Harvest of Stars (60 page)

“I couldn’t anyway, and knew it before I left Earth. It’ll take about that much time before they’ll have industrial capacity free to build enough ships of the right kinds.”

His regard suggested that to him this helped explain why
she had chosen to have a child, but all he did was rephrase his question. “What are you engaged in, then, besides mothering? When last we spoke, you said only, ‘Miscellaneous troubleshooting.’”

“Bueno, I’ve persuaded Guthrie to set me designing windjammers that robots can use. You need a lot more fail-safes than for a human crew with conscious judgment. But fuel is still somewhat of a bottleneck, you know, and if we can save it on freight hauls where there’s no hurry, that’s useful all around. I’ll be testing a boat soon. We’ll work up to ships.”

“Very interesting. Something you can enjoy while you wait for your spacecraft.”

“Oh, yes.”

“I am glad.” Valencia hesitated. “Can we keep in touch? May I phone you now and then?”

Kyra’s pleasure dissolved. “I, I’m afraid I’ll be awfully busy.”

“I see.”

“We’ll meet again when you come back here, surely.”

“I hope so.”

Kyra mustered nerve. “Say hola to Eiko from me. I haven’t seen her in a while, either.”

It was a moment before he could reply smoothly, “Of course.”

“Good luck to you,” she repeated.

He bowed. “And to you, everything that is good.”

What could she do but take his hand? It lingered around hers, hard and warm. A giddiness swept through her. Almost, she opened the door. She pulled free. “Vaya con Díos,” she said.

He smiled, turned, and left her. She stood in the wind, looking after him, till he was gone from sight. The sun went below the hills. Eastward the sky deepened, making Phaethon shine the brighter. A powersat glimmered in the same quarter. At their distance, its kind were no more than added stars. Guthrie hadn’t wanted to ruin the night heavens that would be Demeter’s when the cloud cover had lessened.

Better glance at Hugh. Kyra went inside. The house was small and, except for standardized furnishings, nearly
bare. It took years to accumulate the clutter of a home. Hers lay forever behind her. Bueno, time lay before her.

She had named the child for her father. He continued asleep in his crib, incredibly tiny and perfect. Who would stand father to him? A boy needed a male figure to adore, imitate, rebel against, reconcile with, and give grandchildren to. But damn, damn, damn—

A phone chimed. Every room had one; the colony was glutted with nanotech and assembly-complex wares, including robot workers. Kyra sometimes wondered if any commercial enterprise would evolve on Demeter. She touched
Accept

No image appeared. “Buenas tardes,” greeted her voice. “Do you have a few spare minutes?”

“What is it?” Kyra asked.

“Got a piece of gab for you,” said her download.

Kyra grinned. “You know, you sound more like Guthrie every day.”

Did the tone go a bit defensive? “Bueno, we work hand in glove, don’t we?” It brisked. “This could wait, but I thought you’d appreciate hearing at once. A basic reanalysis of climate cycles has come to my attention. It draws on new data, growth rings in coraloids, isotope ratios in sea-bottom cores, you can study the details later. They give strong reason to believe the northern hemisphere is moving into a period of sudden and violent storms. Vegetation ought to moderate it in the interior, but not much at sea or along the coasts. You’ll want to take this into account.”

Kyra knotted her fists. “Bloody hell!”

“Nothing insurmountable for your project,” the download assured her. “Another factor.”

“I know. But—” Kyra stared into the window and the twilight gathering beyond.

“But what?”

Kyra made herself confront the facelessness in the screen, that it might better see her. “Look, you know we don’t have anything like a proper weather forecasting service thus far, let alone weather control.” Too many unknowns, too many variables swiftly changing. “What you’ve told me is that squalls or worse can jump essentially
out of nowhere. I’d planned to take Hugh along on trial sails. Now I don’t dare. Who’ll look after him while I’m gone?” Not a robot, for sure, unless a trustworthy human was on hand as well; and who could spare the time?

“M-m, yes, a problem.” Kyra stood listening to the wind in the trees. After half a minute she heard, brightly: “How about me?”

“Huh?”

“In an appropriate body. I could have it rigged to be soft and cuddly.”

“But you, you’ve got more work than you can handle. Don’t you?”

“We all do. However, kids come first. They’re the future.”

Guthrie again, Kyra thought.

“These days there’s seldom any call for me to go out in the field,” the download went on. “Mostly I receive input, communicate, make decisions, issue orders. I can meanwhile play nanny. No, not always. But I’ll see about supplemental arrangements. With humans, especially.”

“Can that be done?”

“It has to be done, the sooner the better. We’ll be getting other children before long.”

“I’ve speculated on how we might cope with that,” Kyra said slowly. “Our population as small and overworked as this. I’m not convinced the entire situation was foreseen.”

“I daresay we’ll have to modify the rules. Kids deserve stable families, but we’ll probably give ‘family’ a new meaning.”

Extended? Communal? Kyra wouldn’t admit, even to this ghost of herself, what a tingle went through her loins. “Bueno, I, I have thought … we’re bound to become different from what we were.”

“When did things ever stay the same?”

“I s’pose.” Kyra drew breath. “Gracias for the information and the offer. Let me think about them. Anything else? No? Buenas noches, then.”

She wished her cutoff were less abrupt. But what could she do? Invite the download around for coffee and a girlish chat?

Though her breasts felt full, she shouldn’t wake Hugh. When he wanted to nurse, he’d let her know. Tomorrow she was just going to the lab and the boatyard. She’d take him along as usual. He enjoyed outings, wind in the hair that was black like Bob’s, light in the eyes that were brown like Bob’s, but something of her, she thought, in the face and the way his hands reached out. She looked forward.

Be that as it may, how to pass this evening? Make supper. She preferred to do her own cooking. Best was when she cooked for company, but those occasions had become rare. Her acquaintances were pairing off. She was welcome among them but shouldn’t risk wearing that welcome thin. Spacers were wise not to bind themselves to groundlings; when the bonds broke, they hurt. And, yes, Rinndalir yonder—

The room darkened. Rather than brighten it immediately, she went back out in search of light and air. The sea shimmered. More stars were blinking forth. She stood at her porch rail, it was like the bridge of a sailing ship, and let the wind sing, ruffle her hair, press blouse and kilt against her.

A man came walking past. The street was unilluminated, but by stars and sea and remnant sunset glow she knew him. Young Jeff Packer. “Buenas tardes, Pilot Davis,” he hailed.

“Buenas tardes,” she responded. Her gaze trailed him. What a handsome fellow he was, and a first-class human being. Not that she intended anything untoward. But her other self, who could be objective about such things, had in fact spoken of—not bonds, but something else, something new.

T
HE NORTHERN HIGHLANDS
of Argolis had become Terrestrial temperate. Heather bloomed purple, gorse yellow, beneath cool winds that sent cloud shadows scudding over down and glen, burn and tarn. Rains rushed swiftly, then the sun broke through and a rainbow lifted above the ridges. Birch and willow grew widespread. In sheltered places leaves trembled on the first young aspens. Insects hummed, buzzed, went glittery aloft; spiderwebs glistened with dew. Birds winged in ever greater flocks, as large as grouse and duck; below them amphibians and small mammals ran, swam, burrowed; hawk and fox went hunting.

It was not an iteration of life’s reconquest after the glaciers withdrew, long ago on the mother world. That had gone by millennia and centuries, this moved by decades and years. What had fashioned these forms was not evolution but conscious will and skill. Their forerunners were not weather and water but chemicals, energies, machines of sizes from the monstrous to the molecular. Technology pervaded them, mostly invisible but always driving, guiding, guarding this that mortals had called into being.

Near the middle of the country rose Lifthrasir Tor. Specially planted and tended, a grove crowned it like a dream of the future, maple, poplar, oak, ash, thorn. Download Kyra landed on the airstrip at its foot and walked up a road that wound among crags, boulders,
grasses, wildflowers, and shrubs. She had flown the vehicle today rather than wear it because she was using a humanoid body. Beneath a clear sky its metal answered the gleam of a distant lake. In her hands she bore Guthrie’s braincase. When she passed beneath the trees, they welcomed her with murmurs, dancing light-flecks, odors and mould and growth.

The biocybernetic laboratory in their midst was of modest size. Ivy covered the walls. Its people could draw on the findings of others around the globe, and their own work was too subtle for grandness. Director Basil Rudbeck had seen his visitors coming and stood in the main doorway to greet them, a middle-aged man, blond, stocky, and zestful.

“Bienvenidos, jefe and señora,” he said. “We’ve been looking forward to this for a long time.”

“Well, for me time’s chronically short,” Guthrie replied. “Besides, while you were doing your tinkering and testing and retinkering, you didn’t need me underfoot.”

“You’d have been welcome whenever you cared to come, though I admit we wouldn’t have had much to show you earlier. But we do appreciate how you’ve let us get on with our job unmolested by any bureaucrats.”

“Traditional Fireball policy, whenever I figured a nominee could cut the mustard.” Guthrie made a chuckle. “In your case, I had extra reason to, namely, mercy on the bureaucrats.” Rudbeck was a descendant of Guthrie’s living self.

“And now you’ve achieved a breakthrough?” Kyra prompted.

Rudbeck smiled. “Nothing so dramatic. We’ve gnawed our way forward till we have a system that appears to work as it ought. The real credit goes to the field scientists and, yes, the robots and downloads before them, those who gathered the data and piece by piece learned what they mean, how things happen on this planet and why.” He bowed. “Muchas gracias.”

Kyra had acquired sufficient art of generating a voice that hers registered surprise. “To me? When I go into the field, I’m just a pilot.”

“Pilots are sorely needed,” Guthrie said. “Also, more than once you’ve saved somebody’s valuable ass. I heard.”

“At any rate,” Rudbeck continued, “the incoming information gradually showed us how we should correct our programs and, often, redesign our hardware.” Enthusiasm bore him onward, unnecessarily: “When you’re trying to telescope millions of years of ecological development into two or three hundred, on a global scale because nothing less is possible, it isn’t like gardening. Even if we could be certain what to do—and we can’t, it’s too complex, it goes chaotic—even then, the sheer volume of work and the speed with which an unstable order of things can crash, they’d overwhelm any set of control systems we could ever produce. For an elementary example, do you remember the business of the Thessalian clover?”

“Sure,” Guthrie grunted. “Who doesn’t?”

According to plan, the new-made soil in that wet region had been sown with a new-made moss which should rapidly make it suitable for those humble microbes and invertebrates on which higher species depended. This had gone well, and clovers were introduced to enrich the ground further. Unfortunately and unforeseen, they grew so widely, so densely, that they made the thin peatlike substrate friable. Rain began eroding down toward bed-rock. The best way to limit the clovers seemed to be to bring in predators on the bees that pollinated them. But these insects, developed from wasp DNA, gave rise to a mutant variety whose free-ranging larvae decimated the worms that aerated and fertilized the soil. A specifically designed virus—Nature in Thessaly was still lurching from one catastrophe to the next.

Rudbeck flushed. “I’m sorry. Got carried away. Didn’t mean to lecture at you like a teacher to children.”

“Not to worry,” Guthrie said. “My ego’s pretty thick-skinned. Go on.”

“Gracias, sir. Let me state the basic principle. You’ve heard it, it seems obvious, but only lately has it been proven with mathematical rigor. We
can’t
continue sending our robots and our nanotech molecules scurrying around to find out whatever’s going wrong and repair the
damage. Either life on Demeter dies back to extinction above the microscopic level, aside from a few plots maintained by unremitting and ridiculously large efforts, or else it expands and evolves. In the second case, ecological complexity will increase faster than any regulatory system of ours can grow—unless we make such a host of regulators that they crowd the life out of existence.”

“I know. Government has the same property, though very few people and no politicians ever wanted to realize it. Yet we haven’t got time for nature to balance herself. Your bunch has been searching for a way between the horns of the dilemma. Okay, now that I’ve had my revenge and astounded you with the revelation that horses have four legs, can you explain to me in nickel words what you have accomplished?”