Robert Reed - A Place With Shade

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ROBERT REED

A PLACE WITH SHADE

The old man was corpulent like a seal, muscle clothed in fat to guarantee

warmth, his skin smooth and his general proportions -- stocky limbs and a

broad

chest -- implying a natural, almost unconscious power. He wore little despite

the damp chill. The brown eyes seemed capable and shrewd. And humorless. We

were

standing on a graveled beach, staring at his tiny sea; and after a long

silence,

he informed me, "I don't approve of what you do, Mr. Locum. It's pretentious

and

wasteful, this business of building cruel places. You're not an artist, and I

think it's healthy for both of us to know my objections to your presence

here."

I showed a grin, then said, "Fine. I'll leave." I had spent three months

inside

cramped quarters, but I told him, "Your shuttle can take me back to the

freighter. I'll ride out with the iron."

"You misunderstand, Mr. Locum." His ham e was Provo Lei, the wealthiest person

fora light-month in any direction. "I have these objections, but you aren't

here

for me. You're a gift to my daughter. She and I have finally agreed that she

needs a tutor, and you seem qualified. Shall we dispense with pretenses? You

are

a toy. This isn't what you would call a lush commission, and you'd prefer to

near a civilized world, building some vicious forest for society people who

want

prestige and novelty. Yet you need my money, don't you? You're neither a tutor

nor a toy, but your debts outweigh your current value as an artist. Or am I

wrong?"

I attempted another grin, then shrugged. "I can work on a larger scale here."

I'm not someone who hesitates or feels insecure, but I did both just then.

"I've

had other offers --"

"None of substance," Provo interrupted.

I straightened my back, looking over him. We were in the middle of his house

a sealed hyperfiber tent covering ten thousand hectares of tundra and ice

water

-- and beyond the tent walls was an entire world, earth-size but less massive.

Not counting robots, the world's population was two. Counting me, three. As we

stood there enjoying impolite conversation, an army of robots was beneath the

deep water-ice crust, gnawing at rock, harvesting metals to be sold at a

profit

throughout the district.

"What do you think of my little home, Mr. Locum? Speaking as a professional

terraformer, of course."

I blinked, hesitating again.

"Please. Be honest."

"It belongs to a miser." Provo didn't have propriety over bluntness. "This is

cheap Arctic package. Low diversity, a rigorous durability, and almost no

upkeep. I'm guessing, but it feels like the home of a man who prefers

solitude.

And since you've lived here for two hundred years, alone most of the time, I

don't think that's too much of a guess."

He surprised me, halfway nodding.

"Your daughter's how old? Thirty?" I paused, then said, "Unless she's exactly

like you, I would think that she would have left by now. She's not a child,

and

she must be curious about the rest of the Realm. Which makes me wonder if I'm

inducement of some kind. A bribe. Speaking as a person, not a terraformer, I

think she must be frighteningly important to you. Am I correct?"

The brown eyes watched me, saying nothing.

I felt a brief remorse. "You asked for my opinion," I reminded him.

"Don't apologize. I want honesty." He rubbed his rounded chin, offering what

could have been confused for a smile. "And you're right, I do bribe my

daughter.

In a sense. She's my responsibility, and why shouldn't I sacrifice for her

happiness?"

"She wants to be a terraformer?"

"Of the artistic variety, yes."

I moved my feet, cold gravel crunching under my boots.

"But this 'cheap package,' as you so graciously described it, is a recent

condition. Before this I maintained a mature Arctic steppe, dwarf mammoths

here

and a cold-water reef offshore. At no small expense, Mr. Locum, and I'm not a

natural miser."

"It sounds like Beringa," I muttered.

"My home world, yes." Beringa was a giant snowball terraformed by commercial

souls, carpeted with plastics and rock and rich artificial soils, its interior

still frozen while billions lived above in a kind of perpetual summer,

twenty-hour days but limited heat. The natives were built like Provo, tailored

genes keeping them comfortably fat and perpetually warm. In essence, Beringa

was

an inspired apartment complex, lovely in every superficial way.

The kind of work I hated most, I was thinking.

"This environment," I heard, "is very much makeshift."

I gestured at the tundra. "What happened?"

"Ula thought I would enjoy a grove of hot-sap trees."

Grimacing, I said, "They wouldn't work at all." Ecologically speaking. Not to

mention aesthetically.

"Regardless," said Provo, "I purchased vats of totipotent cells, at no small

cost, and she insisted on genetically tailoring them. Making them into a new

species."

"Easy enough," I whispered.

"And yet." He paused and sighed. "Yet some rather gruesome metabolites were

produced. Released. Persistent and slow toxins that moved through the food

web.

My mammoths sickened and died, and since I rather enjoy mammoth meat, having

been raised on little else --"

"You were poisoned," I gasped.

"Somewhat, yes. But I have recovered nicely." The nonsmile showed again, eyes

pained. Bemused. "Of course she was scared for me and sorry. And of course I

had

to pay for an extensive cleanup, which brought on a total environmental

failure.

This tundra package was an easy replacement, and besides, it carries a

warranty

against similar troubles."

Popular on toxic worlds, I recalled. Heavy metals and other terrors were

shunted

away from the human foods.

"You see? I'm not a simple miser."

"It shouldn't have happened," I offered.

Provo merely shrugged his broad shoulders, admitting "I do love my daughter.

And

you're correct about some things. But the situation here, like anywhere, is

much

more complicated than the casual observer can perceive."

I looked at the drab hyperfiber sky -- the illusion of heavy clouds over a

waxy

low sun -- and I gave a quick appreciative nod.

"The area around us is littered with even less successful projects," Provo

warned me.

I said, "Sad."

The old man agreed. "Yet I adore her. I want no ill to befall her, and I mean

that as an unveiled warning. Ula has never existed with ordinary people. My

hope

is that I live long enough to see her mature, to become happy and normal, and

perhaps gain some skills as a terraformer too. You are my best hope of the

moment. Like it or not, that's why I hired you."

I stared out at his little sea. A lone gull was circling bleating out

complaints

about the changeless food.

"My daughter will become infatuated with you," I heard. "Which might be a good

thing. Provided you can resist temptation, infatuation will keep her from

being

disillusioned. Never, never let her become disillusioned."

"No?"

"Ula's not her father. Too much honesty is a bad thing."

I felt a momentary, inadequate sense of fear.

"Help her build one workable living place. Nothing fancy, and please, nothing

too inspired." He knelt and picked up a rounded stone. "She has an extensive

lab

and stocks of totipotent cells. You'll need nothing. And I'll pay you in full,

for your time and your imaginary expertise."

I found myself cold for many reasons, staring skyward. "I've been to Beringa,"

told Provo. "It's ridiculously cheery. Giant flowers and giant butterflies,

mammoths and tame bears. And a clear blue sky."

"Exactly," he replied, flinging the stone into the water. "And I would have

kept

my blue sky, but the color would have been dishonest."

A mosquito landed on my hand, tasting me and discovering that I wasn't a

caribou, flying off without drawing blood.

"Bleak fits my mood, Mr. Locum."

I looked at him.

And again he offered his nonsmile, making me feel, if only for an instant,

sorry

for him.

Beaty, say some artists, is the delicious stew made from your subject's flaws.

Ula Lei was a beautiful young woman.

She had a hundred hectare tent pitched beside her father's home, the place

filled with bio stocks and empty crystal wombs and computers capable of

modeling

any kind of terraforming project. She was standing beside a huge reader,

waving

and saying "Come here," with the voice people use on robots. Neither polite

nor

intimidating.

I approached, thinking that she looked slight. Almost underfed. Where I had

expected an ungraceful woman-child, I instead found a mannerly but almost

distant professional- was she embarrassed to need a tutor? Or was she unsure

how

to act with a stranger? Either way, the old man's warning about my "toy"

status

seemed overstated. Taking a frail, pretty hand, feeling the polite and

passionless single shake, I went from wariness to a mild funk, wondering if I

had failed some standard. It wounded me when she stared right through me,

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Robert Reed - A Place With Shade

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