[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

diagrams inscribed on platinum plates, and another twelve pages that comprised an elaborate
Rosetta Stone, starting with basic physics and chemistry, from which they derived logic, and then
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grammar, and finally, with some help from biology, a vocabulary large enough to describe the
project in simple terms. They planned to put the plates on a wall in an artificial cave on the top
of the highest mountain on the planet, with duplicates on Mount Everest on Earth and Olympus Mons
on Mars.) It's both natural and odd that Marygay and I wound up being leaders of the band. We did
come up with the idea, of course, but we both knew from our military experience that we weren't
natural-born leaders. Twenty years' parenting and helping a small community grow had changed us--
and twenty years of being the "oldest" people in the world. There were plenty of people older than
us in actual aging, but nobody else who could remember life before the Forever War. So people came
to us for advice because of this mostly symbolic maturity.
Most people seemed to assume that I was going to be the captain, when the time came. I
wondered how many would be surprised when I stepped down in favor of Marygay. She was more
comfortable with being an officer.
Well, being an officer had gotten her Cat. All I got was Charlie.
The meeting broke up before dark. The first heavy flakes of a long storm were drifting down.
There would be more than half a meter on the ground by morning; people had livestock to manage,
fires to kindle, children to worry about--children like Bill, out on the road in this weather.
Marygay had gone to the kitchen to make soup and scones and listen to music, while Sara and I
sat at the dining room table and consolidated all of the scribblings on her once-neat chart into a
coherent timetable. Bill called from the tavern, where he'd been in a pool tournament, and said
he'd like to leave the floater there, if nobody needed it right away, and walk home. The snow was
so dense in the air that headlights were useless. I said that was a good idea, not mentioning the
slur in his speech that made it a doubly good idea.
He seemed sober when he got home, more than an hour later. He came in through the mudroom,
laughing while he beat snow off his clothes. I knew how he felt--this kind of snow was a bitch to
drive in, but wonderful for walking. The sound of it feathering down, the light touch on skin--
nothing like the killer horizontal spikes of a deep winter blizzard. We'd have neither aboard
ship, of course, but the lack of one seemed a more than fair trade for the other.
Bill got a fresh scone and some hot cider, and sat down with us. "Knocked out in the first
round," he said. "They got me on a technical scratch." I nodded in sympathy, though I wouldn't
know a technical scratch from a technical itch. The game they played was not exactly eight ball.
He frowned at the chart, trying to read it upside-down. "They really snaffed your pretty
chart, sister."
"It was meant to be snaffed with," she said. "We're making up a new one."
"Call it out to everyone tonight or in the morning," I said. "Give them something to do other
than shovel snow."
"Your mind's made up?" he said to Sara. "You're going to take the big jump? And when you come
back, I won't even be dust anymore."
"Your choice," she said, "as well as mine."
He nodded amiably. "I mean, I can see why Mom and Dad--"
"We've had this conversation before."
I could hear the house creak. Settling under the weight of snow. Marygay was sitting silent in
the kitchen, listening.
"Run it by again," I said. "Things have changed since I last heard it."
"What, that you're taking one of Man along? And a Tauran?"
"You'll be Man by then."
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He looked at me for a long moment. "No."
"It shouldn't make any difference which individual goes. Group mind and all."
"Bill doesn't have the right genes," Sara said. "They'll want to send a real Man." That was a
pun that saw daily use.
"I wouldn't go anyhow. It stinks of suicide."
"There's not much danger," I said. "More danger staying here, actually." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]