Enid was fairly good at inching along upright, but that was not enough for her. She saw the more experienced skaters gliding along, and a look of yearning crossed her thin little face. She was willing to fall and fall, again and again, so long as she could get better at gliding. By the time we called the children to go, she was almost as fast as Harry, and a great deal more controlled. She could return to her point of origin precisely and serenely at the end of every turn.
They were all pink cheeked and beaming as they unlaced their rented skates. Judith gathered all three pairs and took them off to the return counter while the children put on their shoes.
“We have to do this again!” said Harry, jumping to his feet.
“We definitely have to do this again,” said Enid. “If it’s all right with Grandpa Torulf and Grandma Judith.”
“We won’t be able to come every week,” I said, “but I see no reason you can’t come skating from time to time.”
“And we have to bring Dad when he finds us—” Richard stopped, staring up at me. I looked from him to his brother and sister, who were looking at the scuffed floor. I saw in them a truth I had not even considered: they were waiting for their missing father. They were sure, powerfully sure, that he was trying to find his way to them. That he would get them and take them home.
“Richard,” I said gently. “Richard, let’s talk about this at home, all right?”
He nodded warily. Judith came around the corner. “Ready to go?” she said. She shot me a baffled look at the long faces—they had so clearly enjoyed the skating—but took her cue from my silence on the way home.
I put a long-simmering soup on the stove before I turned to the kids. “Now. Your father. I don’t have any specific information—”
“Neither do we,” said Enid quickly. “If we knew when he was coming, we’d let you know so you could make plans. I mean—”
“Thank you, Enid,” said Judith quietly. “They brought up their father?”
“Richard thinks their father is coming to take them home,” I said.
“It won’t be like before,” said Harry with cheerful confidence. “We know that.”
“Do you? What will it be like?” said Judith.
“Well—” Richard started, and then looked to Enid.
“Of course Mom won’t be there,” said Enid. “And we’ll have to merge ships with another family, since ours has been taken. Probably an alliance of some sort, or else we’d end up the junior cousins, and Dad and Philomel would never make arrangements for us like that.”
“My dears,” I said, as gently as I could, “what other family?”
“The Teuku-Tans, I imagine,” said Enid. “Or someone like that. Someone we know and like.”
I bit my lip, glancing at Judith. She had closed her eyes. I said, “I can help you look. If there are specific families you want to know about. But Enid—most of the families in the Oort had their ships repossessed. It’s not just you.”
“I know, but—the Teuku-Tans have ties to Elizabeth Tan on Miranda Station,” said Enid. “If anyone can help us weather it—”
“You and thousands of other families,” I said. “As I said, we can check. But I don’t think you should count on your dad being able to take you back to the Oort. Even if he finds you—”
“When,” said Enid firmly, her eyes on her brothers. They had looked to her in startled panic when I said “if,” and I realized that she alone was old enough to even think of the reasonable doubts.
“All right, when he finds you,” I said, giving in on the smaller point to make the larger one. “It may be that you have to live here a while longer, you and your dad. Or it may be that he wants to move you out to Ganymede, or Miranda Station, or wherever he can get work. He may have to work in the asteroid belt for a while. A lot of Oorters have to work on company ships in the asteroid belt, and if he does—”
They were all staring at me.
“It may be some time,” I finished helplessly. “The asteroid belt ships don’t usually take children. You may be with us some time. That’s all I’m saying. And of course your father is our family now, too, he’s welcome with us—”
“What your grandfather means to say,” said Judith, “is that we should focus on the present.”
“Oh yes,” said Enid. “I’ve told the boys that too.”
None of them believed it. You could see in their faces, they didn’t believe it in the least. Living on a planet was an experience they were having, and they would probably talk about it fondly when they were grown—but the idea that they might spend any amount of time with Judith and me had not crossed their minds. And I couldn’t really say that we understood what it would mean to raise them to adulthood. I don’t know that we’d had the chance to think about it. But I think Judith and I knew that the odds against their dad coming for them were pretty high.
Judith was the one to propose reading to the boys every night, and Judith had the idea for the outing the next time we had a free weekend. I would never have thought of Magus Station, but when I saw Harry jump up from his train seat and gasp, I knew she was right: it was the perfect place to take them.
“That’s awesome!” said Harry, pressing his nose against the train window. “It’s beautiful! Enid! Richard! Look at all the shiny jewels!”
“It’s certainly shiny,” said Enid, suppressing a smile.
I had to say I was with her: Magus Station is quintessentially Martian, but not what one might call … reserved. Or classy. Nearly every building was made with low-quality peridots from the mining operation, the ones that nobody would want for jewelry, and the effect varied from things that looked like subdued green-yellow glass to a fairy-tale palace, if a fairy-tale palace held the post office and had been decorated by the bad christening fairy’s psychotic sister.
Magus Station had been a mining town in the old days, and still was one, if by mining you mean picking up perfectly nice things from the ground. There were lots of gem carvers and jewelers in town still, since every Martian who goes off-planet wears at least one peridot by custom, but there were also little souvenir shops with T-shirts, fudge, and history game apps for the kids’ handhelds. You could go out in your own suit and pick up your own raw peridots, or you could go down into the museum of Martian mining, which we did.
We were in one of the shops where people buy their earring when they’re going off-planet, and I made an impulsive offer. “How about we buy you each a peridot?”
“No, thank you,” said Enid, more sharply than she’d ever spoken to us.
“Just a little earring,” I said.
Judith chimed in, “It’s nothing extravagant, dear. We can afford it, and we’d like to—”
“No,” said Enid. We blinked at her.
“I like the really greeny green ones,” said Harry.
“Peridots are for Martians, Harry,” said Enid.
“Well, but at this point you’re part Martian,” I said.
“We’re not,” said Richard.
“Maybe a small part?” said Judith. Enid looked up at her with my eyes. I know Judith was seeing my eyes in the girl.
“You never wanted kids,” she said steadily. “Your genes were quite good for kids, and there are plenty of ways to combine them—with help if you needed it—or to raise kids who—kids like us. If you’d wanted to. But you didn’t want to. You just took us because the Martian courts said you had to.”
“That’s—” I sighed, and Judith took over for me.
“That’s entirely true,” she said. “We didn’t want kids. We still don’t want kids. But we want you. We won’t keep you from the rest of your family if they find a way to come for you. If they find they have a place to keep you safe and healthy and get you education and all of that. But if they don’t, we want you. Never doubt that, my dear.”
“All the same,” said Enid. “We’re not giving up on our own family, and we’re not getting peridots.”
Judith and I exchanged helpless looks. The clerk w
as wide-eyed and nervous, seeing a sale slip through her fingers and clearly hoping the children would not get more unruly. I clapped my hands together and proposed fish and chips, that quintessentially Martian food, and Enid relaxed. I hoped that it would let her enjoy the rest of the day.
That night when Judith was reading to the boys, I called Enid into my study. She perched in my second-best chair.
“I haven’t been able to find your father, dear heart,” I said. “I didn’t want to say it in front of the boys because you know best how to handle them.”
Enid nodded. I think she was grateful that I gave her that much. “He’s probably not—probably not somewhere he’ll be easily found, at this point. Perhaps when things have settled a bit, he’ll be able to come in-system.”
“Perhaps,” I said.
“I hope you didn’t think we don’t like staying with you, when I didn’t want the peridot today,” she said, wrapping her arms around one upraised knee.
“I know it’s not what you’re used to. You remember how your Grandma Judith read the boys Mary Poppins? How Mary said she’d stay until the wind changed? You pretended you weren’t listening, but we both know better.”
Enid nodded slowly.
“How would that be, then? If you stayed until the wind changed?”
“Grandpa, you don’t have winds under a dome,” she said, staring at her hands.
I drew my breath in. “Oh, chickadee. Oh, kidlet. No, I’m not trying to trick you into saying you’ll stay permanently. I know you won’t. I just—it’s a metaphor.”
Enid peered at me. “What’s it a metaphor for?”
“For … knowing that you can’t control everything. You’re waiting for a thing you can’t control. You can try to make the best of it while you’re here, can’t you? And—know you can come back if you have to?”
“Grandpa, peridots aren’t for people with family on Mars,” she said patiently. “Peridots are for Martians.”
I puffed out my breath, thinking. “You’re right. You know, you’re right. We need … we need something different. Not earrings or something usual. Maybe a necklace with peridot and something else? What have you got in the outer system for—I mean, what do people wear mostly?”
“Asteroid diamonds,” she said, “but those are a lot more expensive here than peridots, even though they’re much cheaper back ho—back in the Oort.”
They were expensive indeed—and more to the point, nobody looking at a diamond-and-peridot necklace would assume that the diamond was an asteroid diamond, or symbolic of any such thing. I chewed my lip in thought and let her feel that the subject was closed.
And in effect it was closed, until the next time I took them skating while Judith worked.
Experience emboldened the children. I couldn’t have said whether they remembered any of the other skating children from our previous expedition—it seemed unlikely—but they joined in games with Martian kids, not just each other. I leaned back, smiling, and knew that this was going to be part of my life, probably for years. School programs, and getting new vac-suits fitted to growing bodies, and trips to the skating rink. This would be how we did things.
“Grandpa, come skate with us!” called Harry from the ice in front of me.
Richard skated over to the boards and leaned over them, holding his hand out earnestly. “Come on, Grandpa. Come skate.”
“I don’t have any—”
“Neither do we have skates, and you rent them for us,” said Enid. “They have adult sizes. There are hundreds of adults skating right now, it’s not just for kids.”
There were not hundreds of anybody, but I took her point. It was a small thing, and it might be fun. I went and traded my shoes for a pair of scuffed black skates that smelled of sweat and disinfectant. A nice woman who had just helped her two small children out on the ice helped me lace them. I felt wobbly and uncertain trying to stand on skates on dry land.
The ice was not any better. I soon realized why Richard had edged along his first time, why he hadn’t wanted to let go of the boards. Gliding felt less grand and graceful, more completely out of control.
“You’re doing beautifully, Grandpa,” said Harry earnestly. “You can skate out to me, can’t you?”
I looked at him. He was less than two meters from the boards. It might as well have been the distance back out to the Oort Cloud, but if I was going to try, I should do it in earnest. I managed to wobble out to Harry. He said, “That’s great, Grandpa!” and took my hand.
A passing woman in a blue coat smiled at us. I tried to smile back. I could probably smile and skate at the same time, I thought, if I could skate.
Harry tried to tow me along, and then Richard came and helped him. We were almost all right. We were sort of all right. I said, “Boys, I should try it on my own again. Never learn to do it unless I try, right?”
Richard nodded and let go right away. Harry followed only when he saw his brother doing it. “But we’re here, Grandpa,” said Richard. “If you want more towing. We can help.”
They were such nice little sprouts. The smile came much more naturally to me as I tried to push off and glide away from them—or I thought it had, and then the world moved by too fast to apprehend, and I was lying on my back on the ice.
When the pain haze cleared—which only took a split second—and I was paying attention again, there were three worried little faces above me. Enid crouched down to check closer. “There, Grandpa, are you all right?” she said. I was only a little dazed—there would be a giant bruise on my backside, and my wrist was a little wrenched—but I let her hover over me and check me like a professional, top to toe. Richard was there to help her get me to my feet, and Harry trailed along close behind.
“I’m all right,” I said. “Truly. Go on ahead and skate some more.” I sat gingerly on the bleachers, easing the skates off and watching the children dart about, trying to spin, trying too much, falling and trying again. It wasn’t just seeing them in a new setting that I liked about the skating rink, it was seeing myself that way.
The idea of a new setting triggered a thought in my head about the peridots I had wanted to give the children, and after consultation with the netcyclopedia and Judith, I hoped I had an answer. I called Enid into the office where I kept the records about my fish.
If I had been staging it for a video, I would have slipped the necklace over her head, but by now I knew Enid better than that. She wouldn’t have liked it. I simply handed it to her and watched her face as she examined the greeny-gold gems honeycombed with metal. “What is it?” she said.
“It’s pallasite,” I said. “Peridots, but in meteorites. The rest of it is nickel-iron. It shouldn’t rust. I got them for the boys, too, if you like yours.”
“Meteorite peridots,” she said. “So … still from the outer system, but with little glinty Martian bits.” Her face moved oddly. I waited.
“It’s perfect, Grandpa,” she said softly. “Thank you.”
“We’re not trying to make you something you’re not, Enid. We just want you to remember that part of you comes from us.”
A more demonstrative child would have hugged me. Enid just slipped the necklace on and whispered, “I couldn’t ever forget that. Not anymore.”
About the Author
Marissa Lingen, author of the Tor.Com Original, The Ministry of Changes, is an American science fiction and fantasy writer born July 26, 1978 in Libertyville, Illinois. Trained in physics and mathematics, she worked for a time at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. Over the last decade her short fiction has appeared in Analog, Ideomancer, Baen’s Universe, Clarkesworld, Futurismic, and Nature, among other venues, and stories by her have been reprinted in several anthologies including David Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer’s Year’s Best SF 15 (2010). She lives in Minnesota. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Begin Reading
About the Author
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 by Marissa Lingen
Art copyright © 2015 by Keith Negley
Points of Origin Page 2