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eBook Category: Science Fiction
eBook Description: Provo's World was like thousands of other sunless bodies in the Realm. Born in an unknown solar system, it had been thrown free by a near-collision and now drifts aimlessly through interstellar space. Not counting the mining robots, the population of Provo's World is two: the fabulously wealthy Provo Lei and his adopted daughter Ula. Provo hires Hann Locum, a terraforming expert, to tutor Ula and assist with her project in a cavern dug by her father's mining operations. When Hann learns of the circumstances surrounding Ula's 'adoption' from her cruel parents, Provo confesses his concern for Ula's mental stability--and Hann suspects she may have sabotaged their project.

eBook Publisher: Fictionwise.com, Published: First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, 1995
Fictionwise Release Date: October 2001

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Available eBook Formats [MultiFormat - What's this?]: eReader (PDB) [57 KB] , ePub (EPUB) [46 KB] , Rocket/REB1100 (RB) [42 KB] , Adobe Acrobat (PDF) [152 KB] , Palm Doc (PDB) [46 KB] , Microsoft Reader (LIT) [56 KB] , Franklin eBookMan (FUB) [113 KB] , hiebook (KML) [131 KB] , Sony Reader (LRF) [69 KB] , iSilo (PDB) [37 KB] , Mobipocket (PRC) [48 KB] , Kindle Compatible (MOBI) [75 KB] , OEBFF Format (IMP) [64 KB]
Words: 13087
Reading time: 37-52 min.
Microsoft Reader (LIT) Format: Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud ENABLED
Adobe Acrobat (PDF) Format:  Printing DISABLED, Read-Aloud DISABLED
All Other formats: Printing DISABLED, Read-aloud DISABLED

Beauty, say some artists, is the delicious stew made from your subject's flaws.

Ula Lei was a beautiful young woman.

She had a hundred hectare tent pitched beside her father's home, the place filled with bio stocks and empty crystal wombs and computers capable of modeling any kind of terraforming project. She was standing beside a huge reader, waving and saying, "Come here," with the voice people use on robots. Neither polite nor intimidating.

I approached, thinking that she looked slight. Almost underfed. Where I had expected an ungraceful woman-child, I instead found a mannerly but almost distant professional. Was she embarrassed to need a tutor? Or was she unsure how to act with a stranger? Either way, the old man's warning about my "toy" status seemed overstated. Taking a frail, pretty hand, feeling the polite and passionless single shake, I went from wariness to a mild funk, wondering if I had failed some standard. It wounded me when she stared right through me, asking with a calm dry voice, "What shall we do first?"

Funk became a sense of relief, and I smiled, telling her, "Decide on our project, and its scale."

"Warm work, and huge."

I blinked. "Your father promised us a thousand hectare tent, plus any of his robots--"

"I want to use an old mine," she informed me.

"With a warm environment?"

"It has a rock floor, and we can insulate the walls and ceiling with field charges, then refrigerate as a backup." She knew the right words, at least in passing. "I've already selected which one. Here. I'll show you everything."

She was direct like her father, and confident. But Ula wasn't her father's child. Either his genes had been suppressed from conception, or they weren't included. Lean and graced with the fine features popular on tropical worlds, her body was the perfect antithesis of Provo's buttery one. Very black, very curly hair. Coffee-colored skin. And vivid green eyes. Those eyes noticed that I was wearing a heavy work jersey; I had changed clothes after meeting with Provo, wanting this jersey's self-heating capacity. Yet the temperature was twenty degrees warmer than the tundra, and her tropical face smiled when I pulled up my sleeves and pocketed my gloves. The humor was obvious only to her.

Then she was talking again, telling me, "The main chamber is eight kilometers by fifty, and the ceiling is ten kilometers tall in the center. Pressurized ice. Very strong." Schematics flowed past me. "The floor is the slope of a dead volcano. Father left when he found better ores."

A large operation, I noted. The rock floor would be porous and easily eroded, but rich in nutrients. Four hundred square kilometers? I had never worked on that scale, unless I counted computer simulations.

A graceful hand called up a new file. "Here's a summary of the world's best-guess history. If you're interested."

I was, but I had already guessed most of it for myself. Provo's World was like thousands of other sunless bodies in the Realm. Born in an unknown solar system, it had been thrown free by a near-collision, drifting into interstellar space, its deep seas freezing solid and its internal heat failing. In other regions it would have been terraformed directly, but our local district was impoverished when it came to metals. Provo's World had rich ores, its iron and magnesium, aluminum and the rest sucked up by industries and terraformers alike. A healthy green world requires an astonishing amount of iron, if only to keep it in hemoglobin. The iron from this old mine now circulated through dozens of worlds; and almost certainly some portion of that iron was inside me, brought home now within my own blood.

"I've already sealed the cavern," Ula informed me. "I was thinking of a river down the middle, recirculating, and a string of waterfalls--"

"No," I muttered.

She showed me a smile. "No?"

"I don't like waterfalls," I warned her.

"Because you belong to the New Traditionalist movement. l know." She shrugged her shoulders. "'Waterfalls are clichés,' you claim. 'Life, done properly, is never pretty in simple ways.'"

"Exactly."

"Yet," Ula assured me, "this is my project."