“One in college, Matthew Anderson. Leona’s boy. Of course I didn’t have him in high school.” Gifted science students had classes taught by Man. Like my son. “Most of them, I just try to keep awake.”
Charlie and Marygay brought in trays of cheese and fruit, and Charlie went out to get another couple of logs for the fire.
Their place was better suited than ours, or most others’, for this sort of thing. Downstairs was one large round room, the kitchen in a separate alcove. The building was a metal dome that had been half of a Tauran warship’s fuel tank, doors and windows cut in, its industrial origin camouflaged inside with wooden paneling and drapes. A circular staircase led to the bedrooms and library upstairs. Diana had a small office and examination room up there, but she did most of her work in town, at the hospital and the university clinic.
The fireplace was a raised circle of brick, halfway between the center and wall, with a conical hood. So the fire was sort of like a primitive campfire, a nice locus for a meeting of a council of elders.
Which is what this was, though the ages of the participants ranged from over a thousand to barely a hundred, depending on when they were drafted into the Forever War. Their physical age went from late thirties to early fifties, in Earth years. The years here were three times as long. I guess people would eventually become used to the idea of starting school at 2, puberty before 4, majority at 6. But not my generation.
I had been physically 32 when I got here, although if you counted from birth date, ignoring time dilation and collapsar jumps, I was 1,168 in Earth years. So I was 50 now–or “32 plus 6,” as some vets said, trying to reconcile the two systems.
The vets began to arrive, by ones, twos, and fours. Usually about fifty showed up, about a third of those within walking distance. One was an observer, with a holo recorder, who came from the capital city, Centrus. Our veterans’ group had no name, and no real central organization, but it did keep records of these informal meetings in an archive the size of a marble.
One copy was in a safe place and the other was in the pocket of the woman with the recorder. Either one would scramble itself if touched by Man or Tauran; a film on the outside of the marble sensed DNA.
It wasn’t that a lot of secret or subversive discussion went on here; Man knew how most of the vets felt, and didn’t care. What could we do?
For the same reason, only a minority of the vets ever came to the meetings, and many of them just came to see friends. What was the use of griping? You couldn’t change anything. Not everyone even believed things needed changing.
They didn’t mind being part of a “eugenic baseline.” What I called a human zoo. When one Man died, another was quickened, by cloning. Their genetic makeup never changed–why mess with perfection? Our function was to go ahead and make babies the old-fashioned way, random mutation and evolution. I suppose if we came up with something better than Man, they’d start using our genetic material instead. Or perhaps see us as dangerous rivals and kill us off.
But meanwhile we were “free.” Man had helped us start up a civilization on this planet, and kept us in touch with the other inhabited ones, including Earth. You could even have gone to Earth, when you mustered out, if you were willing to pay the price–be sterilized and become one of them.
A lot of vets had done it, but Earth didn’t sound at all inviting to me. One big city, full of Man and Taurans. I could live with these long winters, for the sake of the company.
Most of the people were reasonably content here. I was hoping to change that tonight. Marygay and I had been hatching a plan, and I was going to throw it out for discussion.
After about a half-hour, forty people had shown up, clustered around the fire, and I supposed weather was keeping the rest away. Diana tapped on a glass for attention, and introduced the woman from Centrus.