The Children Star (24 page)

As he watched, a large transport vessel sailed overhead, avoiding the cloud. But as the ship neared, the cloud expanded startlingly. Light flashed, illuminating the depths of the cloud, and thunder rumbled. Out of the cloud snaked a long, gray funnel. With a chilling deliberation, the gray funnel wound its way toward the approaching ship.

Rod ducked just soon enough to avoid the flash in his eyes, as the funnel cloud reached the ship. Above his head the windowpane shattered, and his ears rang. He heard children screaming in the next room. Seconds later, there were muffled explosions as parts of the ship hit the ground.

He hurried to check the children and the other windows.
When at last he looked outside again, black smoke was rising over the wreckage of the ship, dampened by a fine mist of rain. The pancake cloud receded slowly, its edges dissolving and shrinking back until it disappeared in the afternoon sun.

'
j
um watched Sarai hovering over her pods of microzoöids. As she had been taught, 'jum inserted one of the vine tendrils into the pod, to pluck out a microzoöid. It was a tough job, as the microscopic sisterlings had gelled their growth medium and tunneled out little homes to live in. Now the tendril snaked in to find them. The sisterlings always got upset and tried to wriggle away, as 'jum watched their magnified image on the holostage. She selected one, a red-orange ring. The tip of her tendril slithered through the ring hole and captured the sisterling, to be placed under the recorder.

“Find another one right away, Ushum,” Sarai reminded her. “Sisterlings get lonely; a single one will pine away and die.” Sarai frowned reflectively. “Clickflies don't get lonely. Loneliness takes some intelligence.”

'jum placed another sisterling in the dish, a blue one.
Whenever two different-colored sisterlings were put together, their colors immediately shifted until they were the same. Then they flashed very quickly at each other, exchanging bursts of little flashes.

“It's some kind of number code,” guessed Sarai. “That's how the little sisterlings talk to each other. They like talking.” Sarai flicked her fingerwebs absently across her chin. “But what do they talk
about?”
She gave 'jum an intense look.

'jum had finally figured out who this fish-woman was. As she stood at the cave entrance, looking out over Mount Helicon, it came to her, the memory of that day she had stood outside the shack with her mother lifeless inside. For so many days before she had watched her mother change, from the alert forewoman who bossed the other workers at the Hyalite plant and was assigned to quality control, into an invalid at home, her arms and legs wasting, turning white; turning into a form that did not look at all like the mother 'jum knew. And then, all at once, she became completely white and still.

But that was not the end. Somehow, 'jum knew, her mother had gone on changing. One of the gods had remade her body; not quite right, just as Brother Rod had not always got things quite right, but they remade her just the same, for all her fishlike hands and feet. 'jum's mother had turned into Sarai.

'jum returned Sarai's hard stare. “Ask them.”

Sarai called to the holostage. Instantly it filled with numbers in octal, the system Sharers preferred. These numbers the sisterlings had sent to each other, in little bursts. The numbers were disappointingly small, rarely above ten, and there were lots of zeros.

'jum frowned. “How do you get ‘zero' flashes?”

Sarai clasped her hands. “An
intelligent
question—how many years since I heard one! You see, Ushum, the bursts come at regular intervals; yet sometimes the sisterling ‘skips' an interval. I'm betting those are zeros.” She stared fiercely into the lights. “Pattern, pattern, there must be a pattern.” Sarai's jaw fell open. “Look: zero-two-two. It always shows up when sisterling B-eight is one of a pair. Can you find others such correlations, Ushum?”

'jum obligingly went up to the holostage and marked the critical combination with her hand. The numbers set to flashing, wherever they appeared. Sarai clucked her tongue to the clickfly, to record everything 'jum did, not that the girl ever made a mistake.

“Perhaps the sisterlings have names,” said Sarai. “Like clickflies do. If they name each other, perhaps they can name things in their growth media. Let's put some fancy molecule in and see what they say. How about anthocyanin? How about some antitriplex antibiotic, at sublethal concentration of course. That ought to get their attention.”

By now eight of 'jum's sisterlings swam in the dish of zoöid-phycoid soup. Sarai clucked to a clickfly, who immediately spun a partition across the pod, dividing the group into two groups of four. Into one pod she placed a drop of anthocyanin solution; in the other, the antibiotic specific for microzoöid triplex DNA.

An hour later, she and 'jum were poring over the numbers. “Look at this,” Sarai exclaimed. “The patterns are completely different. The microzoöids with the antibiotic produce
‘1 0 5 3 0 1,'
over and over again; whereas the anthocyanin . . . it's a longer pattern.”

'jum stared, as if nothing existed but those numbers in the air. Her lips moved soundlessly. There was a longer number pattern, including an eight and an eleven, but it
only came twice. She felt vaguely disappointed that there were few interesting primes. Still . . . all those zeros intrigued her. What if there were actually a prime series buried underneath?

“Hey, what's this?” Sarai peered at the pod. The contents of the half with the antibiotic had liquefied, except for one spot. On the holostage, the four microzoöids had all migrated to one side, leaving a mass of fibers on the other. “That's where I dropped the antibiotic,” said Sarai. “They walled it off!” She frowned. “This is altogether too clever—even for clickflies. I wonder.” She looked up. “I wonder what their four companions will say, if we ‘play back' to them the same sequence of light pulses that these little ones made.”

So Sarai spent the rest of the day teaching her vines to pulse photons, with much clucking to the clickflies to insert their DNA signals into the plants. 'jum watched so closely that she began seeing flashing lights inside her own eyes. She blinked several times and finally closed her eyes.

The light was still there, inside her eyelids. How curious. It was flashing so fast she could barely make it out, but then it slowed a bit. It came in little bursts of orange, rather like those ringlets on the holostage.

“At last,” exclaimed Sarai.

'jum opened her eyes. Sarai held up two long tendrils of her vine, lifeshaped to produce flashes of light at the tips. The two tips produced the two slightly different wavelengths needed to generate the binary code. These she inserted into the half of the pod receiving anthocyanin, which had remained relatively healthy.

“Now we'll see.” Sarai stared fiercely at the holostage. “We'll see what they say to
that
. If they're as bright as clickflies, they ought to respond.”

As they waited, a whirr appeared in the air, humming
softly. It streaked by 'jum's nose, so close she could see its tiny propeller, then it brushed past Sarai's arm. Sarai waved it away, still watching the holostage.

Another whirr appeared. It spiraled slowly down in the air, hovering at last above the pod of media. Then a second whirr came to join it.

Sarai looked up. “The signal's gone. What happened?” She looked at the pod. “Those infernal insects are eating my microzoöids!”

'jum's lips parted. “I don't think so, Mother. They're just picking them up.”

Sarai glared at 'jum. “Whatever do you mean? They just ate every sisterling in the dish. Gone, all of them.” She chattered at the clickflies, who set to spinning a fine mesh web across the entrance to the cavern.

“They picked them up,” insisted 'jum. “Like a lightcraft. To take them back to their city.”

Sarai's eyes narrowed. She looked back at the pod, then at 'jum. “Explain yourself, Ushum. Where is this ‘city'?”

“The tumbleround.” 'jum looked all around the cavern, the clickfly webs, the carnivorous vines to secrete enzymes twisting out from crevices. But there was no tumbleround here. She had not seen one since she left the Spirit Colony.

Sarai came over, bringing her face close to 'jum's. “Why do you call the tumbleround a city?”

“It smells like one.”

Sarai took a deep breath; her breasts rose and fell. “Ushum, that is not a logical inference. Insufficient data.” She got up and paced back and forth from the holostage to the clickfly webs. “Still . . . suppose it were true.” She stopped. “I would be a kidnapper—and a murderer! But no—it can't be. How could microscopic creatures have any brains, when even most full-size humans have so little?”

'jum did not answer. She never had understood the first thing about people, except that few of them in her life were up to much good.

“Experiment, how to design an experiment?” muttered Sarai. “If the sisterlings are only messengers, they certainly are sharp ones—they have hundreds, perhaps thousands of number words. But how could we prove . . .
that they themselves think and feel as we do?”

The fine mesh web was still forming across the entrance, but not soon enough to keep out more whirrs as they appeared. Dozens of them, as if from nowhere, came swarming insistently, buzzing all around the culture chambers. Sarai closed the open pod, but not before the four were lost. At a command, the main culture vessel was engulfed by a giant flower on one of the vines. The flower closed, its petals tightly wrapped within the calyx, while the whirrs swarmed helplessly around it.

Sarai watched nervously, her hands snapping their fingerwebs. “They know, somehow. They want to get their sisters back.”

Suddenly two clickflies sailed in, clicking excitedly.

“What?” Her fingertips paled. “Not here? It can't have got all the way up the mountain.” She raced out of the cavern, tearing through the newly spun web. 'jum followed her out the passage, up to the main entrance, where the two clickflies hovered. Sarai took a step outside and craned her neck out, searching down the path.
“Shora
—look!”

A tumbleround was rolling slowly up the path. It was rather a small one, 'jum thought, and it moved along faster than the ones that used to visit the Spirit Colony. She could actually see its foremost tendrils stretch and extend to the ground, implanting themselves, while the hindmost tendrils let go, one by one, whipping upward as they broke off. A
haze of whirrs clouded the creature, and its distinctive odor reached her nose.

“No?
here!”
Sarai shrieked at the clickflies and tugged at her vines.

The vines came to life, climbing up across the main en-trance, 'jum hurriedly stepped backward to avoid them. Within minutes the entrance was thoroughly sealed; not a whirr could get through the packed mass of greenery.

As the cavern sealed, Sarai ran back to her holostage. “Get me the Station lab,” she demanded. “That Khral and her dimwit colleagues. I don't care if the line is busy—it's an emergency.”

On the holostage appeared a clinic, like the one where 'jum had spent so many unhappy hours. This one however was Khral's place. Khral stood there with the magic eye perched on her shoulder.

“They've found me!” Sarai yelled at the holostage. “You have to get me out of here!”

Khral exchanged a look with the eye. “Who found you? The octopods?”

“The
tumbleround!
They—there's a million of them in there! And they'll know how I've kidnaped and tortured them!”

“Tortured them? A million tumblerounds?”

“They're
inside
the tumbleround. For Torr's sake, just get me out of here.”

“Well sure,” Khral began, “I don't see why not—”

At her shoulder the eye whispered something.

“Right, Quark,” said Khral. “Sarai, we'll take you up to Station—if you promise to give us a research seminar.”

Sarai leaned across the holostage.
“I'm invaded by aliens
—
and you want a research seminar?”