Marooned on Eden

by Robert L. Forward

  In the hydroponics lab, further subsets of the Christmas Bush moved about in their flickering clusters to pick the crops, filter out the algae, harvest the fish, and cut fillets from the meat tissue cultures, "Ferdinand," "Lambchop," "Chicken Little," "Hamlet," and "Pâtè LaBelle." They then transferred the harvested foods to the automatic galley, where they were transformed into basic food staples and stored. Meals were normally prepared by the galley imp on demand from the crew, although a certain supply was kept available for the rare times when a human decided to cook.

  Since there was no dirt, in the earthly sense, aboard the ship, there was little waste to dispose of. Human fingernails, human hair, and human waste of all sorts was automatically collected, and along with other organic waste from food preparation and cleanup, was reduced to safe organic molecules. These were then recycled to become part of James's feed stock of basic organic compounds for use in the hydroponics tanks.

  Lint from worn clothing, bedding, and the looped carpet that lined the floors and walls of the living areas was also collected by the microimps, along with metal and plastic dust that had been rubbed or scraped off equipment. This was segregated from the organic waste, combined with similar artificial fibers, plastics, and metals obtained from worn-out clothing and equipment, and spun or recast into replacements.

  As the data streams came in from the orbiters, landers, and other exploration robots spread out over the many bodies in the Barnard system, they were analyzed by James; reduced to tables, graphs, and charts, and stored, ready for instant access by the crew. Images from the various telescopes were scanned, enlarged, and contoured. Aberrations in the incoming reports were instantly caught, double-checked, verified, and the corrected data then added to the memory banks, while at the same time being inserted into the continual data stream being sent back to Earth by a multitude of interstellar laser communicators. Within James's inexhaustible memory were stored not only all of the data that had been collected to date during the mission, but all of the vast libraries of science, medicine, literature, music, history; all ready for instant retrieval by the humans. Although James was contained, physically, within the hull of the vessel, and designed by humans to serve them, in many ways James actually was Prometheus, and bulked far larger in activity and importance than all of them put together. The great computer knew no pride in itself nor affection for the human creatures it cared for; it simply continued its multitudinous functions, as it had been programmed to do. Only the flickering lights of the motiles, and the smooth voice of James, were substantial evidence of the computer's activities; never noticed because it was always there.

  James noticed that David was now approaching the living area deck. It had been David's habit to have a tea break at about this time, so James had its motile in the galley switch from cleaning to preparation.

  David made his way into the galle,y where the galley imp handed him his squeezer filled with hot pseudo-tea and a fresh watercress sandwich made with algae-flour bread. The squeezer was monogrammed with his name and a string of multicolored musical notes. Instead of taking his afternoon tea on the communal sofa in front of the large three-by-four meter oval view window in the lounge, David decided to relax up on the hydroponics deck. With both hands full holding squeezer and sandwich, he used his Velcro-bottomed slippers to push on the loop-pile covered handholds built into the main shaft walls in order to propel his way upward. Arriving at the hydroponics deck, he brought himself to a stop at the sofa which had been hauled up from one of the video lounges and placed here in front of one of the larger hydroponics tanks. Twisting his body so that the Velcro patch on the back beltline of his jumpsuit stuck to the looped fabric of the sofa back, his slight form almost lost in the soft cushions, he leaned back to enjoy the sight of the three massive flouwen, swirling dreamily in the hydroponics tank that had been converted for their use. He alone had the instinctive color sense that allowed him to see the marvelous gradations of color in the three aliens, which the others called, aptly, Little Red, Little White, and Little Purple. The "Littles" were small subdivisions of the giant intelligent sea-dwelling natives the crew had befriended on Rocheworld. They had been brought along in this tank of carefully-engineered construction and precisely balanced fluid, to assist the humans by exploring the ocean depths of the other worlds in their planetary system while the humans explored the land surfaces.

  The "parent" flouwen back on Rocheworld were formless, eyeless, flowing blobs of brightly colored jelly massing many tons. They normally stayed in a cloud-like liquid shape tens of meters in diameter and many meters thick, moving with and through the water. The amorphous flouwen were very intelligent—but non-technological—like dolphins and whales on Earth. They had a highly developed system of philosophy, and were centuries ahead of humans in their knowledge of mathematics. The flouwen used chemical senses for short-range information gathering, and sound ranging, or sonar, for long range information gathering. The bodies of the flouwen were sensitive to light, but lacking eyes, they normally could not look at things using light as humans did. However, the flouwen, White Whistler, parent of Little White, had learned to deliberately form a clear imaging lens out of the gel-like material in its body. White Whistler had then taught the eye-making technique to the rest of the flouwen.

  In organization, the flouwen bodies were similar to an ant colony. There were no specialized organs. Instead the whole body was made up of tiny, nearly featureless, dumbbell-shaped units, something like large cells or very small ants. Each of the dumbbell units could survive for a while on its own, but had minimal intelligence. A small collection of units could survive as a coherent cloud with enough intelligence to hunt smaller prey and look for plants to eat. When the collection of units finally grew large enough, it became an intelligent being. Yet, if that being was torn into thousands of pieces, each piece could survive. If the pieces could get back together again, the intelligent individual was restored, only a little the worse for its experience. As a result, although the individual units that made up a flouwen body had a relatively short lifetime, the flouwen itself was essentially immortal. David was always awed by the fact that each of the flouwen in the tank had memories that stretched back thousands of years into the past.

  Neither Carmen Cortez nor Cinnamon Byrd, entering a few minutes later, noticed David on the sofa. The vivacity which was so noticeable a part of Carmen's personality when the ship embarked from Earth had been nearly destroyed by a past emotional trauma from which she was now slowly recovering. This new reserve was like a very thin protective film about her; delicate and fragile, but vital to her, and none of the crew had attempted to come too close, preferring to let her take her own way. The communications systems on Prometheus which she controlled with such expertise were her only real link with her fellows, as if distancing herself through an electronic link would insulate her from further trauma.

  Cinnamon stopped at the flouwen tank and spread her long slender brown fingers out over the surface, clearly and sweetly crooning a song to the inhabitants, who clustered quickly to her. Cinnamon's imp was divided into two sub-imps, one covering each ear—a glittering pair of personal stereo earphones, quietly playing the music of one of her favorite songs taken from James's music archives. Her long black braids swung, as together, human and aliens swayed to their mutual music, an unearthly duet obviously very pleasant to them all. David and Carmen left quietly so as not to disturb them.

  Richard Redwing's large frame rarely went anywhere quietly, and in this case he was shouting as he came through the passway that led from the central shaft.

  "Little Red! Let's get you out of that fishbowl, buddy, and do something noisy!" Cinnamon smiled at the interruption, and stepped away from the flouwen's tank, returning cheerfully to the hydroponics lab and her partners there, Deirdre O'Connor and Nels Larson.

  Deirdre didn't glance up as Cinnamon came in, and Cinnamon was not surprised. Of all the crew, Deirdre had always been the most self-contained. Indeed, the little animal s
haring space with the imp on Deirdre's shoulder usually reacted more to what was going on around them than the woman did. The icy green eyes remained intent on the microscope viewer before her.

  Nels stood, as he always did now, at the tall desk he had requested from the Christmas Bush when his new legs were grown. The advanced mathematical skills, analytical ability, and large memory of the flouwen had been able to unravel and comprehend the growth regulators in the human DNA and deduce a method which made it possible for Nels to grow new legs to replace the flippers with which he had been born. Nels now took secret pride in the long, but very hairy, limbs which now supported him. At Cinnamon's arrival, he moved slightly to one side, indicating a graph on the console screen before him, as he continued his conversation with James through his imp.

  "This decline in cell division of the flour-protein algae—possible causes, James?"

  The computer began its survey. "Initial diagnosis is insufficient nutrients combined with a weakening in light intensity. However, the light intensity monitor was calibrated last week . . ."

  Cinnamon thought briefly about the algae in question. Her nurture of the all-important crop was as instinctive as it was learned, as were her other multiple skills in piloting and emergency medicine. She stepped away down the corridors lined from floor to ceiling with water-filled tanks, and looked thoughtfully at one of the sealed algae tanks with its microscopic but living occupants. She reached to increase, ever so slightly, the levels of oxygen within one of the tanks. She returned as Nels concluded his conversation with James: "If you say the oxygen sensor is out of spec, then it's probably a slight case of oxygen deprivation. Increase and observe results." Cinnamon said nothing and went on to her next task.

  Back at the flouwen tank, Richard, with the assistance of James, finished "pumping" the fluid red creature out of its tank and into its clumsy but efficient "wetsuit." The wetsuit, custom-built by the Christmas Bush, enabled the aliens to move safely about the ship in the low gravity, while protecting the humans from the ammonia in the ocean water that the flouwen preferred to live in. The wetsuits were made of the same strong flexible metallic glassy-foil material that the human spacesuits were made of. In the legless wetsuit with its rounded bottom, the red flouwen looked like an over-sized version of a child's punch toy. From ports in the neckring of the helmet there extended three short "arm" sleeves ending in three-fingered "gloves." By inserting a thickened, gel-like pseudopod into the sleeves and gloves, the flouwen could point, control James's touchscreen computers, manipulate small objects, and pull itself about in freefall. On a planet, it could swim in the suit using its normal undulating swimming motion, and move about, clumsily, on land surfaces, by rolling or humping like a seal.

  Just as a human space suit came with its own imp, the flouwen wetsuits had imps that could pick up the sonic speech of the flouwen and transmit it to James, who then translated the flouwen speech and retransmitted the translated message to the imps of the humans.

  Two semi-globular lenses of plastic were molded into the helmets of the wetsuits at the same position as the eyes of a human. With the lenses to focus the incoming light into an image, the light-sensitive bodies of the flouwen could look at things using light, replacing their more normal method of "seeing" things using sonar. Out in space, this was the only way the flouwen had of observing things at a distance. Inside Prometheus, there was air to transmit sound, so they could also use their preferred method of observing, which was to "see" things using sonar pulses generated and detected by their bodies. The wetsuit rendered Little Red about the same size as Richard, and through the assistance of James's imps and translation programs, the two disparate beings were able to communicate with each other quite well enough to argue. It was, perhaps, odd, that of all the physical bodies in this little society, the only two that really enjoyed contact were these two, as they disputed passage of a door with only room enough for one.

  It was not always so—in the long years of the flight there had been many, many incidents of physical contact between most of the humans—and highly enjoyable they were, to most concerned. But, with James so admirably tending to every human need, and the necessity to work long, hard hours collecting and analyzing data, the people had become more content to pursue solitary interests. And the last journey of exploration, to the frozen wastes of the Gargantuan moon, Zulu, seemed to have left the explorers themselves a little chilly, a little more distant from each other, a little less concerned about each other, than ever they were before.

  Shirley Everett, Chief Engineer, concentrating on perfecting the already-smooth operation of the apartment-building-sized spacecraft she helped design, had no room in her thoughts for the several romances she had known on the trip. Her eidetic memory was now focused on mental images of the original fabrication drawing detailing the fastening arrangements for the heavy duty water pump in front of her.

  After verifying the position of the bolt holes using the tiny, but brilliant beam of her Permalite, she used her considerable strength to muscle a replacement pump into its position under the flouwen water tank, the seals on the previous pump having failed while handling the slightly corrosive ammonia water that the flouwen preferred. She was assisted by Reiki LeRoux, who held two bolts, ready to insert them when the mounting holes were lined up, while in the crawl space beneath the floor, a Christmas Branch waited with lockwashers and nuts. The Christmas Bush, despite its wondrous abilities, was too physically weak to manage the massive pump itself, and so James often had to rely on the brute strength of the larger humans to carry out some of its more difficult tasks.

  As the pump slid gratingly into its tight fitting position, Reiki dropped the bolts into the mounting holes. Underneath the floorboard, the waiting Christmas Branch quickly and efficiently installed the washers and twirled on the nuts. Then it rearranged itself so that its six tough metal main arms were locked into a bracing structure holding the nut.

  On the other side, a slightly panting Shirley replaced her Permalite in her shirt pocket and dug out her Swiss-Army Mech-All from its pouch on her belt. She manipulated a control on the side and the rounded blob of memory metal at one end reconfigured itself into a metric wrench jaw that just fit the hexagonal bolt head. She torqued the bolt down, but in the tight quarters, she skinned her knuckles in the process.

  "Damn!"

  Reiki politely pretended not to hear.

  Shirley's personal imp shifted from its normal crescent shape encircling the top of Shirley's thick single blond braid into a more effective six-legged tarantula shape, and clambered down Shirley's arm to staunch the flow of blood and dress the wound, while sending out distress calls to James. A sub-imp came flying in from the sick bay and unobtrusively applied ointment and a patch of Nu-Skin to the knuckle, then took off again carrying the trimmed off pieces of skin and the coagulating droplets of spilled blood.

  Just as Shirley finished tightening down the last bolt and was putting her Swiss Army Mech-All back into her pouch, through her imp, and that of everyone's imp on the spacecraft, came the call that they all had been waiting for. It was from Nels.

  "Come to dinner!"

  Nels had offered to cook a meal for the entire crew tonight, in celebration of the good news the Zuni orbiters, flyers, and landers were sending up. His own inventions of new algae cultures and variations on tissue cultures were always edible, but he claimed that he and Cinnamon had prepared something really special for them that evening.

  In preparation for the dinner, the Chief Lightsail Pilot, Tony Roma, had put Prometheus into a "high-gee" acceleration mode to provide them with some temporary artificial gravity in the normally near zero-gee environment. The acceleration wasn't much—a few hundredths of an earth gravity—but it sufficed to keep wine in glasses and napkins on laps. The crew seldom missed the gravity of Earth. The freedom of living in free-fall was a delight, and with the advent of simple medications to counteract calcium loss and other problems noticed during the early space age, people in free-fall w
ere able to stay active and healthy for decades longer than those subjected to the debilitating effects of a constant one gee drag on one's body. Everyone on Prometheus had benefitted from this, as well as the age-lengthening properties of the No-Die drug. These, combined with the strong bodily systems for which the crew had been so rigorously screened, made them capable of enjoying the manufactured foods they normally ate. Tonight's dinner, however, was special.

  Reiki, obviously delighting in the formality, smoothed the napkin on her lap and quietly lined up her silver with the edge of the table. She elected, however, to use chopsticks this evening instead, in honor of the occasion. Her beautifully lacquered set had been a gift from her great-grandmother when she first left Japan, and she had treasured them all these years.

  Everyone was delighted when the serving imps brought out the free-fall wine glasses. Tall and tulip in shape, they had much narrower rims than an earthly wine glass, and just below the inner rim was a narrow film of water-repellant compound that kept the ball of wine inside—unless one became careless.

  "I am so pleased to see this instead of a squeezer," said Reiki, holding up her glass to look through it. "This will allow us to partake of our libations in a civilized manner, enjoying the smell and taste of the wine at the same time, instead of merely slurping the liquid directly down the throat through the squeezer straw, bypassing nose and tongue completely." She looked around as Linda Reagan and Katrina Kauffmann joined them at the table, making nineteen in all. "And we're all sitting down together for once, instead of eating alone like hermits. The experience of sharing food is so conducive to civilized behavior!"