In Search Of... Part 1

PART I

“Act your age, Tay!”

Her father was managing (just) to keep his temper, but she knew that wouldn’t last.

“You’ve got to learn there’s more to life than floating around with your friends!”

Any minute now, and he’d start really yelling and then slam out of the air lock without sealing it properly. Which meant their pod would begin taking on water, which meant she and Mom would have to spend the rest of the morning mopping and pumping it out again.

It was all so familiar. She could do entire arguments with her dad on automatic.

Then her mom spoke.

“Tay, this isn’t helping. We have something to tell you. Now. Something you need to hear.”

Tay stared. This wasn’t part of the routine. Mum usually stayed right out of the quarrels with her dad.

Her mom took a deep breath, then let it go.

“We’re going to have another child, Tay,” she said. “When it’s born, you know there won’t be enough air in the pod for four. You’ll have to leave. I... we’re sorry.”

There it was — as bald as that.

She’d known this would happen. Of course she did. It happened to everybody — and still her knees went weak, and she shivered with a sudden sick chill.

“You don’t need to look like that. It’s not as if you aren’t old enough.” Her father’s voice was quiet, almost pleading. “You’re eighteen, after all. Your mother and I were the same age when we left our home pods.”

I don’t care! Tay cried silently. I’m not you — I’m not ready!

“Forth’s and Eden’s parents have applied formally to us,” said Mum. “Either would make a good partner for you. And there’s always Esk. I could easily speak to his mother about him.”

Mum was still talking, but Tay couldn’t bear to listen anymore. She wasn’t stupid. She’d known that one of the three boys would be her pod partner. There had never been any other choice. And since Widow Lunan had died, a pod was sitting empty, deactivated, waiting for a new couple to start their life there. To start breathing there. The pod membrane system, which extracted oxygen from the surrounding water and expelled carbon dioxide from within, was able to process a breathable atmosphere for up to three people. Which had always meant a couple, and one child.

And Tay had had her turn being her parents’ baby. It was someone else’s turn to breathe the home air with them, to be the center of their love, to belong. Air. Love. Belonging.

It was all rationed on Planet Rannoch.

“It doesn’t mean we don’t love you,” Mum said quietly, as if she’d heard her daughter's thoughts. “It just means it’s time for you to move on.”

Suddenly, Tay couldn’t stand it. She couldn’t stand them — her parents — with their oh-so-concerned faces and their careful voices and their horrible power. She had to get out. I won’t cry, she told herself. I swear I won’t cry. But she was already sobbing as the air lock sealed. It occurred to her too late that this was her chance to try Dad’s trick. See how he liked mopping up after her for a change.

As the water swirled over her face, she shoved the portable breather into the slot in her throat, hard, so it hurt. Angry and sore, Tay swam away from the pod.

She didn’t know that her mother was watching from the porthole, admiring even then her daughter’s grace and strength, until the glow of her skin disappeared into the dimness. Then, with a sigh, Mum turned away.

“Should I...?” Dad let the question trail off as she shook her head sadly.

“Leave her be,” she said. “I remember feeling just the same.”

As she swam past the school, Tay could see the Grouping below hers in class. She let herself drift for a bit, watching, thinking, That used to be me. I used to roll up every day, like them, plug in my audio helmet, listen to Mr. Lomond maundering on.... I wonder what they’re doing today?

She kicked a little closer.

It was history.

Every child in the Enclosure was taught history. That was required in the original Charter.

The Charter covered every part of life. It was so old, it had the actual signature of Ensign Leith, the last living member of the starship Macmillan’s crew. Every child was shown that signature specially. It was spidery, and shaky, and pale. Leith was an old man by then.

There was something a little forlorn about that signature.

Anyway, the Charter held firm, even after all this time, and children were taught the events of Year 0, simply at first, with stories and drawings, and then, as they reached their teens, with the Video.

The Video lasted only a few moments. It had survived the crash, when so much data had not, by some fluke that no one understood, and then it had been transferred to equipment developed to operate in seawater and at depth. The school was situated behind the Administration Pod and made use of its outlets to power the audio helmets that allowed teachers and pupils to communicate. Seaweed anchors kept the pupils more or less in place, and the screen let into the back of the Admin Pod was their blackboard and book.

Tay remembered the day Mr. Lomond had shown her Grouping the Video. His voice, as it came over the audio helmets, had been unusually solemn. He began by reminding them of what they already knew.

“When the Survey Starship Macmillan first arrived, our sun didn’t even have a name. It was only N3317 on the long-range maps. So they decided to call it Beten, after the newest member of the crew, a baby born just as the ship reached the outermost planet. That baby was probably toddling by the time they came to Rannoch, our world. Along the way they would have been surveying each planet from orbit, building up a detailed picture of our solar system, and correcting the inevitable minor mistakes the long-distance chartists had made.

“One of those mistakes, however, turned out to be anything but minor.

“The mapmakers had hoped that this system might just be one of the special ones, near enough like the star system that contains Earth. A Class G sun, a collection of gas and rock planets, and in the optimal orbit (not too close to the center star, not too far), a possible place for life. Ninety-nine point nine nine nine systems out of a hundred don’t conform — but in a universe as big as this one, that still left some that did. Then again, not all of those systems had produced life. And not all of those that did had moved beyond the stage of one-celled organisms. But sometimes…

“This time their guess was good. There was life on Rannoch, but they didn’t realize how dangerous discovering it would prove to be.”

The teacher paused and then ran the Video.

The screen showed a view from space, from a starship. A planet spread out below like a milky ball. Cloud cover was almost complete, but the occasional break gave tantalizing glimpses of blue.

“What I wouldn’t give for a swim in a sea,” sighed a woman’s voice. She sounded weirdly breathy and she pronounced her words in an odd way, too, but it was still possible to understand her.

“Yeah,” a man answered. “Still, it’s ’look, don’t touch’ in our line of work. Get it mapped and get on to the next one. If we find life signs, they’ll send a Landable.”

The woman grunted. She seemed fed up.

“I can move in for a closer look if you like, though,” the man suggested.

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

The milky sphere grew until it almost filled the screen.

“Nice,” came the woman’s voice again. “Thanks.”

“H’m. Now, that’s an unusual solar flare,” said the man. “It wasn’t showing up before. You’d better get an analysis of that.”

They heard the woman yawn. The chair creaked, as if she were stretching.

“No thanks. Tell Sam about it. There are exactly two minutes of my shift left, and I’m not starting anything that’ll keep me away from my bed a second longer.”

The man chuckled. “Fair enough,” he said. “See y—”

And that was where the Video stopped.

“Just like that,” said the teacher to the unusually silent class. “The end of the Macmillan.”

The ship had slammed into the shock wave from the solar flare and immediately begun to break up. Two hundred escape pods had launched; less than a hundred made it to the layer of the clouds. They’d ripped through, one by one, heading for the sea below, and the clouds lazily closed up behind them.

“Distress messages were undoubtedly sent out, both from the Macmillan at the time of impact and automatically from the escape pods at the moment of ejection. It is believed that the solar storms interfered with their transmission. At any rate, no answer was ever received nor, as far as we know, was any attempt ever made to retrieve the Macmillan’s crew.”

Mr. Lomond had looked around at them carefully, she remembered. He must have been worried we’d be a bit freaked. Knowing the story and seeing the Video — well, they weren’t the same thing.

“We now know that, at certain times of a biennial cycle, the solar winds in this system become fierce enough to destroy just about any thing smaller than a planet.”

“Even a starship,” murmured Tummel.

Their teacher nodded. “Even a starship. The Macmillan arrived at the right place at the wrong time. But, of course, all was not lost.

“Being entirely covered by water meant that surviving on this world was going to be a challenge. It meant that we would have to be adaptable, we would even have to adapt ourselves, to work with the basic human design to make it more suited to our new environment. How big a change are we talking about? I have here a picture of Ensign Leith’s family, taken on Earth, which he managed to save from the wreck of the starship. He had it with him to the day he died. We understand them to be typical of their kind.”

He’d screened the picture, and Tay grinned to herself as she remembered their reactions.

“But...they’re so UGLY!” exclaimed Carr.

Mr. Lomond had smiled. “The decision to genetically tailor your ancestors for better low-light vision, phosphorescent skin, increased red blood cell count and lung capacity,  and essential throat vents for portable breathers was made at the time of the Charter.”

“And the increased physical beauty? Mine, for example?” asked Esk, posing.

“An unforeseen side effect,” the teacher answered dryly.

The class hooted.

“But look at those people!” Carr was still fixated on the picture. She couldn’t get over it. “Imagine... being a pod partner to something like that!”

And it all came flooding back to Tay — what she was swimming away from, the future that she couldn’t escape. She powered off, kicking hard, her strokes fueled by anger and frustration.

She didn’t even know where she was going.

Continued in Part II