Part 23 (1/2)
Busy-Thoughts moved to the center of the cla.s.sroom and'trummed the cla.s.s to attention.
”Everyone finish his sculpture and set the control pattern in memory. When you finish I have an announcement.”
There were whispered exchanges between the students as they made last minute adjustments to their pieces and closed down their generators. As they gathered around the teacher, Busy-Thoughts momentarily felt the instinct to reach out and cover them all with his hatching mantle. He shook off the feeling, then made a resolve to apply for rejuvenation again. He had been putting it off too long.
”The White Rock Clan has prospered this year,” said Busy-Thoughts. ”With the decrease in our egg quota from the Combined Clans Population Control Board, we have had fewer creche expenses. The elders of the clan have decided to send the entire creche-school on a trip to see the humans. After all, we are in a unique period in history, when all five humans can be seen, up close, at the same time.”
Lovely-Eyes was ecstatic at the announcement. For the first time he would be able to see the humans he had been studying.
The cla.s.s took a glide-carrier to the West Pole and rode up the West Pole s.p.a.ce Fountain to the top.
Busy-Thoughts had arranged a special hookup to the Master Teacher. On the way up the cla.s.s was given a lecture on the geographical features of the West Pole hemisphere they could see below them. At Topside Platform they switched to a tourist s.h.i.+p especially made for viewing the humans. It had artificial gravity generators and tiers of platforms so that everyone had a good view, yet the human s.p.a.cecraft wasn't uncomfortably ”overhead.”
”Oh my! Theyare huge,” Lovely-Eyes said as the tourist s.h.i.+p floated to a stop a meter away from the porthole that held the motionless visages of Pierre and Abdul. He formed a tendril and pointed it at one of the humans. ”That's Pierre. You can tell because of the yellow patch all over the bottom of his head.
The other one is Abdul. He only has a thin yellow patch under his nose.”
”What is the yellow stuff?” one of his cla.s.smates asked.
”Hairs. Humans are mostly hairless like us, but they have hairy patches like Slink hide on their heads.”
”Ugly!!!” she replied.
The tourist s.h.i.+p moved on to the next porthole where Jean Kelly was looking out.
”They all look the same,” someone said. ”I thought they had hides of different color.”
”They do, in the long wavelength portion of the spectrum where the humans eyes work,” said Lovely-Eyes. ”But they all look the same to X-ray vision.”
The tourist s.h.i.+p set up a holovid projector with a time-lapse sequence. First they saw Abdul at the porthole calling Pierre, the appearance of Pierre at the window, then Abdul and Pierre talking and looking at the visiting s.p.a.cecraft. The jerky time-lapse photography had everyone rumbling their tread.
”Stop laughing!!!” Lovely-Eyes shouted into the deck.
Those brave humans have given up their lives to save Egg, and you laugh at them like Slinks in a zoo!”
”Lovely-Eyes!” Busy-Thoughts' tread rapped in the distance. ”Behave yourself!”
Lovely-Eyes' tread fell silent, but his brain-knot was still seething. ”Theremust be a way to save them,”
he thought. ”And I will not change my accursed egg-name until I find it. When I do, the name I shall choose will be a better name, an.o.ble name.”
01:30:05 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050.
”Look at those s.p.a.ces.h.i.+ps!” said Abdul. ”They are almost 10 centimeters long and have multiple decks.
They must be the equivalent of cruise s.h.i.+ps, coming up to see the sights.”
”They are no longer spherical.” Seiko was peering out an adjacent porthole. ”They have found an efficient method of producing gravity, so they no longer need to carry along miniature black holes. Their technological capability is increasing at an astounding rate.”
”I wonder if they'll ever be able to move asteroids,” Jean said wistfully.
”They have plenty of energy to do the job,” said Pierre. ”It's just that Oscar is so fragile, and they and their machines are so dense.”
”Superman may be able to lift icebergs in the holovids,” said Abdul. ”But if he tried lifting a real iceberg he would end up with nothing but a pile of ice cubes.”
”There is no way they could bring Oscar back any sooner than six months,” said Seiko in her authoritative Teutonic tone. ”We might as well stop wishful thinking; it's counterproductive. We're going to die, and there is not much we can do about it. I'm going down to the galley for something to eat.
Anyone care to join me?”
”I'm not hungry just now,” said Cesar. The others kept looking out the windows at the blizzard of visiting s.p.a.cecraft.
03:54:50 GMT WEDNESDAY 22 JUNE2050.
The turn eventually came when Lovely-Eyes at last gave up on his quest and returned to White Rock City, the homeland of his clan. He found the creche-master and asked for a position tending the young ones.
”Few positions left,” said Creche-Master/71. ”PopCon Board decreasing cheela, more robots instead.”
Lovely-Eyes didn't like the abrupt language style that had developed in the last 60 greats of turns. Now that nearly every cheela had a horde of robots at its beck and call, and seldom interacted with other cheela, politeness had nearly dropped out of the language. After all, robots didn't have feelings and didn't have to be persuaded to do anything, just told to do it. Since he was talking to a cheela, however, he thought that perhaps he would do better if he used the old style.
”I would really appreciate it if you could find a position for me,” said Lovely-Eyes. ”I have worked hard for 300 greats of turns and am looking forward to tending the hatc-lings.”
”Experience?” asked Creche-Master/71.
”I have advanced degrees in Humanology, Human Medicine, Expanded Matter Science, Inertial and Gravitational Engineering, and Science Administration. I was also Leader of the Fourth Segment in the Legislature of the Combined Clans.”
”Successes?”
”Not many, I'm afraid,” Lovely-Eyes said. ”I have spent most of my life trying to find some means to prevent the eventual starvation of the humans. I have studied human medicine to find some method like deep sleep to keep the humans alive without food. I have studied expanded matter science to find a way to make food with the equipment the humans have on Dragon Slayer. I have studied inertial and gravitational engineering to find a way to return the distant asteroid sooner. I was unsuccessful.
”I went into politics, became leader of the fourth segment, pushed through the funding to form a special task force to solve the human starvation problem, then left the legislature to run the task force. I had the brightest minds, both cheela and robotic, working on the problem for two generations. They were unsuccessful. When the funding for the task force was terminated I gave up and came here. I have no successes to tell the younglings about. I'm afraid I wouldn't be a good choice for that job.”
”No,” Creche-Master/71 agreed. Her tread was manipulating her touch screen. ”One egg available for hatching in 18 turns.”
”I'll take it!” said Lovely-Eyes.
The driven soul of Lovely-Eyes was, at last, at peace. The egg had produced a near-perfect hatchling, exactly as the geneticists had predicted. The hatchling had the official name of White-Rock/207891384, but Lovely-Eyes, recalling an old story he had read in his humanology studies, called him Grandest-Tiger.
Grandest-Tiger was dodging in and out from under Lovely-Eyes' hatching mantle, playing peek-and-chase with its robotic hatchling-mates. While Grandest-Tiger played, Lovely-Eyes picked up one of the hatchling's learning toys. It was quite expensive for such a simple toy, but the hatchling psychologists felt it was important for the young ones to have experience with the paradoxical phenomena early in their life.
The toy was a simple ring. It came with a dozen tiny metal spheres. When a sphere was pushed through the hole in the ring, it didn't come out on the other side immediately. Depending upon which side the ball was put through, it would come out at some different time, either in the past or the future. Right now there were six spheres lying on the crust. Idly, Lovely-Eyes picked up five of the spheres and poked them, one at a time through the ring. There was a long pause, then the five spheres popped out again.
Suddenly, Lovely-Eyes pulled back his hatching mantle and rushed out of the pen, leaving a bewildered Grandest-Tiger behind. The robotic hatchling-mates diverted the attention of Grandest-Tiger from the disappearing Old One while they sent emergency messages to the creche-master for a replacement.