"Do you hear that, my darlings?" Tana's eyes widened, and she glanced up at the underside of the habitat dome as if she expected to spot something moving overhead. The others looked up as well, but the only thing they could see beyond the transparisteel hull was swirling snow. "I think that we may be getting a little visitor tonight! A very special visitor, with very special gifts for each and every good little colonist on the anniversary of the most important day in the history of Corvus-9. And do you know what that is?" She smiled beatifically at them, encouraging them silently to make a guess.
None of them answered. There were five girls and three boys this year, and they all simply glared at Tana with the sullen defiance so common to those not yet adults, yet no longer children. Even Jarl, the oldest, who had turned eighteen almost a full year ago, merely stared at her in stony silence. Tana didn't really expect them to behave any differently. She had been much the same on the night when she was gathered with all of the other colonists her age for the special ritual that marked her transition from girl to woman. They would all understand soon. Just like she did.
"Tonight, my darlings, is Parasite Eve. It's the last night before you take your place in the colony as fully recognized adults, with all the privileges and responsibilities that entails." Despite herself, Tana somehow expected them to react to the news--with excitement, shock, dismay, even perhaps fear--but their faces betrayed only hostility and confusion. More confusion than hostility in the case of Jarl, it seemed; he'd been asking when he could move out of his parents' dome and begin building his own habitat, and the answers he'd gotten hadn't satisfied him. He was no doubt curious to discover why so many friends who were older than him by a mere week or two were already treated as fully grown, while he was still relegated to the curious in-between status of the other eighteen-year-olds in the colony.
But that was only to be expected. Parasite Eve was one of those rare and wonderful traditions that didn't come with them from the homeworld; unlike the tales and stories they passed along to their children, none of their written histories recorded the legendary night and the even more wonderful and glorious day that followed. It was down to Tana to tell them how it all happened, a duty that she welcomed every year. "Let me tell you," she said, "of the very first Parasite Day. And the very special visitor we can expect quite soon."
She gestured up to the transparent surface of the dome overhead. "It was on a night very much like this one," she declaimed, her voice settling into the rhythms of the story she knew so well, "in the very first year of the founding of Corvus-9. The original settlers had only a handful of domes back then, and the world outside them was even darker and colder than it is now. They knew that the work of turning this planet into a place where their descendants could live without environmental suits and habitat technology was long, dangerous centuries away, but they lived in hope. Just as we live in hope that our children's children's children will someday stand on the surface and look up at a bright blue sky."
Tana assumed that at least that would bring a smile to the young colonists' faces, but all they did was sit in disdainful silence, broken only by the occasional sound of Nari's squirming and wriggling or Cheema's quiet sobs. The in-betweens never truly understood, of course; that was what made Parasite Eve such a special night. But this bunch was particularly obstinate in their disrespect for the colony's traditions. It was probably Jarl, she suspected. He'd grown nosy and suspicious over the last few months, and he'd no doubt bred suspicion in the others as well.
They'd understand soon, though. "But even in that first year, the founding settlers had expanded their reach from the original Central Dome to a second habitat, then a third, and so on until on the first Parasite Eve they finally christened Dome Seven. This very dome we sit in tonight. Oh, I know that now it's just part of the wide and sprawling complex we live in, but back on that long ago evening when the snows blew hard and the skies were black as carbon it was the furthest a human being could go in the entire world. And twenty families shared this little space that feels cramped for just the nine of us!"
Tana exaggerated slightly--the eight in-betweens were all packed a little closely, yes, but that was just to make the ritual easier when the time came. There was plenty of space for a single family, not that any family lived in Dome Seven. Officially, this habitat was earmarked for storage and social gathering, and evacuated every evening promptly at Red Ring. People only stayed overnight in it once a year... but that was what made it such a special event.
"And those first twenty families were all so young," she continued, trying her best to paint a picture with her words despite her unenthusiastic audience. "There were no children on Corvus-9 in those days; pregnancies wouldn't be authorized for another three years, in fact. It was only fertile couples, working hard to make their environment big enough and safe enough to support the little ones who would someday arrive. And so those forty individuals, the twenty families who lived here on Parasite Eve, were the first to hear their new neighbors knock... knock... knocking on the dome."
That finally got a reaction. Cort looked around wildly, as if he expected at any moment to see something on the other side of the transparisteel walls. Nari squirmed so hard that her chair tipped over, sending the breath out of her with a whoosh. And Jarl... their little ringleader Jarl... he looked at Tana with a glare of triumph and fury mingled together as if he expected her to say something just like that. It was a lucky thing Parasite Eve was tonight, she decided. If his suspicions were that fully formed, who knew what he might have done in a few more days?
