Children of the Comet (23 page)

CHAPTER 32

“But what are they doing?” Ning said.

“They are packing up our Dreams and giving them to the priest Joorn and the numberers of
Time's Beginning
,” Torris said.

They were perched on one of the semidomesticated boughs not too far above the cave mouth, looking down at the tiny figures bustling about below. The dwarfs from the gigantic world they called
Celestial Arrow
were folding the queer portable caves they had brought with them, and there was a steady traffic to and fro as they returned them to the chunky transfer vehicle they called a
tu chuan
that floated in space within easy leaping distance. Ning was big with child, wearing a cumbersome new airsuit she had sewn to accommodate her growing belly, and she was willing to settle for the easier game that grazed in the lower boughs.

“I don't understand,” she said, her helmet pressed against his. “How can they take away someone's Dream?”

“With those tiny seed things they poke in your face when they ask their endless questions. The Dream is not taken away, but they may listen to it whenever they wish. And in some way, it is compared with the Dreams of others.”

“Like the annals kept in the memory of a chronicler? When a new priest replaces a priest who has flown to the sky, the chronicler may recite all the Dreams of the past to him. Thus wisdom is preserved, or so they say.”

“Exactly so.”

She tossed her head, momentarily breaking voice contact. When he could hear her again, she was saying, “I don't know about the Dreams of unlicked cubs, but the questions they asked me were mere foolishness and went on and on to the point of drivel. Like why do women not hunt on your Tree but may form hunting associations on mine? And why is it that I hunt alone and not with a hunting sorority? And why are there no female numberers, though I for one was able to interpret the sacred slabs? There is no wisdom in questions like those—just the stupidities of human behavior.”

“They are just trying to learn our ways,” he said uncomfortably. “They plied me with all sorts of foolish questions when they first rescued me and then made scratches on those things they carry around with them. Perhaps they were only trying to learn to speak human language. The scratches give them a magical way of remembering words, as do the seed things they ask us to talk to. Once a thing is said, it may be remembered forever, even by the animal who speaks named Jonah. Joorn says that before they leave they will teach us to make scratches too, so that we may always remember our own words.” He grinned, tired of explaining. “Cleb the Chronicler does not like that.”

“All the same, I'll be glad when they're gone.”

“You can't mean that.”

“They are changing the way we live.”

“Is that a bad thing? They are giving us gifts that make life easier, like my shiny knife and the threads that are stronger than ropes to improve your catapults.”

“As usual, the benefits go to the priests and chroniclers, while ordinary folk must do things for themselves. I don't like being trotted out by Claz and Shamash as a justification for their holding on to their power.”

“Like it or not, it's our duty to our tribes now. It silences the fearful or contentious who would keep the changes from happening. It keeps the priests in line. Think—our tribes are learning to live together now, learning to help each other through hard times. We've stopped the murderous custom of bride raids. Isn't that a good thing?”

She snuggled against him as best as the bulky new airsuit would let her. “Oh, Torris, I wish we could go about our lives without being followed around by gullible people who think they are worshipping the Tree of Trees.” She patted the ungainly bulge in the suit. “I just want to see her grow up and teach her to be the best huntress who ever was.”

“Teach
him
,” he said, “to be the best hunter ever.”

She laughed. “If the Tree has sent a boy, you can teach him to be a Dreamer.”

He leaned over to look at the busy goings-on below, then touched his helmet to hers again.

“Look, there's Joorn with some of his people. I can recognize Chu's airsuit, and Martin, the son of Joorn's son, Alten. And there's that water-filled thing that Jonah rides around in. Isn't it clever the way he uses those grasping limbs to move about on the roots and branches, just as though they were real arms? They're going to meet with the other party of dwarfs from the sky. The one called Yung is grasping Joorn's hand in that weird custom they have—I suppose to show they're not carrying weapons. I don't recognize the man Joorn is pushing forward now, but he's old. I can tell by the way he's bent over. That's what happens to these star people when they age—I suppose because their bones carry more weight than ours. I wonder what they're talking about.”

“It's good of you, Captain Gant, to allow our Professor Ma to meet Professor Karn,” Captain Yung said.

Joorn made an effort to keep his voice cordial. “Professor Karn is not a prisoner,” he said. “He's a highly respected teacher in our physics department.”

Karn kept any hint of asperity out of his own voice as he put out his hand. “I've been rehabilitated,” he said dryly. “But they do keep an eye on me. It's a pleasure to meet you,
Chiao-shou
Ma.”

Ma, a withered old man who looked even more shriveled than Karn, said, “It's an honor to meet you, Professor Karn. It's more than a little surreal being introduced to an icon of the past like yourself. You might like to know that you were considered one of the great names in the history of physics in my day—two hundred years after you left Earth, along with Einstein, Hawking, and someone you never got to hear of, the great Multiverse theorist Harun al-Mudarris.”

“Ah yes, Harun,” Karn said in a sardonic voice. “He was one of my students. It's nice to hear that the boy made something of himself.”

“Professor Ma is being modest,” Yung said. “He was on the way to being an icon himself. The Commonwealth did not want to let him go. He was one of the jewels in their crown. In the end, they decided that there would be a greater luster in providing
Celestial Arrow
with one of the most eminent names in the physics community that our country possessed.”

“Also,” Ma said, matching Karn's wryness, “I was a thorn in their side. I was a partisan of the Karn plan for reaching the most distant quasar possible, and finding the beginning of time itself—or its end.”

“So you became a thorn in Captain Yung's side instead,” Karn said.

“Oh, he keeps an eye on me too,” Ma said, with a hasty glance at a frozen-faced Yung to show that he didn't mean it seriously. “But there was no incentive for a mutiny. By then it was clear that the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe had increased so greatly that there was no possibility of ever catching up with the retreating boundary. Of course relativity itself was still intact, but effectively the edge of the Universe—if I can use such an imprecise term—was outpacing anything traveling at the speed of light because space itself was stretching. And still is, with an unknown consequence at the end.”

Karn didn't like hearing that, any more than Newton would have liked hearing about relativity or Einstein would have regarded string theory. But he remained unruffled.

“Fascinating,” he said. “But I imagine Captain Yung keeps a firm hand on your reins anyway.”

Ma chose not to react to the insult. “We are continuing to study the implications of the changing cosmology,” he said. “We have some fine minds in our physics department. We would like to ask you to join us. Captain Yung and Captain Gant have both given their permission.”

Karn looked at Joorn. “Can't wait to get rid of me, can you, my old friend?”

“Captain Yung's willing to take his chances with you, Delbert,” Joorn said. “I think he can keep you in check. And it's a chance for you to do groundbreaking work in your own specialty instead of moldering away teaching freshman physics.”

Karn turned to Professor Ma. “I accept,” he said.

CHAPTER 33

A new star suddenly appeared in the sky, brighter even than Sirius. According to the computer program that had been waiting for it, its magnitude was −1.48.

“There he goes,” Joorn said.

“There he went, you mean,” Alten said. “He was halfway to Alpha Centauri, more than a light-week from here, when he fired the Higgs drive.”

“Very ethical of him,” Chu said.

They were sitting in the captain's quarters having a drink while waiting for the expected event. Either Alten or Chu was technically the captain now, but after all the long years of tenancy since taking command, the captain's cabin was Joorn's permanent perch.

“Where's Martin?” Alten said.

“He's on the bridge with Robertson, wallowing in the ship's astrometry equipment,” Chu said. “He's set his sights a bit higher since our trip to the sun.”

Alten poured himself another splash of scotch. It was from the last bottle of Earth-distilled scotch in the Universe, the end of the ample supply that Joorn had taken with him six billion years ago. From now on, they'd be drinking imitation scotch from the ship's distillery.

“Naked-eye observation is good enough for me,” he said. “All I need to know is that Yung is on his way. And that he's taken Karn with him.”

“You don't really think he'll try anything aboard
Celestial Arrow
, do you?” Chu said. “Yung is a tough cookie under that smooth exterior. Besides, the good professor doesn't have Oliver to do his dirty work anymore.”

“I feel sorry for Delbert in a way,” Joorn said, replenishing his own drink. “Seeing his lifelong obsession thwarted. Under house arrest here. And now under Professor Ma's thumb, lending his name to legitimizing an unwelcome view.”

“Don't,” Alten said sharply. “Don't feel sorry for him. Or guilty. We didn't make his dream impossible. The cosmos did that. When it became an incontrovertible fact that the Universe was not only expanding, but expanding faster and faster. Feel sorry for Professor Ma. Karn's going to take over his project. And who knows? Maybe together they'll discover another incontrovertible fact. Maybe time does have a stop after all.”

Chu continued to stare at the bright new star. “We won't see Captain Yung for a while,” he said. “He'll be busy terraforming the planets of Alpha Centauri B. And whatever's left orbiting the white dwarf that was once a star so much like Sol. And that Goldilocks planet of Proxima Centauri, no matter what he says. Maybe our descendants, a couple of generations from now, will be trading with his empire. No matter what he chooses to call it.”

“He won't be able to colonize the Oort,” Joorn said. “It's too big to digest.”

Chu nodded in agreement. “He may be able to create a suzerainty or two, but that's just a drop in the bucket.”

“We'll make our own friends,” Joorn said, “starting with Torris.”

Alten took a large swig of his father's scotch, heedless of the pained look he got. “I've been running some computer studies with Nina's help—maybe I should say Nina's instigation, and Andrew's. It's very long-range, but we could nudge Torris's Tree into an orbit in the Kuiper Belt. Along with Ning's Tree and whatever other Trees have joined them by then. A real archipelago of Trees forming the nucleus of a new cometary society. That would bring our friends closer to wherever we settle in the solar system and make a real partnership possible. Maybe even closer than the Kuiper Belt. Maybe as close as the orbits of Pluto or Neptune.”

“But no closer,” Chu said. “We don't want the comets to grow tails and melt away after a few circuits. Bernal's trees evolved to get their water from ice, not the easy way.”

“The Trees wouldn't stand for it anyway,” Alten said. “They'd spread their little light sails and head straight back to the Oort cloud. They're engineered to use any radiation they can get, but getting too close to a red giant would screw up their ecology.”

“Where are our own people going to settle, Skipper?” Chu said. “Jupiter or Mars?”

“Jupiter's core is closer gravitationally to what we were used to on Earth,” Joorn said. “But terraforming Jupiter, even the new slimmed-down Jupiter, is a big job. Maybe a job for future generations, when we start to have a population overflow. We'll put it to a vote, but I think our best bet will be Mars.”

“Mars?”

“Yes. It's already habitable, though still a bit tropical. It'll be easier to terraform, with comet water from near-term comets and uninhabited comets from the Kuiper Belt. There'll be an ocean on Mars for the dolphins—Jonah will like that—and later for the whales whose fertilized eggs have been frozen in the ship's ovatorium for the last six billion years. The gravity will be friendlier to the comet people who visit us but not so weak as to cause us to evolve into a species somewhere between our present selves and
Homo cometes
. After all, there were people living on Mars in my youth, and the babies were doing just fine.”

Chu lifted his glass. “Onto Mars, then.” After a moment, Alten joined him.

CHAPTER 34

“We call it a baby shower,” Irina said. There was no word in Ning's language to suggest the impossible concept of quantities of water pouring down from overhead, so she settled for the closest equivalent she could find in Jonah's three-way dictionary—a word that meant carelessly letting a few precious drops escape when transferring a liquid to a storage bladder.

Ning looked puzzled. “It is another of your customs then, like a ‘farewell party'?”

“Yes. It's another kind of party, this time to give useful gifts before the baby arrives.”

“If it's a ‘party,' why then can I not have the martini drink, as before?”

“Because it's not good for the baby.”

Ning looked unconvinced. “A girl, you said?”

“Yes. Just as you wanted.”

“How can you know that?”

“We are able to look into the womb. Do you remember when you allowed our doctor to examine you, she showed you an image of your baby?”

“Yes. She said it was the ghost of the baby,” Ning said, resorting to a word in her own language. “But it looked nothing like a proper ghost.”

Ning had peered dutifully at the jiggling monitor but had been unable to make sense of the ultrasound image.

Nina saved the day by arriving with a tall orange-juice spritzer in a glass with an inverted rim. Chu had slowed the ship's rotation to almost nothing for Ning's visit, but there was just enough pseudogravity to hold liquids in a glass if you were careful.

“Here, Ning. I think you'll like this,” Nina said. “This is the kind of fruit we grow on our little trees.”

The shower was going well. The room filled with chatter and the clink of glasses. It was mostly women from Irina's various study groups, but Andrew and a few other male researchers had shown up, some of them even bearing presents. Torris himself had stayed away; he had been told it was not the custom and was being entertained at the dolphin pool by some of the men and Jonah.

Laurel came over with a large wrapped package, which she presented awkwardly to Ning. “Thank you, Laurel,” Ning said with her newly acquired shipboard manners. “What is it for?”

“No, no, that's just the wrapping,” Irina said, and helped her tear off the paper. Ning was baffled by the tiny pink garments, but she was genuinely pleased by the little blanket. “To help hold in warmth,” she said, “like the fuzzy skin of a stovebeast.” Earlier someone had presented her with a supply of reusable hydrophilic diapers with phase control settings activated by running a finger along the hem, and Irina had had to explain how they worked.

The gathering grew noisier and livelier, and there was an intermittent parade of well-wishers bearing gifts. There was a baby stroller—useless in a microgravity environment where there would not be enough weight to hold wheels to a surface—and a plethora of rattles and teething rings, but some of the gifts were genuinely useful, like a baby-carrying harness that left the hands free and a wearable night-light with a permanent battery. Ning received them all with a quiet dignity, seemingly at ease among all these strange child-size women, as if her attenuated form with the startling bulge of her pregnancy were the norm, not their gravity-molded bodies.

There was a brief flurry of commotion at the door, and Joorn entered with Chu and Alten. They'd all obviously had a few, and they were very jolly.

“Can a bunch of mere males come in and join the party?” Joorn asked. He caught sight of Andrew and the other men and nodded amiably but unapologetically, then crossed the room to pay his respects to Ning, followed by the other two.

Ning half-rose to greet them, the effort floating her a couple of inches above the divan, where she'd been installed. “So, Joorn, and elders Chu and Alten,” she said, an equal speaking to equals, “you don't respect the division of women and men either. A good omen for the new way of doing things that you are bringing to us. What have you done with Torris?”

“He'll be along later. He's with Jonah and the waterbeasts.”

“The male waterbeasts?” she said with friendly mockery.

He laughed. “No, they've been reformed too.”

“So, the other star people from Chu's kinfolk have left us after trying to ‘reform' us. Will we be seeing them again?”

“I don't think so. They are looking for a new home in the part of the sky where the Sisters rise and set.”

“And now you are leaving us too. Will we be seeing you again?”

“Yes. But not for some years. Not till your new daughter is halfway to becoming a woman. But we will leave you many gifts to help your Trees to grow and prosper. We hope other Trees will eventually join you.”

“That is already starting to happen.”

“What? What do you mean?”

“Torris's Tree has begun to speak to its Dreamers, to tell what some of the nearest Trees have decided. They are starting to alter their courses to bring them closer, though it will take many years before the first of them arrive. They know of
Time's Beginning
now. Torris and Claz, his priest, have learned this from their Tree's Dreamers, and our priest, Shamash, says the same of our Dreamers.”

Joorn and Chu looked at each other. “Are we pulling the Trees' strings, or are they pulling ours?” Chu said.

Alten grew thoughtful. “We'll learn to talk to them more directly. Very very slowly. Through computer mediation. That's how we learned to speak Delphinese. And the dolphins to talk to us.”

“Talking to vegetables,” Chu said. “Maybe Nina had something.”

Ning grew impatient with their gibberish. “So, Joorn, mover of worlds,
Time's Beginning
is not big enough for you. You are going to find a new home in the sky too. Where will it be?”

“Closer to the warmth of the Stepsister. But not too close. Perhaps your children will come visit us. If your Tree will let you.”

“They are talking it over,” she said quite seriously.

Joorn and Chu exchanged another look. “I'm sure they are,” Alten said. “We can tell them of a place closer to the Stepsister called the Kuiper Belt. Closer, but not too close. Warmer, but not too warm.”

It was too much for Ning. She frowned reprovingly at Alten and began to scold him. “If you are talking in riddles like a priest …” But just then, Martin came in. He spotted Ning and started toward them.

“Hello, Ning,” he said with a boyish grin. “Congratulations on the baby. I brought you a little something I made for her.”

He shyly held out his offering. It was a miniature hunting bow, painstakingly carved out of some limber wood like ash from the ship's forest. It was strung with monofilament, ready to go, and obviously a working bow. There was a bundle of tiny arrows to go with it.

Ning took the bow from him and tried its tension. She gave a nod of approval.

“At last, a present that is useful,” she said.