Donald Moffitt - Genesis 02

between his shoulders and looked stubborn.
    “We’ve waited this long—we can wait a little while longer,” said a woman wearing one of the leaf tabards that had been popular five hundred years back. The costume placed her as one of the old hands—now a minority.
    “That’s right,” another person said authoritatively. “Man’s worlds are our best bet, anyway. There’s bound to be some sort of a surviving DNA-based ecology we can adapt to instead of having to start an ecology from scratch from our vats and gardens here. In the meantime, Yggdrasil is a fine world to live on.”
    “Too fine,” someone else said. “We have folk aboard who’ve never known any other world. There may be some who’ll prefer to stay in orbit with Yggdrasil. It makes a more benign environment than most planetary surfaces. I know I’d be tempted to stay myself.”
    “Until one day you found yourself sailing off to the cometary halo or heading for a nearby star that Yggdrasil thought had the right absorption lines,” some wag said, and everybody laughed.
    Jao’s granddaughter, Enyd, claimed attention with a frown and a gesture. She was still chief tree systems officer after all these years, still smooth, cool, and unapproachable. She picked a lover briefly every twenty years or so, but most of the time she remained seemingly wedded to Yggdrasil. The unattached men who had wooed her to no avail called her “the dryad” behind her back.
    “Whatever we do, we’ll have to slow down enough to let Yggdrasil absorb a comet or two before too long,” she said. “It’s been showing the effects of drought these last few years.”
    The current year-captain, a colorless hydroponicist named Ploz who’d had the support of the sociometrics clique, said with quick concern, “How critical is it?”
    “We’re not losing leaves or anything like that. But the reproductive cycle is on hold. And the more recent xylem rings are getting extremely narrow—Yggdrasil’s pretty much shut down its growth these last few years.”
    “How much longer before it gets critical?” Ploz persisted.
    “I wouldn’t want to wait more than another century or so,” Enyd said severely.
    There was a general sigh of relief. Jun Davd said, “Yggdrasil will have its comet long before then.”
    Bram hung around until the press of people got too thick for comfort. Then, with a last regretful look at the galaxy’s swollen heart of fire, he elbowed his way out to make room for someone else.
    “Don’t forget the meeting tomorrow,” Jao called after him. Bram waved acknowledgment.
    When he emerged from the crowd, he found a delegation of four waiting to intercept him—three members of the glib younger set who seemed to be running things these days and one of the former oldsters who’d been around at the start of the journey.
    Silv Jaks was the group’s spokesperson, and that was Bram’s clue that the sociometricians had taken a hand in whatever this would turn out to be. Bram wasn’t quite sure what sociometrics was, other than the fact that it had something to do with people in groups—it was one of the jargon-packed new sciences that had sprung up during the trip’s later generations—but its disciples had definite ideas about the running of the tree, and they wielded a lot of influence among the new people.
    “Bram—we hoped we’d find you here,” she said briskly. “Do you have a minute to talk?”
    “Sure, Silv.” Bram nodded to the group’s senior member. “Hello, Torm.”
    “I’ll come to the point,” Silv said. “We represent a committee that wants you to run for year-captain this term.”
    “That’s very flattering,” Bram said warily, “but I haven’t been year-captain for over two hundred years. I’m just a working biologist and part-time astronomy assistant these days. There are plenty of qualified people around.”
    She set her jaw and drew a breath. “We believe you’re the candidate who’s needed at this time.”
    “I thought you were going to throw your weight behind Ploz again. Everyone says he’s doing a good job.”
    “He was the sort of year-captain we needed while we were still coasting. With deceleration, we’ve become a migratory society again. And there will be further upheavals as the populations of the outlying branches are assimilated into the annual branch once more. We’re going to undergo a lot of societal stress in the coming years. More important, our goal is in sight now.” She gestured