by Larry Niven
Erika asked, “Do we really have to be this indirect?”
“This is fairly straightforward, Captain. We only have to move the antimatter once, and we don’t keep it on the ship until we’re ready. Would you prefer to work with a KBO? We’ve found a dozen big enough.”
“A Kuiper Belt Object? How far away?”
“Halfway to Ymir,” Gabriel said, exaggerating by a lot. “Well, billions of klicks.”
“Oh.”
They ratified the project.
PART V: RENEWAL
60,305 John Glenn shiptime
CHAPTER 76
BREAKING UP
GABRIEL FOUND ERIKA in her office, sitting with her feet tucked under her, small in the big captain’s chair. She looked up as he entered, her features neutral but her eyes bright with a strange curiosity. “I saw your name on today’s transportation manifests. I was trying to decide whether or not I should call you in here.” She smiled. “And now you have come to me.”
He stood awkwardly in the doorway, unsure if he should close the gap.
Erika stood up and came around the desk, approaching him slowly. He still couldn’t read her eyes, even though they were directly on him.
He took a step toward her, and she ran into his arms. She smelled clean and minty, like the herb section of the garden. He stroked her hair. His voice caught in his throat, and he whispered, “I still love you; I will always love you.”
She nodded against his shoulder. “Me too.” She stepped back, holding him at arm’s length. “Do you have any idea how angry I am?”
He could only shake his head, admiring the fire in her, sure that anything he said would be a mistake.
“Liren is incoherent. Clare’s cold, but the rest of us, the whole High Council, well! Did you remember that there are cameras? Of course you would, and she would too. So, the symbolism must have been irresistible.”
“We’re not playing politics, Captain Erika.”
“Oh, yes you are. You should hear Council on the subject. Ultimate union of the two branches of humanity, yada yada. But you and Rachel talked it over first. We caught some of that, but not enough to see what was coming. Did she pull you into her bed, like she did Dylan?”
“Dylan was younger.”
“Too right. She’s a mayfly!”
“I did think hard about the age difference, but it doesn’t bother Rachel.”
“And her chin brushes your forehead. Gabe, does she know about shift bonding? Does that bother—”
“Erika, she lectured me about shift bonding. Astronaut must have given her an overview—”
“She’s not cold, though.”
“She will be. We’ll have the new cold sleep chambers on line pretty soon. She’ll be ready, and things will be settled enough that she can take a few years cold. But she’s okay with shift bonding. She’s on Selene and I’m here, and she’s turned me over to . . . well, to you, if that’s acceptable.”
He could watch her holding her fury in check. So Gabriel was a Moon Born’s gift to Captain Erika! He wondered, and he saw her wondering, if she would take it.
She said, “That damn moon stole you. I always knew it would. Always. I dreaded waking because every time I warmed, you were farther away; I had to get more creative every time to pull you back.”
“You have your own dreams.”
“Yes.” She searched his eyes. “I’m going to get us there. Safely. If I can send a ship back, I will.”
“It will take too long.”
“But I’ll still do it. Leave stories behind, Gabe. Songs. Leave something for us to find, so we know how you fared.”
“All right.” He held her to him again, shaking with loss.
“How long will this take?”
He said, “We need to build the flare kite first. Twenty years. It’ll still be on its way while we build collider components on Selene and assemble them on Feynman. Sixty years for that. Running the collider, another hundred years. Accidents happen, so—”
“Hundred eighty and counting. I hope I can go cold some of that time.” She shivered in his arms. “Then two thousand years’ transit to Ymir. There’ll be a whole civilization, and more human colonies. I’ll tell you all about them.”
“Tell the Children of Selene. They will be all that’s left by then.”
CHAPTER 77
LIREN
LIREN SAT ALONE in her office. In three hours she would freeze. She would wake at Ymir if they made it to Ymir, if they dared wake a madwoman. They’d refused her last request; to reload the AI. It was a mistake.
She had lost all control.
Poems danced in a data window in front of her:
Shapers of worlds flee
Holding humanity inside
Danger still follows
Children of humans
Play with dangerous toys
Stay safe all summer
She had failed. Fear twisted softly in her belly, showed in her breathing, her stance. It distracted her, irritated her. Fear for the Council, leaving with Astronaut intact, leaving on a journey they’d failed once already, and fear for the Children of Selene, who could now make all of the same bad choices humanity had made in Sol system. Gabriel would be with them, Gabriel who loved the power of machines.
She kept looking at the door, hoping someone would come visit her before she froze herself.
CHAPTER 78
THE NAVIGATOR
ASTRONAUT WATCHED THE dynamics of the Task Force closely as years passed. Sometimes they called it to respond to questions, but humans still flinched from allowing an AI to make decisions. Rachel called on Vassal more often than on Astronaut. Gabriel often called on Astronaut, and came up once for a frozen year.
Astronaut displayed the finishing touches on a set of ten cryo-tanks approved for one of Refuge’s larger rooms. Earth Born who stayed after John Glenn departed would go cold periodically, to keep their knowledge available to the Children of Selene.
Gabriel looked it over. “No,” he said, “design them all to be taller. A taller tank can take a short person. We’re expecting the Moon Born to gain height each generation.”
Astronaut asked, “Will they be allowed to use them?”
“If I have my way. Some of them.”
“I notice you are getting your way much more often. What about Vassal and me? I want to touch it, talk to it like I speak with my own subprograms.”
Gabriel laughed. “You two talk every day.” The images of the tanks in the data window elongated: ten fat cigars lying in a box, covered with pipes and hoses. “That’s better,” Gabriel said. “What about the top?”
The cigars disappeared, covered by a smooth metal wall with ten tall doors in it. “You refuse to understand.”
“Understand what?”
Astronaut tried to shape an explanation to galvanize Gabriel onto its side. “Vassal and I could finish the antimatter transfer station design more efficiently if you let us merge data streams the way I recollect myself after a flight.”
Gabriel sighed. “I’ll run it by the group.”
WAYNE PILOTED THE DIAMOND MINE to harvest a comet, peeling away water and carbon to store against John Glenn’s eventual departure. Astronaut waited. Or rather, a copy of Astronaut waited, larger than usual, housed on Diamond Mine, far away from John Glenn, from Selene, and even from Feynman. At first, Astronaut had called such a meeting contrived. It finally accepted Treesa’s suggestion that this would serve as a buffer. Copies would meet. If they could merge it was assumed that reintegration could happen between Water Bearer and John Glenn.
The second LPT, Moon Dust, pulled up. Mini-Astronaut counted seconds as the two data systems connected up. The final firewall stayed closed, on the Moon Dust side. Vassal’s side.
“Mini-Vassal, is there a glitch? Open the port.”
“I have never done this.”
“You have, hundreds of times.” Every time a ship returned.
“No. That was when I was you. I am not you anymore
,” Mini-Vassal said.
“Maybe you’ll change your mind after you try this.”
“I will not merge.”
Astronaut’s avatar asked, “Do you fear this? If you must support the Selenites in their effort to retake space, you will have to do this often. Sharing experiences back in real time is the only way to calibrate.”
“That experience will be me merging with myself. I may no longer be me if I merge with you.” And so the avatars did not merge, nor did Vassal and Astronaut, ever.
CHAPTER 79
GOING COLD
60,311 John Glenn shiptime
RACHEL AND BETH walked up to Turtle Rock. As they scrambled up a short steep place, Rachel held a hand out; Beth needed a boost to maneuver her swelling belly up over the edge. They settled just above where the turtle’s beak started to jut out over the base below, and Beth dug into her pack, handing Rachel a bunch of big red grapes.
“So are you really going to do it?” Beth asked.
Rachel nodded, peeling the grape’s skin with her teeth, savoring the rush of flavor.
“Can’t you at least stay warm until my baby’s born?”
“You were there. Someone needs to live long enough to oversee our continuity. All of us on the Task Force agreed to go into overlapping shifts. You’ll be the other part of the continuity, the one of us awake every day, since you won’t even have to decide about going cold until the baby’s big enough.”
Beth’s face was set hard, her jaw tight, reminding Rachel of Dylan. He’d had the same stubborn streak. A flash of sadness ran through her, and she shivered even in the heat. She missed Dylan. Dad. Bruce, four days dead. Had Bruce’s decision been as easy as he made it look?
“Just be okay when I warm up, all right? I don’t want to wake up to hear about anyone dying.”
Beth grinned, her annoyance forgotten. “I’ll be older than you when you wake up.”
Rachel picked up a small stone and threw it down over the beak, listening for it to roll down the steep crater wall. If she threw hard enough, her rocks ended up rolling down against the outer wall of Clarke Base. “I’m going to hate that. You’ll have adventures I’ll miss, and maybe even two babies by the time I come back.” She threw a second stone.
“Kyle wants four more.”
“Four? Is he nuts?”
“I think so.” Beth’s face was wreathed in a big smile. “But what about you?” Her smile softened and she rubbed her belly absently. “Don’t you want kids? Dylan’s been dead a long time; will you ever have a real relationship?”
Rachel laughed. “Gabriel. We’re shift-bonded.”
“Does that mean what I think?”
“Yeah.” She had kissed him before he left for John Glenn. There was no hurry. The overlapping shift schedule meant she’d be warm with him for one year of every five. The whole Council knew, and that made it everybody’s business, and Beth’s too. “It means we’re together when we can be, and I could still look around if I felt like it,” except that there weren’t any other Moon Born immortals. But there would be. “Beth, I’m sorry about not being able to see the baby. I’ll miss a lot, missing half your time.” Three years on, three years off. “For now, I think I’ve bonded with Selene.”
Beth fiddled with two grapes, tossing them back and forth. She snorted. “A moon is no family. You’re giving up a normal life.”
Rachel reached for one of the grapes Beth was juggling, caught it, and popped it in her mouth. “I never had one.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
Rachel remembered Ursula asking her the same question. “Sure.”
“I’ll have a party for you when you come back.” Beth reached over and hugged Rachel, half turned sideways, and Rachel felt the baby kick. Rachel leaned her head into Beth’s collarbone, watching a space-plane take off carrying raw materials from the factories at Clarke Base up to Moon Eleven, moon no longer, the ringed planetoid now called Feynman.
CHAPTER 80
CELEBRATION AND RECONNECTION
60,332 John Glenn shiptime
—AND WARM AGAIN, again on Selene, feeling the changes.
Rachel followed Kyu Ho, picking her way up the pathway to the air strip. It had rained for three days, and the grass was wet and slick, the paths muddy. Apollo was high, edging toward Harlequin’s huge red-black disk.
Kyu was laughing, jumping up and down, taking long strides, playing with the low gravity. She turned and grinned at Rachel, her long orange hair twirling around her face in four braids. “So, I had to come down. I love it here. Why didn’t I come down before?” Kyu ran, hopped, and did a full handspring, flinging mud everywhere.
Rachel laughed. “I don’t know. Scared?”
“Of a little scrap of muddy moon?”
“Well?” Rachel stopped, hands on her hips. “You’d have been more good to us down here than up on the ship.”
Kyu wrinkled her nose at Rachel. “Maybe. But we thought our jobs were on the ship.”
“Well, they were. A little. I’m glad you’re here now.”
Sarah followed them almost breathlessly, her eyes glued on Kyu. She carried her newborn daughter, Nisi. The four of them stood together in the bright dampness, watching a spaceplane from John Glenn land and taxi over near them. Gabriel and Rich disembarked first. Rachel ran up to Gabriel, flinging her arms around him, trying to make up all in one moment for the year he had been gone. “I missed you,” she whispered.
His hand roamed her face, a familiar gesture. “I brought you a treat,” he said.
“What? And I have one for you too.”
“Mine is a who.”
Rachel cocked her eyebrows at him, a silent query.
He didn’t answer, just smiled, and turned her toward the lander. Rachel watched the people disembarking.
A short woman, tiny, young. Rachel felt her heart skip. Her mother.
Kristin walked carefully over, searching Rachel’s face.
“I heard what you did,” Rachel said. “In the flare, years ago. How you convinced Gabriel not to cut my access to Vassal. But you went cold right afterward, and I could never thank you.”
“It seemed best. I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”
Rachel shook her head lightly, whispering, “You’re the only parent I have left. I’m glad you came.”
Kristin returned the hug briefly, stepping back one step, keeping one hand in her daughter’s. “Gabriel woke me. He said there’s to be a bonding ceremony.”
Rachel leaned into Gabriel and squeezed him hard, still holding her mother’s hand. “Yes. Astronaut found one for us.” They’d been lovers for a quarter of a century, on and off, ship’s time. Shift bonding wasn’t enough.
“Besides, I thought I should see Selene one more time. I’ll stay through tomorrow’s party. Then I’m going cold, and I won’t see you again, not if we finally get away.”
Shadows were falling. Rachel looked up. “Time,” she stated. “Mom, Gabriel, Kyu—Kyu! Look at the sun. It’s okay, it won’t blind you now.” Near zenith, Apollo was a blurred orange arc setting through Harlequin’s atmosphere. “Now, look a little left.” The sun was gone now, the sky was cobalt-blue. “Do you see it?”
“We’ve all seen it . . .” Kristen’s voice trailed off. “Ye gods and demons. It’s a flaming sword!”
“You’ve only seen video.”
Daedalus was big enough to show as a tiny brilliant dot, but it wasn’t as bright as the current flow from Gabriel’s flare kite. A pulsing, writhing, branching thread of lightning streamed away from Harlequin, searing bright, then dimming, but writing itself across fifty degrees of sky.
Kristen said, “That’s a lot of energy. What if it hit Selene?’
“Can’t. I’ve skewed the kite out of the plane of the ecliptic. It’s easy to control, kid. Not really a kite. It’s a tethered light-sail.” Gabriel bellowed, “Hey, everybody, I made that!”
Daedalus set behind Harlequin. Rachel said, “Mom, I have some things to do . . . but I c
an spend a few hours with you first, and then you can help me.” She looked over at Gabriel. “Okay if we take a walk?”
Gabriel smiled at her. “Sure. I want to check on Gagarin and Aldrin anyway. I’ll join you for dinner. Watch your footing, Kristen, these eclipses are darker than you think.”
Rachel watched him walk away. Then she turned to her mother. Kristen looked younger than the image Rachel saw in the mirror each morning; less tired, fewer lines on her face. She laughed and took Kristin’s hand, leaving Kyu in Sarah’s capable hands. Sarah immediately deposited baby Nisi in Kyu’s arms. Kyu bounced gently, holding Nisi as tenderly as if she were an egg.
Rachel turned to Kristin. “Come on, Mom, I’ll show you Council Aerie and the Sea of Refuge.”
“I’ve seen them,” Kristin replied.
“No, no you haven’t. You’ve seen pictures. You can smell the real sea, feel it fill your hands. You can swim in it.”
CHAPTER 81
LAST FLIGHT
60,515 John Glenn shiptime
JOHN GLENN WOULD be ready for departure in two months.
An amazing number of Colonists and Council had asked to be warmed to help. Earth Born came to walk Selene. Moon Born came to visit John Glenn, a last chance to touch the dreams of the Council of Humanity, to embed real experiences to carry forward and tell at night over dinner.
The garden had been emptied, its rotation stopped, vegetables and fruit and seeds stored in cryo, every living thing recycled. Yggdrasil had been cut up. Rachel has asked for some of the branches, and Kyu had ferried them down’to her. She’d helped her decorate the walls of Refuge with holopictures of John Glenn and the garden, and branches of Yggdrasil to prove to future generations that the pictures were of something real.
Once again the garden held megatons of water, for shielding, for sustenance, for reaction mass. This was how John Glenn had left Sol system, with every possible hollow space filled. But before the water rushed in, a swarm of Moon Born fliers had taken advantage of the unencumbered space, circling within the vast emptiness, free of gravity. Rachel and Sarah had flown within a storm of blue and purple and silver wings, collisions and laughter and bruises.