“Nanites might help build up bone mass.”
“Yeah. Yet another task for Carlos to take on.” When Li has finished leading him on. “Anything else?”
“The local day will be about twenty…five hours, fourteen minutes, in standard units. The year is 421.6 local days or…443.3 standard days. We could be traditional and divide the year into twelve months, each of thirty-five local days. In that…case, I’d suggest five-or seven-day weeks. Or we could use fifteen months, each with four…seven-day weeks. Or twenty-eight months of fifteen days. I guess those would be less months than fortnights.”
Fortnights? As Antonio rambled on, she guessed that obscure units of measure were yet another of his fixations. And to keep months the same length, there was something about a New Year holiday not falling within a month at all, whether the year had fourteen, fifteen, or twenty-eight of them. And about extending that annual holiday by a leap day in three years out of five. And preserving standard seconds, rather than recalibrate their records and instruments. And….
Rikki abandoned hope he would ever wind down. “Okay, I’ll be off for my snack.”
“One other thing. I have a planetary temperature. Call it five degrees…Celsius.”
And that was the afterthought? Not, whatever they were, fortnights? She said, “Above freezing, if just a little. As you had predicted.”
“A planetary average. Marvin, does any Earth city have a similar average temperature?”
“Fargo, North Dakota.”
“Never heard of Fargo,” Rikki said. Or North Dakota, for that matter. “But that there is a city in such a climate is another data point to say we can settle here.”
“Marvin has been busy…too. With all the images we’ve collected, I had it assemble a…composite. Cloud cover is averaged out. Marvin, show Rikki the second planet.”
A mottled, spectral globe appeared between them. Large icecaps surrounded the poles. Gray and brown predominated, with splashes of dark green.
Leaning closer, she could just make out indistinct threads on the land surface. The twisty features, whatever they were, had to be huge. Mountain ranges? Fault lines to shame the Valles Marineris? Rivers to dwarf the Amazon? The Great Wall of—what did Li propose to call this world? Confucius?
Rikki resigned herself to more days without answers.
With a flick of the wrist she signaled for Marvin to spin the image.
“Not much water,” she commented. By Earth standards, she meant. Compared to home this world brimmed with water.
“All in how you look at things,” Antonio said. “Here, land is seventy percent of the surface, the rest water. Earth is the…opposite. But the total area here surpasses Earth’s. As dry as it…looks, this world offers more water surface than the Pacific Ocean.”
“And desert everywhere else, it appears,” she said. “Still no radio signals?”
“None.”
Rikki stood and smiled. “Thanks for the update. I’ll give Carlos a heads up that we’ll need skeletal nanites.” And hope I don’t interrupt anything. “What the hell,” she added to herself, reminded of Li and her campaigning. “We have to call these worlds something.”
“One through six?” Antonio asked. “Purple through…red?”
“Wouldn’t those be nice and easy?” With a chuckle, Rikki turned to leave.
“Wait,” Antonio said.
She turned back. “Uh-huh?”
“Li’s name suggestions,” he said. “So far, I’ve studied up on three. Plato. Confucius. Thomas…Hobbes. I’m concerned about the…pattern.”
“Hold that thought.” Rikki shut and dogged the hatches, and made sure the intercom mike was off. “Concerned in what way?”
“These names are…important…to Li.” It was a struggle, but for a few seconds Antonio managed to look straight at Rikki. “I wonder why.”
An astute question. Because Li was pushing hard for her choices.
Li was a psychiatrist. She would know what buttons to push with each of them. Flirting with Carlos. Logic with Antonio. Duty with Dana.
When Blake’s and my turns come, what will Li try? Or has she tried with Blake?
“I don’t know that I could tell Thomas Hobbes from Tom Thumb,” Rikki said. “But Plato? Confucius? Even I know those names. They were among humanity’s great thinkers.”
“I didn’t know much either,” Antonio said. “And yet…”
“Out with it. What’s on your mind?”
“Philosopher kings,” Antonio murmured. “That’s who Plato thought should run society. His so-called republic…had an unelected ruling class.”
“Did it?” Rikki shrugged. “I half remember some Plato text getting assigned in a poly-sci class. At best I skimmed it. Regardless, his republic is theoretical. I mean, no one ever created such a society.”
Maybe Li hopes to be the first. And to be its philosopher queen.
“Until…now?”
Rikki shook her head. “One famous philosopher. It doesn’t need to mean anything.”
Except to judge from the distasteful scene she had walked in on, it was more than one. She asked, “Do you know anything about Confucius?”
“Now, I do.” Antonio gestured at an open text display. “He spoke for family loyalty…respect for elders and ancestor worship. About rites and ritual. He saw that kind of family as the model for…government. Confucianism developed into a centralized state with a…bureaucratic class and the king as moral example. The system of ethics evolved into a rationale for political elites.”
“And you mentioned Thomas Hobbes?” Rikki said.
“Without government, he said, life would be ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and…short.’ He was defending sovereign absolutism.”
“Okay,” Rikki said, “Maybe I know one difference between Thomas Hobbes and Tom Thumb. Didn’t Hobbes talk about the social contract? That people consented to government to avoid all that nasty brutishness? A social contract seems progressive.”
“A contract of submission to the monarch,” Antonio said.
Once is random. Twice is coincidence. Three times is a trend. Maybe Li was predisposed toward certain forms of government. So what? She was only one among six.
Rikki said, “Does it matter what we call the star and the worlds? Mars was named for a mythical war god, but growing up on Mars didn’t make me warlike.”
Fingering his scar, gaze downcast, Antonio said, “It’s the pattern. Maybe to choose these individuals, to make their ideas prominent, will sway the children. They’re bound to get curious about the names.”
If anyone aboard understood the shaping of children’s minds, Li would. It was why Hawthorne had drafted her.
That and having her
