Indeed, the couriers had brought the news years before that the Engineers had bought Macks and a few other genetically engineered creatures from their exiled neighbors. The mechanical technology they had wished to build had simply not been up to the demands of necessity. They had lacked the metals to build trucks and other vehicles and the energy to run them. They had had to compromise their principles if they were to build even a partially mechanical civilization.
They must have mellowed, she told herself. They had to stop thinking of us and our products as anathema. They had to grow more tolerant.
There had to be a real chance that she could at least, for a moment or a day, touch the Earth of her dreams.
* * *
Chapter Three
The construction of the Gypsy had begun in the asteroid belt of Earth’s distant solar system and been completed in orbit around the Earth. It had been crewed by Orbitals, those people who had lived in stations and habitats and on the Moon at the time, by gengineers fleeing the pogroms of Earth’s reactionary Engineers, and by a few rescued bots. They had had in common only their tolerance for novelty, their lack of the Engineers’ neophobia, their fear of persecution and extermination. Since then, they had forged a group identity, found a sense of mission, and adopted the name of their ship. They were Gypsies. “Orbitals” were those who remained in Earth’s solar system.
Now the great ship turned about its long axis, a misshapen cylinder whose surface still bore many of the knobs and fissures that had marked it for untold eons. The cracks had been filled and sealed. The largest protrusions had been carved away. Its tail had been hollowed to house its massive drives. Its tapered nose ended in a round of polished metal. Forests of antennae and other instruments adorned its skin. But it was still, despite all that had been done to its surface and despite all the paraphernalia that clung to its hide, quite visibly what it had always been, a rock from the depths of space.
A minnow seeking to kiss a whale, the Q-ship that had lifted Pearl Angelica from First-Stop approached the smooth surface of the Gypsy’s nose and the bay that lay behind it. The bay’s door irised open, revealing a hollow drum whose walls turned with the rotation that gave the great ship its centrifugal substitute for gravity. The Q-ship drifted in, past the two other ships berthed on the turning wall, toward the still center of the cavity’s opposite face. Magnets pulled it into position as the iris closed, a docking tunnel eeled toward the Q-ship’s hatch from a niche near the bay’s outer rim, a buzzer sounded, and Pearl Angelica was free to debark with the other passengers.
As she undid the restraints that held her safely in her webbing and let the webbing itself snap back onto its ceiling-mounted roller, the bot wondered: Was she doing the right thing by coming here? By even thinking of leaving her lab and her work for the weeks that would be necessary? But Uncle Renny had not discouraged her, had he? Perhaps he understood.
She hefted the small bag that was all she carried and stepped from the docking lounge into the long corridor that, one among many, twisted through the Gypsy’s depths. All the ship’s internal tracks followed such convoluted paths, limiting vistas, letting each curve reveal small surprises, carrying their users from heavier to lighter, coreward gravity, sometimes—but only briefly!—so light that wheels and feet no longer held the pavement and hands must grab for lines or rails, and then back uphill again; the planners had thought to avoid the straight path of boredom. When her turn came, she chose a bicycle from the rack to one side. She would leave it at her destination, as this one had been left for her by someone else.
The bicycle carried her silently into broader corridors where other Gypsies strolled and pedaled and drove Macks and Roachsters, smaller models of the same gengineered vehicles that served the workers down on First-Stop. There were armadillo-based Armadons as well, only recently re-created from tissue samples and the original specifications, and litterbugs, scoop-jawed descendants of pigs, that patrolled the pavements and retrieved whatever wastes the other genimals left behind them.
The animal pungency of the genimals was compensated by abundant plant life, smelling of flowers, refreshing with moisture and oxygen. Every twenty to thirty meters, rock and metal planters interrupted the centers of the corridors with flowering shrubs, snackbushes, and small fruit trees. Similar sprays of foliage softened the rock walls, framed the doorways, and formed islands at corridor intersections.
The Gypsy was far too large for pedestrians. It held three cubic kilometers of volume, only half of which was the native nickel-iron of the asteroid the great ship once had been. The rest was tunnels, chambers, caverns, enough to give each of its 25,000 residents 60,000 cubic meters of space.
Less than a hundredth of that space was devoted to living quarters. The rest was storerooms, engine rooms, bays for the Q-ships, broad corridors, farms, and parks. And still there were whole sectors of the ship that, though they had been bored and excavated like the rest, were dark, unventilated, untenanted, held in reserve for future need.
In the generation since the Gypsy had left Earth’s orbit, its population had already increased some forty percent. Growth had slowed in recent years, but it seemed inevitable that eventually all the empty portions of the ship would be filled. Later still, it might be necessary to build a second Gypsy to absorb surplus population.
Pearl Angelica’s route took her through the broad entrance to one of the Gypsy’s parks. Just within the entrance, a row of three transparent cylinders represented the cross-ship elevators and a holographic map revealed the Gypsy’s pattern of interwoven wormholes; on the map, a glowing bar showed which of the ship’s many corridors happened to overlie each other, comprising nominal levels, at this point; elsewhere the same corridors might meet at ordinary intersections. Nearby, water ran over a pile of mossy boulders to collect in a broad pool. A child sat on the pool’s stone curb, using a stick to push a small boat under a spray of droplets.
To either side of the fountain, the path split to wind past lawns, flower beds, bamboo clusters that might have provided the child’s stick, and groves of trees entwined with honeysuckle vines. The vines were thick with creamy blossoms. The bot shook her head when she saw an unkempt woman holding one of the blossoms like a wine glass in her hand; a dozen others, emptied of their euphoric wine, littered the grass around her folding chair. Even here, she thought, there were honey bums. The addiction had not been left behind on Earth.
There was also, rooted in a lawn beside another grove, a class of young bots surrounding a teacher and a bioform computer. The computer would be passing recorded lessons through its roots to the honeysuckle, which would in turn pass them to the bots. The teacher was there to operate the computer, select the lessons, and comfort those for whom the sudden inrush of data proved too painful.
She nodded to a friend with many-colored scalp blossoms, one of those who monitored the Racs in their daily lives when she was down on First-Stop. Then she looked up at the canopy that bent above her head like thick green gauze. It belonged to a weeping willow whose leaves—thanks to a playful gengineer—now resembled feathers. Most of the Gypsy’s vegetation had grown from seeds brought aloft by refugees. A few plants—she bent to pick a cluster of mossberries, pulpy, sweet, and tart, from a stone-rimmed bed—were native to First-Stop. Future worlds would add still more diversity, but…Not far away, young bots and humans perched on ladders that leaned against flowering trees, using artists’ paintbrushes to ensure the formation of fruits and seeds. Others, ladderless, flicked their brushes over smaller plants.
The park’s ceiling arched above, raw rock visible behind the constellations of lamps that simulated the sun for the plants and the Gypsies who wandered and played among them, their patterned coveralls rivaling the flowers in their colors. No one wore the solid blue of the man who had leaped from the Bioblimp down below. Blue was the color of the Earth they had fled, of the Engineers, their enemies, as well as of the homeworld’s skies and seas.
She sighed and turned her head to watch a
small terrier chase a ball, catch it, tumble, growl, and race back to its young master. There were few animals aboard the ship, only dogs and cats and the descendants of mice and rats that had stowed away or escaped from labs. Seeds had been more portable.
The ship, she thought as she pedaled onward, really did need bees or other pollinators. They could not be had from First-Stop, but on Earth…She passed through the park’s other entrance arch into a second corridor. She found a rack and clamped the bike into place for some other to use. She walked past a small tavern, redolent of beer, sausage, fish, and hot oil; a shop that—so said the hologram that seemed to bulge from the wall beside her—offered coveralls and other garments, the finest in utility or fashion; a food market whose bins overflowed with vegetables and fruits from the Gypsy’s garden chambers. She reached a row of residences, showing only numbered doors to the corridor and its passersby. When she found the one she wanted, she needed no key to enter; the scanner in the frame knew her well and swung the door wide for her.
“Aunt Lois?”
“In here, dear.”
The entry’s white-painted walls supported several small paintings and photos of Earthly scenes—a snow-capped mountain, a forest glade, a city street clogged with traffic thicker than the Gypsy’s corridors could ever know, window-waffled buildings rising high above. Pearl Angelica gave them each, even the city, a wistful stare before she followed the pale green carpet into the apartment’s living room. Here the walls and ceiling were pale blue, the furniture brown wood, leather, and fabric, the effect one of landscape, of earth and growth and sky. Near the door to another room Lois McAlois was seated at a small desk beneath a wall screen full of columns and graphs. Her hands were poised above a keyboard, but her face was turned toward the bot.
Lois McAlois’s face showed the weathering effects of over fifty years of living; the deepest lines were those left by laughter and good humor. Silver streaks in her auburn hair suggested that in another twenty years she would be a striking elder.
“I’m going over the status reports for the Quebec,” she said. The Quebec was her Q-ship, the one she would fly on this year’s courier mission to Earth, or to that space around the homeworld that held the Gypsies’ allies. Of the eight other Q-ships, half were away at anytime, searching nearby systems for worlds the Gypsies might visit next. The other half served as shuttles to and from First-Stop; they were also used to train new pilots.
“You’ll be leaving soon.”
Lois nodded. “A few days. The cargo’s already aboard. We’re taking mossberries, fish, a few baby Armadons.” “We” meant the pilot and her ship; there was rarely any other crew. “And we have a year’s worth of what our people have done, all on floppy cards.” Novels, short stories, monographs, music, and art. She would exchange it for what the Orbitals near Earth had produced.
“I’d like to go too.”
Her aunt’s eyebrows rose. “Whatever for?”
Pearl Angelica explained the lack of suitable pollinators on First-Stop. “And we need them here,” she said. “We need bees to pollinate the flowers on this ship, not people and ladders and brushes. And Earth has them.”
Aunt Lois gave her a shrewdly skeptical look. “It is a waste of labor,” she agreed. “But you could just have put a request for bees through channels. You don’t have to go yourself.”
The bot shrugged uncomfortably. “There’s nothing pressing here, and I should talk to a bee expert.”
“I’m sure we have one or two among us.”
“And I knew you were almost ready to leave. I was afraid going through channels would take too long.”
“All you had to do was call me.”
“But it’s been a while since…”
“You still didn’t have to pitch your case in person, though you know you’re welcome.” Lois McAlois paused a moment, smiling gently, before adding, “What do you really want?”
Pearl Angelica hadn’t thought she was still as transparent as she had been as a child, when Aunt Lois had always been able to tell that her offers to do the dishes or dust the furniture meant that she wanted a favor. But…
“You want to see Earth, don’t you? Visit it, even.”
The bot grinned and nodded. “But we do need bees.”
“They won’t let you land. You’re not the right kind of human for them.”
“She can still get a lot closer than she is here.” Renny Schafer stepped out of the apartment’s next room. Beyond that were kitchen, bathroom, bedroom, storage space. She hadn’t known her uncle was there. “At least she can see it from orbit.”
“I thought they were growing more tolerant,” said Pearl Angelica.
“Not that much,” said her uncle.
“It’s been a year since the last we heard. It’s possible.”
“Barely,” he replied with a shake of his head.
“I think the odds are lousy, but…” Lois McAlois’s look turned thoughtful. “I suppose I could use some help with those Armadons.”
Renny snorted. “You don’t know what you’re in for. The rest of us left Earth very happily, and we don’t want to go back.”
“Not even if things are better there now?”
“They’ve made some progress, but not enough.” Renee’s voice was sad, as if he wished he were wrong. “Not in their attitudes, and not in their technology. When we left, they had a lot more than thirty years of work ahead of them to rebuild a functioning civilization.”
“A lot can be done in even twenty years,” Pearl Angelica said. “Think of the difference between the end of World War II and the first landing of men on the Moon.”
“They hadn’t managed it last year.”
“How much of their progress can you see from space?”
“The Orbitals there have spysats. They don’t miss much.”
“But…”
“What do the other bots say?” interrupted Lois McAlois.
“I haven’t asked them,” said Pearl Angelica. “I don’t plan to.”
“You know they won’t be happy. They’ll think you’re putting far too much at risk.”
“My ‘potential’?”
When Lois nodded, Pearl Angelica gave an exasperated sigh and crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s my potential, and I’ll risk it if I wish. Besides, they have tissue samples.” She stared at her aunt. “Can I go?”
Lois glanced at her husband, and both shook their heads, smiling ruefully. “Of course, though…”
“Thank you.” She turned toward the apartment’s entry, unwilling to give her aunt another word. “I’ll feed your Armadons and shovel their litter. I’ll work my passage.”
“That’s not…” But their niece was gone.
The Tower soared above the valley, limbless now, almost all its bark stripped away to reveal the creamy wood that would in time weather to a faded, silvery grey. The pile of branches, some thicker than a human torso, was visible to the south, jumbled, jagged, needles already browning. When they were dry enough, they would be burned and the air would fill with smoke. The ashes would fertilize the valley’s soil.
Pumps throbbed, pushing the minerals of pseudo-petrification into the wood. The sound of chainsaws, muted by height and angle to a snarling mutter, fell from what would become the records chamber at the Tower’s tip. Wood chips rained to the ground at the Tower’s base, their scatter marking the shadow of the prevailing breezes, pointing toward the blackened landing field and the Q-ship that had brought Pearl Angelica back to First-Stop. Its bulbous nose rose on a fat stem from a bundle of cylindrical tanks that could be filled with powdered rock, water, anything that could be turned to plasma and thrust.
She began to walk toward the pumpkin where her father lay abed. The marks of its repairs—sheet metal covering the hole in the roof, newly painted window frames, grey patching compound filling the cracks in the orange walls—were visible even from a distance. Other marks, she thought, were less obvious but just as real and harder to patch up. The pumpkin in which t
ools were stored now had a lock on its door, and the people she saw seemed to go about their tasks more quietly, with less banter, every Gypsy on the planet keeping a distrustful eye on every other and being watched in turn.
Next to the pumpkin’s door hung an antique brass bell the size of two fists. A cord beside it supported a small wooden mallet. There was also the glass eye of the scanner unit that recognized her as an approved visitor and clicked the lock. When the door did not open as it should, she used the mallet and bell to announce her presence. As footsteps sounded within the building, she tugged on the door’s brass handle, but her efforts were futile until someone lunged against the other side.
A human in a grey coverall patterned with yellow leaves, panting slightly, faced her. He peered suspiciously beyond her, to each side, and toward the Bioblimps above the Tower before he said, “The frame’s warped.”
“Then you should get that fixed too,” she said, but the nurse only shrugged and turned away. Perhaps, she thought, they felt the pumpkin would not be needed much longer. She hoped the need for it would not end before she returned from her journey.
“He’s in here.”
She stood in the entrance to her father’s room. Its open window was graced by light curtains that moved in the breeze. The walls were the lightest of greens, the carpet thick, the furniture a desk, a potted bioform computer whose screen and keyboard leaves were thick with dust, two padded chairs, and a small table that she recognized from when Frederick Suida had been a healthy, active man. There was also a bookcase full of books and boxes of floppy cards that she knew he had been unable to use for months. A veedo screen, silent and pictureless, hung from the crack-webbed ceiling.
The room’s centerpiece was far less homey: a high bed from whose foot projected cranks, along whose sides rose steel rails. Beside it were a rack for intravenous bottles, empty now, cardiac and brain activity monitors, their screens tracing the spastic rhythms of a life too near its end. On it, his hands still upon the light cover, lay her father, his only motions an uneven rise and fall of his chest, a quivering of an emaciated thigh muscle. His eyes were open, their pupils hazy with cataracts.
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