The Meek Read online

  A fragrant wind hit his face, smelling of cardamom and lime. This was a full-fledged real forest, grown here underground, a habitat similar to the ones they had on Vesta, but a lot bigger. This was no trick of holography. He felt the thoughts of thousands drifting up from the forest. He finally understood it, their ability to communicate through thought, why they had made it part of their redesign, why it was so necessary to them, why without it they never would have built what they had here. Unencumbered by the clumsy medium of words, the clans of the Meek were at last forced to understand each other, to empathize and have compassion for each other. The rewritten 27 million letters in chromosome 3 had turned them all into empaths, and, while the ability for vocal speech had atrophied, especially because they no longer used their lungs to breathe, they could better live in harmony with each other by communicating with their minds.

  They had something here. He could sense it wafting up from the forest in cool delicate waves, a society, a way of life, a vision unique to the solar system, a place that was important, a culture that other cultures could learn from. They had a home here. A home they had made their own. A home that was now inextricably linked to their identity.

  And he knew he couldn’t let Axworthy take that away from them or make them abandon it for Charon.

  CHAPTER 15

  They landed under a particularly large tree in a clearing next to the river. Cody had never seen a tree like this before. Its trunk was straight and round, and rose thirty feet straight up to the first branches, which grew out from the trunk at ninety-degree angles, each branch spaced evenly from the next like the spokes in a cartwheel. These branches curved gently upward like bent fingers. Smaller branchlets grew from the primary ones, thatching the whole works like a roof. The leaves were flat, stiff, about half the size of his hand, pear-shaped, dark green in the middle but brightening to orange near the edges. This thatch of stiff green and orange leaves was so thick that people could walk on it up above.

  Cody took off his gloves and pressed his hands to the tree, loving the feel of its smooth bark under his palms, breathing in its scent, a rich resinous smell. He tapped it a few times, wondered how it would cure or if it would cure at all.

  Agatha said: We call these hearthtrees.

  She scrambled up the trunk, looped her left arm around one of the branches, and dangled there like a chimpanzee, staring at him with wide violet eyes. The forest floor was a lush blanket of marrow and fallen hearthtree leaves.

  She said: Are you coming? Buster’s waiting for you. You might as well get this over with.

  Encumbered by his pressure suit, burdened by an extra tenth of a gee, he wasn’t about to climb this tree, especially when he wasn’t physically designed for it the way Agatha was, with her long arms and strong feet.

  “I can’t climb,” he said, speaking out loud now that he had his helmet off. “I’m not used to this gravity, and my suit’s too heavy. Tell him to come down here. We’ll sit by the river.”

  He sensed two thoughts from her. First, she felt sorry for him, the way she might feel sorry for someone who was handicapped. Secondly, she wondered if Ben would be better at climbing trees than he was. She disappeared up through the branches.

  He walked to the river’s edge. The river was wide, flat, nearly a mile across, and smelled faintly of algae. The sound of the moving water soothed him. Much of the riverbank looked as if it had been recently flooded. He couldn’t help thinking of the grav-core flux, how Lake Ockham had bucked and pitched with tides, how it had finally spewed forth a soaking rain onto the city of Newton. Had the same thing happened here?

  He was impressed by the sheer size of the place, by the engineering miracles it must have taken to build it. Had they developed this technology by themselves or had they learned it from somewhere else? To build such a habitat in just 30 years, to recover from the bioextermination, to construct this whole river system … well … that meant crucial breakthroughs in ecoforming organisms. They couldn’t have built this so quickly without such organisms, he decided. Billions upon billions of eco-organisms, little nanoscapers, had been unleashed here, miles below the surface, turning the carbon-rich rock into a fully stocked river-valley system. All that water. How could they make all that water on this small dry planetesimal? Comet-fishing?

  He heard a thump behind him. He turned around and saw Buster standing there. The moonlight dappled Buster’s blue body. Buster approached Cody, licked his fingers, and pressed them to Cody’s lips. The cool wind blew through Cody’s mind, only this time the creosote smell remained faint, just one of several scents, one of a multiplicity of aromas, some spicy, some like fragrant flowers, some musky. It was as if with these scents Buster tried to convey the personalities and feelings of not only himself but of everybody who lived in the Forest of Peace and Understanding and in the City of Resolved Differences.

  Buster said: I bring you here because I want you to see us. Cody now sensed that Buster had at least partially come to terms with the way Lulu felt about him. I want you to know this. We have a way of life here. We have homes here. They might not be homes such as you choose to call them, but they suit us. The give us peace. They give us the tranquility we must always be vigilant to strive for. Our natures have been changed, but as I’ve told you before, we remember the way we were. We call it the ghost code, that which was erased from us by the marrow, but which is still there, hiding in latency, needing only a threat, such as the threat you have brought from Vesta.

  “We mean no threat,” said Cody.

  Buster seemed disappointed by this. He said: Let’s sit by the river.

  They walked downstream until they came to a garden with fountains and flowers, an open spot of riverbank with no trees, a lawn interspersed with beds of marrow. The moons—blue, pink, green, yellow, and red—cast reflections on the wide river. Some waterfowl, like swans but with looping crown feathers, paddled by.

  Cody and Buster sat on an ornate wrought-iron bench. Cody looked around at the impressive river habitat. He thought this might be a good time to ask some questions.

  “How did you hide all this from us for so long?” he said.

  Buster said: We knew you would come again. He gazed serenely at the water as it flowed past. We didn’t want to fight. We have no offensive weapons. We thought it would be better to hide. So we worked to build and implement a technology of invisibility. The strong organic component in much of our technology hides it from your sensors.

  “But why didn’t you hide it from us in the Gerard Kuiper?” he asked. “You hid it from the microsatellites. You hid it from 30 years of Defense Force probes. Why were we the first ones to see all this?”

  Buster raised his eyebrows, looked away. He said: Because our security system is geared to infiltrate and decode the heavy encryption of Defense Force sensors. The last thing we expected were sensors with no encryption, such as you utilized aboard your vessel. We strived valiantly to break what we thought were your secure codes. When we at first couldn’t find them, we tried all the harder, convinced that they must be more heavily encrypted than usual. By the time we realized you weren’t protected by any encryption at all, it was too late.

  “But all those surface probes Vesta sent here over the years,” said Cody. “How were you able to hide the silos from the probes? I understand how you can make the microsatellites see anything you want them to see, but the probes have no software. They’re simple roving cameras.”

  Buster said: You’ve seen the quality of our holography. A structure sits on the surface, but all a probe sees is uninterrupted terrain. The reason you saw what you did six weeks ago was because the silos, as you call them, were undergoing inspection, and so their camouflaging holography was turned off so it wouldn’t interrupt or distort our diagnostic testing. And because the silos are so big, it takes considerable time and technical resources to turn the holography back on. By the time we were ready to hide the silos again, you already knew they were there.

  Cody probed Buster for
more information about the silos, what their true purpose was, but Buster blocked strongly. So Cody went on to his next question.

  “Why steal our oxygen?” he asked.

  Buster said: To give you a nudge. To make you understand we meant business. Buster looked away. I didn’t particularly agree with that strategy. My own idea was to simply keep poking holes in your life-support infrastructure until you finally gave up and went home. But others demanded a more aggressive approach.

  Cody said, “And I don’t understand why you closed all the airlocks after the bioextermination. Why didn’t you just leave them open?”

  Buster nodded. In zero pressure, such as you have on the surface, we have to wrap ourselves in tape. But give us just a few millibars, and our bodies can survive untaped through a special modification of our lymphatic system, a modification that works in tandem with our extra mesh of skin. With the airlocks closed, the temperature and the pressure rise. That makes it more comfortable for us to work and scavenge in Newton. We are able to rove in Newton untaped. Buster’s eyes narrowed. And we must rove Newton. Newton is the basis of our technology.

  “It is?” said Cody.

  Buster said: All the Belt’s greatest universities are in Newton. All the equipment, labs, and other facilities were left intact after the neutron bombardment, all of it at our disposal.

  At that moment, Cody saw something in the air, five children on pedal planes, wings articulated like the wings of pterosaurs, a large propeller out front, powered by bicycle pedals—a pastime common on the asteroids because of low gravity. Children. Born to this place. Their home. He sensed their distant emanations. They were having fun.

  Buster said: These are our children. Meek children. Not orphans. They are not of the crèche. They don’t know the loneliness of the crèche. They have fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers. They have uncles and aunts and cousins. They have grandparents. These children have a place. This place. I never had a mother. I never had a father. I never had a place. I was the first. I was Original Man. I never want these children to go through what I went through. I don’t want these children to be orphans.

  Like a flock of ungainly birds, the children headed down-river. Cody thought of the children back on Vesta. Prone to bone and vascular conditions, needing Ceres to prevent them. Ceres, the dream. An asteroid big enough to remain geologically stable under the force of a stronger gravity. A place where children of the Belt could grow up straight and healthy. Ceres, the center of learning. A dream from the past. What kind of alternative was it when there were these other children flying up in the sky, slim-boned and delicate, designed for microgravity, living in trees, with mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters?

  “Could we not learn to share?” he asked.

  Buster said: I wish we could.

  “And why can’t we?”

  Buster said: Because Ceres is more than just a home to us now. Ceres is a means to an end. This puzzled Cody. He tried to get more on this but the smell of creosote grew stronger. Buster was blocking. Buster changed the subject, went to the matter they were really here to discuss. I’ve plucked whole from your mind Vesta City’s counterproposal, have run models on just how long we could survive on Charon under the conditions and restrictions they demand, and have determined that we could survive on a subsistence level only, in a cold and hard place where there couldn’t be many moments of joy. I’m afraid the answer is no. We will not leave. The negotiation is at an end. There can be no other answer from us. You and the others must leave. This is the only solution. You and the others must understand that Ceres is a dangerous place for you now. Ceres can never be what it once was. Ceres has been changed forever.

  As Cody watched the children disappear down the river on their pedal planes, as delicate as fairies, he knew that a renewal of the hostilities was all but inevitable now. He pictured the bombed-out buildings in Planck’s Constant, hulking ruins sleeping in their own piles of rubble, and thought that there would never now be a cleanup or a reconstruction, that the classrooms of Newton would never again ring with the voices of children, and that once again the ruins would be simply places for soldiers to take cover in. He had come here with great plans. He had come here believing he was going to make a difference. The children on pedal planes finally disappeared into the misty light of the moons. He had never expected to inadvertently become the catalyst for a new war.

  Axworthy stared pensively at his hands when Cody told him Buster’s answer. He finally took a deep breath and ran his hand through his thick white hair.

  “So he as good as told you that they have no weapons, nothing large or significant, just knives and this nano-putty, and their ability to hide really well. And then he refused our counteroffer, refused to give up Ceres even though I have enough firepower aboard the Conrad Wilson to blast the asteroid from the sky. You see what Jerry means when he says you can’t negotiate with these people, even when they have a gun held to their heads?”

  “Yes,” said Cody.

  “I don’t believe it,” said Axworthy. “How did Buster explain the surface silos?”

  “He didn’t.”

  “And what about the gravity-field projector?”

  “We didn’t talk about it.”

  “And what’s this about Ceres being a means to an end? What does he mean by that?”

  “I don’t know,” said Cody.

  “I think he’s lying,” said Axworthy. “This is nothing but orphan double-talk.”

  “He can’t lie; he can only omit. I would sense an out-and-out lie.”

  “And this place you saw, this Forest of Peace and Understanding, this City of Resolved Differences. You saw nothing that looked like military activity there?”

  “No.”

  Axworthy rubbed his chin reflectively.

  Cody thought about it. “Couldn’t we send our children to Earth?” he asked. “Growing up in Earth’s gravity would be just as beneficial to their long-term health.”

  Axworthy shook his head and smiled sadly. “That’s a 320-million-kilometer journey round-trip under optimum conditions,” he said. “Vesta would be bankrupt in six months. Trips to Earth are prohibitively expensive, you know that. I’m sure Vesta City’s going to escalate the pressure somehow. Council has offered the Meek a more than generous chance. If they don’t want to take it, then they’re going to have to suffer the consequences.”

  “And what might those consequences be?” asked Cody.

  “We’ll have to wait and see.”

  Cody heard someone approaching from outside. He faintly sensed Azim, and a moment later Azim stood in the door. He had his hands clutched before him in an inadvertent gesture of prayer, and he looked uncomfortable, as if his intrusion were the grossest breach of etiquette he could imagine.

  “Sir, I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said, and bowed a few times, silently begging the commander’s pardon.

  “Go ahead, Azim.”

  Azim glanced at Cody, squeezing his lips together, then turned back to Axworthy and stroked his small pointed beard a few times in an effort to get his words in order.

  “Sir, photo, satellite, and sonar reconnaissance indicate nuclear detonations at silos 2, 7, 9, and 13.”

  He gave Axworthy several quick nods, as if he felt he had to chase his words vigorously with these affirmative gestures, and rubbed his hands together like he was nervously waiting for the commander to believe him. Axworthy’s face stiffened and he leaned forward. It looked for a moment as if Axworthy were indeed going to refute Azim’s assertions. Yet Cody sensed that Azim was telling the truth, that he was dead sure of his facts.

  “Detonations?” said Axworthy. Azim’s shoulders sagged a bit. “No launches? Just simple detonations? Detonations on-site?”

  Cody could see why Axworthy was so puzzled. Why would the Meek stockpile nuclear weapons only to blow them up in their silos? Azim hoisted a nervous grin to his lips, a messenger hoping to keep himself from harm’s way.

  “Detonations on-site, si
r,” confirmed Azim.

  “Were you able to obtain any triggering information?” Axworthy gazed at Azim with an expression of increasing mystification. “Were they intentional detonations or were they accidents?”

  “Triggering data was unobtainable, sir.”

  Axworthy pondered all this, finally shook his head, then motioned toward the door.

  “We might as well go have a look,” said Axworthy.

  Cody followed Axworthy and Azim to the control room. Claire Dubeau sat at her laptop analyzing the data as it came in. She looked as perplexed as Axworthy. Azim ran the footage from silo 7. First just the structure, in the dark, inactive. Then a blinding flash … and that was all they saw for a while. Azim flicked from camera-emplacement 1 to camera-emplacement 5, ten kilometers back, where the blinding flash at last resolved itself into not the traditional mushroom cloud such as might be expected in an oxygen atmosphere, but into a sphere of white light radiating off to the left, funneled through the silo’s aperture. Cody noted the curious sideways thrust of the blast. And thinking of thrust, he quickly arrived at a hypothesis.

  “Claire, could you access the GK navigational program?”

  Axworthy joined them, interested in what he was doing. “What’s going on?” he asked.

  “The ejecta signature of the blast has given me a hunch,” said Cody. “But in order to confirm it, Claire’s going to need clearance to go into the Conrad Wilson‘s current triangulation file.”

  “Why?”

  “I want to check our orbital trajectory.”

  “For Ceres?”

  “Yes.”

  Axworthy frowned. “But it’s well known,” he said.

  “I think it just changed. I think the silos are thrusters.”

  Axworthy stared at him, taking this in, assimilating the ramifications, and how they connected to the four nuclear detonations. Then he walked over to the communications console and raised the Conrad Wilson.