And if the Guild profoundly repented anything it had let pass council, it had to be the decision that had begun station construction here, in orbit about a blue, living planet, instead of barren, virtually airless Maudette.
Safer, the scientists of that day had argued. Within reach of resources, if something went wrong.
It certainly was within reach of resources, resources and the intelligent civilization they had already detected on the planet. Oh, yes, the Guild raised ethical arguments from the start, but say the truth—the Guild with its talk of moral choices, the right of the planet to develop on its own—they had such a deep concern for the planet-dwellers, papa was wont to say. So why is life down there so sacred to the Guild, and why do they count our lives so cheap?
So he was here, because papa couldn’t be, and mama wouldn’t, without papa: the station and the Movement needed them where they were, if that lander was going to pass a council vote.
What the Guild reasoned now, he didn’t know. Or care. Thank God, hereafter the politics of the Movement, and who was in charge, and who led and who followed (being an administrator’s son, he’d heard all the arguments for and against his being down here, and suffered personally from some of them) and what steps were first and what their policy would be in dealing with the Guild—none of that was his problem anymore. He was down here to practice the science he’d become fascinated with at age eight… and realized when the Guild brats ridiculed him that he’d have no real chance of doing anything with it as a job.
But papa’s dream had been an of-course to him, even at eight… that was why he’d spoken out without thinking, of course they’d go to the world, of course they’d walk down there someday.
And now he did walk the planetary surface, now he did Lenoir’s work, he did it, and for Lenoir’s reasons: all the collections, the taxonomies, the equivalencies that might let them extrapolate from the natural system in the data storage to deal with a living one. He was laying the foundation for a natural science of this world and a means of dealing with this world and protecting it from their own mistakes—because, dammit, they had to; sooner or later they had to be here. Lenoir was right—the world might have a higher life form already, and the world already and for thousands of years had surely had a name, in someone or something’s language—but humanity had come to this solar system without a choice, and it was equally inevitable that they deal with the world, before it was space-faring or after, because Maudette was not their choice, and they knew Maudette was not even the Guild’s choice—just a way to get the Guild’s worker-drones away from the only planet that gave them options. The world had become their hope and their way of securing their freedom and their identity, before they had ever set foot on it.
Until here he was, in a place generations had worked to reach, and, one way or the other, he wouldn’t be admitting defeat. He wouldn’t be going back Upstairs, rescued from starvation by some Guild ship.
And he damned sure wouldn’t be gathered up and transported to airless Maudette, on Guild terms.
Too late for that now, everlastingly too late.
Speaking of late…
It was Julio in the window, shadow against the light.
Shadow that ducked its head in a sudden sneeze.
* * *
III
« ^ »
Perhaps it was cowardice, Manadgi thought, that held him from going down to the valley. Perhaps it was prudence that argued, in the quiet he saw settle about the buildings as the sun set, that watching and thinking through the night might grant him some useful understanding.
One building had windows. Most did not. The size and the height of the windows was ambiguous with distance. He saw the isolated movements of living beings between the buildings, toward twilight, and occasionally after.
He saw the predating machines, prowling about the desolation they had made. None came near him, perhaps because he had settled himself well away from such tracks, which evidently it was the purpose of such machines to make, all about the area, a net of them, as if there were less intent to reach any specific place than to have as many routes as possible within the immediate sight of these buildings.