Military Personnel:
Col. James A. Conn, governor general
Capt. Ada P. Beaumont, lt. governor
Maj. Peter T. Gallin, personnel
M/Sgt. Ilya V. Burdette, Corps of Engineers
Cpl. Antonia M. Cole
Spec. Martin H. Andresson
Spec. Emilie Kontrin
Spec. Danton X. Morris
M/Sgt. Danielle L. Emberton, tactical op.
Spec. Lewiston W. Rogers
Spec. Hamil N. Masu
Spec. Grigori R. Tamilin
M/Sgt. Pavlos D. M. Bilas, maintenance
Spec. Dorothy T. Kyle
Spec. Egan I. Innis
Spec. Lucas M. White
Spec. Eron 678–4578 Miles
Spec. Upton R. Patrick
Spec. Gene T. Troyes
Spec. Tyler W. Hammett
Spec. Kelley N. Matsuo
Spec. Belle M. Rider
Spec. Vela K. James
Spec. Matthew R. Mayes
Spec. Adrian C. Potts
Spec. Vasily C. Orlov
Spec. Rinata W. Quarry
Spec. Kito A. M. Kabir
Spec. Sita Chandrus
M/Sgt. Dinah L. Sigury, communications
Spec. Yung Kim
Spec. Lee P. de Witt
M/Sgt. Thomas W. Oliver, quartermaster
Cpl. Nina N. Ferry
Pfc. Hayes Brandon
Lt. Romy T. Jones, special forces
Sgt. Jan Vandermeer
Spec. Kathryn S. Flanahan
Spec. Charles M. Ogden
M/Sgt. Zell T. Parham, security
Cpl. Quintan R. Witten
Capt. Jessica N. Sedgewick, confessor-advocate
Capt. Bethan M. Dean, surgeon
Capt. Robert T. Hamil, surgeon
Lt. Regan T. Chiles, computer services
Civilian Personnel: to be assigned:
Secretarial personnel: 12
Medical/surgical: 1
Medical/paramedic: 7
Mechanical maintenance: 20
Distribution and warehousing: 20
Robert H. Davies
Security: 12
Computer service: 4
Computer maintenance: 2
Librarian: 1
Agricultural specialists: 10
Harold B. Hill
Geologists: 5
Meterologist: 1
Biologists: 6
Marco X. Gutierrez
Education: 5
Cartographer: 1
Management supervisors: 4
Biocycle engineers: 4
Construction personnel: 150
Food preparation specialists: 6
Industrial specialists: 15
Mining engineers: 2
Energy systems supervisors: 8
TOTAL MILITARY 45
TOTAL CIVILIAN SUPERVISORY 296
TOTAL CITIZEN STAFF 341; TOTAL NONASSIGNED DEPENDENTS: 111; TOTAL ALL CITIZENS: 452
ADDITIONAL NONCITIZEN PERSONNEL:
“A” class: 2890
Jin 458-9998
Pia 89-687
“B” class: 12389
“M” class: 4566
“P” class: 20788
“V” class: 1278
TOTAL ALL NONCITIZENS: 41911
TOTAL ALL MISSION: 42363
Male/female ratio approx. 55%/45%
i
T-00:15:01
Communication: Cyteen Dock HQ
CYTDOCK1/USVENTURE/USCAPABLE/USSWIFT/STANDBY UNDOCK.
T-00:2:15
CYTDOCK1/USVENTURE/YOU ARE NUMBER ONE FOR DEPARTURE.
T-00:0:49
USVENTURE/CYTDOCK1/SEQUENCE INITIATED/THANK YOU
STATIONMASTER/HOSPITALITY APPRECIATED/ENDIT.
ii
T00:0:20
Venture; en route
They moved. The stress made itself felt, and in spite of the tapes which had instructed them how all this would be, Jin 458 felt the shudder and shift of weight through the thousands of bodies jammed into the aisles of the bunks—stacks of bunks which leaned crazily together like watch-towers, stacks already filled with bodies, azi all crowded up together and holding onto each other as they had been told to do. In spite of all the instruction, Jin felt afraid, deep inside, not letting it out. A sigh went up, one united breath, when the weight stopped and they had the falling-sensation again.
“Hold tight,” a voice told them over public address, and they held, a painful clenching of hands on shoulders and on the frames of the bunks and whatever they could hold to, so that they would not come drifting loose when the weight came back again.
And come it did, with a crash and rumble of machinery, an authoritative settling of feet firmly back to the floor and of clothes on bodies, a kind of crawling sensation far from pleasant.
“That’s it,” the PA told them. “We have G now. You can let go and find your places. You’re berthed by alphabetic and numeric sequence. If you can’t find your bunk, report to the door where you came in.”
Jin stood still waiting as the press of bodies slowly sorted itself out, until it became possible to move again, and people who had been jammed into the bunks were coming down the ladders to find their proper places. He could see a tag where he was, bunk M 234–6787.
“The center aisle,” the PA voice said again, “is M 1 through M 7. Row two spinward is M 8 through N 1. . . .”
Jin listened, shrank aside as azi needed to pass him to get to their places. So they were bunked by alphabet and birth-order, not by gene-set. He would not be near his sibs. It was all very confusing, but they were being told what to do and it was all, he supposed, moving with considerable organization under the circumstances.
It was hard to hold on with the ship moving as it was and people stumbled into him, thrown by the movement and the floor curve. Everyone hurried, at the pace of the PA voice, which kept throwing instructions at them. He reasoned that if MNO was spinward of the aisle, then J had to be the other direction, and when he had a clear space he went, handing his way along the bunk rails and not letting go, along aisles and past rows until he had come to a K and turned toward the front of the ship. He found himself among J designations, to his relief, and he kept searching, as others did, having figured out the system, passing muddled wanderers who were probably under T class, unable to read.
He located it—refuge, berth J 458–9998 right on the bottom, so that he would not have to climb the ladders which towered up and up atilt in the eerie slantwise way that things were built on the curved floor of the ship. If he sat up on top, he thought, he could look straight into the chasms of other rows sideways to his floor. It was that huge a room and that much curve; and he was glad not to have that view. He sat down at his assigned place, feet over the edge; and all at once another of the Js showed up. This J, another 458 but of gene-set 8974—must come from some other farm, but he could not be sure with the shaving. The man clambered up the ladder over him and the bunk next upstairs gave slightly as his bunkmate climbed in and swung his feet over the edge. Jin sat still, bent over because of the low overhead. He was tired, very glad to sit down, and he felt a great deal safer enclosed by the four uprights and other groundlevel bunks all around him. Another J found the bunk at his head, which was more company; and more Js went up the ladder.
It was all going very fast now, with comforting efficiency: they had managed to do it all right. Soon people were sitting all about him. Someone took the other decklevel bunk next to his, and he saw people on either side, and facing him and angling away down the diagonal view through the uprights. The room was getting quiet again, even the non-readers having mostly found their places, so that the PA sounded even louder. He had already spotted the small packet the PA told them about next, the plastic case lying on the pillow, and there was a massive stirring as thousands of azi reached and took theirs as he did—as they opened the covers and found hygiene kits and schedules.
“Read your schedule for exercise,” the voice instructed them. “If you don’t read, you will have a blue card or a red card. Blues are group one. Reds are group two. I will call you by those numbers; you will have half an hour at a time.”
It was not much time. Jin was already plotting how he could adjust his personal routine to follow it. There were more instructions, where one went for elimination and how one reported malaise, and instruction that they must sit or lie in the bunks at all other times because there was no room for people to walk about. “A great deal of the time we will play tape,” the voice promised them, which cheered Jin considerably.
He felt uncertain what his life had meant up to this point. He remembered well enough. But the importance he had attached to things was all revised. His life now seemed more preparatory than substantive. He looked forward to things to come. There would be a world, he believed; and he was called on to build it. He would become more and more like a born-man and he would be on this assignment for the rest of his life, one of the most important assignments even born-men hoped to get. All of this was due to his good fortune in having been born in the right year, on the right world, of the right gene-set, and of course it was due to his excellent attention to his work. There would be only good tape for him, and when he had gotten where he was going, when he looked about him at a new land, there were certain things which would have to be done at once, with all the skill he had. People believed in him. They had chosen him. He was very happy, now that all the disturbing things were over, now that he could sit in his own bunk and know that he was safe . . . and he would have just about enough time to understand it all before they would be there, so the tape promised.
There would be Pia, for instance. He would have liked to have found Pia in all this crowd, and asked her whether the tape had talked to her about him. But he thought that it had. Usually they were very thorough about such details. And likely they had known even what he would answer: perhaps their own supervisor had had a hand in it, reaching out to take care of them, however far they had come from their beginnings. He and Pia would make born-men together and the tape said that this would be as good as the reward tapes, a reward anytime they liked as long as they were off duty. He had a great deal of new information in that regard to think on, and information about the world they were going to, and lists of new rules and procedures. He wanted to succeed in this new place and impress his supervisors.
The PA finished instructing them. They were to lie flat on their bunks, and soon they would be asked to take trank from the ampoules given them in their personal kit. He arranged all this where he could find it, taped the trank series to the bedpost, and lay down as he was supposed to do, his head on his hands. He would be very busy for the future. He was scheduled for exercise in the 12th group, and when it was called, he wanted to proceed to the right place as quickly as possible and to plan a routine which would do as much as possible for him in the least amount of time.
He had never been so taut-nerved and full of purpose—never had so much to look forward to, or even imagined such opportunity existed. He loved the state which first ordered his creation and now bought his contract and saw to every detail of his existence. It created Pia and all the others and took them together to a new world it planned to give them. Into the bargain it had made him strong and beautiful and intelligent, so that it would be proud of him. It felt very good to be what he was planned to be, to know that everything was precisely on schedule and that his contractholders were delighted with him. He tried very hard to please, and he felt a tingling of pleasure now that he knew he had done everything right and that they were on their way. He smiled and hugged it all inside himself, how happy he was, a preciousness beyond all past imagining.
A tape began. It talked about the new world, and he listened.
iii
T00:21:15
Venture log
“. . . outbound at 0244 m in good order. Estimate jump at 1200 a. All personnel secure under normal running. US Swift and US Capable in convoy report 0332 m all stable and normal running.”
iv
T28 hours Mission Apparent Time
From the personal journal of Robert Davies
“. . . 9/2/94. Jump completed. Four days to bend a turn after dump and we’re through this one. Out of trafficked space. We’re coming to our intended heading and now the worst part begins. Four more of these—this time without proper charts. I never liked this kind of thing.”
v
T15 days MAT
Lounge area 2, US Venture
“That’s clear on the checks,” Beaumont said, and Gutierrez, among other team chiefs, nodded. “All equipment accounted for. Venture’s been thorough. Nothing damaged, nothing left. The governor—you can call him governor from now on—wants a readiness report two days after third jump. Any problem with that?”
A general shaking of heads, among the crowd of people, military and civilian, present in the room. They filled it. It was not a large lounge; they were crowded everywhere, and the bio equipment was accessible only in printout from Swift, which swore it had been examined, that the cannisters were intact and the shock meters showed nothing disastrous. More of their hardware rode on Swift and Capable than on Venture. They could get at nothing. It was a singularly frustrating time—and after two weeks mission apparent time it was still humiliating to sit in the presence of military officers or ship’s crew, who had never gone through the shaving, who had no idea of the thing that bound them together, who had.
And when it broke up, when Beaumont walked out, grayhaired and venerable and with her sullen special op bearing, there was a silence.
A moving of chairs then. “Game in R15,” one of the regs said. “All welcome.”
“Game in 24,” a civ said. “40,” another added. It was what they did to pass the time. There was a newsletter, passed by hand and not on comp, which told who won what, and in what game; and that was what they did for their sanity. They paid off in favor points. This was a reg, a military customs:—because where we been, Matt Mayes put it, ain’t no surety we get free cash; but favor points, that’s a loan of something or a walk after something or whatever: no sex, no property, no tours, no gear—cut your throat if you play for solid stakes. Favor points is friendly. Don’t you get in no solid game: don’t you bet no big favors. You’re safe on favor points. You do the other thing, the Old Man’ll collect all bets and shut down the games, right?
Got us reg civs, was the way the regs put it. They’re reg civs, meaning the line was down and the regs, the military, swept them into the games and the bets and otherwise included them. And it was a strange feeling, that all their pride came from the stiff-backboned regs, like Eron Miles, whose tattooed number was real, because he came out of the labs, who recovered his bearings as fast as any of them whose numbers were wearing dim. It was We; and the officers and the governor were They. That was the way of it.
And even further removed was the spacer crew—who gambled too, for credits, in other games, because their voyage was a roundtrip and they would go on and on doing missions like this. The spacers pushed odds—even following the route a probeship crew had laid out for them, themselves following a drone probe: Venture went with navigational records and all the amenities, but it was a nervous lot of spacers all the same, and none of the games mixed—Wouldn’t gamble with you, the conversation was reported between spacer and reg: Cheap stakes.
People remembered the room numbers, with the manic attention they deserved, because it was the games that took one’s mind off an approaching jump—that let them forget for a while that they were traveling a scarcely mapped track that had the spacers hairtriggered and locked in their own manic gamblings.
Cheap at any price, that little relaxation, that little forgetting. One forgot the hazards, forgot the discomforts to come, forgot to imagine, which was the worst mistake of all.
There were assignations, too: room shiftings and courtesies—for the same reasons, that with life potentially short, sex was a stimulus powerful enough to wipe out thinking. And liquor was strictly rationed.
It took a cultivated eye to discover the good points of any of them at the moment, but it was appreciated all the more when it happened.
vi
T20 days MAT
Number two hold, Venture
It was duty, to walk the holds—inspecting what was at hand, because so much of the mission was elsewhere, under other eyes, on the other ships. Conn bestirred himself in the slow days of transit between jumps—surprised the troops and civilians under his authority with inspections; and visited those reeking holds where the azi slept and ate and existed, in stacked berths so close together they formed canyons towering twenty high in places, the topmost under the glare of lights and the direct rush of the ventilating fans and the nethermost existing in the dark of the canyons where the air hardly stirred. All the bunks were filled with bodies, such small spaces that no one could sit upright in them without sitting on the edge and crouching, which some did, perhaps to relieve cramped muscles . . . but they never stirred out of them except with purpose. The hold stank of too many people, stank of chemicals they used to disinfect and chemicals they used in the lifesupport systems which they had specially rigged to handle the load. The stench included cheap food, and the effluvia of converter systems which labored to cope with the wastes of so large a confined group. The room murmured with the sound of the fans, and of the rumbling of the cylinder round the core, a noise which pervaded all the ship alike; and far, far softer, the occasional murmur of azi voices. They talked little, these passengers; they exercised dutifully in the small compartment dedicated to that purpose, just aft of the hold; and dutifully and on schedule they returned to their bunks to let the next scheduled group have the open space, their sweating bodies unwashed because the facilities could not cope with so many.
Cloned-men, male and female. So was one of the specs with the mission, lab-born; and that was no shame, simply a way of being born. Tape-taught, and that was no shame either; so was everyone. The deep-teach machines were state of the art in education. They poured the whole of the universe in over chemically lowered thresholds, while the mind sorted out what it was capable of keeping, without exterior distractions or the limitations of sight or hearing.
But the worker tapes were something else. Worker tapes created the like of these, row on row of expressionless faces staring at the bottom of the bunk above them day after day—male and female, bunked side by side without difficulty, because they presently lacked desires. They regarded their bodies as valuable and undivertible from their purpose, the printout said regarding them. They would receive more information in transit—the PA blared with silken tones, describing the world they were going to. And there were tapes to give them when they had landed—tapes for all of them, for that matter. Tapes for generations to come.
He walked through—into the exercise area, unnoticed, where hundreds of azi worked in silence. Their exercise periods, in which crew or troops might have laughed and talked or worked in the group rhythms that pulled a military unit’s separate minds into one—were utterly narcissistic, a silent, set routine of difficult stretchings and manipulations and calisthenics, with fixed and distant stares or pensive looks. No talk. No notice of an inspecting presence.
“You,” he said to one taller and handsomer than the average of these tall, handsome people, and the azi stopped in his bending and straightened, an immediate, flowerlike focussing of attention. “How are you getting along?”
“Very well, sir.” The azi breathed hard from his exertions. “Thank you.”
“Name?”
“Jin, sir; 458–9998.”
“Anything needed?”
“No, sir.” The dark eyes were bright and interested, a transformation. “Thank you.”
“You feel good, Jin?”
“Very good, sir, thank you.”
He walked back the way he had come—looked back, but the azi had resumed his exercises. They were like that. Azi had always made him uncomfortable, possibly because they were not unhappy. It said something he had no wish to hear. Erasable minds . . . the azi; if anything upset them, the tapes could take it away again.
And there were times he would have found it good to have peace like that.
He passed through the hold again, unnoticed. They were undeniably a group, the azi, like the rest of the mission topside. They maintained themselves as devotedly as they would maintain anything set in their care, and their eyes were set on a rarely disturbed infinity, like waking sleep.
He had no idea, much as he had studied them, what thoughts passed in their heads at such times—or if there were any thoughts at all.
And he went topside again, into the silence that surrounded him in this long waiting, because Ada Beaumont and Pete Gallin handled the details. He studied the printouts, and dispatched occasional messages to the appropriate heads of departments. There were his pictures, set on his desk; and there were memoirs he was writing—it seemed the time for such things. But the memoirs began with the voyage . . . and left out things that the government would not want remembered. Like most of his life. Classified. Erasable by government order. He put it on tape, and much of it was lies, why they came and what they hoped.
Mostly he waited, like the azi.
vii
T20 days, MAT
Gutierrez, from a series of free lectures in lounge 2
“. . . there’s as varied an ecology where we’re going as on Cyteen . . . somewhat more so, in respect to the vertical range of development; somewhat less, since you don’t have the range of phyla—of types of life. Plants . . . that’s algae, grasses, native fruits, pretty much like Cyteen, all the way up to some pretty spectacular trees—” (pause for slide series) “I’ll repeat those in closer detail later, or run them as often as you like. This is all stuff that came from the survey team. But the thing you’ll have heard about already, that’s the calibans, the moundbuilders. They’re pretty spectacular: the world’s distinct and crowning achievement, as it were. The first thing I want to make clear is that we’re not talking about an intelligence. The bias was in the other direction when the Mercury survey team landed. They looked at the ridges from orbit and thought they were something like cities. They went down there real carefully, I can tell you, after all the orbiting observations.” (slide) “Now let me get you scale on this.” (slide) “You can see the earthen ridge is about four times the man’s height. You always find these things on riverbanks and seacoasts, on the two of the seven continents that lie in the temperate zone—and this one’s going to neighbor our own site. The moundbuilders happen to pick all the really good sites. In fact you could just about pick out the sites that are prime for human development by looking for mounds.” (slide) “And this is one of the builders. Caliban is a character in a play: he was big and ugly. That’s what the probe crew called him. Dinosaur’s what you think, isn’t it? Big, gray dinosaur. He’s about four to five meters long, counting tail—warmblooded, slithers on his belly. Lizard type. But trying to pin old names on new worlds is a pretty hard game. The geologists always have a better time of it than the biologists. They deny it, but it’s true. Look at that skull shape there, that big bulge over the eyes. Now that brain is pretty large, about three times the size of yours and mine. And its convolutions aren’t at all like yours and mine. It’s got a place in the occipital region, the back, that’s like a hard gray handball, and pitted like an old ship’s hull; and then three lobes come off that, two on a side and one on top, shaped like human lungs, and having a common stem and interconnecting stems at several other places along their length. They’re frilled, those lobes—make you think of pink feathers; and then there’s three of those handball-things in the other end of the skull, right up in that place we call the frontal lobes of a human brain, but not quite as big as the organ behind. Now that’s the brain of this citizen of the new world. And if it didn’t connect onto a spinal cord and have branches, and if microscopy didn’t show structure that could answer to neurons, we’d have wondered. It’s a very big brain. We haven’t mapped it enough to know what the correspondences are. But all it does with that big brain is build ridges. Yes, they dissected one . . . after they established the behavior as instinct-patterned. You do that to a certain extent by frustrating an animal from a goal; and you watch how it goes about the problem. And if the answer is wired into the brain, if it’s instinct and not rationality, it’s going to tend to repeat its behavior over and over again. And that’s what a caliban does. They’re not aggressive. Actually, there’s a smaller, prettier version—” (slide) “The little green fellow with all the collar frills is called an ariel. A-r-i-e-l. That’s Caliban’s elvish friend. Now he’s about a meter long at maximum, nose to tail, and he runs in and out of caliban burrows completely unmolested. They’re fisheaters, both the calibans and ariels, stomachs full of fish. And they’ll nibble fruits. Or investigate about anything you put out for them. None of the lizards are poisonous. None of them ever offered to bite any of the probe team. You do have to watch out for caliban tails, because that’s two meters length of pretty solid muscle, and they’re not too bright, and they just could break your leg for you if they panicked. The ariels can give you a pretty hard swipe too. You pick them up by the base of the tail and the back of the neck, if so happens you have to pick one up, and you hold on tight, because the report is they’re strong. Why would you want to pick one up? Well, not often, I’d think. But they apparently run in and out of caliban burrows, very pretty folk, as you see, and no one’s ever caught an ariel doing a burrow of its own: all play and no work, the ariels. And the probe team found them in their camp, and walking through their tents, and getting into food if they had a chance. They haven’t got any fear at all. They and the calibans sit on top of the food chain, and they haven’t got any competition. The calibans don’t seem to get anything at all out of the association; it’s not certain whether the ariels get anything out of it but shelter. Both species swim and fish. Neither species commits aggression against the other. The ariels are very quick to get out of the way when the calibans put a foot down, while in the human camp, the ariels sometimes went into a kind of freeze where you were in danger of stepping on one, and they’d be stiff as a dried fish until a second after you’d pick them up, after which they’d come to life in a hurry. There’s some speculation that it’s a panic reaction, that the overload of noise and movement in the camp is just too much for it; or that it thinks it’s hidden when it does that. Or maybe it’s picking up something humans don’t hear, some noise from the machinery or the com. Its brain is pretty much like the caliban’s, by the way, but the handball organs are pink and quite soft.
“Interiorly, the snout is odd too, in both species. That gentle swelling behind the nostril slits is a chamber filled with cilia. Hairlike projections, but flesh. And they’re rife with bloodvessels. So are the organs that seem to correspond to lungs. Filled with cilia. Like a nest of worms. They expel water when they come up from a dive: they sit on the shore and heave and it comes out the nostril slits. So they’re taking in water; and they’re getting oxygen out of it. Gills and lungs at once. They can handle river water and estuary water, but no one’s observed them diving at sea. They may have relatives that do. We’re a long way from knowing how many different varieties of lizards there are. But the present count is about fifty-two species under the size of the ariels. And a lot are aquatic.
“There are flying lizards—for the naturalists among you that know what bats are—rather like bats and rather not; warmblooded, we reckon—the probe crew never caught any, but the photo stills” (Slide) “—rather well suggest bats; that’s a terrene form. Or Downbelow gliders, of which no one’s yet got a specimen. We don’t know a thing about them, but their agility in the air, along with the fact that calibans and ariels are warmblooded—suggest that they’re the world’s closest approach to a mammal. This is the item we’ve got a particular caution on. They’re fairly rare in the area, but they do swarm. The wingspan is half a meter, some larger. They could bite; could carry disease: could be venomous—we don’t know. Because they might be something like a mammal, we’re a little more concerned about contamination with them. There’s no good being scared of them. I’m talking about remote possibility precautions. Everything’s new here. You don’t find easy correspondences in lifeforms. All the can’ts and won’ts you ever heard can be revised on a new world. Nature’s really clever about engineering around can’ts. Insects can’t get above a certain size . . . except that insect is a terrene category term, covering things with chitin and certain kinds of internal structure; but what we meet in the Beyond can differ quite a bit. And our world has some oddities.” (slide) “Like the hoby mole. That’s a meter long, half a meter wide, engorges earth like a burrowing worm. That tiny annular segmentation is chitin, and they’re very soft. Yes, they are something like an insect, and if you put a spade through one by accident, don’t touch the remains. They exude an irritant that sent a member of the probe team to sickbay for two days. So there’s also a caution out on this one.
“There are snakes. They’re coldblooded and they’re constrictors. At least the samples were. We don’t rule out poison. Possibly we’re being alarmist in that regard: human prejudice. But poison in a legless structure seems to be a very efficient hunting mechanism and it’s proven so on two worlds besides Earth.
“And the fairy flitters.” (slide) “These little glider lizards are about fingersized, the wings are really rib extensions, and if you set a lantern near the trees, you’ll get a halo of flitters. They don’t really fly, mind, they glide. The iridescence lasts as long as they live. You only see it in the photos, not in the lab specimens. They eat putative insects, they’re utterly harmless, and probably beneficial to the farming effort. They’ll cling to anything when they land, and you just disengage them gently and set them back on a branch. They’ll fly right back to the light. As long as there’s no trees near our camp lights, we won’t have trouble with flitters piling up there. But they’ll be all over you if you carry a light through the woods, and I’m afraid we’re going to have trouble with vehicle headlights. It’s a shame to think of killing any of them. They’re far too beautiful. We’re going to try to devise something that might drive them off. Ideas are welcome.
“Fish—beyond counting. Saltwater and freshwater. No poisons yet detected. Edible. We’ll want to be sure to stick to varieties that have already been tested; and bio will run tests on new species as they’re brought in. You’ll learn to recognize the species so you know what to eat and what to bring us.
“Microorganisms. We’re very fortunate in that regard. No one picked up a parasite. No one got sick. No one developed allergies, either. We don’t get careless, though. And particularly where you have mammal analogues, we don’t get careless. There’s a phenomenon we call biological resonance, for want of a better name. That’s when two worlds’ microorganisms set up housekeeping together and develop new traits over a period of years; when they cooperate. So—the medical staff is going to have a long lecture on this topic—you have to report every contact with a new lifeform, especially if you accidentally touch something, which is not a good idea. And you report every runny nose and every cough and every itch. We do have a biological isolation chamber we can set up. If someone turns out to be in really serious trouble and nothing else will work, we can put you in a bubble for three years until a ship comes back and lifts you off. Short of that we have antihistamines and all kinds of other alternatives, up to the autoimmune lot, so there’s no good becoming obsessive about the chance of contamination; but there’s no good being cavalier about things, either. If you drop down in a faint, it’s really helpful if you’ve already told us you got stung by something that morning or that you’d been digging down on the beach. You’re all going to have to keep your wits about you and be able to give a meticulous account of your whereabouts and your contacts with any and everything. The thing you forget to mention could be the key that we need to figure out what’s wrong with you. And that’s partly my business, because I have to form a picture of every ecosystem, so that if your contact with something harmful was on the beach, for instance, I have a good idea what to look for. And the faster I can answer questions, the safer you are. That’s why I have to ask everyone in the mission to be bio’s eyes and ears. Leave the hands and the touching to us, where you have any doubts. Humans can be compatible with all kinds of ecosystems; don’t kill anything, just move it over. This world doesn’t have any predators to argue with us; and we’ve got the construction sites planned so that eventually we’re going to intersperse urban development with wild areas and wildlife safeguards. The optimum development areas are also the optimum sites for some of the world’s most interesting inhabitants, and there’s no reason why protected habitat can’t exist side by side, theirs and ours. It has to do with attitude toward the wild. It has to do with knowledge and not fear. We’re not turning this world into Cyteen. We’re turning it into something uniquely its own. People who come here will be able to see the old world right along with the most modern development. Caliban habitat right in the middle of a city. Humans are very flexible. We can just extend a road a bit and locate a loading dock around a critical area; and that’s what we’ll do. That’s why there’s a land bank being set up. When you own land, you’ll have title to a certain value of land, but not any specific land, and that lets the governor’s office and the bio department create a preserve where needed, and it protects you and your descendants against any financial damage. You can’t own caliban habitat. That has to be left. On the other hand, to prevent their encroachment on us, there will be barrier zones, usually residential, surrounding any contact point—like, for instance, the caliban mounds near the landing site. In the theory that lifeforms get along better with each other than lifeforms get along with roads and factories, there’ll be housing built along the line that turns only windows in that direction, not doors, not accesses. Once we determine the actual boundary of an area, that’s where the permanent building will go. And you’ll be up against a protected zone, so your actual maintenance on that side will be handled through the bio department. City core will be industrial. All city growth will be handled through the creation of similar enclaves along roadways. This is the way it is in the charter. I think you understand it. I just want to explain how the bio section relates to the construction agency and to the governor’s office and why we’ll have some functions linked in with security and law enforcement. We have a constituency, which is the ecosystem we’re entering. We also represent the human ecosystem. We work out accommodations and bring those before other departments, who have to adjust to the facts as we present them. We don’t really have authority. Nature has that. We just find out the facts as they exist; the decision’s already made—that the two systems have to exist in balance. A world where humans come in at the top of the food chain is easily thrown out of balance. Those of you who are stationborn will appreciate that quite readily. It’s like a station, like Pell, for instance, where two biosystems exist in complement. Very tricky lifesupport setup, one looping into the other, and each benefitting the other. But when you start from the beginning you can do that, and make them balance. We look to have station manufacture for the really heavy and polluting industries. All the departments will be doing these seminars and we’ll go on doing them after we land, making tapes for the azi and for future generations. All of this is going to be priceless stuff. And mostly history’s going to make liars out of us, but, we sincerely hope, not in our hopes for the place.
“I’ll be going over the ecosystem from the microorganisms up in the more detailed session tomorrow; and I’ll be doing it again for my own staff in a morning session day after tomorrow. Check your schedules, and if you find you want to sit in on that lecture you’re quite welcome. It’s going to be pretty detailed, but after the other session it might make fair sense. Session to begin tomorrow morning is Zell Parham on security and law, this room, 0700 mainday . . . .
“Game in R12.”
viii
T20 days MAT
“. . . The world is to be loved,” the tape voice whispered, and Jin accepted it deeply, wholly. “The things you will find there are beautiful. All the things that really belong to the world are to be protected; but you will build there. Born-men will tell you where you will build and if life is taken in the building, that is as it must be. If you can spare a living thing you will do so, if it is your choice alone. You will observe certain cautions in touching wild things. You will report all such contacts to your supervisors, just as born-men have to report them.
“You will work in the fields; and it may be you will take lives. That will be an accident and there is no guilt.
“You will catch fish and eat them, and this is the order of nature. There is no guilt in this. Fish are there for your use, and they feel very little pain.
“You will become part of this world, and if ever people came to harm it you would take up weapons to defend it. In that, you might kill, and you would not have guilt. But if ever you had to take up weapons, you would be trained, and the governor would tell you.
“You will work because you are strong and because your work is very important. You will have a right to be very proud of what you do, and when it is all done well, you will be closer to being born-men.
“The government which holds your contract is very pleased with you. You’re learning very well. Soon you will get born-man tapes teaching you the nature of the world, and in very little time you will step out on your land. Through all the difficulties you will experience you can find occasion for pride that you will overcome them all. Every difficulty will make you stronger and wiser, and you will fit more and more perfectly into the world. Be happy. Not everything will be pleasant, but every difficulty will give the pleasure of its solution, and the confidence that you are as intelligent and as fine as the promise of your gene-set. The government believes in you. The born-men will take care of you and you will take care of them, because where they are wiser than you, you are very strong and you have the capacity to become wise. Love the land. Love the world. Care for the born-men, and expect their care for you. You have every right to be proud and happy . . . .”
Jin lay relaxed, dissolved in the pleasure of approval—stirred, as much as anything moved him in this time, with the anticipation of his becoming. There had never been such azi as themselves, he was persuaded, and he had only believed he was ordinary because no one had ever pointed out to him his uniqueness. He saw his descendants in vast numbers, his genetic material, and Pia’s, who was quite as wonderful, ultimately mixed with all the other specially chosen material. They were made of born-man material: he had never realized this until the tape told him. The capacity was in them, and it was awakening.
He thought on this, having a capacity for sustained concentration that could knit together the most complex of problems. This capacity could be turned to pure reason. He had never had it called upon in quite this way. In fact, it was discouraged, because an azi’s understanding was full of gaps which could mislead. But this special capacity which born-men lost in the distractions of their sense-overloaded environments—could make him very wise as the total sum of his knowledge increased. Of this too, he was proud, knowing that a 9998 was extraordinarily capable in this regard. It would make him loved, and secure, and born-men would never give him bad tape.
“Highest life native to the world are the calibans,” the tape told him. “And if you understand them, they will do you no harm . . . .”
ix
T42 days MAT
Venture log
“. . . arrival Gehenna system 1018 hours 34 minutes mission apparent time. US Swift and US Capable to follow at one hour intervals . . . .”
“. . estimate Cyteen elapsed time: 280 days; dates will be revised on recovery of reliable reference.”
“. . . confirm arrival US Swift on schedule.”
“. . . confirm arrival US Capable on schedule.”
“. . . insert into orbit Gehenna II scheduled 1028 hours 15 minutes mission apparent time. All systems normal. All conditions within parameters predicted by Mercury probe. Systems arrival now determined to be possible within narrower margin to be calculated for future use. Systemic positions were accurately predicted by Mercury probe data. Venture will make further observations during exit from Gehenna system . . . .”
x
T42 days MAT
US Venture
Office of Col. James A. Conn
It was there, real and solid. The world. Gehenna II, the designation was; Newport, he reckoned to record the name. Their world. Conn sat at his desk in front of the viewer with his hands steepled in front of him and looked at the transmitted image, trying to milk more detail from it than the vid was giving them yet. The second of six planets, a great deal blue and a great deal white, and otherwise brown with vast deserts, sparsely patched with green. Not quite as green as Cyteen. But similar. The image hazed in his eyes as he thought not of where he was going, but of places he had been . . . and of Jean, buried back home; and what she would say, when they had been like Beaumont and Davies, travelling together. Even the war had not stopped that. She had been there. With him. There existed that faint far thought in his mind that he had committed some kind of desertion, not a great one, but at least a small one, that he had hoped for happiness coming here, for something more to do. He left her there, and there was no one to tend her grave and no one who would care. That had seemed such a small thing—go on, she would say, with that characteristic wave of her hand when he hung his thoughts on trivialities. Go on, with that crisp decisiveness in her voice that had sometimes annoyed him and sometimes been so dear: Lord, Jamie, what’s a point in all of that?
Something had gone out of him since Jean was gone: the edge that had been important when he was younger, perhaps; or the quickness that crackle in Jean’s voice had set into him; or the confidence—that she was there, to back him and to second guess him.
Go on, he could hear her saying, when he pulled out of Cyteen; when he took the assignment; and now—go on, when it came down to permanency here.
Go on—when it came to the most important assignment of his life, and no Jean to tell it to. It all meant very little against that measure. For the smallest evening with her face looking back at him—he would trade anything to have that back. But there were no takers. And more—he knew what lived down there, that it was not Cyteen, however homelike it looked from orbit.
The light over the door flashed, someone seeking entry. He reached across to the console and pushed the button—“Ada,” he said curiously as she came in.
“Ah, you’ve got it,” she murmured, indicating the screen. “I wanted to make sure you were awake.”
“No chance I’d miss it. I’d guess the lounge has it too.”
“You couldn’t fit another body in there. I’m going down to 30; the officers are at the screen down there.”
“I’ll come down when the vid gets more detail.”
“Right.”
She went her way. Bob Davies would be down there. Jealousy touched him, slight and shameful. There would be Gallin and Sedgewick and Dean and Chiles; and the rest of the mission . . . .
One horizon, one site for years ahead. Blueskyed. Grounded forever. That was what it came to. And whatever private misgivings anyone had now, it was too late.
Look at that, he could imagine Jean saying. And: Don’t take stupid chances, Jamie.
Don’t you, he would say.
He looked back at the image, at the bluegreen world that was not home at all. The whole thing was a stupid chance. An ambition which Jean had never shared.
“Col. Conn,” the com said, Mary Engles’ voice. “Are you there, colonel?”
He acknowledged, a flick of the key. “Captain.”
“We’ve got a fix on the landing site coming up.”
A shiver went over his skin. “What do you reckon in schedules?”
“We’re going to ride here one more day and do mapping and data confirmation before we let you out down there. You’ll want that time to order your sequence of drop. I’ll be feeding you the shuttle passenger slots, and you fill them up at your own discretion. The equipment drop is all standard procedure with us, and we’ve got all that down as routine. You handle your own people according to your own preferences. You will need some of the construction personnel in your initial drop. I’d like to ask you to stay on board until the final load. In case of questions.”
“Good enough. I’ll wait your printout.”
“We have suggestions, based on experience. I’ll pass them to you, by your leave.”
“No umbrage, captain. Experience is appreciated.”
“A professional attitude, colonel, and appreciated in turn. Printout follows.”
He opened the desk cabinet, took out a bottle and a glass and poured himself a drink, soothed his nerves while the printout started spilling onto his desk.
Everything would have to be packed. Mostly there were the microfax books and the study tapes, which were precious. Uniforms—there were no more uniforms where they were going. They became citizens down there. Colonists. No more amenities either, in spite of the cases of soap. He meant to have a shower morning and evening during the unloading. It was that kind of thing one missed most under the conditions he was going to face. Soap. Hot water. Pure water. And a glass of whiskey in the evenings.
The printout grew. On the screen, the tighter focus came in. It agreed with the photos in the mission documents.
Patterns showed up under tight focus . . . the same patterns which the probe had abundantly reported, curious mounds near seacoasts and rivers, vast maze designs which interrupted the sparse green with tracings of brown lines, loops and rays stretching over kilometers of riverbank and coastline.
That was where they were going.
xi
T43 days MAT
Communication: mission command
. . . First drop scheduled 1042 hours 25 minutes mission apparent time. Capt. Ada Beaumont commanding. Selected for first drop: M/Sgt. Ilya V. Burdette with five seats; M/Sgt. Pavlos D. M. Bilas, with five seats; M/Sgt. Dinah L. Sigury, two seats; Cpl. Nina N. Ferry, one seat; Sgt. Jan Vandermeer, one seat; Capt. Bethan M. Dean, one seat; Dr. Frelan D. Wilson, one seat; Dr. Marco X. Gutierrez, one seat; Dr. Park Young, one seat; Dr. Hayden L. Savin, one seat; workers A 187–6788 through A 208–0985, thirty seats.”
xii
T43 days MAT
Venture loading bay one
“He’s not coming,” Ada Beaumont said quietly, rested her hand on her husband’s back, kept her eyes front, on the movement of machinery, the loading of cannisters onto the lift, an intermittent clank and crash.
Bob Davies said nothing. Nothing was really called for, and Bob was careful with protocols. Ada stayed still a moment—looked aside where some of the ship’s crew were rigging the ropes to channel boarding personnel to the lift—but the bay up on the frame was empty yet, the shuttle on its way up from Venture’s belly, close to match-up with the personnel deck. The lift yonder would take them by groups of ten, synch them out of Venture’s comfortable rotation, to let them board the null G shuttle. The azi were to go first, taking the upright berths in the hold and to the rear of the cabin, and then the citizen complements would follow, in very short sequence.
But Conn stayed in his quarters. He had rarely come out of them since their arrival in the system. The ship was crowded; departments were busy with their plans: possibly no one noticed. He played cards and drank with the two of them—he had done that, at the end of watches, regularly. But he never came out among the staff.
“I think,” Ada Beaumont said more quietly still, when the crew was furthest from them and only Bob could possibly hear. “I think Jim shouldn’t have taken this one. I wish he’d take the out he still has and go back to Cyteen. Claim health reasons.”
And then, in further silence, Bob venturing no comment: “What he actually said was—‘You handle things. You’ll be doing that, mostly. The old man just wants to ride it out easy.’”
“He wasn’t that way,” Bob said finally.
“It’s leaving Cyteen. It’s Jean, I think. He never showed how bad that hurt.”
Bob Davies ducked his head. There was noise in the corridor to the left. Some of the azi were coming up. The clock ran closer and closer to their inevitable departure. He reached and took his wife’s hand—himself in the khaki that was the uniform of the day for everyone headed planetward, civ or military. “So maybe that’s why he can sit up here; because he can lean on you. Because he knows you’ll do it. You can handle it. And there’s Pete Gallin. He’s all right.”
“It’s no way to start out.”
“Hang, he can’t make every launch down here.”
“I’d be here,” Beaumont said. She shook her head. The azi line entered the bay, brighteyed, in soiled white coveralls; weeks with no bathing, some of them with gall sores from the bunks. There were already difficulties. Some of the details regarding the azi were not at all pretty, not the comfortable view of things the science people or even the troops had had of the voyage. At least Conn had been down seeing to the azi, she gave him that. He had been down in the holds during the voyage, maybe too often.
Now Conn handed it to her. She knew the silent language. Had served with Conn before. Knew his limits.
He had been drinking—a lot. That was the truth she did not tell even Bob.
xiii
T43 days MAT
Venture communications log
“Venture shuttle one: unloading now complete; will lift at ready and return to dock. Weather onworld good and general conditions excellent. Landing area is now marked with the locator signal . . . .”
“Venture shuttle two now leaving orbit and heading for landing site . . . .”
xiv
T45 days MAT
Venture hold, azi section
“Passage 14,” the silk-smooth voice intoned, “will be J 429–687 through J 891–5567; passage 15. . . .”
Jin smiled inwardly, not with the face, which was unaccustomed to emotion. Emotion was between himself and the tape, between himself and the voice which caressed, promised, praised, since his childhood. He had no need to show others what he felt, or that he felt, unless someone spoke directly to him and entered the bubble which was his private world.
When the time came, he listened to the voice and gathered himself up along with the rest of them in his aisle, stood patiently as everyone lined up, coming down the ladder to join them. And then the word was given and the file moved, out the door they had not passed since they had entered the ship, and through the corridors of the ship to the cold room which admitted them to the lift chamber. The lift jolted and slid one way and the other, and opened again where there was no gravity at all, so that they drifted—“Hold the lines,” a born-man told them, and Jin seized the cord along with the rest, beside a silver clip on the line. “Hold to the clips with one hand and pull yourselves along gently,” the born-man said, and he did so, flew easily upward along the line in the company of others, until they had come to the hatch of the ship which would take them to the World.
It was more lines, inside; and they were jammed very tightly into the back of the hold while more and more azi were loaded on after them. “Secure your handgrips,” a born-man told them, and they did so, locking in place the padded bars which protected them. “Feet to the deck.” They did the best they could.
It took a short time to load. They were patient, and the others moved with dispatch: the hatch closed and a born-man voice said: “Hold tight.”
So they went, a hard kick which sent them on their way and gave them the feeling that they were lying on the floor on top of each other and not standing upright. No one spoke. There was no need. The tape had already told them where they were going and how long it would take to get there, and if they talked, they might miss instruction.
They believed in the new world and in themselves with all their hearts, and Jin was pleased even in the discomfort of the acceleration, because it meant they were going there faster.
They made entry, and the air heated, so that from time to time they wiped sweat from their faces, crowded as they were. But weight was on their feet now, and it was a long, slow flight as the engines changed over to ordinary flight.
“Landing in fifteen minutes,” the born-man voice said, and soon, very soon, the motion changed again, and the noise increased, which was the settling of the shuttle downward, gentle as the settling of a leaf to the ground.
They waited, still silent, until the big cargo hatch opened where they had not realized a hatch existed. Daylight flooded in, and the coolth of outside breezes flooded through the double lock.
“File out,” the voice told them. “Go down the ramp and straight ahead. A supervisor will give you your packets and your assignments. Goodbye.”
They unlocked the restraints line by line in reverse order to that in which they had loaded, and in that order they went down the ramp.
Light hit Jin’s eyes, the sight of a broad gray river—blue sky, and green forest of saplings beyond a hazy shore—the scars of a camp on this one, where earthmovers were already at work tearing up the black earth. Clean air filled his lungs, and the sun touched the stubble on his head and his face. His heart was beating hard.
He knew what he had to do now. The tapes had told him before and during the voyage. He had reached the real beginning of his life and nothing but this had ever had meaning.