“Sure,” Eddie said. “We call those ‘ray guns.’ ” Yuri looked around at us wanly. Then he got into an extended discussion with Eddie about all kinds of technical aspects— power requirements, weight, range, burn time. In the end he gave us seven small hand-held pistols with backpack power packs and two larger devices that could be set up on tripods and used at a distance of up to half a klick. We crated them up and started hauling them back up to the surface.
All the way up Eddie and Yuri continued yakking about various stuff. There was an almost enforced casualness about it, like they were both agreeing to ignore the fact that we all seemed kind of subtly terrified. When we got back to the top and were about to enter the Musadhi lift, I turned around to take a last look at the transcendent marvel Eddie had carved out of wandering rock and metal. The rest of the crew did the same. I wondered if they were thinking what I was, that none of us might see this place again. This place or any other place.
We got back up to the hangar and stowed the lasers in the shuttle. Yuri turned back to Eddie and said, “Well, thanks a lot. This really helps. I don’t know what we would have—well, anyway, thanks.”
Eddie looked Yuri in the eye, concerned, puzzled. “What the hell are you guys up to?” he asked. “I’ve got to say, you are giving off some of the strangest energy I’ve felt in centuries. Is everything okay?”
“Oh, yeah,” Yuri shrugged, looked around at Steel, Marcus, Tamika, “We’re okay. We’re just, you know, under a lot of pressure, you know, schedules, deadlines—”
Steel came forward and said, “You really have helped us a great deal. You’ve taken part in something very important. What we’re trying to accomplish may ... may change the world. I’ve, I’ve said too much, but ... but, thank you. Thank you very much.” She took his hand.
Eddie looked at Steel and the rest of us like he was trying to define us somehow, or engage us or save us or maybe just console us. “Yeah, sure,” he said. “Try not to hurt yourselves with these things.”
“No problem,” said Yuri, “I’ll call up the manuals you gave me. We have time to learn how they work before we have to use them.”
“Okay, well, keep in touch, huh? We should try to see each other more often. Two hundred years is too long.”
“Yeah,” Yuri answered. “Yeah.” He gave Eddie a hug, “Well, ’bye.”
“ ’Bye. Keep in touch.”
“Yeah.”
We filed into the little ball and closed the hatch.
Chapter 30
“Pick up, Alice. Please.” Steel’s voice rose above the whirrs and hums of the shuttle. The soft glow of the control panel etched lines into her face as the Lightdancer loomed large in front of us. We were nearing the personnel airlock that led directly into the habitation module—where most normal people enter their starships. Alice had been silent since we’d left.
“Please, Alice. Pick up. Answer me.” Steel allowed herself no familiarity or endearments with Alice in front of the crew. Once again she showed she could be one person in one setting and quite another somewhere else, and again I wondered who she really was. Steel? Estelle? The person who married John Cheatham or the one who lived in a castle? Or the one who’d picked me up on Vesper? Were they even distantly related?
“I’m sure she’s all right,” Marcus said. “Everyone needs a little down time now and then.” For all the effect it had on Steel he needn’t have bothered.
The shuttle rotated and mated with the Lightdancer. Pressures were equalized and hatches opened. We picked up the crates, our arsenal of lasers, and pushed off. As we pulled our cargo into the lower passageway of the ship, a very welcome visage floated toward us.
“Alice!” Steel exclaimed. “Where have you been? I’ve been bulleting you.”
“Yeah, I know,” Alice replied. “I’ve been online, scoping New Moorea. Did you know there’s nothing but little islands down there? Anyway, there’s a re-boot party happening in Paopao, well just outside of it. On the beach. I figured since I missed the one in Kindu I’d stop in. So anyway, that’s where I’m going.” She floated past us into the shuttle. “ ’Bye.”
“Alice—” Steel started.
“You’ve gotta go down to the surface to get supplies anyway, right? Well, that’s where I’ll be. See ya.” And she closed the hatch.
Steel just stared, immobilized, as the hatch on the Lightdancer closed, too, and we heard the shuttle detach. Alice was on her way to the surface. Marcus said, “Captain, we need to get these lasers stowed before we can get under way.”
Steel shifted her gaze to him, distracted, trying to focus on what he had just said. “Yes. Yes, good. Take us down to the surface as soon as you can. Do you know where ...” She looked back at the hatch where Alice had disappeared. “Do you know ...”
Tamika said, “Um, the refit facilities are on the main island of New Papeete. I believe Paopao is on one of the smaller islands close by. Some kind of underwater mining concern is just off the coast, I think, past the reefs. No corporate stuff, just a small operation.”
Steel looked at Tamika, but there was no recognition there. “Yes ... yes. Take us down as soon as you can.” Then with unexpected fire, “I’m tired of being weightless. Just get us under acceleration.” She pushed off a bulkhead and flew down the passageway.
“Why shouldn’t she go to a party?” Yuri asked me for the third time. “She should be able to go to a party if she wants.” We could see the village of Paopao ahead of us at the top of a small bay. Our open skiff skimmed past jagged volcanic remnants soaked in jungle, bounced across shallow, aquamarine waves. Yuri and I had been dispatched by Steel to collect our errant patient while the rest of the crew was on New Papeete getting the Lightdancer stocked for our voyage to the planet of doom.
“I think,” I started, “I think Alice is getting the benefit and the burden of about a thousand years of pent-up parenting.” It occurred to me that Steel had even less training in how to parent than parents did back in the days when there were parents. When she’d told Yuri and me to fetch Alice she had seemed stunned, at a loss. She didn’t know what to make of Alice’s abrupt departure. It hadn’t occurred to her that Alice could decide to do something on her own. She seemed to feel that Alice didn’t like her anymore, that if she went to bring Alice back, Alice wouldn’t come. She needed someone else to do it. Someone Alice would trust, would like, would cooperate with. Oddly enough, someone male.
“Parenting? What are you talking about?” Yuri asked.
Oh, right. Yuri didn’t know. He really didn’t know about any of it. He didn’t know about the plan to prove that Draco had started the war, didn’t know about the expedition to show that ‘male-dominated’ societies were inherently violent, didn’t know about Steel’s marriage or maternity or how John Cheatham had been destroyed or anything. At that moment I decided to tell him. I was tired of the crew being divided, of feeling separated, and I figured if we all were risking so much on this voyage, everybody ought to know why it was necessary. But how to tell him? How?
“Umm,” I started, “uh, this is going to sound, um, that is, ah, I’m not sure how to say this ...”
“What?”
“Um, okay, I’m just going to, you know, okay. Here goes.” I looked Yuri right in the eye, as though a posture of candor would somehow help get this across. I said, “Steel bore Alice.” I waited for his reaction, but I could tell that, although the names were familiar, the sentence contained no intelligible information for him.
He repeated, “Steel bore Alice,” like it was some kind of code he was supposed to break. “I bore Alice sometimes. Wait a minute, ‘Steel bore Alice?’ You sound like Johnny Weissmuller. You mean Steel bores Alice?”
“No, no—”
“I have to tell you, Mo, you’ve seemed awfully strange since you got back from Eden. Why are you so angry at Steel? I mean, what happened to you down there?”
“No, that’s what I’m trying—I mean, you’re probably right. I am—well, I don’t know i
f I’m angry at her, but,” but he was right. I was angry at her, “but that’s what I’m trying to tell you.”
“What?”
“Okay,” I thought, “try this. Steel ... Steel carried Alice.” No, I could tell that wasn’t going to get the job done. “Um, she, she ... she delivered Alice.” How could I say this? “She incubated Alice.” That sounded weird even to me, but obviously not as weird as it sounded to Yuri. “She, she had Alice. She begat Alice.”
“What are you talking about? I think you’re starting to crack under the strain.”
“No, no. Okay,” I thought again, “okay, how about this? Do you know what the word ‘mother’ means?”
“Mother?” He examined me like he thought he might have to sedate me. “You mean like ‘mother of Lao-Tse?’ ”
“Right!” I said, “That’s what Steel is.”
“She’s a curse?”
“No—”
“What have you got against Steel? I know she can be, you know, odd, but—”
“Yuri, I don’t think you have any idea just how odd Steel can be. I know this is difficult, but try to follow me here.”
“I’m trying.”
We could see the docks of Paopao nearing. I needed to get this across before we found Alice. I didn’t want to be talking about it in front of her. She’d been through enough. “Um, you know that Alice was born on Eden.”
“She was what on Eden?”
“You know, born. Born instead of hatched.”
He looked at me for a moment, then he got it, “Oh, right, she would have been. Yeah. Why are we talking about this? It’s kind of, you know, I mean I don’t want to think about Alice sliding out of someone’s body. It’s kind of disgusting.”
“Yeah, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to—but it’s not just, I mean, it wasn’t just anyone’s body. It was ...” the image of someone sliding out of Steel’s body shocked me, stopped me, and I had slid out of—I mean, I had—I had been—“It was Steel’s. You know, Steel’s ... body.” If it was shocking to me, it was inconceivable to Yuri. Incredulity spread across his features, rendering them slack, paralyzed. He didn’t even try to speak. He just stared. “I’m not making this up. Steel told me, herself.”
“Why would she say something like that?”
“It’s true, Yuri. I know it’s true. Steel was married. To Alice’s ... other parent. To her, to her father.”
“No, no, you’re wrong. She would have told me.”
“Why? Why would she have told you? Does she tell anyone anything she doesn’t have to? Has she ever told any of us anything beyond what she thought we needed to know?”
That brought him up short. He stared off at eroded volcanic spires as he said, “But wait a minute wait a minute it doesn’t make sense. You’re telling me that Alice is the result, the the the product of sex, of two people, a man and a woman having sex.”
“Right.”
“But Steel can’t do that. Nobody can. You could have sex with her as much as you wanted. It wouldn’t result in, in a, a—”
“I know. That’s right. I think she—I mean, she must have, before she went to Eden, I think maybe because she was going to Eden or, or maybe she went to Eden because she had it done or, I don’t know, but she had to have had herself, I mean she had to undergo some kind of ... she had to have had herself ... prepped. Altered. You know, made ... made fertile.”
“You’re talking about her like she’s some kind of breed stock.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I don’t know how to talk about it.”
“This is absurd. You’re telling me that after all the skag femmes gave us about marriage and reproduction Steel went to Eden so she could get married and reproduce? That’s too fricking strange.”
“I know, I know. I don’t know why she did it, but I know she did.”
“She was ‘married’? That’s what she said, ‘married’?”
“Yeah, that’s what they do there, on Eden, they get—she was married to, I mean, I met her ... her husband, before he died, before he killed himself.”
“He ... he killed himself?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“A lot of reasons, I mean, it was complicated.”
Yuri studied me for a moment then looked out over the water. “Complicated,” he repeated, “Holy skag. I thought he just, you know, just ...” He killed the turbine. The boat slowed, stopped. We rocked on transparent water, suspended above white sand. “Alice must be ... I mean I can’t even conceive of what she must be feeling. It’s hard to imagine what it’s like to have ... you know, ancestors. Fathers and stuff.” Disinterested fish swam beneath us. “I couldn’t figure out why Steel’s been so upset. This ... this is ... What happened?”
I told him what I knew. At the end of my story I don’t know if either one of us was any closer to understanding, but it felt good to have him with me again. We were both confused, but we were confused about the same things.
He finally said, “It doesn’t matter. None of this matters. We still have to save Alice. That’s what matters.” I nodded in agreement. “But I’ll tell you one thing: if Alice wants to stay at this party until she’s the last one standing, she gets to.” He looked at me.
“Yeah,” I said, “sounds good to me.”
“Okay,” he said, and started up the turbine again.
I looked back at our other companion—the one Steel had sent along with us to make sure Alice stayed safe. “How’re you doing, Hamster?” I asked.
He pursed his lips and lifted his chin. I guessed that meant he was okay. Beyond him the bay opened out into the strait between us and New Papeete: the island’s verdant slopes blued by distance, surmounted by the kilometer-tall black needle of the Lightdancer. As I watched, a similar needle appeared high in the sky and descended on the blue sparks and blur of high-energy gravitons. “Hmm. Another starship’s coming in,” I said. As it got closer I could tell it was significantly larger than ours.
Yuri glanced back at it. “Yeah. Looks like an eleven-seater. Maybe even a thirteen.”
We didn’t think anything about it. We were clear out at the edge of the galaxy and nobody knew where we were. If anyone was going to visit New Moorea there was only one port. Yuri steered us up to the docks at Paopao.
As I hopped up on the wharf I hopped online. “Hey, Alice, where are you? Steel decided to let us out to play for awhile, too.”
[Who’s us?] She responded, and I was glad to hear her voice. I was afraid she wouldn’t pick up for us at all.
“Just Mo and me,” Yuri said. “And Ham.”
There was a silence. Then: [Okay,] she replied, [I guess the three of you are frilly enough for this party.]
I looked at Yuri. “ ‘Frilly?’ ” I asked.
“Must be fresh slang. I’ve never heard it before.”
I hopped back on, “We’ll try to get frillier before we get there. Where is it?”
[Ask anybody. They’ll tell you.]
“Okay, we’ll see you in a bit.”
[I’m not ready to go back yet.]
Yuri and I regarded each other. “We’re not here to make you do anything you don’t want to,” he said. We had been, actually, before we’d decided to mutiny.
[Just checking up on me, huh? I wish Mom would stop worrying.]
Yuri looked at me quizzically. “What’d she say?” he asked me.
“Oh, uh, ‘mom.’ It’s a word for, um, you know, maternal parent. She means Steel.”
This didn’t seem to help, but finally he shook his head. “Too fricking strange,” he said.
The directions we got from the local at the dock were simple yet poetic: “Just walk down the beach. The party will find you before you find it,” and it did before we’d gone too far. It was less organized, more spread out, than Matessa’s party in Kindu. Small groups hung among coconut palms or on white sand or in the water, talking or making music or having sex.
We looked around for Alice, but she spotted us first. Ham made it
difficult for us to blend in. She ran up and gave him a hug. Scratching his ears, she introduced a man who had walked up beside her: “This is Leos.” He nodded to us like, I don’t know, like we didn’t belong there or something. “We’re gonna go have some sex,” she continued. “Make yourselves at home. There’s food around. Sorry, Yuri, there’s no surf. You’d have to swim out past the reefs.”
“I’m all right,” Yuri said.
“Okay, well,” she took Leos’ hand. “I’ll be back in awhile.” She waved to us and then turned to him and said, “Hey, you wanna log on while we do it?”
“Sure,” he replied and they ran off together.
What could we do? We stood there on the beach looking after her. “This is good,” I said, finally, and I’m pretty sure I meant it. “This is what she should be doing now.”
“Yeah,” Yuri responded.
“Just ... living.”
“Yeah.”
They disappeared behind some rocks. We regarded the rocks for a while, then the palm trees and finally the ocean before I asked Yuri, “Did you ever, in any of your lives, think you would be involved in something like this?”
Yuri kept gazing out at the gentle waves. He smiled. “No,” he said, “I never dared to hope.”
As I wondered at his meaning a small group of musicians to our left started an improvisation. Other people gathered around, and one or another of them would chant or sing. After a while we came to understand that these people were all in their second lives. They called each other ‘twobies.’ They had all spent their first lives indentured to one corp or another and were now on their maiden voyage as free souls. No wonder they treated us like outsiders. We were hundreds of years older than they were. Our lives were measured in ‘lives’; theirs were still measured in years. I thought: how nice for Alice to be able to spend some time around people her own age. None of these folks were more than a century older than she was.
[Yuri, Mo. Where are you?] Steel’s urgency brought us both to full attention.
Yuri replied first. “Um, we’re, ah, outside of Paopao.”
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