"Yet here you are. Now what will you do?"
"Me personally? Go home."
"Why not join us? Your children would have a beautiful future. They would never want or need for anything."
"Excuse me, but that's not even remotely tempting. If I take this helmet off, I die. You know it, and I know it."
"I could grow you an oxygen filter in my housewomb. It would be a part of you in a way your Skin never is. You would live with it in perfect symbiosis."
Lawrence held a finger up. "Yeah, stop right there. I'm not coming to live with you, okay?"
"Why? What do we lack? I do not mock, I am genuinely curious. You seem so primitive compared to us. I don't understand your reluctance. Do you not wish to better yourself, to be a part of a richer, more mature culture?"
"We're the primitives? Which of us is living in mud huts, lady? I wouldn't wish this existence on my worst enemy, let alone my own children. You're going backward faster than progress ever pulled us out of medieval squalor. Sure, this kind of life looks appealing now; you're still close enough to the industrial market economy to make you think this is all stress-free and rich in karma. Another two generations, and you won't be able to cure a cold, let alone cancer. And you call that living life to the full. I call it betraying your children."
"Ah." Calandrinia shook her hair again. "Now I begin to understand. How old am I, Earthman?"
"I haven't got a clue."
"I'm fourteen."
The information left Lawrence nonplussed. He simply couldn't see the relevance. "Really?"
"Yes. It wasn't just their biotechnology skills that our ancestors brought to this world, they brought a saying with them as well. Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse. Thanks to them I can do that."
"How long do you live for?" Lawrence didn't want to ask it, because he suddenly knew he wasn't going to like the answer.
"Probably thirty years. Can you imagine such a time? How it must stretch at the end."
"The oxygen. It's the oxygen, isn't it?"
"Of course. Everything here is faster, more dynamic."
"But... thirty?'
"Thirty whole years, during which time I will live and love and think. Why do you think that is wrong? Why do you want to live for such a long time?"
"To live is to experience. You can't do that in thirty years. There's so much of the universe to know."
"I do experience, far more than you ever will. I grow faster. I learn faster. I live faster. We all do. This world's life is so much more vital than your bland biology. As for the universe, it is contained in your mind. Observation is purely relative. I can watch the stars from here, all of them, while you crawl between them in your tin cans and see only one at a time. I appreciate my life, Earthman; there is less memory in my brain, and much more thought."
"Thought," he sneered. "But you don't use it. What's the point of thinking if you have no way to apply it, nothing to create?"
Calandrinia let her breath whistle out between her teeth, as did several other new-natives. "We do nothing else but create, Earthman. Do you think we have time to carry and birth our young as your women do? I adapt my children to the world as I see it and know it."
"You're talking about shape, aren't you? That's why you all look different."
"We have become morphogenic, the greatest gift our ancestors left us. What I think, my children become. Can you imagine what that is like? If I see a tree that is so tall and full of grace that I have to sit at its foot and gaze up in admiration, I can engender a child who will be able to climb to its apex and laugh with the joy of doing so. When I swim in a mountain lake, I do so for a few exciting minutes, while my daughter will be able to glide through its deeps and play with the fish. And when I shake with awe as a macrorex walks past, I can absorb its essence and mingle it with my own."
"Sweet Fate, you're talking bestiality."
"How simple your mind is. How pitiable. Do you think we alone should remain sentient and aware? If we are to live with this planet, we must share the best of what we are with it. Are you so unselfish, Earthman? Would you stop us from doing that, from waking Gaia?"
"I won't stop you. But I want no part in it. You're not human anymore."
"Why, thank you. I rarely get paid such a compliment."
"Wait a goddamn minute here," Ntoko said. "Are you telling me that the macrorexes are part human, that they're self-aware?'
"Some of them," Calandrinia said. "They are our friends, they help us when we ask."
"And the windshrikes, too?"
"Of course."
"Jesus H. Christ."
"If you don't have pregnancy anymore," Lawrence said, "where do all these kids come from?"
"The housewombs gestate them," Calandrinia said simply.
"House...?" He looked at the dumpy buildings that made up the village. "You mean your homes contain some kind of artificial womb?"
"Do you listen to anything? There is nothing artificial about a housewomb, it is perfectly natural. Our houses were the last stage in bridging the gap from what we were to what we are. Tell me, do your files have fastrocks in them?"
"Yeah." His Skin AS was retrieving the information. Fastrocks were essentially a polyp-type plant that grew quite slowly by Santa Chico's standards. They resembled ocher stones that grew clustered together in vast colonies and were completely fireproof. Their shells were also tough enough to resist being split open by the jaws of anything smaller than a macrorex.
Calandrinia gestured at the houses. "Our ancestors modified those small plants into the sturdy buildings you see today, a true and grand amalgamation of the genes from two planets. Now we live in living houses. Their roots grow deep to collect water and nutrients, while their shells harvest the sunlight. Within our houses we are nurtured without violating the planet as you do. Their organs provide for us in the way your machines do for you, although our bond is closer and more appreciative."
"You mean symbiotic."
"Ah, you are listening. Yes, our houses are a part of our family. Once I have a fertilized ovum, I place it in a housewomb to gestate."
"Did you give them sentience as well?"
"Of course. How could you marry an entity devoid of thought?"
"Good point," Lawrence retorted sarcastically. "Surely you've made yourselves overdependent on these constructs? Do they grow your food for you as well? Our satellites didn't see any working protein cell refineries."
Calandrinia reached up and pulled a cluster of small red berries from the tree. "Modifying Santa Chico's plants to fruit terrestrial food was the first and hardest task facing our ancestors. Once they understood how to merge the two different genetic molecules in a successful union, then everything we are today became possible. It took decades of effort before anything so complex was achieved, which is why we had to involve ourselves with commerce. So much of our respective biochemistries was incompatible, as it is on every world humans colonize. The old ways of life, your markets and machines, had to be sustained for that whole time while the problems were solved. Now, as you can see, we have left them far behind."
"And left yourself in debt," Ntoko said.
"Only on your planet, Earthman. Here there is no such thing. Here we are one."
"Claiming you are above such things as money is a very convenient way to duck the issue," Lawrence said. "But I know you understand economics and technology. You still have spaceplanes and orbital systems. They have to be maintained, spare parts manufactured, fuel produced. House-wombs can't do that for you."