Red Planet Run by Dana Stabenow

harmony.
    “This World is the culmination of a dream that began long ago and worlds away, in the minds of a few, visionary dreamers, back in the days when Terrans didn’t even have a reliable space transportation system, or the funds, or a bureaucratic structure to support the research and development for space travel, much less the construction of habitats and their colonization. The journey has been long, and difficult, and, for some of us”—my voice did not falter— “our last.
    “Today, at journey’s end, we pay tribute. To the dream, and to the dreamers.”
    I gestured towards the tree. “It has been the tradition of Terran builders for centuries that when the frame of a house is complete, they nail a tree to the ridgepole. World One has no ridgepole, and I’m not about to start driving nails through living trees when I know for a fact Roger Lindbergh would eviscerate me if I did.” There was a ripple of smothered laughter in which Roger did not join. Zoya patted his arm.
    “So today, here, now, begins our own adaptation of that continuing tradition. This tree comes from Central Park on Outpost.” I heard a sound that I was pretty sure was Roger’s teeth grinding together. “Archy and I have been looking into its genealogy, and from what we can discover, it is the offshoot of a hemlock planted in the Big Rock Candy Mountains on Terranova. That tree was seeded from a grove of mountain hemlocks in the Chugach National Forest in Alaska.”
    Settling the tree into the hole already dug for it, I filled in the hole, tamping the earth down around the little tree’s roots. When I was finished, I stuck the shovel into the ground and stood back. “From Terra to Terranova to Outpost to World One,” I intoned. “From the tree comes the wood.”
    “And the wood returns to the tree,” they responded.
    “Okay, Archy,” I murmured into my commset.
    Somewhere outside, a set of computer-driven waldoes made a final, minuscule adjustment. The last reflecting mirror was brought into line, and through the ring of tropical graphplex windows the World’s first ray of sunlight slipped shyly inside, to glint off the motes of construction dust that danced through the air of the sphere, to cause the muddy ripples of the shallow (and still straight) river to gleam with a life of their own, to warmly caress our upturned faces. I looked down at the little tree, which, even as I watched, seemed to dig in its roots and shake out its limbs, the better to bask proudly in our approval and that first virgin ray of light.
    There was a brief, sunstruck silence, followed by a thunderous, rolling wave of applause. The cheers from the crowd echoed across the equator, cheers for the little tree, cheers for the New World’s christening by sunlight, but cheers most of all for themselves, and for the culmination of a dream.
    · · ·
     
    Back on Outpost that evening, there was a smaller, more intimate, and infinitely more personal ceremony. Jammed into Charlie and Simon’s living room were Charlie and Simon, Alexei, Axenia, Mother, Crip, and Paddy and Sean, looking so innocent I was immediately suspicious. With an agility that alarmed me as much as it awed me, they had managed to avoid, avert, deter, deflect, and duck any and all explanation of last week’s presence in the train of Brother Moses’ demonstration. I considered warning him, but I didn’t know of what, and so left it for another day. A mistake, as it later turned out, but contrary to public opinion, I was only human.
    Maggie Lu was there, as were Roger, Zoya, John Begaye, Helen, and Ari, Perry Austin attended by the Smith triplets (who filled up half the room all by themselves), and a slender young brunette with tilted hazel eyes and a shy smile, whom I did not know. Leif stood next to her, clasping her hand in his. I opened my mouth to say something, for example, Who are you? and, Why are you and my son holding hands? when there was a stir at the other end of the room.