Building Harlequin’s Moon (25 page)

Justin’s eyes went big. “Are there a lot of Council there?”

“Yes, but it’s so big, it looks empty.”

“How fast does it go?” Jacob asked.

“I don’t know.” She should know, she thought. “I think it’s not moving now. But it must have gone very fast to get between star systems.”

“What does the garden look like?” Sarah asked.

Rachel drew a data window in the air, and asked for a picture of the garden. The window started to fill up with colorful images.

“You didn’t ask it what to do,” Justin proclaimed solemnly.

“But, yes, I did. I asked it.”

Her dad leaned forward. “How?”

“Well . . .” They didn’t know about the Library bud. She swallowed. “Well,” she started over, “on the
John Glenn
, we can find out information by asking. It’s like a voice in your ear.”

“Can I have one?” Justin asked. “I want a voice in my ear. Can you teach me?”

Rachel shook her head. “Council has to give one to you.” She wasn’t supposed to talk about the Library. But she hadn’t mentioned it directly—she was just retrieving information. “Look,” she said, “I have to stop now.” What excuse could she use? “This is hard to do way down here, and I’m not really supposed to use it much.”

Her dad looked over at Kara. “Can you do that?”

Kara hesitated, then looked daggers at Rachel and said, “Yes.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s not polite to show off data rights other people don’t have.” Lips pursed, she returned her attention to her plate.

After dinner, Kara took the children to bathe, and Rachel and Frank were alone in the big common room.

Rachel had become used to large spaces on the ship, but so much personal space on Selene was luxury. Their tent house would have fit in just this room. “Are you happy?” she asked her father.

“I’m happy to have you home.”

“Kara’s going back, isn’t she?”

“Next year. I’ll miss her in some ways. She’s better than most Earth Born. She doesn’t really belong here, and she knows it. But I did okay raising you. I’ll manage these three all right. Kara always said she wouldn’t stay. She has a place at Ymir.”

“So she’s leaving you with the children? Is that what you want?”

“Since when do we get what we want?” Frank stared off into space, twisting his hands together. “I’m sorry about Ursula. I know you’ll miss her.”

“Yeah.” She didn’t want to think about Ursula, not yet, so she said, “Aldrin feels different now.”

“There’s more tension between Earth Born and Moon Born than there used to be. After you and Gabriel left, and Ali followed, the pace sped up down here. The first big change was a building boom. The plan was tents, but we had to change because of the flares. That’s what the buildings are for, by the way—they’re all flare-hardened in at least one room. Here, it’s the kitchen. So if the warning goes off, you go in there and close both doors. There’s enough shielding to protect us from the smaller flares. Those happen a lot more than they did—at least a few times a year.”

The Council hadn’t been lying to her. “Other things feel different too,” she prompted him.

“Sorry—all the building—it was so we could house more people. Aldrin has hundreds of people now—and new rules and more tension. Partly the tension is from Council. We’re behind in their master plan—the flares got in the way, and there’s been minor setbacks with planting. It’s all aggravated because the rules for the Earth Born are different from the ones for the Moon Born. Before you left, it wasn’t that way.”

“How are they different?” she asked.

“Well, that device you’ve got—the one you talk to—I’ve
never seen one down here. We all have wrist pads, but they’re just phones, they don’t generally
tell
us things. We can’t just ask questions and have answers show up as if someone was sitting around waiting on us. Oh, we can get information, but only what’s related to our jobs.” He looked at her closely, narrowing his eyes. “You had better be careful about showing off. Some people might be jealous. Aldrin’s not as safe as it used to be.”

“I’ll be careful.” She hadn’t opened a conversation with Astronaut, not yet. She didn’t know if access to Astronaut was part of her query and response to the Library here. But she hadn’t heard the perfect voice in her ear—just the Library’s standard response talk. There was still so much she didn’t know!

Still, she had seen Selene from the sky, flown in the garden, and climbed Yggdrasil. She was half her friends’ age, but she knew things they didn’t.

Frank straightened and looked her in the eye. “Back at the airport? You acted like it didn’t matter what Gabriel said, like you’re mad at him. And him Council. Do you have any idea how glad we are to see him? Maybe things will come back closer to how they used to be. Council rules us like always. But now, Moon Born and Earth Born fight, and some of the Earth Born fight with each other. Maybe Gabriel can fix
something
. It can’t help us if you make him mad. I didn’t like him a lot before, but I like him better than Shane and Star, who’ve been running classes and teams here. Earth Born run most of the teams, and they do most of the real running of the city.”

“Not Moon Born?”

“No.”

Wasn’t it the plan for Harry to lead teams? For her too? She leaned in closer to her dad. “There’s a High Council. Higher than Gabriel. He has to do what they say. But he’s pretty high up. I bet Shane and Star have less influence. I’ve never even heard their names before, and everybody
on
John Glenn
knows Gabriel.” She stopped for a minute, thinking, rubbing her hands on her knees. “Gabriel wants us to lead. That’s why he brought me to
John Glenn
. But I don’t know if he can really change anything.”

Frank looked surprised. “I thought Gabriel was in charge.”

“I think he is in charge of Selene. But High Council can make rules, even for him.” She shivered. “There’s Kyu—who’s pretty and smart and tough, and the captain, who doesn’t say much, but people listen to him. Clare is the boss terraformer, which makes her Gabriel’s boss, but you don’t see her because High Council almost never comes here.”

“I met her once,” Frank said. “When I was just a little boy.”

Rachel shivered. “And Ma Liren. Liren’s nasty.”

“Gabriel’s the one who called us and said to meet you,” he said. “Rachel, I don’t ever remember being happier to hear from anyone.” Frank swept his mismatched hands through his hair, and then clasped them tightly in front of him, leaning forward. “Gabriel said good things about you. He also seemed concerned, like coming home would be hard on you. That’s partly what prompted me to find your old pictures for your room. Gabriel told me you learn really fast, and that your being iced was a privilege. I was mad at Gabriel for a long time because I missed you so, but who wouldn’t want his child to live longer?” He scrubbed at his face, shielding his eyes from her. “I’m not making any sense—sorry.” He drew a deep breath and dropped his hands, looking directly at her. “I’m just afraid for you after seeing how you’re acting. You can’t tell a Council member what you’re going to do!”

“Maybe someone needs to tell them to treat us better,” she said.

“You’re angry, Rachel. I can feel it in you. Anger and loss. You lost a lot, I lost a lot, but you’re here. And you still have work to do. We all have work to do.”

“I know,” she said.

“Don’t make Council mad. Think of poor Andrew. Remember you could turn out that way. You’re used to being favored—you are favored. But you could lose that, and I’d hate it if you lost your dreams.”

“Don’t you mean if I lost more of them?”

Her father just smiled gently and nodded. “You look tired. Why don’t you sleep?”

“Good idea.” She hugged her dad hard, not wanting to let go.

At midnight she woke up sweating, knowing she could never trust Gabriel so much again. She was dancing to more strings than just his, and he was a puppet too. Liren and Kyu and the captain, they all had more power than Gabriel. Treesa and Astronaut made a difference too, although Rachel didn’t understand it yet. She had thought Council all saw things the same way. But they argued and schemed and planned different plans inside the big plan that they all supported—to leave Selene. Gabriel was asking Rachel to help with that plan, but she didn’t want Council to leave. How would they live on Selene without the Council to run things?

Her thoughts drifted back to Treesa, and it was no comfort to imagine being an old woman alone in a garden with caged birds for company.

D
AWN COLORED THE
window rose as Rachel slipped into the kitchen and made a breakfast. In the fridge there was a bowl of bloody red lumps; she avoided it. No one else had stirred yet when she grabbed the bright blue and yellow
wings she’d brought with her from
John Glenn
. It was still too dark to fly to the grove, but she would fly back. She hadn’t flown through air with no obstacles in so long! A good thermal with the ability to rise, to hold out her wings and float, alone above Selene . . .

Rachel squinted into Apollo’s light and made out silhouettes of old high tent poles. The path to the grove had run through them. She found a wide street that went the right direction and started along it.

She passed a building with a red and blue window sign offering homemade crafts for trade. Curious, Rachel veered toward it. In the Aldrin she’d left, Council provided everything families needed. Peering through the windows in the half-light, she made out curtains and clothes and teapots.

She turned back to look for the path. The street kept going the right direction, straight. She walked uphill between a row of houses. The street ended and she was surrounded by vegetation, plots marked out with rope boundaries. Tattered cloth name tags were tied on the rope, fluttering in the light morning breeze.

By the time she found her plot, the light of full morning was touching the tips of the trees, reflecting on the waxy leaves and making the greens bright and vivid. She set her bag down and waded in, amazed at the height of the grasses and shrubs, the way the branches towered above her head, the ropy thickness of the lianas. The Lobster Claw Heliconia leaves were as wide as her hips, and a stalk of red and yellow bracts towered over her head. The mimosas were chest high, spindlier than she’d expected, and more graceful. The cecropia towered above all of the other plants, reaching for light.

The forest floor was springy, wild with dead things turning back to soil. In the garden aboard
John Glenn
, roots were trapped in synthetic fiber mats and fed perfect nutrient mixes. Here, roots tunneled into dirt that stuck to her
shoes. Rachel knelt down and ran her fingers through the soil, filling the cup of her palm with damp deadfall. She picked through the jumble of tiny twigs and brown leaves, ecstatic to see spidery skeletons of leaves. Her nose wrinkled happily at the peaty smell of natural compost. Looking closely, she noticed an ant, and then another, and another, marching around the trunk of the cecropia tree.

She talked into her wrist pad about the ants; describing counts and behaviors. Rachel wanted to run statistics and images through the Library and see if lower gravity had changed the ants. She was sketching the pattern they traveled on the tree when she heard footsteps behind her.

Rachel turned, and gave a little cry. But it couldn’t be Harry. Not now. His hair was lighter, and the shade of green in his eyes was just off. The square angle of his jaw was right, and he had the little quirky smile she remembered. She tried to remember the name Gabriel had attached to Harry and Gloria’s son.

Before she could find the name in her head, he extended a hand to help her stand. “You must be Rachel.”

Did everyone, everywhere, know her name? She nodded. “And you are?”

“Dylan.”

“Pleased to meet you. You’re Harry’s son.”

“Mom says I look a lot like him. I guess she must be right. Anyway, do you like it?”

“Like? Your name?”

“The grove. We all take turns, Dad and Mom and me, taking care of it.” He swept his right arm expansively toward her trees.

“Of my plot?”

“Dad and Mom said they couldn’t bear to have your plot fall into the student pool. We kept it perfect in case you came home.”

“Th-thank you.” This boy wasn’t more than two years
younger than the Harry she’d seen a few months ago. It was hard to stay balanced on her feet and talk normally. “Yes . . . well, I’m glad someone does, oh, I mean . . .” She slowed and took a deep breath. “Yes, it’s beautiful. Thank you. It looks even better than I thought it would when I designed it.”

“It’s my day to check on things here, but Dad said to call if you were here. So I did, as soon as I saw you. We heard last night. And gosh—Mom was so excited! She said her best friend is returned from the dead. They’ll be along in a bit.” Dylan was looking her up and down as if she were a piece of art.

She shivered and goose bumps rose along her arms. Her voice caught in her throat for a moment, and then she shifted back to a safe subject. “The ants are pretty neat,” she said. “I studied them on the ship.”

“This is Star’s third try for a viable ant colony.” Dylan put his hand down on a trunk in front of a marching column of black ants, and the next ant bumped into his fingertip, then veered around it, marking a new trail. Dylan smiled. “I think this colony might take. These guys have been going for two months now.”

“There weren’t any ants here when I left.”

“Star’s been pushing insects the last few years. We’ve got reproducing colonies of bees now.”

“I saw birds too.”

“There’s fifteen species now.” He sounded proud. “Including chickens. Did you really save Mom’s life?”

“She was a little girl then, and I had to be saved too.”

Dylan grinned.

The whine and snap of wings came from overhead.

Harry and Gloria swooped down and landed, one on each side of Rachel, almost knocking her down as they crowded close.

The thirty-nine-year-old Harry had grown into all of his
body parts. He’d gotten taller. His shoulders were much broader, though he was still lean and muscular. His back was slightly curved in, giving his stance a little stoop. Lines crinkled around his eyes. He didn’t look directly at her for very long.