Harvest of Stars (65 page)

“Bienvenidos,” he said. Smiling: “I feel I should offer you a chat in lieu of a cup of coffee, but no doubt you’d rather I proceed immediately with the grand tour.”

“Must we?” asked Kyra. “Can’t I start directly on the job? I’ve done my homework.”

“I think it would be best, señora, if you first got a physical exposure to the layout. You won’t be joined to a single computer-sensor-effector complex, you know. Here is where the integrations of subsystems around the planet—yes, and satellite monitors—come together.”

“In other words, not just a brain, but organs, nerves, glands, blood cells, the works,” Guthrie said. “You’ll need acquaintance with … yourself.”

“I know, I know,” Kyra replied. “I’ve been through all the simulations and—Sorry. Why am I so impatient? You’re right, there is no substitute for the real thing. Lead on, por favor.” As they took her around, her eyestalks swung to and fro, while questions rattled from her speaker.

They brought her finally to the core. There, hands made connections, more through energies and inductions than wires; eyes dwelt on meters and displays, ears on auditory cues; voices gave guidance, piece by piece. This union was immensely more encompassing than when Guthrie first entered it.

Yet she had for many years taken input from and given impulse to many different contrivances, on more worlds than this. She had often linked to other computers, to
make their powers temporarily her own. To her the nonhuman was not foreign; she had been it. Today she learned fast. She would not at once become one, that would have taken long even were the means complete, but she began.

Light fills the air, wind is aglow, drink of it, breathe of it, make leafing
.

Rainfall sows itself; it grows down through soil to the secret places where stones abide; it brings the strength of them up rootward
.

Lie still molder away, then be again grass
.

Stems ripple to the running of a river
.

Cherish these boughs which cast shade
.

A storm flashes and clamors. Wings
.

When they took her out, “How are you? How’d it go?” Guthrie cried.

“I can’t say,” Kyra answered as if in sleep. “Too strange. Give me time to know.”

“You want time, then, time in the world?”

“Yes, oh, yes.”

A
MONG THE
D
EMETRIANS
who came from Earth, many adapted to the rotation period by changing their circadian rhythm to a thirty-hour cycle, sleeping for a night and into the next forenoon, then wakeful for the rest of that day and the following night and day. Others, and nearly all children, lived straightforwardly by this their world. It might require a little help in the beginning, treatment to reset the biological clock, or it might not, but always it soon became natural.

Hugh Davis woke shortly before sunrise. Dew gemmed the glade between blue-black battlemented walls of forest. A few drowsy chirps tinkled through the hush. Orange-red clouds limned branches and crowns to the east. Above them shone white Aphrodite, inward planet, morning star.

He watched heaven brighten around it. His mother was somewhere yonder. May she be doing well, may she come home bearing more tales of mighty deeds. He wriggled from his sleeping bag and drew in a draught of air cool, moist, tinged with humus odors. The turf beneath his feet was wet and elastic. The spring nearby gave a tang of iron when he drank. Radiance shouted through the woods as A stood up; a thousand hues of green surrounded him. No, he wouldn’t change with her.

Stoking his banked fire, he squatted down and cooked breakfast. The bacon smells drove him deliciously loco. On a field trip every meal became a feast. Too bad he’d nobody to share it, preferably female. But as thin-spread as the ranger corps was, he couldn’t justify a partner in this comparatively safe area. If he did get into real trouble—by no means unheard of, when so much was unknown and unforeseeable—he’d call the Rescue Corps. If the trouble killed him, that was the chance he took, small enough price to pay for the life he led.

Having cleaned his gear, campsite, and self, he assembled his backpack, shrugged it on, and set forth. His plan was to continue along this ridge to Emerald Lake, then beside the stream that issued from it down into the valley and as far across as he could before dark. How far that would be depended on what he found on the way. Satellite views had indicated the route should offer a fair sample of conditions in general.

His pace was unforced but covered ground at a goodly rate among alder, birch, maple, spruce, berry bushes, hazel, among sun-spattered shadows and low soughings. Squirrels darted aloft, jays shrilled, a mockingbird fluted. The sun baked scents from leaves overhead and leaves that crinkled underfoot. His progress slowed after he reached the brook. The descent got steep, tricky in places, and brush grew thick. Besides, he stopped whenever he thought it advisable to examine a plant, take a specimen, or stick a chemical meter into the soil. These past five days he had searched the heights. Now he entered another environment, warmer, better sheltered, hard to observe from above and seldom traversed afoot. In such places nature might go agley unbeknownst till suddenly scathe exploded across a continent.

Thus far central Achaea seemed to be prospering. Hugh might have grinned and said aloud, “Nice job, Madre,” if discarnate Kyra might have seen or heard him. But that was improbable anywhere, out of the question here: no sensors, no integration of any kind except what the forest and its creatures brought forth of themselves. Robots lacked the minds to judge it. Therefore rangers were needed.

Hugh thought they would be till Phaethon smote. It wasn’t that the equipment couldn’t be produced; it could, at avalanche rates, even faster than engineered genes and molecular coactors drove the growth of nature. What set a limit was
use
. The download reported that year by year she gained mastery over her role. She proved it, taking on ever greater capabilities while Demeter suffered ever fewer sicknesses. Yet she would never consciously know or control any but a fraction of the whole. Did he think about each leg muscle when he walked, did he will his blood-stream to circulate oxygen and slay invaders, could he bind the sweet influences of love?

The stream rushed and rang, a final cascade, and whispered off through the valley, its glitter soon lost to sight behind trees. A kilometer onward he found a mossy ledge open to the sky and its breezes. Noontide waxed hot. Hugh crouched above the water, washed sweat off his face, sat down on the spongy greenness for a rest.

Brush barely rustled behind the clear space. He glanced about and sprang to his feet.

As softly as the girl had come, he knew her for loreful. She poised at the edge of the moss, nervous, ready to flee back into the shadows. Keeping hands well away from his sheath knife, he smiled his best smile. She was young, her slenderness not quite filled out, skin fair where the sun had not touched it with golden brown. Yellow hair fell from a garland of ivy past her shoulders. Her eyes were large and smoke blue, freckles dusted a snub nose, her lips recalled to him rose petals in his mother’s garden. For clothing she wore a sleeveless green tunic, less than knee-length, a pocketed belt, and moccasins. She carried a basket woven of split reeds.

“Why, hola,” he murmured.

“Who … are you?” The English bore a slight accent, a lilt that he couldn’t put a name to.

“Ranger Hugh Davis, at your service, señorita!”

Her mouth fluttered upward a bit. “I am … Charissa. How did you come, Ranger Hugh Davis?”

“Flew to Mount Mistfall and set out on foot.”

Her eyes widened. “Why?”

“I might ask you the same,” he countered. “You’re hardly outfitted for a long trek.”

“Oh, I live here. In Dandelion Glen, I call it, not far at all.” She hefted the basket. “I was berrying.”

“You live here?” he wondered. “Not by yourself, surely.”

She shook her head. The blonde locks tumbled. “No. My parents and two little brothers.” He guessed she too was trying for friendliness: “I’m glad to be free of the boys this while. They’re dears, but they can be such nuisances, can’t they?”

Wistfulness tugged. The first-born of Demeter, he had passed his childhood among adults, their machines, and some pet animals.

Bueno, he had his duty. “How long have you been in these parts?” he inquired. “Where did you come from?”

She frowned and touched her chin. “Nine years? No, eight, I think. I was little then myself.” She meant Demetrian years, of course; in those, he guessed she was
now twelve or thirteen. “We moved from Aulis.” A settlement on the coast, he recollected, chiefly a marine research station though half a dozen families had joined it to experiment with agriculture under local conditions. “I don’t remember it very well.” Emboldened, she added, “But you aren’t telling me anything, Ranger Hugh Davis.”

“Uh, ‘Ranger’ is just my, uh, title,” he said, taken aback. “My work. I look to see how things are going in the wilds.”

Charissa nodded. “I know about rangers. We do have a multiceiver at home. Jason-Father lets us watch it an hour a day, or more if we’ve found something good.”

“He sounds pretty strict.” It wasn’t as if floods of programs were pouring out, the way he’d heard they did on Earth (or had done; he’d gotten an impression it wasn’t true any longer). Port Fireball’s live broadcasts were intermittent, amateur, and decorous. For most entertainment, people drew on the cultural database, when they didn’t make their own.

“We can screen as many books as we like,” Charissa said. “I read a lot. Yes, I know about rangers. But I don’t know how to ad—ad—
address
you, sir.”

“‘Hugh’ is fine, Charissa.”

Her shyness left her. “Can you stop and visit us? Betty-Mother will be so happy.”

“M-m, what about your father?”

She laughed. “Don’t you fear. He may be kind of stiff at first, but he’ll soon break out the cider and talk. Oh, my, he’ll talk!”

“You get visitors, I take it?”

“A few. Mostly woodsrunners.”

“Woodsrunners?”

“You know. They don’t live in houses—they make shelters wherever they roam—” The girl stopped, surprised. “You don’t know?”

His scalp prickled. “N-no. They can’t have been at it long, or be many. Else we’d have heard.”

“I suppose. I haven’t counted them.”

Hugh sensed how his tension troubled her, and sought for an easing. “You and your folks, you live in a house, right?”

“It isn’t a big house,” Charissa admitted. “I’ve seen houses on the multi. This is a, a cabin. But it’s snug.”

He couldn’t escape bluntness. “Why do you do it?”

“Why—why—We’re happy.” She took a defensive stance. “Jason-Father says it’s too cramped and mechanical everywhere else that people are.”

“But he hasn’t made woodsrunners of his family.”

“Certainly not!” She sounded indignant. “Can’t you see?”

Taking that for an invitation, he gave himself the pleasure of studying her in detail. Her tunic was natural fiber and dyes, well-woven, well-tailored; similarly for her pocket belt, and its buckle was annealed neopine resin. Her entire being spoke of good nutrition, adequate medical and dental protection, freedom from toil such as bent the body and stunted the soul.

Though it appeared that a handful of eccentrics had adopted a pseudo-savage life, Jason-Father and Betty-Mother weren’t among them. A multi and a power source were obviously not the only things they had taken along when they retreated into the wilderness. And … it wasn’t a piece of primeval Earth revived. Those ancient forests had provided food, fuel, timber, fiber, skins, furs, bone, horn, remedies, an abundance never intended but discovered. On Demeter lived species meant to be viable, fully in the natural world, but also serving human needs. Nicknames drifted through Hugh’s thoughts: mulch bacteria, copper algae, fleshfruit, woolbark, healer mold … If these had taken a strong hold in the Achaean outback, then, given perhaps a tool kit, a polyrobot, and a basic nanoarray—Yes, it would be most interesting to see what they had wrought at Dandelion Glen.

Charissa flushed beneath Hugh’s regard, though she didn’t seem to mind very much. “We trade things we make, for what they hunt and gather,” she explained earnestly. “But we are—are—
settlers
.”

“This will be priority news at headquarters,” he said. “It upsets everything for us.”

He hadn’t expected instant alarm. Had she picked up cues of hostility to authority from her parents? Why? They
had done nothing illegal. It would have been better if they’d given notice of their intent to seek the forest—and quite likely they hadn’t because they knew the biological service would discourage them from it—but still—Maybe hers was simply a nymph’s timidity when for the first time she met a warrior in bronze, with plumed helmet and sword at side.

“You see—” Hugh stumbled, “the reason I’m here—” He dropped into lecture mode, hoping that would soothe her. “This isn’t a climax forest, you realize. It’s new, and changing fast. The genes were designed for quick maturation, the warmth and carbon dioxide level make it possible, but at this stage the ecology isn’t stable. We aim for an eventual steady state, trees that last for centuries, a million different plants and animals—”

“I know,” Charissa interrupted, a bit impatiently.

That struck him as a promising sign. “Bueno, we’ve reached a point in Achaea where we’re thinking of introducing bigger game. Deer, for instance. That means making sure they won’t graze their range to death, which means bringing in wolves to control them, and, and … endless complications. I’m running survey to help find out whether the country is ready for this, whether it can take it without harm.”