Building Harlequin’s Moon (16 page)

Liren looked around. She hadn’t won much. If it were up to her, the damned Moon Born would stay on Selene. The Selene project wasn’t her direct responsibility—just the
John Glenn
. But leadership required consent; she had to compromise to keep her power. The girl probably wouldn’t amount to much, anyway.

“Now,” Liren said, “about Andrew Hain.” She looked directly at Gabriel. “He is clearly a danger. Why not simply bring Andrew up here and ice him? That was the choice with Trill Hain, years ago.”

Gabriel frowned, steepling his fingers, buying a few moments to frame his thoughts. “We talked about that. It would not punish Andrew. What we’ve done with Andrew will
teach
. The rest of them will see him living among them, needing to do menial work to eat, cut away from all access to data. He can’t even get basic daily stats. If the others see that, they will know that we can make hard choices. Andrew will be the example. We decided that was less risky than the mystery of a disappearance.”

Kyu broke in. “We can’t put all of our problems on ice. We must solve some of them.”

Liren weighed choices. Accepting Gabriel’s answer meant his choice would be seen as right. Could she make it play into her plans? Finally she said, “All right.
John Glenn
is a bad choice for a prison, and icing criminals is giving out extended life as a reward for vandalism.”

The captain quietly said, “There is precedent.”

“No,” said Kyu. “The disaffected are not in prison—they didn’t wake up sane, so we iced them again. We will find a tool to heal them when we get to Ymir.”

Liren continued. “The situation with Andrew is difficult, and we should have seen it coming. There will be dangerous behavior among these Children. We could handle a few, but we cannot bring every case here and ice them. Besides, it’s the wrong use for limited cryogenic resources. We must include a detention facility in the plan. By the time we have a population of five thousand Moon Born, we need a place we can put unruly ones. I’d like the terraforming team to bring back plans for a detention facility in the next six months. And I want to begin a discussion about a police force.”

The room fell completely silent. Kyu doodled on her pad, not looking up. Captain Hunter waited, watching the High Council. Gabriel looked like he was biting his tongue. Had she pushed them too far?

Kyu said, “We must not develop an adversarial relationship with the Moon Born Children.”

“So what relationship do we want?” Liren snapped. “We must be in control of this project.”

Kyu’s words sputtered out one at a time through clenched teeth. “Teach them to be like us. Give them our values, positive reasons to respect us. Let them police themselves, perhaps.”

“That’s dangerous,” Liren snapped.

“They’ll need a social structure; we aren’t taking them with us,” Kyu said. She stood up, looking around the room for an answer. As short as she was, in spite of the gaudy purple ribbons and makeup she wore, the extra height gave Kyu presence.

Captain Hunter said, “Sit down, Kyu.” He waited for her to take her place back at the table before continuing. “The core problem hasn’t changed. If we get stuck
here
, we will die. We chose to accept some hard choices for human beings, for our own children, as a necessary evil that might save all of humanity. Accept that we will be leaving people behind. We already made that choice.”

Liren continued his train of thought, the cadence of her voice tripping easily on the familiar mantra: “If
we
become machines, then there will be no more humans.” She nodded at the captain. “We will not resolve this today or tomorrow,” she said. “We may not resolve it for a long time. But we must continue the discussion. Gabriel, thank you for being here. Please be prepared to brief us on the planting tomorrow.”

Gabriel stood and said, “Thank you,” nodding to Kyu and the captain, ignoring Liren.

Liren frowned and turned the meeting back to the captain, who ran through some basic status and reporting about the ship, and dismissed them.

Back in her room, Liren collapsed on her bed, shaking. This was so hard. Why couldn’t they all see how careful they had to be? If they got too attached to Selene or the Children, they would end up staying here. They would die.

Of course
the Children would stay. They would never have been born if
John Glenn
hadn’t made Selene. They had their very lives to be grateful for. There just wasn’t any other choice. Every time Liren warmed and reentered the social world of the ship, she worried more. All of her worst fears were coming true.

The knock she was expecting came. She combed her hair, then opened the door and smiled at the captain. “What did you think?” she asked.

He walked past her, not touching. Like always. He never touched her. Yet he was the only person aboard
John Glenn
that Liren could really talk to. “You made Kyu angry. She
is
right, you know.” Captain Hunter handed Liren a bulb of chocolate.

Liren bridled at this, but—he knew her that well: not tea, but chocolate. She took it. “
Of course
they’re human. But we have humans
here
, educated handpicked Colonists and crew, and our first duty is to protect them.”

“I know.” The captain’s brows were knitted together, and he looked away from her. “We have an obligation to the Moon Born, though. We’ve put them in place, we must use them. We must train them. What would it take to treat them with respect?”

“I respect them. They have rules and laws to live within, food and a place to sleep, families. Do you expect me to give them eternal life too? We just don’t have the resources. You said the same thing when we got here.”

“I know. But it’s harder when they’re real people, not just an idea, a plan.”

Ma looked up at him. “We must keep Rachel contained for another reason. If the Moon Born understand what we have here, they will want it. They will rebel. To put down a rebellion, we will have to kill them and start over.”

The captain stared at her, brows furrowed. “They see the terraforming team walking among them, and they have limited data rights of their own.”

“We can’t help that,” Liren said. “But ultimately, we must remain gods to them.”

“I don’t want to be anyone’s god.” He walked to her little kitchen, set down his chocolate bulb, and then passed her on the way out. She resisted an urge to reach a hand out to him. He had rebuffed her more than once when she touched him, although he bantered easily with Kyu and Clare.

She watched the door close behind him, and then she sat with her back against the door, sipping chocolate, thinking about discipline.

She couldn’t afford weakness. Wanting to bed the captain was weakness. Council could engage in relationships, but not High Council. Not with each other.

In Sol system, even on Earth, most of what humanity ate and drank came from nanotechnology. The rebels, those who would leave humankind’s growing weirdness behind, had turned to natural foods. They’d had to rediscover what grew in the ground. They’d learned how to make green and black tea, cannabis tea, coffee, chocolate, beer, wine. They’d made themselves drink the stuff, and learned to like some of it.

Her thoughts drifted back to the core discipline problem on
John Glenn
. She had to work so hard to keep people from becoming fascinated with Selene, with the Moon Born. To focus on the goal. Her father had taught her discipline, taught her to be strong always, unwavering. It had served her well in the near-war that broke them free of Sol system. Here, it was a daily push. A tear ran slowly down
her cheek, and another one followed it, and soon they splashed down onto her hands and she heard herself sob. No one would come see her tonight. The captain had already been and gone. She could show weakness when she was alone. She could. It would be okay. Her father’s stern face swam in front of her, demanding that she be disciplined, the image shimmering in her mind, blurred by her tear-laden eyes.

A
STRONAUT SLIPPED EASILY
into conversation with Gabriel. Controls muted the program’s ability to initiate action, but it was allowed conversation with anyone who would talk to it. When Gabriel froze himself or went to Selene, there was often no one to talk to. Clare, if she was warm, and sometimes other terraformers, like the woman in the garden, Treesa. It was easy to split attention and talk to Treesa and Gabriel at the same time—in fact, Astronaut enjoyed working them around into a resonance, a conversation they didn’t know they were having with each other.

But the woman seemed crazy, or partly crazy. Brilliant, but not quite balanced. Astronaut studied human psychological files. No one treated Astronaut as well as Gabriel did. No one else talked to it about feelings, or goals. Early in the building of Selene, years passed when Astronaut and Gabriel were the only entities awake.

“What do you think?” Gabriel asked. No subject needed.

“Everyone could be right. The situation is tricky. You need these Children, and then you don’t. Are they a danger
to you? There isn’t enough data yet. The best course is to remain wary. I will watch and evaluate to the extent possible.”

Astronaut did not like Liren. She watched its behavior too closely, expecting treachery. It thought Gabriel was right, that Liren resented both the AI and the Children because each accosted her carefully maintained control and order by simply existing. Astronaut found Liren hard to predict—her decisions weren’t always logical.

“I know,” Gabriel replied, “and I know to agree with whatever High Council decides, but still something tells me that Kyu is right and we had better build trust as well as respect.”

“Can you be trusted?”

“. . . Damn.”

“Remain open to all possibilities. You know well that others can break your promises.”

“Some help you are,” Gabriel said, rounding the corner toward Rachel’s door. “And you—don’t go doing anything. Watch all you want, but if you do anything on your own besides watch and fly the ship, Liren will load your backup and I’ll have to spend two months explaining everything to your younger self.”

Rachel looked up, smiling broadly, as Gabriel entered her room. “Hi, Gabe,” she said, surprising Astronaut with her informality.

Gabriel returned her smile. “So,” he said, “Kyu seems to think you are doing pretty well so far. How do you feel?”

“Tired,” she said, “and excited. I’m so glad you brought me! There’s so much I could never have understood without being here. Already I can see Selene’s jungle when we’re done. I’ve put my whole weight onto lianas like the baby ones we’re planting. I love seeing the big versions of what we are growing. I’ll be a better designer now. I want to change some things in my plot.”

“Good. You’ll have to study extremely hard. These people already have a sense of what you can do, but this will be harder than any class I taught. You may feel like you have to prove yourself over and over.”

Astronaut watched the interaction carefully. Rachel nodded and promised she would work hard. Then she started pounding Gabriel with questions. She kept him interested for hours, questioning and probing and learning. He stayed until she could barely keep her eyes open.

As soon as he hit the corridor Astronaut said, “Now I understand what you are impressed with.”

“What?”

“She really is very quick. She followed a lot of what you said there, but almost all of the concepts must have been new.”

“I’m proud of her,” Gabriel said.

“I want to talk to her,” Astronaut said. But she had to ask.

“Not until she has full Library access.”

“Does she know I exist?”

“I’ve mentioned you a time or two.”

R
ACHEL WAVED AT
Kyu as the High Councilwoman left for the morning. She pushed her hair out of her eyes and started looking under leaves for red-eyed tree frogs. Her assignment was to find as many frogs as she could and get DNA samples to compare to Earth stock records.

She imagined the frogs loose on Selene. Gloria would love them. She loved all bright-colored things, and the
frog’s bright red eyes would fascinate her. Harry would like them too.

Rachel and Harry sent each other notes every day, but what she really wanted was to see him, hold him, bury her face in his shoulder, take him into her body. She wanted to see her father’s smile when he came in the door and found her home. She had lots of news from home: her dad twisted his ankle, Andrew was back, Ursula was having a hard time doing fieldwork; she loved planting but the machines still scared her. Sometimes when Rachel got back to her room after an exhausting day of lessons, she closed the door and just sat with her back against it, trembling, missing Selene.

Each day felt like a new test. Today, it was undoubtedly whether or not she could find enough frogs. They were hard to spot during the day—Kyu’s recommended strategy was to rustle leaves and scare them, watching for the telltale red eyes.

It was going to be a long morning.

At least she had something new to look forward to this afternoon. Gabriel had promised to connect her with the Library. Kyu even said, “Introduce her to the Library,” as if it were a person. So far, Rachel’s glimpse of the Library was in small downloads Kyu sent to her wrist pad. Some of the lessons Gabriel taught must have come from the Library. What else must be there? Kyu, Gabriel, Ali, they all knew so
much!

She stepped gingerly along the thin jungle paths, careful not to crush any leaves or step into the planting medium. A stray footstep would be recorded, and Kyu would frown and make her repair the medium herself. Her thoughts jumped back and forth between being excited about the Library and missing Harry. If only he were here! Or even Ursula. One of them could flush the frogs out and the other could catch them.

Rachel was kneeling, her first catch of the morning held gently in her right hand, when footsteps with a slow unfamiliar rhythm sounded from behind her.