Part 42 (2/2)

”This is Year Day on Ridgeback,” she said in her smooth announcer's voice. ”It was a barren world when we came. Now, slowly, life is spreading across the land. The farming teams have spent this last year dredging mulch from the sea bed and boiling it to kill the native life. Now it grows the tame bacteria that will make our soil.” The screen showed a sequence of action scenes: tractors plowing furrows in the harsh dirt; colonists glistening with sweat as they pulled boulders from the ground; and Jill supervising the spreading of the starter soil. Gra.s.s seed and earthworms were sown into the trenches, and men and machines worked together to fold them into the earth.

Cynnie had mounted a camera on one of the small flyers for an aerial view. ”The soil is being spread along a ten-mile strip,” she said, ”and grains are being planted. Later we'll have fruit trees and shade trees, bamboo and animal feed.”

It was good, Roy thought, watching. It was smooth. Getting it all had been rough enough. Before they were finished the colonists had become d.a.m.n sick of Roy and Cynnie poking their cameras into their every activity. That sign above the auditorium toilet: Smile! Roy Is Watching!

He'd tried to tell them. ”Don't you know who it is that builds stars.h.i.+ps? It's taxpayers, that's who! And they've got to get something for their money. Sure we're putting on a show for them. if we don't, when election time comes around they may ask for a refund.”

Oh, they probably believed him. But the sign was still up.

Roy watched Cynnie interview Jase and Brew in the fields; watched Angie and Chris constructing the animal pens. Jill thawed some of the fertilized goat eggs and a tape was shown of the wriggling embryos.

”At first,” Cynnie reminisced, ”Ridgeback was daunting. There was no sound: no crickets, no birdsongs, but no roar of traffic either. By day, the sky is Earthlike enough, but by night the constellations are brighter. It's impossible to forget how far from home we are-we can't even see Sol, invisible somewhere in the northern hemisphere. It's hard to forget that no help of any kind could come in much less than twenty-five years. It would take five years just to refuel the s.h.i.+p. It takes fourteen years to make the trip, although thanks to relativity it was only three years 's.h.i.+p time.'

”Yes, we are alone.” The image of Cynnie's sober face segued to the town hail, a geodesic dome of metal tubing sprayed with plastic. ”But it is heartening that we have found, in each other, the makings of a community. We come together for midday meal, discussions, songfests and group wors.h.i.+p services.”

Cynnie's face was calm now, comforting. ”We have no crime, and no unemployment. We're much too busy for marital squabbles or political infighting.” She grinned, and the sparkle of her personality brought pleasure to Roy's a.n.a.lytical mind. ”In fact, I have work to do myself~ So, until next year, this is Cynnie Mitch.e.l.l on Ridgeback, signing off.”

A year and a half after landing, a number of animals were out of incubation with a loss of less than two percent. The mammals drank synthetic milk now, but soon they would be milling in their pens, eating Ridgeback gra.s.s and adding their own rich wastes to the cooking compost heaps.

Friday night was community night at the town hail.

From the inside the ribs of the dome were still visible through the sprayed plastic walls, and some of the decorations were less than stylish, but it was a warm place, a friendly, relaxing place where the common bond between the Ridgebackers was strengthened.

Jill, especially, seemed to love the stage, and took every opportunity to mount it, almost vibrating with her infectious energy.

”Everything's right on schedule,” she said happily. ”The fruit flies are breeding like mad.” (Booo!) ”And if! hear that again I'm gonna break out the mosquitoes. Gang, there are things we can live without, but we don't know what they are yet. Chances are we'll be raising the sharks sooner or later. We've been lucky so far. Really lucky.” She cleared her throat dramatically. ”And speaking of luck, we have Chris with some good news for the farmers, and bad news for the sunbathers. Chris?”

There was scattered applause, most vigorously from Chris' tiny wife Angie. He walked to the lectern and adjusted the microphone before speaking.

”We, uh,” he took off his gla.s.ses, polis.h.i.+ng them on his s.h.i.+rt, then replaced them, smiling nervously. ”We've been having good weather, people, but there's a storm front moving over the mountains. I think Greg can postpone the irrigation ca.n.a.ls for a week, we're going to get plenty wet.”

He coughed, and moved the microphone close to his mouth. ”June and I are working to program the atmospheric model into the computer. Until we do, weather changes will keep catching us unaware. We have to break down a fairly complex set of thermo and barometric dynamics into something that can be dealt with systematically-wind speed, humidity, vertical motion, friction, pressure gradients, and a lot of other factors still have to be fed in, but we're making progress. Maybe next year we'll be able to tell you how to dress for the tenth anniversary of Landing Day.”

There were derisive snorts and laughter, and Chris was applauded back into his seat.

Jase bounded onto the stage and grabbed the mike. ”Any more announcements? No? AU right, then, we all voted on tonight's movie, so no groans, please. Lights?”

The auditorium dimmed. He slipped from the stage and the twin beams of the holo projector flickered onto the screen.

It was a war movie, shot in flatfilm but optically reconstructed to simulate depth. Doc found it boring. He slipped out during a barrage of cannon fire. He headed to the lab and found Jill there already, using one of the small microscopes.

”Hi hon,” he called out, flipping on his desk light. ”Working late?”

”Well, I'm maybe just a wee bit more bugged than I let on. Just a little.”

”About what?”

”I keep thinking that one day we'll find out that we left something out of our tame ecology. It's just a feeling, but it won't go away.”

”Like going on vacation,” Doc said, deliberately flippant. ”You know you forgot something. You'd just rather it was your toothbrush and not your pa.s.sport.”

She smeared a cover gla.s.s over a drop of fluid on a slide and set it to dry. ”Yes, it feels like that.”

”Do you really have mosquitoes in storage?”

She twinkled and nodded. ”Yep. Hornets too.”

”Just how good is it going? You know how impatient everyone is.”

”No real problems. There sure as h.e.l.l might have been, but thanks to my superior planning” she stuck out her tongue at Doc's grimace. ”We'll have food for ourselves and all the children we can raise. I've been getting a little impatient myself, you know? As if there's a part of me that isn't functioning at full efficiency.”

Doc laughed. ”Then I think you'd better tell Greg.”

”I'll do better. I'll announce it tonight and let all the fathers-to-be catch the tidings in one shot.”

”Oh boy.”

”What?”

”No, it has to be done that way. I know it. I'm just thinking about nine months from now. Oh boy.”

So it was announced that evening. As Doc might have expected, someone had already cheated. Somehow Nat, the midwestern earthmother blond, had taken a contraceptive pill and, even with Doc watching, had avoided swallowing it. Doc was fairly sure that her husband Brew knew nothing of it, although she was already more than four months along when she confessed.

Nat had jumped the gun, and there wasn't a woman on Ridgeback who didn't envy her. A year and eleven months after Landing Day, Doc delivered Ridgeback's first baby.

Sleepy, exhausted by her hours of labor, Nat looked at her baby with a pride that was only half maternal. Her face was flushed, yellow hair tangled in mats with perspiration and fatigue. She held her baby, swaddled in blankets, at her side. ”I can hear them outside. What do they want?” she asked drowsily, fighting to keep her eyelids open.

Doc breathed deeply. Ridiculous, but the scentless air of Ridgeback seemed a little sweeter. ”They're waiting for a glimpse of the little crown princess.”

”Well, she's staying here. Tell them she's beautiful,” Ridgeback's first mother whispered, and dropped off to sleep.

Doc washed his hands and dried them on a towel. He stood above the slumbering pair, considering. Then he gently pried the baby from her mother's grip and took her in his arms. Half-conscious mother's wish or no, the infant must be shown to the colony before they could rest. Especially Brew. He could see the Swede's great broad hands knotting into nervous fists as he waited outside. And the rest of them in a half-crescent around the door; and the inevitable Cynnie and Roy with their holotape cameras.

”It's a girl,” he told them. ”Nat's resting comfortably.” The baby was red as a tomato and looked as fragile as Venetian gla.s.s. She and Doc posed for the camera, then Doc left her with Brew to make a short speech.

Elise and Greg, Jill's husband, had both had paramedic training. Doc set up a rotating eight-hour schedule for the three of them, starting with Elise. The group outside was breaking up as he left, but he managed to catch Jase.

”I'd like to be taken off work duties for a while,” he told the colony leader, when the two were alone.

Jase gripped his arm. ”Something's wrong with the baby?” There was a volume of concern in the question.

”I doubt it, but she is the first, and I want to watch her and Nat. Most of the women are pregnant now. I want to keep an eye on them, too.”

”You're not worried about anything specific?”

When Elise left her s.h.i.+ft at the maternity ward, she found him staring at the stone ceiling. She asked, ”Insomnia again? Shall I get a 'russian sleep' set?”

<script>