“Do you miss Raven and Dori?” Dinar asked. I nodded. Our next stop was supposed to finally confirm that Zealanders really did have kids, and really were civilized enough to show them to outsiders.
“We could have brought them,” Dinar went on. “The party was annoying, but everything’s been safe enough. Hell, everyone has been a lot more sober than your average parade celebrant.” Which was true: Asterion’s idea of a good time seemed notably free of intoxicants. Maybe it was hard enough to keep track of their games without getting stoned.
“We could’ve,” I said. “But I’m still glad we don’t have to take care of them on our own. Even Cytosine travels with most of her family to back her up.” I couldn’t tell her the real reason I was glad to have Dori at home. Which made Cytosine right: when you brought your kids to every negotiation, you had to be on your best behavior. Definitely no sneaking around installing malware back doors. Kids at a negotiation were more than a prompt for mindful choices. In practice they were also hostages, even in a parent’s embrace.
On this trip, I could risk myself in ways I’d never risk Dori. Dinar and I coming to Zealand alone wasn’t merely rude by Cytosine’s standards, but a threat—one that Rhamnetin had made her complicit in. No wonder she’d been furious. And if I were caught with the bot, the diplomatic damage wouldn’t only be between the Chesapeake and Asterion. It might well convince the Ringers that they couldn’t trust the watersheds at all.
I tried to look distracted by the scenery, rather than like someone wrestling a thorny moral dilemma. Too many trade-offs to model inside my own head.
Kelsey interrupted my reverie. “This is where my kid goes.”
“You have a child?” asked Cytosine.
“Seven years old.” Kelsey laughed. “Not old enough for an internship, but too big to carry around! Tha spends evenings with my household—but for us, family is a private haven. So this is where we start introducing our children to other people.”
The school, or whatever it was, took up the ground floor of one of the skyscrapers. As we came in, screens showed cartoon figures at play. On one side, pink bears and green bears counted blocks in different colors. On the other side, they traded blocks with gestures of exaggerated excitement: three squares for four triangles. Whether they were celebrating the math or the trading, I couldn’t tell.
Kelsey stopped at an office, came out with badges marked visitor. “Anyone can come here—to see thos kids, or play with other people’s kids when they’re starting to think about thos own, or to trade tutoring, but the office likes to know who you are. I’ve given them a list.” Hoi (currently playing prince, according to Adrien) helped the Ringers get the lanyards attached. I examined the slick plastic. It wasn’t intended to be disposable, at least; the letters were faded from years of reuse.
Kelsey knocked on a door and cracked it open. “Can we come in?”
In response, I heard a ragged chorus of, “They’re here!” and a flock of kids poured into the hall. They all looked well past toddlerhood and not yet adolescent. They were dressed more plainly than Asterion’s adults, though several wore boas or jewelry or gaudy belts along with their simpler jumpsuits, as if we’d caught them at the start of a dress-up game. They clustered around the Ringers, peppering them with questions. An adult clad in green velvet followed behind, laughing. “That was never going to work. Serge, say hi to your zaza.”
One of the taller kids, with a shock of red hair above their pink boa, turned and waved—“Hi, Zaza! Hi, Associate Mallory!”—before getting back to the interesting visitors. Kelsey returned the greeting and smiled, looking satisfied, and Mallory waved as well.
Dinar leaned over to whisper, “Can you imagine never having people over to your house?”
Mallory either overheard, or had known Dinar for the five minutes it’d take to guess what would disturb her most. “We’re no less social than you. But our ancestors recognized that one of their mistakes had been forcing career obligations into every part of life. Without that time to relax, to focus elsewhere, it was hard to know when situations at work needed changing. We’re passionate about our careers, but now we also value having sacred space where it can’t intrude.”
Dinar’s eyebrows went up. “Is having friends over work?”
Kelsey smiled wryly. “Playful work, but yes. We have plenty of places to meet friends, even cook for them if we want. But when I go home, I focus on my spouses and our children. Trust that it works for us. And that you won’t miss much by not getting to ogle the state of my living room.”
“I like the way we do it better, too,” I told Dinar when Mallory had gone out of earshot. But then, we didn’t have the sort of work that Kelsey and Mallory’s ancestors had forced on ours a century ago, either. The things I did, from commenting on threads to analyzing water chemistry to nursing Dori, all wove together to make a complete life. “But we have our own dedicated spaces where certain kinds of work can’t intrude. I wouldn’t try to model runoff in synagogue.”
“You wouldn’t try it during the Passover seder, either. It’s not just the place, it’s that some things shouldn’t be multitasked, and ritual is one of them.”
The teacher (also in prince mode, my mesh guessed) approached us. “Do you want to see the classroom?” Hoi looked uncomfortable.
“Sure,” said Dinar.
Hoi led us inside, away from the teeming kids. Over the door, bright letters spelled out “PLAY WELL WITH OTHERS.” It probably wasn’t meant to seem ominous. The setup wasn’t particularly alien: work tables in the middle of the room and study stations around the edges, ranging from a relatively familiar science station with rock samples and a bridge-building set to an “economics” station with biographical posters and strange-looking network diagrams along with blocks like the ones in the mural. There was in fact a scattering of dress-up boxes in one corner, shiny things spilling out.
The teacher twisted hos hands together, looking around.
Trying to set hom at ease, I said, “I remember working with a bridge kit like that, when I was in school. They’re fun, but tricky.”
Hoi nodded. “We’ve been working on producing more relevant kits as well. Most of these kids have never seen an actual bridge.”
“I guess they wouldn’t, on an aisland.”
“Drain systems, on the other hand—” Hoi pointed out what I’d mistaken for a marble racecourse, now revealed as a miniature set of pipes intended to divide a stream of water in as many directions as possible. It was a clever toy, and the first corporate product I’d encountered on Zealand that I wanted. Differently colored segments represented different drainage materials, each with its own material characteristics—and, Asterion being what they were, with prices clearly marked for each. Students would be given a budget, and assigned to build within it.
Dinar texted me. Why are we in here?
To see how they actually raise their kids?
So why are they keeping us away from the actual kids?
I straightened. “Thanks for the tour—we should get back to our group.”
Hoi folded hos arms. “You’ve got a problem with how we raise our children?”
I blinked. “I didn’t say that.” I honestly had less of a problem than I’d expected to—and a nasty part of me was upset that these people were doing well enough to pass Cytosine’s test. I couldn’t imagine her treating with people who really did use crèches.
“You didn’t have to. You didn’t have to follow our guests on their trip, either. Aliens are one thing—meeting them is the opportunity of a lifetime, for the kids as much as the rest of us. You—we know what you want to do with them.”
“I haven’t done anything with your children. I’ve been too busy trying to save mine from the things you did.”
Dinar touched my wrist. Judy. Hoi’s our age.
And this is literally the first time I’ve been in the same building as corporate kids.
Yes, but we’re supposed to be the diplomatic experts.
“If you had your way,” said the teacher, “they’d never learn anything about their heritage.”
I should’ve turned and gone back out into the hall. “You’re not preserving some deep spiritual tradition. Your heritage is that you almost broke civilization, and wounded the planet enough that we’re still trying to fix what you destroyed.”
“We made civilization.”
Dinar tugged at my hand. “We’re going now.” Please, this isn’t the way to change the minds of random people who’ve never left Zealand.
If this is what they’re teaching their kids, we’re never going to get anywhere with them.
And we should do something about that—later—but this argument won’t manage it.
Adrien hurried over to intervene. “Cytosine’s going to come in and tell a Ringer kids’ story, so I wanted to make sure the classroom was ready.”
“Of course,” said the teacher. “We’re fine.”
It shouldn’t have shaken me that there were people in Zealand who hated us. We held grudges against the corporations—justified, I thought, but of course they’d have their own opinions about their fall from power. It wasn’t the sort of thing humans tended to be unbiased about. And still, the bitter pride coloring the teacher’s voice felt like those kids drawing swastikas on my tablet: an intrusion so sharp that it sullied everything around it.
I couldn’t shake the idea that the furious teacher wasn’t a coincidence. Sure, maybe Kelsey’s kid happened to get stuck with an asshole this year—or maybe Kelsey sent hos kid to a school where convincing kids we were the devil was a keystone of the curriculum. Certainly Kelsey hadn’t seen anything wrong with using this as the demonstration class for the Ringers. Even if the presence of network reps brought out more vocal resentment, those feelings probably weren’t silent the rest of the time. Kelsey would’ve known. Was foisting this teacher on us an unfortunate necessity, or a deliberate insult? Or just meant to shake us? It was blunter, but it left me with the same bitter taste as the conversation with Jace.
Anyway, I got myself looking calm. The teacher proved to have as good a poker face as the associates, and the kids streamed back in. And we finally got to hear a Ringer story.
Cytosine scuttled to a cushioned reading circle, and rolled back against a stack of pillows. The corporate kids, laughing and jostling, sat cross-legged around her and tried to look serious, not helped by the two plains-folk kids squirming to find spots among them or the inevitable bickering over who got to sit next to the aliens. Diamond ended up draped across Kelsey’s kid’s lap and into someone else’s. Cytosine must have judged Asterion’s parenting and found it worthy.
The teacher made a calming gesture, hands pressing down and aside as if kneading imaginary dough. The children quieted. I began recording livestream; I suspected this would be informative. How much could you learn about humans from In My Garden or the story of the golem?
Cytosine rocked gently. “Diamond, Chlorophyll, what story should I tell?”
Chlorophyll squealed. “Tell about Fructose!” They added something in their own language, which my algorithm translated as stimulant. A name? “And Fructose and lost babies!”
Their mother rocked faster, considering, then slowed again. “All right. I know that one well enough, and I think it’ll make sense to humans, too.”
I love this story, texted Rhamnetin.
There’s a thread on folklore starting up—I pointed him at the link—can you join for Q&A so they don’t expect me to interrupt Cytosine?
She’s kind of used to that. But he posted to the thread.
Cytosine began: “In the days of the First Reach, the First Ring sent people to meet the Second skin-to-skin, on their birth world. Among the travelers from the plains was—I’ll call her Caffeine; that has the right connotations, I think—who had helped program the original probes to observe the tree-folk. Her cleverness brought her many mates, and she carried triplets still nursing to the new world. Among the tribe that welcomed them was Fructose, who even before the Reach had learned how to grow the choicest fruits in the canopy around her dwelling place, so that all the children in the tribe could feed well and safely. She was brilliant from the egg, and still so young that her brothers hadn’t hatched yet. Both Caffeine and Fructose had been born with lonely names, but had chosen new ones together, sharing diagrams of the molecules that had been most vital to their success.
“Some among the tree-folk were unhappy about the plains-folk’s arrival. They liked their power as it was and feared change, or believed the shared technology was a poisoned gift from corrupt gods. So one day Fructose’s sister came to her and said: ‘I was tending our brothers’ eggs when the Chief with the Lonely Name came with her brothers and stole them away. I tried to fight them off, but they were many and I was small and alone. I tried to follow them, but the biggest of her brothers held me back until the others vanished. I tried to track them, but they traveled without breaking a leaf to mark their trail.’
“Fructose knew that she had to get the eggs back, or the Chief with the Lonely Name would raise them as her own, and the Chief’s band of brothers would grow even larger and more dangerous. ‘I know the trees better than anyone,’ Fructose said, ‘and can find trails that no one else can see.’ ‘And I have devices that the Chief refuses to understand,’ said Caffeine, ‘and satellites to find where she dwells. I will come with you, and help save your brothers’ eggs, and show the Chief what we can do together.’”
She went on, describing the pair’s adventures in the wild orchards and cultivated jungles of the tree-folk’s lost homeworld. Fructose and Caffeine reminded me of human trickster archetypes, or one of the folkloric travelers of North American fable—the network thread excitedly compared them to examples ranging from Coyote to Johnny Appleseed—but they were scientific tricksters. Caffeine was a hacker of sorts, programming new sensors on the fly and distracting predators with recordings of more familiar prey. Fructose was the sort of inventor whose name—for humans—was lost in unwritten prehistory: a first farmer who still knew the secrets of hunter-gatherers, and who could tell the meaning of every seed and leaf.
They were also both mothers—or rather, a mother and a sister who expected to raise her brothers as soon as they were hatched. I was surprised at how much I liked that, how much it made me feel an absence in our own stories. But that’s going to be me. If we didn’t screw this up completely, if we managed to come to a relationship that worked for everyone, I’d be the person who met the ship with my daughter on my chest, and shared adventures with our visitors.
Or else I’d be the villain, trying to hold back the inevitable loss of our world. I suddenly sympathized with the Chief with the Lonely Name. She did something hideously immoral to try and preserve the world she loved. Kidnapping eggs was nastier than releasing malware, but I couldn’t disagree with her about the stakes. Saliva soured in my mouth. The cheerful adventurers, swinging and scuttling through the trees with triplets in tow, felt ominous as a stormfront.
They were real people, put in Rhamnetin. They didn’t do everything the stories claim, but you can read their records.
I’d love that. I suspected, though, that the Ringers hadn’t saved any memoirs from the Chief with the Lonely Name. Whoever she’d been.