Starbound

by Joe Haldeman

  Moonboy had sustained a wound to the top of his head, from the pool stick, which was bleeding even worse than Elza’s nose. I saw this. Blood covered his face and much of the front of his shirt. He fainted, and Namir carried him to the infirmary.

  A comical scene ensued, which I suppose would be the third act of the play, in human terms. Moonboy’s wound had to be sewn up with stitches. Namir started the process, cleaning the wound and removing hair from around it, but before he could start stitching, his wife came in and took over. So she sewed the wound closed while Carmen held the ice pack to her nose, both of them laughing over the absurdity of the situation. Along with Namir and Meryl, they carried the patient back to his bed.

  Then the three women moved into the kitchen and drank alcohol and laughed for some time. The men either weren’t invited or felt they wouldn’t be welcome.

  Altogether, a complex display of interactions, which I could not pretend to understand. It will be interesting to record the changes this causes in attitudes and actions.

  It’s a pity that we will probably not live to return to Mars and discuss all this. The starship is like a small laboratory, with us nine organisms sealed within. But there’s no scientist to peer at us from outside, and draw conclusions.

  16

  INJURIES

  Namir suggested a meeting the morning after, while Moonboy was still under sedation. It was natural for Elza to lead the discussion.

  “For me, it could have been a lot worse.” She touched her bruised nose gently. Both eyes were dark, too. One nostril was open, the other packed with gauze. “The break is simple, not ‘displaced.’ So it will heal without surgery. What’s broken inside Moonboy is not so easy to heal.”

  “What do you know about his . . . condition?” Paul asked.

  “More than I can say, ethically. It does involve anger that’s been suppressed for years, though. Unfortunately, it’s associated with claustrophobia.”

  “But this starship is huge,” Snowbird said, gesturing with all four arms.

  “Snowbird,” Paul said, “you’ve always lived inside a big room, a cave. Moonboy grew up in Kansas, a large flat state. You could look around and see forty kilometers in any direction.”

  “I don’t know that that’s a factor,” Elza said. “This was a very small space, involuntary confinement.

  “Anyhow, as well as the sedative, I’ve given him a mild antipsychotic medication. For his protection and ours.”

  “Good,” Dustin said.

  “I should give you one as well, darling. You have not been a model of rational behavior.”

  “He came after me.”

  “You could have fought him off with a pillow, not a pool cue. Try to leave your balls on the table next time. So to speak.”

  “Yes, Doctor.” Obviously a familiar response.

  “So do we have to keep him doped up for the duration?” Paul said. “Do we have enough drugs for that?”

  “I can synthesize things that simple. I could keep us all doped to the gills for the whole mission. Which has crossed my mind.”

  “That would not be practical,” Fly- in-Amber said. “Would you be able to eat, and drink, and excrete?”

  “All in the same place,” Namir said.

  “I’ve been to parties like that,” Dustin said.

  “They’re kidding,” Elza said to the Martian. “So am I. Meryl, he’s never lost control like this before?”

  “Not since we’ve been married; not on Mars.” She hesitated. “He got in trouble when he was a kid. That involved fighting, I remember. At the time, I thought how unlike him that was. But I never asked him for any details.”

  “I’ll see if he wants to talk about it.”

  “To you?”

  “To a doctor. He ever say anything to you guys? About being a wild kid?”

  The men all shook their heads. “I don’t remember him ever talking about his life on Earth,” Paul said. “Funny, now that I think of it. Everybody has Earth stories.”

  “He’s odd that way,” Meryl said. “He talks about his mother, when he was little, and he talks about college, but not much in between.”

  “That’s not so unusual,” I said. “Paul never talks about that time in his life. Do you?”

  “Boring,” he said. “Dealing drugs, child prostitution, day in and day out.”

  “Child prostitution?” Fly-in-Amber said.

  “Kidding,” he said. “They were all over eighteen.”

  “Paul . . .”

  “I’m sorry, Fly-in-Amber. It’s disrespectful of me to kid you.”

  “On the contrary,” the Martian said. “I learn from your humor. If you had actually been a bad boy, you wouldn’t joke about it. Your feelings are ambiguous, are they not? You wish you had been more bad?”

  “Got me there,” he said. “Elza, you’re both victim and professional observer. What if it had happened to someone else—”

  “Paul, that’s not relevant,” I said. “There are only two other women here.”

  “It might be relevant,” Elza said, “on various levels.” She touched her nose and grimaced. “I’d just asked him about his father, sort of out of the blue.”

  “What about his father?” Meryl said. “He never talks about him.”

  Elza studied her for a moment. “I know some things I shouldn’t. Maybe because of my security clearance, I don’t know, I . . . I was given access to confidential psychiatric records.”

  “About his father?” Meryl said.

  “I’m on thin ice here,” she said.

  After a pause, everyone started to talk at once. “Wait, wait.” Paul had the strongest voice. “Elza, you don’t have to violate your political principles . . .”

  “Yes, she does,” Dustin said.

  His wife smiled at him. “The philosopher speaks.”

  “All right. The principle of doctor-patient confidentiality is a luxury we have to forego.”

  “Like the luxury of anger?” she said, still smiling.

  “We are seven people, or nine,” he plowed on, “who may have the fate of the entire human race, both races, depending on our thoughts and actions. Our freedom to think and act can’t be constrained by tradition. By law or superstition.”

  “I think he’s right,” Namir said slowly. “At least in terms of information.”

  Elza looked at him, then away. “Maybe so. Maybe so.” She sat up straight and spoke to the middle distance, as if reciting. “This is something Moonboy doesn’t remember, because it was repressed by court order: When he was eleven years old, his father killed him.”

  “Tried to?” Dustin said.

  “Killed him. Not on purpose. Tried to stop his crying by taping his mouth shut. Then bound his hands and feet with the tape and threw him in a dark closet.”

  “Holy shit,” Dustin said.

  “When his mother came home from work, probably a few minutes later, she asked where the kid was, and got into an argument with dear old dad. When she opened the closet, Moonboy was dead. He’d choked on vomit and stopped breathing.

  “The rescue people got his heart and lungs going again. But what if his mother had not come home in time? He could have died permanently or suffered irreversible brain damage.”

  “What happened to the father?” Namir asked.

  “The record doesn’t say.”

  “Moonboy thinks his parents got a no- fault divorce when he was eleven,” Meryl said, “and his father dropped out of his life. Probably into prison or some rehab program, judging from what you say. With an ironclad restraining order.” She shook her head. “It . . . explains some things. It’s a lot to assimilate.”

  “The white hair?” I said. He had a tangled nimbus, like Einstein. “I know a person’s hair doesn’t turn white overnight.”

  “Old wives’ tale,” Elza said. “But continual stress can cause premature graying.”

  “Maybe that memory wasn’t completely erased,” Meryl said, “and he dwells on it at some level. His hair wa
s almost completely white when we met. I think he was twenty-two.”

  “Is that why he’s called Moonboy?” Namir asked.

  I knew about that. “No, he was born during an eclipse, a total lunar eclipse.” I cringed at the memory of a cheap magazine article when I was famous, putting us together: Moonboy and Mars Girl.

  “His mother’s an astrology nut,” Meryl said. “We don’t get along too well. He thinks she walks on water, though.”

  Dustin laughed. “Well, she did bring him back from the dead. Even if he doesn’t know it, she does. It could make for an interesting relationship.”

  Meryl nodded. “It does explain a lot.”

  “His voice,” Elza said. It was a soft, hoarse rasp. “That could be damage to his vocal cords from stomach acid. As he lay there dead.”

  Namir broke the silence. “We have to tell him. Now that we all know.”

  “Not ‘we,’ ” Elza said. “I have to tell him. I started the whole damned thing, with my curiosity.”

  That was a delicate way to put it, I thought. Her curiosity about Moonboy’s medical record came after her curiosity about his body. If that was what it was, her need for different men.

  Of course the only man left now was mine.

  17

  THERAPY

  I didn’t want my wife alone in a room with the man who had assaulted her. But she felt they had to talk one-on-one, and besides, she would have no trouble overpowering him under normal circumstances. As a compromise, she let me sit in an adjacent room and watch the interview on a notebook, ready to rush in and save her. It wasn’t necessary, as it turned out. But it was educational.

  He knocked tentatively and walked in, looking sheepish and uncomfortable. She sat him down next to her desk and inspected his stitches, dabbing at them with an alcohol swab. He winced, and her expression was not one of empathy.

  “You’ll live,” she said, and sat down facing him.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry. Don’t know what got into me.” His speech was slightly slurred.

  “That’s what we have to talk about.” She took a deep breath. “What happened yesterday started twenty-nine years ago. Do you know the acronym SPMD?”

  He shook his head. “No. When I was eleven?”

  “Yes. It’s Selective Precision Memory Dampening. Not done very often anymore; it’s controversial.”

  “When I was in the hospital so long, with pneumonia?”

  “Yes. But it was a lot more than pneumonia.”

  For several minutes he didn’t speak, while she recounted in unsparing detail what his father had done and what happened afterward. When she was through, he just stared into space for a long moment.

  “They could have told me,” he said in a flat, hurt voice. “Mother should have told me.” He hit the desk with his fist, hard enough to hurt.

  “She should’ve,” Elza said. “I would have, at least when you were an adult.”

  “What did you say,” he said slowly, “when we were in bed?”

  “I asked you about your father.”

  He leaned forward and spoke through clenched teeth. “You asked me whether I loved him.” I rose from the chair, ready to go next door.

  “Let me see your hand.” She took it in one hand and, with the other hand, pressed the inside of his wrist.

  He sat back slowly and looked at his wrist, and touched the small flesh-colored circle there. “What’s that?”

  “It’s a relaxant.” She must have had it palmed. “It’ll wear off quickly.”

  “I . . .” He looked at the wall. “I was upset because I couldn’t, I couldn’t come.”

  “You did all right.”

  “No—I mean it happens all the time. I thought with you, with a new sexy woman . . .”

  “It’s all in the head,” she said gently. “It’s always all in the head. You were nervous.”

  “When you said . . . that about my father, I suddenly couldn’t breathe. I mean I tried, and it was like someone, someone was choking me. I must have lashed out. I don’t remember.”

  “You got in a lucky shot.”

  He smiled for the first time. “Thank you for not killing me. I’ve seen you throw Daniel and Namir around on the mat.”

  “It took some restraint. How is the elbow?”

  “Still hurts a bit.”

  She stood. “Hmm. Take off your shirt and get up on the examination table.” He did, and she moved his arm around and palpated his elbow. “That doesn’t hurt?”

  “Not really, no.”

  She pressed behind his shoulder. “This does, though?”

  “A little.”

  She nodded and looked at him for a moment. “Take off your shoes and lie down on your back.” He did, while she watched and nodded.

  “I want to check your reflexes,” she said, starting to unbuckle his belt. She stopped partway. “This wouldn’t be ethical on Earth. But we’re playing with starship rules.”

  “Okay,” he said, smiling broadly. She unzipped his fly, and his reflexes appeared more than adequate.

  I’ll have to ask her about that patch. I turned off the notebook. It was time to start dinner. Go pull some carrots.

  18

  ANNIVERSARY

  8 May 2089

  Namir is baking a cake. It’s everyone’s anniversary: we took off exactly one year ago, and everyone is still alive.

  The notebook says that on Earth it’s 16 July 89, so relativity has shrunk about seventy days off our calendar.

  It does feel like twelve months have gone by, though, rather than fourteen, so a time for taking stock. In one year:

  Only the one day of violence, back in September, when Moonboy broke Elza’s nose, and Dustin parted his hair with a pool cue. For a long time now, Dustin and Moonboy have been civil with each other, and Elza has lost her nasal accent.

  Elza also has fucked every man aboard except Paul (if he’s telling the truth), and Meryl as well, in a three-way with Moonboy, though that seems to have petered out.

  The avocado tree has blossomed, but set no fruit in spite of assiduous pollination. We’ve asked Earth for advice, but they’re half a light-year away, so it will be a while.

  Most of the other crops are thriving. We’ve almost doubled the floor space allotted to tomatoes, trimming the real estate from leafy greens and legumes. Namir needed more Italian plum tomatoes for sauces, and no one complained. I wish we’d brought more fruit trees, myself, or more acreage. Enough grapes to make our own wine; the idea of waiting for it to ferment is attractive; something to look forward to. Can’t have everything.

  The planners were wise to design such a large hydroponic garden, even though we could survive without it. Having regular menial chores helps keep us sane; caring for living things promotes optimism. Even in our situation.

  In the sports news, I’m now swimming two kilometers a day. There’s a new house rule in billiards: Namir has to shoot left- handed, or no one will play with him. He still wins, but not all the time anymore.

  On Saturdays, we move all the lounge furniture to the walls, string a badminton net across the room, and work up a good sweat. The Martians come out and play for the first few minutes, one on each team, though they overheat quickly and are handicapped by the gravity, not to mention lacking the concept of “sport.” We compensate for their relative lack of mobility by letting them each use two racquets. They’re ambidextrous four ways.

  Meryl’s wall-sized crossword puzzle is about a third finished. She’d better slow down. Elza put away her needlepoint for a while, but has started a new one, another fractal chromatic fantasy.

  Moonboy spends an hour or two a day on the piano, composing silently, and sometimes plays all night, haggard but happy in the morning. I don’t read music too well, but noticed the other day that Composition 3: Approach/Retreat is thirty-five pages long.

  Paul spends most of the mornings drinking coffee and cranking out equations, which he sometimes tries to explain to me. He won’t be through coursework on the
doctorate for another year and a half. Then he’ll write a dissertation and send it off to Earth. So maybe in fifty years he’ll get a doctorate in Quaint Astrophysics from Stanford, if there still is a Stanford.

  Namir is working on another balalaika, a long one with low notes, and is slowly carving a bust of Elza, which is at a creepy stage—half of it still a block of wood and half a mostly finished sculpture, as if she were being pulled out of the material. Straight on, I think her expression is one of stoic acceptance; from another angle, her lips slightly apart, she looks like she’s on the verge of an orgasm. He knows her better than any of us, of course. Maybe that’s what she looks like all the time, to him.

  I’ve taken up drawing again, using the texts Oz recommended when I was first on Mars. No paper, but it was a lifetime ago when I last had paper to spare. I can adjust the stylus and notebook to simulate pencil, ink, or wash. I’m copying some faces from the actual book that Namir brought along, all of Vermeer. His The Geographer looks a lot like Moonboy, though his hair isn’t white.

  Our brand-new spaceship is getting a little worn around the edges. The air recycler started making a noise like a person whistling through her teeth, barely audible. Paul described it to the auto- repair algorithm, and the noise stopped for a few days, then came back. Meryl did it a slightly different way, and it stayed quiet. But it was a scary time. Can’t send out for parts.

  The Martians’ swimming pool has to be continuously recaulked. Long hours of immersion—totally unnatural, of course, for Martians—must do something with the chemistry of their skin, which makes the water react with the caulking compound. Try to get those two out of the water, though.

  Along with Meryl and Moonboy, I’m chipping away at the Martian language. Snowbird is more helpful than Fly-in-Amber, but even so it’s a frustrating experience.