Stopping at Slowyear

by Frederik Pohl

  "How else? There's nobody alive to teach me."

  "But, my dear, why should it be you to take such a risk?"

  He thought it over carefully before he found the right answer. "Because I want to," he said.

  * * *

  As the month of Thunder warmed into the month of Green Murra tried again and again to recapture his attention, or at least to entertain him.

  She didn't nag her husband; that wasn't her style. Murra's style was to be forgiving, loving and never irritating-in fact, a perfect winter wife, even through coldspring and warmspring and right on through the year. She kept inventing pleasures for him-unfortunately, pleasures that he didn't seem to want.

  That didn't keep Murra from going on with her project of devising entertainments for him. Some represented real sacrifices on her own part, as when she persuaded Blundy to a weekend's rafting on Sometimes River, slowly dwindling down from its coldspring flooded size. That wasn't a success for either of them. Murra managed to contain, or at least disguise, her own distaste for anything out of doors, but Blundy was not entertained.

  He did some mood-disguising of his own. He dutifully paddled the raft with her, shouting as loud as she when they were drenched in the rapids, smiled a lot, exclaimed appropriately at the pretty warmspring flowers that were beginning to carpet the canyonsides-and was bored again.

  The sort of thing that would really give Blundy the pleasure and stimulation he needed had to be a mixture, she decided. Fun people to talk to (but not the sort of dolts she had invited for dinner), an interesting place to visit (but nothing that required too much exertion)-of course! She had it: a picnic up on the glaciers, perhaps at a place near where the shuttles were just now emerging from their winter shroud of ice.

  Again she chose her guest list with the greatest care. Her first pick was Vorian, who was old but still spry, and was always willing to play chess with Blundy; besides, Vorian wouldn't be with them much longer, she was pretty sure. Then Morney, who was still pretty in spite of the fact that she was nearly three; Blundy liked being around pretty women. Importantly, she was also quite securely married to Megrith, the family doctor, who was an asset to the picnic in his own way: he loved to cook outdoors. Finally, there were Vincor and Verla, Vincor because Blundy liked him and Verla because she was Murra's sister. And this time they would be invited to bring their children. You couldn't have children at a dinner party, but how could you have a picnic without them? They were good enough children, as children went; they were winter-born kids, old enough to be reasonably civilized. (And sister Verla, though a cheerful soul and always good company, was conspicuously plain.)

  Of course, when Blundy was told about the picnic he got that cold and obstinate look of his. But then he always did. And he gave in in the end.

  * * *

  When Blundy found Petoyne to make his apologies she was working in the insemination pens. "I'm sorry, Petoyne," Blundy told her, watching while she worked. "You know I wanted to spend your birthday with you, but I really can't get out of this picnic. Maybe I can fix it so you could come along?"

  She finished with the bleating ewe, spraddled on its back with all four of its legs tied in the air, and looked up at him. "Fat chance of that," she said dispassionately. "Even if Murra would let me come I'd spoil the whole day for her. Not that I'd mind that so much. But she'd make it miserable for me, too. No," she said, "I'll spend my first birthday by myself. It's all right. I'll have others."

  She filled the syringe again with the mixture of sheep semen and distilled water and moved to the next writhing ewe. Blundy knotted his brows.

  "Why did you volunteer for insemination? You don't have to do all this kind of scut work," he protested.

  "I have to pay my taxtime off, don't I?"

  "Well, sure." They all had that problem-Petoyne, Murra, Blundy himself, everyone connected with Winter Wife; the show had been a great financial success, and their taxes were high. "But not this way, Petoyne. I'll be going out with the herd again, after the ship lands. You could come with me again."

  "Oh," she said, "I want to get it out of the way. I think I'm going to be want to stay in town when the ship's here. You know. Just to see what they have to sell; and mostly, I guess, just to see the strangers."

  "That's not my idea of fun," Blundy said.

  "Well, it'll be interesting, anyway. You don't get the chance to see that every day." She finished with that ewe and moved to the next; it was almost the last. "Do you know what these people from the ship are like?"

  she asked.

  "As much as you do, I guess. No more. They're just traders, people in an old ship, trying to make a living going from planet to planet." He thought for a moment, then added, "They'll probably seem pretty strange.

  They're old, you know. I don't mean physically-I mean the time dilation-they travel pretty close to the speed of light, between stars, so time slows down for them. I'd bet that some of them were already born when the first colonists landed here."

  She nodded. It wasn't anything she didn't know for herself, but it needed repetition to make her believe that any living person could have been alive that long, long time ago, more than twenty-five of Slowyear's very slow years. She sighed. "Poor people," she said, finishing the last of the ewes. She patted the creature's head, then sealed the bottle of semen for return to the freezer and sat down to wait until it was time to release the dozen bleating animals. "You'd think it would be more fun for them to do it the other way," she said absently, watching them struggle against their bonds. "With a ram, I mean."

  "Then we couldn't control the breeding. We get better lambs with artificial insemination," he pointed out.

  She nodded, then suddenly giggled. "You could do it this way with Murra,"

  she said, grinning up at him. "Then you could get a baby, and you wouldn't have to touch her."

  Blundy cleared his throat uncomfortably. He hated it when Petoyne talked that way about Murra, almost as much as he hated it when Murra talked about Petoyne. All he said was, "What makes you think I want a baby?"

  "Well, everybody does, don't they?" she said reasonably. "I do. I'll take my chances, some day. Maybe pretty soon, too," she added, "because that's the best time to do it, when you're one."

  It was another allusion to her birthday, Blundy thought, the birthday that he would not be spending with her. The trouble was, birthdays were important. You didn't have more than four or five of them in your life, and every one marked a real change. The first long year was for growing up.

  The second was when you finished your education and began to get your career and your family and your life together. In your third and fourth years you were as successful and able as you were ever going to be, because the fourth birthday was retirement time-if you lived to see it-and then you just went downhill until you died.

  "I've got to get cleaned up and out of here," Petoyne said. "And I guess you've got to get back to Murra."

  "Well, I promised-"

  "Sure," the girl said. "So long, Blundy. Have a nice picnic."

  And she put her face up to be kissed, just as though nothing had changed.

  He gave it up. He kissed her. "Happy birthday tomorrow," he said, turning to leave. He was a dozen paces away when he heard her call his name.

  He turned to look at her. "Blundy?" she said. "I wanted to tell you-Well, if you did want to have a baby- Well, I'd be willing to have it for you."

  * * *

  Blundy resisted going on the picnic again at the last minute, suddenly determined to spend Petoyne's coming-of-age birthday with her after all.

  But it didn't take Murra long to reason him out of disappointing the others, and at last he let Murra drag him along to the hills.

  And when they got out of the borrowed cat-car in a pleasant glade he seemed resigned to going along with the picnic spirit. More than that, Murra thought; he seemed quite relaxed. Even happy. He sat on a blanket under the biggest tree they could find---no more than two meters tall, because of co
urse it had only had coldspring to grow-and gazed out over the scene before them. Far below the Sometimes River had at last returned to within its banks. The floodplain all around was already planted, and the first crops well along-good crops they would be, too, because all that land was refreshed every years from the spring flooding, just as ancient Egypt had been before the building of the Aswan Dam. (Though neither Murra nor Blundy had any clear knowledge of the country of Egypt, much less of Aswan.)

  The thing was that when at last he stirred himself he fled from the grownups Murra had selected with such care and romped up onto the glacier with the children. Murra gazed indulgently up at them, sliding around on the ice as they chased a little flock of pollies.

  "He's so good with children," she told Verla proudly-thoughtlessly, because then her sister had no more sense than to say:

  "I've always thought Blundy would love having some of his own."

  "Oh, certainly he would," Murra said, her lips smiling but her eyes suddenly cold. "But we can't have everything we want, can we? You know how it is with Blundy and me. Can you imagine us with children?

  We do love them so, naturally we do, but you see that for us it would be quite impossible."

  Verla nodded, seeing-seeing mostly what Murra hadn't said. She understood, out of her own experience, why any woman would hesitate to have a baby on Slowyear. They were unbearable in winter, when everyone was huddled together underground, and not much better in the hot summer, when most people were back in the buried city again. And even if you arranged to have the childbirth at the best possible time-right after New Year's, say, when people were getting ready to emerge into the sunlight again, as she had with her younger child-there was the high risk of heartbreak, with infant mortality on Slowyear so frighteningly high. Verla had seen a dozen of her friends go through all the mess and misery of bearing a child, and watch it like a hawk for ten long months, knowing there were three chances in ten that it would sicken and die, swiftly and inevitably, before it could walk. She'd been lucky with her own . . . so far.

  But others had not. Two of her own friends had lost babies just in the past five months since New Year's, one of them twice. Verla didn't say any of that to her sister. She turned to peer down into the crevasse, where the pumps were sucking the meltwater from around the hydrogen fuel complex.

  That would serve the shuttles, all three of them gleaming like beached whales on the flat plateau off to the west. She said, to the group at large,

  "It looks like everything will be ready in time for the ship."

  "In time for the ship, in time for the ship," Megrith said, looking up from the fire he was starting in the grill. "That's all you hear these days, what's going to happen when the ship comes."

  Old Varion agreed. "But it's exciting, Megrith," he said. "You can't blame people. It's a good thing the ship's coming in warmspring, too.

  There'll plenty of time for the unloading before the worst of the summer."

  Megrith nodded. "The last one was bad, they say. You know, the one that came in, oh, eight years ago, was it? It came in winter, and they had a terrible time getting the shuttles ready to fly."

  "Before my time," Varion cackled. At four and a bit, it pleased him to talk about things before his time. He craned his neck. "Isn't Blundy ever coming down?" he complained. "I brought the chessboard."

  "Oh, leave him alone, Varion," Verla said good-naturedly. "Can't you see he's having fun? Let him wear himself out with the kids-maybe he'll wear them out, too, and then we can have a civilized lunch and talk."

  Her husband looked at her and cleared his throat. "Actually," he said,

  "I've been wanting to talk to Blundy about something-and to you too, Murra."

  "Oh?" said Murra.

  "I've just been wondering," Vincor said apologetically. "I mean, Winter Wife was such a great success-"

  "They're going to rerun it, aren't they?" Verla asked.

  "Yes, so they say," Murra agreed, looking at her brother-in-law. She was well aware that Vincor had always been a little envious of Blundy's success-and hers, of course; the man wanted to be a director himself.

  Warily she asked, "What about it, Vincor?"

  "Well, I had an idea. With a huge success like that, you might as well follow up on it. You know, in a few months it'll be summer. . . ."

  "Personally," his wife put in, "I think summer's as hard to get through as winter, though it's shorter, of course."

  "So what would you think of a new one for the summer? I thought of a natural title. It tells the whole story: You could call the new series Summer Wife."

  Murra pursed her lips. They had obviously been planning this for some time. She didn't blame her sister for being ambitious-didn't blame anyone, as long as their ambitions didn't conflict with her own, and there were advantages to working with your own family. "Summer Wife," she said meditatively. "Now, that's quite an idea, isn't it?"

  "Do you think Blundy would like to do it?" Vincor asked, the eagerness showing in his voice.

  "Oh, heavens, Vincor," Murra smiled, "you'd have to ask Blundy about that. I never interfere. When you're married to a genius you have to learn to let the man do things his own way." She spread her hands helplessly. Then she said, "Anyway, I think I'll just go up and join them on the ice for a bit; it looks like so much fun."

  * * *

  Before she reached the ice she had to dodge half a dozen screeching pollies, making their escape from Blundy and the little boys. Brightly colored-emerald green, scarlet, one or two patterned with diamonds and polkadots-the pollies weren't dangerous, except to the bugs they fed on, but Murra disliked having them there: they were uncontrolled. Climbing up from the greensward onto the glacier itself was a very un-Murralike thing to do. It meant puffing and panting, and besides the grass turned into mud and the mud into slush before you were on solid ice. She was glad she'd worn old boots.

  She was also glad she'd worn warm clothes, because it was cold up there.

  Not winter cold, of course; the sun was still hot. But the breeze was chilling. Besides, she could hear sounds of running water from underneath the ice, and now and then a sharp cracking sound, like a large stick snapping. Was this place really safe?

  She paused and looked at Blundy and the two little boys, Petternel the sturdy fourteen-month-old, Porly the toddler. They hadn't seen her yet.

  They had found a smooth place for sliding, and they were running toward it, then planting their feet and gliding along it, arms windwilling to keep their balance, shouting with pleasure, laughing when little Porly fell down anyway.

  It was very good, Murra thought with satisfaction, to see her husband laughing like that again. The picnic had been an excellent idea. She glanced around. The world was a pretty sight from the ice sheet. She could see clear down to Sometimes River and to the dozen streams that fed it with meltwater, some of them crystal clear as the ice itself, some milky white with the powdered rock they had ground away in their course.

  It would have been even prettier if it were a photograph or a painting hanging in her drawing room, and a lot warmer, she thought, and for a moment wondered if she should try painting again. For a while in the early part of her second year Murra, before she turned to poetry, had thought she had a talent for art. But it had been a lot of hard work, with improvement coming very slowly; and anyway then she met Blundy and found a new career. As his leading lady, of course; there was always a part for her in everything Blundy wrote. More importantly, as his wife.

  But a wife could also be a mother to children.

  Verla had put that unwelcome idea in her mind, not for the first time. It wasn't a prospect Murra could look forward to: four long months of pregnancy, with your belly swelling and your grace of movement stolen away. Then the pain of parturition. Then the other pain if the baby died-She shuddered. The trouble was that time was running fast on Murra's biological clock. Your second year was when you had your children if you were intelligent about it, and it was an unfortunate fact that Mur
ra's second year was some time past.

  But did she really want to have physical children? Squalling, messy ones?

  Wasn't it better to have mind-children? Her poems, for instance; weren't those as valuable as babies?

  But there too the clock was running for Murra. If anyone was ever going to be a poet-a real poet, a poet whose work would be admired and cherished by many others than the poet's own husband-this was the time to do that, too, wasn't it?

  She turned around, startled. Blundy was approaching with the boys, one on either hand. Grinning, Blundy asked, "Time for lunch yet? I hope Verla brought along dry socks for the kids."

  "I'm sure she did," Murra said, and waited for Blundy to drop the children's hands so he could help her down the slippery ice, back to where Megrith had put the chops on the grill and old Varion was gazing wistfully at the spring-he would not likely see another. Concentrating on her footing, Murra had forgotten about the little boys behind them until she heard her sister scream the toddler's name.

  They turned. Little Porly was spread-eagled on the ice, with his brother fearfully tugging at him.

  "He just fell," Petternel moaned, "but he won't get up."

  Then all the adults were racing up the slope, Verla in the lead, Megrith close behind her-transformed instantly from cook to doctor. By the time Murra got to them they had all surrounded the child and Megrith had the boy's head on his crouching knee, lifting an eyelid to peer at the eye.

  Verla was sobbing and Blundy was swearing to himself.

  Then the little boy opened the other eye and, struggling to get up, began to cry.

  Megrith gave a little laugh. "He's all right, Verla. He just fell and it knocked the wind out of him. But now his clothes are all wet . . . and, oh, hell, can't you smell the chops? They'll be burned black if I don't get back to them!"