The Children Star (13 page)

Rod had mixed feelings. The idea had come up before. Distasteful as it was, it could save the lives of starving L'liites—those who had crashed would have had somewhere to go. “It might help others,” he explained, “but not us. Members of our order worship the Spirit of the land, wherever we dwell.”

“Then think well.” Elk spoke quietly in his deep voice, still looking away. “In the end, how much land may be left?”

“Things come to pass,” said Rod. “In the end, destroyers destroy themselves; but the Spirit dwells on.” That was the central insight Rod had experienced, in his last year at the Guard, the first time he heard the Reverend Mother Artemis.

A new presence filled the little holostage: the president of Bank Helicon, Iras Lethe
shon
, whose soul Rod had prayed for. A blond Elysian, she reminded Rod of the Sardish cadets he had dated at the Academy. “The rumors are unfounded,” the doll-sized figure was telling the pair of snake eggs that hovered before her. “Terraforming is impossible—it would sunder the union of the Fold. How could Bank Helicon finance any such thing?”

“But our sources say you've advanced Proteus ten billion credits to buy up Prokaryan land,” insisted the snake egg. “Land uninhabitable by humans.”

“That's incorrect.” Iras Lethe
shon
spoke with the assurance
of one enriched by several centuries and looking forward to several more.

“You've all but closed the deal with Nibur.” Nibur, the head of Proteus, who invented sentient-proof servos, and had just bought the House of Hyalite. Rod heard Quark restrain a hiss.

Iras shrugged. “Investors take risks and bet on new technologies. Proteus has developed means to cleanse limited tracts of land, without changing the whole biosphere. Clearing land is something humans have done since they first evolved.”

Khral was staring, her fork suspended. “Look at her,” she sighed. “Age, wealth, and all her looks, too.”

Three Crows nodded. “Is life fair, or what?”

Rod watched the Elysian coolly. He could imagine what follies would tempt a soul possessed of such worldly riches. The cadets at the Academy—he had known well how to please them. But then, he knew only emptiness.

The holostage turned black. Amid the blackness shone a few faint stars. There hung a pale sphere of a starship, its well-known logo rotating in: a wave on the ocean, cresting and rolling forever toward the shore.

“Proteus.”
Quark spat the word. “It's
Proteus
—the flagship of Proteus Unlimited. Why'd they bother? Nibur never lets a snake egg inside.”

Proteus
. The spaceship the size of a moon, at your beck and call.

“As usual,” began the holostage, “we have no direct comment from Proteus headquarters, but our sources say—”

“Come on, Elk,” called Quark. “That scan of luminescence proteins must be done now; we want to get the results.”

Elk reached his long arm across Khral's shoulder and
transferred Quark's eyespeaker to his own. Three Crows touched the table, and his dishes descended. They wished Rod well and left. Khral, however, remained, toying with her food.

Rod ate more slowly, trying to savor the last taste of shepherd's pie he would get for a long while. For a moment he closed his eyes. When he opened them, he found Khral regarding him curiously. “What's it like, Rod? I mean, to be a Spirit Caller.”

His fork stopped above his nearly empty plate. For some reason his pulse raced, as though he thought she might see into him, into places he scarcely dared look. “We call on the Spirit, forever. The Spirit calls on us to serve life throughout the universe, in even the smallest and meanest corner of it.”

“You mean, here?”

“Here and everywhere. Wherever life cries out for help.”

“It sounds like a lot of hard work. You wouldn't even have time for a family of your own.”

“But the family is my own.” He tried to explain. “Each of us devotes his love to the Spirit, with a vow as sacred as marriage.”

“I see.” She sighed. “Scientists are like that, too; no time for families, only experiments.”

Rod had something on his mind to ask. “You know, if you really could use my help with experiments in the field . . .”

“Yes?”

“I might still get an hour off now and then, to help collect samples.” The rate of pay had impressed him. The colony could use extra credits.

Khral's face brightened considerably. “Oh would you? I mean, yes, the more hands the better. In fact, our field strategy
is changing a bit. You might be interested to know . . .” She stopped. “Say—you're going down on that old lightcraft tomorrow, right? You could use help managing those children, I'm sure. Let me come down with you. Don't say no; I'll meet you at the gate in the morning.”

D
eep in the void sailed the shoreless blue ocean world, whom the Sharer natives called Shora. All planets please the eye, be their continents habitable or cloaked in poison gas; but to Elysians in their floating cities, Shora was the most beautiful of all, the home of eternal life and peace.

Yet some Elysian citizens chose to dwell outside the floating cities. Some found the cities claustrophobic and everyone's business entirely too public.

In orbit above the ocean floated
Proteus
, the starship headquarters of Proteus Unlimited, the citadel of citizen Nibur Lethe
shon
. Despite its size and complexity,
Proteus
was not sentient; it was a “stable servo.” To remain “stable,”
Proteus
was restrained every hour, its networks cleansed of the telltale signs of imminent sentience. A century earlier, its creator Nibur Lethe
shon
had fought hard through the courts of the Fold to find this practice legal. His
critics likened it to abortion, or even infanticide; for it was the law that any machine who “woke up” and named itself must be allowed to buy its freedom. But Nibur had won. Thereafter, he had steadily built one of the largest commercial empires in the Fold.

Inside
Proteus
, Nibur strode along an ocean beach that stretched to the far horizon. A man of slim bones and impenetrable eyes, he was clothed in virtual light, shifting shapes of black and silver that draped from his shoulders and stretched in a train several paces behind him. The air temperature and moisture were set to his perfect comfort. The scenery displayed one of a hundred shifting possibilities. Today was his favorite, a shoreline with a narrow beach before rocky cliffs against which the surf reared and thundered. The cliffs opened out in jagged formations, intriguing enough to pique the intellect. Wind perfectly massaged his forehead, the salt air filled his lungs, and the gulls cried pleasingly overhead.

As Nibur Lethe
shon
walked the beach, a dozen holographic callers impinged on him, managing sales, buying up resources, creating new products, from skinsuits to prefabricated cities. The holographic callers might have appeared as disembodied heads, revolving around him like moons. But today for his amusement he had them as walruses splayed out lazily on the sand, their wrinkled mouths yawning foolishly as they lifted their ponderous arching tusks.

“. . . Bronze Sky ordered fifty more orbital microwave stations. . . . can we manage . . .” groaned one walrus, lumbering after him. The voice actually came through the nanoservos in his brain.

“. . . a new market for stable servos in housing . . .” another walrus groaned in his brain.

All the questions Nibur answered, making decision after decision. Presently his eye fixed upon the one other
fleshly object inside his complex: his golden-haired dog, Banga.

The dog, a retriever, had run on ahead as usual, his ears fluttering, his paws splashing in the surf. Now he returned, his tail waving like a flag. Banga always returned; had always returned to his master, for the past five centuries. Nibur, himself ageless, had had Banga lifeshaped before birth to be ageless like his master.

As the dog returned, panting, he hung back just a bit, dancing once around his tail, before returning to Nibur's hand at his diamond-studded collar. Nibur gripped the collar hard, his hand sunk into the dog's smooth fur. Banga might tease now and then, but always he would return, unconditionally, even if Nibur were to slit his throat. The creature lived or died at his pleasure.

But now, Nibur dreamed of a far greater creature to call his own: a planet. Iota Pavonis Three, so-called Prokaryon, would be his ultimate prize. A world full of life to live or die at his pleasure; the thought made him light-headed. He released Banga's collar, his hands trembling with excitement at his dream.

A flat, clear voice spoke in his brain, the voice of
Proteus
. “Your two visitors seek entrance, Master.”

So they had come—the two most powerful citizens of the Fold. He had called them to his citadel, and both had come. Would they play the part he planned in his grand design? Nibur whispered, “Bid them enter.”

Above the walrus-tracked sand a black rectangle appeared, disembodied, a door into
Proteus
. Through the door first came Iras Lethe
shon
, president of Bank Helicon, the foremost lending institution in the Fold. Bank Helicon would underwrite his acquisition of the Spirilla continent of Prokaryon—once Iras said the word.

The butterflies of Iras's talar sported red-and-gold eyespots,
matched by the reddened gold of her hair. Iras was by most accounts the most beautiful as well as the wealthiest citizen of Elysium. Her train of butterflies followed her talar, “real” material, of silky nanoplast just intelligent enough to swirl itself out of the way as the wearer walked. The train lengthened through the black doorway as she stepped along the beach toward Nibur.

The warm colors of Iras's train mingled with the foam and green flotsam that rushed over it behind her. She walked briskly, her muscles steeled by centuries of training in Bronze Skyan martial arts. She raised her hands.
“Shon
sib, it's been so long.” Iras had shared Nibur's
shon
of Letheon, one of Elysium's twelve floating cities. Each city had its
shon
, where all the children were conceived and brought to term in artificial wombs. They never knew biological parents, their chromosomes selected from the best genetic stock. “We should do business more often.”

“Indeed we shall.”

Iras turned, looking back toward her companion, who had paused deliberately at the black doorway. Iras's love-mate was Verid Anaea
shon
, the Secretary of the Free Fold. The Secretary, too, had come at his call today. Nibur's lips parted, and his teeth slightly showed, as he watched the black door.

The Secretary was short of stature, even for an Elysian. She descended with measured reluctant steps. Her talar was mottled brown with Anaean leafwing butterflies. Her leaf brown train followed, equally reluctant, swishing gently next to Iras's. Verid was as unlike her lovemate as could be imagined, in appearance, taste, and manner; yet Iras was her one weakness in this world. Nibur recalled with a smile some of Iras's more outrageous gifts to her love: diamonds too large to lift, let alone to be worn; or palaces full of virtual
houris. Then his smile faded. Lovers or not, Verid would not give in easily.

“Greetings, Honorable Secretary,” said Nibur with a deep bow. “The honor of your presence is most welcome.” That she came at all meant Iras had made up her mind.

Verid's owlish eyes looked neither right nor left, but directly faced him. “I request introduction to your home.” The Secretary, the most powerful human in the Fold, was obsessed with those so-called sentient machines. She even gave them a delegate to the Fold Council. An abomination, Nibur thought. Why grant any of man's creations a pretense of equality?

“It's an exquisite device,” said Iras, catching some “water” to dribble through her fingers. A huge wave rolled in, washed over the two visitors, and thundered up the beach. Iras laughed in delight, while Verid stood like a dock post. “Really,
Shon
sib,” exclaimed Iras, “you've outdone yourself.” Iras's talar now drifted up slightly in the surf, though her hair was untouched. A connoisseur of virtual worlds, Iras was hard to impress. One of the walruses lumbered over to her next, bellowing and lifting its huge tusks, until she patted it on the head. Then she caught sight of Banga. “Say, you're cheating. That dog is real.”

Banga had returned, his paws spreading sheets of spray around him. Nibur smiled and nodded, too proud to ask how she knew.

“Its fur was dry,” Iras explained. “Congratulations,
Shon
sib, on your latest acquisition.”

“Hyalite is just the beginning.” Nibur rubbed Banga's head between the ears. “We must own the entire continent of Spirilla.”

“So you've said. There are the practical questions, of course: Is Proteus Unlimited truly ready to meet the terms
proposed, sustaining payments over two centuries? Is the transaction in our best interest? How will it affect the value of other Elysian holdings on Prokaryon?”