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The aide was approaching, a bright red wireless communicator of some kind in
his hand. The old man took it with a nod and said into it at once: "Do you
call now to see if I am still alive?" Even as he spoke, there came another
godlike blast far above; the living rock around them shook and trickled
powder. "Of course, I am alive. How can you slay a man, who is an idea first
of all, with a machine?"
A few more words were exchanged. Then the fleshy old arm held out the device
to
Shen-yang. "There is someone who wishes a few words with you."
When he held the thing for his own use, Hondurman's face was visible in its
little screen, and Hondurman's voice came through. "My government's deepest
apologies, Mr. Shen-yang, if any military action of ours has in fact
endangered you. Of course you knew that you were entering a combat zone "
"I'm still alive," he interrupted. "By the way, you were right about the
missiles here."
A slight bow was visible. "It appears that you were right, all along. Our
Council of
Ministers has just been reorganized, and it now agrees to the Ungavan
conditions for peace talks to resume. Our new government deplores the latest
launchings, disclaims responsibility for them, and will take disciplinary
action against the officers responsible. Our official position is that the war
is essentially over and the situation must be normalized before our world
rejoins the galaxy."
"I was right about its being over, yes. But wrong about one other thing."
Shen-yang paused. "So, you're changing leaders to get the peace talks going?
That's what losers
do, you know."
The eyes in the small screen were haunted. "And just what else, sir, did you
suppose we were?"
BIRTHDAYS
One
Looking back, Bart could never clearly remember any part of his life before
the day when the Ship first woke him from a long, artificially induced sleep,
and guided him to the nursery to see the babies. That day and the first few
that followed were very confusing to live through.
The Ship's machines, working with paint and glass and light, had made the
nursery spacious-looking and cheerful. Bart counted twenty-four cribs. To
count babies would have been harder, because only those who happened to be
napping were in their beds.
The rest crawled or sat or toddled on the soft-tiled deck, sending up a racket
and getting underfoot of their attending machines and images. The babies were
all the same age, just about a year old the day Bart first saw them. They wore
white diapers, and some had on green hospital gowns like Bart's only of course
smaller.
Bart was not tall for almost fourteen but he could easily lift one bare leg
after the other over the low barrier the machines had placed to keep the
little kids from tottering or crawling out of the nursery into the corridor.
The corridor led in one direction to Bart's small private room and in the
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other so his memory, working in a new, selective way, informed him to the rest
of the habitable Ship.
The babies squalled, gurgled, blubbered, or took time out to stare in silence
at the world. They made nothing much of Bart's coming in among them. The
images that the machines kept projecting and moving around the infants were of
solid-looking adult humans, speaking and smiling; they evidently took Bart to
be just one more image.
The babies reacted more strongly to the machines because of the physical
contact they had with them.
"Pick one up, if you wish," the Ship said in his ear. It was able to project
its conversation so there was no way of telling just what direction the words
came from.
The Ship's voice sounded human, but not quite male or female, not quite young
or old.
Like a good obedient boy Bart bent to have a try at picking up a baby. The
chubby belly felt cool against his hands above the papery diaper and the head
of dark, scanty curls turned so that the liquid brown eyes could stare at him
uncertainly.
"See how the machines hold them," counseled the Ship. "Their arms are of
basically the same form as yours."
He shifted his grip.
"The prime directives under which I operate are very clear. One human parent,
adoptive or real, is necessary to the successful maturation of children;
images and machines are psychologically inadequate for optimum results.
Therefore, after receiving some elementary preparation for the role, you will
serve as adoptive parent for the first generation of colonists."
Colonists.
The word evoked in Bart the abstract knowledge that the Ship had started
from an orbit around Earth, and was outward bound to seed humanity somewhere
among the stars. How long ago the voyage had begun, and whether he himself had
witnessed that beginning, were questions that his memory could not answer. Nor
did he feel any urgency attached to them. Somewhere in Bart's lost past he had
learned that the Ship was to be trusted utterly and now he could wait
patiently for a better understanding of what it meant by its announcement that
he was to be a parent.
Meanwhile he watched the infants, played a little with them, and tried to
comfort and distract those who cried. It seemed to be the thing to do.
The machines labored ceaselessly, patting, changing, feeding, washing, wiping
up.
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