The Children Star (10 page)

“Sarai said I could visit her!” exclaimed Khral. “Thank you so much for mentioning me.” She held her tray of food expectantly.

“You're welcome.” As Rod introduced the children, the dining table extended for one more place.

“And this is Quark,” she added, glancing at her shoulder. There perched a nanoplastic eyespeaker. “Quark is our lightcraft.” At Rod's look of puzzlement, she added, “The rest of him is docked outside Station.”

The round sentient eye swiveled in its clamp. “I've heard you like math, 'jum,” said Quark. “You ought to go to Science Park someday.”

Khral settled her tray, and patted the toddler seated next to her. “Quark will take me down to the planet tomorrow. We're so excited!”

“Have you been lifeshaped already?” asked Rod.

“Of course not; I won't live here forever, only to study for a year or two. I wear a skinsuit.”

A skinsuit required incredibly delicate servoregulation; the best models were actually sentient. The thin nanoplastic sheath fit itself snugly around one's entire body, with an air filter at the mouth. It had to circulate air and water, while excluding any trace of dust, and stretched itself precisely as the wearer's joints flexed. The young scientists who tramped across the Fold in third class used such expensive lab gear without a thought. It disappointed Rod, though, that she would not be lifeshaped, like himself and Diorite, the real Prokaryans.

Quark said, “It's surprising how little we know about microzoöids, especially since they caused so much trouble in the early days.” The first sentients to visit Prokaryon had gotten fouled up by microzoöids, but since then the redesigned
nanoplast had few problems. If only human redesign were so easy.

“There's no grant money in it,” Khral pointed out. “Singing-trees are sexier. But the veins of singing-trees are full of microzoöids. We'll see what Sarai knows about them.”

Rod had a thought. “When you see Sarai, maybe you could check up on Gaea for me.”

“Why don't you come with us?”

He thought it over. “I hope your lightcraft's more precise than ours,” he said guardedly, thinking of the mountain target.

Quark said, “What do you take me for?”

“Of course.” Rod was embarrassed. “Well, I don't know, with the children.”

Khral considered this. “Why not get a baby-sitter? I'll ask around the lab. . . . Elk Moon's mate would help. He misses his folks on Bronze Sky; he'd be glad to play with babies for an afternoon.”

As promised, Quark landed them swiftly and cleanly on the trail just above Sarai's cavern. “This is as close as I'll get,” the sentient said. “I don't think I'd fit on the ledge down there. But my eyespeaker will guide you.”

Khral's skinsuit covered her like a film of plastic wrap, pressing down her hair and clothes. Her breath sucked hollowly through the mouth filter. With Quark's eyespeaker on her shoulder, she skipped briskly down the lower trail.

“Okay, we're getting close,” said Quark. At their left rose a sheer wall of black rock, with miniature rivulets trickling down; at their right fell the sheer drop to Fork River. Fog billowed in from the roaring waterfall.

Khral seemed to be walking farther than Rod recalled. Had they passed the entrance?

“That's odd,” said Quark. “Something's not right here.”

“Could we have missed it in the fog?” asked Khral.

Rod did not like the fog at all on this narrow ledge. “Let's turn back.” He turned and walked slowly along the rock face, feeling his way. Suddenly the rock gave way, and he fell.

For an instant he thought he had fallen off the mountain. But no—he had fallen
into
the mountain, and not very far, just through the illusory rock face onto the floor of Sarai's cavern.

“Oh!” Khral had tumbled in after him, and she caught his arm.

The plants lit up with their green glow. “You gave my clickflies no warning,” announced Sarai.

“Excuse us, please.” Khral looked around with interest.

“It's an intelligence test.” Sarai leered at the eyespeaker.

Quark's eye swiveled indignantly. “Well, I never—”

“We admire your work so much, Sarai,” said Khral. Sarai gave Rod a worried look. “And what are
you
here for? More neglected children?”

“I came to see Gaea. How is she?”

“You don't trust me,” Sarai muttered, while Rod repressed the impulse to agree out loud. She led them all down the calcite-studded corridor, clickflies swirling around her head.

There sat Gaea, inside a calyx of enormous green leaves that enclosed her tightly up to her chest. The leaves were attached below to a twisted stem as thick as Rod's arm, which twined off into hidden recesses of the cavern. Not yet seeing him, the two-year-old watched openmouthed as a clickfly danced on a web just outside her reach. With her hands she batted at the bright webbing.

Once she did catch sight of him, she gave a shriek and stretched out both arms. Rod hurried over to hug and soothe her.

“If the stem breaks, she'll die,” Sarai warned helpfully.

So Rod spent the next two hours entertaining Gaea, while Khral and Quark visited Sarai's lab. They emerged talking excitedly about things he barely understood.

“Their chromosomes are triplex,” Khral was saying, “so of course when the micros replicate, they divide in three.”

“And they divide all the way around the torus,” added Sarai. “The chromosome encircles the central hole; so you have to end up with three daughter rings.”

Quark asked, “You have the enzymes and cell physiology all worked out?”

“And those other aromatic polymers, the ones that do light-activated quantum electrodynamics—Sarai, you've got to report this,” exclaimed Khral.

Sarai looked fierce again. “Those brainless legfish at Station—nobody will understand it.”

“You're welcome to attend our next lab meeting,” Khral added. “Elk Moon will be summing up his latest work on singing-tree intelligence.”

“Singing-trees may harbor lots of microzoöids, but they're even less intelligent than sentients.”

An awkward pause ensued, Khral's tact finally worn thin.

“Does anyone ever study the tumblerounds?” asked Rod. “Tumblerounds seem terribly interested in humans.”

Khral and Quark looked at him. Sarai muttered, “I know little about tumblerounds. They stay down in the garden rows.”

“Interesting,” said Khral. “We'll have to take a look at those tumblerounds.”

Sarai smiled slyly. “There is one other creature that harbors plenty of microzoöids.”

“Really?” said Khral. “What is that?”

“Wouldn't you like to know.”

O
ver the next three weeks, the two babies completed their first phase of treatment and followed T'kela home to Prokaryon. Then the toddler Qumum, too, went home in Geode's eager arms. Now each of them would only have to come up periodically to progress through the second phase of treatment; within months, they would be eating entirely Prokaryan food, 'jum would take longer; and for Rod, of course, this second phase might last for years.

Rod was left at Station with 'jum, who might take another two months before even making a visit. Mother Artemis was trying to make some arrangement for her care, so that Rod could return. In the meantime he felt idle. To pass the time he took 'jum “traveling” on the holostage: to the decaying temples of Urulan, where barbarians used to breed gorilla-hybrid slaves; to Bronze Sky with its bloodred sunsets and untamed volcanoes, terraformed to settle
millions from 'jum's world; and to the floating cities of Elysium, with their gene-perfect children, raised in nurseries where they never knew “parents,” only their perfect sentient teachers, like Mother Artemis used to be.

At Khral's invitation he attended Elk Moon's seminar on singing-trees. Elk Moon was a tall Bronze Skyan, of L'liite ancestry; a bush of prematurely graying hair set off his dark features, rather like Rod imagined 'jum's father might have looked. “The singing-trees are the real intelligence controlling this planet,” Elk began, his deep voice filling the holostage. “A creature that puts out light signals in thirty-seven distinct colors has got to know what it's doing.”

'jum tapped Rod's arm. “A number without children.” Her knowledge of Elysian had grown dramatically.

A canopy of the singing-tree forest appeared, at twilight, when the colors flashed most, a spectacle to rival any rainbow. Enlargement of a loopleaf revealed specialized tissues that pulsed brilliantly.

“These pulsing structures we call ‘light pods,' ” Elk continued. “Each light pod emits millisecond bursts of color—and the repetition rate is always a prime number.” Prime series rarely appeared in nature. “Moreover, intriguing patterns emerge: colors red-one and red-five invariably preceded emissions of blue-seven. We know there's a language here, if only we had a Rosetta stone. Lacking that, we haven't a clue until the natives respond to us—which they tried to do, early on.” Elk pointed for emphasis. “Last year, the singing-trees actually started to echo back to us the light signals that
we
sent, almost instantaneously, as if they got the message. Then it just stopped. Why?”

Rod had no idea why. He recalled the story in the news, later put down as a false lead.

“One theory,” Elk went on, “is that singing-trees live on a faster time scale than humans do; perhaps a hundred or
a thousand times faster. If they don't hear back from us within seconds, they lose interest; just as our attention would fail if aliens took years to get back to us. We did try to respond, but never caught on in time, and the natives gave up.”

Then Station's omnipresent voice cut in. “Singing-trees live for centuries, perhaps millennia. They scarcely move their limbs over our own time scale, let alone the millisecond range. How could they ‘talk' any faster than humans?”

“That's where Khral's breakthrough came in.” Elk talked faster now. “Khral showed that the light pods actually carry microzoöids to make light—like the bacteria of luminescent fish. Suppose the singing-trees actually talk by
exchanging microzoöids
—luminescent ones, that each encode their data in a matrix of photoproteins. Like luminescent fish, who release their bacteria continually, to colonize other fish. Similarly, if singing-trees transmit their language with luminescent microzoöids, they could transfer enormous quantities of information quickly—just like our nanoservos.”

Rod blinked, trying to sort this out. If singing-trees carried little light-flashing microzoöids to talk with other singing-trees . . . how would they try to talk to other creatures—like humans?

“Come on, Elk,” said Quark. “If singing-trees really are running this planet, then why can't they let us know? Why have no singing-trees scored more than ten percent on any intelligence test? Sentients can pick up any frequency, as you well know. Why couldn't we detect anything?”

Rod recalled Sarai's “intelligence test” with a smile. Elk shrugged. “No one's ever tested their microzoöids. Would you test human IQ by examining our excrement?” Laughter filled the holostage.

Khral was elated. “It's fantastic—my idea fits right in,”
she told Rod at their supper, where they met now most evenings. She always talked at a breakneck pace, and, unlike Rod, she never seemed to notice what she ate. “Even Station knows microzoöids are the answer; that's why I was hired. We've got to grow those microzoöids in pure culture,” Khral went on. “We haven't managed it yet—but Sarai has. I must get her formula.”

Rod grinned. “Lots of luck.”

“Oh, I have things to offer in return.” Khral's hair curved pleasantly around her cheeks. “All sorts of goodies from Science Park.”

“If singing-trees ‘talk' with microzoöids,” Rod wondered, “what if they try to ‘talk' with us?” The thought took away his appetite, even for shepherd's pie.

“By infecting us, you mean?” Khral smiled in perverse delight. “Now you're thinking like a scientist! Rod, if you've got time on your hands, why not join our next field expedition? We need to collect light pods for analysis, and set up behavioral experiments. But we're short one skinsuit right now—it turned sentient and demanded to ship back to Elysium. Next time, we'll buy from Proteus.”

He looked up with surprise. “Proteus Unlimited? How would your sentients feel, if you dealt with Proteus?”

Khral shrugged. “Quark wasn't happy. But, heck, it was Station's decision. Our personnel costs would double if we had to pay all the skinsuits.” She looked at him speculatively. “You don't need a skinsuit. You'd be a great help to us, and earn some cash besides.”

“And get infected by microzoöids?”

Khral tapped his arm. “Come on, that was a joke. Micros don't grow in us. You said your colony needs credits—Elysian credits. We'll take care of 'jum again, too.”