Part 4 (1/2)

It started when they were sprawled on the spiky Newmanhome gra.s.s in the schoolyard, panting, just after finis.h.i.+ng the morning's calisthenics. What they all usually wore when they exercised was the plain white jockey shorts that were standard issue for all colonists as underwear; what was annoying Viktor that particular day was that Reesa had done ten more pushups than he had, and so he looked at what she was wearing and sneered, ”Why are you wearing a top?”

She looked at him with understanding contempt. ”I'm a girl,” she informed him.

She wasn't the only female teenager to wear a s.h.i.+rt, but there weren't many others. ”You've got nothing to hide,” he pointed out.

She said, adult to child, ”That's not why I wear the top. I wear the top to show what I will will have. Anyway,” she added, ”I'm older than you are.” have. Anyway,” she added, ”I'm older than you are.”

It began with that. The argument went on for days. They had both been six when her s.h.i.+p, the New Ark, New Ark, moved out of orbit. When Viktor's moved out of orbit. When Viktor's Mayflower Mayflower landed, they were both twelve-so Viktor insisted, because they had each spent the same length of time frozen, just about, and the same number of Earth years growing. landed, they were both twelve-so Viktor insisted, because they had each spent the same length of time frozen, just about, and the same number of Earth years growing.

But, Reesa said with that superior old-timer sneer that made Viktor's blood boil, he hadn't calculated right. Mayflower Mayflower was a tad faster than was a tad faster than Ark, Ark, being a generation later, so she had spent less time in the freezer and more growing up. being a generation later, so she had spent less time in the freezer and more growing up.

”You've got that backwards!” Viktor howled in triumph. ”You spent more more time frozen!” time frozen!”

She scowled, flushed, and quickly backtracked. ”But that's not the important point,” she insisted. She had spent six more Earth years than he had on Newmanhome. That made her older, because Newmanhome had twice as many years, just about, as Earth in any given period of time.

Viktor strongly protested her arithmetic.

It was true, of course, that the Earth calendar didn't match up well against the realities of Newmanhome. Newmanhome's day, sunrise to sunrise, was about twenty-two and a half Earth hours; and it swung around its sun so fast that it only had about a hundred and ninety-eight of those days in each year. So a Newmanhome ”year” was not much more than half an Earth (or ”real”) year.

The discrepancy played h.e.l.l with birthdays. That wasn't much of a practical problem, but it made a major annoyance when you got into arguments like the one with Reesa McGann. Viktor's birthdays were terminally confused, anyway. Everybody's were, for how could you allow for a couple of stretches of freeze time? Of course, you could count back to time of birth. At any time the teaching machines could easily tell you the exact Earth day, year, and minute it was right then in Laguna Beach, California, U.S.A., Earth (or, in Viktor's case, should they reckon from Warsaw, nearly a dozen time zones away?). But Reesa flatly refused to consider Earth standards applicable.

Viktor pondered over the question at school. It wasn't just birthdays. Even worse was the question of holidays. Where in the Newmanhome calendar did you put Christmas, Ramadan, or Rosh Hashanah? But as it was birthdays that established the pecking order between him and Reesa, Viktor took time to do a lot of arithmetic on the teaching machine, and then he presented his teacher with a plan to recalculate everybody's age in Home years.

Mr. Feldhouse squashed it firmly. ”You haven't allowed for relativistic effects,” he pointed out. ”A lot of the transit time for both s.h.i.+ps was at forty percent of the speed of light or better; you have to figure that in.”

So grimly Viktor put in some more of his precious few hours of spare time with the teaching machines . . . which Mr. Feldhouse approved, grinning, because it was wonderful math practice for the whole cla.s.s.

Slowly, painfully slowly, the reinforced colony digested its new additions and began to incorporate the cargoes Mayflower Mayflower had brought into their lives. Steel from the s.h.i.+p wouldn't last them forever. Ore bodies existed, taconite mostly, but the surface outbreaks were limited and there wasn't the manpower to dig deep mines. had brought into their lives. Steel from the s.h.i.+p wouldn't last them forever. Ore bodies existed, taconite mostly, but the surface outbreaks were limited and there wasn't the manpower to dig deep mines.

That was where Marie-Claude Stockbridge's machines came in, and that was when Viktor got closer to his life's ambition-though, of course, Reesa spoiled it for him.

She came to Viktor's tent early one morning and leaned in. ”Get up,” she ordered. ”If we get there first we can help Stockbridge with her Von Neumanns.”

Viktor pulled the sheet indignantly up to his chin and glared at her fuzzily. ”Do what?” he asked.

”Help Marie-Claude Stockbridge,” she repeated impatiently. ”They've given her the okay to send the machines out, and she's going to need help-us, if you get off your dead a.s.s and get there before everybody else does.”

That woke him up. ”Get out of here so I can get dressed,” he ordered, suffused with joy, and pulled on his shorts and shoes in no time at all. He knew about the Von Neumanns, of course. Everybody did. They were going to be very important to the colony, but they'd had to take their turn, like every other very important project, until the utterly urgent ones of survival had been taken care of.

On the way to the machine shed Reesa explained. ”Jake Lundy told me about it. He's kind of got eyes for me, you know; he's helping Stockbridge prepare the machines, and I think he liked the idea of having me around for a few days. So right away I thought of you.”

”Thanks,” Viktor said happily. He didn't much care for Jake Lundy-five years older than Reesa or himself, a tall, muscular man who was already known to have fathered at least one child for the colony, though he showed no signs of wanting to marry. But Viktor could put up with Lundy-could even put up with Reesa-if it also meant being near Marie-Claude.

Then he stopped because what she was babbling on about had just reached him. He glared at her. ”What did you say?”

”I said I think Stockbridge is kind of hot for Jake, too, you know? I mean, he's a gorgeous hunk of man.” Then she paused to peer at him. ”What's the matter with you?”

”Nothing's the matter with me!” he snapped.

She walked around him, looking at him curiously from every side as he stood, mute and belligerent. ”Oh, I get it,” she said wisely. ”You've got a crush on Marie-Claude.”

”Shut your mouth,” he said, trembling.

She did her best to be patient with him. ”But, Vik, that's just normal, you know? You shouldn't get p.i.s.sed because she's making it with a guy. She's a woman, isn't she?” She stepped back a pace before the look he gave her. ”Hey, don't get mad at me! I didn't do anything!”

”Just shut up,” he blazed.

She looked at him thoughtfully, then led the way toward the machine sheds. But she couldn't keep quiet indefinitely, and just before they got there she cleared her throat. ”Viktor? Don't get sore if I ask you something. When you were all on the s.h.i.+p, did you ever see Marie-Claude and her husband make love?”

”Don't be disgusting!” disgusting!”

”Oh, Viktor,” she sighed. ”Doing ”Doing it isn't disgusting. Watching somebody is, maybe, so the reason I asked-” it isn't disgusting. Watching somebody is, maybe, so the reason I asked-”

”I said shut up.” shut up.”

And for a wonder she did, because his tone was really dangerous. But his internal pain didn't heal.

Marie-Claude Stockbridge had in her charge a dozen prototypes of Von Neumann finder-homer machines, great, simpleminded automata that weren't in any real way alive, but shared with living things the ability to forage in their environment, to ingest the kind of chemicals that they were made up of, and to replicate themselves, as people do when they have babies, by making copies of themselves to grow up and do the same thing all over again, generation after generation. And each had a ”homing circuit,” like that of the freshwater salmon or the migratory birds, which would bring it back to the place it started from (or its ancestors had) when it was of a certain size, there to be dismantled and forged into whatever metal parts the colony needed.

They were ugly things, but they sure beat the h.e.l.l out of digging holes in the ground.

The Von Neumann machines came in several varieties. There were digging kinds, that looked like iron bedbugs; there were swimming kinds, to exploit the thermal springs they hoped to find at the bottom of Great Ocean, that looked like chromium-plated versions of the sort of sh.e.l.l people picked up on Earthly beaches. They weren't purely mechanical. The iron-miner, for instance, had a complex ”digestive” system like the second stomach of a ruminant, where genetically tailored iron-concentrating bacteria helped extract the metal from the rock after the jaws of the Von Neumann miner had pulverized it.

What Reesa and Viktor and a couple of other drudges did was only to fetch and carry, to hoist the Von Neumanns in slings while Marie-Claude and Jake Lundy pried off their inspection hatches and checked their circuits, and to test the seals and make sure the mechanical parts were freed from their s.h.i.+pping constraints. It was hard, hot work. Viktor was stiffly ill at ease at first, eyes always on Marie-Claude and Jake Lundy to see if there was any visible affection going on between them; but in the pursuit of her specialty Marie-Claude was all business. And best of all, she was there. She was where he was hardly an arm's length away, for hours at a time; and if she thought of him as a child she treated him as a colleague. Even Jake Lundy wasn't so bad. His muscles were a big help when the ma.s.sive machines needed hoisting or turning, but Viktor was getting pretty strong, too, and he was the one Lundy yelled for when something hard had to be done.

They worked from sunup to school, two or three hours every morning. Reesa was always the first one to tell Viktor it was time to leave, because Viktor had no incentive to leave Marie-Claude's company for the schoolmaster's-except one day. On that day Reesa disappeared into the backhouse for several minutes when work was through, and when she appeared she grabbed his arm, looking oddly triumphant. ”Look at this, doofus,” she ordered, flushed and excited.

”We're going to be late for cla.s.s,” he complained. He wasn't much annoyed. He was only irritated by the fact that she was touching touching him again-he tolerated with difficulty the fact that she was a touching, hugging kind of person, always wanting physical contact-until he saw what she was displaying for him. Then he recoiled from the sc.r.a.p of stained white fabric in disgust. ”Ugh! Gross!” he cried. ”It's your dirty him again-he tolerated with difficulty the fact that she was a touching, hugging kind of person, always wanting physical contact-until he saw what she was displaying for him. Then he recoiled from the sc.r.a.p of stained white fabric in disgust. ”Ugh! Gross!” he cried. ”It's your dirty underwear!” underwear!”

Her face was rosy with pride. ”Look at what it's dirty with! That's blood!” blood!” she crowed. ”That means I'm a grown-up she crowed. ”That means I'm a grown-up woman woman now, Viktor Sorricaine, and you're still just a dumb little kid.” now, Viktor Sorricaine, and you're still just a dumb little kid.”

He looked around apprehensively, to see if anyone was observing this, but the others were still hard at work. He understood what she was showing him. What he didn't understand was why. why. Of course he knew what menstruation was, because the teaching machines had been quite specific about all the physiological details of s.e.x. But, as far as the female reproductive systems were concerned, the overriding impression Viktor had come away with was that it was Of course he knew what menstruation was, because the teaching machines had been quite specific about all the physiological details of s.e.x. But, as far as the female reproductive systems were concerned, the overriding impression Viktor had come away with was that it was messy. messy. Viktor wasn't a male chauvinist pig. At least, he didn't think he was. He didn't consider himself superior to females simply because of gender. What he thought about s.e.xual dimorphism was mostly charitable compa.s.sion for the nasty predicaments females found themselves in every month, and the even worse ones that confronted them in childbearing. Viktor wasn't a male chauvinist pig. At least, he didn't think he was. He didn't consider himself superior to females simply because of gender. What he thought about s.e.xual dimorphism was mostly charitable compa.s.sion for the nasty predicaments females found themselves in every month, and the even worse ones that confronted them in childbearing.

It had never occurred to him that any female would boast boast about it. about it.

”That means I could have a baby!” baby!” Reesa chortled. Reesa chortled.

”Not without some guy to help you,” Viktor pointed out defensively.

”Oh,” Reesa said, starry-eyed, ”there isn't going to be any problem with that.” that.”

And the colony grew.

Even while Marie-Claude was turning loose the first few of her Von Neumanns, her fingers crossed in the hope that they wouldn't break down, that they would work the way they were supposed to, that they would find their way back as they should-even then the construction workers were finis.h.i.+ng the great steel skeleton of the vast rectenna that, very soon, would deliver the first Mayflower Mayflower-generated microwave power to the colony. A model steel plant was half done, ready for the first of Marie-Claude's Von Neumanns to come back with raw metal. And wells were being sunk into the hot water that underlay the hills behind the town they were beginning to call Homeport. When those geothermal wells were beginning to produce electricity there would be plenty to spare, enough to run the immense freezers whose foundations were being dug, to store all the samples still on microwave power to the colony. A model steel plant was half done, ready for the first of Marie-Claude's Von Neumanns to come back with raw metal. And wells were being sunk into the hot water that underlay the hills behind the town they were beginning to call Homeport. When those geothermal wells were beginning to produce electricity there would be plenty to spare, enough to run the immense freezers whose foundations were being dug, to store all the samples still on Mayflower Mayflower and and Ark. Ark.

That wasn't all. Real homes were being built, with a lottery every week to see which half-dozen lucky families would get to move out of their tents into something with walls. The beamed broadcasts from Earth still came in, all the hours of every day, along with the regular reports from New Argosy, New Argosy, now more than halfway to Newmanhome; but people watched them now only for entertainment, not with the hopeless yearning of the first years. now more than halfway to Newmanhome; but people watched them now only for entertainment, not with the hopeless yearning of the first years.

It was a time for-well, not for rejoicing, exactly, because there were still endless years of hard work ahead. But at least it was a time when the three thousand and more (every day more) human beings could look back on how much had been accomplished, and look around at the farms and the docks and the sprawling town with satisfaction that the planet was being tamed to their needs.