It offered a space ten meters Jong by six wide. Foldout tables, collapsible chairs as thin as Lunar gravity permitted, chests that doubled as seats allowed passage, occasionally zigzaggy, no matter what was going on in the way of games, partying, entertainment, education, or simple ease. Dura moss made a living green carpet. Reserve tanks of water and air on the roof forbade any view straight up, but the windows on either side gave ample outlook. She saw the regular field van parked nearby, the whirly, strewn geological specimens and other clutter, the moun-tainscape, Earth big and lovely, the sun opposite stopped down to a wan disc. Music twanged from the speakers, for Dagny mercifully low—the newest feng-huang, she assumed. Her youngsters’ tastes were not hers. She sometimes wondered what their generation would compose when they were grown.
Anson was outside with his father and the two grad students. Gabrielle, at seven the next oldest, sat before one of the computer terminals. That was in order, her regular schooling session. But why did five-year-old Sigurd hunker beside her? He should be at his own lesson. Francis, three, was curled up with a reader. That was nothing strange; all of them had acquired literacy by his age, except for Helen in her cradle, who doubtless would too, and Francy seemed a natural-born bookworm. What had he chosen today? He never cared for the ordinary stuff …
Her eyes took aim on Gaby and Sigurd. Intent, they had not noticed her arrival. She recalled past incidents, a quick switcharound when she appeared, an air of surreptitiousness, baffled half-suspicions. In two kangaroo bounds, she was there. The baby’s noises weren’t of the sort that meant emergency.
The girl registered dismay, immediately masked.The boy’s mutinous expression stayed on him. He was the hell-raiser among them. Dagny peered at the screen. No, it did not carry an interactive math program. ARVEN ARDEA NIO LULLUI PEYAR— “What the devil is going on here?”
Her daughter blanked the display. “Nothin’,” she muttered. Color came and went in her face. She was outwardly the most Earthlike, chubby, topped with light-brown curls. Quiet, studious, was she inwardly the most paradoxical? “Just a game.”
Easy, Dagny thought, take it slow, don’t drive them into hostility. They bore alien genes, but that DNA had come from two mighty self-determined parents. She caught Sigurd’s glance and held it. “Doesn’t seem like your kind of game,” she said mildly to this large, strongly built, redhaired muchacho,
He flushed in his turn. “Aw, we wan’ed a break.”
“If I were playing hooky, I’d do something more interesting. Unless this is. May I ask what it’s about?”
Gaby was getting back some composure. “Per— per-mu-ta-tions,” she said. Triumphantly: “See? I did study.”
Having the machine produce random combinations of, no, not words, syllables? Dagny shook her head. That couldn’t be right. Her glimpse had suggested a pattern, as if those were words in an unknown language. Could the pair be creating a fantasy world? Gaby showed gifts of that kind, insofar as she revealed any of herself. Sigurd, restless, resentful at being cooped up when his older brother had gone forth, might be finding an outlet in a shared dream.
If so, it was nice that these utterly unlike two had set their fights aside and made something in common, for however brief a spell. Childhood secrets that had lain three decades forgotten stirred within Dagny. She’d better not push her invasion further.
“Good for yqu, as far as it goes,” she said. “However, you are not supposed to study sets today, you’re to practice the mechanics of arithmetic. And you, Sigurd, are to improve your deplorable spelling.”
“Bo-oring,” he whined. Gaby nodded, again and again.
“I know,” their mother replied. “And you wonder why you have to, when a computer can do such jobs for you. Bueno, listen. You may not always have a computer handy, when you badly need to figure out something or write something that comes across unmistakable. More important, learning the systems is the single way you’ll get to understand them. If you’re ignorant of how the machines work and why, they won’t serve you, they’ll boss you. And you’ll be shut away from all kinds of wonderful things. Mainly, remember: Independent people have got to be independent.