by Greg Bear
"I'm the one who's done something wrong," I said. "It's me, not you."
"It felt so obvious. So true," Charles said.
"Maybe it would have been, three years from now, or five. But we've missed the timing. Who knows what we'll be doing then."
Charles sat on a bench. I sat beside him, wiping my eyes quickly with a sleeve. Only a few years ago I had given up playing with dolls and burying myself in LitVids about girlhood in Terrie Victorian times. How could this have come so fast?
"On Earth," Charles said, "they teach their kids all about sex and courtship and marriage."
"We're old-fashioned here," I said.
"We make mistakes out of ignorance."
"I'm ignorant, all right," I said. Our voices had returned to a normal tone of conversation. We might have been discussing a tea competition. Martians dearly love their tea, I prefer pekoe. And you?
"I won't apologize any more," he said, and he took my hand. I squeezed his fingers. "I meant what I said. And I tell you now . . . whenever you're ready, wherever we may be, I'll be there for you. I won't go away. I chose you, Casseia, and I won't be happy with anyone else. Until then, I'll be a friend. I won't expect anything from you."
I wanted to jump up and scream, Charles, that is just so dumb, you don't get what I'm saying . . . But I didn't. Suddenly, I saw Charles very clearly as an arrow shot straight to the mark, with no time to lie or even to relax and play; a straight and honest man who would in fact be a wonderful and loving husband.
But not for me. My course could not follow his. I might never hit my mark, and I doubted our two marks would ever be the same.
I realized that I would miss him, and the pain became more intense than I could bear.
I left the tea garden. My father showed Charles the guest room.
After, Father came to my room. The door was sealed and I had turned the com off, but I heard his knock through the steel and foam. I let him in and he sat on the edge of my cot. "What is going on?" he asked.
I cried steadily and silently.
"Has he hurt you?"
"God, no," I said.
"Have you hurt him?"
"Yes."
Father shook his head and curled his lip before assuming a flat expression. "I won't ask anything more. You're my daughter. But I'm going to tell you something and you can take it for what it's worth. Charles seems to be in love with you, and you've done something to attract that love ..."
"Please," I said.
"I took him to the guest room and he looked at me like a lost puppy."
I turned away, heartsick.
"Did you invite him here to meet with us?"
"No."
"He thought that was your reason."
"No."
"All right." He lifted one knee and folded his hands on it, very masculine, very fatherly. "I've wondered for years what I would do if anybody hurt you — how I'd react when you started courting. You know how much I love you. Maybe I was naive, but I never gave much thought to the effect you might have on others. We've raised you well ..."
"Please, Father."
He took a deep breath. "I'm going to tell you something about your mother and me that you don't know. Just think of it as fulfilling a duty to my sex. Women can hurt men terribly."
"I know that." I hated the whine in my voice.
"Hear me out. Some women think men are pretty hard characters and should get as good as they give. But I don't approve of your carelessly hurting men, any more than I'd approve if Stan started hurting women."
I shook my head helplessly. I just wanted to be alone.
"Family history. Take it for what it's worth. Your mother spent a year choosing between me and another man. She said she loved us both and couldn't make up her mind. I couldn't stand the thought of sharing her, but I couldn't let go, either. Eventually, she drifted away from the other man, and told me I was the one, but ... it hurt a lot, and I'm still not over it, thirteen years later. I wish I could be gallant and understanding and forgiving, but I still can't hear his name without cringing. Life isn't simple for people like us. We'd like to think our lives are our own, but they're not, Casseia. They're not. I wish to God they were."
I could not believe Father was telling me such things. I certainly did not want to hear them. Mother and Father had always been in absolute love, would always be in love; I was not the product of whims and unstable emotions, not the product of something so chaotic as what was happening between Charles and me.
For a few seconds I could hardly talk. "Please go," I said, sobbing uncontrollably, and he did, with a muttered apology.
* * *
The next morning, after a breakfast that lasted forever, I accompanied Charles to Kowloon depot. We kissed almost as brother and sister, too much in pain to say anything. We held hands for a moment, staring at each other with self-conscious drama. Then Charles got on the train and I turned and ran.
The forces were building.
Klein asked for but did not receive guarantees of solidarity, and there was a split in the BM Charter Council. Earth and GEWA asked more Martian BMs to sign more stringent agreements favorable to Earth. There were more embargoes against bigger BMs, and some folded into each other, facing pernicious exhaustion of funds — bankruptcy. Even the largest unaffected BMs realized that the systems of independent families was headed for a breakdown; that solidarity in the face of outside pressure would soon not be a choice, but a necessity.
The first time around, my application for a syndic apprenticeship was turned down. I switched from Durrey back to UMS and resumed studies at the much-reduced govmanagement school. I applied for the apprenticeship again six months later, and was rejected again.
Bithras Majumdar, syndic of Majumdar BM and my third uncle, had been summoned to Earth in late 2172, M.Y. 53, to testify before the Senate of the United States of the Western Hemisphere. Bithras's testimony could have been transmitted and saved us all a lot of money. Politicians and syndics seldom do much unrehearsed talking in public. But the arrogance of Earth was legendary.
GEWA — the Greater East-West Alliance — had emerged as the greatest economic and political power on Earth. Within GEWA, the United States had kept its position as first among equals. Still, it was generally accepted on Mars that GEWA was using the United States to express its strong disappointment with Mars's lack of progress toward unification. Thus, the United
States wanted to hold direct talks with, and take direct testimony from, an influential Martian.
It seemed in a perverse way all very romantic and adventurous; and if everybody had been practical, I probably would never have been offered the chance to go to Earth. Even the most dedicated red rabbit looked upon Earth with awe. Whatever our opinions of her heavy-handed politics, her feverish love of overwhelming technology, her smothering welter of biological experiment, her incredible worldliness, on Earth you could walk naked in the open air, and that was something we all wanted to try at least once.
So, having failed twice, I applied again, and this time, I believe — though she never confessed — that my mother pulled strings. My application went further than it had ever gone, my level of interviewing rose several ranks — and finally I was led to understand that I was being seriously considered.
The last time Charles and I saw each other, in that decade, was in 2173. While waiting for a decision on my application, I served a quarter as a Council page at Ulysses and worked in the office of Bette Irvine Sharpe, mediator for Greater Tharsis. Working for Sharpe was great experience; being given that job, my mother thought, was a sign of high BM favor.
I attended a barn dance held to raise funds for Tharsis Research University, newly established and already the bright spot for Martian theoretical science, as well as the center of Martian thinker research.
Charles was there, in the company of a young woman whose looks I did not approve of. We saw each other under the beribboned transparent dome erected for the occasion on a fallow rope field.
I wore a deliberately provocative gown, emphasizing what did not need emphasizing. Charles wore university drab, a green turtleneck and dark gray pants. Charles managed to separate from the clutches of his friend, and we faced each other over a table covered with fresh, newly-designed vegetables. He told me I looked wonderful. I complimented his clothes, not honestly; they were dreadful. He seemed calm, but I was nervous. I still felt guilt over what had happened between us; guilt, and something else. Being near him made me uncomfortable, but I still thought of him as a friend.
"I've applied for a syndic apprenticeship. I'd like to go to Earth," I said. "There's a good chance I'll get it. I might go to Earth with my Uncle Bithras."
Charles said he was pleased for me, but added glumly, "If you get it, you'll be gone for two years. A Martian year."
"It'll flash," I said.
He looked dubious. "I told you I'd always be willing to be your partner," he said.
"You haven't exactly been waiting," I said, a sudden wash of anger and embarrassment coloring my face, sharpening my tone.
Charles was quicker on his feet now and more experienced with people. "You haven't been very encouraging."
"You never called," I said.
He shook his head. "You were the one who said good-bye, remember? I have a few tatters of pride. If you changed your mind, I figured you would call me."
"That's pretty arrogant," I said. "Relationships are mutual."
He braced himself to say something he didn't want to say and looked away. "Your world has grown too large for me. Waiting doesn't seem practical."
I just stared at him.
"You've matured, you're becoming everything I knew you would be. I wish you all the best. I will love you always."
He bowed, turned, and walked away, leaving me totally flustered. I had approached him as an old friend, and he had brought up this uncomfortable thing that I thought we had both left behind, just as I told him about what promised to be the greatest accomplishment of my young life. Such pure emotional blackmail deserved my deepest contempt.
I walked briskly across the tarp-covered field and palmed into a rest kiosk. There I stood by a gently flowing resink and stared into the single round mirror, angrily asking why I felt so terrible, so sad.
"Good riddance," I tried to convince myself.
I never disliked Charles, never found in him anything I did not admire. Yet even now, with a century of living between me and her, I can't bring myself to call that young woman a fool.
I tell all this as trivial prelude to things neither Charles nor I could imagine. I look back now and see the relentless roll of events, building across the next seven Martian years to the greatest event in human history.
Trivial pain, trivial lives. The shiver of specks of dust ramping to the storm.
Part Two
You can go home again, but it will cost you.
In the late twenty-second century, travel between Mars and Earth remained a corporate or government luxury, or a jape of the very rich. A passenger of average mass traveling from Earth to Mars, or Mars to Earth, would pay some two million Triple dollars for the privilege.
The rest had to settle for sending their messages by light-speed dataflow, and that put a natural wall between one-on-one conversations.
From Earth to the Moon, reply delay is about two and two-thirds seconds, just enough to catch your breath and not quite enough to lose your chain of thought. To Mars, delay varied with the planetary dance from forty-four minutes to just under seven.
The art of conversation lapsed early between Earth and Mars.
2175-2176, M.Y. 54-55
As soon as I heard I was a finalist for the apprenticeship, I began furiously re-studying Earth politics and cultural history. I had already gone far beyond what
most Martians are taught in the course of normal education; I had become, somewhat unusually on Mars, a Terraphile. Now I needed to be an expert.
I had some idea of the kinds of questions I would be asked; I knew there would be interviews and tough scrutiny; but I did not know who would be conducting the examinations. When I learned, I couldn't decide whether to be relieved or nervous. Ultimately, I think I was relieved. The first interview would be with Alice, Majumdar's chief thinker.
The interview was conducted in Ylla, in an office reserved for more formal, inter-family business meetings. I dressed slowly that morning, taking extra care with the fresh clothes as they formed beneath the mat on my bed. I scrutinized myself in a mirror and in vid projection, looking for flaws inside and out.
I tried to calm myself on the hundred-meter walk to the business chambers, deliberately choosing a longer route through family display gardens, offset from the main tunnels, filled with flowers and vegetables and small trees growing beneath sheets of artificial sun.
Thinkers were invariably polite, infinitely patient, with pleasant personalities. Also smarter than humans and faster by a considerable margin. I had never spoken with Alice before, but I knew my uncle had established a specific set of criteria for his apprentice. I had little doubt that she would speck me soundly and fairly. But taking into account my age and lack of experience, that little doubt quickly magnified into a bad case of nerves.
A few minutes early, I presented myself to the provost of selection, an unassuming, monk-faced, middle-aged man from Jiddah named Peck. I had met Peck while going through scholarship prep. He tried to put me at ease.
"Alice's hookup is clean and wide," he said. "She's in a good mood today." That was a small joke. Thinkers did not exhibit moods; they could model them, but they were never dominated by them. Unlike myself. The mood dominating me came close to panic.
I murmured I was ready to begin. Peck smiled, patted my shoulder as if dealing with a child, and opened the door to the office.
I had never been here before. Dark rosewood paneling, thick forest-green metabolic carpet, lights lurking serenely behind brass fixtures.
A young girl with long black hair, wearing a frilly white dress — Alice's image — seemed to sit behind the opal-matrix desk, hands folded on the polished black and fire-colored stone. Alice had been named after Lewis Carroll's inspiration, Alice Liddell, and favored Liddell's vividly animated portrait as an interface. The image flickered to reveal its unreality, then stabilized. "Good morning," she said. She used a dulcet young woman's voice.
"Good morning." I smiled. My smile, like Alice, flickered to announce its illusory nature.
"We've worked together once before, but you probably don't remember," Alice said.
"No," I admitted.
"When you were six years old, I conducted a series of history LitVids from Jiddah. You were a good pupil."
"Thank you."
"For some months now, Bithras and Majumdar BM have been preparing to journey to Earth to deal directly with various partners and officials there."
"Yes." I listened intently, trying to focus on the words and not on the image.
"Bithras will take two promising young people from the family to Earth with him, as apprentice assistants. The apprentices will have important duties. Please sit."
I sat.
"Does my appearance make you uncomfortable?"
"I don't think so." It was odd, facing a young girl, but I decided — forced myself to decide — that it did not bother me excessively. I would have to learn to work closely with thinkers.
"Your ed program is ideal for what Bithras will require in an apprentice. You've strongly favored government and management, and you studied theory of management in dataflow cultures."
"I've tried," I said.
"You've also investigated Earth customs, history, and politics in some detail. How do you feel about Earth?"
"It's fascinating," I said.
"Do you find it appealing?"
"I dream about it. I'd love to see it real."
"And Earth society?"
"Makes Mars look like a backwater," I said. I did not know — have never known — how to dissemble. I
doubted Alice would be impressed by dissembling, anyway.
"I think that's generally agreed. What are Earth's strengths, regarded as a unit?"
"I'm not sure Earth can be thought of as a unit."
"Why?"
"Even with com and link and ex nets, common ed and instant plebiscite . . . there's still a lot of diversity. Between the alliances, the unallied states, the minorities of untherapied . . . a lot of differences."
"Is Mars more or less diverse?"
"Less diverse and less coherent, I'd say."
"Why?"
"Earth's people are over eighty percent therapied or high natural. They've had a majority of designer births for sixty Earth years. There's probably never been a more select, intelligent, physically and mentally healthy population in human history."
"And Mars?"
I smiled. "We value our kinks."
"Are we less coherent in our management and decisions?"
"No question," I said. "Look at our so-called politics — at our attempts to unify."
"How do you think that will affect Bithras's negotiations?"
"I can't begin to guess. I don't even know what he — what the BM or the Council plans to do."
"How do you perceive the character of the United States and the alliances?"
I cautiously threaded my way through a brief history, conscious of Alice's immense memory, and my necessarily simple appraisal of a complex subject.
By the end of the twentieth century, international corporations had as much influence in Earth's affairs as governments. Earth was undergoing its first dataflow revolution; information had become as important as raw materials and manufacturing potential. By mid-twenty-one, nanotechnology factories were inexpensive; nano recyclers could provide raw materials from garbage; data and design reigned supreme.
The fiction of separate nations and government control was maintained, but increasingly, political decisions were made on the basis of economic benefit, not national pride. Wars declined, the labor market fluctuated wildly as developing countries joined in — exacerbated by nano and other forms of automation — and through most of the dataflow world a class of therapied, superfit workers arose, highly skilled and self-confident professionals who demanded an equal say with corporate boards.