Nascence City, the colonial capital, nestles halfway up the side of a volcano everyone swears is extinct (this surrounded by a lavid plain that seethes with fumaroles, geysers, and the like…suuurrrrre). You can see its lights winking, blinking, and nodding among the crags when you are down on the flats, but when the road actually begins climbing the mountain, your line of sight is blocked off by assorted igneous effusions that welled up some thirty million years ago—this geological travelogue courtesy of Nascence Alive!!!, one of those End-Every-Sentence-With-An-Exclamation-Point publications whose natural habitat is the top drawer of hotel night-tables.
The hotel in question was the Nascence Renaissance—redundant in name, and redundant to describe for those who have stayed at its kith and kin throughout our wart on the galactic arm. Squatting by the main highway, just inside the dome's airlock, surrounded with carefully tended greenery that would look more natural if it were plastic…anyone who has travelled on expense account knows that this same hotel follows you from city to city, running on ahead so it has time to put down its foundations and change its make-up in the hopes that you won't recognize it from the night before. Everywhere, the same covered entranceway, whether you drive up in a lava cruuz, sand-crawler, or gondola: so dark and shadowed by the overhanging portiere that they need lights during the daytime (globe-lights in simulated antique fixtures), and as you are helped out of your vehicle by a grizzled male in pseudo-military livery, you see assembling a battalion of bellhops who wash their ruddy cheeks each morning in a fifty-fifty aqueous solution of eagerness and cynicism. Professional small talk ensues momentarily; then, into a plush lobby befitted with oaken desk, crystal chandelier, and round-the-clock concierge (always a middle-aged woman who is the epitome of courtesy and dispatch, but whom you can tell was a Grade A heart- and ball-breaker in her day).
You can count on two artpieces in the foyer: one some sort of sunset, the other an historical motif, neither aggressively representational or abstract. The Nascence Renaissance held true to form on the first, with a hooked shag-wool tapestry of one (1) regulation red giant about to take its roseate leave behind a near-naked horizon clad only in a tastefully placed cactus. But what to my wondering eyes should appear on the wall above the neo-Victorian pseudo-hearth? Not the black-and-white Battle of This, nor the blue-study Treaty of That, nor even the sepia Discovery of The Other Thing: it was a layered assemblage of vertical mylar and buckram strips, the mylar a wispy mercurial foreground that tinselled several planes of fabric behind it (like a curtain of mist in a dream? a glittering spider web? bars of a gossamer cage?), and the stiff cloth backgrounds painted with dyes to give a textured three-dimensional picture of a nursery—playpen, cradle, toy box, stuffed animals scattered about the floor, dolls toppled over on a window seat, a closet with its door ajar and filled to overflowing with tiny carefully hung clothes.
At first, there was no one visible; but as I examined the work, I thought there was a small movement behind one of the nursery curtains. When I looked directly at it, nothing; but out of the corner of my eye, I caught a tiny quiver of motion behind the closet door, ducking out of sight too soon for me to see. Then in the toy box; then from behind a pile of dolls; then under the blanket tossed carelessly beside the cradle—the piece was alive with children peeking from behind every strip of fabric, but hiding too fast to leave more than the ghost of their passing.
"Computer-controlled," Leppid said at my elbow. "Hidden cameras keep track of your eye movements. You can watch all day and the little buggers will never be where you're looking."
"Could get bloody irritating after a while," I said.
"If it were done badly," he shrugged. "But it's not." And even though I was not kindly disposed towards the Doctor3 at the time, I had to admit he was right. The work had a subtlety and a sly naturalness that made it both haunting and haunted.
"Who's the artist?" I asked.
"Vavash," he answered. "Earth mother type—long straight silver hair, shapeless tie-dyed dresses, would rather wear glasses than have corrective surgery…a textbook classic. One of the First Colonists, of course. They're what make Crèche what it is. Since the Rediscovery, a lot of lesser lights have settled here to bask in reflected glory, but no one of any stature. Most of the new immigrants are…well, the group at the Vac/Port were typical. Black Velveteers."
"We'll stick to the First Colonists," I said hurriedly.
"I thought you'd feel that way," Leppid grinned. "I've set up a visit to their retreat tomorrow morning. It's in the Upper City—poshly Spartan. Entirely state-supported too; the other colonists treat the Firsties like royalty. Not much interaction between old and new, except at official ceremonies. It wouldn't hurt you to be a bit deferential around them."
I gave him a look that was intended to wither his fat-beribboned carcass right in its pointy-toed shoes. He laughed and slapped me on the back as if I'd told a joke.
My internal clock was scarcely in the sleeping mood when I retired to my room, so it seemed like a good time to refresh my memories of the sordid history of Crèche by looking up the colony in Auntie Agatha's Encyclopaedia of All Those Things You Should Have Learned in School, You Jam-Headed Git, But No, You Were Too Lazy to Apply Yourself and Now Look Where You Are… a reference work that I have recommended many times in this column, whenever I use it as a cheap expository device.
The First Colonists landed on Crèche some sixty years ago, the vanguard of what was intended to be a grand colonizing caravan that would bring hundreds of thousands of other nouveau Crechi and Crechae to this toasty-warm lava-ball. For Reasons That Have Never Been Adequately Explained (i.e. a computer error that the damned sneaky machines managed to cover up before human auditors arrived), all of the subsequent colony ships were diverted to the beautiful planet of Mootikki, famed for its semi-sentient water spiders that eat anything with a pulse. Forty years passed before some minor functionary stumbled across records of the original Crèche expedition and sent out a scout to peek in on their progress.
Crèche had not done badly, all things considered. There had only been ninety people on the lead ship, but there had been a full complement of builder-bots, plus all the materials needed to erect a life support dome and get the food vats pulsating. In fact, with only ninety people to support, there was an embarrassment of supplies, and more than enough bot-power to keep the staples stapled.
All skittles and beer then…except for The Problem. As reported by the Crechians to the scout four decades later, no children had come. Hell yes, they had tried making babies, with a lusty devotion, and according to all medical analyses, they were fertile as Teenagers-Who-Think-It-Can't-Happen-To-Them; but something in the water/air/top-soil/Van Allen Belts was preventing Mr. Sperm and Ms. Ovum from producing nicens little baby Zygote, and year after year went by without those little feet a-patterin'.
Now our old friend Sigmund the Shrink would be cocky as a cigar to hear what happened next: the Crèche colony turned to the solace of Art as compensation for lack of littl'uns. (Isn't that always the way? Every time you think Freudian psychology has finally achieved its own death wish and the world can move on to something loftier than the Poopoo-Weewee-Slurp School of Human Behavior, along comes some pack of clods giving their all to make the All-World Sublimation Team and you're right back in Libido-land. The human psyche is pretty damned anal-retentive about Freudianism.) Still, I thought to myself, the Crechians hadn't chosen either their situation or their hang-ups; the important question was what they had made with what they were given.