Cadmann watched absently. "Who are his parents?"
Rachael looked uncomfortable. "As you know, the sperm and egg samples were chosen both from the members of the colony, and the frozen contributions of those who didn't make the trip for one reason or another. There are representative samples from all the basic genetic groups and cultures of the world, but all flawless. We could be picky. The idea was that some children would be raised by the colony as a whole, without any specific parental attachments. It was one of the theoretical bases of the colony, an experiment in shifting the primary bonding imperatives of a child from a pair, onto a concept or system. As you know, the experiment was begun in earnest after the Grendel Wars, and was terminated four years later."
Carolyn McAndrews smiled and said, "We were making enough babies."
"You always had doubts," Zack said. Carolyn nodded. "Maybe we should have listened." Ice on her mind, he didn't have to say. Nobody would have listened to Carolyn; which was a bit odd, because Carolyn had been one of the genuine heroines of the Grendel Wars. No one could quite remember when they had stopped listening to her.
Rachael said, "The project was terminated for other reasons."
Cadmann was looking out into black space. Carlos saw only his back. He asked, "Problems?"
"Stuff that came through from Earth, maybe a year after we left. There were files on the Bottle Baby research. We didn't get anything else for years. Geographic's last received signal was a light-speed communique ten years after we left. Garbled. It took quite a while to reconstruct it," Rachael said. "There was research that implied that the creche children had a more difficult time bonding. They had all been adopted info loving, supportive homes—where parents had waited years for children, but due to fertility problems were forced to utilize artificial wombs.
"Sure, problems, Cad. There're always problems. Statistically significant? Maybe. Some kind of academic dominance game was going on. Those can get nasty. I think some of their theories got sent and some got buried. Numbers, too.
"One theory had to do with the endocrinal flux in the uterus. The numbers we got suggest that the actual ebb and flow of biochemical products as the mother is awake, asleep, afraid, hungry, tired, sexually stimulated, whatever... is a form of communication between mother and child. It's another nutrient... an emotional nutrient, if you will, as important as blood or oxygen."
"I thought that all of those things had been duplicated."
Rachael shrugged. "It's still an art form. When you try to create a computer program to simulate the messages that a mother sends to her child, you have to remember that it is a feedback loop between the mother and the fetus. Thousands of fetuses were studied, and the ways that their mothers responded to them were recorded, and a refinement of everything that was learned was created for use in the creches."
"So?"
"So? A camel is a horse designed by committee. There is a difference between the clumsy elegance of the human body and the sophisticated, intellectual choices made by a committee of experts deciding which endocrinological experiences are good for baby. They tried to round out the experience. This mood swing was inappropriate, that orgasmic response pattern was a biochemical form of child abuse, a mother experiencing anger is damaging her child. The liberals swung the profile one way, the conservatives another. Too many morphemes. Too much adrenaline. Chill those kiddies out."
"Ouch."
"Hindsight. But the program may have been too bland. Didn't place enough of an imprint on the children, leaving them a little too vulnerable to their environment."
"What happened on Earth?"
"Not much. A statistically significant increase in emotional problems among those children. A slight indication of an increase in sociopathy. But remember something—each and every one of those children was in a loving home, one where the parents had waited for years to have a child. They had far more love and attention than average. It is interesting to note what might have happened if such children had been placed into average home situations."
Cadmann still didn't turn. "What about ours?"
"There was nothing about that from Earth—we thought that giving them love would counteract any potential problems."
The image of Aaron continued to age. From time to time the program would lock on a particular sequence. Aaron climbing a mountain. Young Aaron kicking a soccer ball. Aaron visiting Edgar in traction. Aaron debating. Aaron defeating Edgar in debate. Aaron teaching a class in woodcraft to a group of Biters. Aaron hiking, moving quickly past a not yet injured Edgar Sikes. They were surrounded by a universe of Aaron Tragons.
Rachael said, "It worked—in general. Quite well in some cases."
"For instance?"
Zack leaned forward. "Children from genetic groups conditioned for group raising of children. Little Chaka, from New Guinea, for instance. Toshiro Tanaka. But I know Rachael worried about Aaron, and Trish Chance, and a few others."
"Everyone in the colony participated in the nurseries back then," Rachael said.
"I remember, " Sylvia said. "That was a real labor of love."
"When the children were older, they were shared by the colony as well. On through their teens. Every one of them had a dozen parents, every colonist had a dozen children. This was one of the reasons that the sexual freedom in the colony was so fluid."
"Well," Cadmann said, "we didn't take any diseases."
"True," Rachael said. "But the other idea was that all pregnancies were desirable. If a particular mother or father didn't want to have the child at that time, the fetus could be removed and frozen, or carried to term in a host uterus, or an artificial womb. They could be thawed when the mother or father was ready for the responsibility, or adopted by a particular set of partners—"
"Or they could be adopted into the general colony. We tried that far more often than they were adopted by specific parents," said Carolyn. "I did what I could to... " She trailed off.
Rachael sighed, and removed her glasses, rubbing her temples hard. "You asked me yesterday to look into Aaron. I have. I wish I'd done it sooner, before Ruth got so involved. I found some things which disturb me."
Cadmann asked, "What kind of things?"
On the holostage Aaron had grown older. Aaron and virtually every woman of his generation, at one time or another. Aaron on the mainland, one of a troop of Grendel Scouts led by Carlotta Nolan and Cadmann Weyland.
"He has great leadership potential, but... "
"But?"
Rachael said, "If the combination of ectogynic origin and lack of specific bonding and imprinting hit anyone hardest, it was Aaron Tragon. I think that he has bonded not to the members of the colony, but to the dream of colonization itself."
"What's wrong with that?" Sylvia asked.
Aaron's image, larger than life, stared down at them, immense, serious, intent.
"I don't mean that he has an idealistic view of what this colony should be. I don't mean that he has the kind of gung-ho conquer-the-universe attitude that we had to have to get onto Geographic in the first place. I mean literally that dream itself, the dream of spreading across the mainland, the planet. The entire Tau Ceti system itself. Of Mankind taking the stars and remaking them to Aaron's wishes. That dream is his mother and father, his reason for being. That dream was what this was all about, remember?"
"I... remember." Cadmann was thoughtful. "But his debates... sometimes they seem almost conservative. Back to nature? Live-with-the-planet sort of speeches."