Stephen Baxter - Time

Anyhow, when the fabricators had completed the bubble — a gold-tinted plastic — the squid started to fill it with asteroid water extracted by simple inflatable solar heaters. A cap of Cruithne substrate rock, sheared off the asteroid and anchored to the metal cage, would serve as feedstock for methane rockets and a source of raw materials for the habitat.

Though the technology was simple, it still seemed something of a miracle to Malenfant to see water bubbling up out of coal-black asteroid rock.

It would be a long, grim journey, Malenfant knew. Under the low acceleration of the methane drive it would take many years for this bubble ship to reach the cluster of Trojan asteroids, five times Earth’s distance from the sun. The current generation of squid — none of whom would live to see the conclusion of the journey — were surely condemning generations of their offspring to a journey through despair and darkness and squalor.

And it might not work. If population controls failed, there would be wars, he thought. Savage. Perhaps the fragment of civilization on this ship would fall so far there would be nobody left alive who knew how to fix the methane rockets or breaches in the habitat meniscus.

Somehow he didn’t think that would come about. Already this miniature colony, here on Cruithne, had survived long enough to show the cephalopods possessed a purpose — a ruthlessness — that far transcended the human.

And at last, the survivors would reach Jupiter’s leading Trojan point, where the sun would be a point source brighter than any star, and Jupiter itself a gleaming gibbous disc, and a million asteroids would swarm in the sky.

With the gentlest of nudges from spring-loaded latches the droplet parted from its asteroid parent. The moment had come: no countdown, no fuss.

The rise was slow; nothing that big was going to make any sudden moves. It sailed upward like a hot-air balloon, huge waves rippling softly over the golden structure, the cap of asteroid rock sullenly massive at the base.

When it reached the sunlight a glow exploded from the droplet’s interior.

As their great journey began — away from the complexities and politics of the crowded inner worlds, off to the wide-open emptiness, the calm and cold precision of the outer system — Malenfant thought he glimpsed the squid themselves, rushing this way and that, peering excitedly from their rising bubble ship.

But perhaps that was just his imagination.

He watched as the droplet shrank, receding, hoping to see the moment when it was far enough from the asteroid for the methane rockets to be lit in safety. But the flames would be invisible, and he was growing tired.

Malenfant raised his hand in salute. Good-bye, good-bye, he thought. Perhaps your great-great-grandchildren will remember me. Maybe they will even know I was the being responsible for sending their ancestors out there, for giving you this chance.

But they will never know how I envied you today.

It had taken fifteen of their twenty available days, here on Cruithne, to deal with the cephalopods. Now they had five days left — five days to confront the thing that lay on the other side of the asteroid, to confront the alien.

He turned and started to crawl back across Cruithne, and to home.

Bill Tybee:

There was a new assistant at the Nevada center, who started a

week ago. A big bullnecked Texan called Wayne Dupree.

Wayne did not look like any kind of teacher to Bill — he had the biggest, thickest arms Bill had ever seen on any human being — nor was he a parent or relative of any of the kids. And he had no noticeable skills in teaching or child care. He just supervised the kids in glowering silence, occasionally administering a shove or a prod, as they went about the routine of their lives.

Wayne was the first adult Bill saw strike one of the kids here.

Bill complained about that to Principal Reeve. She made a note in a file and said she’d look into it, but that she was sure Wayne wasn’t overstepping any mark.

And Bill was sure she didn’t do a damn thing about it, because he saw Wayne do it again, a day later.

The turnover of staff here had always been high. Bill had noticed that the professional types soon became discouraged by the kids’ baffling opacity and distance. After a few months Bill had become one of the more experienced helpers here; he was even assigned to train new folk.

But recently a new type of person, it seemed to him, had been appointed to work here.

Persons like Wayne.

Despite the shutting down of the Milton Foundation, the Blue kids continued to be the subject of feverish, superstitious awe and fear — a mood whipped up needlessly, in Bill’s opinion, by commentators who speculated endlessly about the children’s superhuman nature and cosmic role and so forth. There was still protection, of course. In fact security had gotten so tight it was virtually impossible for anybody outside of an armored truck to pass in or out of the center.

But it seemed quite possible to Bill that it might be becoming more acceptable to people at large that the Waynes of the world be recruited to “supervise” the Blue children, that the centers be allowed to evolve from education homes for gifted children to prisons for freaks, guarded by brutes, just like the Milton Schools. As long as it was out of sight, of course.

But none of it mattered, Bill thought doggedly, not as long as he was here with Tom, and could keep him from harm’s way.

Bill promised himself that if Wayne ever did raise a hand to his son, he would take on Wayne, despite any consequences, and that was that.

Sooner than Bill had expected, it came to a head.

Tom’s group, in their shiny gold uniforms, were working in the physics lab. Wayne and Bill were both on duty, sitting in chairs in opposite corners of the room.

The kids were building something: a cage of wires and electromagnets and batteries and coils. They’d been working all day, in fact, and Bill and the other assistants had had some trouble making them stop to eat, or even take toilet breaks, let alone do any of their other study programs.

The kids seemed to be growing more purposeful in their activities. They didn’t have a written plan, and they didn’t even speak to each other much, but they all worked together flawlessly, according to their abilities. The older ones, including Anna, did the heavier work like the bulky construction of the metal frame, and also more dangerous stuff such as soldering. The little ones generally worked inside the cage itself, their fine little fingers doing fiddly, awkward manipulations.

Bill watched Tom clambering around inside the cage like a monkey, snipping and twisting together bits of wire with flawless accuracy. As he concentrated, he stuck his tongue out of his mouth, just as he used to when he made clay soldiers or drew pictures of flowers for his mother.

As the day’s end approached the kids seemed to have finished their cage. It was a box that was taller than Tom. Anna made them stand back, threw a few switches, and watched. Nothing happened as far as Bill could see save for a dull humming, a sharp scent of ozone. But Anna nodded, as if satisfied.

Then the kids broke away and, as if going off duty, wandered off around the lab.

Some of them went to the bowls of food Bill and Wayne had put out around the room. They seemed to avoid the dishes Wayne had slyly dipped his fat fingers into. Others, Tom and Anna among them, began playing. They started to throw Tom’s electronic Heart around, catching it like a football, kicking it along the ground like a soccer ball. That was okay. The Heart was built for kids and was meant to last a lifetime, and was more than strong enough to take the punishment. The kids were noisy now, calling and yapping and even tussling a little.