The Children Star by Joan Slonczewski

strayed out to Station seemed less picky about sustenance than those back home.
    He saw a hand waving, next to an empty seat. The stranger motioned him to sit, removing her backpack from the chair across from her.
    â€œThanks,” he said. The woman, a simian student, looked vaguely familiar.
    Rod sat down and placed his finger on a small window that read his fingerprint. Choosing what to order was always hard, all the more so since every minute that passed made him feel guilty for keeping himself from the colony. “Shepherd’s pie, with mixed greens.” He usually ended up with his Valan home favorite.
    The woman opened a pocket holostage to play the news from Elysium. Rod never watched the news at home, as it distracted from his prayers. Today’s story was on Prokaryon’s “hidden masters.” Giant tracks had appeared among the singing-trees, in a remote region west of Mount Helicon. Even on the holostage the “tracks” looked more like streambed erosion, but of course there were experts to claim otherwise. No wonder the “snake eggs” were about.
    The tabletop opened, and a plate of steaming pie rose up. The odors brought him right back to his childhood; he could almost hear the gulls calling off Trollbone Point. The pleasure of the first few mouthfuls filled his attention, until the holostage again caught his eye. Another ship of illegals from L’li had tried to crash-land, this time on Elysium.
    The hapless vessel hung forlornly above the Sharer ocean, in which the Elysian cities floated. Elysians had intercepted it, of course, and “repatriated” the passengers. Rod’s fork froze in his hand.
    The woman was watching him. “You came from L’li, didn’t you?”
    He recalled the simian student in the connector tube, staring down at him as he tried to keep a grip on the infants.
    She closed the holostage and extended her hand. “I’m Khral, a microbiologist, just arrived from Science Park.” Science Park, the top Elysian research institute, sponsored fieldwork on Prokaryon. “I’ve joined the singing-tree project.”
    â€œWelcome,” said Rod, shaking her hand. “I’m Brother Rhodonite, of the Sacred Order of the Spirit.”
    â€œOh yes! I’ve heard of Spirit Callers on Valedon. They do a ritual dance before the moon at midsummer.”
    â€œThat’s the ‘Spirit
Brethren,’
“Rod corrected, much annoyed. “They split off years ago.”
    â€œI’m so sorry, I don’t know much about Valedon. I’m from Bronze Sky.” Bronze Sky, named for its vulcanic haze, had been terraformed four centuries before to settle excess L’liites. Today Bronze Sky was full, and there were twice as many L’liites as before—and Prokaryon was here to settle.
    But Khral also showed ancestry from gorilla hybrids created as slaves on ancient Urulan. Her nose was pushed in with a wrinkle, and her heavy brow overhung her eyes, giving her a permanently serious expression. “You know, everyone gets wrong what I do, too. The students here avoid me. They think I’m here to find a plague, to give the Fold Council an excuse to terraform Prokaryon. But it’s not true.”
    â€œIt doesn’t make sense,” agreed Rod. “Prokaryan microbes cannot live in humans.”
    Khral looked thoughtful. “That’s an interesting question. There are reports of occasional microzoöids isolated from human tissues—and even from nanoplast.”
    â€œMicrozoöids?”
    â€œWe call Prokaryan microbes ‘microzoöids’ because each cell is doughnut-shaped, just like the larger zoöids that roll across the fields. Each microzoöid cell runs its circularchromosome right around the doughnut hole! With their triplex DNA, microzoöids reproduce by splitting three ways down the middle, into three daughter cells.”
    â€œBut they can’t reproduce