by Larry Niven
“Reverse?”
“A bird hits the water hard and fast, makes its grab, then takes off at its leisure. That bird hit the water slow and took off fast, almost as if . . . ” She frowned, shaking her head like someone trying to rattle cobwebs off a thought. “Never mind, I’m trying to force something.”
“Or see something that isn’t there. You’d love to put some mystery into this system.”
“How’d you get to know me so well?”
“I always understand other men’s women.”
“Ah.”
Without warning, Cadmann began to run, pulling Sylvia down the last twenty meters of slope. She skidded on her heels to slow herself, nonplused but exhilarated by his sudden burst of energy.
He glanced back and realized that Ernst was running too. Ernst looked frightened. “Hold up,” Cadmann said. He called, “Ernst! It’s okay, Ernst. We’re just running for fun. Want to race?”
Ernst’s brow cleared; his run slowed. “Race. Sure, Cadmann. Start even?”
They lined up, gave Sylvia a hundred meters of head start, and ran.
Even this far out from the camp, there was a blackened strip of road for them to follow. It was brittle and glassy.
“Your road,” Ernst shouted. “Yours.”
“Sure.” It was. The last time they really needed me. Ernst led with the weed burner, a converted military flame thrower. Cadmann had driven the bulldozer, wishing all along that there had been enough fuel to use a landing craft. That would have made a road! Hover across the ground on the Minerva, fuse the rock forever—Even so, he felt pride when he scanned the kilometers of dark ribbon he had created with his own sweat and skill. He bent to look closer at the surface of the road. A few tiny bluish sprigs were nosing their way out of the ground.
Sylvia came up puffing. “Maybe we should sow the ground with salt before you make your next pass.”
“I’m not even sure it matters. Not much of the heavy machinery comes out this far.”
Thin clouds of dust raised by the tractors puffed like tiny fires in the distant fields. The crops had been established. Now they must be expanded. Prepare the ground for new crop tests, lay away grain and seeds against the possibility of a bad year.
The Colony was a success. Zack Moskowitz—administrator, all-around good guy, everybody loves Zack—Zack had done it. The Colony was a success, and nothing short of disaster could stop its expansion across the island and eventually over all of Tau Ceti Four.
Agriculture. Food, vitamins, some comforts. We have those, and now comes prospecting. Iron ore had been discovered on the island itself, and the orbiting laboratory had found what looked very much like a deposit of pitchblende. It was deep in the interior of the continent, across thousands of kilometers of ocean and through badlands—but it was there.
Iron and uranium. The foundations of empire. “The sons of Martha.”
“Eh?” Sylvia giggled.
“Kipling. Sorry. Politicians are the sons of Mary. Then there are the others, the ones who keep civilization going. ‘They do not preach that their God will rouse them a little before the nuts work loose—’ Oh, never mind.”
Today seemed more tolerable, more like the First Days, when Cadmann and Sylvia and the other First Ones thundered down from the heavens in their winged landing craft. All the gliding characteristics of a brick. We left a line of fire and thunder that circled the sky. A hundred and fifty colonists waited in orbit, cold as corpses and no more active, while we scanned a strange planet from end to end, and chose the place to set our city, and set our feet in the rock of this world.
The National Geographic Society’s probes told a lot. Tau Ceti Four had oxygen and water and nitrogen. The planet was cooler than Earth, so the temperate zones were smaller, but a lot of the planet was livable. They’d known there would be plants, and guessed at animals. Humans could live there—or could they? Probably, but the only certainty would come when people tried it.
Civilization on Earth was rich, comfortable, satisfying; and crowded, and dull. Forty million university graduates had volunteered for the expedition. The first winnowing had eliminated compulsive volunteers, flakes whose horoscopes had told them to find a different sky, candidates with allergies or other handicaps, geniuses who couldn’t tolerate cramped conditions or human company or people who gave orders . . . Perhaps a hundred thousand had been seriously considered; and two hundred had set forth to conquer Tau Ceti Four. Eight had died along the way.
No world would ever be tamed by robots. It took men, crossing space, some awake, some chilled, a hundred years across space—The early days were good days. We were comrades in an untamed land.
Then we found Paradise, and they don’t need me at all. They need Sylvia. They need the engineers, and the tractor drivers, and, God help us, the administrators and bean counters, but never a soldier.
Sheep and calves roamed the pastures now. Colts grazed. Soon the camp would be full of children, alive with their happy wet smells and sounds; and what need had those for Colonel Cadmann Weyland, United Nations Peacekeeping Force (Ret.)?
Animals . . . a distant lowing snapped Cadmann out of his reverie. They were nearing the rows of moist, furrowed earth. Other crews had burnt the ground, spitting jellied fuel from backpack flame throwers to clear the soil of underbrush without glazing it into slag. The charred dirt had long since been plowed under to prepare for seeding. The ground was very fertile, needing only minor nitrate supplementation to provide a healthy medium for their crops.
In the distance one of the farmers slowed his tractor to wave to them, and Ernst lifted two samlon in triumphant greeting. Further ahead, Cadmann knew that there were colts and calves, still far too young to manage the plows that would be fashioned for them. It was an unusual combination—a meld of high technology and muscle-intensive agriculture. In an emergency, the Colony could fall back on the most ancient and reliable means of production.
There were rows of wheat and spinach and soybeans, and in the mist-filtered glare of Tau Ceti their leaves and stalks glistened healthily. At the base of the rows ran the irrigation ditches, fed by the stream that passed under the low bridge just ahead, flowing past the camp and over the edge of the bluff to join the Miskatonic River.
The sounds of the main camp drifted to them. The hum of light machinery, the crackle of laughter and the whining burr of saws and lathes working wood and metal.
The animal pens were on the outskirts of the main camp. Dogs and pigs had their own pens, the horses a well-fenced running space. The chickens were cooped near the machine shop, closer in to the main compound.
Cadmann stopped to examine the wire surrounding the pens. His face taughtened into a frown. Their “hot wire” wasn’t even warm; the power had been switched off months before. The barbed wire beyond that was down in three places that he could see. He scraped at a brownish patch of rust with his thumbnail.
“Let it go,” Sylvia chided.
“Look at this.” His voice was flat with disgust. “The strands are slack, and the power line is broken. Doesn’t anybody give a damn anymore? We haven’t been here long enough to get this lazy.”
“Cad—” Sylvia’s pale slender fingers covered his, prying them away from the strand. She gripped his hand tightly.
“Look, I know I keep getting outvoted, and I can live with that.” He was mortified to hear the petulance creeping into his voice, to see the maternal concern softening her eyes. “Listen. You keep telling me that there are things about this island that bother you. We’ve only got one shot at this. Nobody’s going home, and no one’s sending any reinforcements. It only makes sense to be a little paranoid. That’s why we picked an island, isn’t it? To localize the dangers?”
She squeezed his arm. “I can’t change your mind, so I’ll try not to want to. Listen. Why make a big thing about it? Why not just fix the fence yourself?”
“Sounds good.”
“Good. I’ll send for you when we’re ready for the barbecue.”
> Just before they took the last turn into town, Cadmann looked back at the farmers and felt a brief pang of jealousy. They, in wresting victory from the soil, were the true hunters, the true warriors. Ultimately their efforts would determine the future of the fledgling community.
The sun was warm, but far warmer was Sylvia’s hand against his arm.
The community had grown in a strangely organic manner; the first crew members to build their individual prefab huts had built them close together within the defensive perimeter.
Perimeters. Three rings. Electric fence, minefield, barbed wire. It made sense at the time.
Cadmann’s folly.
And one of these days they’ll make me go dig up the mines. No enemies. No dangers. Nothing. And all that fucking work to build fences.
Most of the colonists had only been awake for eight months, and already they were beginning to get sloppy.
As they had been awakened and shuttled down, the camp expanded, filling the defensive compound, then spreading outside it. From above, the Colony looked like a spiral nebula or a conch shell sliced sideways. Cadmann’s home was at the center.
The colonists outside the fence had more room, larger lots—but their location showed their status. Colonists. They were not among the First Ones. Everyone on Avalon was equal, but some were more equal than others. The First Ones had landed four months earlier and had social status—at least those who hadn’t wasted time and effort building needless fences and minefields had status.
The muffled whirr of a power saw grew louder, and the dry smell of sawdust more distinct, as Cadmann wove his way through the narrow streets that divided off the flat-roofed houses and foam-sprayed prestructured domes. Some of the domes had been left in their original tan. Others were painted, some with a kaleidoscope of colors. Here and there were strikingly realistic murals. We have a lot of talent here. All kinds. Speaking of which—The saw changed pitch as Carlos Martinez spotted Cadmann and lifted a hand in greeting.
Carlos’s dark, lean body glistened with perspiration as he glided the saw over the planks. The thorn trees at the perimeter of the clearing provided a generous supply of wood, but it was knotty and coarsely grained. Only a master craftsman like Carlos could have made anything but firewood of it, and the carpenter was deliciously aware of his valued position.
Half the Colony’s dwellings had a table or bed frame by Carlos. It was doubtful that he would ever have to take his rotation in the field to earn his share of the crop.
“Cadmann! Mi amigo.” Carlos wiped his brow and extended a sweaty palm that Cadmann shook firmly. Carlos was a true mongrel, and gloried in it. Originally from Argentina, his bloodline was predominately black, his cultural leanings anyone’s guess. His Spanish was atrocious, but he interjected it into his conversation regardless. “I heard that you had gone off with the lovely Señorita Faulkner.”
“Señora,” Cadmann corrected. He moved in for a closer look at the woodwork on the bench. It was the beginnings of a headboard for Carlos’s bed, and already penciled on it were mermaids cavorting in improbable couplings with virile mermen and grinning sailors. He sighed.
“Señora.” Carlos smiled mischievously. “It is true that sometimes I forget.”
“It’ll get easier to remember.” He patted his stomach. “She’s got a passenger on board now.”
Carlos raised his eyebrows in lecherous speculation. “She is taking on good flesh, no? My people, we appreciate a—” he screwed up his mouth in a dramatic search for the right word—“a substantial woman.”
“Substantial.”
“Sí! A helpmate in the fields, a comfort by the fireside. Ah, the days of old . . . ”
“Cut the crap,” Cadmann said without heat. “Your family never got closer to the fields than the handle of a whip. They’ve had silk on their backs and diplomas in their pockets for six generations. At least.” He turned and worked the latch of his own foam-frame igloo.
Behind him Carlos sighed. “With men like you, who can wonder that romance is dying in the world?” The rest of his monologue was drowned out as the saw revved up again.
Cadmann groped out to find the curtain cord and drew it to let in a spray of sunshine. It might be a month before Tau Ceti Four saw such a bright day again, and he was loath to waste it. The sun was already low in the sky. Preparations for the barbecue would begin when twilight fell. The colonists who were working the day shift would put aside their farming and building and repair work and gather on the beach for good food and good fellowship.
He wanted to grab his toolbox and go out to the fence, but his solitary bed, nestled beneath a sheltering bough of drip-dried underwear, called to him in a voice that his suddenly heavy muscles couldn’t ignore.
I’ll just sit for a moment, he told himself. The water mattress sloshed pleasantly under his buttocks as he settled his weight into it. He rarely noticed until he was tired, but Avalon’s gravity put an extra ten pounds on him every second of his life.
The waning sunlight cast deep shadows in the room, here and there glinting on the shelves and boxes that held the last remnants of another life. Everything he had been was in this room. The hundred and sixty people who made up the crew and passengers of the Geographic were his only family and friends.
It wasn’t much, but it was enough. Enough, because the behaviorists and sociologists and colony planners said it was enough. Because they, in their infinite wisdom, had calculated exactly how many pressed flower petals and class-album videodisks were required to stave off depression: just enough to stimulate the fond memories, not enough to create an incurable homesickness.
His world. The silver-gilt college trophies, reminders of victories in Debate and Track and Wrestling, were holograms. Hologram images of smiling women whose warm lips and smooth bodies left frustratingly little impression on his memory. How long had they been dead? Thirty years? Forty?
They’d been planning another colony even before Geographic launched. A statuesque New Yorker named Heidi had talked about riding the next starship to build a colony at Epsilon Eridani. Maybe she had. It would have launched twenty years after Geographic. She might even now be wondering which of her old beaus was still alive.
There were disks of favorite movies—his personal collection, though in principle they were part of the camp library. There, a shifting hologram of his command post in Central Africa. A peacekeeping force, nothing more, until the revolutions. “Sergeant Major Myubi! We’re moving out!”
“Sir!”
We were needed. Then.
His clothing was all non-synthetics that might take a generation to replace. How long would it be until they thawed out the silkworms and the mulberry bushes for them to feed on? Not exactly a high priority item . . .
He didn’t remember closing his eyes, but when he opened them he was lying down, and the sun had set. Cadmann grabbed his toolbox and a folding stool and hustled from the room. Getting old is one thing, dammit! Senility will just have to wait.
♦ChaptEr 2♦
on the beach
Glory to Man in the Highest!
For Man is the master of things.
—Algernon Charles Swinburne, “Hymn to Man”
A jeep roared by, full of colonists who were full of beer. “Grab some wheels and we’ll race you to the beach!” Cadmann waved and pointed to his toolbox. They razzed him and careened out of the compound, singing.
Electric lights were wavering to life around the camp as workers changed shifts. The party atmosphere was infectious. Avalon’s inadequate twin moons would smile on a beachful of frolicking spacefarers.
The folding stool’s seat was several centimeters too small, but as he bent to the task of repairing and refastening the wire, he forgot the discomfort.
Avalon’s moons cast double, divergent shadows with their bluish glow, and the stars were brilliantly sharp and clear. No crickets. And along about evening the nightbirds aren’t beginning to call because the things they use for birds here don’t sing. And ma
ybe we’ll fix that, with bluebirds and mockingbirds if the goddam ecology people want them. I wonder if they brought crickets.
Cadmann unwound two meters of wire and scraped at the clotted dust surrounding the loose connection, then clipped the old wire free and attached the new. He fired the soldering torch.
Do they still stand retreat at the Academy? Cadets in archaic uniforms standing in rigid rows, plebes telling jokes in hopes of making upperclassmen laugh and be seen by the officers . . . sunset guns, bands, the Anthem, the flag lowered slowly to the beat of drums . . . He attached the leads from the voltmeter. The needle jumped into the red. Done.
Mist had rolled in from the sea. The stars were gone; the moons were wavery blobs. Cadmann felt pinpricks of moisture on his face.
A calf on the far side of the wire grunted longingly and shuffled over, looking at him with huge, liquid eyes. Cadmann reached through and petted it, and it licked his hand.
“No mother, eh, girl? Must be tough not to have a mommy cow to love you.” Its tongue was rough and warm, and it moved more urgently now as it tried to suckle at his hand.
Cadmann laughed and pulled his fingers away. The calf shivered. “Aw, come now, you can’t suckle my fingers . . . ” Then he saw fear in the calf’s eyes. Its head jerked to and fro, then stopped abruptly as it stared toward the stream.
The other animals moved toward him. They stood together in clumps. A filly whinnied with fear, and Cadmann came to his feet.
“What’s bothering you, girl?”
The feeding stalls were enclosed by the electric fences and narrow walkways. Cadmann carefully stowed the tools and went into the compound. What’s bothering them? The filly was to his right. Instead of trotting over to him she bucked. Cadmann opened the gate to her pen. “Heidi. Here, girl.” She moved warily. “Here.” He ruffled her mane. “Shhh. Heidi, Heidi,” he crooned. “Quiet, girl.”
Night came suddenly. Both moons were at half stage: bright enough, but they left pools of dark shadows through the barnyard, some of them back by the dog pen. There were ten young German shepherds in the pen, and their ears were flattened against their heads. They growled deep in their throats, teeth bared in the moonlight.