by Larry Niven
The Minerva was a one-hundred-sixty-foot long delta-winged aerospaceplane. Its dock was the artificial lake northeast of the colony, but it could land on any body of water. The Minerva’s power plants would dissociate lake water into hydrogen and oxygen to use as fuel. Together they had made almost four hundred round-trips to the Orion craft.
That couldn’t last. All of the original equipment from Earth was aging fast. One day another Minerva would fail. When the last Minerva failed, as it must, the human race on Avalon would be grounded until they could build an industrial base capable of taking Mankind back to the stars. Depending on priorities, that might take a hundred years. Knowledge alone wasn’t enough. Spacecraft require specialized equipment.
They strapped themselves into the worn seats. There had been fifty, but now there were only nine. The others had been removed: more cargo space and less weight.
Carlos watched his friend ease into the pilot seat. The position was more symbolic than real: Minerva was controlled by a computer. And that’s the way it is, Carlos thought. We sit at the controls, but we don’t run the colony anymore. I wonder if Cadmann feels that way. Probably not. Cadmann was a strange one. He was bothered, he was troubled, but as long as there was a definite purpose to his life, he moved with all of the old intention and force. It had grown harder over the years to find a purpose to animate him, to give him a sense of meaning and potential contribution, but he still felt needed.
Or had until the Robor incident. Now there seemed no way to console him. The death of one of the children . . . There was no word for the sense of loss. And Carlos, for all of the years of knowing Cadmann, couldn’t say that he understood the workings of his friend’s mind.
“Cassandra. System check.”
Cassandra slowed her processes down to give Carlos a system-by-system check of all of the component parts of the Minerva. She stopped in the middle to flash a schematic, saying, “I have identified a burn-through spot in the right rear attitude cluster. I would suggest repair during the next maintenance cycle.”
“Is it safe for today?”
“Yes. Fractional chance of failure, and two backup systems.”
“All right. Power up sequence. Destination, dock with Geographic.”
“Two hundred and nine seconds to liftoff,” Cassandra said. Lights flashed on the control board. “Ground tests complete. Engine ignition in one hundred and seventy seconds.” They waited. Then pumps whined, and they felt the steady roar as the engines lit.
“Power-up complete,” Cassandra announced. “All systems go.”
“Take us up.”
“Thirty-five seconds to liftoff,” Cassandra said.
They waited again; then they felt the first motion. The Minerva slid across the water faster and faster, and suddenly they were aloft. The nose tilted up until it was almost vertical. Clouds broke across the nose; then the sky was baby blue, gradually darkening. The roar seemed to originate inside him, shaking and stirring him, giving him a wild and joyous sense of freedom unmatched by anything else in his world. He loved it.
His weight eased. A whisper of thrust continued: though the oxygen and hydrogen tanks were empty, the fusion plant remained. With that he could reach the planets. Once you’re in orbit you’re halfway to anywhere.
He glimpsed Geographic twinkling ahead.
“Docking sequence initiated,” Cassandra said.
Carlos unlocked his chair and spun it sixty degrees around. Cadmann was resting with his eyes closed. Sylvia’s hand rested softly in his. Zack was engrossed in a holo data-management module display, probably some inventory list that needed to be vetted for the hundredth time.
They needed someone like Zack. Thank God it didn’t have to be Carlos Martinez! That, Carlos decided, would have been a genuine waste. But someone needed to put tomorrow on an even par with today.
He, Carlos, enjoyed the present far too much.
Geographic was nearly history’s largest work of man (the Zuider Zee still held the record) and was certainly and by far the largest movable object. Though a mere skeleton of its former size and mass, it was still impressive as hell. Cadmann could remember the young man he had been, flying up from Buenos Aires to Geographic for the first time, one of a shuttle group of twelve. The first inspection of a genuine interstellar spacecraft was so different from the simulator sessions they had all suffered through.
It had been the culmination of a dream, a grand adventure at the end of a lifetime of adventures, something so beautiful, so rife with possibility . . .
It was too big. And it was going to take them someplace too far, and take entirely too long to do it—and they had worked to be there. If they had had regrets it was far too late to voice them by the time they were aboard.
“I was thinking . . . ” Cadmann said. “Why did we come out here?”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. Not what we say to the children. Not the myths. Why are we really here?”
Zack glanced up from his figuring. “What do you mean?”
“Why is it that all of us were willing to risk our lives. Our histories. Not one of us had enough family or friends to hold us to Earth.”
“I brought my wife with me,” Zack said. “So did Joe Sikes and some others.”
“Think, now. We weren’t the smartest and bravest, even though that’s what we told ourselves.” The Minerva was sailing through a sea of stars, the bright blue haze of Avalon below them. “We were the ones willing to leave it all behind. To go.”
“Speak for yourself,” Sylvia said. “Terry and I wanted to come here. We worked at it. Worked hard. A lot of us did, Cadmann—for that matter, so did you.”
They felt a gentle jolt as the padded docking tubes engaged and inflated. Docking with Geographic was like an act of slow love, a reunion with an old and dear friend. She had seen them through so much, and seemed to be waiting to discover if they would need her again, ever. The air always seemed to change flavor now, at this point. Just his imagination, no doubt.
“Top floor dungeon,” Carlos said. “Jewelry department, leg irons, neck irons—”
Rachael and Zack were out of the Minerva and swimming down the lines leading to the Geographic’s main lock. A curved door sealed behind them, and they were in a womb of steel and ceramic. Another door opened, and they were in the main corridor.
The ship smelled faintly musty. Twenty years of near desolation hadn’t changed that, and they had never quite gotten that smell out of the ship. Two hundred people living in close proximity for a hundred years will do that—even if ninety-five percent of them are asleep at any given time.
They heard a voice from deeper in the ship, and Carolyn McAndrews hailed them. She was followed by Julia Hortha and Greg Arruda. There was always someone aboard because Geographic served as an orbiting machine shop for maintenance of the observation satellites, and Cassandra and her maintenance and repair robots couldn’t be prepared for everything. There was never a problem finding volunteers to keep watch for a week, and for many it was a plum assignment, a chance to get away and meditate in near isolation. Carlos had, of course, taken advantage of other aspects of Geographic. He had taken many tours well stocked with female friends. He hadn’t quite tired of the null-grav amenities, but he was slowing down.
Carolyn swam down the lines effortlessly. Although her bulk was growing more and more ponderous, she moved with an uncanny grace, here where her weight was that of thistledown.
“Good to see you,” she greeted them. “It was only just getting lonely up here. Lots of time, and old cubes to sort through, but . . . well.” A strand of her washed-out brown hair floated away, got away from her, and she chuckled and swept it back into place. “How are the children?” she asked.
“Fine,” Carlos said. “But they overwater your plants.”
She patted him on the chin, and kissed him lightly. “Thank you,” she said. “Now—you want the computer room? Are you going to want privacy?”
Cad
mann shook his head. “No. Get in on this, Carolyn. You were as much involved in Aaron’s raising as anyone.”
“More than most,” she said. Then she closed her eyes, and blushed a little.
“This was Aaron’s creche,” Rachael said. “We can trace down anything, forward or backward. Cassandra, give us Childe Aaron One.”
The holostage began to play out a series of images. Every image of young Aaron, from infancy onward. They were virtually a time-lapse display, carrying him through to toddlerhood.
Cadmann watched absently. “Who are his parents?”
Rachael looked uncomfortable. “As you know, the sperm and egg samples were chosen both from the members of the colony, and the frozen contributions of those who didn’t make the trip for one reason or another. There are representative samples from all the basic genetic groups and cultures of the world, but all flawless. We could be picky. The idea was that some children would be raised by the colony as a whole, without any specific parental attachments. It was one of the theoretical bases of the colony, an experiment in shifting the primary bonding imperatives of a child from a pair, onto a concept or system. As you know, the experiment was begun in earnest after the Grendel Wars, and was terminated four years later.”
Carolyn McAndrews smiled and said, “We were making enough babies.”
“You always had doubts,” Zack said. Carolyn nodded. “Maybe we should have listened.” Ice on her mind, he didn’t have to say. Nobody would have listened to Carolyn; which was a bit odd, because Carolyn had been one of the genuine heroines of the Grendel Wars. No one could quite remember when they had stopped listening to her.
Rachael said, “The project was terminated for other reasons.”
Cadmann was looking out into black space. Carlos saw only his back. He asked, “Problems?”
“Stuff that came through from Earth, maybe a year after we left. There were files on the Bottle Baby research. We didn’t get anything else for years. Geographic’s last received signal was a light-speed communique ten years after we left. Garbled. It took quite a while to reconstruct it,” Rachael said. “There was research that implied that the creche children had a more difficult time bonding. They had all been adopted into loving, supportive homes—where parents had waited years for children, but due to fertility problems were forced to utilize artificial wombs.
“Sure, problems, Cad. There’re always problems. Statistically significant? Maybe. Some kind of academic dominance game was going on. Those can get nasty. I think some of their theories got sent and some got buried. Numbers, too.
“One theory had to do with the endocrinal flux in the uterus. The numbers we got suggest that the actual ebb and flow of biochemical products as the mother is awake, asleep, afraid, hungry, tired, sexually stimulated, whatever . . . is a form of communication between mother and child. It’s another nutrient . . . an emotional nutrient, if you will, as important as blood or oxygen.”
“I thought that all of those things had been duplicated.”
Rachael shrugged. “It’s still an art form. When you try to create a computer program to simulate the messages that a mother sends to her child, you have to remember that it is a feedback loop between the mother and the fetus. Thousands of fetuses were studied, and the ways that their mothers responded to them were recorded, and a refinement of everything that was learned was created for use in the creches.”
“So?”
“So? A camel is a horse designed by committee. There is a difference between the clumsy elegance of the human body and the sophisticated, intellectual choices made by a committee of experts deciding, which endocrinological experiences are good for baby. They tried to round out the experience. This mood swing was inappropriate, that orgasmic response pattern was a biochemical form of child abuse, a mother experiencing anger is damaging her child. The liberals swung the profile one way, the conservatives another. Too many morphemes. Too much adrenaline. Chill those kiddies out.”
“Ouch.”
“Hindsight. But the program may have been too bland. Didn’t place enough of an imprint on the children, leaving them a little too vulnerable to their environment.”
“What happened on Earth?”
“Not much. A statistically significant increase in emotional problems among those children. A slight indication of an increase in sociopathy. But remember something—each and every one of those children was in a loving home, one where the parents had waited for years to have a child. They had far more love and attention than average. It is interesting to note what might have happened if such children had been placed into average home situations.”
Cadmann still didn’t turn. “What about ours?”
“There was nothing about that from Earth—we thought that giving them love would counteract any potential problems.”
The image of Aaron continued to age. From time to time the program would lock on a particular sequence. Aaron climbing a mountain. Young Aaron kicking a soccer ball. Aaron visiting Edgar in traction. Aaron debating. Aaron defeating Edgar in debate. Aaron teaching a class in woodcraft to a group of Biters. Aaron hiking, moving quickly past a not yet injured Edgar Sikes. They were surrounded by a universe of Aaron Tragons.
Rachael said, “It worked—in general. Quite well in some cases.”
“For instance?”
Zack leaned forward. “Children from genetic groups conditioned for group raising of children. Little Chaka, from New Guinea, for instance. Toshiro Tanaka. But I know Rachael worried about Aaron, and Trish Chance, and a few others.”
“Everyone in the colony participated in the nurseries back then,” Rachael said.
“I remember,” Sylvia said. “That was a real labor of love.”
“When the children were older, they were shared by the colony as well. On through their teens. Every one of them had a dozen parents, every colonist had a dozen children. This was one of the reasons that the sexual freedom in the colony was so fluid.”
“Well,” Cadmann said, “we didn’t take any diseases.”
“True,” Rachael said. “But the other idea was that all pregnancies were desirable. If a particular mother or father didn’t want to have the child at that time, the fetus could be removed and frozen, or carried to term in a host uterus, or an artificial womb. They could be thawed when the mother or father was ready for the responsibility, or adopted by a particular set of partners—”
“Or they could be adopted into the general colony. We tried that far more often than they were adopted by specific parents,” said Carolyn. “I did what I could to . . . ” She trailed off.
Rachael sighed, and removed her glasses, rubbing her temples hard. “You asked me yesterday to look into Aaron. I have. I wish I’d done it sooner, before Ruth got so involved. I found some things which disturb me.”
Cadmann asked, “What kind of things?”
On the holostage Aaron had grown older. Aaron and virtually every woman of his generation, at one time or another. Aaron on the mainland, one of a troop of Grendel Scouts led by Carlotta Nolan and Cadmann Weyland.
“He has great leadership potential, but . . . ”
“But?”
Rachael said, “If the combination of ectogynic origin and lack of specific bonding and imprinting hit anyone hardest, it was Aaron Tragon. I think that he has bonded not to the members of the colony, but to the dream of colonization itself.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Sylvia asked.
Aaron’s image, larger than life, stared down at them, immense, serious, intent.
“I don’t mean that he has an idealistic view of what this colony should be. I don’t mean that he has the kind of gung-ho conquer-the-universe attitude that we had to have to get onto Geographic in the first place. I mean literally that dream itself, the dream of spreading across the mainland, the planet. The entire Tau Ceti system itself. Of Mankind taking the stars and remaking them to Aaron’s wishes. That dream is his mother and father, his reason for being. That dream was what this was all
about, remember?”
“I . . . remember.” Cadmann was thoughtful. “But his debates . . . sometimes they seem almost conservative. Back to nature? Live-with-the-planet sort of speeches.”
“Well, I don’t think he wants to strip-mine the planet. He wants to people the planet. Our technology is advanced enough to live in harmony with Avalon—there is no need to produce more children than Avalon can handle.”
“And second?”
“I think that Aaron Tragon stopped showing us his true face a long time ago.”
The image of Aaron at twelve appeared, duplicated itself along the walls.
Rachel looked from one image to another and sighed. “Aaron believes that the original colonists have abandoned the dream. Betrayed it. I think he is internally rather than externally motivated. I think that he might have little true contact with anyone. I think that Aaron’s sense of love has only to do with goal accomplishment.”
Carolyn smiled, a flash of what she must have been like a hundred years ago. “Of course, that goes beyond sociobiology.”
“A little. But none of that makes him dangerous,” Rachel said. “Or does it? And my daughter is in love with him, and pregnant by him, and sometimes I can’t remember I’m a psychiatrist.”
Carolyn put her arm around Rachel. They stood together and looked at the Aaron images.
Cadmann shook his head. “What disturbs me is the entire dirigible incident. He had us. From the first moment to the last. We were set up beautifully. But there was something so . . . so utterly cold-blooded about it that . . . ”
“That what?”
“That it makes me wonder who Aaron Tragon really is. Who’s really alive behind his eyes.”
“You ought to know if anyone does.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because he probably bonded more to you than anyone else. It’s clear he thinks of you as his father.”
“I—” Cadmann hesitated. “I was going to say I hadn’t known that, but I suppose I did. He was always finding reasons to go places with us, and it wasn’t just that Justin and Jessica were his friends. But I don’t know who’s in there, Rachael.”