Part 3 (1/2)

”We don't die.”

She shrank away as if suddenly afraid of him. Pepe opened his mouth to ask something, and shut it without a word.

He chucked at our startlement. ”We've engineered ourselves, you see, more than we've engineered the Earth.”

Casey turned to look out across the shadowed craters at the huge globe of Earth, the green Americas blazing on the sunlit face, Europe and Africa only a shadow against the dark. He stood there a long time and came slowly back to stand in front of Uncle Pen.

”I'm going down to see the new Earth when I grow up.” His face set stubbornly. ”No matter what you say.”

”Are you growing wings?” Uncle Pen laughed and reached a golden arm to pat him on the head. ”If you didn't know, the impact smashed all your old rocket craft to junk.”

He drew quickly back.

”Really, my boy, you do belong here.” Seeing his hurt, Uncle Pen spoke more gently. ”You were cloned for your work here at the station. A job that ought to make you proud.”

Casey made an angry swipe across his eyes with the back of his hand and swallowed hard, but he kept his voice even.

”Maybe so. But where's any danger now?”

Uncle Pen had an odd look. He took a long moment to answer.

”We are not aware of any actual threat from another impacting bolide. All the asteroids that used to approach Earth's...o...b..t have been diverted, most of them steered into the Sun.”

”So?” Casey's dark chin had a defiant jut. ”Why did you want to dig us up?”

”For history.” Uncle Pen looked away from us, up at the huge, far-off Earth. ”I hope you try to understand what that means. The resurfaced Earth had lost nearly every trace of our beginning. Historians were trying to prove that we had evolved on some other planet and migrated here. Tycho Station is proof that Earth is the actual mother world. I've found our roots here under the rubble.”

”I guess you can be proud of that,” Casey said, ”but who needs the station now?”

”n.o.body, really.” He shrugged, with an odd little twist of his golden lips, and I thought he felt sorry for Casey. ”If another disaster did strike the Earth, which isn't likely at all, it could be repeopled by the colonies.””So you dug us up for nothing?”

”If you knew what I have done,” Pen leaned and reached as if to hug him, but he shrank farther away. ”It wasn't easy! We've had to invent and improvise. We had to test the tissue cells still preserved in the cryostat, and build new equipment in the maternity lab. A complex system. It had to be tested.” He smiled down into Tanya's beaming devotion. ”The tests have turned out well.”

”So we are just an experiment?”

”Aren't you glad to be alive?”

”Maybe,” Casey muttered bitterly. ”If I can get off the Moon. I don't want to sit here till I die, waiting for nothing at all.”

Looking uncomfortable, Pen just reached down to lift Tanya up in his arms.

”We were meant for more than that,” Casey told him. ”I want a life.”

”Please, my dear boy, you must try to understand.” Patiently, Uncle Pen shook his furry head. ”The station is a precious historic monument, our sole surviving relic of the early Earth and early man. You are part of it. I'm sorry if you take that for a misfortune, but there is certainly no place for you on Earth.”

2.

Sandor Pen kept coming to the Moon as we grew up, though not so often. He brought tantalizing gifts.

Exotic fruits that had to be eaten before they spoiled. New games and difficult puzzles. Little holo cubes that had held living pictures of us, caught us year after year as we grew up from babies in the maternity lab. He was always genial and kind, though I thought he came to care less for us as we grew older.

His main concern was clearly the station itself. He cleared junk and debris out of the deepest tunnels, which had been used for workshops and storage, and stocked them again with new tools and spare parts that the robots could use to repair themselves and maintain the station.

Most of his time on the visits was spent in the library and museum with Dian and her holo mother. He studied the old books and holos and paintings and sculptures, carried them away to be restored, and brought identical copies back to replace them. For a time he had the digging machines busy again, removing rubble from around the station and grinding it up to make concrete for a ma.s.sive new retaining wall that they poured to reinforce the station foundation.

For our twenty-first birthday, he had the robots measure us for s.p.a.ce suits like his own. Sleek and mirror-bright, they fitted like our skins and let us feel at home outside the dome. We wore them down to see one of our old rocket s.p.a.ceplanes, standing on the field beside his little slips.h.i.+p. His robots had dug it out of a smashed hangar, and he now had them rebuilding it with new parts from Earth.

One of the great digging machines had extended a leverlike arm to hold it upright. A robot was replacing a broken landing strut, fusing it smoothly in place with some process that made no glow of heat. Casey spoke to the robot, but it ignored him. He climbed up to knock on the door. It responded with a brittle computer voice that was only a rattle in our helmets.

”Open up,” he told it. ”Let us in.””Admission denied.” Its hard machine voice had Pen's accent.

”By what authority?”

”By the authority of Director Sandor Pen, Lunar Research Site.”

”Ask the director to let us in.”

”Admission denied.”

”So you think.” Casey shook his head, his words a sardonic whisper in my helmet. ”If you know how to think.”

Back inside the air lock, Pen had waited to help us shuck off the mirror suits. Casey thanked him for the gift and asked if the old s.p.a.ceplane would be left here on the Moon.

”Forget what you're thinking.” He gave Casey a penetrating glance. ”We're taking it down to Earth.”

”I wish I could come.”

”I'm sorry you can't.” His face was firmly set, but a flush of pleasure turned it a richer gold. ”It's to stand at the center of our new historic memorial, located on the Australian subcontinent. It presents our reconstruction of the prehistoric past. The whole story of the pre-impact planet and pre-impact man.”

He paused to smile at Tanya. Flushed pink, she smiled back at him.

”It's really magnificent! Finding the lunar site was my great good fortune, and working it has been my life for many years. It has filled a gap in human history. Answered questions that scholars had fought over for ages. You yourselves have a place there, with a holographic diorama of your childhood.”

Casey asked again why we couldn't see it. ”Because you belong here.” Impatience edged his voice.

”And because of the charter that allowed us to work the site. We agreed to restore the station to its original state, and to import no genetic materials from it that might contaminate the Earth. We are to leave the site exactly as it was before the impact, protected and secured from any future trespa.s.s.”

We all felt sick with loss on the day he told us his work at the site was done. As a farewell gift, he took us two by two to orbit the Moon. Casey and I went up together, sitting behind him in his tiny slips.h.i.+p. We had seen s.p.a.ce and Earth from the dome all our lives, but the flight was still an exciting adventure.

The mirror hull was invisible from inside, so that our seats seemed to float free in open s.p.a.ce. The Moon's gray desolation spread wider beneath us, and dwindled again to a bright bubble floating in a gulf of darkness. Though Pen touched nothing I saw, the stars blazed suddenly brighter, the Milky Way a broad belt of gem-strewn splendor all around us. The Sun was dimmed and hugely magnified to let us see the dark spots across its face.