Vectors (28 page)

"If you're not worn out," I replied, "I'd like you to take me up to the section near the Hub where the children have their recreation area."

"Give me another five minutes. The high-gee track is rough going."

I looked at his body, pale and skinny, and I thought of the other reason why I didn't care to talk yet. True, I needed more evidence—but equally true, if I were right there was grief ahead for many of us.

This time we went up to the Hub in an elevator, a continuous belt that we grabbed as it came by and rode up the shaft holding on to it. We used an exit point about thirty meters short of the Hub itself. I thought the gravity there was zero, but Tom assured me that we were still experiencing a fiftieth of a gee—I weighed about a kilo, Tom a little less. We pulled ourselves along, hand over hand, to a transparent plastic flap in the section wall, about two meters square. Tom pulled it aside and we floated ourselves through, Tom easily, I with a good deal more effort and less grace.

We had entered a large, open, octahedral section, about thirty meters in diameter. The walls were unfinished grey metal, smooth and unmarked except for a large number of yellow metal bosses. Tied to these, and criss-crossing the interior space in a complex, bewildering web, were numerous plastic cables, color coded and intricately tied at their many crossing points. The ties themselves were focal points for the attachment of hammocks, cabinets, tent-like enclosures and cloth screens. In the room were about fifty children, singly and in small groups, ranging in age from about four to eleven.

I paused and looked about me.

"They did all this themselves?" I asked.

Tom nodded without speaking. The children looked at us warily as we drifted through the section, moving and guiding ourselves with the aid of the web of taut cables.

We stopped near a child of about six years, painting on a blue, rough-textured plastic sheet. His 'brushes' were small aerosol cylinders, each giving a controllable color spray that ranged in thickness from a fine line to a broad, diffuse swath. His movements as he painted were like an elaborate ballet. As his hand went forward to his canvas, the other thin arm and the long, slender legs moved also. When he looked around at us, I noticed that his arms and legs made small, precise movements at the same time as his head. The effect was very beautiful, and totally alien. I saw that he was painting a flowing pattern of lines, converging on a blue center. The common structure of Earth paintings, into horizontal and vertical elements, was lacking completely.

"Tom, why do the children move that way?" I asked softly, as we left the child and moved on through the maze of cables. "They seem to move every part of them, all at once."

"They do." Tom looked back at the child. His expression was a strange mixture of affection, worry and sadness. "They learn it when they are very young. They move to keep their heads facing the way they want to, by balancing the linear and angular momentum of each part of the body. I've tried to do the same thing, but never been able to master it. Of course, it's really useful up here, in zero gee. On the outer sections, it doesn't matter so much. They spend so much time up here, they all learn to do it by the time they are four years old."

"But what about the calcium loss, Tom? If they spend all their time in low gee, isn't it uncomfortable for them on the outer rim—their bones won't take it, will they?"

The worry was evident on Tom's face. "That's one of the big problems, Beth. They don't like the outer sections, and they hate to exercise. Every chance they get, they are up here. The first of them are supposed to go down to Earth to complete their education in just two more years. They don't have the bone and muscle to take it. Even if they exercise hard now, it will be very hard on them physically. We've tried every argument. They don't argue back, but they don't change their ways. I've tried every persuasion—their parents, their teachers. Nothing seems to make any difference."

We moved on past a group of four children, completely absorbed in wrapping a sheet around a group of light struts, to form a neat, silver enclosure.

"See there," said Tom. "That's the same thing, on a higher level. Only the older children can do it. They are moving to keep their
total
momentum right, their bodies and the cube they're making. Don't ask me how they do it."

I had seen enough for my theories, but I stayed to watch for esthetic pleasure. It was like the finest choreography, danced with unearthly skill by a group of fairy-folk, delicate-bodied and frail. I knew now what I had to do. But I still had to decide on the right way of doing it.

* * *

I never did find that right way. Events overtook me. Tom and I had just been to the outer levels, the 'basement' of the Colony, and Tom had taken me on a long guided tour of the agricultural sections. All the food that we ate was produced on the Colony, with almost perfect recycling. The small losses were made up by occasional shipments of raw materials from the lunar surface. Tom estimated the total materials loss from the Colony at less than one percent of recycled substance per century, which made it effectively self-sufficient for the foreseeable future, even if Earth cut off support for a second and larger Colony. According to Tom, it was the psychological effect of that second Colony which was so important—the Colonists had to feel that they were in space to stay, that it was their natural and real home.

As we returned to the main living quarters, Tom stopped by the message center. He came out looking enormously pleased and excited.

"Beth!" he said. "Why didn't you tell me?" He waved a message slip at me. "This is from Stanford—approving an early start to your sabbatical, so you can work in the L-5 Colony. It says that if you decide to stay here, as you hinted, you would be asked to serve as an extramural professor for as long as you choose."

I winced at the pleasure in his voice. This would make it harder yet.

"Tom, I don't know if I want to be a colonist here. I do want to spend a year here, at least, trying to help out, and I think it will take at least that long. That's why I sent my message. I didn't expect such a fast reply, or I'd have talked with you before."

"You think you've got the solution to our problem here?"

"Not a solution. All I've got is an explanation."

He looked relieved. "Hell, don't worry about that, Beth. We've solved every other problem that Nature's been able to throw at us up here. If you can tell us the cause of it, well find a fix."

"I hope you're right. I wish I was that confident." I thought for a few seconds, then mentally shrugged. I had to get it over with, the sooner the better.

"Tom, I could say this a hundred ways, but none of them are graceful. I'll say it flat out: we don't
belong
here."

He frowned, then laughed uneasily. "Beth, you'll have to say more than that. I don't know what you're trying to tell me."

I leaned forward and took his hands, thin and bony, in mine. "Look, you know my thought processes as well as anybody in the world—or out of it. I'll tell you exactly how I got to where I am, and you can tell me if you spot any error in the logic."

"All right." He nodded. His face was troubled. "What's the bad news?"

"All that I knew when I came up here," I said, "was that the children in the Colony were feeling terribly lost and unhappy. That was obvious from the things they were writing in school. Then, even before we got here, I noticed an odd thing. You never called them the children—it was always the 'space-borns.' And when I got here I found that the other adult colonists used the same expression."

"Well, Beth, they
are
space-born—all of them."

"Of course they are, but more than that they are your
children.
It's not as if some of the children had been born on Earth, and you needed to separate the two types for some reason. They were all born here. Oh, I know there's plenty of love and affection, it's not that. I've seen the teachers working with the children, and I've been impressed by them. But I still found it odd that you would refer to them by a different name. I wondered at first if it were their odd appearance—that was the only explanation that I could think of."

I thought back to that appearance, and to the aerial ballet of the children's activities, the movement of those delicate, graceful bodies with their smooth skin and scanty hair.

"When I got here, I went to hear the classes that were being taught. They were excellent. I can't recall hearing anything better on Earth. Well presented, by teachers who loved the children and their work. I seemed to be stuck. I went back to my room, locked myself in, and re-read the school reports and the medical records.

"Tom, you know the methods I use in my work. I tried to imagine myself inside the head of one of the space-borns, seeing the world through the child's eyes. It wasn't easy, because the cultural referents are so different—but when I got it, it was a revelation. Remember, not one of the children here has ever been to Earth—not even to the Moon.
This,
the Colony, is the world. The only
real
world, the only one that matters."

"We tell them all about Earth, and the Moon too, Beth. They will all visit them, in due course."

"I know you tell them of Earth and Moon—too much. Tom, all your teaching is done by adults, born and raised on Earth, and it has a single viewpoint—a geocentric one. We can't see the world any other way. But try and see it now as an outsider would. You try to get the children to live in the high-gravity parts of the Colony, the ones most like Earth—when all the time they would rather live in zero gee, up near the Hub. You plan elaborate exercise programs for them, designed to prevent calcium loss and to keep their muscles strong. They hate it, they don't need those muscles or that strong bone structure. They don't see any point in running on the treadmill—that's the way they see you, in the Red Queen's Race and getting nowhere. You even promote standards of beauty based on Earth physique—which must make them all feel like freaks.

"Do you wonder that they feel alienated from the adults?"

I paused for breath. Tom was looking unconvinced, and a little stubborn.

"Beth, of course we try and get them to exercise in the higher gravity parts of the Colony. Surely you understand why. We don't want them to feel they're on a treadmill, but if they don't build their bodies they'll never be able to go to Earth at all—it will be closed to them."

"Sure it will." I held to my purpose and pressed on. "Just the way that a trip to Jupiter is closed to you and me. Do we worry about that? Of course not. It isn't home.

"Tom, this is big news.
The Colony here is a total success.
It can run itself indefinitely. There's only one thing out of place in the Colony.
Us.
We don't belong here. We're clumsy in the low gravity, we need special measures to keep fit, and we never can learn some of the zero-gee skills of the space children. As for them, they're miserable and self-destructive for one good reason—people they love are telling them they should be something they are not, something they don't want to be. That gets drummed into them, day after day. Do you wonder that they seek happiness away with their own kind, or that they are thoroughly miserable and confused with us?"

Tom was looking crushed and miserable, his eyes full of self-doubt, but I had to finish.

"The children could run this Colony, Tom, today—with a minimum of advice and assistance from us. This is their home. Earth is an alien place, a remote, unreal ornament in the sky. As for us, we've served our purpose. We were just the transition team, essential to getting the place started. Now, we do more harm than good."

I was done. I watched in silence as Tom grappled with what I had said, watched as the despair mounted in his face.

"Beth, if that's it, why can't we see it?" His voice was anguished.

"You are too close to it—you devoted your life to this Colony, all of you. It needed somebody from the outside to take a close look."

"But Beth, you're saying we'd harm the space-borns—the children," he corrected himself quickly. "We'd never do that."

"You wouldn't harm them,
knowingly.
You've harmed them, just the same. Don't you see, somehow to you they aren't real children. You watch them, all of you, waiting for the magic day when they will
change
to human children and be like you. That won't happen, ever. They are right for space. Compared to them, we are clumsy, poorly-coordinated. We aren't right for life up here."

Tom had never been self-deluding, and he had never been a coward. He was fighting to find a flaw in what I said, but on his face was dawning a pained and yearning look, the mask of Moses, learning that he might see but could never live in the Promised Land. I wondered if I could ever soothe away part of that loss.

"Beth." He roused himself, and looked at me, trying one last hope. "If what you say is true, if the children don't need us or want us here—then why do you plan to come and live here, yourself? What use will you be as a behavioral specialist, if you don't even try and influence the children's attitudes? You'll have no work to do here."

I leaned forward and took Tom in my arms, cradling his head on my breast.

"I'll have work, Tom, more work than I've ever had in my whole life. People here will need help to adjust, tremendous help. But not the children. Everyone but the children."

 
Afterword.

To me, the most interesting parts of the Skylab experiments were the biomedical results. The astronauts adjusted to free fall after a few days, so they didn't feel nauseated all the time. But soon after they went up their bodies began to excrete calcium, and that loss continued the whole time they were up there. Most significantly, the rate of loss was constant, as high at the end of the flight as near the beginning.

The possible implications of that are obvious. Lose calcium for a long enough period, and you won't have a bone structure left that can stand Earth's gravity. That leaves you with two possible conclusions: mankind can't take a low-gee environment—men and women would die if they were up there long enough. Or mankind would
adapt
to space, becoming a life-form that was not suited to existence on the surface of a planet. Take your pick—the evidence is not in yet.