Beowulf's Children (47 page)

"You know what I'm talking about. Not what we say to the children. Not the myths. Why are we really here?"

Zack glanced up from his figuring. "What do you mean?"

"Why is it that all of us were willing to risk our lives. Our histories. Not one of us had enough family or friends to hold us to Earth."

"I brought my wife with me," Zack said. "So did Joe Sikes and some others."

"Think, now. We weren't the smartest and bravest, even though that's what we told ourselves." The Minerva was sailing through a sea of stars, the bright blue haze of Avalon below them. "We were the ones willing to leave it all behind. To go."

"Speak for yourself," Sylvia said. "Terry and I wanted to come here. We worked at it. Worked hard. A lot of us did, Cadmann—for that matter so did you."

They felt a gentle jolt as the padded docking tubes engaged, and inflated. Docking with Geographic was like an act of slow love, a reunion with an old and dear friend. She had seen them through so much, and seemed to be waiting to discover if they would need her again, ever. The air always seemed to change flavor now, at this point. Just his imagination, no doubt.

"Top floor dungeon," Carlos said. "Jewelry department, leg irons, neck irons—"

Rachael and Zack were out of the Minerva and swimming down the lines leading to the Geographic's main lock. A curved door sealed behind them, and they were in a womb of steel and ceramic. Another door opened, and they were in the main corridor.

The ship smelled faintly musty. Twenty years of near desolation hadn't changed that, and they had never quite gotten that smell out of the ship. Two hundred people living in close proximity for a hundred years will do that—even if ninety-five percent of them are asleep at any given time.

They heard a voice from deeper in the ship, and Carolyn McAndrews hailed them. She was followed by Julia Hortha and Greg Arruda. There was always someone aboard because Geographic served as an orbiting machine shop for maintenance of the observation satellites, and Cassandra and her maintenance and repair robots couldn't be prepared for everything. There was never a problem finding volunteers to keep watch for a week, and for many it was a plum assignment, a chance to get away and meditate in near isolation. Carlos had, of course, taken advantage of other aspects of Geographic. He had taken many tours well stocked with female friends. He hadn't quite tired of the null-grav amenities, but he was slowing down.

Carolyn swam down the lines effortlessly. Although her bulk was growing more and more ponderous, she moved with an uncanny grace, here where her weight was that of thistledown.

"Good to see you," she greeted them. "It was only just getting lonely up here. Lots of time, and old cubes to sort through, but... well." A strand of her washed-out brown hair floated away, got away from her, and she chuckled and swept it back into place. "How are the children?" she asked.

"Fine," Carlos said. "But they overwater your plants."

She patted him on the chin, and kissed him lightly. "Thank you," she said. "Now—you want the computer room? Are you going to want privacy?"

Cadmann shook his head. "No. Get in on this, Carolyn. You were as much involved in Aaron's raising as anyone."

"More than most," she said. Then she closed her eyes, and blushed a little.

"This was Aaron's creche," Rachael said. "We can trace down anything, forward or backward. Cassandra, give us Childe Aaron One."

The holostage began to play out a series of images. Every image of young Aaron, from infancy onward. They were virtually a time-lapse display, carrying him through to toddlerhood.

Cadmann watched absently. "Who are his parents?"

Rachael looked uncomfortable. "As you know, the sperm and egg samples were chosen both from the members of the colony, and the frozen contributions of those who didn't make the trip for one reason or another. There are representative samples from all the basic genetic groups and cultures of the world, but all flawless. We could be picky. The idea was that some children would be raised by the colony as a whole, without any specific parental attachments. It was one of the theoretical bases of the colony, an experiment in shifting the primary bonding imperatives of a child from a pair, onto a concept or system. As you know, the experiment was begun in earnest after the Grendel Wars, and was terminated four years later."

Carolyn McAndrews smiled and said, "We were making enough babies."

"You always had doubts," Zack said. Carolyn nodded. "Maybe we should have listened." Ice on her mind, he didn't have to say. Nobody would have listened to Carolyn; which was a bit odd, because Carolyn had been one of the genuine heroines of the Grendel Wars. No one could quite remember when they had stopped listening to her.

Rachael said, "The project was terminated for other reasons."

Cadmann was looking out into black space. Carlos saw only his back. He asked, "Problems?"

"Stuff that came through from Earth, maybe a year after we left. There were files on the Bottle Baby research. We didn't get anything else for years. Geographic's last received signal was a light-speed communique ten years after we left. Garbled. It took quite a while to reconstruct it," Rachael said. "There was research that implied that the creche children had a more difficult time bonding. They had all been adopted info loving, supportive homes—where parents had waited years for children, but due to fertility problems were forced to utilize artificial wombs.

"Sure, problems, Cad. There're always problems. Statistically significant? Maybe. Some kind of academic dominance game was going on. Those can get nasty. I think some of their theories got sent and some got buried. Numbers, too.

"One theory had to do with the endocrinal flux in the uterus. The numbers we got suggest that the actual ebb and flow of biochemical products as the mother is awake, asleep, afraid, hungry, tired, sexually stimulated, whatever... is a form of communication between mother and child. It's another nutrient... an emotional nutrient, if you will, as important as blood or oxygen."

"I thought that all of those things had been duplicated."

Rachael shrugged. "It's still an art form. When you try to create a computer program to simulate the messages that a mother sends to her child, you have to remember that it is a feedback loop between the mother and the fetus. Thousands of fetuses were studied, and the ways that their mothers responded to them were recorded, and a refinement of everything that was learned was created for use in the creches."

"So?"

"So? A camel is a horse designed by committee. There is a difference between the clumsy elegance of the human body and the sophisticated, intellectual choices made by a committee of experts deciding which endocrinological experiences are good for baby. They tried to round out the experience. This mood swing was inappropriate, that orgasmic response pattern was a biochemical form of child abuse, a mother experiencing anger is damaging her child. The liberals swung the profile one way, the conservatives another. Too many morphemes. Too much adrenaline. Chill those kiddies out."

"Ouch."

"Hindsight. But the program may have been too bland. Didn't place enough of an imprint on the children, leaving them a little too vulnerable to their environment."

"What happened on Earth?"

"Not much. A statistically significant increase in emotional problems among those children. A slight indication of an increase in sociopathy. But remember something—each and every one of those children was in a loving home, one where the parents had waited for years to have a child. They had far more love and attention than average. It is interesting to note what might have happened if such children had been placed into average home situations."

Cadmann still didn't turn. "What about ours?"

"There was nothing about that from Earth—we thought that giving them love would counteract any potential problems."

The image of Aaron continued to age. From time to time the program would lock on a particular sequence. Aaron climbing a mountain. Young Aaron kicking a soccer ball. Aaron visiting Edgar in traction. Aaron debating. Aaron defeating Edgar in debate. Aaron teaching a class in woodcraft to a group of Biters. Aaron hiking, moving quickly past a not yet injured Edgar Sikes. They were surrounded by a universe of Aaron Tragons.

Rachael said, "It worked—in general. Quite well in some cases."

"For instance?"

Zack leaned forward. "Children from genetic groups conditioned for group raising of children. Little Chaka, from New Guinea, for instance. Toshiro Tanaka. But I know Rachael worried about Aaron, and Trish Chance, and a few others."

"Everyone in the colony participated in the nurseries back then," Rachael said.

"I remember, " Sylvia said. "That was a real labor of love."

"When the children were older, they were shared by the colony as well. On through their teens. Every one of them had a dozen parents, every colonist had a dozen children. This was one of the reasons that the sexual freedom in the colony was so fluid."

"Well," Cadmann said, "we didn't take any diseases."

"True," Rachael said. "But the other idea was that all pregnancies were desirable. If a particular mother or father didn't want to have the child at that time, the fetus could be removed and frozen, or carried to term in a host uterus, or an artificial womb. They could be thawed when the mother or father was ready for the responsibility, or adopted by a particular set of partners—"

"Or they could be adopted into the general colony. We tried that far more often than they were adopted by specific parents," said Carolyn. "I did what I could to... " She trailed off.

Rachael sighed, and removed her glasses, rubbing her temples hard. "You asked me yesterday to look into Aaron. I have. I wish I'd done it sooner, before Ruth got so involved. I found some things which disturb me."

Cadmann asked, "What kind of things?"

On the holostage Aaron had grown older. Aaron and virtually every woman of his generation, at one time or another. Aaron on the mainland, one of a troop of Grendel Scouts led by Carlotta Nolan and Cadmann Weyland.

"He has great leadership potential, but... "

"But?"

Rachael said, "If the combination of ectogynic origin and lack of specific bonding and imprinting hit anyone hardest, it was Aaron Tragon. I think that he has bonded not to the members of the colony, but to the dream of colonization itself."

"What's wrong with that?" Sylvia asked.

Aaron's image, larger than life, stared down at them, immense, serious, intent.

"I don't mean that he has an idealistic view of what this colony should be. I don't mean that he has the kind of gung-ho conquer-the-universe attitude that we had to have to get onto Geographic in the first place. I mean literally that dream itself, the dream of spreading across the mainland, the planet. The entire Tau Ceti system itself. Of Mankind taking the stars and remaking them to Aaron's wishes. That dream is his mother and father, his reason for being. That dream was what this was all about, remember?"

"I... remember." Cadmann was thoughtful. "But his debates... sometimes they seem almost conservative. Back to nature? Live-with-the-planet sort of speeches."

"Well, I don't think he wants to strip-mine the planet. He wants to people the planet. Our technology is advanced enough to live in harmony with Avalon—there is no need to produce more children than Avalon can handle."

"And second?"

"I think that Aaron Tragon stopped showing us his true face a long time ago."

The image of Aaron at twelve appeared, duplicated itself along the walls.

Rachel looked from one image to another and sighed. "Aaron believes that the original colonists have abandoned the dream. Betrayed it. I think he is internally rather than externally motivated. I think that he might have little true contact with anyone. I think that Aaron's sense of love has only to do with goal accomplishment."

Carolyn smiled, a flash of what she must have been like a hundred years ago. "Of course that goes beyond sociobiology."

"A little. But none of that makes him dangerous," Rachel said. "Or does it? And my daughter is in love with him, and pregnant by him, and sometimes I can't remember I'm a psychiatrist."

Carolyn put her arm around Rachel. They stood together and looked at the Aaron images.

Cadmann shook his head. "What disturbs me is the entire dirigible incident. He had us. From the first moment to the last. We were set up beautifully. But there was something so... so utterly cold-blooded about it that... "

"That what?"

"That it makes me wonder who Aaron Tragon really is. Who's really alive behind his eyes."

"You ought to know if anyone does."

"Me? Why?"

"Because he probably bonded more to you than anyone else. It's clear he thinks of you as his father."

"I—" Cadmann hesitated. "I was going to say I hadn't known that, but I suppose I did. He was always finding reasons to go places with us, and it wasn't just that Justin and Jessica were his friends. But I don't know who's in there, Rachael."

"I've told you most of what there is to know."

"No," Cadmann said. "Who were his parents?"

Rachael looked uncomfortable. "All right. It's not as if it was actually security sealed. It was more a general colonial agreement. I guess I just feel uncomfortable. It was under my own code—that was why you couldn't access it." She cleared her throat. "The father was from Earth. A Swedish mathematician of Russian extraction named Koskov."

Cadmann seemed to relax, Carlos noticed. As if he had expected—and feared—another revelation altogether. "And the mother?"

Rachael looked at Sylvia. Sylvia colored, and the psychologist nodded.

"That's right," she said. "Aaron Tragon is your son. It was your egg."