“So what have you been doing?” Frania asked, breaking in on Mahala’s thoughts.
Mahala wrenched herself back to the present. “Doing?”
“In Oberg. You didn’t send any messages, so I figured you had to be busy.”
“I guess I was.” Mahala felt a twinge of guilt. She might have made time to send Frania more messages or called more often, but she had not known how to convey her sense of unease and disappointment. After several attempts at setting down messages in writing, or speaking them aloud to the screen, it had been easier not to try.
“So how was it?” Frania asked.
“Except for my friend Ah Lin, there was hardly anybody my age or older still attending my old school. I put in some time being a teacher’s aide.” Eugenio Tokugawa had asked her to assist in his classroom occasionally with the younger children. “And there was plenty of work to do at my grandparents’ house.” Mahala paused. “I should have called you, Frani. I tried, but every time I got ready to call, I started thinking about Oberg and what’s happened to some of my old friends, and then I just—”
“I understand. I could see it in your face when I called, your disappointment.”
Her former schoolmates had given up. They would do what they could for the Project and find whatever happiness they could in their work, even if they had once dreamed of a different kind of life. Such resignation seemed contrary to the spirit of the Project, to the dream of creating a new world. Maybe Benzi had given up, too. That might be why he had not returned or even sent her a message.
It was foolish to think that way. Risa had left school at an early age, and Sef could barely read his own name, but no one could claim that they had not contributed much to the Project. Yet their lives seemed constricted, and she knew that they both had regrets about what they might have learned.
“Have you heard anything from Solveig?” Mahala asked.
“I got a message from her yesterday,” Frania replied. “She’s going to Anwara. It’s just for a week, but she’s really excited about it—says one of the astronomers there is going to show the students around. She said hello to you.” Solveig had been admitted to a school on Island Two nearly a year ago and would be there for at least another year. “That reminds me— Ragnar’s going to be here in a couple of days.”
Mahala slowed as they came to the ceramics plant. Solveig had come to Turing alone during her last two visits; Ragnar still spoke to Dyami over the screen, but Mahala had not seen him for almost two years. She frowned. Solveig had sometimes hinted that she was worried about her brother, but had avoided saying anything more specific.
“He probably just wants to get more instruction from Dyami,” Mahala said.
“I don’t know. He was kind of mysterious about what he’s coming here for, and I didn’t ask.”
“I would have asked, especially with his kind of record. How many black marks does he have now, anyway?”
“That’s not fair, Mahala,” Frania said in her gentle voice. “His reprimands were only for being in protests, and he hasn’t been involved with any protesters for a while.”
Frania, she thought, would always stand up for Ragnar. “I’ll enjoy seeing him anyway,” Mahala murmured, a bit surprised that she meant it.
Frania filled her in on the doings of their schoolmates as they approached the tunnel to the north dome. All of them were still in school, although a few would be apprenticing themselves soon. In a couple of years, some would probably be volunteering for Bat duty; Frania was betting that Gino Hislop-Carnera would be the first to do so.
Mahala looked toward the Habber residence as they came out of the tunnel. She should go there right now and do what she had never been able to bring herself to do; tell Balin that she wanted to send a message to Benzi. She had put it off for too long, afraid that Benzi might not want to receive her message. But Balin probably wasn’t there now anyway; he would be waiting at her uncle’s house to welcome her home.
Turing was truly her home now. She welcomed its stretches of empty land after the clutter of Oberg; at the same time, she felt as if she knew Turing too well, that she had already exhausted it and would never discover anything new here again.
Dyami greeted her with Balin at his side. Her uncle and Arnina had made her favorite vegetable soup and dark bread, and Tasida soon arrived to share the meal with them.
She would not ruin their evening by pestering Balin for news of Benzi. If he had any sort of message from her great-uncle, he would have conveyed it to her by now; so she told herself, while wondering if that was the case. In all the time that she had been living with Dyami, Balin had been practically part of her uncle’s household, yet she could still feel that she did not truly know the Habber.
She also knew little of his and Benzi’s society or of its limits. Benzi might be unable to return; the Habbers might be more restricted in their comparative freedom than she assumed.
“Frani told me Ragnar’s coming to visit,” Mahala said after she had finished her recitation of recent events in Risa’s household.
“Actually, he isn’t just going to be visiting,” Dyami said.
Frania glanced at Mahala, apparently as surprised as she was. “I found out today,” Dyami continued. “Ragnar’s planning to live in Turing. More digger and crawler operators are needed for the work on Turing’s new east dome, now that the topsoil’s laid down. Turns out that Ragnar can run the machines—he apprenticed himself a year ago. I don’t know why he never told me, but I suppose he thought it was his business and not mine.”
“Oh,” Frania murmured. Mahala set down her cup; Solveig had not told her that Ragnar had left school.
“Anyway, Ragnar put himself on the list,” Dyami said, “and the engineering team seems happy to have him. His record shows that he’s a hard worker and that he also has the understanding of spacial relationships that a good operator needs. I guess that’s not surprising, given his artistic gifts, and—”
“How could he?” Mahala burst out.
Amina lifted her brows slightly; Tasida sat up and wrinkled her nose. “How could he what?” Dyami asked.
“Give up like that. In Oberg, at our old school, he’d do as well as anybody whenever he bothered to work. He could have gone to an Island school if he’d tried. How could he settle for being a crawler and digger operator?”
Dyami frowned. “I’ll remind you,” he said softly, “that Risa doesn’t consider running diggers and crawlers beneath her, and that Sef earns some of his credit repairing them. Your great-grandmother, in spite of her climatology degree from the Cytherian Institute, had a bond with a laborer—you’re his great-grandchild, too.”
Her grandmother would have said almost exactly the same thing. Amina might be a metallurgical engineer, with training at an Island school, but she was capable of running a crawler. Dyami himself, who had once hoped to make mathematics his specialization, seemed content to do his mining and engineering tasks at the refinery and the ceramics plant while limiting his mathematical pursuits to what he could pick up from files in the net of minds, journal articles transmitted from Earth, and what he could learn from Balin.
“I’m sorry,” Mahala mumbled. “I didn’t mean—” She paused. “Most of my old schoolmates in Oberg aren’t in school anymore. It isn’t that what they’re doing now isn’t important, it’s just that maybe they’re settling for less than what they might have done. And now Ragnar—”
Dyami’s brown eyes grew warmer. “I understand. But if Ragnar’s making a mistake, he’s the one who has to live with it. He might not be wrong, you know. He’ll have his choice of sites in the east dome when it’s finished, if he wants to live there, and there’s nothing to stop him from pursuing more education with screen lessons. I’d like to ask him to stay here with us, as long as it’s all right with you. I’m sure his parents would rather have him in this house instead of with strangers or living in a tent.”
Frania cleared her throat. “That’s fine with me.”
Mah
ala set down her soup spoon. “Of course he can stay.” Solveig must know of Ragnar’s plans by now; her parents would have told her about them even if her brother had not Ragnar would not follow his sister to the Islands. Mahala felt a pang of regret; she had assumed that they might all be there eventually— she, Solveig, Frania, and Ragnar—dreaming together of other places they might see and deeds they might accomplish.
She gazed across the table at her uncle. For a moment, she thought she saw her regrets hiding in Dyami’s eyes before he turned to murmur a few words to Balin.
Mahala and Frania went to meet Ragnar at the airship bay. He had grown much taller during the past two years and wore his long blond hair pulled back in a braid. His face was as chiseled as one of his sculptures, his shoulders broad; he looked like a man now.
Frania blushed as she greeted him. Mahala murmured a few words of welcome as she picked up one of his three duffels.
“I won’t be with you for more than a few days,” Ragnar said. “One of the engineers said they’d get a temporary shelter up for anyone who doesn’t have a place to live.”
“But you have to stay with us,” Frania murmured. “Dyami will insist. You’ll have to sleep in the common room, at least for now, but—”
“That’s all right, then. I didn’t want to ask Dyami myself, but I was hoping he might let me stay with him.”
“You could have asked,” Frania said, her blush deepening. “We all want you to stay, for as long as you like.”
“I won’t be in your way,” Ragnar said. “I asked for a schedule of darktime shifts, so I can sleep when you’re all out of the house.”
“You asked for darktime shifts?” Mahala said. Most people took them only reluctantly, when their turns at them came around. “But why?”
“Why not? Anyway, they were glad to let me have them.”
The two duffels the girls had taken were light enough to carry to the house. Ragnar lifted the largest one to his shoulder. “Have you heard anything from Solveig?” Mahala asked.
“Haven’t talked to her in a while,” Ragnar replied.
“I was just wondering what she thought about your coming here to work.”
His eyes narrowed. “It was my decision.” He turned and followed Frania toward the road.
“Exactly what kind of work will you be doing?” the other girl asked.
“They’ve assigned me to digging tunnels for now,” he replied. “But with the dome up already, I’m hoping they’ll move me to landscaping.” He went on to speak of his training in both remote and manual control of the machines; apparently, unlike some operators, he had also learned something about repairing the diggers and crawlers. Frania gazed at him raptly whenever the three slowed their pace, as if the story of Ragnar’s apprenticeship were the most fascinating tale she had ever heard.
Mahala was soon lagging behind them. They looked perfect together, the two of them, tall and graceful. The last time Ragnar had visited them, over two years ago, he had made a bust of Frania, modeling her face in clay for the mold Dyami helped him cast later at the refinery. Frania had kept still for hours while he worked, the perfect model; Mahala had never been able to stop fidgeting whenever she sat for him. Maybe he would try his hand at painting Frania now that Dyami, in a burst of uncharacteristic extravagance, had spent a huge amount of credit on imported paints and canvases from Earth.
Frania loved Ragnar. Mahala had known that for a while. Now she saw the longing in Frania’s hazel eyes, a look that flared into joy whenever Ragnar so much as glanced at her.
A lump rose in Mahala’s throat; she swallowed hard. She had never spoken to Frania of her own tangled feelings for Ragnar, partly because she could not be sure of what she actually felt. His emotional distance, the way he seemed to care for nothing but his art, had often convinced her that she disliked him. She had thought she was past her own emotional confusion, that mix of rage and yearning that melted into gratitude for his occasional kindnesses toward her.
But her own feelings for Ragnar did not matter. Frania would be deeply hurt if she ever saw into Mahala’s troubled heart; better not to reveal her emotions. Ragnar would only mock her if he ever found out how she felt. He could not possibly care for someone like her when a girl as kind and beautiful as Frania adored him.
“Have you thought about what you want to do?” Ragnar was saying to Frania.
“I didn’t know for the longest time,” she replied. “Then, about a month ago, I realized that I did know, and then it was as if I’d known what I wanted to be all along and just hadn’t seen it. I’d like to be a pilot.”
Mahala faltered, stunned by this admission, then hastened to catch up with the two. “A pilot?” she said as she came up on Frania’s left, bewildered that her friend had not even hinted at this ambition before revealing it to Ragnar. “This is the first I’ve heard of it.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Ragnar said. “You always did want to see other places. If you’re a pilot, you’ll get to visit all the Islands and settlements eventually—and Anwara.”
“Maybe even Earth,” Frania said, “if I can train to be a torchship pilot—but there are enough of those from Earth, so a Cytherian doesn’t have much of a chance at that.”
“I thought you were going to try for an Island school,” Mahala said, “and study biology.”
“Oh, Mahala—I couldn’t get in. I’m sure of that now. It’s kind of a relief to know that, in a way.”
“But we always talked of going together,” Mahala muttered.
“I know we did, but—” Frania stopped and searched Mahala’s face. “I don’t think that’s really for me, Mahala. Look, once you make it into an Island school, I can visit you. I’ll have to come there anyway for shuttle training.”
“That’s if you make it into pilot training,” Mahala said, “or get through it. A lot of people want to be pilots, so they can go here and there and not be stuck in one place most of the time. They can’t accept everyone for the job.”
Frania flinched. Ragnar shifted from one foot to the other, obviously annoyed. “I didn’t mean that you don’t have a chance,” Mahala said hastily.
“I’ll make it,” Frania said, sounding more confident than she ever had before. “I’ve taken some tests, the ones you do with a band and simulations. I did very well. As soon as I try the next tests, I’ll tell Amina if I pass them, too. I don’t want to say anything to her until I know I have a real chance at becoming a pilot.”
“Come on,” Ragnar said. “I’m going to be starving by the time we get to your house.”
They continued toward the tunnel. Mahala was silent as her two friends, their lives now seemingly mapped out, chattered of their plans.
Ragnar ate a meal of bread and cheese, then suggested a walk along the lake. Mahala followed the two down the rocky slope, feeling as though she was in their way and wishing that she had thought of an excuse to stay behind. But they were likely to run into other young people, since many of their friends spent their free time near the water. Mahala could go off with another group then and leave Frania and Ragnar to themselves.
But the shore was deserted; even the few daring young people who had recently taken up swimming were absent. Mahala searched the trees as they neared the forested land and saw no one.
They had said little while walking. Ragnar let out a sigh and sat down on a clear patch of land as Frania settled herself next to him. Mahala gazed out at the still surface of the nameless lake. No one had given the lake in Oberg’s west dome a name, either. They left the landmarks in their environments without names or labeled them according to their functions; they continued to mark time by Earthly days and months and years, as if knowing that they and their artifacts and designations of time and place were only the prelude to the true Cytherian civilization, that nothing in their own culture was likely to endure.
“I like it here in Turing,” Ragnar said then.
“Better than Hypatia?” Frania asked.
“Yeah.” Ra
gnar shrugged. “Part of that’s because of Dyami’s house. He picked a good site for it, and I like its design more than that of most houses I’ve seen. About the only thing I’d do differently with my own house is maybe have it closer to the trees.”
Mahala sat down and folded her legs. “Is that why you came here to work? Because you like it and want to build a house here?”
Ragnar leaned back, resting an arm on one raised knee. “That’s part of it.”
“I don’t understand you.” Mahala could not restrain herself anymore. “Is that all you want to do with your life, run diggers and crawlers and then go home to your house?”
Ragnar’s face paled slightly. “It’s what I want to do now.”
“I guess I thought you were more ambitious.”
“Mahala.” Frania touched her arm. “Be fair. What’s wrong with that?”
“I didn’t say there was anything wrong with it.” Mahala took a breath. “It’s just—you could have gone to an Island school, Ragnar. You’re smart enough that they probably would have admitted you even with your record. You could have done something else, and you just threw away all your chances.”
“I didn’t throw anything away.” Ragnar sat up straight. “I know exactly what I’m doing. I don’t much care what kind of job I have, as long as I’m good at it and can earn my credit doing it. The kind of work I’ll be doing won’t get in the way of my art, and that’s what matters to me.”
“Your art?” Mahala shook her head. “Is that all you really care about—your hobby?”
“It isn’t just a hobby to me.” Ragnar’s eyes were cold, his face taut. “It’s something I have to do. Don’t ask me why— that’s just the way it is with me. That hobby is my real life, it means the most to me—nothing else really counts. If I couldn’t make the things I do, it would be like not being able to breathe. I thought you’d understand that by now.”
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