"Good . . . uh, boy," she said, patting his young genitals. He exhaled a sigh of relief as she turned away, but the relief did not last long. She stopped, then faced him again, scowling in the effort to remember the children's-English words for what she wanted to say:
"I warn them, you understand. You understand? Sent warning. Late a little. But radio faster than kaons, get there first." She stared at him, her face clouding again. "Good boy," she said again, and strolled thoughtfully away.
Although Jeron had understood almost nothing of the exchange, he understood that it was over. He dumped the sweetbeans back into the gravelly substrate they were growing in and headed in the other direction. It was a worrying position for a four-year-old to be in, especially if he wanted to live to reach five.
"Wait, Jeron," whispered Uncle Will from the tangle of citrus at the entrance. "What was that all about?"
Jeron jumped. "You scared me, Uncle Will," he accused, peering around until he located the glassy shadow behind the rich fruit.
"I'm sorry," said Uncle Will, waiting for the answer Jeron wanted mightily to give, but did not dare.
"Oh," the boy said, "she was telling me Chinese stories again. And all that other stuff all you grownups say, that I'm acting funny. Damn sick of hearing it," he added shrewdly.
"Is that all?" whispered Uncle Ghost.
"All I understood." There was silence from among the oranges while Uncle Will pondered. If he had really wanted to know, Jeron reflected, he would have come up and listened; but even Uncle Will did not like interfering with his widow's private matters.
If Will had pressed any harder Jeron would have told him the whole thing, or as much of it as he understood, but Will didn't press and the boy didn't dare. It wasn't that he didn't trust Will. Will would have kept his confidence. Would even have tried to protect him, but how much protection could you expect from a ghost?
To build a planet they needed structural materials. To forge the materials from raw spaceborne rubble they needed heat. Alpha Centauri gave them the heat—once they had rolled out the foil to cup it and pour it into their furnaces —once they had built the tools to roll the foil—once they had captured the ores to make the metals to build the tools to roll the foil. They were in orbit a year, and Jeron was five years old, before the first artifact not made out of original ship's stores was ready. It was a thirty-ton roller. From then on progress was exponential. Everyone was working, all eight adults (even shadowy Will) and all fifty-two of the children. The youngest cohort was now nearly four, and thus of laboring age. There was no room now for anyone not working, and the six-yearolds were kept occupied holding the webby edge of a shell section or overseeing an automatic welder, the fives like Jeron did more adult but less physical tasks, and even the fours toted meals to the grownups. It was not enough, of course. The job was too big for human beings. So no person from the starship, not even a child, ever did anything that a machine could do instead . . . after they had achieved the machines.
In all that time Jeron kept locked the ununderstood event he had been forbidden to disclose. All through his studies, all through his games and maturation rites with the other kids, all through the slow growth of their new home, he remembered that one subject was not to be talked about. Uncle Will Ghost worried at him about it for months, but Jeron was too scared at first to open up and, anyway, learned how to be more clever about concealing the fact of concealment as time went on. Finally even Uncle Ghost let it drop. There was an exponentially growing inventory of secrets among them anyway. With all the modes of communication the grownups had invented, there was still an increasing corpus of information each retained. Partly for privacy. Mostly because few of them were, really, very interested in what any of the others was doing any more.
There is no trip like a knowledge trip, no hallucinogen more potent than an area of knowledge no one else shares. All eight of them were constantly stoned out of their minds with revelatory insights. Occasionally they offered to discuss them with each other, and found few listeners. Now and then they thought to try to pass them on to the children —and failed; there were not enough points of common experience for communication at these rarefied levels. It would have been as easy to teach eschatology to a cat. The only area which all of them shared was the building of the habitat, and that occupied most of everyone's time anyway. In thirty-one months from the first orbital approximation, the machines they built were building the machines that did the work, and Alpha-Aleph was growing. Ring on ring the O'Neill habitat took form. When the third ring locked on it became their home.
Even though he was now seven Jeron still worked in the fields, no longer because he was not good enough for anything else but because he had become very good at that. He was transplanting a seedling, patting the damp made soil with one hand while the other held the plastic film to put over it, when he realized someone was near.
"Hai!" shouted a voice over his shoulder. But before that he had already begun to rise and turn, his right hand grasping out for the trowel.
"Hai!" he shouted in return, ready for attack. But it was only Jemolio, a full sister from his own cohort, holding a grain stalk as though it were a sword.
He relaxed from the ready position, scowling, and put the trowel down. They eyed each other warily, both bare and glistening with sweat, only their cache-sexes marring the shiny tanned skins. "You lost that one," he said, "and you're not supposed to pull up the plants."
She tossed the stalk onto the compost heap. "It was one of Uncle Ghost's failures anyway. There's a cohort meeting. Uncle Ski wants us all there. Twenty minutes. I think the grownups are fighting again."
"Oh, Jesus."
"Sure, but be there."
"All right," he said, turning away—and then quickly twisted, catching up the trowel and lunging at her belly, shouting, "Hai!"
She was ready for him. They were always ready for each other, or for spooky Uncle Ski, in all of these Zen stimulations; by the time they were three they had each been challenged a thousand times. They rolled lazily about in the light gravity. It did not matter how quickly you moved when you weighed just a few kilos, everything turned out to be slow motion anyway. And there was the heat. They were gasping by the time they separated, and Jemolio had wound up on top. She was as strong as Jeron and a little faster. It was not uncommon for her to win the one-on-ones with him, and also not important. Winning was not important. Being always ready—being always accepting of what might come, never surprised, never at a loss—that was what Uncle Ski called important. "Twenty minutes, Jeron," she panted, scratching at her belly. In the heat and terribly low humidity sweat vanished as fast as it formed, but seared mucous membranes and parched skin paid for exertion.
"All right. Don't ever pull up any of my plants again. You don't know which are failures."
She stuck out her tongue and turned away. He had been half tensed for one more pseudoattack, but she simply left. It was a good thing Uncle Ski wasn't there. He would have seen that Jeron was tensed. Punishment would have followed.
The boy finished packing the earth around the seedling and carefully sealed down the vapor shield. The hydroponics were all his now. The grownups were too busy for more than occasional visits. Day by day Jeron was in charge.
Jeron had a knack for plant development. He did not have dead Will Becklund's skill. None of the children did. None were willing to do what Will had done to acquire it.
But Jeron was good. And sometimes he would set out his pots of seedlings and spooky Will would come by in the night and make his magic. And then, out of a row of ten identical sprouts, one might develop soft jelly-fleshed fronds, and another might flower with blooms bigger than hibiscus —and most of the rest die. Will's tricks did not always work.