Marooned in Realtime

'You know what Tioulang and Fraley did when I started Mama's giveaway?' she continued. 'They told me how they had their disagreements, but that the future of the race was of supreme importance; their experts had gotten together, come up with a 'Unity Plan.' It specified production goals, resource allocation, just what every damn person was going to do for the next ten years. They expected me to jam this piece of wisdom down everyone's throat.... Idiots. I have software that's spent decades crunching on these problems, and 1 can't plan at the level of detail these jerks pretend to. Marta would be proud of me, though; I didn't laugh out loud. I just smiled sweetly and said anyone who wanted to follow their plan was certainly welcome to, but that I couldn't dream of enforcing it. They were insulted even so; I guess they thought I was being sarcastic. It was after that that Tioulang started peddling his line about majority rule and unity against the queen on the mountain.'

Other items were more serious, and did not amuse her at all. There were 140 low-tech females. Since the founding of the settlement, her medical service had diagnosed only four pregnancies. 'Two of the women requested abortions! I will not do abortions, Brierson! And I want every woman off contraceptive status.'

They had talked around this problem before; Wil didn't know quite what to say. 'This could just drive them into the arms of the NMs and Peacers.' Come to think of it, this was one issue where Korolev and the governments probably saw eye to eye. Fraley and Tioulang might make a show of supporting reproductive freedom, but he couldn't imagine it as more than a short-term ploy.

The anger left Yelen's voice. She was almost pleading. 'Don't they see, Wil? There have been settlements before. Most were just a family or two, but some-like Sanchez's were around half our size. They all failed. I think ours may be big enough. Just barely. If the women can average ten children each over the next thirty years, and if their daughters can perform similarly, then we'll have enough people to fill the gaps left as automation fails. But if they can't, then the technology will fail, and we'll actually lose population. All my simulations show that what's left won't be a viable species. In the end, there'll be a few high-techs living a few more subjective centuries with what's left of their equipment.'

Marta's vision of a flamed-out ramjet diving Earthwards passed through Wil's mind. 'I think the low-tech women want humanity back as much as you, Yelen. But it takes a while to get hardened to this situation. Things were so different back in civilization. A man or a woman could decide where and when and whether —'

'Inspector, don't you think that I know that? I lived forte years in civilization, and I know that what we have here stinks.... But it's all we've got.'

There was a moment's awkward silence, then: 'One thing I don't understand, Yelen. Of all the travelers, you and Marta had the best intuition about the future. Why didn't...' The words slipped out before he could stop them; he really wasn't trying to provoke a fight. 'Why didn't you think to bring along automatic wombs and a zygote bank?'

Korolev's face reddened, but she didn't blow up. After a second she said, 'We did. As usual, it was Marta's idea. I made the purchase. But... I screwed up.' She looked away from Brierson. It was the first time he'd seen shame in her manner. 'I, I didn't test the shipment enough. The company was rated AAAA; it should have been safe as houses. And we were so busy those last few weeks... but I should have been more careful.' She shook her head. 'We had plenty of time later, on the future side of the Singularity. The equipment was junk, Brierson. The wombs and postnatal automation were shells, with just enough processing power to fake the diagnostics.'

'And the zygotes?'

Yelen gave a bitter laugh. 'Yes. With bobbles it should be impossible to mess that up, right? Wrong. The zygotes were malformed, the sort of nonviable stuff even Christians won't touch.

'I've studied that company through GreenInc; there's nothing that could have tipped us off. But after their last rating, the owners must have gutted their company. The behavior was criminal; when they were caught, it would take them decades to make reparations. Or maybe we were a one-shot fraud; maybe they knew I was making a long jump.' She paused. The zip returned to her voice. 'I wish they were here now. I wouldn't have to sue them; I'd just drop 'em into the sun.

'Sometimes innocent people have to pay for the mistakes of others, Inspector. That's how it is here. These women must start producing. Now.'

Wil spread his hands. 'Give them, give us some time.'

'It may be hard for you to believe, but time is something we don't have a whole lot of. We waited fifty million years to get everyone together. But once this exercise is begun, there are certain deadlines. You've noticed that I haven't given away any medical equipment.'

Wil nodded. Peacer and NM propaganda noticed it loudly. Everyone was welcome to use the high-techs' medical services, but, like their bobblers and fighting gear, their medical equipment had not been part of the giveaway.

'We have almost three hundred people here now. The high-end medical equipment is delicate stuff. It consumes irreplaceable materials; it wears out. This is already happening, Brierson, faster than a linear scale-up would predict. The synthesizers must constantly recalibrate to handle each individual.'

There was a tightness in Wil's throat. He wondered if this was how a twentieth-century type might feel on being told of inoperable cancer. 'How long do we have?'

She shrugged. 'If we gave full support, and if the population did not increase, maybe fifty years. But the population must increase, or we won't be able to maintain the rest of our technology. The children will need plenty of health care.... Now, I don't know how long it will be before the new civilization can make its own medical equipment. It could take anywhere from fifty to two hundred years, depending on whether we have to mark time waiting for a really large population or can get exponential tech growth with only a few thousand people.

'No one need die of old age; I'm willing to bobble the deathbed cases. But there will