What they had started with was no more than a hundred plant varieties. A few had been ornamentals. Most had been food. All had been selected because they were really good at soaking up carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen into the air. There were no trees. There was nothing like kelp; there were no water plants at all, except for a few microscopic ones. And that was all they had to work with.
Aunt Flo had changed that a lot and, after his accident, so did Uncle Will. Flo's efforts were mostly rudimentary Luther-Burbankian crosses and selections. Will went deeper. The same patient submicroscopic coaxing that had tripled the thrust of their fusion reactor could switch amino acids within the genes as readily as Flo had urged genes to move about the chromosomes. Plants that started as, mostly, carrots became indistinguishable, nearly, from sweet potatoes. An allele from a volunteer milkweed seed turned sweet corn into cottony-downy pear-shaped fruits that, with a few other tamperings, tasted (nearly) like lamb chops. Out of the frozen and stored meat supplies Uncle Will had salvaged a few viable structural parts from animal chromosomes to add to their basic resources, but they were not really necessary. Long before Alpha-Aleph had begun to fill with their manufactured air Jeron could produce something very close to mahogany veneer—or strawberries, or Gorgonzola at will —out of the materials at hand.
Jeron looked around the gentle sweep of the hydroponics plot and was content. Far at the other side of the ring was another plot, sterile and empty until they made enough water to give it life, to balance the spin of the three joined rings. Someday they would have ground enough rock into sand and squeezed enough organics for loam and the whole habitat would be soil-covered and growing things; but not yet. He left the plot and, hand over hand, pulled himself up the shinnying cable to what was left of the Constitution at the hub. Later on, when they accelerated the habitat to full spin, that would be hard work. But by then there would be more moisture to soak the air, and the temperature of the shell would not have to be kept so high. Jeron could feel the salt drying on his skin as the parched air sucked away his sweat. It itched terribly. He paused to reach down to scratch, and something caught his ankle.
"Hai!" shouted Uncle Ski from beneath him, tugging furiously at his leg. Jeron reacted without thought. He did not pull away. He shifted position and kicked. The foot broke free as Uncle Ski scrambled for a better hold, and Jeron pulled himself a meter or two higher, peering down, ready to place the next kick between Ski's eyes.
"Good enough," said Uncle Ski, panting. "Where are your sibs?" His voice was high and hoarse, because of the air, but he was relaxed as he swung below Jeron, gazing up at the boy.
"Ammarin and Jemolio are there already, I think, Uncle Ski. Forina and Famine are supposed to be with Aunt Mommy. I don't know about the others."
"Aunt Eve Barstow," Ski corrected. "They're not there now. Everybody's supposed to be at the meeting. Get a move on."
Jeron nodded courteously and swarmed up the cable, careful to keep above Uncle Ski's lunging distance. There was something in the old man's eyes that made Jeron think this meeting was special. That would not prevent Uncle Ski from assaulting him again, or a dozen times more; it was the fundamental of his lessons that one must be ready for challenge when one expected it least.
But not this time.
They emerged into the old Constitution and the last one in slammed the locks behind them. The air was noticeably cooler and more comfortable even before that, and the heat pumps and humidifiers quickly made it optimal. It was sheer bliss to feel normal beads of perspiration trickle down his nose before the temperature dropped, but it was not a good sign. Something was going on. And Jeron saw at once that it centered around the grownups, and the hologram of the Earth in the middle of Constitution's main compartment.
Jeron had three siblings in his cohort, two female and one other male, but he also had three full sibs in the fourth cohort, born so soon after his own that they had grown up almost as a unit. They were still into having children by marital partners when the cohort was conceived. But Ann Becklund wanted children, of course, and of course Uncle Will Becklund was temporarily not able to sire them because of his death. So Uncle Dad—Jim Barstow—donated sperm for Ann's litters. By the time of the fifth cohort the problem of Uncle Will had been solved. They were the largest cohort of all, and the youngest—more than a year younger than Jeron's, just babies!
But now that there was room for real babies again the fifth was admitted to the meetings too. It made a considerable crush in the little Constitution. Jeron crowded through the littler kids and took his place with the medium-sized ones, peering through the tallest at the scene in the middle of the room.
There was the hologram of Earth, basketball-sized and brightly glowing in green and blue and white, and there were a handful of the grownups, chattering and screeching around it. Jeron counted quickly. It was not easy, because they were chattering and screeching and, some of them, leaping about, but there were Uncle Shef and Aunt Ann on one side of the globe, Shef clutching at any of the others who came in reach, Ann serene and silent; there were Aunt Flo and Aunt Eve, whispering savagely to each other; Uncle Jim was shouting at nothing at all, which on closer examination turned out to be Uncle Will Ghost; and there came Uncle Ski, burrowing through the children and sending them flying, as he struggled to get into the cockpit. It was rare for all eight of the grownups to be-present in the same place. That they were at each other's throats was not rare at all, for the eight adults were often that way, though not usually as badly as this. The noise was deafening, and, of course, the audible quick-speech words were only a minor fraction of the arguments. Uncle Ski grabbed Aunt Dot's hand, tapping out pulsed finger pressures to supplement his facial expressions and shrugging shoulders. He was not talking to her with his voice; that was reserved for the other conversation he was carrying on, with Aunt Eve arid Uncle Shef, who were now arm in arm, but not in affection. Aunt Dot was trying to pull her hand free because, stripped nude, she was anointing herself with skin cream to take advantage of the comfortable humidity, and Ski was causing her to smear the shiny stars she had grown on her shoulders. At the same time she talked and grimaced to most of the other adults, and they to her. Even Uncle Will flickered in and out of visibility, an unstable shimmer over the globe itself, and his harsh whisper penetrated the yelling.
Like all of the children, Jeron understood a little quick-speech. It would not have sufficed, except for Aunt Dot. She had elected to take seriously—or jokingly, but the joke had been going on for more than a year now—the orders that had come in from Earth ludicrously promoting her to general's rank; and so she practiced speaking in approved West Point English. "Ten-hut!" she shouted, and at least the children reluctantly fell silent. Into the dwindling din she rapped out: "At oh five hundred hours this date Willis NMI Becklund, civilian, discorporeal, informed this officer that he had obtained evidence indicating that Lt Col Sheffield H Jackman, 0328770, of this command, had been screwing around retributively with the kaons. Date of offense approximately three years ten months fifteen days prior to present. As senior officer commanding I have convened this court-martial."
Uncle Shef combed the dreadlocks out of his eyes and spat a long, incomprehensible sentence at her; he seemed about to follow with a lunge, but Uncle Ski leaped between them in full unarmed-combat stance. "Knock it off, you two!" Aunt Eve cried furiously. "What are you talking about, Dot?"