Martin had inherited his father’s physique and his father’s long, grim face; he also had his father’s sweetness of temper and sharpness of mind. But his almond eyes and his sensuous, full lips over protruding front teeth were his mother’s.
A mom entered from below and moved up silently beside him, a squat flattened cylinder about a meter tall, copper and tarnished brass, with a headlike bump but no features, no arms, and no legs.
“I am ready for your report,” the mom said. The mom’s voice was authoritative but not shrill or insistent. It never demanded, never ordered, merely instructed and guided. A mom always referred to itself in the first person, as did the ship’s mind on the rare occasions it was heard from. The children had no evidence, other than tone of voice, that ship and moms were any different.
“We’re doing okay,” Martin said. “The children all seem healthy, physically.” He looked away. “There’s some tension with four or five individuals who aren’t getting along with the rest. Rex Live Oak has troubles now and then. A few others. I’m keeping track and trying to work them back into the group. Rosa Sequoia’s the worst. She attends the meetings, does her drills, hangs around when we play games, but she has few friends now. She doesn’t even talk with the Wendys much.
“Exercises are going well. We’ve been simulating small-craft navigation in planetary space, orbits and evasive maneuvers, ship’s defense, shepherding makers and doers. I guess you know that.”
“Yes,” the mom said.
His neck grew stiff. Here it came. “I’d like to see some outside exercise. The real thing. I think we’re ready.”
This was the third time he had made such a suggestion in his six months as Pan. All the children were anxious to get outside the Dawn Treader in the craft they had been training to use. “Five and a half years is a long time. We’ve come a long way. We know it might take much longer, but…We’re impatient.”
“Understood,” the mom said. “Continue.”
“I suppose we’re growing up, more mature. There’s less upset…not as much squabbling about sexual stuff. Fewer arguments and noise. I talked about this last tenday.”
“These are all expected events.”
“Well, they’re still significant,” Martin said, irritated by the mom’s attitude, or non-attitude. “I’m trying to use this…calmness, whatever, to help us focus on the training. It’s working, a little, anyway. We’re doing better in the trials. But there’s still grumbling about how well informed we are. I’d like to suggest fuller participation. I’ve suggested that before.”
“Yes,” the mom said.
“That’s about it. Nothing spectacular.”
“I see no signs of major trouble. You are doing well.”
With a characteristic lack of the minutiae of social grace, the mom glided from the schoolroom along its own unseen ladder field.
Martin puffed his cheeks, blew out a breath, and turned to leave, then spotted Hakim Hadj in the doorway below.
Hakim moved aside for the mom’s passage and spread his ladder to where Martin waited by the star sphere.
“Hello, Pan Martin,” Hakim said. He climbed to within a couple of meters of Martin and assumed a floating lotus. “How are you today?”
“As usual,” Martin said. He bit his lower lip and gestured at the door with an unenthused hand. “The usual friendly brick wall.”
“Ah yes.” Leader of the search team, Hakim was shorter than Martin by seven or eight centimeters, with smooth brown skin, a thin sharp nose, and large confident eyes black as onyx. He spoke English with a strong hint of Oxford, where his father had gone to school.
To see Hakim blink was a wonder; his face conveyed centuries of equanimity in the midst of strife, his lips composed a genial and unjudging line. “I am glad to hear it.”
He had taught Martin Arabic a few years before, enough for him to read Arabic children’s books from the libraries, but the lingua franca of the Dawn Treader was English, as it had been aboard the Central Ark, Earth’s death having frozen the American moment in history.
“The search team may have a suspect,” Hakim said. “I would like to present the evidence to you, and then to the moms. If you do not agree, we will keep our thoughts from the moms until better evidence comes along.” Hakim was usually cautious and taciturn to a fault about the search team’s work.
Martin arranged himself in a less graceful lotus before him. “I just gave my tenday report…”
Hakim apologized. “We cannot be certain enough to render final judgment—but there is sufficient evidence that we