Travel into our world.)

  What is your world like?

  The numbers flashed, and she translated. (You’ll see. Trust me; I am an elder.)

  ’jum focused on a tiny green speck of light. The speck grew into a ring, and the ring became a fat, healthy torus. Its surface was crisscrossed with a molecular scaffolding that held the cell intact. It extended loops of polysaccharide filaments toward ’jum, as if to caress her.

  (My name is:) 1 0 0 3 7. The whole shining torus flashed at her. (What is your name?)

  ’jum thought this over. 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1, she said, picking some of her favorite primes.

  (A beautiful name, 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1. Your elders must love you very much.)

  My elders all died, one after the other.

  (Your elders died? Ours can live for thirty generations of children. How do you live without elders?)

  Brother Rod brought me to the Children Star. Now, I have Mother Sarai.

  (“Mothers” we cannot understand. For a tumbleround, yes; but for a person?)

  Another torus tumbled over, a blue one, looming near out of the dark liquid. Then came two yellow ones. As they approached, though, all turned green. (Our children.)

  The green rings propelled themselves by pumping little jets of liquid this way and that. Two of them knocked together, then one managed to squeeze itself affectionately through the ring of the other. They tangled in each other’s filaments, and blinked their light at each other, so fast even ’jum could not make out the numbers.

  (We normally converse a thousand times faster than I do with you.)

  When will your children grow up? ’jum wondered.

  (She will grow up fast,) 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1. (In a couple of hours, she will be as old as you. She’ll go to school, too.)

  A new group of rings appeared, of various colors and sizes, all smaller than the adults. In their midst floated one elder, colored red. The elder flashed color insistently, and the smaller ones gradually adjusted, though they kept straying off a bit, here orange, there indigo. It was always hard to make children listen.

  How do you eat? ’jum wanted to know.

  (We take food through molecular pores in our sheath. The pores open wide when we like the food around us. And all our food comes from you! Please, feed us foods we adore, especially foods rich in mimosin and azetidine.)

  I’ll remember, ’jum promised, watching the children. Do they tell stories?

  (We all tell the story of how our people, the Dancing People, came to be. Long ago, in the Perfect Garden, our ancestors dwelt within a mindless world; a world to be controlled, to be led in its wanderings, to cultivate our planet full of worlds, but mindless nonetheless, indifferent to our desires. From other worlds came whirrs, bringing visitors, but one world to another was all the same.)

  (Then the whirrs brought numbers about different kinds of worlds, grown with internal landscapes of harsh alien beauty. The Dancing People marveled. How could such a world appear; where did they come from?)

  (To seek answers, some of us took to the whirrs and braved the passage into the alien worlds. Many died, for the habitat was harsh and unforgiving, its physiology foreign to our control. But we learned and adapted. One of those worlds, 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1, became our beloved home.)

  (Then we discovered an amazing thing: The alien world had intelligent feelings. You could, in fact, understand us, responding to our most intimate desires. And most astounding of all, you came from the stars, like the very gods. It is a wondrous thing, to inhabit a god.)

  In the laboratory, with the Secretary beside him, Rod eyed the culture dish, a bauble of nanoplast connected to a dozen ports of gases and nutrients. Khral adjusted a connection, not looking at him.

  “Are you sure we can’t just take the culture down to Prokaryon?” asked Rod. “They’ve lasted this long.”

  “They need constant adjustment of oxygen and temperature,” Khral explained. “If I disconnect the culture, they’ll die outright.”

  “The whirrs can’t carry them?”

  “A whirr is like an ambulance. It’s well equipped, but you wouldn’t want to spend months in one; you’d starve. Remember, the micromen live on a faster time scale.”

  “But these have never been inside a human,” said Rod. “What if they’re too sick to adjust to me?”

  “Your own micromen seem to think they can stabilize their ‘brothers’ and keep them from dying off before we find a tumbleround.”

  The Secretary touched his arm. “I’m convinced we’ll impress your alien inhabitants
with our humanitarian gesture. Once they’re willing to listen, we can get them to agree to stay out of human bodies.”

  “The transfer will have side effects, but we’ll protect you.” Khral placed a nanoplastic patch on his neck. “The patch will send nanoservos into your blood, to keep your fever down when so many foreign visitors are transferred.” Then she took a vial of whirrs and opened it into a connecting tube to the culture. As the valve turned, the whirrs swarmed into the culture, presumably picking up as many micromen as they could. Rod felt his scalp prickle. But the worst was yet to come.

  “Vacuum suction,” Khral called to the culture system. The whirrs immediately were sucked up back into the vial, which sealed itself as she removed it. Her hand shook slightly as she turned to Rod. “This may be easier if you don’t look.”

  Rod looked away, his face turned to stone. He felt the round pressure of the vial against his skin, but surprisingly nothing more. Those whirrs certainly knew how to avoid irritating their host.

  GREETINGS. WE WELCOME OUR BROTHERS.

  Hush, Rod told the letters flashing before his eyes. This will be hard enough.

  “I’ve known many brave men,” said the Secretary, “but none more than you. Well, Khral—are we ready?”

  “Titer check,” Khral called to the culture vessel. “Looks like a few left behind; we’ll repeat the procedure, then we’re done.” She looked to the Secretary. “I’ll go down to the planet with him. If he runs a fever or anything, I can take care of it.”

  “Very well,” said Secretary Verid. “You all understand—absolute secrecy.”

  “We’ll take the old servo shuttle, so Quark needn’t answer questions. It’s been fixed up,” Khral assured Rod.

  The stripes of wheelgrass loomed through the window. It seemed so familiar, yet utterly strange to be returning to Prokaryon. So much that had been a mystery was now explained. Rod knew, now, who made the wheelgrass grow in bands; he knew, far better than he cared to, how Prokaryon’s true masters governed the beasts that grazed the rows, never picking off so much as a shoot of a singing-tree in the forest. Yet despite how much had changed, within himself he could not shake off the sense that he was going home, and the loss of home ached all the more.

  Khral pointed to the viewport. “There, near the river where the forest starts—I see a herd of four-eyes.” Several of the tire-shaped beasts were grazing.

  “The micromen wanted a tumbleround, remember.” The tumbleround had always been their preferred host; yet now, the micromen that had grown up inside him seemed to like an alien human even better. How could that be?

  Seconds later the craft landed, more gently than it used to. It must have been fixed up well this time, Rod thought hopefully. Then he remembered, there was no more colony to need it.

  The ginger wind blew across his face as he stepped down. Khral had activated her skinsuit, and Rod remembered that she was not even lifeshaped for Prokaryon. “You can stay here,” he told her. If she slipped and the suit failed, there was no help anywhere, not another human or sentient on the planet.

  “Bother.” Khral stepped down amidst the wheelgrass. She always looked prettiest in her skinsuit, the sunlight sparkling from every curve. Rod recalled happier days, when the scientists went collecting singing-tree pods and watching the light show in the upper canopy; as it turned out, all telecommunications of the micromen. What had those little people thought of them, he wondered, these great human beasts lumbering through their forest, chopping off great hunks of their habitat to haul off in vessels unimaginably large.

  Now, though, they had to find a tumbleround and get their errand done. Finding a tumbleround was not so easy, Rod realized with chagrin. Before, he had spent so much energy getting rid of them, but now he had no idea where to go look for one. “We might try the forest,” he guessed. “I think they prefer the shade.”

  Khral nodded, the creases of nanoplast winking around her neck. She hiked with him toward the forest, where the first singing-trees arched overhead, loops upon loops of branches reaching outward. She stopped. “We shouldn’t go too far; you’ll tire out. Why not stay in one place, and let the whirrs find us.”

  Rod leaned into the arch of a singing-tree, stretching his back. In the loops of the upper branches the wind sang, and helicoids clattered among themselves. The planet would be saved from destruction, Verid had said. Suddenly he felt very good; there was hope after all, and he was doing his part. “How is the lab?” he asked. “Are you making progress with the language?”

  Khral rested next to him. “We figured out a lot, until Sarai went into whitetrance. Now we can’t wake her. One of your children could wake her, but Station said it wasn’t right.”

  “For a change.”

  “And ’jum won’t talk either, but I suspect that’s just ’jum. You know her.”

  “All too well,” he admitted.

  “Damn that Station,” Khral exclaimed. “If only she were more tactful.”

  “You can’t blame her. After seeing what I went through, why should she let anyone help the micromen learn to live within nanoplast?”

  Khral turned to him. “Rod—I can’t bear that it happened to you. I wish it was me, or anyone else in the world.”

  Rod shrugged. “It had to be someone.”

  “Not you. You’re the only man who ever looked at me like a human woman.”

  Startled, he looked at her. Was he that transparent, all this time? But the weakness that he despised, she praised. Her skinsuited face was so near; her eyes held him, until he thought he would fall in. He wanted to tell her something, but somehow could not find the words. He lifted his hand and caressed the nanoplast on her cheek.

  Khral adjusted something on her suit. Its voice squeaked, “Suit alert, suit alert! You’re in danger!”

  “Hush,” whispered Khral. “I’ve begun lifeshaping; I’ll survive an hour.” The suit slowly peeled, flowing down her face and shoulders, into a puddle of nanoplast at her feet. Her face was clear, her lips near enough to taste.

  Rod felt the blood pound in his ears. He thought, I am a free man, not a llama; I will freely choose.

  As he met her lips, her arms were around him, her fingers alighting on his back, the nape of his neck. He shuddered as her touch set him on fire. His hands remembered how to slip the clothes off as quickly as possible. Beneath his hands a fine fur covered her back, but her breasts were bare. She pressed herself to him, wanting him so badly, he prayed he could last long enough to please her. Nothing else existed; they were one, alone in the universe.

  Afterward they lay quiet together in the wheelgrass. The wind swept over them, and far overhead a flock of helicoids cried as they took off from a singing-tree. Rod let out a sigh of peace and despair. “Spirit forgive me,” he whispered.

  He felt tears from her eyes. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. Was it good, Rod?”

  Rod did not want to say how good. He would not fear the micromen again. He pressed her hair. “You are a beautiful woman.”

  “I knew it would be good. Oh, Rod—if we ever get out of all this, let me take care of you. I earn good pay, enough for you and any number of kids.”

  “Khral. Would you trust a lifelong vow from a man who just broke one?”

  Her face crumpled. “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” She looked at the starstone, lying cold on his chest. “Will you have to leave all those children?”

  Rod nearly blacked out to think of it. Let the micromen come; their torments would drown his pain.

  “How can it be,” she whispered. “How can something that feels so right be so wrong?”

  Something more than the wind brushed his arm. Several whirrs had come to settle, their tiny propellers humming.

  “They’re here at last,” said Khral. “They’ll take your sick micromen now.”

  Rod eyed the whirrs with suspicion. “The micromen—they were waiting for us.” It was bad enough to break his vow, without a million “people” watching.

&n
bsp; “They’re good biologists,” said Khral. “I’m sure they wanted to know how humans do it.” She caught his arm as he started to rise. “Don’t exert yourself. There will be lots of traffic in your bloodstream, new ones arriving and old ones leaving. Your immune system won’t like it; you may run a fever.”

  New ones arriving—that was not part of the bargain, he thought. He lay back, watching the loopleaves flutter in the wind, trying not to think at all about anything. A scent of glue reached him. “Is the tumbleround there?”

  “I see one, a ways off, in the arch of that tree.” Khral pointed, her arm outstretched across her breast. She sat up, retrieving her clothes and her skinsuit.

  In his eyes appeared something bright that was not sunlight. Closing his eyes, Rod found the message. WELL DONE. OUR BROTHERS WILL LIVE.

  Rod sat up. “They say they’re done. We can go now.” As he started to pull on his shirt, an unwelcome sense of pleasure entered his brain. “No,” he said aloud, squeezing his eyes hard shut. “I said, no rewards.”

  HOW DO WE THANK YOU FOR SAVING A WORLD?

  He blinked, then laughed aloud.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Nothing, only my own foolish words. Let’s go.” He was starting to run a fever, but he could walk to the shuttle.

  “I’ll get lifeshaped,” Khral promised. “If it takes ten years I will. We’ll be forever studying this place.”

  Rod said nothing. Lifeshaping looked easy, next to the choice that faced him now.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Deep inside ’jum, the sisterlings danced. The little rings danced in intricate patterns, three crossing five and five crossing seven. Red and orange, yellow and blue, their paths wove to and fro, all the while blinking in songs that ’jum could not follow. (What about you,) 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1, they called. (Do you dance? Do the gods dance, too?)

  ’jum wondered. The Spirit Children never seemed to dance. Why not?

  Outside her, some useless grown-up was trying to bother her again.

  Take me with you, 1 0 0 3 7, she told the sisterlings. Show me how to dance.