After that warm wet hour they dressed, and trooped into the kitchen, damp and pink-skinned, queuing up and filling their plates, sitting at the long tables scattered among the adults. There were one hundred and twenty-four permanent residents, but usually about two hundred people there at any given time. When everyone was seated they took up the water pitchers and poured each other’s water, and then they tore into the hot food with gusto, downing potatoes, tortillas, pasta, tabouli, bread, a hundred kinds of vegetables, occasionally fish or chicken. After the meal the adults would talk about crops or their Rickover, an old integral fast reactor they were very fond of, or about Earth—while the kids cleaned up and then played music for an hour and then games, as everyone began the slow process of falling asleep.
One day before dinner a group of twenty-two people arrived from around the polar cap. Their little dome had lost its ecosystem to what Hiroko called spiralling complex disequilibrium, and their reserves had run out. They needed sanctuary.
Hiroko put them in three of the newly-mature treehouses. They climbed the staircases spiralling up the outsides of the fat round shoots, exclaiming at the cylindrical segments with their doors and windows cut into them. Hiroko put them to work finishing construction on new rooms, and building a new greenhouse at the edge of the village. It was obvious to all that Zygote was not growing as much food as they now needed. The kids ate as modestly as they could, imitating the adults. “Should have called the place Gamete,” Coyote said to Hiroko on his next time through, laughing harshly.
She only waved him away. But perhaps worry accounted for Hiroko’s more distant air. She spent all her days in the greenhouses at work, and seldom taught the children any more. When she did they only followed her around and worked for her, harvesting or turning compost or weeding. “She doesn’t care about us,” Dao said angrily one afternoon as they walked down the beach. He directed his complaint at Nirgal. “She isn’t really our mother anyway.” He led them all to the labs by the tunnel hill greenhouse, chivvying them along as he could so well.
Inside, he pointed to a row of fat magnesium tanks, something like refrigerators. “Those are our mothers. That’s what we were grown inside. Kasei told me, and I asked Hiroko and it’s true. We’re ectogenes. We weren’t born, we were decanted.” He glared triumphantly at his frightened, fascinated little band; then he struck Nirgal full on the chest with his fist, knocking Nirgal clear across the lab, and left with a curse. “We don’t have parents.”
Extra visitors were a burden now, but still when they came there was a lot of excitement, and many people stayed up most of the first night of a visit, talking, getting all the news they could of the other sanctuaries. There was a whole network of these in the south polar region: Nirgal had a map in his lectern, with red dots to show all thirty-four. And Nadia and Hiroko guessed that there were more, in other networks to the north, or in complete isolation. But as they all kept radio silence, there was no way to be sure. So news was at a premium—it was usually the most precious thing that visitors had, even if they came laden with gifts which they usually did, giving out whatever they had managed to make or obtain that their hosts would find useful.
During these visits Nirgal would listen hard to the nights’ long animated conversations, sitting on the floor or wandering and refilling people’s teacups. He felt acutely that he did not understand the rules of the world; it was inexplicable to him why people acted as they did. Of course he did understand the basic fact of the situation—that there were two sides, locked in a contest for control of Mars—that Zygote was the leader for the side that was right—and that eventually the areophany would triumph. It was a tremendous feeling to be involved in that struggle, to be a crucial part of the story, and it often left him sleepless when he dragged off to bed, his mind dancing through to dawn with visions of all he would contribute to this great drama, amazing Jackie and everyone else in Zygote.
Sometimes, in his desire to learn more, he even eavesdropped. He did it by lying on a couch in the corner and staring at a lectern, doodling or pretending to read. Quite often people elsewhere in the room didn’t realise he was listening, and sometimes they would even talk about the children of Zygote—mostly when he was actually skulking out in the hall.
“Have you noticed most of them are left-handed?”
“Hiroko tweaked their genes, I swear.”
“She says not.”
“They’re already almost as tall as I am.”
“That’s just the gravity. I mean look at Peter and the rest of the nisei. They’re natural born, and they’re mostly tall. But the left-handedness, that’s got to be genetic.”
“Once she told me there was a simple transgenic insertion that would increase the size of the carpus callosum. Maybe she fooled with that and got the left-handedness as a side-effect.”
“I thought left-handedness was caused by brain damage.”
“No one knows. I think even Hiroko is mystified by it.”
“I can’t believe she would mess with the chromosomes for brain development.”
“Ectogenes, remember—better access.”
“Their bone density is poor, I hear.”
“That’s right. They’d be in trouble on Earth. They’re on supplements to help.”
“That’s the g again. It’s trouble for all of us, really.”
“Tell me about it. I broke my forearm swinging a tennis racket.”
“Left-handed giant bird-people, that’s what we’re growing down here. It’s bizarre if you ask me. You see them running across the dunes and expect them to just take off and fly.”
That night Nirgal had the usual trouble sleeping. Ectogenes, transgenic … it made him feel odd. White and green in their double helix … For hours he tossed, wondering what the uneasiness twisting through him meant, wondering what he should feel.
Finally, exhausted, he fell asleep. And in his sleep he had a dream. All his dreams before that night had been about Zygote, but now he dreamed that he flew in the air, over the surface of Mars. Vast red canyons cut the land, and volcanoes reared nearly to his unimaginable height. But something was after him, something much bigger and faster than him, with wings that flapped loudly as the creature dropped out of the sun, with huge talons that extended toward him. He pointed at this flying creature and bolts of lightning shot out of his fingertips, causing it to bank away. It was soaring up for another attack when he struggled awake, his fingers pulsing and his heart thumping like the wave machine, ka-thunk, ka-thunk, ka-thunk.
The very next afternoon the wave machine was waving too well, as Jackie put it. They were playing on the beach, and thought they had the big breakers gauged, but then a really big one surged over the ice filigree, knocked Nirgal to his knees and pulled him back down the strand with an irresistible sucking. He struggled, gasping for air as he tumbled in the shockingly icy water, but he couldn’t escape and was pulled under, then rolled hard in the rush of the next incoming wave.
Jackie grabbed him by the arm and hair, pulled him back up the strand with her. Dao helped them to their feet, crying, “Are you okay, are you okay?” If they got wet the rule was to run for the village as fast as they could, so Nirgal and Jackie struggled to their feet and raced over the dunes and up the village path, the rest of the children trailing far behind. The wind cut to the bone. They ran straight to the bathhouse and burst through the doors and stripped off their stiff garments with shaking hands, helped by Nadia and Sax and Michel and Rya, who had been in there bathing.
As they were being hustled into the shallows of the big communal