by Larry Niven
It was early evening, nearly dark. Aldrin glowed with new lights, at least twice as many as before. Twenty years ago, air traffic used a wide hardened field near the grove. Today they glided onto a paved surface on the other side of town, ringed with bright lights, guided in by a two-story tower. They were the only space-plane landing, but they competed for landing room with a plane from Gagarin. Slim new planes with red and blue wings lined the runway.
Rachel grabbed her pack and slung it over her shoulder and scrambled out of the plane. She inhaled deeply. The smells didn’t match her memory, but they were the smells of a world: dirt and plants and people. The stars spread above her where they belonged, and the ground under her feet was solid and dark out to where horizon met black sky.
She looked around for her dad or Harry and Gloria, or anyone. Surely they had come to greet her?
A brown-haired, compact man wearing braid clips like Gabriel’s came up and clapped Gabriel on the back. “Boy, am I glad to see you! There’s a lot to catch you up on—”
“Not here.” Gabriel turned toward Rachel. “Rachel, this is Shane. He and Star have been teaching and overseeing Teaching Grove, just like Ali and I did when you were a student.”
“P-pleased to meet you,” Rachel said.
Shane’s eyes traveled up and down her body as if inspecting her. Finally, he smiled and extended a hand. She shook it quietly. Shane turned and led them toward a squat brown building below the tower.
As they crossed the threshold, Rachel saw her father standing twenty feet away. At first, he hesitated; looking, then his eyes sparkled as a huge grin split his face. She ran toward him, throwing her arms around his waist. “I came back, Daddy. I told you I’d come back!” She felt his arms tighten around her, finally holding her as hard as he used to.
“Shhhh . . .” he said. “Shhhh . . . I know.” He stood there for a long time, rocking her, and then he held her away from him and studied her. She returned the gaze. New lines surrounded his eyes, and his hair was gray. His skin hung more off his face, and was mottled. He looked tired.
“You . . . you . . . look . . . exactly . . . like you left a few months ago,” he stammered.
“I did,” she said. “I did.” The oddness of his grip penetrated, and she looked around at his hand on her shoulder.
“Wait now, you’re stronger. More muscle. Did Gabriel tell you about Kara and the kids?”
She nodded, swallowing. His thumb and forefinger were missing. His remaining fingers were very strong. She touched his hand. “Dad, what happened?”
“We’ve made a room up for you. Gabriel said he might let you visit. Can you come?”
Rachel thought he looked uncertain again, and she turned to look at Gabriel, who stood just behind her. If she asked, Gabriel could say no. And leaders created the future. She turned back to her father. “I will. Gabriel can come’for me when he needs me.”
Behind her, Gabriel’s voice was flat. “I’ll pick you up day after tomorrow.” She turned around to thank him, but Gabriel turned away and she couldn’t see the look on his face. She swallowed, turning back to her dad.
His eyes were wide. “You should have asked.”
She took his hand, and said, “Let’s go.”
Frank squeezed her hand, and leaned closer. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“Me too.” She wished she’d been able to see Gabriel’s face, to tell if he was mad at her. Rachel followed Frank out of the building. The paved path outside was wide enough for them to walk side by side. Lights made round pools they walked in and out of, holding hands. “So, tell me about Kara,” she said.
“Well, they always wanted me to have more children, but . . . but I kept hoping your mom would come back.” He looked at her questioningly.
“I didn’t find anything out, except that she’s like I was, dead to the world while it goes on around her. No one would tell me anything.”
Frank frowned. “I lived alone for the first few years. In the beginning, you were coming back in three months, and we talked all the time. Then it was going to be another year, a year cold, and—” She felt his shudder. You don’t talk to the dead. “The year was hard. It was harder when it got past the year. I thought I’d lost you forever. No one told me anything when I asked at first, just that they’d warm you someday.” He took her hand and squeezed it, so hard it hurt. “That’s what they said about Kristin!
“It took me two years to choose to live with someone else. Kara was one of those Earth Born they brought down to help build more shelters; there wasn’t much time between flares to get it done. I knew I was getting close to running out of choices, and besides, living alone was getting hard.” He cleared his throat. “I got assigned to help with the new buildings too, and Kara and I got along all right. They don’t make us match up, but it’s expected, you just know it. They need children here so we’ll have enough hands to do the work. I was afraid I wouldn’t have good choices if I didn’t hurry up and make my own decision, and besides, I was lonely.” He squeezed her hand again. “Kara and I did a ten-year contract when we found out she was pregnant with the twins.” He looked at her searchingly, as if wanting her approval.
She nodded slightly. “Go on.”
“Kara’s all right. She’s honored her contract and stayed with us. She’s Earth Born. She thought she’d wake up at Ymir, but of course she didn’t. She’s adjusted okay, but she wants to go back to the ship. Most Earth Born are like Kara—surprised and thinking this isn’t what they were meant for. Some are friendly to us, some keep to themselves.”
He walked quietly for a while, as if he was someplace far away. Rachel looked at him closely. He was older, but she sensed more than that. It felt as if he had less hope; as if he were unhappy and tired in some deep way. But then he looked back at her, brightening again.
“Rachel, you should see the kids . . . the boys are nine, Jacob and Justin—did anyone tell you we had twin boys? They’re both wild. They take things apart all the time, and they try and put them back together. I think they’ll be mechanics, and maybe bad ones.” He smiled warmly. “Or very good ones. And we have a daughter, Sarah, who’s seven.”
“Daddy, what happened to your hand?”
He held it up and turned it back and forth, looking. “Oh. I swung an ax at a burl stump. The grain was all wrong. It came back at me. Stupid. Willie Doc reattached the forefinger, the thumb was just shredded, but the finger went necrotic and it had to go too. It happened the year after you left.” So long ago that he’d forgotten that his hand had once been different.
She worried about her dad, but her body continued betraying her, lifting her mood, registering every sensation. Her weight was perfect. The open sky and the horizons and the light touch of wind on her cheeks felt like home. She smelled grasses, and cooking vegetables. The square houses lining the walk were weird—when she left, there were only two hard-sided buildings with roofs, and even Council lived in fancy tents. She remembered the fluttering scarves that made windows on the tent city. The new houses were neat but they all looked alike. People moved in the windows of some of the houses. They passed a few little knots of people outside, and Rachel didn’t see anyone she knew.
They turned left down a wide pathway lined with lights, and then into the doorway in a sand-colored box house. Her father went in first, and was immediately covered in children. Frank laughed and greeted them, then turned and introduced Rachel. She liked being older than someone around her. There were no children in John Glenn.
The children were friendly and shy, clustering around Frank’s legs and looking up at her. Jacob and Justin were all legs and arms, with little-boy faces topped by short reddish curls. Sarah was blond and blue-eyed, and reminded Rachel of Gloria when she was a little girl.
Rachel bent down and greeted each of them by name. The boys held back, uncertain, but little Sarah reached out her hand for Rachel’s, and shook it solemnly, then giggled.
A woman who must be Kara leaned in the kitchen do
orway, her arms crossed over her torso. She was clearly Earth Born, wider and shorter than Rachel or Frank, with ample hips, a broad face, and serious eyes framed with dark brown hair. She stepped forward and took Rachel’s hand firmly, and said, “I can’t tell you how pleased your father has been to know that you are okay, that you were coming home.”
Rachel returned the handshake, noticing that Kara hadn’t said that she was happy to see Rachel. “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said.
“Your room is made up,” Frank said, turning. “Follow me.”
As soon as the door opened, Rachel broke into a broad smile. Her old bed was there, and new clothes, and even a pile of blankets. Pictures she’d made before she left hung on the walls. The little box he had carved for her sat by the bed. She put her pack down and opened the box, taking out the little tree and holding it in her palm.
He had put real effort into helping her feel at home. “Thank you,” she said, as controlled as she could. “Thank you.”
Her dad looked bewildered. “You’re welcome. We’ll have dinner in about an hour—if we can keep the kids away from the table for that long. I’m sure you’ll want to rest some after the trip down.”
She wasn’t tired; her new body wasn’t tired. Her spirit needed a break, a chance to breathe in the new smells of her old home. She leaned into him and held him. “I came back, Daddy. I said I would.”
“I know.” He stroked her hair. “I knew if anyone could get back from up there, you would do it.”
Rachel pulled the doorway curtain closed and sat down on the bed—on her bed—and it was too much again, and she rolled over and cried. She cried about her dad’s hand, his uneasy alliance with Kara, his gray hair, and how he looked so sad. Someone had been kind enough to put a box of tissues in the room.
Dinner was a surprise. Rachel was introduced to chicken served on rice. Nobody flinched at the notion that they were eating a dead bird. Rachel watched to see how they did it, how they worked their teeth and lips around the bones. She’d seen birds in Treesa’s panorama of Earth. Here they’d been introduced nearly twenty years ago, when so many more Earth Born came to Selene.
Kara was quiet as Frank told Rachel about how Aldrin had grown, explaining the hand he’d had in designing infrastructure. Rachel felt like Kara was watching her, waiting for something.
Jacob interrupted. “What does the John Glenn look like?”
“Tell us about the ship,” Justin said.
Sarah looked at Rachel with big eyes, but didn’t say anything.
Rachel described the bright-jeweled face of Selene as they flew above it and the absolute darkness of space outside of the atmosphere.
“How big is John Glenn?” Justin asked.
“Bigger than Aldrin. And there’s a garden inside it that’s bigger than Teaching Grove.”
Justin’s eyes went big. “Are there a lot of Council there?”
“Yes, but it’s so big, it looks empty.”
“How fast does it go?” Jacob asked.
“I don’t know.” She should know, she thought. “I think it’s not moving now. But it must have gone very fast to get between star systems.”
“What does the garden look like?” Sarah asked.
Rachel drew a data window in the air, and asked for a picture of the garden. The window started to fill up with colorful images.
“You didn’t ask it what to do,” Justin proclaimed solemnly.
“But, yes, I did. I asked it.”
Her dad leaned forward. “How?”
“Well . . .” They didn’t know about the Library bud. She swallowed. “Well,” she started over, “on the John Glenn, we can find out information by asking. It’s like a voice in your ear.”
“Can I have one?” Justin asked. “I want a voice in my ear. Can you teach me?”
Rachel shook her head. “Council has to give one to you.” She wasn’t supposed to talk about the Library. But she hadn’t mentioned it directly—she was just retrieving information. “Look,” she said, “I have to stop now.” What excuse could she use? “This is hard to do way down here, and I’m not really supposed to use it much.”
Her dad looked over at Kara. “Can you do that?”
Kara hesitated, then looked daggers at Rachel and said, “Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s not polite to show off data rights other people don’t have.” Lips pursed, she returned her attention to her plate.
After dinner, Kara took the children to bathe, and Rachel and Frank were alone in the big common room.
Rachel had become used to large spaces on the ship, but so much personal space on Selene was luxury. Their tent house would have fit in just this room. “Are you happy?” she asked her father.
“I’m happy to have you home.”
“Kara’s going back, isn’t she?”
“Next year. I’ll miss her in some ways. She’s better than most Earth Born. She doesn’t really belong here, and she knows it. But I did okay raising you. I’ll manage these three all right. Kara always said she wouldn’t stay. She has a place at Ymir.”
“So she’s leaving you with the children? Is that what you want?”
“Since when do we get what we want?” Frank stared off into space, twisting his hands together. “I’m sorry about Ursula. I know you’ll miss her.”
“Yeah.” She didn’t want to think about Ursula, not yet, so she said, “Aldrin feels different now.”
“There’s more tension between Earth Born and Moon Born than there used to be. After you and Gabriel left, and Ali followed, the pace sped up down here. The first big change was a building boom. The plan was tents, but we had to change because of the flares. That’s what the buildings are for, by the way—they’re all flare-hardened in at least one room. Here, it’s the kitchen. So if the warning goes off, you go in there and close both doors. There’s enough shielding to protect us from the smaller flares. Those happen a lot more than they did—at least a few times a year.”
The Council hadn’t been lying to her. “Other things feel different too,” she prompted him.
“Sorry—all the building—it was so we could house more people. Aldrin has hundreds of people now—and new rules and more tension. Partly the tension is from Council. We’re behind in their master plan—the flares got in the way, and there’s been minor setbacks with planting. It’s all aggravated because the rules for the Earth Born are different from the ones for the Moon Born. Before you left, it wasn’t that way.”
“How are they different?” she asked.
“Well, that device you’ve got—the one you talk to—I’ve never seen one down here. We all have wrist pads, but they’re just phones, they don’t generally tell us things. We can’t just ask questions and have answers show up as if someone was sitting around waiting on us. Oh, we can get information, but only what’s related to our jobs.” He looked at her closely, narrowing his eyes. “You had better be careful about showing off. Some people might be jealous. Aldrin’s not as safe as it used to be.”
“I’ll be careful.” She hadn’t opened a conversation with Astronaut, not yet. She didn’t know if access to Astronaut was part of her query and response to the Library here. But she hadn’t heard the perfect voice in her ear—just the Library’s standard response talk. There was still so much she didn’t know!
Still, she had seen Selene from the sky, flown in the garden, and climbed Yggdrasil. She was half her friends’ age, but she knew things they didn’t.
Frank straightened and looked her in the eye. “Back at the airport? You acted like it didn’t matter what Gabriel said, like you’re mad at him. And him Council. Do you have any idea how glad we are to see him? Maybe things will come back closer to how they used to be. Council rules us like always. But now, Moon Born and Earth Born fight, and some of the Earth Born fight with each other. Maybe Gabriel can fix something. It can’t help us if you make him mad. I didn’t like him a lot before, but I like him better than Shane and
Star, who’ve been running classes and teams here. Earth Born run most of the teams, and they do most of the real running of the city.”
“Not Moon Born?”
“No.”
Wasn’t it the plan for Harry to lead teams? For her too? She leaned in closer to her dad. “There’s a High Council. Higher than Gabriel. He has to do what they say. But he’s pretty high up. I bet Shane and Star have less influence. I’ve never even heard their names before, and everybody on John Glenn knows Gabriel.” She stopped for a minute, thinking, rubbing her hands on her knees. “Gabriel wants us to lead. That’s why he brought me to John Glenn. But I don’t know if he can really change anything.”
Frank looked surprised. “I thought Gabriel was in charge.”
“I think he is in charge of Selene. But High Council can make rules, even for him.” She shivered. “There’s Kyu—who’s pretty and smart and tough, and the captain, who doesn’t say much, but people listen to him. Clare is the boss terraformer, which makes her Gabriel’s boss, but you don’t see her because High Council almost never comes here.”
“I met her once,” Frank said. “When I was just a little boy.”
Rachel shivered. “And Ma Liren. Liren’s nasty.”
“Gabriel’s the one who called us and said to meet you,” he said. “Rachel, I don’t ever remember being happier to hear from anyone.” Frank swept his mismatched hands through his hair, and then clasped them tightly in front of him, leaning forward. “Gabriel said good things about you. He also seemed concerned, like coming home would be hard on you. That’s partly what prompted me to find your old pictures for your room. Gabriel told me you learn really fast, and that your being iced was a privilege. I was mad at Gabriel for a long time because I missed you so, but who wouldn’t want his child to live longer?” He scrubbed at his face, shielding his eyes from her. “I’m not making any sense—sorry.” He drew a deep breath and dropped his hands, looking directly at her. “I’m just afraid for you after seeing how you’re acting. You can’t tell a Council member what you’re going to do!”