Analog Science Fiction and Fact - June 2013

ANALOG
Children clambered over the playground
equipment. Younger kids with shovels and
pails dug in sandboxes. Dark lacked soil, but it
had plenty of sand. As she had sensed from
the distance, several of the bigger kids were in
the tiny garden plot. Picking tomatoes, apparently.
All the boys and girls wore pants and
sweaters, dressed alike except for color. Red
for the oldest, blue for the cohort a year
younger, green for those a year younger still.
Like uniforms. Why had she never noticed
that?
The yard, for all the dozens of little ones,
was quiet and orderly; the expressions on so
many of the young faces seemed purposeful
rather than playful. But on what basis could
she form expectations? Only ancient memories
of her own childhood.
Dana walked to the garden. She leaned forward,
hand outstretched to tousle Eve’s hair.
Eve scuttled away, circling behind a row of
potted tomato plants, to shelter behind Li.
“Excuse me, Eve,” Dana said. “I didn’t mean
to startle you.”
“Tell Ms. Dana you’re sorry,” Li directed.
“No need,” Dana said hastily. “Honey, how
are you doing? Are you enjoying the nice
weather?”
Eve buried her face in Li’s back. “I’m sorry,
Ms. Dana,” she mumbled.
Her brothers (for lack of a more fitting
term) had sidled close together.
“How are you big boys today?” Dana asked.
“Fine, Ms. Dana,” Castor said. Pollux, his
lower lip trembling, held out a tomato.
“Run along,” Li told them. “Take inside
what you’ve picked, and then see if Mr. Carlos
could use your help.”
Pails swinging at their sides, the three scampered
toward the childcare center.
“What was that about?” Dana asked Li.
“What do you mean?”
Around the sandboxes, most of the children
had stopped their play. Several stared, wideeyed,
at Dana. She said, “Look at them.”
“Kids watch adults. That’s part of how they
learn. They don’t see you often, is all.”
Only to Dana these children looked wary,
not curious. “And Eve? I would swear she was
afraid of me. Pollux, too.”
Li sighed exasperatedly. “Shy. Eve was shy,
Dana. Pollux, too. Kids sometimes are. Now
look what he gave you, and what you did with
it.”
Dana looked. Her hand was wet and sticky.
She had squeezed the tomato into goo; juice
and pulp dribbled between her fingers.
“I guess I’m tense,” she admitted. No,
scared shitless that Rikki was right. That apart
from Li, none of them knew what they were
doing. “Maybe the kids picked up on that.”
“They did,” Li said flatly.
“Sorry about that.” More sorry than you
can imagine.
“Go home,” Li said. “Take the afternoon off.
There’s something important I’ll be bringing
up after dinner.”
“We’ve reached a major milestone,” Li said.
Around the dinner table, the peasants studied
her with curiosity. Carlos wore a relaxed
grin, from a beer or three too many rather
than from foreknowledge.
“Every day is a new challenge,” Li continued.
“Every day has its chores. But look what
we’ve accomplished. Wheat, corn, and barley
crops ripening for the upcoming harvest, and
enough freeze-dried bacterial mat to see us
through bad weather. Remote-sensing instruments
placed on the moons. Our very own climate-improvement
program.”
“And ever more thriving children,” Carlos
added. Giving Li credit, predictably. With
hopes, no doubt, of . . . reward later.
“And thriving children,” Li repeated.
She had set the dining-room walls to a
peaceful seascape, a gentle froth of combers
rushing up and swirling back down a
sparkling white sand beach. In a cerulean sky,
behind pink wisps of cloud, a tomato-red sun
kissed the sea. Waves whispered, and tropical
breezes sighed through palm trees, and sandpipers
piped. Restful. Hopefully lulling. Even
Carlos and Rikki, neither of whom had ever
visited Earth or experienced such a sunset,
must feel it.
The common experiences of thousands of
generations embedded themselves in the genetic
code. Not as simple as memory, genetic
programming recorded the common heritage
of the species. Genetic programming instilled
fear of the dark, when predators hunted and
proto-humans were wise to hide, and of
predators yet unseen. Genetic programming
suggested, too, what was not a threat and
when—as in this case—it was safe to relax.
88 EDWARD M. LERNER