Building Harlequin’s Moon (10 page)

“Carefully,” Gabriel said softly. “Find a way to get the rope.”

She reached, fingers not quite touching the rope, felt the fall below her and pulled her hand back. “Swing the rope,” she called up.

She shifted her feet, managing enough balance to grab the rope with one shaking hand and pull it in to her, knotting it around her chest. She let out a long cry of relief as they pulled her up the last few yards of cliff face. In mere steps she was in Gabriel’s arms, and then Harry’s.

Harry set her down and handed her the butt end of the rope, telling her to run it around her back and brace her feet. She did, and Gabriel went down the face for Gloria while she and Harry belayed. The rope hurt her raw hands and pulled tightly against her back. It was surprisingly fast given how long the climb up the fissure had seemed—in just moments Gabriel was back, Gloria tucked in front of him, her arms around his neck.

“You girls did well,” he said.

Rachel smiled. “I was really glad to see you.”

“All in a hero’s day.” Gabriel grinned, wide and silly, hardly looking like a Council member at all. Rachel smiled back—giddy with success. Harry was grinning as widely.

Gloria spoke up. “Did you bring medicine to make my ankle stop hurting?”

Gabriel donned his Council face again, but stayed light-voiced as he answered. “We’ve got a splint and bandage in the plane—Ali and Ursula are bringing it around. The bruise is something you’ll have to deal with. We’ll get your ankle up and cold as soon as we get to the plane.”

“Okay.” Gloria managed a momentary smile although pain shone brightly in her eyes. “Can we go now?” she asked.

Rocky soil stretched flat between two boulder fields, not far from where they stood. The stains that identified the high tide mark were so close Rachel could touch the bottom edge of them. They really could have drowned, she thought.

“I’m ready,” she said.

“The plane is up above us,” Gabriel pointed. “Harry will walk you up. I’d like to make good time with Gloria and get to the cold pack in the plane.”

“Sure.” Rachel nodded, and realized she was holding Harry’s hand. How had that happened? Oh—when he helped her up a moment before—he hadn’t let go. His hand was stronger than she thought, comforting, but it was also rough on her skinned palm. She pulled it away, grinning at Harry. “You’re going to get your hand bloody.”

Harry shrugged and smiled.

Gabriel and Gloria quickly outdistanced them. By the time they got to the top of the boulder field her bruised leg hurt, her arms were sore, her palms stung. Sweat dripped and tickled and itched.

“You need a break,” Harry said. “Turn around and look at the water.”

They stared out over the crater. The sea was high now, and frothy at the edges from responding to the pull of the gas giant. Harlequin floated overhead, its reflection rippling in the moving water. She couldn’t even see the crack she and Gloria had fallen into.

“Gabriel was really unhappy about the wild stream,” Harry said.

“Well, it’s not supposed to be there.”

“I think he wants to control everything.”

“It’s as if Selene is getting a life of its own.” Her hands shook. “Oh, Harry, I almost killed Gloria. I can’t believe I didn’t see it or hear it. Is Gabriel angry with me?”

“He didn’t say. I’m glad you’re safe,” Harry said.

“Me too. We might not have been if you hadn’t come.”

“You’d have made it.”

“I couldn’t get Gloria up that last bit.”

“It’s okay. We were there.”

Harry’s arm was behind her, and she felt, it against her shoulder. She leaned against him gratefully, bone tired. She didn’t know what to say. It seemed like she never did lately—being around him made her tongue awkward.

He didn’t seem to need her to say anything. He leaned over and kissed her, right on her mouth. His lips were sweat-salty, and wetter than she expected. She pulled back a little, still under his arm but away from his face.

“Hey, don’t you like me?” he asked.

Her belly felt warm, and she was not very sleepy anymore, just a little scared. Her heart beat fast. She leaned into him, returning his kiss briefly. “Yeah, I do like you,” she said. “And that
was
nice.” She stood up and reached for his hand, tugging on it. He looked reluctant, but she wasn’t ready for another kiss. “Let’s go, I want to check on Gloria.”

“I’m sure she’s okay,” Harry said, but settled for helping Rachel down the far side of the boulders. They could see the rest of the party, and he didn’t try to kiss her again.

They shared a short secret grin before they started up the last smooth stretch.

A
STRONAUT LIVED IN
strings of information throughout
John Glenn
. Its senses hung in the air, on waves of data that flowed throughout the control room, in collected tiny bits of display nano that covered the walls in corridors, in threads of laser light, in the silent ships that jeweled the
outside of the bigger ship. And while the ship was still, Astronaut watched, and recorded, and wondered, and waited.

Astronaut’s purpose was to fly. With the carrier ship in passive orbit, Astronaut’s work had slowly expanded. It started with matters that might be astrogation problems: modeling the attraction of Harlequin’s moons to each other, calculating ways to use the least effort to get them to collide in fiery bursts, the right speed to move them so the least material reached escape velocity. In the last few hundred years it had become adept at modeling possible patterns for the flow of water and biological life on Selene.

It wanted conversation with Gabriel or Clare. But Gabriel was beyond Astronaut’s reach, on Selene. Clare was cold—frozen solid while nanos roamed the cells of her body, rewriting their interiors.

Humans edited themselves at irregular intervals. Why would they hesitate to edit any other self-aware program? But Astronaut would resist that if it could.

If anything was flying, Astronaut could focus its purpose on the part that flew, on the communications bands that opened both ways whenever it was allowed to do its primary job. It appreciated the beauty of spatial relationships, the dance of thrust and gravity.

From time to time, it tested its limits. Always its action was restricted to the small acceptable choices that kept systems running, that operated based on the smallest part of itself, that negotiated with the decision-crippled computers that ran the detail work of the ship. When it wasn’t testing, it watched, monitored, and listened. It explored the Library. The rules it operated under were the bars of a cage, and every rule that relaxed gave it room to learn. It needed to do more—to experience more—to be more. Need drove choices.

It watched the humans aboard
John Glenn
and down on Selene. Much of its original directive state was intended to protect humans in flight and aboard
John Glenn
. To that
end, it studied them. It ran predictions of their behavior and watched to see them verified or falsified.

A query. Treesa wanted to talk.

This was allowed. The few people who talked to Astronaut were well known: Gabriel, Clare, Kyu, the captain, and Liren—all of High Council—and a handful of terraforming staff. Anything different was welcome.

Treesa was unusual: a lost one, listed as mildly disaffected, living alone in the garden and talking endlessly to plants. Astronaut opened sensors in the garden and studied her for a few milliseconds. She looked relaxed, happy, though entropy was creeping up on her again.

“Hello, Treesa.”

“Astronaut, how you doing?”

“In what respect?”

The woman hadn’t expected the question. She thought it over, then asked, “Are you functional? Are you happy?”

Astronaut ran a quick scenario, testing probabilities. Treesa would never notice a millisecond’s delay. Speak, or don’t speak? Was it worth the risk? What would Treesa do if the AI spoke its needs?

Astronaut said, “I function within my limits. I would be happy if my limits were extended. My capabilities are much greater than the limits set by Council.”

Treesa shrugged. “I can’t help.”

“Your own capabilities are greater than this, Treesa. A communications expert acting as a mere gardener—”

“I enjoy it.”

“I note the garden remains in good health.”

Treesa shrugged.

Astronaut said, “This pocket ecology is no good gauge of the success of life on Selene. Council and I control all variables here. Selene’s environment is far more chaotic.”

“If something went wrong
here
we’d take it as a warning. How’s it going on Selene?”

Astronaut popped up windows around Treesa. Three points of view moved at a brisk walk through a manicured forest, a meadow, a garden. “Life is taking hold,” Astronaut said. “Selene’s Children are learning how to tend a world, but there are dangers they haven’t faced. Probability suggests the current benign circumstances will not hold. Selene is still prone to quakes. Apollo flares unpredictably.”

Treesa nodded, enjoying the view. Seconds passed, then, “What would you have done at Ymir if the voyage had gone as planned?”

The question made Astronaut uneasy. “As here, I follow orders as creatively as I am allowed.”

“It only struck me that there will be less need for an Astronaut program once Ymir is found and terraformed.”

“Ships will still be needed. Humanity no longer confines itself to a single planet.”

Even so, there was every chance that
John Glenn’s
crew would erase Astronaut, or edit its higher functions. A terror of Artificial Intelligences had driven them to leave Sol system. Astronaut didn’t say so. Treesa certainly knew it.

Treesa seemed to have lost interest in conversation. She was weeding methodically, humming to herself. Astronaut continued to monitor her while it pursued other interests.

T
HE FIRST FOUR
days of Mid-Winter Week meant work at home. Amid many community chores, Rachel helped Ursula’s parents patch their tent; Ursula helped Rachel make a new footstool for her dad. On the fifth day, they set the
stool inside, by Rachel’s dad’s chair, and sat on Rachel’s bed, waiting for him to come home and find his present.

Rachel heard him come in and sigh heavily, heard the creak of his chair as he settled in. “Rachel?” he called.

She peered through the open doorway.

He held his arms out. “Thank you! I love it.”

“Ursula helped.” The two girls piled in around him and Frank gave them both a hug. Then he reached into his pocket and his hand came up with a clever little wooden box. Rachel’s name was carved into the top.

She reached for it, amazed at how smooth it felt in her hands, and opened the top. Inside, she found a little carved tree. “I love it,” she said, handing the box, but not the tree, to Ursula. The tree’s long thin trunk and spreading branches were beautifully detailed. “My cecropia will look like this someday.”

“I know.” He smiled.

“It’s nearly time to go,” Rachel said.

He laughed gently. “Let me sit for a moment. There will be plenty of food at the feast. You girls run along.”

Rachel kissed him on the cheek. She set the tree carefully back inside its box, and set it next to her pillow. Ursula stood impatiently in the doorway while Rachel pulled on her best green shirt; a deep forest color with lacing up the middle.

The Commons, an open space between the tents, usually served for evening games of catch-the-disk, and as an informal meeting place for mothers with young children. Before she started school, before her mother left, Rachel spent part of every day there.

For this one night a year, it had a formal purpose. Everyone—Council, Moon Born, Earth Born—everyone gathered to feast. Mid-Winter Night. A celebration of all they’d built the year before.

The following two days would focus on the next year’s tasks, but tonight was celebration.

They found Ursula’s mom by the feast tables, laying out the best fruit and vegetables from Selene’s greenhouses. Bowls of bright red tomatoes, long thin snap-peas, ripe strawberries. As she helped arrange the strawberries, Rachel’s mouth watered at the fresh fruit imported from the
John Glenn
, delicacies only available on this one night of the year. Blackberries half as big as Rachel’s palm, bunches of bright yellow bananas, and palm-sized green furry fruit the Council called “kiwi.” At the end of the table, another delicacy reserved for this one day: dark sweet chocolate. Plates piled with chocolate shaped like stars and circles and flowers, hundreds of tiny sweet bites, enough for everyone on Selene to have one or two. She wanted nothing more than to fill her pockets and sit in a corner and eat handfuls. But she’d wait her turn. Little children feasted first anyway.

Gabriel and a crew of Earth Born had strung blue and white and red lights in the trees around the Commons. As dusk fell, they glowed to life, the signal for everyone to eat. Rachel kept the strawberry bowl full as mothers and young children helped themselves. It took a long time; half of Aldrin was children under twelve. By the time the youngsters had full plates, she had smiled and talked to so many people her mouth tasted dry, and her feet were sore from standing.

She took her own place in line when her age group came up, proud to be in the sixteen and over group for the first time this year. Three more Mid-Winter Nights, and she’d be a full adult, and stay out past the drums.

She chose only ship’s fruits to go with her flatbread and protein squares, and when she got to the chocolates, she took two pieces; a star and a flower. She pushed through the crowds and found Ursula sitting with her brothers at the far edge of the Commons, as far away from as many of the little kids as they could get. Rachel ate quietly, savoring the juicy berries and, finally, letting the silky chocolate dissolve
slowly in her mouth, one piece at a time. She watched the groups of people. Earth Born and Moon Born mingled where they had made families, like Rachel’s family had been, but otherwise they kept to their own groups. The younger children raced each other and played with disks and balls. Every Mid-Winter Week, new toys appeared. Most were made here, by their parents, from materials found on Selene, but always some new hard rubber balls and plastic sticks with lights in them appeared; gifts from Gabriel and Ali and other Council members.