His weight eased. A whisper of thrust continued: though the oxygen and hydrogen tanks were empty, the fusion plant remained. With that he could reach the planets. Once you're in orbit you're halfway to anywhere.

He glimpsed Geographic twinkling ahead.

"Docking sequence initiated," Cassandra said.

Carlos unlocked his chair and spun it sixty degrees around. Cadmann was resting with his eyes closed. Sylvia's hand rested softly in his. Zack was engrossed in a holo data-management module display, probably some inventory list that needed to be vetted for the hundredth time.

They needed someone like Zack. Thank God it didn't have to be Carlos Martinez! That, Carlos decided, would have been a genuine waste. But someone needed to put tomorrow on an even par with today.

He, Carlos, enjoyed the present far too much.

Geographic was nearly history's largest work of man (the Zuider Zee still held the record) and was certainly and by far the largest movable object. Though a mere skeleton of its former size and mass, it was still impressive as hell. Cadmann could remember the young man he had been, flying up from Buenos Aires to Geographic for the first time, one of a shuttle group of twelve. The first inspection of a genuine interstellar spacecraft was so different from the simulator sessions they had all suffered through.

It had been the culmination of a dream, a grand adventure at the end of a lifetime of adventures, something so beautiful, so rife with possibility...

It was too big. And it was going to take them someplace too far, and take entirely too long to do it—and they had worked to be there. If they had had regrets it was far too late to voice them by the time they were aboard.

"I was thinking..." Cadmann said. "Why did we come out here?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You know what I'm talking about. Not what we say to the children. Not the myths. Why are we really here?"

Zack glanced up from his figuring. "What do you mean?"

"Why is it that all of us were willing to risk our lives. Our histories. Not one of us had enough family or friends to hold us to Earth."

"I brought my wife with me," Zack said. "So did Joe Sikes and some others."

"Think, now. We weren't the smartest and bravest, even though that's what we told ourselves." The Minerva was sailing through a sea of stars, the bright blue haze of Avalon below them. "We were the ones willing to leave it all behind. To go."

"Speak for yourself," Sylvia said. "Terry and I wanted to come here. We worked at it. Worked hard. A lot of us did, Cadmann—for that matter so did you."

They felt a gentle jolt as the padded docking tubes engaged, and inflated. Docking with Geographic was like an act of slow love, a reunion with an old and dear friend. She had seen them through so much, and seemed to be waiting to discover if they would need her again, ever. The air always seemed to change flavor now, at this point. Just his imagination, no doubt.

"Top floor dungeon," Carlos said. "Jewelry department, leg irons, neck irons—"

Rachael and Zack were out of the Minerva and swimming down the lines leading to the Geographic's main lock. A curved door sealed behind them, and they were in a womb of steel and ceramic. Another door opened, and they were in the main corridor.

The ship smelled faintly musty. Twenty years of near desolation hadn't changed that, and they had never quite gotten that smell out of the ship. Two hundred people living in close proximity for a hundred years will do that—even if ninety-five percent of them are asleep at any given time.

They heard a voice from deeper in the ship, and Carolyn McAndrews hailed them. She was followed by Julia Hortha and Greg Arruda. There was always someone aboard because Geographic served as an orbiting machine shop for maintenance of the observation satellites, and Cassandra and her maintenance and repair robots couldn't be prepared for everything. There was never a problem finding volunteers to keep watch for a week, and for many it was a plum assignment, a chance to get away and meditate in near isolation. Carlos had, of course, taken advantage of other aspects of Geographic. He had taken many tours well stocked with female friends. He hadn't quite tired of the null-grav amenities, but he was slowing down.

Carolyn swam down the lines effortlessly. Although her bulk was growing more and more ponderous, she moved with an uncanny grace, here where her weight was that of thistledown.

"Good to see you," she greeted them. "It was only just getting lonely up here. Lots of time, and old cubes to sort through, but... well." A strand of her washed-out brown hair floated away, got away from her, and she chuckled and swept it back into place. "How are the children?" she asked.

"Fine," Carlos said. "But they overwater your plants."

She patted him on the chin, and kissed him lightly. "Thank you," she said. "Now—you want the computer room? Are you going to want privacy?"

Cadmann shook his head. "No. Get in on this, Carolyn. You were as much involved in Aaron's raising as anyone."

"More than most," she said. Then she closed her eyes, and blushed a little.

"This was Aaron's creche," Rachael said. "We can trace down anything, forward or backward. Cassandra, give us Childe Aaron One."

The holostage began to play out a series of images. Every image of young Aaron, from infancy onward. They were virtually a time-lapse display, carrying him through to toddlerhood.

Cadmann watched absently. "Who are his parents?"

Rachael looked uncomfortable. "As you know, the sperm and egg samples were chosen both from the members of the colony, and the frozen contributions of those who didn't make the trip for one reason or another. There are representative samples from all the basic genetic groups and cultures of the world, but all flawless. We could be picky. The idea was that some children would be raised by the colony as a whole, without any specific parental attachments. It was one of the theoretical bases of the colony, an experiment in shifting the primary bonding imperatives of a child from a pair, onto a concept or system. As you know, the experiment was begun in earnest after the Grendel Wars, and was terminated four years later."

Carolyn McAndrews smiled and said, "We were making enough babies."

"You always had doubts," Zack said. Carolyn nodded. "Maybe we should have listened." Ice on her mind, he didn't have to say. Nobody would have listened to Carolyn; which was a bit odd, because Carolyn had been one of the genuine heroines of the Grendel Wars. No one could quite remember when they had stopped listening to her.

Rachael said, "The project was terminated for other reasons."

Cadmann was looking out into black space. Carlos saw only his back. He asked, "Problems?"

"Stuff that came through from Earth, maybe a year after we left. There were files on the Bottle Baby research. We didn't get anything else for years. Geographic's last received signal was a light-speed communique ten years after we left. Garbled. It took quite a while to reconstruct it," Rachael said. "There was research that implied that the creche children had a more difficult time bonding. They had all been adopted info loving, supportive homes—where parents had waited years for children, but due to fertility problems were forced to utilize artificial wombs.

"Sure, problems, Cad. There're always problems. Statistically significant? Maybe. Some kind of academic dominance game was going on. Those can get nasty. I think some of their theories got sent and some got buried. Numbers, too.

"One theory had to do with the endocrinal flux in the uterus. The numbers we got suggest that the actual ebb and flow of biochemical products as the mother is awake, asleep, afraid, hungry, tired, sexually stimulated, whatever... is a form of communication between mother and child. It's another nutrient... an emotional nutrient, if you will, as important as blood or oxygen."