The Children Star Read online

  PRAISE FOR JOAN SLONCZEWSKI

  THE CHILDREN STAR

  “This novel offers a dazzling array of alien life and a cast of memorable characters…[An] imaginative and compelling tale of transformation and renewal…Highly recommended.”

  —Library Journal

  “Beautifully constructed and absorbingly related.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  A DOOR INTO OCEAN

  Winner of the John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Novel

  “By the time the conflict she introduces so obliquely in Part One has moved to center stage, you not only know the antagonists intimately, you care passionately about the outcome.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “The novel is an impressive piece of world building, with a varied cast of characters and a theme that seems a natural consequence of its premises.”

  —Newsday

  DAUGHTER OF ELYSIUM

  “The world building is magnificently detailed; the characters are done with deftness and wit.”

  —Chicago Sun-Times

  THE WALL AROUND EDEN

  “This novel cements Slonczewski’s reputation as an important new voice in the genre.”

  —Michael Berry, San Francisco Examiner

  Other Books by Joan Slonczewski

  Still Forms on Foxfield

  A Door into Ocean

  The Wall Around Eden

  Daughter of Elysium

  NOTE: If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher, and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book.”

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE CHILDREN STAR

  Copyright © 1998 by Joan Slonczewski

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form.

  Edited by David G. Hartwell

  A Tor Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Visit Joan Slonczewski’s home page:

  http://www.kenyon.edu/depts/biology/slonc.htm

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

  ISBN: 0-812-56862-1

  Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 98-19410

  First edition: September 1998

  First mass market edition: August 1999

  Printed in the United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Jeanne and Ron

  CONTENTS

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY-ONE

  TWENTY-TWO

  TWENTY-THREE

  TWENTY-FOUR

  APPENDIX

  THE

  CHILDREN

  STAR

  ONE

  The sun crawled steadily up behind the dying city. Its rays stretched across towers and avenues to the hillside, through the window of a shack, to the eyelids of six-year-old ’jum. The sunbeams teased ’jum to wake up and look out upon Reyo City, and count the many lightcraft rising to meet the ships in orbit around L’li. But when she woke, her belly gnawed inside. Above Reyo, one glowing lightcraft rose, another came down…not the thousands she used to count. So she counted the sunbeams instead. So many sunbeams peeked out through the skyline that even ’jum could never count them all.

  From behind she heard a scratching sound. In the corner scrabbled a rat, its nose twitching. ’jum watched the rat. Blood pounded in her ears, and her belly gnawed harder.

  She felt in her pocket and grasped a stone, a good heavy one, while her eye still fixed on the rat. With all her strength she flung the stone.

  Red lights flashed across her eyes, and her ears rang. But the rat lay there, twitching and squeaking, so she dragged herself over to it. After she broke its neck it lay still.

  From outside came the cry of a crow, the whine of a beggar, the grating of a wheelbarrow up the steep path. Once, the shacks that crowded the hillside would have all been stirring by now, with sweepers, garbage pickers, a seller of tin scrap in the doorway. Now all were gone.

  The wheelbarrow grated again and came to rest just outside. A hoarse voice called, “Any dead?”

  The call had become a part of the morning routine, since the “creeping” had spread. The creeping began as a numbness in the fingers and toes that crept upward over several months. It spread amongst people living together; how, ’jum did not know.

  “Any dead?” The call came closer now, and the barrow came to a halt just outside. Usually, ’jum’s mother would call to her from her bed, for ’jum to go out and answer. Of course, if no one answered, the man would just come in. Such a man with such a barrow had come in before, first for her sister, then her brother, then at last her father. Then the factory where ’jum worked had found out and sent her home. No more days of counting strange bits of metal to piece together, one thousand twenty-one, one thousand twenty-two; only the lightcraft to be counted, and the windows in the proud towers that reared opposite the hillside.

  With an effort ’jum pulled herself up and pulled the paper back from the doorway. The man’s grayish brown arms poked like sticks through his cloak. His cart already held two twisted bodies. Now he stared back at ’jum.

  ’jum closed her lips tight and shook her head.

  Expressionless, the man picked up the two handles of the barrow. The wheels creaked: one-and…two-and…’jum held on to their rhythmic sound. One always comes before two, and the digits of any number divisible by three add up to be divisible by three. As her family had subtracted, one by one, ’jum had added and multiplied, creating families of factors in her head. Six hundred ninety-three was a family of four: a seven, eleven, and twin threes…

  ’jum bit into the rat, tearing out its flesh as best she could. Then she thought of her mother, who could no longer rise from her sleeping mat and needed ’jum to feed her. ’jum felt her way across the room, lighted only by the window, to the mat where her mother slept, covered by a sack ’jum had salvaged from the factory still bearing the sign of Hyalite Nanotech. Her mother’s hand lay across it in the same position as the night before. Yet something had changed; the color of her hand was different, grayer. ’jum reached over and touched her mother’s hand.

  The hand was a frozen claw. ’jum shivered all over, as if the cold from the hand seeped through her body.

  The next thing she knew, she was standing outside, leaning against the shack. Her breath heaved, and her heart thumped as if it would burst from her chest. Behind her, the shack had filled with a chill emptiness that reached for her next.

  She tried to run, but the effort of rushing outside had exhausted her. She stared out over the roofs of the shacks that clung to the hillside, to the office towers of Reyo. From the top of one tower a lightcraft grew a golden cone and rose to the sky. Above the towers shone a bright star. Her mother had called it the Children Star, a faraway paradise that children were born to when they died.

  A cloud dimmed the sun, and now ’jum’s eyes could make out the windows in the towers. Broken panes hinted that even t
he most well-off had not escaped the creeping. ’jum calmed herself the one way she knew how, by counting the windows up and across; five times nine made forty-five, three times ten made thirty, and so on. In the old days at the factory she could have spent all day thus, counting the metal parts.

  As ’jum counted, a man in a pale hooded robe climbed up the hill, along the rutted path that the carts barely managed. The man strode purposefully. For a moment he paused, as if looking for someone. Then he resumed his pace and came over deliberately to face ’jum. His figure towered over her, blocking the sun and the city. One so erect and strong could scarcely be mortal; he must be a god. Perhaps the very god of Death.

  “Is that your home, little one?” Death’s voice was low, and his accent had a foreign edge. ’jum could only stare wonderingly. The hooded apparition half turned, as if uncertain. Then he said, “Is your mother home?”

  So that was it. Death himself had come for her mother.

  But this time, ’jum decided, he would fail. She drew herself up straight, planting her feet before the entrance to the shack. Her left hand dug deep into her pocket for the largest stone she had. As she clasped it, her eye judged her aim for the critical part of his anatomy.

  Death awaited her reply. Hearing none, he took something from his cloak and held it out to her. It was a chunk of bread.

  The smell of the bread overpowered her, so that she nearly fainted. She took the bread and tried to stuff it whole into her mouth, then she choked, as her throat was so dry. Expecting this, he produced a flask of water, miraculously clear and fresh. For the next few minutes she applied herself to consuming the bread and water, forgetting anything else existed. She barely noticed as he passed her to enter the shack, then came out.

  “Child,” he said, putting his hood back so that wisps of hair blew across his face. “What is your name?”

  ’jum did not answer. Her name meant “pig urine,” which her mother had intended to discourage evil spirits after losing two previous infants. But now she scanned the man’s face. He was younger than she had thought, his cheeks smooth and tanned, with a neatly cropped beard. His blue eyes fairly glowed.

  Something glinted on his chest, something hung on a chain. It was a transparent stone, as blue as his eyes. A sunbeam struck it, revealing a hidden star within, a star composed of three intercepting shafts. The star could define six triangles, with six sides shared and six outside, and seven connecting points.

  “You may call me Brother Rod.” His voice interrupted her study of the stone. “Come with me,” said Brother Rod. “You’ll always have enough to eat, where we’re going. It’s a different world, far from here, at a far star.”

  At that, ’jum’s lips parted and her eyes widened. “The Children Star.”

  He smiled, like her older brother used to. “‘The Children Star,’” he repeated. “That would be a good name for it.”

  By this time two beggars had found Brother Rod, and they grasped his cloak, whining for bread. He took out more bread and distributed it, while leading ’jum up the path to the top of the hill. When the bread was gone he spread his hands, but the beggars keened after him. So he gave them some coins, and his watch. Then he drew himself up and sketched a strange sign in the air. “The Spirit be with you, Citizens.” His voice was firm, and the muscles rippled in his forearm. The beggars moved off.

  At the top of the hill Brother Rod came to a halt. In the sky a glowing disk descended beneath a cone of boiling air. As the lightcraft came near, it hissed ever louder, and its heat baked ’jum’s face. But she stood there bravely until the craft settled upon the hill.

  The lightcraft rose on its beam of microwaves, lifting Brother Rhodonite and the child toward the ship that would soon cross the space folds. His last child that year, Rod realized with a wrench in his heart. L’li had once been a beautiful world, but its forty billion humans had long ago tilled its last acre and filled its last air with haze. Only the “creeping” had finally reversed its growth and started a ghastly decline. Elsewhere, citizens of the other six worlds of the Free Fold either shrugged in despair, or felt secret relief that something at last would curb the L’liite population. Rod sketched a starsign and silently prayed the Spirit to heal them all.

  The Sacred Order of the Spirit was the most ancient religious order in the Fold. Their roots reached back before the Free Fold, to Valedon, the gemstone world, in an age when world warred against world. Each Spirit Caller wore on his neck a Valan sapphire star. The star’s three shafts of light spelled the threefold call of truth, grace, and spirit; and wherever these were needed, Spirit Callers went. Brother Rod had been called to L’li.

  “Thanks for the smooth ride,” he told the lightcraft. Foreign money kept L’liite transport running for the tourists, but declined to cure her citizens.

  “You’re welcome, Citizen.” The lightcraft was an electronic sentient, no mere servo machine. Modern Valedon was known for both, and Rod knew better than to miss the difference. “I don’t often take passengers from that hill; and if things keep getting worse, I’ll quit the planet altogether. Do you return to Valedon, Brother Rhodonite?”

  “No, Citizen. To Prokaryon.”

  Prokaryon was a virginal frontier world, at a star two space folds away. With his fellow Callers, Rod collected dying orphans from L’li to join a small colony on Prokaryon. The child he had just collected was pale with fear; Rod held her close, wishing he could explain the wonders her future held on a world full of food, free of “creeping.”

  “Prokaryon!” exclaimed the lightcraft. “Are you human? I hope your cells have good arsenic pumps.”

  Rod smiled. “They do.” Unlike Valedon, Prokaryon was not terraformed, for today the Fold forbade alien ecocide. But Prokaryon’s alien ecology, full of arsenic and triplex DNA, poisoned human bodies. Unless, of course, they were lifeshaped, their genes modified to survive. Lifeshaping took best in young children.

  Out the viewport, the boarding station loomed ahead, its hull displaying the vista of ancient L’liite temples. The lightcraft docked, and its round door fused to that of the station like two mouths kissing. An entrance opened through the fused doors and widened into a corridor.

  Above the corridor, floating fingers pointed to Rod’s feet. “Watch your step,” a voice whispered in six languages.

  Rod caught the child’s hand, remembering that she might never have seen such a place. He ignored the virtual newscaster announcing new jump holes through the space folds, and new Elysian bank deals to finance copper mines on Prokaryon. Virtual doorways juxtaposed Reyo City’s nightlife with that of Elysium—the wealthiest world of the Fold, where people stayed young for a thousand years. Rod himself had toured the hot spots of Elysium, as a young Guardsman on leave. But he had left all that behind ten years ago, to follow the Spirit.

  At his cabin, the door molded itself open. Rod sketched a starsign to his fellow traveler, Brother Geode.

  “Back at last, Brother.” One of Geode’s six limbs sketched the star in return. “What kept you so long?” Like the lightcraft, Brother Geode was a sentient. Self-aware machines were called “sentients” ever since their revolt against their human creators two centuries before. Sentients were built of nanoplast, trillions of microscopic servos. Geode himself had a torso of nanoplast about the size and shape of a pillow, with his star sapphire nearly buried in blue fur. His nanoplastic limbs could extend and mold themselves to any length and thinness. His limbs sported fur in each of the primary colors, giving him the appearance of a giant multicolored tarantula.

  At the moment, Brother Geode had one red furry limb cupped to cradle a tiny infant, while a yellow limb fed it cultured breast milk. Three other infants slept in nanoplastic nooks nearby; the entire ship itself was a sentient. Brother Rod had brought all four of the infants from an orphanage in Reyo. The orphanage had run out of formula months ago; the infants, just left there that day, would not have lasted the week.

  “I found one more Spirit child.”

 
The girl flexed her toes in the carpet and stared wide-eyed at the sight of Geode.

  From a nook in the wall, a baby several weeks old awoke with a cry and stretched his trembling arms. Rod went over and swaddled him, then tucked him under his arm, as a bottle slid out from the dispensary window. The bottle held breast milk as “real” as a mother’s, including cultured lymphocytes. The infant soon settled against his chest, gazing upward into Rod’s eyes. With barely more weight on him than the newborns, his limbs were wobbly sticks, but the milk would bring him round. How resilient infants were.

  Geode’s two eyestalks rose from his torso like periscopes and trained on the girl. “An older child?” He spoke in Elysian, the language sentients preferred; they, like Elysians, were forever young. “An older child—not again. You’ve grown soft, Brother.”

  “She looks barely two.”

  “Malnourished. She’s six if I’m a day. An older child,” Geode repeated. “You know what the Reverend Mother will say.”

  The Reverend Mother Artemis had founded their colony on Prokaryon. It was she who first called Rod to the Spirit, in his final year at the Guard Academy. He still could not think of her except with a sense of awe.

  “The Reverend Mother will say we cast our nets well,” Rod replied. “I climbed the hill and brought what I found. Not a child under five was left alive.”

  “She’ll spend a year in the gene clinic, vomiting half the time,” Geode added, “and we’ll be the next ten years paying her off.” Infants up to eighteen months could be processed in a couple of weeks; older children took much longer, and adults might never make it. Rod himself had spent three years in treatment, yet he still could eat nothing grown on Prokaryon.

  Was Geode right? he wondered. The child’s eyes had arrested him, there on that hill; those eyes had clutched his heart against his reason…But the Spirit within had called to him, saying, This is the one.

  Rod adjusted the baby in his arms, holding up the tiny head. Then he turned to the girl. “See, child,” he told her in L’liite. “This will be your new brother on Prokaryon. You’ll have thirty-nine brothers and sisters—think of it. You’ll grow your own food, and even mine your own gemstones.”