by Joe Haldeman
It made some of us nervous, too, like being cargo in a ship without a rudder. Okay, that was irrational. But we’d already had one emergency. What if the next one called for immediate action, but Paul had to suit up, waiting for the air lock to cycle through? That took about two minutes.
In two minutes we covered almost a thousand miles. A lot could happen. And there weren’t any space suits for the rest of us.
13
VIRTUAL FRIENDS AND FOES
I was not the most popular girl in my classes—I wasn’t in class at all, of course, except as a face in a cube. As the time delay grew longer, it became impossible for me to respond in real time to what was going on. So if I had questions to ask, I had to time it so I was asking them at the beginning of class the next day.
That’s a prescription for making yourself a tiresome know-it-all bitch. I had all day to think about the questions and look stuff up. So I was always thoughtful and relevant and a tiresome know-it-all bitch. Of course it didn’t help at all that I was younger than most and a brave pioneer headed for another planet. The novelty of that wore off real fast.
Card wasn’t having any such problems. But he already knew most of his classmates, some of them since grade school, and was more social anyhow. I’ve usually been the youngest in class, and the brain.
I was also a little behind my classmates socially, or a lot behind. I had male friends but didn’t date much. Still a virgin, technically, and when I was around couples who obviously weren’t, I felt like I was wearing a sign proclaiming that fact.
That raised an interesting possibility. I never could see myself still a virgin five years from now. I might wind up being the first girl to lose her virginity on Mars—or on any other planet at all. Maybe someday they’d put up a plaque: “In this storage room on such-and-such a date…”
But with whom? I couldn’t imagine Yuri tearing himself away from the keyboard long enough to get involved. Oscar and Murray seemed like such kids, though once they reached college age, that might be different.
There would be plenty of older men on Mars, who I’m sure would be glad to overlook my personality defects and lack of prominent secondary sexual characteristics. But thinking of an older man that way made me cringe.
Well, the next two ships would also be made up of families. Maybe I’d meet some nice Aussie or a guy from Japan or China. We could settle down on Mars and raise a bunch of weird children who ate calcium like candy and grew to be eight feet tall. Well, maybe not for a few generations.
Nobody talked about it much, but the idea of putting a breeding population of young men and women on Mars gave this project some of its urgency. After Kolkata and Gehenna, any nightmare was possible.
The mind veers away from it, but how much more sophisticated would the warriors have to be, to make the whole world into Gehenna? How much crazier would they have to be, to want it?
We got into that once on the climber, Dad doubting that it would be physically possible, at least for a long time, and also doubting that the most fanatical terrorist would be that crazy. To hate not just his enemies, but all of humanity, that much. Mother nodded, but she had her bland patient look: I could argue, but won’t. Card was kind of bored, familiar as he was with playing doomsday scenarios. Sometimes I think that nothing is really real to him, so why should doomsday be any different?
Time started passing really fast once we were settled into school, and most of our parents into their various research projects. It was more comfortable than you would expect, with all of us crammed into a space the size of a poverty-level tenement—but the parents and kids seemed to be giving each other more respect, more space.
Even the little kids calmed down. Mary Jefferson taught all four grades at once, in a partitioned-off part of B galley, and when they weren’t in school or exercising, they played down in the zero-gee room, pretty far from anyone’s work area, and usually respected the no-screaming rule.
(The idea of “Spaceship Earth” is such an old cliché that Grand-dad makes a face at it. But being constantly aware that we were isolated, surrounded by space, did seem to make us more considerate of one another. So if Earth is just a bigger ship, why couldn’t they learn to be as virtuous as we are? Maybe they don’t choose their crew carefully enough.)
Roberta was having more trouble than I was, making the transitionfrom high school to college. For one thing, she’s very social, and used to studying together with other girls and boys. That wasn’t really possible on the ship, with us all going to different schools. Besides, she’d tested into advanced math and chemistry, while I was starting with calculus-for-dummies and general physical science. We both had English lit and philosophy, but of course with different textbooks.
Mother sometimes worried about my tendency to be a loner, but it turns out to be an advantage, studying when your classmates are millions of miles away.
I did coordinate my study hours with Roberta, so we were both doing lit and philosophy homework at the same time, and she helped me over some humps in the math course. We also had exercise and meal hours together most of the time, along with Elspeth.
It was not much like anybody’s picture of college life. No wicked fraternity parties, no experimenting with drugs and sex and finding out how much beer you can hold before overflowing. Maybe this whole Mars thing was a ruse my parents made up to keep me off campus. My education was going to be so incomplete!
That was actually a part of college I hadn’t been looking forward to. Not “growing up too fast,” as Mother repeatedly said, but looking foolish because I didn’t know how to act when confronted with temptation. When do you politely decline and when should you be indignant?
And when should you say yes?
14
MIDWAY
At the midpoint of our voyage, Mars was a bright yellow beacon in front of us, Earth a bright blue star behind. It was an occasion to party, and the Mars Corporation had actually allotted a few kilograms’ mass for a large plastic bottle of Rémy Martin cognac for that purpose.
Since several of the adults didn’t drink, it proved enough to get the rest of them about as intoxicated as they wanted to be, or perhaps a little more. Like me.
We joked about the drinking age between planets, and my parents shrugged. Since there was no other alcohol aboard ship, I wasn’t likely to become a drunkard. Which doesn’t mean I couldn’t get into trouble.
Paul had only one drink, mixed with water—the curse of being captain, he said wryly—but I had three before my parents went to bed, and maybe two afterward. It lowered my inhibitions, but I suppose I wanted them lowered.
The drinks were served in the galley, where there was gravity to keep the booze in the glasses, but some of us moved into the zero-gee area to dance. Pretty strange, dancing without a floor. It was all kind of freestyle and rambunctious. We took turns asking the ship for music. A lot of it was old, jazz and ska and waterbug, or ancient like waltzes and rock, but there was plenty of city and sag.
Paul and I danced for a while, usually with each other, and I guess I started feeling glamorous, or at least sexy, dominating the captain’s attentions. Not that there was much unmarried competition.
The zero-gee room goes to night-light from midnight till six, conserving power and giving people a reasonably private, or at least anonymous, place to have sex—or romance, but I don’t think much of that was going on. There was no real privacy in the sleeping quarters, just a thin partition, which didn’t prevent some people from embarrassing the rest of us. But most couples waited and met at one dark end or the other of the zero-gee room.
At midnight the only others in the zero-gee room were the Manchesters, who left us alone after a bit of obvious yawning and stretching.
Afterward, we agreed that we both had been sort of time bombs ticking, waiting for the midnight hour. If I hadn’t wanted to be “seduced,” I could have left while the lights were still on. But there was something desperate going on inside me, that wasn’t just sexual desire o
r curiosity.
Our whispered conversation had gotten around to virginity, and my sort of in-between status, which I’d never told anyone about. But the booze loosened my tongue. When I was thirteen I was fooling around with a boy who had “borrowed” his sister’s vibrator, and in the course of investigating how to use it, he was a little clumsy and popped me. It wasn’t very painful, but it was the end of that relationship, right at the playing-doctor stage.
He didn’t go to my school, so I didn’t know whether any of the other boys knew about it, but I imagined they could all tell at a glance that I wasn’t a virgin anymore. After about a year or so I realized that I still actually was.
I was unpopular and unattractive, or at least felt like it. Skipped a grade but then got it back after my parents took me out of school for a year to go overseas. They worked in London and Madrid, and I went back and forth, learning about enough Spanish to order a Coke in a restaurant.
From not speaking Spanish it only took a few minutes for the conversation to get about to the difficulties of having sex in space, with lack of privacy being only one of several problems, with the conservation of momentum and angular momentum high on the list. Difficult to describe, so I asked him to demonstrate, with our clothes on, of course.
That stage didn’t last too long. We explored another problem, that of getting at least partially undressed while both of you had to hold on to a handle or go spinning apart.
We did manage to get our bottoms mostly removed. He looked kind of large, if smaller than my friend’s sister’s vibrator, but he was slow and gentle. As soon as he got it all the way in, he ejaculated, but we stayed together, and he recovered in a few minutes and did it again.
I’d been prepared for an ordeal, but in fact it was all pretty exciting and fun. I kept losing my grip, and he’d swim after me, while I groped for one of the handles. We wound up floating in midair, though, holding each other’s shoulders, rotating slowly, then not slowly.
I didn’t really have an orgasm until later, in the shower, but it was still overwhelming. Floating in space with Paul inside me, and me inside his arms. It took me a long time to fall asleep that night, and I woke up with the feeling still fresh. His face in the twilight, eyes closed, concentrating, then losing control. And me not a virgin anymore, not even technically.
It was several days before we could find the privacy to talk about it. We were both in the galley for the last breakfast shift, and I killed some time cleaning up the microwave and prep area until the last people left.
He said it quickly, almost sotto voce: “Carmen I’m sorry I took advantage of you.”
“You didn’t. I loved it.”
“But you were drinking, and I really wasn’t.”
“Just to get up the courage.” Not strictly true; I’m sure I would have had a couple no matter who was at the party. “Don’t feel guilty.” He was still sitting down; I leaned over and hugged him from behind. “Really, don’t. You made me so happy.”
I could tell he was trying not to squirm. “Made me happy too,” he said in an unhappy voice.
I sat down across from him. “What? What is it? Age difference?”
“No. That’s part of it, but no.” He leaned back. “It’s my being pilot, which is to say captain.” He visibly struggled, trying to find words. “I want to show you how I feel, but I can’t. I can’t court you; I can’t treat you differently from anybody else.”
“Of course not. I wouldn’t expect—”
“But I want to! That night meant as much to me, maybe more, and I want to treat you like a lover. I can’t even wink at you, not really. Let alone hold your hand, or…”
Or do it again, I realized. Even if we manufactured an opportunity. “Do you really think it’s a secret? The Manchesters pretty obviously left to give us some privacy.”
“You haven’t told anybody?”
“No.” Not in so many words. But Elspeth and Kaimei gave me big grins that were pretty clear.
“That’s important. The ship runs on rumor as much as hydrogen. People will whisper; they’ll know, but as long as you and I keep it private, my… my authority isn’t compromised.”
His authority. And a devilish part of me wanted to tell everybody. I’m a real woman—I’m fucking the captain. “I can see that.”
Somebody was coming down the ladder. He stood up.
It was my mother, coffee cup in hand.
“Oh… hello, Paul.” Amazing how much she could communicate with two words.
“Morning, Laura. See you later, Carmen.” He went up the ladder as soon as she let go.
She watched his retreating ass with a little smile. Then she got a spoonful of coffee and poured hot water on it. “I was younger than you,” she said. “Seventeen, and no, it wasn’t your father.”
“You didn’t meet until graduate school,” I said inanely.
“He’s eleven years older?”
“More like ten. He was born in February.”
She put some sugar in the coffee, not normal for her. “Don’t get too attached to him. He has a life on Mars, and he’ll have to stay there.”
“I might want to stay there, too.” Even as I said the words, I couldn’t believe they’d come out of my mouth.
“We all have the option, of course.” She touched my shoulder. “He’s a nice man. Don’t forget there are a billion of them back on Earth.”
She capped the coffee and swung up the ladder, back to her research station, without saying any motherly things like Don’t let him hurt you or Don’t let your father know, proving life is not a soap.
Of course Dad would know, along with everybody else. If the pilot had fucked any other innocent young thing, I suppose I would have known by breakfast.
I didn’t feel particularly young or innocent. If everyone knows, why not keep doing it? It wasn’t as if I could get pregnant; with Delaze, I wouldn’t start ovulating until after we’d landed on Mars, as he well knew. Even mighty space-pilot sperm wouldn’t live that long.
After we reached the halfway mark, all of us young ones met our volunteer “Mars mentors,” people who weren’t teachers or parents but wanted to help us with our transition to their world.
My guy was “Oz,” Dr. Oswald Penninger, a life scientist like Mother. He had a big smile and a salt-and-pepper beard.
Conversation was awkward, with an eight-minute delay between “How are you?” and “Fine,” but we got used to it. It was kind of like really slow instant messaging. You ask a question, then do something else for a while, and he answers, then does something else for a while. We didn’t normally use visual, unless there was something to show.
He was like everybody’s favorite uncle, acknowledging the difference in our ages but then treating me like an equal who didn’t know quite as much. I grew to like him better than I did most of the people on board, which I suppose was predictable. He was sixty-three, an African-American from Georgia, exobiologist and artist. They didn’t have paper for drawing, of course, but he did beautifully intricate work on-screen that galleries in Atlanta and Oslo printed and sold.
Should an artist’s pictures match his personality? Oz was a jolly plump man, given to sly wordplay and funny stories. But his art was dark and disturbing. He’d studied art in Norway for two years, and said his stuff was positively cheerful compared to the other people’s in his studio. I’d have to see that to believe it.
He zapped me the software that he uses for drawing, but I’ve never had much talent in that direction. He said he’ll show me some tricks when we meet in person. Meanwhile, I’ve downloaded a beginner’s text on cartooning and will try to learn enough to surprise him.
Funny to have a friend you’ve never touched or actually seen. I wonder whether we’ll like each other in person.
15
SEXUAL DISORDER
About a week went by without Paul suggesting another tryst, if that’s the right word. He seemed to be going out of his way to treat me like just another passenger, which was of
course according to plan. But I was a little anxious because he was playing the part too well.
He wasn’t avoiding me, but nobody on the ship was harder to get alone. I kept taking the last breakfast shift, and finally managed to corner him.
As I approached, he got a kind of resigned look, but reached out and took my hand. “I’m afraid I’m in trouble. With Mars.”
“Because of me?”
He shrugged. “You’re not in trouble. But somebody heard, and is whizzed at me for ‘seducing one of the Earth children.’ ”
“I’m not a child! I’m nineteen, going on thirty.”
“As I pointed out. They still say it was immature and unprofessional of me. Maybe they’re right.”
“It’s not fair. We didn’t really do anything wrong.”
“Somebody thinks otherwise. Somebody here, who told somebody there.”
“Who? Someone who has it in for you, or me?”
“I’m pretty sure who it is on Mars, but I don’t know about here. It didn’t have to start out malicious; just a juicy scrap of gossip.” He took a sip of coffee that was probably cold. “I hope your parents don’t find out this way.”
“Oh, they know. At least Mother does, and she’s okay with it.”
He nodded slowly. “That’s good. But I guess we’d better put it on ice for a while.”
I tried to keep anger out of my voice. “I don’t see why. What’s done is done.”
“The sexual part, yes. But now it would be insubordination as well. Which might be more serious. Would be.”
“For your career.”
“Not exactly. Nobody can fire me. But the colony’s a small town, and I have to live there the rest of my life.”
“If you…” I almost said something I would regret. “If you say so. But once we’re on Mars?”
“Things will be different. People will get to know you, and accept you as an adult.”