Earthseed

“We put you together and programmed you. Your mind was part of our dream.” She gazed out at the crowd. “The ship was to leave our solar system with its seeds. We had decided that young people, born on this vessel and trained to settle a new world, knowing nothing else, would have a better chance than those of us who were older. But a few of us worried. What if the ship, able as it was to do its tasks, failed at preparing the children? We talked, and made our decision. We crept on board and concealed ourselves. It was easy to hide from the ship, which hadn’t yet been activated—more difficult to ensure that others did not find us. As you see, they did not. Once the ship left the solar system, they could not call it back.” She held up her hands, stretching the rope. “But something went wrong. We awoke too late.”
    “The Project was going well enough without you,” Aleksandr said.
    “Was it?” Petra turned to him. “What were you doing in the corridors, then? What was that group of children doing hiding out by the lake? And what about the crippled and handicapped among you?” She shook her head. “You needed us. You’ll need us on your new home.”
    “You grew up with the Project, by your own admission,” Ship said. “You wanted to cling to it, even if it meant going against those who planned it with you. And you brought death with you into me. You weren’t concerned with the Project, only with having your will. Willfulness—that is your distinctive quality. How long it has taken me to learn that.”
    “It was our Project,” Petra screamed. “It’s ours.”
    “It is not yours now,” Ship said. “It is theirs—the young people’s. They are your seeds, and perhaps also in part the seeds of the spacedwellers you so despised. They must be allowed to grow.”
    “Kill us, then. You’re no better.” She stared at the crowd. “That’s what you want.”
    “Wait,” Anoki said. He climbed to his feet and leaned on Gowon’s shoulder, steadying himself. “Ask them what they were going to do with the ones they thought were unfit. There were a lot of us—not just the ones like me, but the ones they called misfits.” He looked around at the assembled group. “A lot of people here didn’t seem to object as long as they weren’t labeled unfit themselves. Go on. Ask them what they were going to do.”
    Aleksandr turned toward Petra. “We weren’t going to hurt you.” She spoke in a flat, toneless voice. “We were going to put you in suspension, that’s all. Maybe in time ways would have been found to heal you, or to give you a life inside this ship. Is that so bad?”
    “You would have taken them from everything they knew,” Aleksandr answered. “Their friends, their society, their world. You would have set them apart.” He paused. “I think you’ve pronounced your own sentence.”
    “No,” Petra shouted. “No. You said you wanted no more death, but you’re condemning us anyway. You’re fooling yourselves. You can tell yourselves a story about how we’ll be revived one day, but it won’t be done. You might as well kill us.”
    “We’re doing only what you would have done to that boy. You’re the misfits—trying to control everything, twisting it to your own ends without letting it develop. Perhaps in time,” Aleksandr continued more gently, “you can be revived, and see how the world we’ll settle has developed. It may be very different from what you expected.”
    “You’re lying to yourself,” Petra cried.
    The crowd stirred. “She’s right,” someone behind Zoheret murmured. She sighed; would this divide them in the future? Would someone drag the issue out again to mask another disagreement? Two people behind her were already arguing; she heard the hiss of their whispers.
    “That’s one problem solved,” Tonio shouted. He was seated near Zoheret; he rose and pointed to Ho, who was sitting near the storehouse porch with his friends. “What about him? What about his group? Why should we punish those old people and let him go?”
    “He helped us when it counted,” Zoheret called out.
    Tonio drew back, as if intimidated by her. Everyone was looking at her now; she clutched self-consciously at her empty sleeve, and slouched, trying to hide herself. “Why don’t they stop looking at me?” she whispered to Manuel.
    “They respect you,” Manuel said. “For what you did. Don’t you know that?”
    She had killed two people; that merited no respect. “I