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Beginning to recover, she found strength to call the director.
 The creatures have hurt me, she admitted.  But their faults are forgivable.
Primitive as they are, they ve reached a critical point in their evolutionary
progress. They need contact with the Elderhood.
 May I open contact?
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The observatory was out in the halo fringe, and his reply took many of the
planet s fleeting days to reach her.
 Request denied.
The signal came very faintly through heavy interference from the crude
electronics of the planetics and the radiation of the star itself.
 We are dismayed by the murderous misbehavior of the specimen planetics here
in your sister s care.
They have become so violent in their quarrels with one another that we must
regard their presence in the halo as an actual threat to the Elderhood.
 We regret your own predicament, but you will recall that you were warned. In
view of your own mistreatment, your present concern for the creatures
astonishes me. We have no means, unfortunately, to offer any aid. Your orders
remain in effect.
 You will not communicate.
She obeyed.
She didn t talk, yet Doctornadyadain seemed to sense the truth. There were no
more demands.
Instead, the kind-seeming female continued to reveal the planetic culture,
filling her cell with electric receivers she didn t need, and the books and
periodicals she was learning to decode.
Touched by such consideration, she called the director again, begging him to
reconsider. At least a few of the planetics had evolved far enough, she told
him, to be selected for welcome into the halo and encouragement in their
progress toward eventual admission to the Elderhood.
There was no reply. Frightened by the unexpected silence, she set out to
rebuild some of the planetic equipment into a transceiver that could use the
whole orbital web for an antenna that would reach farther into the halo.
Doctornadyadain did not stop her work, or even pry too far into the design of
her equipment. Before it was finished, however, an odd-feeling package was
delivered to the laboratory. She watched
Doctornadyadain opening it.
Too late, she sensed what it was.
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Sunblood.
A term for the complex of genes required by the space environment. These genes
were not, for the most part, new mutations, but rather selections from the
existing human gene pool. The highsiders were


therefore totally human, though their fitness for space made them a new elite,
bitterly resented by those less fit.
To the Holyfolk, they were spawn of Satan wearing the mark of the Beast

,

.
12
«^»
THE FERRY LIFTED THEM UP THE SKYWIRE, PAST THE geosynchronous level and on
toward the docks. People on the moving ringwalks frowned at his naked face,
glanced at the gold-rimmed
Security badge, peered at Mindi, kept uneasily away.
She ignored that hostile wariness.
 The High Lab was planned for hazardous projects, she told him.  Located out
here where the solar wind would carry wastes away. Your mother brought the
skyfish here, away from high gravity and the Holyfolk.
Outside the lab, two Security guards saluted Mindi and put a laser reader on
Quin s badge before they unlocked the double valves. Inside, they stumbled
into blackness. The stagnant air was icy cold, edged with a bitter stink of
old fire. When Mindi found the lights, the place became a shadowy cavern whose
high walls echoed every sound. The floor was bare metal.
He followed Mindi around it.
 Olaf s shop. An array of lathes and drills and presses, of dies and reels
and ovens, of sinks and vats and kwanlar annealers.  Your mother was always
close to me, and I got fond of Olaf. A big shaggy man with a genius for fusion
engineering and a blind spot for solarpolitics.
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 Or maybe I should say a genius for trouble. The propulsion system he designed
for the Kwan-class cruisers made his name, but then he blundered. Stupidly,
your mother told him. His little team had come up with a better superconductor
for an even better fusion reactor.
 The machine he planned was too small and simple and safe to please the Kwans.
Your mother warned him to drop it. Kwan Labs cut off his research funds.
Security agents came to grill him. Real trouble, if Benito hadn t bailed him
out.
 Benito?
A wry half-frown at his astonishment.  Benito gave him a contract job. Just to
build him a private space-plane.
She nodded at a sleek silver hull, hardly larger than the shuttle he had flown
with Jason Kwan. It lay on rails outside a fat cylinder jutting out of the
wall.
 Designed for flights down to Earth and back. That s her dock. She was never
launched. The
Company was afraid he meant to use her to test his new reactors. Or maybe to
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make contact with your mother s alien friends in the halo. One day Olaf and
half a dozen of his best people were gone.
Suspected of defecting to the Holyfolk.
 A cruel thing for your mother. She was arrested and interrogated. She claimed
not to know where he d gone or what he planned. She was finally released to
carry on her work with the skyfish, but only under guard.
They went on to his mother s lab. A smaller space, still littered with
wreckage from the bomb. Tall metal partitions ran half around it, black from
fire and crusted with yellow blobs of dried foam from the chemical
extinguishers.
 Her desk was there. Mindi pointed into an empty spot.  A powerful bomb the
Holyfolk are experts. She must have died instantly. Three helpers also killed,
by smoke inhalation.
A wide black stain on the metal floor. His mother s blood? Feeling numbed,
nearly ill, he turned from it to wander through the debris. Overturned
workbenches. Burned and twisted metal scraps that had been scientific
instruments. Broken glass crunching under his boots. Mindi followed, and he
felt her sympathetic hand squeeze his.
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 A long time. Gratefully he drew her closer.  I was only seven. But it
hurts.
Aimlessly he kicked into the litter. Charred paper, matted and clotted with
the yellow foam.
Computer cubes, shattered into glinting shards. Bits of holo film, fused
around the edges. Acrid dust came up. Bending to sneeze, he saw a face.
Kerry s hairless head, grinning at him through a thin smear of ash and foam.
Stooping for it, he stirred through the clutter. A young child, peering [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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