“He did, now. So you can understand him now?”
“A little. Still sometimes sounds like a lot of squeaky noises. But Cadell and me are going to be the faery experts on this planet, you know,” she said, puffing up importantly.
I didn't laugh at her, but couldn't contain my grin.
“Well, now,” I said. “Can't think of anyone better for that job.”
Sometimes, Marda, I see why you like kids. Most of the time they're just sound and mess and aggravation, of course, but once in a while they might just be a bit... cute, and interesting.
I'll upload the picture of the little pointed faery for you when I upload this letter. So tonight, it's time to meet the Jallohs. They're directly from Amara, no in-between time on stations, and Udo Jalloh looks like a painting from the Amaran movement; tall, slim beyond elegance and into stylistically slim, with long fingers and feet and skin so black it shines almost blue. He showed me a holo he keeps of his late wife, she has those beautiful, high, angled cheekbones and the full, earthgoddess mouth the Amaran artist Isoke liked to paint. Udo tells me Isoke painted Femi Jalloh twice before her untimely death. He has the prints packed away in his crate, waiting until he has built a permanent residence.
He and his wife married very young, only eighteen, and she died shortly after Ayo was born eight years ago. Their older two boys are Tau, fifteen, and Kojo, fourteen. Ayo has his mother's dark gold eyes; the older two are obsidian-eyed like their father. Tau barely speaks, head usually bent over a book on his pad, but Kojo is very social, always telling jokes and flashing his bright teeth while his friends dissolve in laughter.
Little Ayo is energy personified. If the little ones are sitting still for too long during one of their games, Ayo will get up and bolt around the camp, climbing ramps and cartwheeling down them to burn off some of his extra voltage.
You'd love him (you love children) but sometimes I need a nap just watching him. Udo says if he could only bottle that, we could power our settlement indefinitely.
There are several people in our group that carry a deep sadness around with them – Udo Jalloh, Rumor Watson, the xenobotonist Tesla Shane from the Black Moon group. I wonder what they seek do to here, on this new planet. Lose their pain behind them in space, or plant it here in new ground?
Me, I kept my grumpiness. It's part of my charm, you tell me.
Goodnight, Marda.
Night 9
Dear Marda, I've been thinking a lot about how Edgecliff must have chosen our group. It's clear no two groups are from the same system; the Gethins are Adrash, the Jallohs Amaran, the Kimuras from Yutaka, The Almarics are from a station above Shima (like I said, descended from Earth America). The Watsons are a family that haven't touched ground since leaving Earth seventy years ago, there are Watsons on stations all around the Commonwealth, and they lost a relative in the battle for the Orphean Outpost.
The kids in the Porpoise Blues group are all from a college in Ymirsvik, pretty much just following Doc Raines into a new world as an adventure. Doc Raines and Soren Hinrick were roommates in their early college life, then Soren specialized in xenobiology and ended up in a different branch of the same college.
Black Moon is all people who met only months before beginning their journey to Ashling station and then on to planetfall on Estoper in the middle of the night, nine nights ago. All professional sorts here to study and further Edgerift's knowledge of the planet they snapped up in the Commonwealth's settlement lottery.
Maybe Edgerift's idealists who believe they can bring culturally differentiated groups together and create a new Utopia for all of us. Or maybe they believe this will make them more money in the long run; the posters for Estoper back on Yutaka will have the Kimuras' faces on them, the posters on Shima will feature the Almarics. “Look, good folk, your kind live here!”
Not that I'm cynical or anything, but when we left Earth in waves, people separated themselves according to culture. We have peace now that we never had on Earth because of the distance; there's no more squabbling over space like siblings forced to share the room over the garage and there's only one bookshelf.
Sure the Commonwealth is largely squabbling and pontificating made flesh, but it's not like the planets themselves call war upon each other the way the nations they sprang from used to. Yet. And there's still the Exiles to deal with, all those violent criminals we exiled in the beginning of the migration, to less than ideal planets. They bred, and they hated, and they grew, and they took several of the choicer planets. I can't say they're all still violent criminals, that's not a society made for stability and growth, but I can say they hate the Commonwealth, and they hate the people of the Commonwealth, and they have done their best to make that hatred known, from wiping out a handful of the early colonies to trying to take down the Orphean Outpost, which would have put them squarely in charge of traffic to and from Old Earth.
As long as we have an enemy, even an enemy we created, there's an incentive for the Commonwealth planets to keep peace.
Not that I'm cynical. But human beings are what human beings are, far less changed and evolved than perhaps the Commonwealth's charter would have us believe. We want things for ourselves; ground, food, mates, trinkets and power, and we'll die to get and keep them. We'll kill to get and keep them.
Not this Turkey Gombo. That's right, I'm eating Gombo. I have no idea what it is, but I'm guessing the food packager may have meant “gumbo”. No way to tell from the food itself, it's soft enough to eat without teeth, with vaguely green mushy stuff and white mushy stuff and several shades of beige all mixed in a reddish-beige sauce. I'm eating it hot, but I wonder if it would have had more texture if I'd just eaten it right out of the packet.
Anyone who'd kill for this Gombo has more problems than simply covetousness. People may die from it, but probably not for it.
It's sad, but this is what it takes to make me look forward to the freeze dried apple I've got set out for dessert. I miss your kitchen and the wonderful food that comes out of it. It was always your kitchen; I'm a disaster in there and it took only a month of trying to help you cook before you banished me from it. Anytime someone asks you if I cook you say “Oh, god no,” and give them a horrified look.
I just shrug, but I admit I love the way you play that story; your expressive face, your feigned shock they'd even ask. Clearly, you'll say, they've never seen me in a kitchen.
It's a lucky thing these food packets heat themselves with the pop of a bubble on the packet.
Give me a moment. The little monsters are clamoring for a story, their dinner eaten, their schoolwork done, and if I tell them a story, it gives their parents time to clean up after dinner.
Ok, back. Tonight we had the story of Pwyll and Rhiannon and the upbringing of their lost son Pryderi. After we finished up our story, Alis took out her harp and sang something wistful and sleepy in Adrash, then all the children trundled off to bed.
Perhaps there is hope for peace. The children all speak the same language, Standard, as their primary language, and they may have different ideas for games or stories, but they all play together as if nothing mattered but being children at the same time.
Catrin showed me more pictures of her pointed faeries, this time two dancing together. She's pretty good at evoking movement, I never got the hang of position in drawing. But then I really don't like drawing and she clearly does.
“I call him Trevor, and that's his sister Liberty,” she said. “Cadell calls them Destroyer and Sword,” she added, offended.
“Cadell is good at naming creatures,” I told her. “But I like your names for the faeries better.” I've left the bunk set up for Briallen or whoever I might be able to tolerate who needs to rest while we're moving. Leaving the puffgel mattress there made it all unbalanced on my extra-mattressed bed, so I put the extra mattress from my bed onto the extra bunk.
I still miss you in the dark, but I also feel you closer in the darkness. Decades of sleeping beside you, I suppose, becoming accustomed
to and dependent on your warmth and closeness.
Goodnight, Marda.
Night 10
Dear Marda, It's a fortnight now since we left Ashling Station, and ten days on this planet. There's nineteen other groups scattered around this planet, and Huw's in contact with all of them, reading their reports and submitting his own to them and to Edgerift via the beacon.
It's been pretty uneventful the last couple of days and we've made good time heading for our projected settlement (Settlement Estoper Thirteen, as of yet no colloquial name chosen). Huw tells us we will put up suggestions for a colloquial name and vote when the time comes. I've been trying to think of a name, and so far I have been stuck on “Mardabell” for you, Marda Bell. I'm not a man of imagination by any means.
I am trying to think of something with Femi Jalloh's name in it. Seems to me three motherless boys would feel a bit less motherless living in a settlement with their mother's name attached. Mardabell's a name I thought of in transit from Ashling Station, and it's a good, solid name for a place, I think. But I'll see you soon enough, and the Jalloh boys only have their mother in holos and in two paintings by a painter they don't really know the importance of. I know you'd prefer I find something for them and I wish you were here to advise me. You are the part of us who creates, who makes and grows. Me, I guard and I fix stuff.
Can't fix motherlessness. In a couple days, if we're still barreling on ahead of schedule, we've decided to take a day to relax and let the children run around and be children. Kojo Jalloh's already planning out a football game, he's brought his ball from home and we can mark some goals with the fence rod generators. A few of us grownups can keep look out up on top of the crates, so we won't need to confine the kids inside the camp during the day.
If we keep making good time, we might even end up next to the lake Huw promised the children we'd run into this week, and then everyone with a hankering can swim for a bit, assuming it's cleared by the scientists.
I admit I'm tired out early. I've done my storytelling time, and damned if I'm not going to run out of stories by the time we make settlement, and Alis has sung to the children and the adults who gather around the edges of the kids' group, and the young are all tucked in. I'll go do rounds with Huw, then turn in.
Goodnight, Marda. I love you, I miss you.
Night 11
Dear Marda I'm really coming to enjoy the brief, purple sunsets. The sky itself is slightly purplish in hue, when we can see it, and when the sun sets there's a wash of purple to the west, then almost immediately the darkness chases the color over the horizon.
Watching it through the fog is like watching it in a hazy mirror. Sometimes it's annoying, sometimes it seems archaic and romantic, like watching someone else's lost memories of a sunset.
I like to imagine what you might say when you see it for the first time.
While we share a pot of your coffee.
Real, dark, bitter coffee, yours with cream and sugar. I had coffee with Rumor Watson this morning. She brought it around to my crate before we went around checking for loose panels and connections. I was my usually surly morning self, but she didn't seem to mind. I'm not instinctively suspicious of her non-platonic motives anymore, the only feeling I get from her is a rather sisterly comfort. Turns out she's one of seven children, and her oldest brother (who passed away last year) would be about my age. If sitting with a brotherly stand-in and having a morning cup of coffee lifts that veil of sadness from her face for a bit, I guess I can tolerate it.
For the coffee. She told me a little about her husband this morning. Just that he collected butterflies, that his collection covered the walls all throughout their compartment on the Virgo Iota Station. His family was old money, hers old-middle-class, and between them they had a pretty spacious compartment with room for their daughters and their families.
After Theo died, she went through his butterflies and saved the most valuable ones for his daughters and the ones that held the most sentimental value for her, then sold the rest, and used the money to secure them this spot on Estoper, courtesy of Edgerift Industries. She felt it was time for her daughters and her grandchildren to know the feeling of ground beneath their feet.
Deja was married for a time, to Iris Blue and Even's father, until he fell into drugs and never climbed back out. She divorced him to cut off his access to the family money, but pays to this day, a decade since their divorce, for his rehab care when he chooses to try to rehabilitate his life.
“I like her good, strong heart,” Rumor said. “I don't know if I could have done it, just forgiven enough to keep trying to help, but she says he's the kids' father, and she still loves the man he once was.”
“I know I couldn't,” I said. “I don't even like non-addicts.”
And Rumor laughed.
I wish you were here, Marda. You'd be so much a better comfort for her than I, but at least I can make her laugh.
So shortly after that we started out for the day. Here's how that goes: Boring.
Boring.
Boring.
Boring.
Play chess over the dash com with Soren Hinrick. Boring.
Boring.
Boring.
Stop for lunch.
Boring.
Boring.
Listen in on Phenni and Black Moon discussing grass. Boring.
Boring.
Boring.
Stop and make camp for the night.
I don't have to keep my eyes on the road, so to speak. Huw programs in our course, all the crates follow his, the people-crates, and the two double supply crates. An adult is to keep a general eye on things and stay in communication with the lead crate, but one can get up and go to the bathroom, and a lone adult like me can manage the moving crate with no real worries.
When we're settled and the houses domes are assembled, we can re-purpose the storage crates and connect them together as a meeting place, with one being set aside for use as a medical clinic that unlike Doc Raines' home, will belong to the company. Edgerift has sent us a map with our plots of land delineated and suggested locations for the homes. After a year or so, more settlers will come and fall into place along the lines Edgerift has planned; I'm rather excited to see all the things that don't go as planned.
Our homes will be just to the west of the planned town area, with a market and offices and a town hall and school. Doc Raines will get set up in the new downtown when that day comes, and hopefully he'll have another doc to help out around the settlement.
I had dinner with the Gethins this evening and I have to admit, this prepackaged crap is much better when it's actually prepared like real food. Alis Gethin didn't order ready to eat meals like we did, she ordered ingredients.
She says the desserts some mysterious stranger left on their ramp are certainly a big hit with the children, who have them as a snack in the afternoon, after doing their schoolwork. I sternly held in a grin when she told me that.
After dinner I told the kids about Branwen's disastrous marriage, and her psychopathic step-brother Evnissyen. Boy did they have some interesting ideas about how to handle Evnissyen. Kids have a powerful sense of justice, and Evnissyen causing so much trouble that eventually Branwen died of a broken heart because of his actions and events put into motion by him really gets them feeling the injustice there. They don't have the kind of horrified, gut-wrenched reaction a parent gets to hearing about Evnissyen tossing little Gwern, Branwen's little son, into the fire, but they definitely feel an injustice has occurred in that every bad act Evnissyen commits, Branwen pays for it emotionally.
“Bran should take Evnissyen and throw him into the sea and never let him come back on land no matter how much he cries,” Cadell said.
I thought that was awfully vividly thought out. “But Evnissyen protected his family,” I said. “If not for him, the Irish hidden away in the meal-bags would have come out and killed all of Branwen's family in the night. And we haven't gotten quite to the end yet!”
And I
told them how, in order to atone for all he'd caused and done, Evnissyen sacrificed his own life to prevent the magic cauldron from bringing the hundred Irish warriors he'd murdered (as they lay in wait to betray his family) back to life.
Maybe, sometimes, even terrible people can find redemption. Not that it mattered to poor, griefstricken Branwen, dead of a broken heart. Maybe redemption is more hollow than one might hope.
You know what, I think I'll leave off tonight.
I love you. Goodnight, Marda.
Night 12.
Dear Marda,
After a rough night of terrible dreams, I re-gathered my equilibrium when Rumor Watson brought over some more real coffee.
“You look awful,” she said, bluntly but not unkindly.
“I've looked worse,” I said, making the curmudgeon face at her.
“I am glad,” she said dryly, “that you had adequate medical care at the time.”
“Pure cussedness isn't fatal for the carrier,” I said, and she grinned at me. I've never enjoyed socializing much; unlike you, I need to recover from having to deal with other human beings. But this is a small group, and the couple people I talk to on a daily basis seem like decent folk. I'm getting used to the kids. They're still loud and destructive and messy, but an old fart can at least enjoy his audience some.
Alis is talking about using the town hall, after assembly, as a schoolhouse. It's an interesting thought. As you know, mostly kids do their schoolwork at home and socialize as part of their community, whatever that is. The Lutheran kids back home socialize within the Lutheran community, go to church, and hang out with the children of their parents' friends; the Catholic kids are similarly managed, so on and so forth. Kids with special learning troubles are tutored within their own groups.
You used to bemoan how insular humanity was becoming inside itself, even to the point of separating into homogenized planets and stations. Sure there is less war, you said, but there's also less growth and less sense of us as a whole species and not a bunch of groups.
Planetfall For Marda Page 4