Earthseed

the children, it had begun to doubt its own purpose.
    But I no longer doubt. I told them that they were responsible for what they became. I must believe the same thing of myself.
    It would have to decide what to do with its sleeping passengers. They were so few; could they survive on a new world? It would have to find a gentle world for them, a place where they might be healed. There was time.
    They struck out at me. But they also created me. I must believe that there is some good in them.
    It looked into its incubator, empty now. It would give birth to others. This time, it might make some modifications. The impulses racing along its circuits died for a second as it recoiled from the notion. Its old programming was still powerful—preserve the human form, save pure humankind. But much of humankind had altered itself; had it not adapted, it might have died out. The changed spacedwellers had also built Ship.
    Human beings are rational. They are also curious, and willful, and compassionate, and angry. If I can understand what human beings are, then I shall preserve humankind, though perhaps not in the way my makers once desired.
    Ship thought of the children it had left behind, and its sadness faded as it considered what lay ahead. Perhaps those who had sent it out had not been ambitious enough; with a few genetic alterations, it might be possible to settle human beings on a world where unchanged people could not have lived. Would this be in keeping with its mission? It seemed that it was, but Ship could not be sure. It would have to give that possibility more consideration.
    There were other possibilities, more cautious ones. By giving birth to a few, it might raise them to be teachers of a larger group of children born later. Perhaps young human beings needed the example of older ones. Ship had done its best, but the children could not look to it to see what they might become.
    I am changing. As new circumstances arise, I must be willing to alter my own thinking, or I shall make more errors.
    A vision came to Ship. It saw its present body as a core around which a world could be built. It would no longer have passengers, but living beings who would be part of itself. It would become a civilization and might meet other such civilizations, joining its mind to theirs.
    How grandiose of me. I must be patient, and build carefully.
    Its first children were behind it now. As Ship gathered speed, years would pass on their world. It wondered what it would find when it returned. Would the seed have blossomed, or died, choked by weeds? It chose to believe that they would thrive. But they would no longer be the same, and it would greet them as a stranger.
    I, too, am no longer a child.

Books for Young Adults by Pamela Sargent
    Earthseed
Eye of the Comet
Homesmind Other Books by Pamela Sargent
    The Alien Upstairs
Cloned Lives
The Golden Space
Starshadows
The Sudden Star
Venus of Dreams
Watchstar Anthologies edited by Pamela Sargent
    Bio-Futures
Women of Wonder
More Women of Wonder
The New Women of Wonder

Manuel waited until the room was still, then spoke. “We’ll all be going to the Hollow soon to live. That’s what I want to talk to you about.
    “We have to learn how to live by ourselves,” Manuel went on. “So I think Ship should shut down its sensors while we’re there. We’re getting too dependent on Ship. We always expect it to be there, and it keeps us from thinking for ourselves.”
    An ALA Best Book for Young Adults

Earthseed
    Copyright © 1983 by Pamela Sargent
    All rights reserved.
For information address Harper & Row Junior
Books, 10 East 53rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
Published simultaneously in Canada by Fitzhenry
& Whiteside Limited, Toronto.

    eISBN 9781429994729
    First eBook Edition : March 2011

    Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Sargent, Pamela.
    Earthseed.
    “A Starwanderer book”
    Summary: Before Zoheret and her companions can populate a new planet, they must learn to conquer those same instincts that almost destroyed their ancestors on Earth one hundred years ago.
    [1. Science fiction] I. Title.
    PZ7.S2472Ear

1983
    [Fic]

79-2666
    ISBN 0-06-025188-3 (lib. bdg.)
ISBN 0-694-05600-6 (pbk.)
    First Starwanderer edition, 1987.
Starwanderer books are published by
Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.