Earthseed

shook her head.
    “I must say,” Ship went on, “that I do think you look at those holos much too often. They would not have wanted that, I’m certain. To know that some part of themselves will live on elsewhere was their desire. They would have wanted you not to look back, but to look forward. You must become yourself.”
    “I am myself. What else could I be?”
    “That isn’t what I meant. I meant that all of you here are a new human society, unhobbled by the past. The weight of history will not hold you back. You will be starting a history of your own, and in times to come, your descendants will tell legends and myths about you. You will live as human beings were meant to live. You will have a glorious destiny.” Ship’s voice rose a bit as it spoke.
    Zoheret felt irritated. She had heard these comments of Ship’s before. When she had been small, they had thrilled her, provoking formless daydreams of adventure in which she was the central figure, battling alien creatures or commanding her friends. She now knew that the glorious destiny Ship spoke of was going to be hard work.
    She skated back to Lillka and sat at her side. Anoki gripped the arms of a chair, slowly lowering himself. “I’ll bet you know as much as Ship does about Earth,” Zoheret said to the other girl.
    “Not quite as much. A lot, though. Don’t forget, Ship never saw Earth. It only has what was programmed into it.”
    It was true. Ship’s mind had been assembled on the asteroid that had become Ship’s body. All of them had been born and raised on Ship, but Ship had been traveling through space for years before that, alone, moving at close to the speed of light while time slowed for Ship and centuries passed on Earth. Ship was moving toward a planetary system with a habitable world. When it reached that world, it would be time for all of the young people to leave Ship and to settle there.
    Zoheret had longed for that time. No longer would Ship constantly watch them and tell them what to do; they would decide things for themselves. Now, as that time drew closer, she worried.
    “It’s funny,” Lillka continued. “Ship knows so much. But things are missing. You don’t notice that at first, but if you read enough, you begin to see it.”
    “What, for instance?” Zoheret asked. Ship had taught them much about Earth, beginning with its geological history and ending with the Project, with a lot in between. They had been given reading assignments and holo viewings; they had listened to Earth’s music and seen Earth’s art. Sometimes Ship simply told them stories. The point of it all was simple; all of Earth’s history had led to the Project designed to fulfill the destiny of their species—to settle on other worlds and create new and varied cultures. Zoheret had wondered why, if they were to build their own society, they had to know so much about Earth’s. “What’s missing?” she went on.
    Lillka shrugged. “The wars.”
    “Ship told us about those.”
    “Not really. It told us when they happened and how many people died and how they were fought and how they ended. It even told us the causes. Everybody thought that wars were horrible, but they kept having them. And then they stopped, because their weapons became too powerful and there was too much to lose. That doesn’t make sense. It seems to me they would only stop if they didn’t have any weapons.”
    “You’re wrong,” Zoheret said. “They stopped because they could have killed everyone, and no one would have won. That sounds like a good reason to me.”
    “War would have been suicide,” Ship said. Its soft but resonant voice filled the room. “There is nothing worth sacrificing one’s entire species.”
    Lillka shook her head. “But they still had the weapons. Why did they keep them if they weren’t going to use them? I’d get rid of them.”
    “I wouldn’t,” Anoki muttered. “Engineers learned a lot building weapons that they could use for other things. You might not like it, but it’s true.”
    “The weapons are totems,” Ship said. “Humankind keeps them as reminders of its past savagery, so that no one forgets. The weapons are guardians, forever holding the powerful in check, as a king on a chessboard is limited by the position of the opponent’s pieces. If someone held a gun to your head, you would do as he told you. The weapons are held to the head of all the world, and the world behaves. No one has an advantage; no one can win. By now,