Yet now he acted indifferent to our accomplishments, dropping his head and walking off the rock shelf and stopping, then looking back at me. And over the sound of tumbling water, he asked, “How is she?”
“Ula’s fine.”
“No troubles with her?” he inquired.
It was several weeks after our hilltop celebration, and I barely remembered the hand on my leg. “She’s doing a credible job.”
Provo appeared disappointed.
I asked him, “How should she be?”
He didn’t answer. “She likes you, Mr. Locum. We’ve talked about you. She’s told me, more than once … that you’re perfect.”
I felt a sudden warmth, and I smiled.
Disappointment faded. “How is she? Speaking as her teacher, of course.”
“Bright. Maybe more than bright.” I didn’t want to praise too much, lifting his expectations. “She has inspirations, as she calls them. Some are workable, and some are even lovely.”
“Inspirations,” he echoed.
I readied some examples. I thought Provo would want them, enjoying this chance to have a parent’s pride. But instead he looked off into the trees again, the stubby branches sprouting smaller branches and fat green leaves. He seemed to be hunting for something specific, old red eyes squinting. Finally, he said, “No.” He said, “I shouldn’t tell you.”
“Tell me?”
“Because you don’t need to know.” He sighed and turned, suddenly older and almost frail. “If she’s been on her best behavior, maybe I should keep my mouth shut.”
I said nothing for a long moment.
Provo shuffled across the clearing, sitting on a downed log with a certain gravity. The log had been grown in the horizontal position, then killed. Sitting next to him, I asked, “What is it, Mr. Lei?”
“My daughter.”
“Yes?”
“She isn’t.”
I nodded and said, “Adopted.”
“Did she tell you?”
“I know genetics. And I didn’t think you’d suppress your own genes.”
He looked at the waterfall. It was extremely wide and not particularly tall, spilling onto the shelf and then into a large pond. A pair of mag-rails carried equipment in and out on the far shore. Otherwise little moved. I noticed a tiny tagalong mosquito who wouldn’t bite either of us. It must have come from the tundra, and it meant nothing. It would die in a few hours, I thought; and Provo suddenly told me, “Adopted, yes. And I think it’s fair to tell you the circumstances.”
Why the tension?
“I’m quite good at living alone, Mr. Locum. That’s one of the keys to my success.” He paused, then said, “I came to this world alone. I charted it and filed my claims and defended it from the jealous mining corporations. Every moment of my life has gone into these mines, and I’m proud of my accomplishments. Life. My metals have brought life and prosperity to millions, and I make no apologies. Do you understand me?”
I said, “Yes.”
“Few people come here. Like that freighter that brought you, most of the ships are unmanned.” Another pause. “But there are people who make their livelihood riding inside the freighters. Perhaps you’ve known a few of them.”
I hadn’t, no.
“They are people. They exist on a continuum. All qualities of human beings live inside those cramped quarters, some of them entirely decent. Honest. Capable of more compassion than I could hope to feel.”
I nodded, no idea where we were going.
“Ula’s biological parents weren’t at that end of the continuum. Believe me. When I first saw her … when I boarded her parents’ ship to supervise the loading … well, I won’t tell you what I saw. And smelled. And learned about the capacities of other human beings. Some things are best left behind, I think. Let’s forget them. Please.”
“How old was Ula?”
“A child. Three standard years, that time.” A small strong hand wiped at his sweating face. “Her parents purchased loads of mixed metals from me, then sold them to one of the water worlds near Beringa. To help plankton bloom, I imagine. And for two years, every day, I found myself remembering that tiny girl, pitying her, a kind of guilt building inside me because I’d done nothing to help her, nothing at all.” Again the hands tried to dry his face, squeezed drops of perspiration almost glittering on them. “And yet, Mr. Locum, I was thankful too. Glad that I would never see her again. I assumed … I knew … that space itself would swallow them. That someone else would save her. That her parents would change. That I wouldn’t be involved again, even if I tried—”
“They came back,” I muttered.
Provo straightened his back, grimacing as if in pain. “Two years later, yes.” Brown eyes closed, opened. “They sent me word of their arrival, and in an instant a plan occurred to me. All at once I knew the right thing to do.” Eyes closed and stayed closed. “I was onboard, barely one quick glance at that half-starved child, and with a self-righteous voice I told the parents, ‘I want to adopt her. Name your price.’”
“Good,” I offered.
He shook his head. “You must be like me. We assume, and without reasons, that those kinds of people are simple predatory monsters. Merely selfish. Merely cruel.” The eyes opened once again. “But what I realized since is that Ula … Ula was in some way essential to that bizarre family. I’m not saying they loved her. It’s just that they couldn’t sell her any more than they could kill her. Because if she died, who else would they have to torture?”
I said nothing.
“They couldn’t be bought, I learned. Quickly.” Provo swallowed and grabbed the log, knuckles pale as the hands shook. “You claim my daughter is well-behaved, and I’m pleased. You say she’s bright, and I’m not at all surprised. And since you seem to have her confidence and trust, I think it’s only fair to tell you about her past. To warn you.”
“How did you adopt her?”
He took a deep breath and held it.
“If they couldn’t be bribed … ?” I touched one of the thick arms. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” A shrug of the shoulders, then he said, “There was an accident. During the loading process. The work can be dangerous, even deadly, when certain equipment fails.”
I felt very distant, very calm.
“An accident,” he repeated.
I gave him a wary glance, asking. “Does she know what happened?”
Provo’s eyes opened wide, almost startled. “About the accident? Nothing! About her past life? She remembers, I’m sure … nothing. None of it.” Just the suggestion of memories caused him to nearly panic. “No, Mr. Locum … you see, once I had legal custody … even before then … I paid an expert from Beringa to come here and examine her, and treat her … with every modern technique—”
“What kind of expert?”
“In psychology, you idiot! What do you think I mean?” Then he gave a low moan, pulling loose a piece of fibrous bark. “To save her. To wipe away every bad memory and heal her, which he did quite well. A marvelous job of it. I paid him a bonus. He deserved it.” He threw the bark onto the pond. “I’ve asked Ula about her past, a thousand times … and she remembers none of it. The expert said she might, or that it might come out in peculiar ways … but she doesn’t and has no curiosity about those times … and maybe I shouldn’t have told you, I’m sorry … !”
I looked at the pond, deep and clear, some part of me wondering how soon we would inoculate it with algae and water weeds.
Then Provo stood again, telling me, “Of course I came to look around, should she ask. And tell her … tell her that I’m pleased … .”
I gave a quick compliant nod.
“It’s too warm for my taste.” He made a turn, gazing into the jungle and saying, “But shady. Sometimes I like a place with shade, and it’s pleasant enough, I suppose.” He swallowed and gave a low moan, then said, “And tell her for me, please … that I’m very much looking forward to the day it’s done … .”
> Terraformers build their worlds at least twice.
The first time it is a model, a series of assumptions and hard numbers inside the best computers; and the second time it is wood and flesh, false sunlight and honest sound. And that second incarnation is never the same as the model. It’s an eternal lesson learned by every terraformer, and by every other person working with complexity.
Models fail.
Reality conspires.
There is always, always some overlooked or mismeasured factor, or a stew of factors. And it’s the same for people too. A father and a teacher speak about the daughter and the student, assuming certain special knowledge; and together they misunderstand the girl, their models having little to do with what is true.
Worlds are easy to observe.
Minds are secretive. And subtle. And molding them is never so easy and clear as the molding of mere worlds, I think.
Ula and I were working deep in the cavern, a few days after Provo’s visit, teaching our robots how and where to plant an assortment of newly tailored saplings. We were starting our understory, vines and shrubs and shade-tolerant trees to create a dense tangle. And the robots struggled, designed to wrestle metals from rocks, not to baby the first generations of new species. At one point I waded into the fray, trying to help, shouting and grabbing at a mechanical arm while taking a blind step, a finger-long spine plunging into my ankle.
Ula laughed, watching me hobble backward. Then she turned sympathetic, absolutely convincing when she said, “Poor darling.” She thought we should move to the closest water and clean out my wound. “It looks like it’s swelling, Hann.”
It was. I had designed this plant with an irritating protein, and I joked about the value of field testing, using a stick as my impromptu crutch. Thankfully we were close to one of the ponds, and the cool spring water felt wondrous, Ula removing my boot and the spine while I sprawled out on my back, eyes fixed on the white expanse of ice and lights, waiting for the pain to pass.
“If you were an ordinary terraformer,” she observed, “this wouldn’t have happened.”
“I’d be somewhere else, and rich,” I answered.
She moved from my soaking foot to my head, sitting beside me, knees pulled to her face and patches of perspiration darkening her lightweight work jersey. “‘Red of tooth and claw,’” she quoted.
A New Traditionalist motto. We were building a wilderness of spines and razored leaves; and later we’d add stinging wasps and noxious beetles, plus a savage biting midge that would attack in swarms. “Honest testing nature,” I muttered happily.
Ula grinned and nodded, one of her odd expressions growing. And she asked, “But why can’t we do more?”
More?
“Make the fire eagles attack us on sight, for instance. If we’re after bloody claws—”
“No,” I interrupted. “That has no ecological sense at all.” Fire eagles were huge, but they’d never prey on humans.
“Oh, sure. I forgot.”
She hadn’t, and both of us knew it. Ula was playing another game with me.
I looked across the water, trying to ignore her. The far shore was a narrow stretch of raw stone, and the air above it would waver, field charges setting up their barrier against the heat. Beyond, not twenty meters beyond, was a rigid and hard-frozen milky wall that lifted into the sky, becoming the sky, part of me imagining giant eagles flying overhead, hunting for careless children.
“What’s special about the original Earth?” I heard. “Tell me again, please, Hann.”
No, I wouldn’t. But even as I didn’t answer, I answered. In my mind I was thinking about three billion years of natural selection, amoral and frequently shortsighted … and wondrous in its beauty, power, and scope … and how we in the Realm had perfected a stupefying version of that wonder, a million worlds guaranteed to be safe and comfortable for the trillions of souls clinging to them.
“Here,” said Ula, “we should do everything like the original Earth.”
I let myself ask, “What do you mean?”
“Put in things that make ecological sense. Like diseases and poisonous snakes, for instance.”
“And we can be imprisoned for murder when the first visitor dies.”
“But we aren’t going to have visitors,” she warned me. “So why not? A viper with a nerve toxin in its fangs? Or maybe some kind of plague carried by those biting midges that you’re so proud of.”
She was joking, I thought. Then I felt a sudden odd doubt.
Ula’s entire face smiled, nothing about it simple. “What’s more dangerous? Spines or no spines?”
“More dangerous?”
“For us.” She touched my ankle, watching me.
“Spines,” I voted.
“Back on Earth,” she continued, “there were isolated islands. And the plants that colonized them would lose their spines and toxic chemicals, their old enemies left behind. And birds would lose their power of flight. And the tortoises grew huge, nothing to compete with them. Fat, easy living.”
“What’s your point, teacher?”
She laughed and said, “We arrived. We brought goats and rats and ourselves, and the native life would go extinct.”
“I know history,” I assured her.
“Not having spines is more dangerous than having them.”
I imagined that I understood her point, nodding now and saying, “See? That’s what NTs argue. Not quite in those terms—”
“Our worlds are like islands, soft and easy.”
“Exactly.” I grinned and nodded happily. “What I want to do here, and everywhere—”
“You’re not much better,” she interrupted.
No?
“Not much at all,” she grumbled, her expression suddenly black. Sober. “Nature is so much more cruel and honest than you’d ever be.”
Suddenly I was thinking about Provo’s story, that nondescription of Ula’s forgotten childhood. It had been anything but soft and easy, and I felt pity; and I felt curiosity, wondering if she had nightmares and then, for an instant, wondering if I could help her in some important way.
Ula was watching me, reading my expression.
Without warning she bent close, kissing me before I could react and then sitting up again, laughing like a silly young girl.
I asked, “Why did you do that?”
“Why did I stop, you mean?”
I swallowed, saying nothing.
Then she bent over again, kissing me again, pausing to whisper, “Why don’t we?”
I couldn’t find any reason to stop.
And suddenly she was removing her jersey, and mine, and I looked past her for an instant, blinding myself with the glare of lights and white ice, all at once full of reasons why we should stop and my tongue stolen out of my mouth.
I was Ula’s age when I graduated from the Academy. The oldest teacher on the staff invited me into her office, congratulated me for my good grades, then asked me in a matter-of-fact way, “Where do these worlds we build actually live, Mr. Locum? Can you point to where they are?”
She was cranky and ancient, her old black flesh turning white from simple age. I assumed that she was having troubles with her mind, the poor woman. A shrug; a gracious smile. Then I told her, “I don’t know, ma’am. I would think they live where they live.”
A smartass answer, if there ever was.
But she wasn’t startled or even particularly irritated by my nonreply, a long lumpy finger lifting into the air between us, then pointing at her own forehead. “In our minds, Mr. Locum. That’s the only place they can live for us, because where else can we live?”
“May I go?” I asked, unamused.
She said, “Yes.”
I began to rise to my feet.
And she told me, “You are a remarkably stupid man, I think, Mr. Locum. Untalented and vain and stupid in many fundamental ways, and you have a better chance of success than most of your classmates.”
“I’m leaving,” I warned her.
“No.” She shook her head. “You aren’t here even now.”
We were one week into our honeymoon—sex and sleep broken up with the occasional bout of work followed with a swim—and we were lying naked on the shore of the first pond. Ula looked at me, smiling and touching me, then saying, “You know, this world once was alive.”
Her voice was glancingly saddened, barely audible over the quiet clean splash of the cliché. I nodded, saying, “I realize that.” Then I waited for whatever would follow. I had learned about her lectures during the last seven days.
“It was an ocean world, just three billion years ago.” She drew a planet on my chest. “Imagine if it hadn’t been thrown away from its sun. If it had evolved complex life. If some kind of intelligent, tool-using fish had built spaceships—”
“Very unlikely,” I countered.
She shrugged and asked, “Have you seen our fossils?”
No, but I didn’t need to see them. Very standard types. The Realm was full of once-living worlds.
“This sea floor,” she continued, “was dotted with hot-water vents, and bacteria evolved and lived by consuming metal ions—”
“—which they laid down, making the ore that you mine,” I interrupted. With growing impatience, I asked, “Why tell me what I already know, Ula?”
“How do you think it would feel? Your world is thrown free of your sun, growing cold and freezing over … nothing you can do about it … and how would you feel … ?”
The vents would have kept going until the planet’s tepid core grew cold, too little radioactivity to stave off the inevitable. “But we’re talking about bacteria,” I protested. “Nothing sentient. Unless you’ve found something bigger in the fossil record.”
“Hardly,” she said. Then she sat upright, small breasts catching the light and my gaze. “I was just thinking.”
I braced myself.
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