The ship would come, bringing them the supplies and lab facilities they needed; and then the machines would grind and dig their way further across the landscape around that ell bend between the river and the forest, making foundations for the lab and the real city they planned.

But the nearer focus was still tents. Still tents. More than twenty thousand tents, dull brown under the sun. They tried, having hunted the last determined caliban off this shore; but the crawlers had reached the point of diminishing returns in maintenance, needing the supplies the ship would bring. Up the rivercourse the azi blasted at limestone and hauled it back in handpulled wagons, laboriously, as humans had hauled stone in the dawn of human building, because they dared not risk the crawlers, the last of them that worked on parts cannibalized from the others. The azi labored with blasting materials and picks and bare hands, and there was a camp of two dozen tents strung out there too, at the limestone cliffs where they quarried stone.

Perhaps it might have been wiser to have moved the whole site there, to stony ground–knowing now that Calibans burrowed. But they had spent all their resources of material and fuel. The domes stood, so at least the staff had secure housing. The fields were planted, and the power systems and the equipment were safe so long as they kept the calibans away.

Conn studied his charts, traced again and again the changes they had had to make in plans. The cold this spring had hurt his hands; and the joints twisted and pained him, even in the summer sun. He thought of another winter and dreaded it.

But they survived. He knew the time of the landing that would come, down to the day, year after next; and mentally he marked off every day, one to the next, with all the complexities of local/universal time.

The ship, he was determined, would take him home. He would go back to Cyteen. He thought that he might live through the jumps. Might. Or at least he would not have to see more of this world.

Newport, he had called it. But Gehenna had stuck instead. It was where they were; it described their situation. Like Styx for the Forbes River, that began as a joke and stayed. When a wheel broke on one of the carts or when it rained–Gehenna’s own luck, they said; and: What do you expect, in Hell?

They came to the Old Man and complained: Conn solved what he could, shrugged his shoulders at the rest. Like Gallin. Finally–like Gallin. “That’s your problem,” was Gallin’s line, which had gotten to be a proverb so notorious Gallin had had to find different ways of saying it. A sad fellow, Gallin, a bewildered fellow, who never knew why he deserved everyone’s spite. Conn sat placidly, waited for problems to trickle past the obstacle of Gallin, soothed tempers–kept the peace. That was the important thing.

A figure slogged down the lane, slumpshouldered and forlorn, and that was Bob Davies, another of the casualties. Davies worked the labor accounts, kept the supply books, and went off the rejuv of his own choice and over the surgeons’ protests. So there were two of them getting old. Maybe it showed more on Davies than on him–balding and growing bowed and thin in the passage of only a few months.

“Morning,” Conn wished him. Davies came out of his private reverie long enough to look up as he went by. “Morning,” Davies said absently, and went back to his computers and his books and his endless figuring.

That was the way of it now, that as fast as they built, the old pieces fell apart. Conn turned his mind back to the permafax sheets in his lap and made more adjustments in the plans which had once been so neatly drawn.

Two things went well. No, three: the crops flourished in the fields, making green as far as the eye could see. And Hill’s fish came up in the nets so that a good many of them might be sick of fish, but they all ate well. The plumbing and the power worked. They had lost some of the tape machines; but others worked, and the azi showed no appreciable strain.

But the winter–the first winter…

That had to be faced; and the azi were still under tents.

x

Day 346 CR

The wind blew and howled about the doors of the med dome. Jin sat in the anteroom and wrung his hands and fretted, a dejection which so possessed him it colored all the world.

She’s well, the doctors had told him; she’s going to do well. He believed this on one level, having great trust in Pia, that she was very competent and that her tapes had given her all the things she had to know. But she had been in pain when he had brought her here; and the hours of her pain wore on, so that he sat blank much of the time, and only looked up when one of the medics would come or go through that inner corridor where Pia was.

One came now. “Would you like to be with her?” the born‑man asked him, important and ominous in his white clothing. “You can come in if you like.”

Jin gathered himself to unsteady legs and followed the young born‑man through into the area which smelled strongly of disinfectants–a hall winding round the dome, past rooms on the left. The born‑man opened the first door for him and there lay Pia on a table, surrounded by meds all in masks. “Here,” said one of the azi who assisted here, and offered him a gown to wear, but no mask. He shrugged it on, distracted by his fear. “Can I see her?” he asked, and they nodded. He went at once to Pia and took her hand.

“Does it hurt?” he asked. He thought that it must be hurting unbearably, because Pia’s face was bathed in sweat. He wiped that with his hand and a born‑man gave him a towel to use.

“It’s not so bad,” she said between breaths. “It’s all right.”

He held onto her hand; and sometimes her nails bit into his flesh and cut him; and betweentimes he mopped her face…his Pia, whose belly was swollen with life that was finding its way into the world now whether they wanted or not.

“Here we go,” a med said. “Here we are.”

And Pia cried out and gave one great gasp, so that if he could have stopped it all now he would have. But it was done then, and she looked relieved. Her nails which had driven into his flesh eased back, and he held onto her a long time, only glancing aside as a born‑man nudged his arm.

“Will you hold him?” the med asked, offering him a bundled shape: Jin took it obediently, only then realizing fully that it was alive. He looked down into a small red face, felt the squirming of strong tiny limbs and knew–suddenly knew with real force that the life which had come out of Pia was independent, a gene‑set which had never been before. He was terrified. He had never seen a baby. It was so small, so small and he was holding it.

“You’ve got yourselves a son,” a med told Pia, leaning close and shaking her shoulder. “You understand? You’ve got yourselves a little boy.”

“Pia?” Jin bent down, holding the baby carefully, oh so carefully–“Hold his head gently,” the med told him. “Support his neck,” and put his hand just so, helped him give the baby into Pia’s arms. Pia grinned at him, sweat‑drenched as she was, a strange tired grin, and fingered the baby’s tiny hand.

“He’s perfect,” one of the meds said, close by. But Jin had never doubted that. He and Pia were.

“You have to name him,” said another. “He has to have a name, Pia.”

She frowned over that for a moment, staring at the baby with her eyes vague and far. They had said, the born‑men, that this would be the case, that they had to choose a name, because the baby would have no number. It was a mixing of gene‑sets, and this was the first one of his kind in the wide universe, this mix of 9998 and 687.

“Can I call him Jin too?” Pia asked.

“Whatever you like,” the med said.

“Jin,” Pia decided, with assurance. Jin himself looked down on the small mongrel copy Pia held and felt a stir of pride. Winter rain fell outside, pattering softly against the roof of the dome. Cold rain. But the room felt more than warm. The born‑men were taking all the medical things away, wheeling them out with a clatter of metal and plastics.