New Earth (24 page)

Looking back at Tithonium Base, Jamie saw that the structures looked timeworn, weary. Just as he felt. Old. Tired. The Navaho part of his soul felt that death was coming. Looking up into the clear, butterscotch sky of Mars, he felt that soon his spirit would be a cloud wafting up there, looking down
upon a long, arduous lifetime’s work.

Jamie had spent his life striving to keep human explorers working on Mars, uncovering the buried villages of the long-extinct Martians, translating their prayer tablets, helping the struggling Martian lichen to survive the pitiless harsh environment.

And working to keep the million-year experiment going.

Now it was all in danger again. Funding from Earth
was drying up, evaporating like a puddle of water in the thin Martian atmosphere.

His son, Ravi, walked out to meet him, full of youthful energy. He was almost half a meter taller than his stocky father, his skin darker than Jamie’s copper hue. But he had his father’s easy smile, his father’s clear brown eyes, his father’s broad cheekbones and unbending perseverance.

“Y’aa’tey,” Ravi said. The
old Navaho greeting.
It is good.
“I figured you’d be here.”

“Y’aa’tey,” Jamie replied, his voice reedy and rasping, like the thin Martian wind.

“The L/AV lifts off in half an hour,” said Ravi.

Jamie nodded. “I know. I’ll be there to see you off, don’t worry.”

Ravi grinned at his father. “I got that shitload of messages you want me to deliver: Dex, Dr. Ionescu, all the others.”

“In person.
I’ve been talking to them from here, but you’ve got the chance to see them face-to-face.”

“I don’t know about President Newton,” Ravi said slowly. “He might not want to see me.”

“You’ve got to get to him.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I know you will, son.”

Almost mischievously, Ravi said, “I’m surprised you didn’t put Chairman Chiang on the list.”

Jamie shook his head inside the bubble helmet of
his nanosuit. “Chiang’s an old hothead. We’ve got to work around him, get all the others to agree to continue our funding. Then he’ll come around. Not before.”

An uncomfortable silence fell between them. Jamie turned his back on the stone marker and started walking slowly back toward the base and the rocket vehicle that would take his son to the ship waiting in orbit.

At last Ravi asked, “Dad,
what if I fail? What if they absolutely refuse to continue funding us?”

Jamie didn’t hesitate an eyeblink. “Then we’ll go down to a shoestring operation. Most of the people will go back home, but a handful of us will remain. We’ll keep the work going.”

“But—”

“We’re just about self-sufficient. We’ll get along. We’ve been through lean periods before and survived.”

Ravi didn’t say what he was
thinking: Mom didn’t survive. She didn’t make it through the last time you had to live on a shoestring.

“The important thing,” Jamie went on, leaning a hand on his son’s shoulder, “is to keep the experiment going.”

Ravi knew what his father meant. The million-year experiment. They had excavated several pits deep enough to expose the Martian extremophiles that lived under the permafrost layer.
They had domed over the excavations and kept them warm despite overnight temperatures that plummeted to a hundred degrees below zero or lower.

The hardy bacteria were surviving, thriving, in fact. At one of the pits they had even begun to clump together in cooperative aggregations—the first step toward evolving true multicellular organisms.

It was an experiment to see if Mars could be returned
to life, its own indigenous Martian life, an experiment that would take millennia to complete. Biologists were stunned by its boldness. Religious fanatics worried that it might prove that evolution is more than a theory.

Father and son walked side by side through the base’s scattered buildings and out to the concrete slab where the spindly, spraddle-legged landing/ascent rocket was being loaded.

Ravi turned to his father and said, “I won’t let you down, Dad.”

“I know you won’t.”

“But if … if those flatlanders don’t come through with more funding, I’ll come back here anyway.”

“Now wait,” Jamie said, suddenly alarmed. “Just because I’ll stay here doesn’t mean you have to. You’ve got to find your own path, Ravi.”

“I know where my path leads, Dad: back to Mars.”

Jamie tried to reply,
but his throat was suddenly choked with tears.

One of the crew loading the rocket called, “Hey Ravi, you coming or not?”

Ravi waved to him, then said to his father, “I’ve got to go, Dad.”

“Go with beauty, son.”

“But I’ll be back. One way or the other. I’ll be back.”

“Go with beauty,” Jamie repeated.

REVELATIONS

Most men, when they think they are thinking, are merely rearranging their prejudices.

K
NUTE
R
OCKNE

THE BIOLAB

Jordan stood dumbfounded, staring at Aditi, thinking, She wasn’t born naturally. She was created, built out of cell samples, gestated in an artificial womb, a machine. She’s not natural, not real …

Yet she was sitting beside him on the stone bench, her beautiful face looking concerned, worried that his innate fears and prejudices would destroy their loving relationship.

Jordan
squeezed his eyes shut momentarily. She
is
real, he told himself. She’s as real as I am. She’s warm and loving and—alien.

He opened his eyes and Aditi was still there, beside him, close enough to touch, close enough to catch the delicate floral scent she wore, close enough to see that her eyes were troubled.

“Have I shocked you?” she asked, her voice low.

He had to pull in a breath before he
could answer, “It’s … a surprise. I never thought…”

“Would you like to see the facility where we were created?”

“I’m not so sure,” he said. “I don’t know if I’m ready for that.”

Aditi got to her feet and reached a hand out to Jordan. He rose, took her hand, and numbly followed her as together they walked into the city.

People were strolling along the streets, together with the pony-sized animals
they used as beasts of burden. Smaller pets scampered among them, unhampered by leashes. Many of the people smiled and said hello.

He asked her, “All of these people were…?”

“Created in the biolab, yes,” Aditi answered easily. “So were the ponies and all the other animals you have seen here in the city.”

“And the animals in the forest?”

She shook her head. “They procreate among themselves,
of course.”

“Of course,” he said weakly.

As she walked purposefully along the street, Aditi said, “Jordan, it’s merely another way for a species to reproduce. We use our technology. We can control every aspect of gestation. It allows us to produce babies that are healthy, intelligent, and empathetic.”

He said nothing, but his mind pictured hordes of identical clones being mass-produced like
automobiles or robots. He knew it was nonsense, that Aditi was not a mindless zombie, that every one of Adri’s people was as individual as humans. Yet the picture remained in his mind. Things that looked like human beings being stamped out in a factory assembly line.

Aditi sensed his inner turmoil. “Jordan, dearest, the end product of our way is the same as the end product of your way: a baby.
A squalling, gurgling, dribbling baby. Just the same as your babies. Just as human.”

They were at the entrance to a smallish building. Its door opened at Aditi’s touch and they went into the biolab.

Jordan followed Aditi through rows of equipment, all silent and still. She pointed out the microscopes and specimen containers, the glassware for cell cultures, the reactors where egg and sperm cells
were united.

Like our biovats for meat, Jordan thought. Smaller, though. Much smaller.

“And here are the gestation chambers,” Aditi said, gesturing to a line of small spheres that looked to Jordan like gourds made of plastic with half a dozen flexible pipes connected to them.

“They enlarge as the fetus grows, of course,” Aditi said.

“I see,” he murmured. Then he realized, “None of the equipment
seems to be functioning.”

“Not now. We don’t need any more people for the time being. When the need arises, we can gestate newborns.”

“And where do the eggs and sperm come from?” he asked.

“From us,” she replied. “We donate ova and sperm cells when they are needed.”

Rather cold-blooded, Jordan thought. But he said nothing.

Going down the line of artificial wombs, Aditi stopped at one. “This
is where I was gestated,” she said. “Number six.”

The writing on the bench’s top was indecipherable to Jordan, but he looked from it to her face, smiling hopefully.

“It did a good job,” he said, smiling back at her.

Aditi broke into tears. Leaning her head against his chest, she sobbed, “You don’t think I’m a monster?”

“I know you’re not.”

“You can accept me, knowing how I was created? How
different I am?”

Folding his arms about her, Jordan said, “I love you, Aditi. I don’t care how you were created; that doesn’t matter.”

He wasn’t being entirely truthful. Jordan felt a slight shiver of apprehension as he looked past her tousled head to the row of artificial wombs standing silently on the bench, waiting to be used again to create new aliens.

RETURN TO CAMP

“I’ve got to go back to the camp, tell the others about this,” Jordan said, as they walked back toward the entrance of the biolab.

“I understand,” Aditi said.

The door opened again at her touch and they stepped out into the sunshine and bustle of the late-afternoon street. The slanting rays of sunlight felt warm, soothing, on Jordan’s shoulders. Squinting against the brightness,
he felt a cooling breeze that rustled the trees planted along the sidewalk.

“Will you come back tonight?” she asked.

As they walked along the street, back toward the city’s perimeter, Jordan shook his head slowly. “I don’t think so. This will be a lot for Meek and the others to digest. I’ll have to stay with them, I’m afraid.”

“I understand,” she repeated. Reluctantly, Jordan thought.

“Will
you come with me?” he asked. “Spend the night in my cubicle?”

Without hesitation, Aditi replied, “I’d like to, Jordan, but I don’t think it would be best. I don’t want them staring at me as if I’m a freak.”

“I understand,” he said. “I should have known.”

They walked to the city’s edge in silence, each wrapped in their own thoughts. Jordan knew that Aditi was right. Let Meek and Longyear and
the others absorb this new information. It’ll stun them, I’m sure. I don’t want Aditi to be there when they find out about it. I don’t want them staring at her, whispering about her. Let her stay here in the city, where she’ll be safe.

Safe? He wondered why he thought about it that way. Surely she’d be safe in our camp. No one’s going to harm her. Not Longyear and certainly not Meek. They’re
frightened of her, but they wouldn’t harm her. Yet he had instinctively felt concern for her safety.

And he realized that what men are frightened of, they often lash out against. It was a very human reaction.

*   *   *

By the time Jordan reached the camp, Sirius was setting, turning the sky into a blazing bold vermillion and painting the low-lying clouds deep violet. Higher above he saw the
pinpoint of the Pup, bright as a laser, riding above the horizon-hugging cloud deck.

To his surprise, Brandon and de Falla had returned. They were at the rocketplane they had traveled in, out at the edge of the camp, while a pair of robots unloaded their gear. De Falla was watching the robot; Brandon stood nearby, all smiles, with Elyse clutching his arm happily. Jordan thought that she must
have come in from the observatory once she learned that Bran was returning.

“Finished your survey so soon?” he asked de Falla, as one of the robots drove their tractor down the plane’s cargo bay ramp and out onto the grass.

“That sector, yes,” the geologist replied. “We’ve mapped it down to a centimeter scale and sampled its rocks and soil.”

“We ran out of clean clothes,” Brandon joked.

Jordan
said, “Bran, I want you and all the others to gather at the dining area at seventeen hundred hours. I have some important new information to share with you. Tell the others, will you?”

Brandon nodded. “Okay, Jordy, I’ll spread the word.” He started off toward the cluster of bubble tents, Elyse at his side, leaving de Falla and the robots to finish unloading the rocketplane.

Jordan personally
told Meek about the meeting, then went looking for Longyear and Thornberry.

Precisely at seventeen hundred hours Jordan stepped into the bubble tent that housed the camp’s kitchen and dining area. All eight of the others were there, sitting at the longest table in the place, heads together in buzzing conversations. On the wall-sized display screen at the end of the table, Hazzard, Trish Wanamaker,
and Demetrios Zadar looked on from the wardroom of the orbiting
Gaia
.

Jordan went to the head of the table. The talk stopped and they looked at him expectantly.

“I’ve learned something about our aliens that’s both very interesting and … well, frankly, rather unsettling,” he began.

“They’re evangelists and they want to convert us to their religion,” Brandon wisecracked.

A few titters ran along
the table. Meek shot Brandon an annoyed glare.

With a tolerant smile, Jordan said, “No, it’s not that bad.”

“Then what is it?” asked Yamaguchi.

Jordan hesitated a heartbeat, then plunged, “They aren’t born naturally. They aren’t conceived and carried in a woman’s womb. They’re gestated in apparatuses in a laboratory.”

Absolute silence for almost half a minute. Then Meek said, “I knew it! They’re
not real. They’re constructs. Biological constructs.”

“They’re as real as you and I, Harmon,” Jordan countered. “They simply were created in a different way.”