Earthseed

human anymore—that’s what Ah Lam says. Some of them are part machine—a lot of them don’t even look like us. Earth is only a backwater, and even Earth has to depend on their technology. The Project was just a spiteful little jab. The people on the Project had this idea that it would somehow prove something if they sent us out, that it would show they were right. We’re supposed to preserve pure humankind, whatever that means.”
    Zoheret wrapped her arms around her legs. The world was changing itself even before she could ground herself in one set of facts. There was nothing left for her to believe.
    “I don’t know how we’re supposed to prove anything,” Bonnie said, “when nobody back there is going to know what happened to us anyway.”
    “Oh, Ah Lam explained that. They’ll get us settled, and then they’ll send Ship to another world, and raise more kids, except that next time they’ll make sure they’re around to raise them from birth. And they’ll go back into suspended animation while Ship’s looking for another Earth-like planet. And they’ll keep doing that until they have a lot of worlds seeded—that’s what Ah Lam calls it, seeding. And eventually they’ll travel back to our world to check up on our descendants. Oh, they have it all worked out—you should see Ah Lam when she talks about it. She starts breathing faster, and her eyes roll up under her lids as if she’s having a fit.” Lillka mimicked the expression. “They can do it, you know. They’ll be in suspension a lot of the time, and hundreds of years will pass on our new home while only a few years pass aboard Ship when it’s traveling at near light speed they’ll be able to see what happens. And one day, they’ll send a message back to Earth and the solar system, and everyone will know that the Project was successful.”
    “They won’t do it,” Zoheret said. “Ship won’t let them. It was programmed to run the Project in a certain way, and it won’t let them change it.”
    “Maybe Ship will listen to them,” Bonnie said. “After all, they built it.”
    “It won’t agree.” Zoheret was angry. Was she going to live and have children and die on an unknown world only so that a group of old people could prove a point? She and the others in the Hollow were no more to these strangers than the microbes in biology lab had been to her.
    “Poor Ship,” Lillka said. “They lied to it, too. All it ever told us about Earth was what the Project wanted it to know. I wonder how it’s going to feel when it finds out.”
    “I don’t care,” Zoheret said. “I don’t care about the Project and I don’t care why they did it. We don’t owe anything to Earth and we don’t owe anything to the people out there.”
    Lillka looked down. “There’s nothing we can do about it.”
    “There is. They don’t have the right to make us what they want. We have to fight them.”
    “How?”
    “There’s more of us—we outnumber them. If we fought them, we’d win. I don’t care how many weapons they have. They couldn’t get all of us.”
    “They don’t just have stun guns,” Lillka said. “I’ve seen others. And not everyone would fight. Some would stay out of it, and some would fight with them. You’d lose.” Zoheret frowned; Lillka had said you, not we. “If we do what they tell us to do, we’ll still have most of what we had before. And they know more about living on a planet than we do.”
    Zoheret’s nails dug into her palms. “Listen to me. We can fight. If you stood up to them even a little, it might persuade some people. You’re the leader.”
    “I’m not the leader anymore.”
    “Don’t you know what they did to Bonnie? They beat her. They’ll probably do the same thing to me.”
    “If you do what they tell you, they’ll leave you alone. Don’t you understand? You don’t have to make trouble. I don’t like some of the things they’ve done, but you’re bringing it on yourself.”
    Rising, Zoheret went to the door and kicked it in frustration. The door remained closed. She kicked it again. It opened suddenly, almost knocking her to the floor. A man pushed Manuel inside and then closed the door again.
    The boy’s face was sallow. He sagged against the wall, then felt his face as if expecting to find something there.
    Zoheret turned to Lillka. “Go along. That’s your answer to everything, isn’t it—go along. The first time Ho stole from us, you wanted to forget it—anything to avoid