by Mary Carmen
“It is time for you to return to Earth,” she said.
“Anna, if you wish to visit Earth, we will go tomorrow,” I told her.
“You need to go alone,” she told me.
I was curious. I had no desire to return to Earth, but I was ready to handle any assignment.
“What do I need to do there?” I asked.
“I have a reservation for you on the spacecraft that leaves tomorrow. You will need to make a connection at Farnoll, but the trip will take only four months. It is time for you to return to your life on Earth.”
I was unable to think of what to say. I finally blurted out, “My life is here with you, Anna. I have no life on Earth now.”
She looked at me calmly. “Your wife still lives in Pittsburgh, in your house. You should rejoin her.”
I was surprised. “How do you know about my wife? I have not exchanged a word with her in the thirty years you and I have been married.”
She said, “I have known about her almost from the beginning. As soon as I expressed an interest in you after you came to dinner, Daddy had you and your family thoroughly investigated. He always smiled and nodded while a person talked, but he never believed anything without other evidence. For you, he ran three separate investigations to determine your academic background and your family situation.”
A terrible ache formed in my stomach. My breathing was heavy and uneven.
“If he knew everything about me, why would he let you marry me?” I demanded.
“We did not marry. Read the contract. You agreed to live with me as my husband during your tenure on Octula. There was no affirmation in our contract that you were free to marry,” she said.
“You said you wanted a father for your children. Is that all I have meant to you? And to Len?” I shouted. I jumped up from the reading chair and paced in front of the west fireplace.
“No, not to Daddy. He hated you for being so introverted and so smug, but he admired and loved you for being so intelligent and so faithful to me. He was very pleased with the reports about your three children on Earth, and he hoped he could have three grandchildren just like them. As our children came, he became just besotted with them. All he could think of was how to add onto your wing those things that would express his gratitude. Things you would like and things that would keep you here to continue to sire children.”
By now I was shouting. “I didn’t stay here in this frightful, frigid place because of all these architectural wonders! I stayed here because I care for you! I love you and I cannot imagine my life without you!”
Anna started shouting, too. “You have no idea about love! You have never taken a meal with any of our children, you have left Daddy and me to do all the childrearing, and you have always been somewhere else when any child needed a parent! You may have felt some pride in these children from afar, but you have had no interest in dealing with them as human beings!”
I shook my head. “I agree they have never interested me more than my reading, but I want to stay here with you. It is you I care about.”
Anna waved me away. “The limousine will be here for you tomorrow morning. Take any of the books from the library, and take that fat check,” she said. She arose and left.
I sat down in my reading chair and poured myself a tumbler of Bourbon. I was shaking violently.
I Leave for Farnoll
I got no sleep that night. For two hours I drank and considered my legal options. It was plain Mr. Kojptop was a good friend of the family, and he would not permit me to stay if Anna wanted me to leave. I had no other home on Octula, and I no longer had the visitor’s visa I would need to register at a hotel.
After spending time coming to this conclusion, I went into the storeroom to find the two suitcases I had brought to Octula thirty-two years before. They had been gathering dust in our wedding house since our marriage.
I reviewed my assets. I had enough money in Octulian dollars to buy a good pair of boots, and I had enough Universal Gold coins stored in my library to buy a small house in a small town in America. I had my large check and I had a savings account in America with half my earnings from the years I worked on Octula. I had three credit cards, all backed by American banks.
I found a large envelope and stuffed it with all the Octulian dollars and about half the Universal Gold coins. I sealed the envelope and wrote Miss Gasnes’s name on the front.
I looked over the books in the library. Many were precious to me, but I selected seventeen books I wanted to keep, including first editions by Mark Twain and Joseph Conrad. I put these into the suitcases.
Next, I copied all the files of my photographs from Octula onto three separate sets of media and put one set into each suitcase. I kept the third set in my briefcase.
Then, I considered clothes. Since the lifting of the rationing after the war, Anna had bought each of us new clothes, and she had been especially generous with me. I estimated in 2104 I could wear a clean shirt each day for fifty days without sending any shirt to the laundry. I also had four tuxedos, seven pairs of boots, ten heavy coats, and twenty suits.
I selected ten shirts, ten sets of underwear and socks, two pairs of boots, two pairs of shoes, four sets of pajamas, one tuxedo, and three suits. I decided I would wear one heavy coat and three sweaters over a bodysuit for the trip. I would do without a bathrobe for the sake of taking more books.
By daybreak I was stuffing as many things into suitcases as I could. I had selected enough clothes for a steamer trunk, and with only two suitcases I was going to have to discard some of them. I found three large plastic bags in the observatory, and I filled them with more clothes.
Miss Gasnes knocked and entered my bedroom with a breakfast tray. She said in Octulan, “Mrs. Anna asked me to give you this box. She said the limousine will be here in an hour.”
I handed Miss Gasnes my envelope full of money and said, also in Octulan, “Open this after the limousine has gone.”
Miss Gasnes took the heavy envelope and noisily departed.
I opened the small cardboard box and found my itinerary, passport, and tickets. The spacecraft would depart from New Philadelphia about two hours from that moment.
I quickly ate my breakfast and I took the suitcases, the briefcase, and the bags to the entrance where the driver would pull up.
As my time ran out, I took one last look at my wing. I wanted to remember the library with its fabulous holdings and its patchwork of beautiful woods, the amazing kaleidoscope with its glass from many planets in many colors, the observatory with its huge telescope, the swimming pool with its delicate etched windows, the theater with the three stages, and the hallway with the priceless art. I knew I would never see anything like that house again.
The Trip to Farnoll
No one came to say farewell as the limousine pulled up to our wedding house. I helped the Octulian driver load the car, and I looked straight ahead while she pulled out onto the street. Snow flurries were coming down, as usual, but the street and the sidewalks were clear and dry.
The limousine was met at the spaceport by the transport company’s escorts. They quickly put the plastic bags into a heavy case and took all my luggage, except for my briefcase.
Within twenty minutes I was settled into my cabin. This was not the poor consultant’s accommodation I had occupied on my trip to Octula in 2077. Instead it was the best cabin in the craft, with a sitting room, a private bathroom, a private dining room with a kitchenette, and a bedroom with a huge bed.
On the walls were beautiful paintings, and the steward showed me how to select different paintings from a computer that controlled nearly everything in the room. I could choose art from almost every major period on Earth or I could select art from one of eight other planets. As I selected the art, paintings disappeared into the walls and other paintings appeared.
On the dining room’s table was a menu of the day’s selections from the kitchen. Here, again, I was nearly overwhelmed by the variety of the options available to me. Th
e note on the menu said I was to select my food in the evening for the next day and to note the times I wanted each meal served. I could have my roast duckling at breakfast and my wild rice waffles at supper.
The bathroom was nearly as large as the one in my wing at home. It contained a steam room, a sauna, a huge whirlpool, a bidet, two different toilets, and three sinks.
The bed was a marvel of comfort, certainly better than anything I had seen on Octula. It adjusted in twenty different places for firmness. It was fitted with four silk sheets and four fluffy pillows with silk pillowcases.
The temperature in the cabin could be adjusted from forty degrees to eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit, to please people from every climate. I started the temperature at fifty degrees and gradually got used to warmer temperatures as the trip went on.
The sitting room was nothing like my library, of course, but it had a comfortable chair and an ottoman for reading.
By the end of the first hour I was settled into the chair with my reading computer. The steward had pressed all my clothes and had set out my toiletries in the bathroom. Later I found he had been assigned to look after only me, but I found him unobtrusive and frequently very helpful.
The spacecraft took off toward Farnoll about three hours after I had boarded. I watched the buildings of New Philadelphia disappear, and I felt I was leaving all my happy days behind on Octula.
Arriving in Farnoll
The trip to Farnoll took just over a month. The spacecraft needed to go back only fifty thousand centuries in order to make a turn toward Farnoll and its large star.
During that time I read, ate, and slept. I had loaded my computer over the years with nearly everything written in English in the twenty-first century, and I started to catch up with the things I had missed. I read all the American papers concerning the reorganization of the government, and I read the fiction I would not allow myself to enjoy while I was working. I read English mysteries and American adventures. I read Irish political dramas and Russian business biographies. I allowed myself to laugh and to cry.
The food was the best I had ever had. Miss Gasnes had become a good cook, but the three chefs on this craft were masters. Every meal was something special, both a treat to the taste buds and to the eye. The meals were served by my steward in my dining room. I did not leave my cabin once during the trip.
I slept about half of each day. I knew I was depressed about the way I had been thrown out of Octula, and I believed sleeping would lighten my heart.
About twenty days after the trip began, I asked the steward to bring me a guidebook to Farnoll. He brought three guidebooks and a translating computer for English speakers.
We landed on the north side of the planet. According to the guidebooks, Farnoll is about the size of Jupiter but with firm land and warm seas. According to the Murphy-Waltrop Planetary Guide, the planet was formed just after Earth and has seven moons, none of which is inhabited by intelligent beings.
Farnoll is known as the vacation destination of the universe. It is inhabited by people with little interest in science who have been happy to make the planet into a series of casinos and nightclubs. The locals cater to rich travelers, and they are known for giving good value for their high prices. Nearly every pleasure is available at a fair price.
After we landed at a large spaceport just outside the town of New Saint Charles, my steward transferred my belongings to the best accommodation on the top floor of a small hotel.
The staff came to greet me, welcoming me to the exquisitely decorated suite. Included in the welcoming committee were seven beautiful American women, ranging in age between twenty and fifty. One of them looked very much like my Anna, and I invited her to stay. This was Melody.
A Month of Lovemaking
The spaceship to Earth was scheduled to leave in four weeks, and Melody started my vacation by taking me on a tour of the beautiful city.
The streets were built to allow easy travel. The gravity on Farnoll has a little more pull on the human body than Earth does, but the hotel was gravity conditioned to allow me to adjust it to the gravity of either Earth or Octula. The streets were designed with automatic walkways for strolling and magnetic routes for riding in carriers. These magnetic routes, never seen on Earth or Octula, allowed the driver to program a journey at its beginning. From there, the streets would direct the vehicle with no further involvement by the operator. If the passengers wanted to change the route, this could be done very easily by reprogramming while in transit. There were no vehicles accidents and no breakdowns.
New Saint Charles is essentially a beach lined with a series of interconnected casinos. Melody took me to my hotel’s private beach and to the bathhouse reserved for my suite. There we took off our clothes and went to the warm water. Melody was almost as beautiful as Anna was on our wedding night, and I imagined that I was, too. I forgot my wrinkles and my arthritis. We danced in the water and caressed each other.
After an hour in the warm water, we walked to the cold tub for a splash.
Back at the hotel, we made love. I was not the virile lover I had been on my wedding night, but Melody was everything Anna had not been on that night. Melody was experienced. She knew what to do with an older man. And I responded.
I knew I had only a few weeks on Farnoll, and I was determined to have a memorable visit. Anna and I had put off vacations after our honeymoon because Anna frequently could not leave her bedroom. Now I had the vacation I had fanaticized about all those years but without my wonderful Anna.
Melody looked so much like Anna I forgot, for a few hours each day, I was without my beloved.
Each morning I arose and walked through the town in search of new sights. I found pleasant places for breakfast and lunch, and I joined all kinds of tours of the surrounding areas.
The light from Farnoll’s star was brightest in the morning, and it painted the buildings in red and yellow. I liked to sit in a café for breakfast and coffee and watch the shadows move over the piazza.
By mid-afternoon I went back to the hotel to take a nap. Later in the afternoon, Melody knocked on the door and invited me for a swim. The water in late afternoon was colored in greens and blues from the setting star, and I loved to watch the ocean change to violets and blacks at starset.
After dark, Melody and I went to a wonderful restaurant, a different one each night of my stay, and then back to the hotel for several hours of lovemaking.
I marveled at her expertise in the art of love. She was my first, and last, professional, but she made me feel as if the words she said to me were fresh and for me alone. She knew all the news from Octula and from Earth, and she knew the exchange rate of Universal Gold and American dollars every day.
We kissed a great deal and spent most of our lovemaking time in foreplay. She was experienced enough to know that right after coitus came the end of our date, and she put off that time longer than I could believe possible. She licked a little and then allowed me to go limp for a few minutes. She pinched my nipples until they were hard and then allowed them to relax. Over and over again she brought me close to orgasm and then let me relax. She never mentioned the word septuagenarian.
The last days came too soon. I went to the American Express office and wired my check from Len’s estate to my bank in Pittsburgh, telling them I would be back on Earth in two months. Then I went to Tiffany’s to buy a present for Melody. I spend over half my remaining Universal Gold on a beautiful set of ruby and diamond earrings and a matching bracelet.
On our last night I took pictures of Melody wearing the rubies and diamonds, and I later retouched the pictures of Melody so she looked almost exactly like Anna. I had had a vacation to remember, and my pictures showed me with my darling beloved.
The Trip to Earth
On the last morning in Farnoll, I went to the hotel manager to pay my bill. She assured me all charges had been taken care of when the reservation was made. The hotel rates included all service charges, calculated at thirty-five percent of the bas
ic room charge. All monies left in the rooms would be forwarded to the guest on the next connecting flight. Except for the visit to Tiffany’s and the restaurant and tour bills, Anna had paid for the entire vacation.
I took the shuttle to the spaceport and met the steward. Again, I was assigned to the best cabin, and this one was even larger than the one on the first part of the trip. The cabin included immense windows that looked out into the grey interstellar matter. I moved the overstuffed wing-backed chair with its ottoman so that I could look out the windows, and I spent most of my time in the room in that chair. I forgot my reading and just watched the heavens go by.
The cabin had been decorated by a master, though, in the style of the best American houses of 1800. Antique reproductions filled the rooms, and precious silver and crystal were used for the lights and the dining service. I took many pictures of the cabin with the idea I would find a little house in Pennsylvania and make it look just like that space.