Farseed, page 6
“Not that much of a chance. At least one of them would have found some way to get back here by now, to let us know what happened, to get more supplies, to warn us if there’s something out there that we should know about. Aleksandr and Zoheret and the board should have organized another group to go and search for them long before now.” Trevor sighed. “You think this is just about my mother, but it isn’t. I’d feel the same way even if she hadn’t decided to go. Sooner or later we have to see what’s out there for ourselves.”
He was right, of course. However thorough the records were in the library, there were details that Ship’s scans might have missed. Something out there might pose a threat to them. Ignorance and fear of the unknown would be no protection against such potential dangers.
“It’ll be hard for your father,” she said, “to have to worry about you, too.”
“It’ll be hard for all of our parents, for everybody.”
“It’ll be harder for your father,” Leila insisted. “My parents would still have my sister and each other. Anoki wouldn’t have anybody.”
“He keeps thinking about what might have happened to my mother, and then he gets angry because all of that might have been prevented if the boards had just listened to his earlier suggestions. Is it going to be that much worse for him to be worrying about me, too? He wanted to go with her before. He’d leave here by himself to look for her if he could.”
“I know,” she said.
“Anyway, why bring that up now? You’re just looking for an excuse to put everything off. Then we’d have to wait until the warmer weather returns, and by then we’d probably find some other reason to stay here.”
“Maybe I’m afraid.” She could admit that to him. She would not have said it in front of anyone else.
“I’m afraid, too.” She was surprised at his admission. “Anybody with any sense would be afraid,” Trevor continued. “I have to find out what happened to my mother if I can, but it isn’t just that. We have to go outside this settlement and see what’s out there, or it’ll just become easier and easier never to leave at all.”
“I know,” she said. “I’ll talk to my mother tonight, or tomorrow at the latest.”
“Good.” Trevor whistled; the black horse trotted toward him. He slipped the reins over the horse’s head, then leaped onto the animal’s back. Leila watched him ride away from her, moving as though he and the horse were one being, riding with the grace his father Anoki lacked.
There were enough good reasons for her and Trevor to explore more of this continent, enough arguments to make before the board even without mentioning the three whose fates were unknown.
But Anoki had to be behind his son’s plans to leave the settlements. She was sure of that, even though Trevor had never admitted it or given her any reason to assume it. Anoki couldn’t search for his mate himself, so his son would have to go in his place, however afraid he might be. Anoki would expect his son to be as courageous and adventurous as his mother. Trevor might confess his fears to Leila, but he would never have admitted them to his father.
5
The windmills turned as Leila and Rosa climbed the hill to their dome. Long bluish shadows cast by the arms of the windmills fluttered over the domes of their settlement, which lay to the west of the wheat fields. Luis had met them at the entrance to the eastern settlement’s greenhouse and helped them carry their harvest of colulos to his laboratory.
Rosa pulled her hat off her blond head and tucked it under her arm. “Luis wasn’t wearing his eyes again,” Rosa murmured as they approached their dome.
“That’s nothing new,” Leila said.
“He does that more now, not wearing them.”
Leila did not want to think about that. “When I don’t really need them, it’s sometimes easier to leave them off,” Luis had told her some time ago about his goggles. “Helps me get used to being without them.” Luis was blind without his goggles. He had been born that way, and needed his goggles to see anything at all. Even with Ship’s advanced technology, a few of its children had emerged from Ship’s wombs with physical limitations.
“But you don’t have to get along without them,” Leila had objected.
“It doesn’t hurt to be prepared,” her father’s brother had replied. “What if they fail me some day? Then I’d have to be able to get along without them.”
Luis had sounded like Anoki, Trevor’s father. Anoki’s limp had grown worse in recent years, yet he still resisted using a cart when he had to walk a longer than usual distance, and lately he had taken to using a long stick to support himself during his walks. Better to adapt to any pain or discomfort; there might come a day when the carts could not be repaired or their batteries and fuel cells would fail and even more surgery might not be able to help him. Ship had given them the tools they needed to survive on Home, but how long would they be able to maintain them or replace them? How much time would pass before they were able to create their own more advanced technological base and replicate what they had been given?
Their small dome was just behind the larger one shared by her friends Yukio and Sofia and their families. Leila climbed the three steps to the door and pushed it open.
Manuel was sitting on the floor as she and Rosa entered, on a mat in front of the table, his head bowed over their family’s reading screen. Scrapper, their cat, was curled up next to Manuel, resting after yet another day of keeping their dwelling free of vermin. It was unusual for their father to be home this early; he and Zoheret usually didn’t get back to their dome until after dark.
He lifted his head and gave them a quick smile. “Greetings,” he said. Unlike many of the men, their father wore no beard, keeping his face scraped clean with a razor. “And what were you two doing today?”
“Harvesting colulos for Luis,” Rosa replied as she sat down next to Manuel.
“Not the most interesting work to do,” Manuel said, “but not the hardest, either.”
Rosa leaned against their father. “It’s not so bad,” she said, “but I’ll be glad when it’s time for our lessons again.” Their classes at the library were to resume during the month of First Frost, three months from now.
Leila shrugged as she sat down across from them. “I’d rather be harvesting plants than doing lessons.”
Manuel shook his head at her. “Better not say that in front of Lillka. You’re lucky to have as good a teacher as she is.”
“Lillka’s all right,” Leila said.
“You used to look forward to your times in the library with her. I hope you’re going to do better at your lessons than you did last year.”
Leila frowned. Lillka wouldn’t have complained directly about any of her students to their parents, or told them outright that a particular boy or girl was being lazy, sloppy, or careless during lessons. Instead, she would have paid a visit to Manuel and Zoheret, sighed, and spoken of how well Leila had once been doing, of how enthusiastic she used to be about learning new skills and searching the library’s databases and records, and then she would have sighed some more and shaken her head. What she really meant would have been clear enough to Leila’s parents, namely that Leila was not doing as well as she might have been, that a once-promising student had either grown lazy or had perhaps reached her intellectual limits, and that the library’s precious and carefully maintained resources were wasted on her. If she didn’t show any improvement next season, then Lillka would recommend that Leila drop all her studies except for her lessons in practical pursuits. After that, she would pass most of her time in mastering whatever skills she showed the most aptitude for and preparing for whatever work would most benefit the settlements while looking forward to finding a mate and rearing her own children.
What a narrow and constricted life it was, Leila thought, not for the first time. The older people thought of nothing but maintaining what they had and passing that life on to the children who would follow them. They lived on Home much as the cats and dogs they had brought to this world lived among them, grateful for what they were given, set in their habits and uneasy with any sudden break in their routine, bound by their limits, hanging on to what they had built without creating much that was new. It seemed impossible that they could be the people she had read about and seen images of in the records, the ones who had been brave enough to leave the familiarity of Ship for the unknown, who had struggled to fulfill the goal of seeding Home with human life.
Once, she had thrilled to the stories of their exploits, and taken pride in being a child of such people. But if her life was to be no more than hanging on to what Zoheret and Manuel had made for her and her sister, then poring over the records and studying what Lillka called the history of their species were useless.
She could go on as she was expected to do, and wait for the inevitable day when Lillka would sigh and shake her head and then advise her to drop most of her lessons and prepare herself for life as an adult. Or she could speak up for herself and for the others of her friends who were impatient to explore what lay beyond their settlements. Tonight, she would tell her mother what they were planning, as she had just about promised to do, and try to gain Zoheret’s support for the venture. Whatever Trevor might say, Leila knew that they would need the help and support of the settlements if they were to have any chance of going out and returning safely.
Even with their carefully laid and cautious plans, they might not return at all. That was one possible outcome, too. Zoheret would be thinking of her old friends while Leila was speaking of their plans for an expedition, of the three explorers who had already been lost.
Manuel turned off the reading screen, then got to his feet. Scrapper stretched, then licked at his thick orange fur. “You girls must be hungry,” Manuel said. “We’ve got some bread left, and there’s cheese and fruit.” He gestured at the grapes on the table. “Do you want to eat here, or at the public hall?”
“The hall,” Rosa replied.
“Well, come on, then.”
Leila said, “I’m not that hungry. I’ll wait until Zoheret comes home.”
“She might be late,” Manuel said. “She had a longer shift at the greenhouse today.”
“That’s all right.” Trevor would probably be at the hall, eating with his father or a few friends; Leila recalled that Sofia, Lillka’s daughter, was supposed to be on kitchen duty that evening, helping to prepare and serve the community supper. Trevor and Sofia would be expecting her to speak to Zoheret about their plans. She would have a better chance at convincing her mother if she spoke to her alone, without Manuel around to raise any objections.
Manuel held out a hand to Rosa and pulled her to her feet. She leaned against him for a moment as he ruffled her white-yellow hair. Rosa was already taller than Leila had been at her age, with bigger bones and bright blue eyes instead of the dark brown eyes of Leila and their parents. Unlike them, Rosa often had to wear a hat at midday to keep her pale skin from turning a bright pink, and her fine blond hair was a contrast to Leila’s coarser and thicker black hair. Most of the couples in the settlements had more than one child, and often only their firstborn was theirs genetically.
“We need variant strains,” was the way Kagami the healer, who knew more biology and medicine than anyone else, had put it when explaining the physical differences of those who were siblings to Leila and her friends. The small laboratory next to Kagami’s dome housed the preserved sperm and ova of thousands of the people who had sent Ship on its journey. More variety in their genetic heritages would keep them from growing too inbred and ensure healthier descendants. A larger gene pool would give those who would follow them more ways to adapt to unforeseen changes in their environment.
Zoheret had carried both of her daughters inside herself before giving birth to them; like all of the other parents, she and her mate Manuel drew no distinction between their biological and gestational children. Leila had never seen any sign that her parents cared any less for Rosa than for her. Lately, in fact, there were more signs of their wishing that Leila might be a little more like her clever and industrious sister.
Manuel paused in the doorway, glanced back at Leila with a worried look on his face, then followed Rosa outside; the door closed behind them.
Leila got up, went to the cupboard to get some bread and cheese, then changed her mind. After pumping some water from their cistern into a large curved shell and setting that on the floor for the cat, she crossed the room and opened the outside door.
The sky had grown dark green and the wind was picking up, as it usually did in the evening. Below her on the hillside, Manuel and Rosa had been joined by Lillka’s mate Brendan and his dog Tyra, a setter, who followed Brendan everywhere whenever she wasn’t being used to herd the sheep. Other people would be making their way to the community hall through the corridors that connected some of the domes to the hall.
The heat of the day lingered, but Leila smelled change in the air; the spicy scent of the wind was mustier, an early sign of cooler weather to come. Colder winds would sweep down on the settlements from the mountainous lands to the north, which according to the records were covered with ice and snow for nearly half the year. The yellow native grass on the plain below would begin to turn white in about a month, and two months or so after that, the first frost would appear. She and her friends would have to leave within the next few days if they wanted to get back here before beads of ice covered the ground.
Leila sat down on the steps outside the doorway, resting her arms on her knees. She and her friends had pored over the records of Ship’s scans, the maps, images, and data that had been compiled before their parents had been allowed to leave Ship for Home. They would not have to travel through territory about which they knew nothing. But Trevor’s mother Bonnie and her two companions had studied the same records, yet had not returned. Something overwhelming and completely unexpected must have come upon them.
Their greenhouse was near the bottom of the hill, its glassy roof golden in the evening light. A wide field of grain lay between this settlement and the hill to the east on which the other settlement stood. Aleksandr was the leader there, as Leila’s mother was here. The adults in Aleksandr’s group were older and had grown up apart from Zoheret’s group aboard Ship, reaching adulthood before learning that the world Ship had originally chosen for them was in fact uninhabitable. After arriving on Home, the two groups had decided to build two separate settlements, close enough so that they could work together and share resources, but with each group governing itself. As the years passed, the elected boards of advisors in each settlement had held more of their meetings jointly, while Zoheret and Aleksandr consulted with each other so often that the eastern and western settlements had become, in practice, one community. Leila could not think of any dispute that had ever divided them, and Zoheret and Aleksandr almost never disagreed on anything as far as she knew, at least not in public.
But they had disagreed about the outsiders, about how much help to give them, about whether or not to seek them out and find out more about the land beyond their settlements. Leila recalled the night when the two leaders had argued ten years ago, when Aleksandr had angrily left Zoheret’s dome.
What would they think when Leila told them what she and Trevor were planning? Would that be enough to bring the two into open disagreement? Zoheret might become the one to argue against sending out an expedition, while Aleksandr could remind her that she had spoken up for Bonnie and her comrades earlier, that she might only be worrying now because her own daughter would be at risk. With their two leaders disagreeing openly, people would take sides, which was probably the reason Aleksandr and Zoheret preferred not to air any disputes in front of others.
Leila leaned back against the wall. People trusted her mother. Every time Zoheret even hinted that she might give up her position and ask the people in her settlement to choose another leader, so many people had objected that she had always decided to stay on. Everyone trusted her as their leader. Maybe they trusted her too much, depended on her too much.
Leila heard a movement behind her, and turned her head. Her mother was coming down the hill toward her. “Zoheret,” Leila called out, surprised. “I thought you’d be at the greenhouse.”
“I left early,” her mother replied. “Promised to look after Cho Lin’s new baby so she and Julius could have some time to themselves. Their other children were planning to go to an early supper with their friends. I thought I mentioned my plans to your father.”
“I guess you forgot.”
“And why are you sitting out here all alone?”
“Manuel and Rosa went to supper. I decided to wait for you.”
Zoheret sat down next to her. “I feel too tired to walk to the hall and I still have to check the latrine.” The settlement’s toilets, designed by Anoki, compressed their wastes for use as fertilizer, but each family was responsible for collecting the small bricks and taking them to the sheds next to the greenhouses.
“We can eat here, then. We’ve still got enough food inside.”
“Then I’ll eat with you.” Zoheret leaned back. “Cho Lin says that this is going to be her last child, but I wouldn’t be surprised if she changes her mind in a few years.” Their new child was the fourth for Cho Lin and Julius; theirs was one of the larger families in the settlement. Most of the couples here and in Aleksandr’s settlement had two or three children, although they were all still young enough to have one or two more if that was what they chose to do. Trevor’s parents Bonnie and Anoki, however, had only one child, because giving birth to Trevor had been so hard on his mother that Kagami had strongly advised Bonnie not to bear any more children.
Everyone was familiar with Bonnie’s situation, because it had led the community to decide in a public meeting against using the technology they had brought with them for the gestation of embryos and fetuses in artificial wombs unless an unforeseen emergency required such a measure to save a fetus’s life. Their energy sources were still too limited for them to drain them of power when that energy was needed to maintain their greenhouses, their looms, and other facilities. It was the same reasoning that had brought them to rely on their food dispensers, which could create all kinds of foods from recycled materials, only when there were severe shortages of necessary nutrients. Using stored genetic material for their gestational children did not involve as many risks, or an extreme dependence on technology they might not be able to repair or replace for ages, if ever, and was a temporary measure anyway until their population grew much larger.
