The Children Star (4 page)

“Patella doesn't answer,” said the Reverend Mother. “Who knows what the young ones are up to.”

No answer from Patella? That was odd. Wherever he was, Brother Patella could hear Mother Artemis from the lightcraft, then send out Haemum or one of the ten-year-olds with the llamas for them to ride home.

As it happened, they landed in wheelgrass, not far from the trail. The wheelgrass spread in waves all around them. A welcome scent of ginger blew in from the distant singing-trees, always a sign he was really home.

High in the ever-blue sky shone Prokaryon's sun, Iota Pavonis, proud as an albino peacock. The thin ozone layer
blocked less of the sun's ultraviolet than on other worlds supporting life. That might be one reason triple-stranded chromosomes had evolved here, to protect DNA from mutation. Prokaryan weather, like its landscape, had a predictable pattern: sunshine every day, with gentle rain in the evening.

But far to the east, past the dark line of hills, the clouds could burst into unexpected storms. And above those clouds hovered the peaks of Mount Anaeon and Mount Helicon. The tallest peaks had been named for the twelve floating cities of Elysium, who had bankrolled the first explorers. They may have regretted the naming, for the mountains proved unlucky, full of landslides and other accidents for hapless prospectors. Many colonists blamed Prokaryon's “hidden masters,” a claim hard to disprove.

Still there was no sign of Haemum's llama, its ears pointing out like flags, its broad feet bred specially to tramp the loopleaves down. Rod turned to Mother Artemis. “No word yet from Brother?”

“He must be running after Gaea and T'kun again.”

That would not keep Patella from answering. Patella, like Geode and Mother Artemis, could manage several tasks at once. Unless he was conducting a very complex operation . . . Rod felt a chill at his neck. “I'll go ahead and send the llama back for you.”

The Reverend Mother smoothed his shoulder. “The Spirit go with you. Excuse me while I sleep.” She drew in her arms, which lost form in the shadows of her sleeves. Her figure seemed to pull itself in and turned gray all over. Rod had seen her “sleep,” though she tried to hide it from the children. Sentients had to save their energy, for if their power packs ran out, their minds would die. That was their one weakness as colonists.

He returned her touch lightly, thinking, how odd that
this gray shape was actually such an extraordinary person. Then he stepped outside. The sun was warm, so he took off his robe, revealing dun-colored everyday trousers much worn and stained. Tucking the robe under his arm, he strode resolutely out into the wheelgrass. The gray-green loopleaves of the wheelgrass twisted and caught his toe at every step; it took him a quarter hour just to cover the few meters to the trail. High above him buzzed several helicoids, their ring-shaped propellers clattering as if laughing at him.

Ahead, a herd of four-eyes rolled away like tire tubes, with no legs to get caught in the wheelgrass. Each four-eyes had four compound eyes spaced evenly along the “tread” of its “tire,” the upper two eyes alert and watchful, the lower two asleep; the eyes took turns sleeping. In between each pair of eyes was a rasping mouth, so each mouth faced downward in turn to consume wheelgrass. Extensible suckers covered the rest of the creature's surface; to move forward, it simply contracted the foremost sucker and lifted up the hindmost, rolling over the wheelgrass. By this repeated motion, the little zoöid could work up a remarkable speed in either direction. Rod hoped no zoöid predator would come barreling after them and mistake him for edible prey.

Once on the clear trail he jogged easily, his feet eating up the miles. A couple of whirrs alighted on his arm, miniature helicoids the size of a pinhead. Finding no zoöid secretions to feed on, the whirrs soon left, very different from the insects he had grown up with on Valedon. The wind brought snatches of song from the singing-trees at the far edge of the wheelgrass. At last the wheelgrass gave way to brokenhearts, golden ringlets that looked like so many lost wedding bands. The protein-rich brokenhearts were cultivated to feed the lifeshaped children.

At last the colony's nursery and dining hall appeared, jutting out of the hillside below the sapphire mine. The long mud-colored buildings were built of ring-fungus, a tough growth that could be pressed into shapes and dried hard as wood.

As he approached, twelve-year-old Haemum came running out to meet him. The founding child of the family, she now stood nearly as tall as he and seemed to be all legs. Her skirt and scarf were made of the same cloth that they all wove and dyed of fibrous loopleaves. She threw her arms around Rod, pressing her black curls to his chest. “Brother Rod, thank the Spirit you're here,” she exclaimed in L'liite, which the children were taught to retain their heritage. “We don't know what to do—Brother Patella fell down the ravine, and he must have ‘broken' somehow.”

“Broken how? Where is he now?”

Two of the boys were running out, ten-year-old Chae and four-year-old T'kun, with his arm ominously bound in a sling. Then little Gaea dragged herself through the dust on her arms, her paralyzed legs trailing behind her. Gaea had spina bifida—Brother Geode had thrown up his woolly arms when Rod picked that one, but so it was. The colony would save enough to reshape her, someday.

“It was T'kun's fault,” Haemum explained. “T'kun was running ahead and playing space pirate, and when I called after him he got mad. He tripped and slid down the bank, tumbling over. Brother Patella tried to get him out, but he slipped, too, and fell farther. Then he turned all gray and lumpy, and wouldn't answer.”

Gaea grabbed his ankle and clung, and he nearly lost balance. “Bro-der Rod, T'kun bring home zoöid! We play with zoöid!” Zoöids in the nursery would not do; but it would have to wait.

“Did you call Station?” Rod asked Haemum.

“I did, but the medics haven't shown up yet. I finally dragged T'kun back up and set his arm as best I could. . . .”

Rod clenched his fist, then caught it in his palm. As usual the Spirit Colony was not Station's first priority. No billion-credit shipment of ore would be lost if Patella were crippled, or worse. “Can the boys lead me out to him?”

“I will, I will,” cried T'kun.

Rod patted his head. “Good—but be careful. And you, Chae, mind Gaea and the babies.” He extricated his ankle from Gaea's fingers and swung her up for Chae, who staggered as he carried her off. “Haemum, you'll need to ride the llamas out for the Reverend Mother; we touched down just west of the trail. Remember, she'll be ‘asleep.' ”

Haemum raced off to fetch the llamas, her skirt flashing colors in the sun. Rod followed T'kun up the trail by the rushing stream, into the hills full of sapphires and other marketable stones. Here the wheelgrass gave way to a coarse dark shrub, with dense loopleaves. A flock of helicoids rose up suddenly, the sunlight glinting on their propellers.

“There!” T'kun shouted, and tried to point, then winced at the pain in his bound arm.

Rod caught sight of the gray shape, tumbled several meters down a steep bank. It looked nothing like Patella, whose form resembled Geode's. He froze, sick at heart. If Patella's nanoplastic body had not fixed itself by now, the news might be bad. Even if his neural circuits were intact, he would have to be shipped back to Elysium to retrain. And the colony would have to do without a doctor.

The emergency squad from Station came at last. A sleek glowing disk burned its way through the air and set itself
down precisely, right on the trail that overlooked the ravine. For a moment Rod envied the sentient lightcraft, then he suppressed the unworthy thought.

From the craft emerged two medical sentients, their bodies shaped like caterpillars. They crawled down the ravine to rescue the injured doctor, not deigning to speak to Rod. As they lifted the shapeless nanoplast into their craft, Rod felt the full shock of his loss. He had worked with Patella ever since he came here; now, in an instant, his brother was gone.

Meanwhile, the older children were coming home from the gravel pit with carts full of corundum and occasional gem-quality stones. Mother Artemis, now returned, was nursing the four youngest ones, including the twins Pima and Pomu, whom Rod had picked up last year. Then she called the older children over for writing lessons.

Rod checked T'kun's arm, which Haemum seemed to have bound up reasonably straight, as far as he could tell. He would bring the boy up to Station the next day for a scan. In the meantime, the watering tubes for the vegetables had broken down, helicoids hung by their sucker mouths from the gutters, and besides, a tumbleround had invaded the garden.

“Look at it, Brother Rod,” Haemum exclaimed. “It's the biggest tumbleround I ever saw.”

The tire shape of the tumbleround looked partly deflated, its lower half collapsed into the ground. Twisted loopleaves stuck out in all directions, some extended to root in the ground. The plant-creature smelled like glue and invariably attracted clouds of thirsty whirrs. A tumbleround generally rooted and grew in one spot for a long while; but under certain conditions, perhaps nitrogen deficiency, some of its vines would root themselves in the ground at one edge, then contract, pulling the organism to
tumble it over slightly. More vines then rooted down, and so forth; once the tumbleround got going, it could travel several meters per day, trampling and digesting whatever vegetation crossed its path. Scientists disputed whether they were more animal or plant, zoöid or phycoid; “phycozoöid” was the term in favor. Whether plant or animal, this one was as tall as Rod and perhaps twice his weight.

“It's been there for the longest time, just outside the fence, you remember.” Haemum pointed to the long slimy trail full of broken tendril loops, leading in through the crushed fence. “After you left, one night it just started to move, and kept coming until . . .”

The scent blew toward them. For a moment Rod felt light-headed, and he caught himself up just in time. Then he realized that he had not gotten around to eating anything since breakfast on the ship. He shook himself and straightened. “Well, Sister—what shall we do with our guest?”

Haemum put her hands on her hips. “We could chop it up. If we chop the pieces small enough, they won't grow back. We can scoop them out and dry the hide to make shoes.”

A tedious, gruesome task, but it would work. And yet . . . Why had this thing come to peek in the window? What if this whirr-clouded beast really was one of the planet's hidden masters? Station said no, tumblerounds had no IQ to speak of.

“We'll dig it out and haul it off,” Rod decided. So they set to work with the shovels, all the while brushing whirrs out of their eyes and mouths, taking breaks when the fumes overpowered them. A sentient lifter could have done it in a minute, but the colony could not afford such. The work of one's hands was a gift to the Spirit.

At last, Rod raised the stinking creature out of its hole,
where the loops of its roots lay gashed. His muscles bulged as he lifted it onto the cart, first one side of it, then the other. Three llamas pulled the cart, spitting in protest, while the two colonists pushed from behind, driving it out as far as they could before they dumped the tumbleround out. It would root again in no time.

Just before dinner, while helping Pima and Pomu wash their faces, Rod remembered to call Geode. So he hurried off down the hall to the holostage. The twins, who immediately knew what he was after, plodded after him excitedly.

As Rod entered the cylindrical chamber, the usual column of light shone up from the stage; the twins cooed in delight. Soon Brother Geode himself appeared, full of good spirits and just as delighted to see them. “My two little dears!” the sentient exclaimed. “Alike as two parts from the same factory—and walking, already! Why, we weren't gone but three weeks.”

“I thought you'd be pleased,” said Rod. “But I'm sorry about Patella.”

“I can't believe it. I just can't bear to think of it.” Three of his arms waved violently in the air, twining and untwining. He and Patella had been built to the same model and shipped from the same Hyalite plant on Valedon. Both had earned their freedom in an Elysian nursery, as had Mother Artemis. “I just hope his central processor's okay, so he can reshape himself.” He shuddered all over. “How will you ever manage? I'd better come down.”

“But the babies need you. How is 'jum?”

“ 'jum is right here. Don't shrink away, girl—look, here's Brother Rod.”

The light-shape of 'jum appeared, wide-eyed and uncertain. She extended her arm, then pulled it back as if remembering. Rod felt bad about leaving her, though they
had no choice. “I'll come up soon to hug you, 'jum. Look,” he said, nudging the twins. “See your little brothers. We all can't wait to have you home.”

As he finally went in to dinner, Haemum was leading the singing at the head of one of the two long tables.
Let us love only truth, desire only grace, and know only Spirit
. . . . Haemum took her devotions seriously, and planned to join the order when she came of age. The children were a cheery sight, their starstones flashing on their necks, all seated in orderly rows in their bright red-and-yellow patterned shifts. Their legs swung briskly under the chairs, and the long tables reminded Rod incongruously of mealtimes at the Guard Academy.

Soon the bowls of four-eyes stew came passing down, with red and green loop-fruits the boys had cooked up from the garden. Since Rod could not yet eat them, Chae brought him his two cakes of standard-grade food from the synthesizer. The synthesizer reshaped organic matter at the molecular level and filtered out toxic metals. An economy model, it put out two flavors, fruit or flesh; Rod had eaten them for so long that he forgot which was which. But the first bite reminded him he was famished. He ate quickly, forgetting his usual insistence on “civilized” conversation.