Free The Children Star by Joan Slonczewski Page B

the bud in about a month.”
    His heart overflowed with hope, then turned cold. He watched Gaea, as Sarai’s meaning sank in. Gaea must have sensed it, for suddenly she pulled out the vines and dragged herself over the floor to his feet.
    â€œA month . . . here?” he repeated. “Inside a . . . flower?” Of a carnivorous plant? He wanted to snatch the child back.
    â€œFrom the chest down. Well, what do you want? Why didn’t you get her here sooner? Machines and ignorant clerics, raising infants—there ought to be a law.”
    â€œYou didn’t answer our calls,” Rod snapped. “What do you know of children, holed up alone on this damned mountain?”
    â€œBro-der Rod,” Gaea’s voice quavered. “Gaea go home now.”
    Sarai was chuckling as she rearranged her scatteredvines. “So the Spirit Caller has a temper. Well, well. Should I treat every impoverished infant in the Fold? Even my Sharer sisters let the Elysians drag the L’liite ships off
Shora,”
she observed, using the ancient Sharer word for their home world.
    â€œBetter one than none.” Rod took Gaea up in his arms.
This ocean has no shore . . . the Spirit should grant me a world
.
    â€œLet them come here, then,” said Sarai. “Let them find me.”
    â€œThey try. A new student from Science Park tried to reach you.”
    â€œ ‘Hidden masters’ again,” she replied with contempt. “They call themselves scientists, yet all they want to prove is that some great father rules the world after all.”
    â€œDo you think the singing-trees communicate?” he asked suddenly. “What about tumblerounds?”
    Sarai froze still. Her inner eyelids came down like pearls. They protected Sharers’ eyes underwater, but Sarai used them to hide her inner thoughts. “Why should I share my data?”
    â€œGo home now,” insisted Gaea.
    Rod held the child tight, sickened by what he had to do. “Gaea, you’ll have new legs when you come home.”

FIVE

    T he return journey was easier, yet infinitely harder, for he could only wonder how Gaea fared after her last shrieking farewell. At home, Mother Artemis assured him that he had done the right thing. “I knew Sarai would help,” said Mother Artemis, “once she saw the dear little girl in front of her. When the Spirit offers, do not question.”
    He still felt sick to think of it.
    Haemum, now, was brimming with excitement at her new school. “ ‘There are all kinds of worlds to see!’ ” she exclaimed. She and Rod stopped in the garden, pulling out double-root weeds that clung like steel wire. “You can dive right into the ocean, or climb to the top of a volcano on Bronze Sky—the ground shakes when it erupts. You can learn how all the planets were made, how the rock flows under and over inside them. Some of them even have‘weather’ that changes every day—did you know it can rain in the daytime? And then you can see a
rainbow
stretch across the sky!”
    â€œImagine—a rainbow.” Rod looked up from the garden with a smile. There was nothing like the magic of a young person’s first taste of the world.
    â€œYou can meet Fold Friends, too.” Haemum had brushed her curls neatly, and her voice had a new lilt in it. “Children from all different cultures. Even Elysian children in their fabulous
shon
. But of course, the most noble culture of all is that of our own L’liite people.” That was a line from her New Reyo teachers. “Our little ones should have more lessons, too, you know. Children belong in school eight hours a day.”
    â€œWe’ll see about that.” For the little ones, actually, Rod thought Mother Artemis’s lessons more effective than the school days he recalled. “What time in the morning are you due in class?”
    â€œOur homeroom starts at seven.”
    â€œLet’s