Harvest of Stars (59 page)

“Just a local hitch, then, that came near doing you in by coincidence,” Kyra said. “I suppose it’s correctible by adding the right stuff to the humus mix.”

“I fear matters are not so simple. Other poisons will act elsewhere, salt, selenium, perhaps radioactives, and who knows what more? We cannot watch over a planet as we can over a cottage garden. And what different kinds of attack will it launch on us? The populations we introduce are disease-free, but they cannot remain so indefinitely. Essential bacteria will mutate into pathogens. Lengths of DNA will turn into viruses. Mere imbalance between species can prove fatal; consider how deer, when their predators were eliminated, increased until they over-grazed their ranges and starved. On Earth we discovered how hard it is to repair a damaged ecology that took three billion or more years to evolve. On Demeter we hope to create one
de novo
within a century or two. We cannot. We can merely found it. Thereafter it must develop and maintain itself.”

“I know that, in a general way. This in the Mycenaeans has driven the lesson home to me. Didn’t you misspeak a bit, though? The nature we dream of can’t spring into being from a few seeds we plant. We have to be part of it from the first and on till the last—we, our machines and our people.”

“Yes, yes. But that great oneness transcends my poor imagination. We cannot truly model it, either. It is a chaotic system, as you and I have lately experienced. We can only, humbly, do whatever we think may help.”

O
UT OF THE
abyss, Eiko’s first half-clear thought was
How is Kyra? How is her baby?
Memory, dismay, stabbed from the marshalling center on Earth where she had heard the admission, across forty-seven years, four and a third light-years. Banzai daft, to embark pregnant! The chance of never awakening from that half-death was too high at best—Awareness fell apart into confusion and pain. Pitiless, the things at her side and the things within her held fast to the shards.

After some fraction of forever she drew back together. Now she knew mostly nausea, foul tastes and stenches, a thirst as if her blood had turned to sand. She achieved realizing that she would live. Later she became able to tell herself that that was worth hoping for.

Of course she was sick, very sick. She had lain invaded by tubes and wires, pervaded by chemicals and nanostructures, in fluid of subfreezing cold. Despite shielding and electromagnetic screening, radiation had seeped through, and it had welled from atoms of her own, to wreak harm that quiescent cells could not repair. The damage must be mended, the foreign stuffs flushed out, the body reschooled. She got that far before she toppled into darkness.

The time came when what claimed her was a natural sleep, though light and full of dreams. She roused to clarity. Utter strengthlessness held her in its calm. A robot entered the ward, spoke gentle words, and helped her swallow some broth. Afterward she lay back, understood that her father must be dead, and quietly wept.

From then on she recovered hour by hour. With health came increasing cheer and, gradually, eagerness for the future. The life she had lost—no, forsaken—would always be an ache in her, like the phantom pain she had read about which amputees felt where limbs had been, before regeneration was possible. But the vitality, the whole meaning, had been fast draining out of that life, and her father had blessed her departure.

She began to chat with the patients on either side of her bed. The robots informed her about such others whom she knew as had been revived to date; only a few at a time could be. Kyra Davis was a month ahead of her and should soon be able to go groundside. Nero Valencia had been processed in the last group before Eiko and recently discharged from isolation. They both wished her well. No direct meeting could happen till she too had been released, which wouldn’t be until her immune system was operating properly again. Any communication equipment in here would have been an unaffordable extravagance of payload mass. She didn’t much mind, having always found enough of interest inside her head.

Still, the daycycles dragged. She rejoiced when an examination informed the physician down on Demeter that she was out of danger. Two robots helped her through a passage to the women’s convalescent ward. There she found small individual multi sets, sent up from the planet, and access to a database which included most of humankind’s culture.

The short walk exhausted her. After taking orbit, the ship had divided in two halves, joined by a ten-kilometer fullerene cable, and gone a-spin. The weight thus furnished was as low as compatible with the physiology of Earthfolk, but she had lost nearly all muscle tone.

Regaining it required systematic exercise. She also had other aspects of humanness to practice. During the next daywatch, following a brief workout and a long hot bath, she was brought to a recliner in the common room.

The chamber was as austere as everything else aboard, basically an empty space where people could mingle. The heavens outside filled a large viewscreen. Across blackness
drifted stars, Milky Way, damped-down sun A, fierce light-point of B, and Demeter, Demeter. At this moment the planet was a crescent, not marbled like Earth but white, beclouded. She could see where weather swirled. One rift shone sapphire, ocean, at its edge an ocher that might be a continent. She searched for the companion ships, but couldn’t pick any out.

Half a dozen colonists were present, in various stages of rehabilitation. None were acquaintances of hers. They advanced courteously to congratulate her and the two newcomers with her. But then appeared Kyra. She brushed past them, big and forceful, as a wind might, and knelt to embrace her friend. After the sterility of the isolation ward and the cautious contacts since, this—warmth, solidity, sunny-smelling hair and lips alive against her cheek—overwhelmed.

“Bienvenida, querida, bienvenida,” Kyra exulted. “We made it, the both of us.”

She rose. Eiko looked up the height and fullness and whispered through a fluttering, “Oh, the child?”

Kyra laughed and slapped her belly. “Just fine, I’m told. Good stock.”

“That is splendid. I was so afraid for you. … But will the … the situation … not be difficult?”

“Sure. A while before I can go spacing again, no doubt. But then, it’ll be a while anyway, and I trust the little rascal will be worth any delays. Consider me a pioneer. My case won’t stay unique. It better not!”

Eiko smiled. “I imagine I shall be a homebody, working as a coordinator. When you are away … perhaps I can care for the child I would be happy to.”

“Sweet of you. But you may have a couple of your own to pester you by then, you know.”

Eiko lifted a palm. “Scarcely.”

The hand dropped. A man had entered her view. Nero Valencia.

He was still haggard and slow-moving, pale beneath the olive complexion. Either his biojewel had died in the tank or he had chosen to have it removed before he left; the mark on his brow had not yet faded entirely away. He bent
over Eiko, making it a bow. Warmth filled his tone: “Buenos días, Srta. Tamura. It is marvelous to see you again.”

Why should her heart skip a beat? “Gracias,” she answered. “I was glad … to learn … you came through well.”

Valencia straightened. “Buenos días,” Kyra said flatly.

He cocked an eyebrow, flicked a glance at her waist, and replied, “Buenos años.” Somehow it did not strike Eiko as impudent, though Kyra flushed a bit.

“How glad I am,” Eiko ventured quickly. “We have much to talk about … when I am stronger.”

“We’ll have more to learn about, I’d say,” Kyra answered.

The viewscreen went blank. It doubled as an annunciator. The image of a man formed in it, burly and reddish-haired. “Ah, yes,” Kyra observed. “The jefe. He addresses each new lot of us. Repetition, more or less; I suppose it’s recorded and reedited.” Just the same, everybody watched.

“Bienvenidos,” rumbled the simulacrum. “You know who I am. I hope soon to know who each of you is. We’re all Demetrians now.” The face went solemn. Eiko saw on Kyra and Valencia that what came next was news to them. “I deeply regret having to report a death. Rosa Soares did not revive. Hers shall be our first honored grave. There are going to be more.”

The generated countenance lightened. “But let me speak ahead. Those freshly roused haven’t heard anything but rumors yet, about how things are where you are bound. Bueno, I can tell you that we forerunners have done pretty well. On the whole, the work has gone according to plan.” A brief grin. “The plan allows for endless unforeseen problems, troubles, glitches, hitches, and outright disasters. In that, we have not been disappointed. You have no dearth of tasks waiting for you. Our crying need is for conscious intelligences, all-around human beings—in short, you. But when you get your legs back and come join us, you’ll find quite a pleasant little town.”

“This I have heard before,” muttered Valencia impatiently, beneath the ongoing speech.

“Me oftener,” Kyra said.

“But not I,” Eiko reminded them.

“You will, dear, you will,” Kyra told her. “Better if you don’t in a single chunk. He never was much where it comes to oratory.”

Valencia smiled at Eiko. “Language for heroes, that is your department,” he murmured.

“Give me time, please,” she protested. “And, I beg you, keep your expectations low. I am no Homer. … And even he first needed a story to tell.”

T
HE DOOR SUMMONED
Kyra to her porch. That was fine in itself. She had meant to step out soon and watch the sunset. Clear days were not quite a rarity any more at the high latitude of Port Fireball; vegetation was changing
climates astonishingly fast as it burst across the continents, gulping down carbon dioxide and breathing forth oxygen, holding moisture in soil, tempering the thermal extremes of naked rock. But you didn’t take them for granted.

The street on which her house stood ran along a headland overlooking the town and the bay. Trees lined it, planted when the first Guthrie returned, pine and deodar grown tall in the decades after, broadleafs still young and requiring special care. The wind off the water soughed in them. Its coolness and tang cut through earlier heat like a sword. Blade-bright ran the waves to meet a sky where already an evening planet gleamed—Phaethon, but nonetheless beautiful. Southwestward A drew near the hills; haze turned its disc mellow golden. B was invisible, far-swung on its cometlike path and, at this time of this year, lost in the brilliance of its companion. A few gulls caught the light on their wings. Enough fish now swam or washed ashore to support them. And flowerbeds lay red, white, violet around the house. …

Kyra drew up short. Before her stood Nero Valencia. As if of itself, her hand reached behind to shut the door. “Oh,” she said. “Saludos. What brings you here?”

Did she really see wistfulness in his smile? “I came to say adiós,” he answered.

“You’re going away, then? For a fairish while?”

He nodded. “To Boeotia.”

“I, uh, I’m sorry. I’d like to invite you in, but between the baby and my other occupations—the place is a mess—”

She lied, and suspected he knew it. Why did she? That killing belonged to a dead past; to him it had been a duty; he had since ceased to be a gunjin; in spite of rebuffs none too subtle, he was always polite to her, yes, amiable, helpful on the couple of occasions she’d given him the opportunity; Eiko liked him well. But Kyra didn’t care to be alone with him.

“That’s all right,” he said gently. “I must hurry onward in any case.” She judged that was another lie. “I could not leave without seeing you. It has been too seldom.”

“Bueno, everybody’s busier than a one-armed octopus, learning our way around and settling into our work.”

“Still, I had hoped—” He shrugged. “No matter.” His eyes had caught hers and would not let go.

She was afraid of him, she realized. Afraid he’d charm her off her feet. Even if she hadn’t been sleeping single too damn long, memories lived. It was not an involvement she wanted. At least, it would be foolish. Besides, there was Eiko.

“I admit I haven’t been very sociable or kept close track,” she said hastily. “Not able to. You’re involved in ecological development, I know, and Boeotia must be ready for a higher stage. But it’s halfway around the planet. What exactly will you be doing?”

Valencia chuckled. “Nothing exact. We’re taking vertebrates, herbivores and carnivores, from exogenesis, to introduce there.”

“I see. They’re necessary for plant diversity, as well as desirable for their own sakes.” A cliché, schoolchild knowledge, conversational filler.

“It will be tricky.” He began to sound cheerful. “We expect countless failures, improvisations, frantic rescues and repairs.”

His tone made Kyra easier. “Sounds like fun,” she said. “Where do you fit in?”

“I like wilderness, especially where it’s becoming woodland. And it seems I have some talent for handling animals.”

“Moose, elephants, wolves, lions?”

He laughed. “Not for many years, if ever. Rodents, small birds, hawks.”

Yes, she thought, he would understand hawks. “Good luck,” she bade him quite sincerely.

“What have you been doing lately?” he asked. “I don’t imagine you can return to space before your baby has grown a little.”