Read Online Aurora by Kim Stanley Robinson - Free Book Online Page B
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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threatening hand.
“We’re in trouble,” Devi said in a low choked voice. “So I don’t want you around right now, I can’t have it. I need to deal. Besides you’re at the age. You’ll grow up and get over this shit, so you might as well do it somewhere where I don’t have to suffer it.”
“That’s so mean,” Freya said. “You’re just mean. Enough of having a kid! Fine when she’s little, but now that you’ve decided she’s not good enough, off she goes! ‘Come back in a year and tell me about it!’ But you know what? I will
never
tell you. I will
never
come back.”
And Freya stormed off.
Thirdly, Badim asked her to wait for a while before leaving on her wanderjahr. “No matter where you go, it’s still you that gets there. So it doesn’t really matter where you are. You can’t get away from yourself.”
“You can get away from other people,” Freya said.
Badim had not heard a full account of the argument in the park, but he had noticed the estrangement between his wife and his daughter.
Eventually he agreed to the idea that Freya now start her wanderjahr. She would love it, he said, once he had agreed. She would be able to visit home anytime she wanted. Ring B was only fifty-four kilometers around, so she would never be far away.
Freya nodded. “I’ll manage.”
“Fine. We’ll arrange housing and work for you, if you want.”
They hugged, and when Devi joined the discussion, Devi hugged her too. Under Badim’s eye, Freya was cooperative in hugging her mother. Perhaps also she saw the distress on Devi’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Devi said.
“Me too.”
“It will be good for you to get away. If you stayed here and weren’t careful, you might end up like me.”
“But I wanted to end up like you,” Freya said. She looked as if she were tasting something bitter.
Devi only squished the corners of her mouth and looked away.
On 161.176, Freya left on her wanderjahr, traveling west in Ring B. The ring tram circumnavigated the biomes, but she walked, as was traditional for wanderers. First through the granite highland of the Sierra, then the wheat fields of the Prairie.
Her first extended stay was in Labrador, with its taiga, glacier, estuary, and cold salt lake. It was often said that your first move away from home should be to a warmer place, unless you came from the tropics, when you couldn’t. But Freya went to Labrador. The cold did her good, she said.
The salt sea was mostly iced over, and she learned to ice-skate. She worked in the dining hall and the distribution center, and quickly met many people. She worked as a manual laborer and general field assistant, or GFA, or Good For Anything, as they were often called. She put in long hours all over the biome.
Out there next to Labrador’s glacier, people told her, there was one yurt community that brought up their children as if they were Inuit or Sami, or for that matter Neanderthals. They followed caribou and lived off the land, and no mention of the ship was made to their children. The world to these children was simply four kilometers long, a place mostly very cold, with a big seasonal shift between darkness and light, ice and melt, caribou and salmon. Then, during their initiation ceremony around the time of puberty, these children were blindfolded and taken outside the ship in individual spacesuits, and there exposed to the starry blackness of interstellar space, with the starship hanging there, dim and silvery with reflected starlight. Children were said to return from this initiation never the same.
“I should think not!” Freya said. “That’s crazy.”
“Quite a few of these children move away from Labrador after that,” her informant, a young woman who worked in the dining hall, told her. “But more than you’d think come back around as adults, and do the same to their own kids.”
“Did you grow up like that?” Freya asked.
“No, but we heard about it, and we saw them when they came into town.
“We’re in trouble,” Devi said in a low choked voice. “So I don’t want you around right now, I can’t have it. I need to deal. Besides you’re at the age. You’ll grow up and get over this shit, so you might as well do it somewhere where I don’t have to suffer it.”
“That’s so mean,” Freya said. “You’re just mean. Enough of having a kid! Fine when she’s little, but now that you’ve decided she’s not good enough, off she goes! ‘Come back in a year and tell me about it!’ But you know what? I will
never
tell you. I will
never
come back.”
And Freya stormed off.
Thirdly, Badim asked her to wait for a while before leaving on her wanderjahr. “No matter where you go, it’s still you that gets there. So it doesn’t really matter where you are. You can’t get away from yourself.”
“You can get away from other people,” Freya said.
Badim had not heard a full account of the argument in the park, but he had noticed the estrangement between his wife and his daughter.
Eventually he agreed to the idea that Freya now start her wanderjahr. She would love it, he said, once he had agreed. She would be able to visit home anytime she wanted. Ring B was only fifty-four kilometers around, so she would never be far away.
Freya nodded. “I’ll manage.”
“Fine. We’ll arrange housing and work for you, if you want.”
They hugged, and when Devi joined the discussion, Devi hugged her too. Under Badim’s eye, Freya was cooperative in hugging her mother. Perhaps also she saw the distress on Devi’s face.
“I’m sorry,” Devi said.
“Me too.”
“It will be good for you to get away. If you stayed here and weren’t careful, you might end up like me.”
“But I wanted to end up like you,” Freya said. She looked as if she were tasting something bitter.
Devi only squished the corners of her mouth and looked away.
On 161.176, Freya left on her wanderjahr, traveling west in Ring B. The ring tram circumnavigated the biomes, but she walked, as was traditional for wanderers. First through the granite highland of the Sierra, then the wheat fields of the Prairie.
Her first extended stay was in Labrador, with its taiga, glacier, estuary, and cold salt lake. It was often said that your first move away from home should be to a warmer place, unless you came from the tropics, when you couldn’t. But Freya went to Labrador. The cold did her good, she said.
The salt sea was mostly iced over, and she learned to ice-skate. She worked in the dining hall and the distribution center, and quickly met many people. She worked as a manual laborer and general field assistant, or GFA, or Good For Anything, as they were often called. She put in long hours all over the biome.
Out there next to Labrador’s glacier, people told her, there was one yurt community that brought up their children as if they were Inuit or Sami, or for that matter Neanderthals. They followed caribou and lived off the land, and no mention of the ship was made to their children. The world to these children was simply four kilometers long, a place mostly very cold, with a big seasonal shift between darkness and light, ice and melt, caribou and salmon. Then, during their initiation ceremony around the time of puberty, these children were blindfolded and taken outside the ship in individual spacesuits, and there exposed to the starry blackness of interstellar space, with the starship hanging there, dim and silvery with reflected starlight. Children were said to return from this initiation never the same.
“I should think not!” Freya said. “That’s crazy.”
“Quite a few of these children move away from Labrador after that,” her informant, a young woman who worked in the dining hall, told her. “But more than you’d think come back around as adults, and do the same to their own kids.”
“Did you grow up like that?” Freya asked.
“No, but we heard about it, and we saw them when they came into town.
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