Read Online Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson - Free Book Online
Authors: Kim Stanley Robinson
Tags: Fiction, General, Science-Fiction, Space Opera, Fiction / Action & Adventure, Fiction / Science Fiction / Space Opera, Fiction / Science Fiction / Hard Science Fiction
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solstice agrarian festivals in Ring B celebrated the turn of the season by symbolically destroying the old year. First, people went out into the fields and gardens and broke open all the remaining gourds and tossed them into the compost bins. Then they scythed down the stalks of the dead sunflowers, left in the fields since autumn. The few pumpkins still remaining were stabbed into jack-o’-lanterns before being further demolished. Face patterns punctured by trowel or screwdriver were declared much scarier than those formally carved at Halloween or Desain. Then they were smashed and also tossed in the compost. All this was accomplished under low gray winter clouds, in gusts and drifts of snow or hail.
Devi said she liked the winter solstice ceremony. She swung her scythe into sunflower stalks with impressive power. Even so, she was no match for the force Freya brought to bear with a long, heavy shovel. Freya smashed pumpkins with great force.
As they worked on this winter solstice, 161.001, Freya asked Badim about the custom called the wanderjahr.
Badim said that these were big years in anyone’s life. The custom entailed a young person leaving home to either undertakea formal circuit of the rings or simply move around a lot. You learned things about yourself, the ship, and the people of the ship.
Devi stopped working and looked at him. Of course, he added, even if you didn’t travel that would happen.
Freya listened closely to her father, all the while keeping her back to her mother.
Badim, looking back and forth between the two of them, suggested after a pause that it might soon be time for Freya to go off on her time away.
No reply from Freya, although she regarded Badim closely. She never looked at Devi at all.
As always, Devi spent several hours a week studying the communications feed from the solar system. The delay between transmission and reception was now 10.7 years. Usually Devi disregarded this delay, although sometimes she would wonder aloud what was happening on Earth on that very day. Of course it was not possible to say. Presumably this made her question a rhetorical one.
Devi postulated there were compression effects in the feed that made it seem as if frequent and dramatic change in the solar system was the norm. Badim disagreed, saying that nothing there ever seemed to change.
Freya seldom watched the feed, and declared she couldn’t make sense of it. All its stories and images jumbled together, she said, at high volume and in all directions. She would hold her head in her hands as she watched it. “It’s such a whoosh,” she would say. “It’s too much.”
“The reverse of our problem,” Devi would say.
Once, however, Freya saw a picture in the feed of a giant conglomeration of structures like biomes, stuck on end into blue water. She stared at it. “If those towers are like biomes,” she said, “then what we’re seeing in that image is bigger than our whole ship.”
“I told you,” Devi said. “Twelve magnitudes. A trillion times bigger.”
“What is that?” Freya asked.
Devi shrugged. “Hong Kong? Honolulu? Lisbon? Jakarta? I really don’t know. And it wouldn’t matter if I did.”
Secondly, Freya kept going to the park around sunset. Sometimes she tracked the youth named Euan and his friends as they headed off into the twilit wilderness. She hid herself from them by acrobatic movement and extreme stillness in cover. It was as if she were a wild cat on the hunt. In fact her genome was nearly identical to that of her ancestors when they were hunting on the African savannah, a hundred thousand years before.
In Nova Scotia, the wild cats were bobcat, lynx, and puma. The puma was potentially a predator of solitary humans. Therefore, people had to keep an eye out for them, even though they inhabited mostly the deepest depths of the park. Nevertheless, it was advisable to go into Nova Scotia’s park in groups. The wilderness sections, however, were off-limits to people.
Devi said she liked the winter solstice ceremony. She swung her scythe into sunflower stalks with impressive power. Even so, she was no match for the force Freya brought to bear with a long, heavy shovel. Freya smashed pumpkins with great force.
As they worked on this winter solstice, 161.001, Freya asked Badim about the custom called the wanderjahr.
Badim said that these were big years in anyone’s life. The custom entailed a young person leaving home to either undertakea formal circuit of the rings or simply move around a lot. You learned things about yourself, the ship, and the people of the ship.
Devi stopped working and looked at him. Of course, he added, even if you didn’t travel that would happen.
Freya listened closely to her father, all the while keeping her back to her mother.
Badim, looking back and forth between the two of them, suggested after a pause that it might soon be time for Freya to go off on her time away.
No reply from Freya, although she regarded Badim closely. She never looked at Devi at all.
As always, Devi spent several hours a week studying the communications feed from the solar system. The delay between transmission and reception was now 10.7 years. Usually Devi disregarded this delay, although sometimes she would wonder aloud what was happening on Earth on that very day. Of course it was not possible to say. Presumably this made her question a rhetorical one.
Devi postulated there were compression effects in the feed that made it seem as if frequent and dramatic change in the solar system was the norm. Badim disagreed, saying that nothing there ever seemed to change.
Freya seldom watched the feed, and declared she couldn’t make sense of it. All its stories and images jumbled together, she said, at high volume and in all directions. She would hold her head in her hands as she watched it. “It’s such a whoosh,” she would say. “It’s too much.”
“The reverse of our problem,” Devi would say.
Once, however, Freya saw a picture in the feed of a giant conglomeration of structures like biomes, stuck on end into blue water. She stared at it. “If those towers are like biomes,” she said, “then what we’re seeing in that image is bigger than our whole ship.”
“I told you,” Devi said. “Twelve magnitudes. A trillion times bigger.”
“What is that?” Freya asked.
Devi shrugged. “Hong Kong? Honolulu? Lisbon? Jakarta? I really don’t know. And it wouldn’t matter if I did.”
Secondly, Freya kept going to the park around sunset. Sometimes she tracked the youth named Euan and his friends as they headed off into the twilit wilderness. She hid herself from them by acrobatic movement and extreme stillness in cover. It was as if she were a wild cat on the hunt. In fact her genome was nearly identical to that of her ancestors when they were hunting on the African savannah, a hundred thousand years before.
In Nova Scotia, the wild cats were bobcat, lynx, and puma. The puma was potentially a predator of solitary humans. Therefore, people had to keep an eye out for them, even though they inhabited mostly the deepest depths of the park. Nevertheless, it was advisable to go into Nova Scotia’s park in groups. The wilderness sections, however, were off-limits to people.
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