Building Harlequin’s Moon (34 page)

Rachel wondered if he knew how popular her greenhouse classes were. Or what she really offered in those classes.

“Please,” said Gloria.

Rachel stayed quiet. Quiet had fallen over the whole circle, the camaraderie swallowed by tension.

Rachel watched Gabriel, waiting for his next words. He’d have to let her go now, he’d have to. She held her tongue.

Gabriel sighed. “I’ll come for you just before noon.”

Rachel knew better than to signal her triumph in any way, and she quietly said, “Thank you,” and sat down again, both frightened and pleased.

Gabriel immediately changed the subject to work assignments for the next few weeks. He didn’t give Rachel any, although it surprised Rachel when Gabriel assigned her teaching duties to Nick. Maybe he knew more than she thought.

M
A
L
IREN AND
the captain shared a bench in the tall grass and oak savannah. Yggdrasil’s branches waved high above them. Garden programming had created spring conditions, and the rich menthol tang of mountain mint mixed with the citrus smells of blooming bergamot. Purple asters clustered at their feet.

Liren breathed in the flowery smells, reveling in the open expanses of the savannah. The view was a welcome respite from crowded meeting rooms full of people absorbing the blow of the fire, preparing to warm a hundred Earth Born to carry the extra work, and to shift the entire Selene population to a new location. It was the first break except sleep for either of them since Rachel’s panicked message about the fire six days ago.

The captain leaned forward, hands steepled above his knees, apparently lost in thought.

“How much time will the fire cost us?” Liren watched pollenator bots glide smoothly from aster to aster. They were tiny, barely visible, like gnats. The ground was littered with dark specks of failed bots, dead things waiting for other bots to clean them up. Liren picked one up and rolled it between two fingertips, feeling the sharp carbon edges. The amount of mechanization it took to maintain
the garden symbolized the tough choices they’d had to make at every step.

The captain shook his head, coming out of whatever daydream he had been lost in. “Time loss? For the collider? Not more than a season. We can get enough food out of Clarke Base; we’ll expand the greenhouses and fields-right away. It moves the jungle planting schedule out, of course. Lots of rework.”

He ran his hands through his gray hair. “I’ve watched feeds of the firefighters on Selene.”

When had he had time in the last few days? When he was supposed to be sleeping? Damn the man, she could have used more help with logistics.

“I think perhaps the fire helped us,” he said, turning so he was sitting angled, nearly facing her. “Did you see how hard everyone worked—together?”

“It was an emergency. People pull together in an emergency. Teams bond. We can break that up over time, call back most of the Earth Born, and wake up others. The usual order will be reestablished as the move happens.”

The captain waved his hands in front of her face. “You’re not listening—”

“Yes, I am.” She faced him squarely, daring him to avoid her eyes. He had helped her lay out the original plan! “You want the big happy family to continue. And you would be right if the end story were going to be different. But you and I both know what we’re doing—we’re leaving the Moon Born here and going on.”

The captain pursed his lips and looked away again. A small muscle twitched along his jawline. Liren waited. He knew the situation; they’d championed the original choices together, run up support, forced the right High Council vote. He would come around.

When he spoke, his voice was firm and clear. It seemed to Liren that he was saying something he’d practiced over and over in his head before giving it an audience. “We
made a mistake, Liren. We’re doing this all wrong. We were scared. We ran away from a world that was being destroyed by AIs, by runaway nanotechnology. Our creations were killing us. Even the ship went wrong on us. The only star in range didn’t have a decent solar system, just a sun with a gas giant companion that rains iron, and
nothing
in the habitable band. No rocky worlds, no big moons.
Of course
we hated this system. We
built
a world—”

“We still can’t live here. Flares alone will kill us,” Liren said.

“Gabriel’s flare kite idea might solve that problem. But that’s not the issue. We left Sol to save something of humanity. Well, humanity is down there on Selene as well as up here.”

He was too damned soft. She tried an appeal to his logical side. “Every single simulation says we’ll die if we stay in this system. The only differences in results are how long it will take to die, and what we’ll die of. The sims suggest the human race itself is less likely to die if we find the others, at Ymir, or at some other better place to live.”

The captain stood and turned to face her directly, looking down at her. “Who says it isn’t dead already except for us? Sixty thousand years, Liren. If there
is
a sophisticated colony on Ymir, they could have looked for us. They had our last transmissions, and we still have beacons going today.”

Liren stood up so her eyes were almost even with his. “How would they know we’re still alive? We don’t have the technology to stay here. We can’t build starships—we can’t survive here long enough to build an economy that could do that.”

“We can give this colony a chance to live before we leave.”

“Just by building the flare kite?” How could he be so simplistic?

“No. Some of us might have to stay.” The captain started walking. “We might have to leave them more technology than we want to.”

Liren followed him, shaking her head. He was talking about letting the AI do more. She didn’t trust Astronaut. But she’d told him about her suspicions once before, long ago, just after the catastrophe that marooned them here. He’d laughed in her face. Since then, not one single disaster could be pinned on the AI.

She said, “I can’t support that. The only choice we have is to stay with the original plan. If we deviate—if we unleash too much technology or fall in love with the Moon Born—we’ll never leave.”

“Sure we will. Most of us, anyway.” He stopped and turned, so she had to stop or run into him. “Is it really that bad if some of us stay here? Look at the Earth Born who choose not to come back here. They love their children enough to stay now—maybe they’ll love them enough to stay long-term.”

Liren shivered. They needed every one of the trained experts they’d brought; every reserve resource. The line between life and death for her shipmates was thinning. “Any choice that doesn’t support getting to Ymir leads to our death. Maybe not immediately, but surely.”

“New information bounces off of you like light against a mirror. Maybe you should watch the fire feeds. We built ourselves a trap when we got here—it’s time to unbuild it.”

Her face flushed with anger. “I don’t need to relive the damned fire. I need to go forward.”

The captain shook his head at her and she did her best to hold him with a steady gaze. She was right. She knew she was.

He smiled, and for a minute she thought he saw what she saw—their sure destruction—but all he said was, “Calm down. Gabriel will be here in a few hours, and he’s bringing Rachel and Beth.”

What? Why didn’t anyone tell her? “I don’t want her here again,” Liren said. The knot in her stomach, the worry that never went away anymore, twisted again.

“Rachel?”

“Any of the Moon Born. Now there will be two of them.”

“They’re heroes.”

“We’re losing,” she said. “We lost a mining ship putting out this fire. Every loss makes it less sure we’ll get away.” Her fists clenched and she struggled to keep John Hunter from seeing her anger. “How much more can we lose?”

The captain’s voice fell away to a soft steely tenor, just louder than a whisper. His eyes were dark intense pools. “We would have lost Aldrin if Gabriel hadn’t taken the miner. Sometimes it helps to see the triumphs. Can you act like you appreciate the pain Beth and Rachel went through?”

“We can’t afford to care about it. If we let ourselves care, we’ll never get to Ymir. Or anywhere. We’ll die—of flares, of old age, of lack of willpower. We have to think long-term. Selene will be habitable for at least a while, maybe generations. We can’t do more for them than that.”

“If you can’t, then don’t plan on my support.” He turned and walked away, his shoulders square, his stride firmer than usual. He looked like he used to look, before the disaster, when he strode the decks of the
John Glenn
, in command of the first interstellar colony ship in human history.

Liren watched his retreating back until he turned up-spiral from her.

R
ACHEL HELPED
G
ABRIEL
strap Beth into the acceleration couch. He had fashioned a special backboard for her; protection for her ravaged spine. Beth gripped Rachel’s hand tightly as they left the atmosphere, her eyes alight with pain.

They burst through the thin atmosphere into clear, bright stars. Gabriel turned the little ship around while they were still close enough to Selene that it hung huge in front of them, so big that Rachel’s eyes couldn’t take it all in at once. A stain of brown and black spread from the Sea Road out like an amoeba. A rough circle—the meadow—was bisected by the ragged gouge of the miner’s last triumphant landing, and the color shifted from brown to green on either side. “Wow. You were lucky,” Rachel said. “What a landing!”

“I’m glad Aldrin didn’t burn,” Beth said. She pointed. “And that’s the Hammered Sea?”

“Yes,” Gabriel answered her, pointing. “And those were the First Trees.” His voice gone ragged for a moment. “Down and to the right—that’s Erika’s Folly, where Rachel helped save your mom.”

Beth smiled broadly; the sight of Selene seemed to have torn her mind from her fears about the trip and from her own pain. Gabriel turned the ship toward
John Glenn
, and it grew in front of them until Rachel felt like an ant. Beth’s grip on Rachel’s hand tightened until Rachel grit her teeth from the pain.

Kyu and Ali waited for them in the corridor as Gabriel maneuvered Beth and the backboard awkwardly through the airlock. Rachel stumbled after Gabriel, balancing their three small packs precariously. Ali looked like she had when Rachel last saw her; long braids, simple belted shirt and pants, a ready smile. Kyu wore black and silver makeup topped by glittering white hair, and a sheer cloud of silver and white gauzy material belted with a chain. Rachel blinked, surprised at how pleased she was to see them both.

At the sight of Kyu, Beth turned her head into Gabriel’s shoulder, and looked beseechingly at Rachel.

Rachel patted her cheek. “It’s okay. Kyu was my teacher; I told you about her, remember?” She leaned in close to Beth’s ear, whispering, “She just dresses funny.”

Ali took two packs from Rachel, and Kyu grabbed the third with one arm and enfolded Rachel in a hug. “You did well down there, Rachel. I am very proud of you.”

Rachel scraped out a smile and said, “Thanks. You helped more than I can say. Your voice in my ear during the fire felt like having a friend along.”

“The fire was scary, wasn’t it?” Kyu asked.

“Very.” Now Rachel smiled for real. It felt good to see Kyu. She hadn’t thought to miss Kyu. She’d been so buried in the daily world of adjusting to Selene for the last four years. She hadn’t even sent her messages.

Ali spoke up: “And you are Beth Rachel. I met your parents last time I was on Selene. I’m Ali, and this is High Councilwoman Kyu.”

Beth’s eyes went wide. “I’m glad to meet you both,” she said softly.

Beth reached a hand for Rachel, who took it, saying, “It’s only scary at first I’ll show you around when your legs work again.” Then Rachel looked at Kyu. “They will work again, won’t they? You can fix her?”

“It may take a while,” Kyu said. “And no time like now to start. But I need to talk to Gabriel. Ali will take Beth to Medical.”

“I want to go with Beth,” Rachel said, remembering how strange
John Glenn
had seemed to her the first time she came.

“Of course,” Ali said. She and Rachel each took a side of the backboard, and started down the corridor.

Gabriel called after them. “Ali, Rachel, meet us in the garden cafeteria as soon as Beth’s asleep.”

Rachel turned, trying to hide her flash of alarm, remembering, “You won’t ice her?”

Kyu responded. “We’ll have to cool her for the nanodocs to work on her.”

“But not ice her? Not just freeze her and leave her?”

“Not today,” Kyu said, laughing softly. “I promise.”

Rachel laughed, recognizing the friendly poke. She and Ali walked down the corridor to Medical, carrying Beth and chattering about the fire, clearly trying to distract the younger girl from her fears.

A med tech met them and gave Beth a shot. Rachel stroked Beth’s arm while she drifted to sleep, singing and talking to her, telling her it would be all right.

Ali sat quietly in a chair, brushing out her hair, watching Rachel speculatively. Beth’s eyes closed and her breathing softened, becoming shallow and regular.

Ali stood and gestured to Rachel to follow her. She set a fast pace to the garden cafeteria, which was so busy many people had to stand. Rachel noticed a number of new faces. Liren stood by herself. A woman as small as Kyu, ice-pale in coloring where Kyu was dark ebonies and bronze, chatted amiably with Gabriel, one hand on his arm. A sandy-haired, stocky man Rachel had never seen stood with them, listening to the small woman.

“Who are they?” she whispered to Ali, pointing at Gabriel, and the woman and the man.

“The woman with Gabriel is Erika. The other man is Rich Roberts. Human resources,” Ali replied. “He chose who came with us, and he intervenes in disputes between Council members. Rich is pissed off—he wanted to stay cold until this project is finished.”