by Larry Niven
“Maybe someone needs to tell them to treat us better,” she said.
“You’re angry, Rachel. I can feel it in you. Anger and loss. You lost a lot, I lost a lot, but you’re here. And you still have work to do. We all have work to do.”
“I know,” she said.
“Don’t make Council mad. Think of poor Andrew. Remember you could turn out that way. You’re used to being favored—you are favored. But you could lose that, and I’d hate it if you lost your dreams.”
“Don’t you mean if I lost more of them?”
Her father just smiled gently and nodded. “You look tired. Why don’t you sleep?”
“Good idea.” She hugged her dad hard, not wanting to let go.
At midnight she woke up sweating, knowing she could never trust Gabriel so much again. She was dancing to more strings than just his, and he was a puppet too. Liren and Kyu and the captain, they all had more power than Gabriel. Treesa and Astronaut made a difference too, although Rachel didn’t understand it yet. She had thought Council all saw things the same way. But they argued and schemed and planned different plans inside the big plan that they all supported—to leave Selene. Gabriel was asking Rachel to help with that plan, but she didn’t want Council to leave. How would they live on Selene without the Council to run things?
Her thoughts drifted back to Treesa, and it was no comfort to imagine being an old woman alone in a garden with caged birds for company.
CHAPTER 29
HARRY
DAWN COLORED THE window rose as Rachel slipped into the kitchen and made a breakfast. In the fridge there was a bowl of bloody red lumps; she avoided it. No one else had stirred yet when she grabbed the bright blue and yellow wings she’d brought with her from John Glenn. It was still too dark to fly to the grove, but she would fly back. She hadn’t flown through air with no obstacles in so long! A good thermal with the ability to rise, to hold out her wings and float, alone above Selene . . .
Rachel squinted into Apollo’s light and made out silhouettes of old high tent poles. The path to the grove had run through them. She found a wide street that went the right direction and started along it.
She passed a building with a red and blue window sign offering homemade crafts for trade. Curious, Rachel veered toward it. In the Aldrin she’d left, Council provided everything families needed. Peering through the windows in the half-light, she made out curtains and clothes and teapots.
She turned back to look for the path. The street kept going the right direction, straight. She walked uphill between a row of houses. The street ended and she was surrounded by vegetation, plots marked out with rope boundaries. Tattered cloth name tags were tied on the rope, fluttering in the light morning breeze.
By the time she found her plot, the light of full morning was touching the tips of the trees, reflecting on the waxy leaves and making the greens bright and vivid. She set her bag down and waded in, amazed at the height of the grasses and shrubs, the way the branches towered above her head, the ropy thickness of the lianas. The Lobster Claw Heliconia leaves were as wide as her hips, and a stalk of red and yellow bracts towered over her head. The mimosas were chest high, spindlier than she’d expected, and more graceful. The cecropia towered above all of the other plants, reaching for light.
The forest floor was springy, wild with dead things turning back to soil. In the garden aboard John Glenn, roots were trapped in synthetic fiber mats and fed perfect nutrient mixes. Here, roots tunneled into dirt that stuck to her shoes. Rachel knelt down and ran her fingers through the soil, filling the cup of her palm with damp deadfall. She picked through the jumble of tiny twigs and brown leaves, ecstatic to see spidery skeletons of leaves. Her nose wrinkled happily at the peaty smell of natural compost. Looking closely, she noticed an ant, and then another, and another, marching around the trunk of the cecropia tree.
She talked into her wrist pad about the ants; describing counts and behaviors. Rachel wanted to run statistics and images through the Library and see if lower gravity had changed the ants. She was sketching the pattern they traveled on the tree when she heard footsteps behind her.
Rachel turned, and gave a little cry. But it couldn’t be Harry. Not now. His hair was lighter, and the shade of green in his eyes was just off. The square angle of his jaw was right, and he had the little quirky smile she remembered. She tried to remember the name Gabriel had attached to Harry and Gloria’s son.
Before she could find the name in her head, he extended a hand to help her stand. “You must be Rachel.”
Did everyone, everywhere, know her name? She nodded. “And you are?”
“Dylan.”
“Pleased to meet you. You’re Harry’s son.”
“Mom says I look a lot like him. I guess she must be right. Anyway, do you like it?”
“Like? Your name?”
“The grove. We all take turns, Dad and Mom and me, taking care of it.” He swept his right arm expansively toward her trees.
“Of my plot?”
“Dad and Mom said they couldn’t bear to have your plot fall into the student pool. We kept it perfect in case you came home.”
“Th-thank you.” This boy wasn’t more than two years younger than the Harry she’d seen a few months ago. It was hard to stay balanced on her feet and talk normally. “Yes . . . well, I’m glad someone does, oh, I mean . . .” She slowed and took a deep breath. “Yes, it’s beautiful. Thank you. It looks even better than I thought it would when I designed it.”
“It’s my day to check on things here, but Dad said to call if you were here. So I did, as soon as I saw you. We heard last night. And gosh—Mom was so excited! She said her best friend is returned from the dead. They’ll be along in a bit.” Dylan was looking her up and down as if she were a piece of art.
She shivered and goose bumps rose along her arms. Her voice caught in her throat for a moment, and then she shifted back to a safe subject. “The ants are pretty neat,” she said. “I studied them on the ship.”
“This is Star’s third try for a viable ant colony.” Dylan put his hand down on a trunk in front of a marching column of black ants, and the next ant bumped into his fingertip, then veered around it, marking a new trail. Dylan smiled. “I think this colony might take. These guys have been going for two months now.”
“There weren’t any ants here when I left.”
“Star’s been pushing insects the last few years. We’ve got reproducing colonies of bees now.”
“I saw birds too.”
“There’s fifteen species now.” He sounded proud. “Including chickens. Did you really save Mom’s life?”
“She was a little girl then, and I had to be saved too.”
Dylan grinned.
The whine and snap of wings came from overhead.
Harry and Gloria swooped down and landed, one on each side of Rachel, almost knocking her down as they crowded close.
The thirty-nine-year-old Harry had grown into all of his body parts. He’d gotten taller. His shoulders were much broader, though he was still lean and muscular. His back was slightly curved in, giving his stance a little stoop. Lines crinkled around his eyes. He didn’t look directly at her for very long.
For her part, she could hardly look at him. It hurt.
Gloria had changed far more than Harry. Rachel remembered the plucky young girl she had carried on her back; she saw a tall, sharp-edged woman with spiky hair and clear muscle definition. Her stomach protruded with pregnancy. Gloria was the first one to talk, “Rachel—oh, gosh. I thought you’d never come back. You . . . you . . . you look so much . . .”
“. . . the same? Yep. But you sure don’t—and you look great.” Words rushed out of Rachel in her confusion. “I’ve been sitting and talking with Dylan. You have a great son. I’m really very happy for you.” She couldn’t look at Harry as she said it. A young blond girl landed and stood behind Dylan. She looked almost thirteen. “And who is this?” She looked at the girl, who nodded once, and smiled shyly.
Dylan spoke for her. “This is my sister, Beth Rachel.” He emphasized the Rachel, but said, “We should call her Beth, since you’re here.”
Gabriel had said they’d named their girl after her. Rachel felt more goose bumps. She held her hand out. “Pleased to meet you, Beth. Have you helped too?”
“Sometimes,” Beth Rachel said.
“So much has happened; I don’t know how to catch up. And hey, I’m really grateful to you all for keeping this place up so well. It’s beautiful.” Rachel’s eyes stung, and she swallowed and blinked, taking three long pranayama breaths, using Gabriel’s techniques to calm her racing heart, control her fear.
Gloria looked down at the ground between her shoes. “We wanted to keep it right in case you ever came back. It’s . . . it’s a family habit. We . . . we didn’t want to forget you. You meant so much to us.”
“Nick helps too sometimes,” Harry said. “And Sharon. All of us do; everyone who remembers you. And some others you haven’t met help; at least when the rest of us are gone or on extra shifts.”
Why would they do that? She was overwhelmed; she had steeled herself to a world gone on without her, forgetting her. She blinked back tears.
They toured the First Trees. Rachel was openmouthed with surprise at how big they’d grown. The large buttressing roots of a full jungle were beginning to appear, so they had to step up and over roots, or walk around them. Lianas ran overhead, and flowers filled the air with a sticky sweetness. Birds flashed in the trees.
“Hey, Dylan,” she said, “I don’t see any ants here.”
“Council never uses the First Trees for testing anymore.”
Gloria interrupted. “Dylan, Rachel—Beth Rachel that is—we need to go. I have to get to the schoolyard.” She looked at Rachel. “Being pregnant keeps me off the crews, so I do a half-shift babysitting every afternoon. The kids help me. Will you come to our house tonight? I’ll make dinner. Spaghetti?”
Rachel wasn’t sure she could be around them for a whole evening. “I promised my dad I’d eat at home. Sometime soon?”
Gloria looked disappointed, but she said, “I understand.” She kissed Harry on the cheek, and then turned and left. Beth and Dylan followed her.
Gloria was chattering to Beth, and Beth’s face was turned up toward Gloria’s, smiling. Dylan looked back over his shoulder once. Rachel watched them walk away until they were nearly at the far edge of the meadow. She should have been the one to herd Harry’s children home.
“Walk with me?” Harry asked, turning away.
Rachel just nodded, numb, and followed him. They walked silently for a long time, picking their way along a thin path that meandered just inside the First Trees. They were so close to the meadow that light streamed in and touched the tips of the ferns and lianas with gold, and sent spots of dappled light across Harry’s back. Rachel’s stomach heaved and she struggled not to cry out loud, then stumbled and stood next to a cieba, sobbing.
Harry stopped, and made a strangled sound in his throat, and reached for her. She stepped into his arms and cried on his shoulder. He held her softly, awkwardly, patting the back of her head. When she looked up, his eyes were red too. The lines around his eyes and small streaks of gray in his short hair made her dizzy. He pushed her back, and looked directly into her eyes. “I’m sorry it all turned out this way.”
“I know,” she said, “we were robbed. It wasn’t either of our faults.”
“It could have been changed.” Harry sounded bitter.
“Not anymore.” She sniffed, and wiped her face with the back of her hand. “You seem to be happy.”
He hesitated, then said, “I am. Things turned out well for me.” He smiled softly. “I love Gloria and the kids a lot. But I thought about you often, even after Gloria and I contracted.”
She started walking, leading him this time, choosing a wide path that wound away from student plots, through community jungle that was old enough to rise above their heads. She didn’t trust herself to say anything. In a few places tiny saplings struggled up right in the path. Rachel was surprised to see them; they would have been pulled up as seedlings when she was here before. She stepped carefully around them, even though surely they’d be removed eventually.
“Aldrin is different now,” Harry said, his voice floating up from behind her.
“Dad and I talked about that last night. He looks tired. I think they’re making him work too hard. He says that Council is much tougher. I really hope Gabriel being back makes a difference.”
“It’s not likely to. The rules are different, and there’s the Earth Born . . . a lot of them don’t like us much.”
“Yeah, I met Kara last night. I feel like an unwelcome stranger in my own house. Only it’s not even my house. I feel like I walked into someone else’s life.” Rachel tripped over a long thin root, nearly falling, and Harry caught up with her.
“You were gone a long time.”
“I don’t even know what Council expects of me anymore. I did learn a lot on the ship, and I very much want to use some of what I learned.” She thought about Astronaut, and Treesa. She couldn’t tell Harry about them.
“Do you feel like that, even after all Council did to you?”
“It wasn’t ‘Council’ that made that choice. It was Ma Liren, and High Council. There’s a High Council that makes choices for us, even for Gabriel and Ali.”
“But you aren’t Council, you’re one of us.”
“I meant for all of us, Harry. Council, Earth Born, Children. All of us. We don’t choose the important stuff.”
He didn’t reply. They walked without talking for a while, feet scratching through deadfall on the path. Rachel smelled flowers that she couldn’t even see, and damp mosses, and the light healthy rot of the deadfall. She cleared her throat. “Tell me about Andrew.”
“He’s strange, Rachel. He runs with a crowd of younger people in Aldrin, and they answer to him for things, and he keeps them angry with Council. I think that’s how he gets his information since he still can’t have direct data. Oh, they all still do what they’re told, but they do it like they want to see how far they can push Council and Earth Born. He’s going to get in more trouble. He was my best friend once, but I’m actually glad that my kids don’t hang out with him.”
“Trust Andrew to be stupid. We can’t fight Council. We need them—we just have to find a way to make them let us help them so we learn more. Either that, or find a way to make them stay here on Selene, or at least in Apollo system. But I don’t know how to do that.”
Harry walked faster to catch up with her. “Watch for a while. And be careful, Rachel. Last week one of the guys on Nick’s crew, one of the young ones that hangs around with Andrew, got in trouble for talking back and he disappeared for a few days. He said they kept him in a locked room.” Harry put a hand on her arm. “I don’t agree with Andrew exactly, and I don’t like his ideas, and I hope we don’t have to fight Council or Earth Born. I don’t want to, because of the kids. But if they keep making us work so hard and giving us so little, it may come down to a fight someday.”
Rachel blinked and stumbled, unsure what to think of this new Aldrin, this new Harry. She pulled ahead of him, and stopped out in the clear meadow, then turned toward him, so he stopped, facing her. How could she share some of what she’d learned? “You should see Selene from space; it’s beautiful. It’s like a jewel we’re making, the water shines out and sparkles, and the edges of the craters are shadowed and beautiful. It’s small, Harry, too small for us to fight over. It’s fragile. And the John Glenn, it’s huge, but it’s still fragile too. Did you know Sol system had billions of people, and they lived all over the system, not just on one tiny moon? And some of the Council think they all died. This is a smaller and more fragile place than we think it is.”
Harry looked at the ground and shuffled his feet. Then he looked up and smiled. “Gabriel was right, you’re a natural leader.”
She shook her head. She couldn’t take an
y more—there was so much wrong with this older Selene. “Harry,” she said, “I have to go. I need to get back home, and first, I need to fly some. The garden is so cramped. I need to feel some space.”
Harry looked startled. “Would you like me to fly with you?”
“No. I need to be alone. I’ll come over some night soon and talk with you, I promise. You can start sending me questions and notes again if you want.”
“No, I can’t. They don’t let us use much extra communication anymore.”
Rachel drew her lips tight. “Okay, we’ll talk. I need you.”
He smiled at her and stroked her face as if she were a child. “I do have a lot more questions for you.”
Rachel pulled back. “I bet you do.” She turned away. “I have to go. I have to think about all of you being older.”
“I understand.” Harry turned and walked away in the same direction Gloria and the kids had gone.
Rachel realized she didn’t even know where they lived.
CHAPTER 30
MARINER STEW
GABRIEL FLEW A criss-cross pattern over Selene’s jungle, trying out a new plane, staying high, eyeing the changes in Selene from an eagle’s viewpoint. Green squares covered the ground, riots of greens competing in the older plantings, sienna sprinkled with green in newer fields. Snakes of dirt road crossed the older green squares. Long rectangles of landing strip interrupted the patterns in the newer jungle. A few of the landing strips were dotted with people and small flyers.
What he saw pleased him; the old plantings looked established. New lines of green pushed out along the old Sea Road. Here and there brown sticks attested to flare damage, but most of the trees looked healthy. Fifty percent of the intended jungle was planted. Already there was nearly enough diversity to sustain the planned five thousand population. They were behind their goal for square kilometers planted. The numbers sat on the tail end of the pessimistic side of his and Ali’s original models. Still, he grinned to see that even the unexpected flares hadn’t dropped production below the slop they’d programmed into the model for chaos effects. They were good at this.