"Forward, Robert L - Rocheworld 02 - Return to Rocheworld - with Julie Forward Fuller 5.0" - читать интересную книгу автора (Forward Robert L)

Today was Carmen's birthday, although she had told no one on board about it. She was 72, well, 42 really. You couldn't count the time they had spent under the influence of No-Die. The drug had slowed the rate of aging of the crew by a factor of four, so they only aged ten years during the forty years they had spent coasting at twenty percent of the speed of light from Sol to Barnard. Unfortunately, the drug also lowered their Iqs by an equivalent amount, turning highly intelligent adults into large bodied preschoolers. All Carmen could remember of those years was her frustration at the boys not wanting to play doctor, and at the pain involved when William Wong finally did. She still remembered vividly the time when he poked her in the neck and said to James, "Carmen's got the mumps."
William changed after that, becoming distant and aloof. Then he pulled them all into the sick bay one by one, and gave them the most horrible treatment. It had made her feel weak and nauseated all the time, and her hair fell out. Just when she was starting to feel better, William was gone. Carmen had gone to his room for more of those tickle and kiss games that he, alone, of the men remembered how to play, but he was just lying there, stretched out under the tension sheet on his bed, still and cold, with only the Christmas Bush in attendance. Carmen knew now, that William had come out of No-Die in order to treat the crew with chemotherapy to save them from a virus-initiated Hodgkins cancer that had attacked them all. William had delayed treatment on himself in order to properly take care of them, and when it was his turn, it was too late. Part of her couldn't help but feel guilty for enjoying his adult sexuality while all the rest of the crew were acting like three-year-olds.
Carmen had spent the remainder of the time on No-Die feeling lonely and different. On No-Die, it was obvious that the other crew members were smarter than she was, and without their civilized veneers, the others had the heartless cruelty of children. As they started to be brought back, they would laugh because she had trouble reading, and would not play games with her because they thought beating her was too easy. That was when she first befriended Cinnamon.
Nels was ahead of them all intellectually, and while Jinjur nominally remained in charge throughout the No-Die void, it was Nels who thought up all the best games. Carmen noticed that sometimes he would slip off by himself, so one day she followed him. He went into an apartment Carmen had never been in before. It had belonged to Cinnamon Byrd. The viewwall in Cinnamon's apartment was perpetually set on a repetitive video scene that looked like someplace in Alaska, with a wild ocean and snow-covered trees in the foreground, and snowy mountain peaks in the distance. Nels sat making faces at a girl with long black braids, who was just lying there in the apartment sitting room, playing with her toes, and clapping with glee every time a whale breached the ocean in the viewwall scene. Cinnamon would smile and gurgle and coo, but Carmen had never seen her out playing with the others, or coloring, or watching cartoons. Carmen had hardly noticed Cinnamon during the training period before they went on No-Die, and the drug had lowered Cinnamon's mid-level IQ too far for her to interact with the others during the long flight out to Barnard.
Carmen started visiting Cinnamon's quarters regularly, and as they both came back to themselves, Carmen took the other woman under her wing. Before Carmen had relearned to read, she retaught Cinnamon the alphabet. And when Carmen remastered long division, she taught it to Cinnamon. By the time everyone was back in their own ages, Carmen and Cinnamon were inseparable. But however motherly she might feel toward her friend, Carmen was no one's mother, and never would be.
Carmen had grown up Catholic, and even with all the changes Vatican IV brought to the church, "Go forth and multiply" was still the 11th commandment. William had wanted to sterilize her when she first came on board. After all, the mission was to study, not to colonize. All the other women had their tubes tied. When Carmen refused, he demurred, saying that since all the men had undergone vasectomies anyway, she was in no danger of becoming pregnant. At first, Carmen thought it was wonderful sort of freedom to never have to worry about conceiving.
Vatican IV had accepted group marriages and since the whole crew was on this one-way mission to the stars for "better or worse, till death do us part", Carmen had cheerfully submitted to all her new husbands. But now her biological clock had started sounding alarms. This family of adults ... it wasn't enough. Down there on the surface of Eau those simple alien blobs of jelly could do God's will. They could co-mingle with a purpose, and reproduce. Carmen remembered vividly the last time she had gazed at floating dribbles of ejaculate. It had been so long ago that she wasn't even sure who's it was, but as the cleaning mini-imps for the apartment had carried them away, all Carmen could think of was "Death". That which should have been carrying life to her fertile womb, was lifeless and empty, decaying already.
Carmen's belly was rounded now only with her own fat. She would never feel "quickening", the stirring of life that she had felt when she touched her sister's belly so long ago. Her sister was a grand-mother or a great-grandmother now. Carmen would just grow old and die.
Carmen sat up. _This is ridiculous_, she thought. _I'm not dead yet. What was it the cat "Mahitabel" used to say? "there's life in the old girl yet!"_
Carmen splashed a little cold water on her face, letting the mini-imps scramble to collect all the spattered droplets. She looked at her reflection and re-applied her make-up. Her face seemed a little hollow, but, she thought critically, hollow was only to the good. Some day she would have to go on a serious diet or no one would remember that she had a chin.
Carmen left her room, palming the sliding room shut, and stood on the balcony surrounding the wide central shaft, listening quietly for a moment. It was usually easier to find Cinnamon by listening for her singing, than it was to ask James where she was. Carmen could hear her coming down the shaft from the hydroponics deck above.
"It's my party and I'll cry it I want to, cry if I want to, cry if I want to..." For a moment Carmen wondered if Cinnamon could tell she'd been crying, but when the tall girl saw her she just called out, "Welcome Home!" and swooped towards her to give her a big hug.
"Hey, hey! We missed you! I was worried about you!" Cinnamon released her and stepped back. "So when are you going back down to Rocheworld?"
"Going back?! What makes you think I'll be going back?" Carmen laughed. She stepped back and palmed open the door so that Cinnamon could come into her room.
"Nels says that we have to go back ... the chance to find out more about these flouwen ... it's just too big an opportunity to miss!"
"Yes, but I'm not the only comm expert, it'll be someone else's turn next time. Besides, we've all been cross-trained. After all, even you can land the SLAM..."
Cinnamon blushed. "Carmen; I told you the truth about that, and it's not funny! Gods! What if Jinjur actually wanted me to..."
Carmen laughed. "Don't worry. I don't think the General is desperate for volunteers. Anyway, I suppose we _will_ go back down, but I don't know how soon.
"All I know is that Nels is going to be one of the volunteers. He's chomping at the bit!"
"Nels? Why would he want...? Oh, I get it. He wants to see if he can breed a flouwen that we can eat."
"Don't be silly. He really _is_ the best person to study the flouwen ... at least from a biological point of view. And probably from an intellectual viewpoint. James says that the flouwen are very smart, and I _know_ that Nels is the smartest one on board."
"Like you're an objective judge of brains. After Nels saved the Alaskan coastline, you believe he can do anything. Besides, I'd wager that the smartest one on board is James."
"No bet! But I don't think Nels is perfect for everything, just perfect for this job. Not that I want him to go. Every landing is risky -- look what nearly happened to the six people who crashed on Eau. If anything happened to Nels, _I_ would have to be in charge of the hydroponics deck! We'd all be living on algae shakes within the week. But I'm really hoping that Nels will manage to convince Jinjur to let him go. You know though ... I think the General is one of the few people that intimidates Nels. I don't think that he has said a hundred words to her in all these years."
"Your hero has feet of clay?"
They both laughed together. They were close enough to Nels to know that he would appreciate the joke.
"Actually, Nels has hardly said a hundred words to the whole crew! He is the most ... reserved? ... quiet? ... succinct! ... man I know."
"Well you and he certainly did a lot of communicating way back when..."
"You mean the sex? Chula, we didn't waste anytime talking! He just made sure that I wasn't merely giving him a pity-fuck, and then we went at it. Foolish man ... legs just get in the way in zero-gee. Dios, you should know." She cocked an eyebrow at Cinnamon.
Cinnamon squirmed and looked down at her fingers.
"What?" exclaimed Carmen as she tried to catch her friend's eye. "You mean you still haven't?"
"He hasn't asked," said Cinnamon defensively. "Besides I'm not sure it would be good for the relationship."
"What relationship?" asked Carmen sarcastically.
"We're friends, and we work well together ... and _we've_ had this conversation before. Let's change the subject."
"Okay..." Carmen paused, "So what's been going on up here? Make anything new at the lab?"
"I almost forgot!" Cinnamon reached into her coverall pocket and pulled out a small glass globe filled with water. "I made this myself ... it's not real, it's a tissue culture from a pea blossom, but it came out pretty, I think. Anyway, welcome home."
Inside the palm-sized globe there floated what looked like a deep red rose. Closer inspection showed it to be all petals, with no stamen or stem, but Cinnamon was right, it was pretty.
"Thank you, Cinnamon!"
"You're welcome. Do tell me if it starts growing or shrinking or anything. It's one of my first DNA modifications and I need to know if it mutates."
Just then there was a knock at the door.
"Come!" called Carmen.
Jinjur stepped inside. "I hope I'm not interrupting?"
"Oh no, sir ... ma'am ... uh, just leaving, ma'am..." Cinnamon sidled around Jinjur and out the door. Jinjur looked after her. She knew who Cinnamon was, of course, but she had not had much contact with her. Still, this "ma'am" stuff had to go. Jinjur turned back to Carmen and cleared her throat.
"Well, from all accounts, you did very well out there."
"Thank you Jinjur, we all tried our best."
"Yes, yes, of course. But George and I have been talking things over. What we need to do next is to set up a communication link so that the flouwen can talk directly to the Earth."
"Is that possible? Think of the time lag involved! Why just the two second round trip time delay from Earth to the Moon makes conversation nearly impossible."
"George believes that the flouwen have incredibly long lives. They are very intelligent and can give the people of Earth a lot of new mathematical insight ... insight so pure, that back and forth conversation is hardly necessary."
_Dios_, Carmen thought. Then she said, "You'll need to have a specialized input pad ... aren't the flouwen geared toward sonic communication? Do they even have a written language?"
"They seem to be able to transfer memories chemically. They share 'tastes' of themselves to communicate ideas too large to be easily transmitted sonically. We will need to do a lot more research into that, but that's a matter for the biologists and the chemists. What I need from you, is a design for a laser communications link that will be able to transmit all the way to the Earth. It will need to be powerful enough to punch a wideband video signal over six lightyears, adaptable enough to maintain lock on Sol through all the rotational and orbital gyrations of Rocheworld, and rugged enough to stand up for decades in Eau's ammonia atmosphere and violent storms. I'd like for you, Caroline, and Shirley to get to work on it ... if you think you'd like another trip down to the surface?" Jinjur smiled.
Carmen was stunned for a moment. "Thank you!" she cried and hugged the Marine. "This is wonderful!" Then she paused and remembered the conversation she had just had. "You know General, you might also want to send Nels down. He'd be able to ferret out all the flouwen's physical peculiarities and maybe even its genetics."