Rosa looked down, lowered her arms as if resting. “The farmer became bitter. He thought he would fight the wind. He built walls against the wind, higher and higher, making them out of the dust and straw and the mud that ran in rivers across the dead fields. But the wind knocked the walls down, and still the farmer was alive. The wind took his family one by one, and still the farmer lived, and cursed the wind, and finally he began to curse the Maker of Winds—”
“He became a wind breaker!” Rex Live Oak called out.
Rosa smiled, unperturbed. “He tried magic when the walls wouldn’t work. He chanted against the wind, and sang songs, and all the while, he grew to hate the land, the wind, the water.
He cursed them all and he became more and more bitter, until it seemed bad water ran in his veins, and his mind was poisoned with hate and fear and change. He no longer missed his family; he no longer missed the farm. It seemed nothing meant anything to him but revenge against the wind—”
“Sounds subversive to me,” Hans whispered to Martin.
“And he grew thinner and thinner each day, more and more wrinkled, until he looked like a dead stalk of corn—”
“I don’t remember what corn looked like, growing on a stalk,” Bonita Imperial Valley said. “I grew up in a farm town, and I just
“He couldn’t remember, either,” Rosa continued smoothly. “He couldn’t remember what the crops looked like, or what had been important to him. He fought the wind with the only weapon he had left, useless empty words, and the wind howled and howled. Finally, the farmer became so bitter and dry and dead inside, the wind sucked him up through the air like a leaf. He lived inside the wind, empty as a husk, and the wind filled his dry lungs, and reached into his dry stomach, and then into his dry, rattling head.”
“So what’s the point?” Jack Sand asked, looking around the assembled group with a puzzled expression.
“It’s a story,” Kimberly Quartz said. “Just listen.”
“I don’t listen to stories unless they have a point. It’s a waste of time,” Jack said. He got up and left, glancing at Hans and Martin and shaking his head.
“In the wind,” Rosa continued, hardly missing a beat, “the farmer knew what he was up against, and that he had no power. He stopped cursing and he started listening. He stopped resisting—I mean, how can you resist something so powerful?—and he began to live in the wind, as part of the howl and the whirl and the swirling. He saw other people in the wind—”
Hans motioned for Martin to follow him outside. Martin walked through the door and they stayed in step down the corridor, past Jack Sand, past Andrew Jaguar and Kirsten Two Bites.
Out of the others’ hearing, Hans said, “When I was a little kid, back on Earth, my folks took television and video games away from me for a week to punish me for something I did. I went nuts. I even started to read books. Well,” he said, “our TV’s gone now. Rosa is better than nothing.” He shook his head. “But not much.”
“Did you slick Paola Birdsong?” Ariel asked. Martin picked up his tray of food and walked away from her, face pinking.
“Did you?” she asked innocently, following with her own tray.
He sat, got up when she sat next to him, moved to another table, started to get up again as she kept pace with him, and finally dropped the tray a few inches to the table, slapped the tabletop once with his fist, and said, “Who the hell cares?”
Martin ate and tried to ignore her.
“I’m not trying to be nosy,” Ariel said. “I want to know what it means to be devoted to someone for a long time, even after they’re dead.”
Martin found the situation intensely uncomfortable. “I’d like to eat in peace,” he said.
“I’m sorry. I’m bothering you. I apologize.” She got up, carried her tray out of the cafeteria, and left him feeling guilty, mad, and confused.
That sleep, he cried again, thinking of Theresa, but he did not remember any dreams.
Two moms appeared in the schoolroom for the next crew tenday report. There had been no announcement, no fanfare, but the crew cheered, taking it as a sign that things were improving.
Hans announced the results of the previous day’s nose-to-tail races.
Hakim had five minutes to squeeze in a report on science.
Jennifer Hyacinth came up to Martin after the meeting.
“Maybe you’d like to be in on what we’re doing,” she said. She sounded almost conspiratorial, but he could not imagine Jennifer involved in intrigue.
“About what?” he asked.
“The noach. We’re having a little conference to share results.”
“Oh.” He had planned to attend the next trial for the main race, but that was certainly trivial enough to ignore.
“Sure,” he said.
“In the nose in ten minutes. Hakim Hadj, Giacomo Sicilia and Thorkild Lax are coming.”
“I’ll be there,” he said.
Hakim, Giacomo, Thorkild and Jennifer had formed a Noach Studies Society some tendays before. Martin had not attended the meetings—they were reportedly dry and mathematical, the chief excitement being momerath challenges.
The reports were wrong.
Jennifer, with Giacomo’s help, had put together a comprehensive description of how the noach could work, how matter could change character under the influence of noach-transmitted information, and what that meant for the ultimate shape of Benefactor society as they imagined it.
Hakim spent a few minutes projecting graphics for Martin, filling him in on the key points.
Jennifer and Giacomo held hands and contemplated momerath until the meeting was convened by Thorkild.
“We’ve been trying to piece together an overview of Benefactor technology,” Thorkild began. “Jennifer’s done most of the tough work, laying a foundation for the rest of us. Giacomo has erected the frame on that foundation…”
Giacomo smiled.
“You might say they work together intimately,” Thorkild added. Hakim clapped his hand on Giacomo’s shoulder as if in congratulations. Jennifer’s face remained set in solid neutrality, but her eyes flashed.
“Hakim has put on the siding and I’ve painted,” Thorkild concluded. “Mind you, none of what we’ve come up with has much meaning for our mission. It’s all theoretical—”
“I disagree,” Jennifer said.
“Which I was about to add,” Thorkild said.
“I think it could have a lot of meaning for the Job,” Jennifer said. “We were caught by surprise when the Killers converted our craft to anti em. We assume the moms were caught by surprise. The more we can guess about the technology and theory behind our weapons, the more we can contribute to planning.”
Martin rubbed his nose. “So what’s the house look like?”
Hakim projected a list. “First, the noach—instantaneous communication at a distance. This is made possible by confusing two particles—in this case, atomic nuclei—into ‘believing’ that they are the same. Second, actually creating a particle at a distance—deluding the matrix into believing that a particle exists at a certain position, and has a certain history attached. This could be how fake matter is created—resistance to pressure, but no resistance to acceleration; extension, but no mass.”
“Noach could be the key to all of this,” Jennifer said. “To send a noach message, you have to confuse a particle’s bit makeup, its self-contained information about character, position and quantum state.”
“What do you mean by a particle ‘believing’ something?” Martin asked.
“The particle’s bit makeup determines its behavior,” Hakim said. “ ‘Behavior’ is a bad word, like ‘belief.’ We do not think particles are alive or think. But they do exhibit simple behavior, of course—a nature or character, which is the same for all similar particles, and a history in spacetime.”
“Given that,” Martin said, “how do we get to the rest of the abilities in this list?”
“To create fake matter,” Giacomo said, “basic elements in the matrix are convinced they have some of the properties of matter. To noach messages, you tamper with the privileged channels used by particles to convince
