Evolution (2 page)

Doc leaned forward to watch the commotion around the shuttle on the other side of the large field that bordered the lake. “Take your time, wander around, meet some of the new people who stop by, then tell me what you think. I’ve been living the process, but someone who knows what Chariklo was previously like might have a better perspective on what’s changing and what isn’t. We’ve never had more need of a shaman than we do now. Time to earn your keep.”

* * *

S
am wandered
among the village structures—each one a work of art. People scurried from the shuttle to their homes, their arms loaded with boxes from FAO Schwarz, Bloomingdale’s, and a host of other fine Earth establishments. Each person called out his name in hasty greeting. Santa’s immense sleigh would be empty soon—though Jess was as far from Father Christmas as Sam could imagine.

His boss’s soft voice cut through the chatter. “About time. I was ready to search for a new apprentice.”

Sam grinned. Yoshi could work all hours of the day or night. But when it came to trusting someone to train for the intricate task of helping the master gardener, there was always tomorrow. “Yeah, any day now, right?”

“Just waiting for the right kid to walk into the village. Worked pretty well last time, didn’t it?” Yoshi asked with his usual good humor.

“Sure, but at the time, I was the only new person to get snagged by the village’s vines in twenty years.” In hindsight, being dumped by Lev into the agro pod had been the biggest favor anyone had ever done for him.

Between the conversation with Doc, the shuttle trip, and the welcoming low gravity of Chariklo, Sam’s stomach was grumbling. “Anyone cooking this afternoon? I could go for some natural village food. A year eating synthetic food-like material on Earth kind of left a craving.”

“Maybe.” The twinkle in Yoshi’s eye warmed Sam’s stomach—which would soon be once again filled with homegrown vegetables. But instead of leading Sam down the well-worn path toward the waterfall, Yoshi pointed his walking stick at the aspen grove. “Once you’ve gotten something to eat, meet me in Mira’s garden. There’s a new net of vines in need of repairs.”

Such a sweet innocent name: Mira’s garden—the secluded meadow at the base of the mountain where Yoshi’s wife conducted her sex-education workshops. “How is it she isn’t swarming Jess and the shuttle like everyone else?”

Yoshi craned his neck to inspect the stragglers grasping their treasures from Earth. “Well, I guess the packages from Extreme Restraints
and Dominance Leathers are on the next shuttle.” With a wink, he left, whistling a simple tune as he strolled along the lake’s edge toward the mountain.

Sam chuckled as he made his way down the dirt path. Teaching girls to embrace their sexuality and boys to control their urges required more than just lectures. And maintaining a balance of sexual dominance often demanded additional study by all members of the community. A small woman, Mira took to the task of educator with gusto.

The smell of fresh, roasting vegetables wafted up from a crude makeshift kitchen by the river—not at all like the village—but the aroma proved irresistible. The natural beauty dancing the vegetables across the open flame swayed her hips as she hummed a tune to the food as if adding a spice with her voice. Her sheer, colorful dress highlighted her naked body beneath the fabric.

Without turning from her task, her hum transitioned to a greeting. “Hi, Sam. I’ve just about got these green beans ready for you.”

As she turned from the roasting fire, her eyes caught his confusion. Her coy smile ignited his vague recognition. “I’m not surprised you don’t remember me—”

“Jillian, the bartender aboard
Leviathan
.” The memory of the flirtatious waitress flooded back.

“I’m honored you remembered,” she said in a sweet voice. “You seemed so lost aboard that old space freighter. That whole day must have been a confused blur for you.”

Admitting that
Leviathan
’s Tobe, Lev, had downloaded every aspect of Jillian’s life into Sam’s brain didn’t seem likely to improve her image of him. Better to let her imagine she’d been the last woman to catch his eye before the love of his life swept him up into her arms. “What strange set of events led you down here?”

Jillian brought two plates stacked with a medley of colorful fried and baked natural foods. She curled her legs up under her as she took a seat opposite him. “I was working aboard
Leviathan
when you all landed here on Chariklo. It was a fun job—seeing so much of the solar system—and such a wonderful cross section of humanity. Rumors about your village filtered in: a new utopia where women took charge of their sexuality, a place that encouraged experimentation, and people living in harmony with their surroundings.
Leviathan
was one of the few ships delivering settlers and provisions out this far, so the stories spread. Even when you were in the agro pod, there were rumors about Mr. Yoshi’s marijuana. So last time we came by, I got off and moved to the outpost. Your village lets me open my little kitchen a couple days per week. I had to see for myself if the stories were true about the otherworldly redheaded man whose mind was so taken with higher concepts he couldn’t function without his sexy companion.”

Sam scrunched his eyes. “Ouch, I’m not that much of a space head, am I?”

The sound of Emily’s singing as she skipped along the trail interrupted Jillian’s laugh. The girl’s simple, joyous manner of moving from place to place took on a whole new aspect in low gravity. Each of her hops sent her nearly over Sam’s head. But when she placed the two thermoses of Yoshi’s beer on the table, he knew her arrival hadn’t been by chance. “Isn’t Jilly wonderful, Daddy? She lets me help out when she’s here.”

Jillian squinted at her assistant. “You’re late. I expected you half an hour ago.”

Rather than looking chastised, Emily spun on her toes to show off her new dress. The bright-yellow print with blue flowers mirrored the girl’s hair and eyes. “See what Mommy brought me, Jilly? Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Emily’s quite my little helper. With her social nature, she’ll end up running this place.” Looking for all the world like a caring aunt, Jillian pulled Emily to her lap.

When Sam and Jess had left Chariklo, the twins had been nine of Earth’s years, as near as he could estimate. Now they were approaching eleven. He wondered how much of his concern was that of a father not wanting to accept his daughter’s growth and how much was from her embrace of outside influences. A year or two hadn’t sounded like much before they’d left. But the true cost of that time was staring at him through Emily’s eyes, which had lost some of their innocence.

Sam’s concern about his young daughter spending time with someone not of the village apparently didn’t go unnoticed by Jillian. “Don’t worry. I’ve talked with Doc about both Emily and Sara. As we have a history, he thought I might help the girls define what they thought about all these strange new people.”

“And what do you think of all this, my darling daughter?” Sam asked.

Emily took on the aspect of a thinker far more mature than her tender years. “I really like working with Jilly. She treats me like a grown-up.”

Sam enjoyed listening to his daughters’ points of view. “And how does your sister feel?”

“Ra only comes down here when I make her. She says these people give her the willies. It’s like what Mommy said about us…” Emily let the comment die off as she picked at the food on Jillian’s plate.

“What did Mommy say?” Sam asked.

“Oh, she said Sara prefers learning from books and I’m more about getting to know people.”

S
am woke
to the first rays of light from the solar array creeping through the woven wall of sweet-scented wisteria. Jess lay in his arms, which no longer struggled with her weight in the welcome low gravity of the centaur planet. Dreams of Earth faded like the fog dissipating off the lake. On and on the dreams had tormented his sleep—misguided, advanced beings who considered him their god; his position as founder and majority stockholder of the largest, most powerful company on Earth; a penthouse overlooking all of New York.

Light—tinged pink from the vine blossoms—played with the wind and danced across Jess’s naked body. “It was all a dream.”

Jess squirmed around in his embrace, her head coming to rest with her cheek against his, her mouth at his ear. “As I’ve told you every day for the last six months, it wasn’t a dream,” she whispered, not unkindly.

He heaved a heavy sigh and tightened his arms around her just as he had each morning since their return home. “Then I’ll treasure every minute I have in the village. Time to make the most of the day.”

The lightweight cotton pajamas from Earth—the current set printed in a dazzling montage of colorful flowers—hadn’t been intended for daytime wear. But as the village sifted through the cargo-hold full of gifts Jess had brought home, the airy garments had gained acceptance alongside the traditional loose clothes handwoven by the tribe.

The girls scarfed down their breakfasts. As they grew into young ladies, meals became an athletic competition. And with the low gravity, their bodies developed a lot faster than Sam remembered happening to girls on Earth. At least that was what he told himself.

Once finished with their meal, the twins grabbed Sam’s hands for their daily walk—one of his favorite parts of the day.

Emily swung his arm as she held his hand. “Tell me about Earth, Dad.”

Daddy
was gradually being replaced with
Dad
, a transition Sam observed with good humor. He suspected his girls did their best to slip the change in slowly so he could adjust. No doubt it was their subtle way of telling him they were growing up.

“You asked about Earth yesterday, Emi,” Sara said.

“Well, it’s a big topic, Ra. Tell me you aren’t curious,” Emily said. Sam might have become
Dad
, but their toddler mispronunciations of each other’s names would forever be a part of their bond.

Sara’s soulful brown eyes looked down as they walked. “Okay, but you have to be more specific. Pick some aspect of Earth, not the whole planet because that’s just too much.”

Emily bit her lower lip as she looked up at the planet so far away. “I really want to know more about Ellie and Joshua, but we talked about them yesterday. How about we talk about how people learn there. Did you go to school when you were a kid, Dad?”

More often than not, they wanted to hear more about his youth than the recent adventure to mankind’s home planet.

“I did go to school. We had big buildings made of metal, glass, and concrete. Nothing at all like the living buildings Yoshi built.”

Sara swung his arm hard, indicating she wanted to be heard. “Emi said school, Dad, not what kind of buildings were down there. You’re getting distracted again.”

“I’m not distracted. The buildings were a big part of how I learned. They make up some of my earliest memories. Big buildings, big classrooms filled with students—sometimes they seemed like miniature cities.”

Emily squeezed his hand. “That must have been wonderful—a city of just kids.”

“You might think so, but often it was more of an institution. We all got the same lessons, had to perform the same tasks. There was very little individuality to it.”

“How did you learn? Emi and I are about as similar as anyone in the village, and even we don’t learn the same way.”

Being twins, they did have a unique connection, but they seldom saw or did anything the same way. They considered their differences to be complementary pieces. Sara’s love of books added context to Emily’s voyages of personal discovery. Forcing Emily to read up on entomology, or Sara to contemplate insects without first knowing what she was looking at, had proved disastrous. Letting the girls discover their own paths of learning had set the groundwork for all the other children of the village.

Sam tried for the truth. “It wasn’t easy. Many of my friends learned more in spite of the teachers than because of them. Honestly, I wasn’t a very good student.”

“
God of the Tobes
wasn’t a very good student.” Sara laughed. “Did you tell Ellie and Joshua that you weren’t a good student?”

The twins’ technology-based siblings were never far from their minds.

“They have access to all the information on me,” Sam said. “They could find out more than I could tell them.”

Emily shook her head. “I wonder what it must be like to have all that knowledge so easily accessible. I can only hold parts of books in my head. The Tobes hold every book in theirs. Do you have all the books in your head too, Dad?”

The familiar ache of all the information that lay hidden in his brain never fully lifted. “I try not to think about it. Knowing a lot of stuff can get in the way sometimes.”

Thirteen years had passed since he’d been in a coma-induced state, bonded to
Leviathan
’s damaged computer. Using his mind as a blueprint—and the ship’s connection to all of Earth’s information—he and the ancient builder’s pod that had been left behind in the computer’s core had reconstructed the missing sections of the space freighter’s operating systems. But once the information had been loaded into his brain, it couldn’t be extracted. As if that weren’t bad enough, the connection to all information became a permanent link as the computer became self-aware. And the resulting life form, the Tobes, considered him their god.

He’d accepted his role with the Tobes, yet he still resisted the side benefit of their creation, Rendition. Lev tried explaining Rendition as a warehouse of knowledge in his brain, telling him that once he learned to control his thoughts, he could access it.

His trip to Earth proved Rendition to be so much more. The telepathic connection to all Tobes didn’t surprise him. That initial bond had created Lev in the first place, and it was no surprise all of her offspring would share that ability. That this odd accumulation of data known as Rendition should become the most powerful corporation in the universe still baffled him. Which came first, the company that developed
Leviathan
’s operating system, or Sam’s connection?

He thought about Sophie, the captain and operating system of the space yacht
Persephone
. She was her own Tobe, yet she was also the ship—just as Sam held Rendition in his mind, yet it was also the most powerful company on Earth. Still, maybe the Tobes could’ve given the company another name. The fact that they hadn’t meant something. Everything they did carried multiple messages.

The familiar fork in the path signaled the beginning of the day for both father and daughters. “Where are you two off to today?” Sam asked.

Sara nodded toward the far end of the lake. “Mira’s teaching us biology today.”

He was glad he didn’t need to know about every lesson plan.

The girls headed off for their day of education, community work, and people who would fill their minds with questions—questions he’d struggle to answer the next day. He took the path that circled around back to Jess for a little parental regrouping.

The ring trail—a lovely walk that would take him around the small planet in a day— crossed his paths. Sparkling specks of light, reflections from Chariklo’s ice and dust rings, made for a magical journey. He needed to take his girls on another adventure. It’d been too long. But this wasn’t the day for it. He filed the idea away for later.

The morning light from the array played with the lightweight fabric of Jess’s dress—highlighting her curves—as he turned off the pathway for home.

“They asked you about Earth again, didn’t they?” She knelt, fiddling with her plants.

Sam pulled his attention from the sight of her leaning over. The day’s planned activities got in the way of so many impromptu ideas. “How did you guess?”

“It seems to be all they ask about lately. At some point, they’re going to want to see it.”

“I know.” He loved everything about the village. Leaving again—even just discussing the possibility—left him anxious. “But why?”

“Because they’re human beings. Earth is their home. I want them to grow into womanhood out here. But once they’re ready, I want them to understand where we come from.” She took a moment then shook her head. “Doc was wrong about keeping us isolated. I love this village. It’s my family. But it’s an incubator, not a finished destination. Utopias should be accessible to people. It’s a good thing we have visitors from the outpost, but that’s only going to leave the girls wanting more.”

“So you agree with Jonathan?” he asked.

She nodded toward the old agro pod, which had been converted into Yoshi’s nursery. “We’re like that building—a place to start something new and to protect it when it’s young and fragile. But once the roots take hold, it’s time for the plant to get out of there so it can add to the garden. These new people are a starting point for that progression.”

Sam had worried about Jess, worried about having daughters, worried about those daughters becoming sexually aware, and here was something new to worry about. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. That ground’s not very suitable to what we want to grow out there in the wildness of people’s hearts.”

“We’re helping the girls become strong, independent young women. That’s the best we can do. Ultimately, it’ll be up to them to find the education they need and the lives they want. I just don’t want them to believe this is where they have to end up. The whole solar system is open to them. That’s what you taught me.”

* * *

S
am’s days
on Chariklo took on a lazy-summer-afternoon feel as six months back home stretched to two years. Breakfasts and conversations stimulated his thoughts throughout the day; he took walks with his daughters, who grew more willowy and graceful; he spent hours untangling the vines and retying them into something useful.

Work with Yoshi grounded him in a familiar and loved reality. In addition to maintaining the ever-growing buildings, chores included the gardener’s Cannabis Chariklovius—which could grow to fifty feet if not pruned down. Often the stalks added a foot in height a day. And all those trimmings found uses in one product or another. Tending the plants and having light conversation brought Sam back to being the well-cared-for fake shaman of the tribe—a position the village needed to help smooth interactions. Qualified or not, Sam had to get back to doing his job.

As Sam wandered home after a day taking care of the plants, the yelling that emanated from Jonathan’s dwelling proved so loud Sam adjusted his course to investigate. Mediation— even with a couple—was part of the job of shaman. When the female voice in the conflict settled down in pitch, he realized it belonged to Jillian. He only caught her final words: “I’m out of here.”

As Sam rushed up to the base of the tree house to offer his support, Jillian fell into his arms. With the low gravity, swan dives out the front door weren’t uncommon.

Jonathan leered over the side. “First you steal my childhood friend, and now you’re taking my girlfriend? I wish you’d never come back from Earth. You can have her, though. She has no idea what it means to be faithful. None of you do.” He beat his fist so hard against the tree wall the slender trunk swayed.

Jillian made no attempt to leave Sam’s cradling arms as he carried her to the lake. Gently, he laid her on the beach. “You’ve been living with Jonathan long enough to realize we’re all family even if some of his ideas don’t quite mesh with the village’s goals. So this isn’t me prying when I ask what’s going on.”

“Nothing you ask would ever be prying.” She attempted a smile, but it didn’t last. “I never should’ve moved in with him. I just loved the village so much I wanted to be a permanent member—not just
vegetable girl
. Two years of coming here a few days a week only made me realize how much I hated the rest of my life. I guess I hoped my love of everyone here would extend to Jonathan too.”

As Sam sat down in front of her, Jess separated herself from the afternoon yoga class and joined them.

“You finally broke up with him?” The tone of Jess’s voice held little surprise.

Jillian looked up at Jess and then lowered her eyes, defeated. “I should’ve listened to you. But we had nearly a year invested in the relationship. Why couldn’t he figure out I’m not a possession?”

Jess lifted the woman’s chin to look in her eyes. “You don’t need to live with someone to be accepted into the village. But if you want that direct contact to feel you’re welcome, come live with us. It can be platonic if you prefer. The girls would be thrilled.”

Jillian didn’t need much convincing. She was nodding her agreement by the end of Jess’s first sentence.