The Children Star Read Free

born to strangers?”
    Two of Geode’s limbs began to mold themselves into probes to examine the girl’s health.
“I
was never born. I was built—to precise specifications. I make fewer mistakes than one byte in a trillion trillions.”
    Rod smiled. “You had to be taught to think.”
    Ignoring this jest, Geode extended a long, slender tendril out of his furry limb toward the girl, who moved back a step. Brother Rod put his arm around her. “Let Geode treat you, child. He will help your stomach feel better. Then we’ll have a good bath, and a good dinner.”
    The tendril wound around the girl’s arm, inserting a microscopic probe which she would not feel. The probe would sample her blood for her own DNA and proteins, as well those of any pathogens. “Her name is ’jum G’hana,” Geode announced, matching the gene sequence with his database.
    The girl blinked at the sound of her name amidst the foreign gibberish. A sharp mind, Rod thought.
    â€œShe was first sampled at approximate age three, upon hiring full-time at Hyalite Nanotech. Father died of ‘creeping,’ mother alive, age—”
    â€œHer mother’s dead,” Rod corrected. “Creeping” sickness was caused by prions, misfolded proteins that directed normal ones to mimic their structure and accumulate in the motor neurons. Paralysis crept out the limbs and inward. Other types of prion infection were contained in the nervous system, but the dreaded “creeping” prions leaked out in secretions and transmitted readily.
    â€œShe has lice and worms,” continued Geode. “And prions, though not yet irreversible.” So she did have the disease, as Rod suspected from her mottled legs. Even her relatives, had she any, would never claim her. The emigration forms would go straight through.
    The cure for creeping was to inject millions of nanoservos, microscopic servo machines, into the bloodstream to methodically search and reshape the misfolded proteins. It was effective, but expensive. On Prokaryon, the Fold paid to cure colonists, to encourage human settlement.
    â€œShe wasn’t badly nourished, her first three years.” Geode’s infant had done feeding and was now bouncing in one coiled limb. “Maybe she’s not even brain-damaged. Say, ’jum,” the sentient demanded in L’liite, “did you go to school? Can you read?”
    â€™jum slowly shook her head.
    â€œCan you count your factory wages?”
    At that, ’jum did not answer but gave the sentient an intent look.
    â€œWhat’s one plus one?”
    She frowned, as if this were a very difficult problem. “Not quite one and a half,” she said in a voice so low that Rod barely heard.
    Geode twined his eyestalks disparagingly.
    â€œWhat do you expect? She’s never been to school. Is your workup done? She needs a bath.”
    â€œDefinitely,” the sentient agreed with emphasis. “I don’t know, though. I wonder sometimes if we’re not half-crazy, trying to settle a frontier with starving babies.”
    â€œIt’s the cheapest way,” Rod said ironically, for that was the reason of the Fold.
    â€œBut—look, you know, it’s not just any world, by Torr. It’s
Prokaryon.”
    Prokaryon was named for its unique “prokaryotic” life-forms. Animal or vegetable, all Prokaryan cells contained circular chromosomes, free of nuclear membranes—like bacteria,
prokaryotes
. But Prokaryan cells were ring-shaped as well. And the higher structure of all the multicellular organisms was toroid, from the photosynthetic “phycoids”that grew tall as trees, to the tire-shaped “zoöids” that rolled over the fields they grazed—or preyed upon those that did.
    â€œAnd I don’t care what the Free Fold says,” Geode added. “There
are
intelligent aliens running Prokaryon, somewhere.”
    Rod held