Exiled to the Stars (31 page)

The ship was stocked with a variety of aquatic life, of course, and it was hoped that at least some of it would survive on Crashlanding and help prevent the lake from stagnating. The pipes were a precaution. Only time would tell whether the fish and other creatures and plants would survive, and the Council was unwilling to take any chances. Still, the river now provided insurance that a drought or other water emergency would not kill the colony.

The dam’s completion freed up equipment to begin clearing additional land for farming. It also touched off a near-war on the Council. Douglas Ryles led a faction that favored turning the freed-up equipment to the building of fortifications.

"We're on a strange and hostile world," Ryles proclaimed. "We've just survived a plague that killed as many of us as the crash. What other threats are waiting for us? We must fortify our position, and build a defense force! We cannot afford to lose even one more colonist!"

"Ridiculous," Cesar replied. "We're still living on ship's rations. Our most urgent need is to become able to feed ourselves. We have no time to waste in building a wall around the colony. And we certainly do not have the population to waste on building an armed defense force.

"Once our food supply is secure,
then
we might consider some sort of Explorer corps, or something. It
is
important that we begin learning about our new home. But we cannot afford the time, effort, and resources necessary to build some kind of walled city here, and building an army is just absurd."

"Protecting our people is absurd?" Ryles jeered, "If you're unwilling to defend them, perhaps you should resign, and let someone take over who wants the colony to survive."

"You've said a lot of stupid things since you joined the Council, Messer Ryles," Vlad said, "But I think you've just set a personal record for stupidity!"

But the people were frightened of the unknown, and the unknown was all about them. Eventually, Ryles' faction forced approval to fortify the colony, though they were unable to push through the establishment of an armed militia. A Councilman consulted the computer, and returned with the design for a six-sided wall, with diamond-shaped extensions at each corner, boasting that the extensions made it possible for the colony's weapons to cover any part of the wall, thus preventing assaults.

Cesar shook his head in disgust. "An incredible waste of effort and resources," he complained. "There was a reason they stopped building forts on Earth. The development of aircraft made them useless." But his protests were in vain, and construction began on a fortified wall encircling both the ship and the colony around it.

Predators were an ongoing concern as they learned about their new world. And predators there were. So far, six people had lost their lives to native life forms. In every case, the life form died as well, poisoned by the human flesh, but that was no consolation to the victim.

Most worrisome was the small animal the colonists named ‘prairie rat’. Jerlson claimed that they were about the size of Earth rabbits, and closely resembled those creatures, though with claws and razor-sharp pointed teeth in the front of their mouths, and crushing molars near the back.

The prairie rat was omnivorous, and lived in groups of thousands in large burrows topped by large mounds. Individually, the creatures were no threat to anything as big as a man; but if a man strayed too close to the home burrow or mound, hundreds of the creatures would erupt from holes in the mound or the ground itself, snapping and tearing in a ravening horde. They could strip a man to the bone in less than three minutes. The mounds themselves were obvious and not hard to avoid; but the burrows often extended meters beyond the mound, underground and unnoticeable. It was wise to give prairie-rat mounds a
wide
berth!

The alpha predator seemed to be something the colonists were calling “wolf lizards.” Overall, they most closely resembled two-meter lizards, with muscular tails and eight long, wide-set, spidery legs. The front legs were adapted for grasping and slashing, and the head and jaws more closely resembled the terrestrial wolf than a terrestrial crocodilian. For short distances, it could run faster than a man. This was no lazy, cold-blooded ambush hunter, but a fast, savage predator. It was also large enough to view man as prey.

And it wasn’t just the animals. Several plants had proven poisonous or carnivorous, even a
tree
!

They had adopted Susan’s proposal about exposing the developing livestock fetuses to the air of their adopted planet, and the delivery of normal, healthy livestock was now routine. It took months for the colonists to overcome their conditioned abhorrence and learn to kill and butcher animals, but once a few hardy souls had proven capable of doing so under Tara’s tutelage, the colonists were virtually unanimous in deciding that real meat was far superior to synthetics, be it beef, pork, sheep, goat, chicken, or rabbit.

Test plots had been planted with Earth grasses, and the lake seeded with Earth plants and algae before the plague hit. Monitoring of progress had, of course, been sporadic and largely unscientific during the plague. Fortunately, once infected by the symbiont, it seemed that Earth life was actually
stronger
than native life. The Earth-based food chain had been carefully genetically engineered by EarthGov to succeed, despite any possible missing links.

The first Earth plant actually sown on Crashlanding had been Earth grasses, with some accompanying insect eggs and larvae. The computer had explained that until the livestock had grazing lands, they would have to be hand-fed using the ship’s stocks. These were, of course, limited. By the time the plague had passed and the Council gotten the colonists motivated to survive once again, the test plots were green with Earth grasses instead of the mottled green/brown of the native plains grasses. The grasses had spread well beyond the test plots themselves, to become fully-fledged pasture. Chief Pilot Schmidt had died of the plague, and none of the survivors had flying skills. So, teams of women, protected by Scouts and militia, fanned out, sowing grass seed by hand, as their ancestors had done for millennia. Within a few days, Earth-descended grass seed had been sown from the ship to the river.

The lake had shown similar results, though it was slower, there. Some of the native aquatic creatures were hardier than the plains grasses, and were resisting their replacement by Earth-descended equivalents. Still, it was obvious that they were well on the way to a stable food chain in Gouge Lake.

By the one year mark, the number and size of the farms surrounding the colony had begun to slowly grow. The colonists discovered the joys of eating real, fresh produce instead of processed synthetics and were actually becoming weaned from the ship’s food supply as the local food became available. The inconvenience of stopping work to return to the ship for meals was, of course, a large factor. Whatever the reason, Cesar noted with relief that consumption reports showed a steady decline. He hoped that enough food stocks would remain aboard the ship to become an emergency resource.

Still, the Council decided that active exploration could wait. Their population was still far too precarious to take risks. The Militia escorted the machines clearing the land, protecting the operators from predators. The militiamen were told not to take any chances, and ruthlessly slaughtered any native animal they saw. Tara had refused to give up her beloved Mannlicher rifle, and she hounded Cesar mercilessly until the Council agreed that farmers should be given a crash course in weapons handling, and issued hand lasers with which to protect themselves, their families, and their livestock from predators. Susan’s lab was nearly always full to overflowing with Crashlanding animal and plant life.

It turned out that life on Crashlanding was carbon-based, but every animal or plant Susan examined shared something of that strange virus that caused the plague. In the plants, it was more rudimentary, simpler than in the animal life, but it was definitely there, and definitely related. They also universally metabolized an alkaloid that was fatal to Earth life, though they themselves seemed unaffected by it. Susan had been searching for an antidote, so far without success.

Susan had never stopped worrying about the genetic diversity issue, despite daily distractions. Still, it was several months before she and Vlad invited Cesar and Helen to their home.

“I could kick myself,” Susan said disgustedly. “I should have seen it in minutes, not months. We can use the incubators! The same ones we use for incubating livestock. A human fetus is not much larger than a piglet. The incubators should accommodate it easily.

“We don’t carry fertilized ova for humans,” she continued, “but we have sperm and egg donations from the entire pre-plague population. It will be a simple matter to test their DNA and then fertilize the ova in the lab. We can create as many genetically stable ‘test tube babies’ as we can nurture!”

Cesar smiled. “Well, it should certainly be easier to find women to adopt babies than it would be to convince them to carry and bear one.”

Vlad just shrugged. “I dunno,” he said. “It seems to me there would be plenty of problems. The first you’ll run into is the people all thinking about having us clone spouses or children lost to the plague.”

“Well,” Susan replied, “we certainly can’t do that. For one thing, we’re not equipped for gene surgery or DNA modification, much less cloning, which is a far more involved procedure. And even if we could, it would be a social catastrophe. Most people don’t realize that just because someone has a certain genetic makeup doesn’t mean they’ll develop anything like the original person. Everyone involved would be miserable, including the child. Maybe especially the child.”

Vlad grinned. “In other words, nature versus nurture rears its ugly head. Okay, if they can’t have clones of lost children, the next idea will be using the parents’ DNA to have another baby.” He snorted. “They won’t stop to realize that there’s no real difference between that and just having another baby naturally.”

Susan shrugged. “It’s worse than that. What if the parents’ DNA isn’t compatible? What if their dead child carried a recessive gene that would have been fatal in another generation? How do you tell them you won’t permit it?”

Cesar was frowning. Now he shrugged. “I assume they would simply try for another natural childbirth. In fact, I’m sure many already have. And there would be very few cases of genetic incompatibility. If I remember correctly, genetic screening was part of EarthGov processing. Frankly, I’m more worried about having women on light duty for weeks. Not to mention the risks to their health. Now that Ryles has rammed through that ridiculous 'castle' idea, we need all the workers we have. We cannot afford to lose anyone for weeks.

“You’re right, of course,” Susan replied with a rueful smile. “I’d forgotten about that.”

“When you took those sperm and egg donations, I assume you took all the information on the donors? Names, and so forth?”

“Of course.”

“And they would have seen your people entering the data into the computer,” Cesar continued. He paused. “But it’s urgent that we diversify our genetic makeup. I think we need a computer glitch. Something that will ‘lose’ all the identification records, but keep all the DNA records.”

Vlad shook his head. “I don’t think you could sell it, Oh, maybe to the drones. Most of them think the computer is magical anyway. But a lot of the Undies are more sophisticated than you think. Could you have sold that story to Ron Creding?”

Cesar shook his head, frowning. “Of course not.”

Vlad nodded. “And you won’t be able to sell it to a lot of the others, either. They’ll just lose trust in you. I think you should do an EarthGov. Classify it. Tell ‘em that sperm and egg will be matched up strictly by genetic factors, and that parental identities will not be revealed. Then stick to it.”

“I’m not sure the Council will buy it.” Cesar said doubtfully.

Vlad shrugged. “You’re the head honcho of the computer. You tell it to classify those files, or even to forget them, it will.”

Cesar’s head shake was firm. “No. I won’t do that. This must be something decided by at least the Council, and perhaps referred to the entire colony.”

“Why even worry about it?” Helen asked. “Just announce the capability, and let nature take its course.”

“That has been tried,” Susan replied. “Remember the ‘designer baby' scandal twenty years ago?”

Helen grimaced. “Yes, I do. Some of the strongest sermons my husband ever wrote were on that subject.”

Susan smiled. “Yes, the churches went crazy. But they weren’t the only ones. I studied it as a case in an ethics class. The idea that the wealthy could simply have a child’s DNA programmed, as it were, and produce a baby with the intelligence of a Joshua Combs and the looks of a vid star. Silly, of course. Even on Earth we didn’t know enough about DNA surgery to approach that level of complexity. But the newsies didn’t care. It was a sensational story.”

Vlad looked confused. “I really didn’t follow the story that carefully. It wasn’t in my specialty. But what about that doctor…Steinman, was it? He went to prison for life, didn’t he?”

Susan’s smile was sad as she shook her head. “He was a fool. He had a few successes with gene splicing and DNA surgery in the lab, and couldn’t wait to run to the newsies with them. The newsies ran with it, and before long, billionaires were throwing money at Steinman.” She shrugged. “He couldn’t resist the money and the fame. Of course, he had a long string of failures. There were rumors of a few successes, but the prosecutors could find no records of them. No, his crime was raising peoples’ hopes and then dashing them.”

Cesar waved a dismissing hand. “Long ago and light-years away. We have a situation to deal with right here. Artificial insemination or crèche-born, we still have to deal with the issues of insularity and reluctance to adopt.

“Don’t forget that idiot Wen. ‘My wife will bear no man’s child but mine’,” he mimicked. “Do you really think he’ll be open to adopting a Caucasian baby? And you can be sure there will be many like him.”