Building Harlequin’s Moon Read Online Free PDF Page A

Rachel was born when he was forty-two Moon years old, or just over half that many Earth years, and his parents had been awake two Moon years before they had him, so the trees surrounding the meadow must be . . . twenty-five Earth years or more old. They were tall, the biggest more than a hundred feet. Branches intertwined tightly, even fifty feet above the forest floor. Webs of thin young lianas, vines, curled up trunks and hung down from branches, reaching for ground and sky together. Light in this part of the grove shone low andhazy, mysterious. The air smelled damp and rich, as if the canopy held in the scents of growth. It was Rachel’s favorite place.
    Once, Gabriel had told her that the First Trees were planted too close together. He had miscalculated how much Selene’s oxygen-rich atmosphere and three-quarter Earth gravity would elongate everything that grew on the moon—stems, and branches, and people. He’d said trees were shorter and fatter on Earth. Rachel
liked
the intertwined effect—it made the First Forest dark and intriguing.
    Gabriel’s voice brought her back to the present. “Now we move on to the practical. Your combined score determines whether or not you become a Horticulture Terraformer. If you don’t pass, there are other choices for work.”
    Rachel’s stomach clenched.
Not me. I have to be around trees. I have to help plant Selene. I have to pass
! She imagined her father’s voice in her ear, suggesting she
“breathe
,” saying,
“My daughter can do anything
.”
    “Some of our evaluation will be based on the work you did during class. That tells us how you approach day-to-day tasks,” Gabriel said. A few children groaned. Ursula and Rachel grinned at each other; this was good for them, they worked hard. “We’ll also judge how well you’ve learned the system’s ecology behind terraforming. First, Ali will question you as a group.”
    Rachel and Ursula sat next to each other. They squeezed each other’s hands, passing a wish for luck back and forth. Ali faced the class, sitting cross-legged on a waist-high black dais. She opened a data window beside her, opaqued it white, and left it suspended in air to her right. “First, tell me what is in the base nutrient mixture?”
    An easy question. Rachel chose to let one of the younger children answer it. Two of them, and Andrew, all registered an answer at almost the same time.
    Ali called on the young blond boy Andrew had teased earlier, Nick, and his answer appeared in the window besideAli. His voice started with a quiver of nerves, but got stronger as he listed, “Nitrogen, silicon, phosphorus, and potassium are macro-nutrients. Calcium, magnesium—” Nick stumbled through the rest, getting most of it right.
    “Anyone else?” Ali asked.
    “Iron,” Sharon spoke up.
    “But we get iron from the soil,” Andrew said.
    “We still have to measure it; there’s too much in some places,” Sharon answered him.
    “Quite right. Why is it irregular?” Ali asked.
    “Well, here, in the grove, it’s pretty even. All Selene’s soil came from space stuff, and in some places, the way you made the world, it didn’t work. It came out scattered.” Sharon put her hand over her mouth. Some of the other children tittered.
    Rachel tried to cover for Sharon. “It wasn’t a mistake, it couldn’t be helped. Some asteroids and moons have more iron than others. Besides, everything else varies too. We have to watch places where there is too much iron—it burns the roots. We always survey the soil before we plant, especially in the field.” Rachel grinned at the younger girl. “And you’re right, iron is important. There has to be some, and there can’t be too much.”
    “But every nutrient is like that,” Andrew said. “They all have to be just right.”
    Sharon didn’t answer. Andrew had succeeded in making Rachel look foolish too. Rachel squirmed, furious for the second time that morning. She couldn’t show her anger—it might make