by John Varley
They had it down to a science. In the assembly hall they were packing them in like sardines, in three layers, two of them temporary fold-up bleachers with bucket seats and seat belts. I was settled into mine, between Elizabeth and Mom, and in a few more minutes the hall was full. Very much like a ride at Disney World.
Within five minutes we were treated to a big-screen picture of the Sovereign of the Planets, from one of the shuttles we’d just left. They didn’t waste any time. The longer they spent in free fall, the more vomit bags there were going to be to dispose of, drugs or no drugs.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” came the announcement. “We are beginning our acceleration. We will take three minutes to achieve four-tenths of a gravity, just slightly higher than you have been used to on Mars. Please remain seated while this is done, with your seat belts firmly fastened. Some of you may experience some nausea as gravity returns. Please notice that there are plenty of spacesickness bags in the pouch behind the seat in front of you. You may also want to take the in-flight magazine and look at the ship’s map you will find inside, to familiarize yourself with the layout of the ship. The captain will be joining you shortly after full acceleration is achieved. Thank you.” This was repeated in Spanish, French, Chinese, Arabic, and Japanese.
I felt the weight gradually pushing me down into my seat, until I felt normal. The few extra pounds weren’t noticeable . . . yet. All the way to Earth, the boost would be gradually increased—except for the ten minutes of weightlessness when they turned the ship around to decelerate—until we were being blasted by the full, deadening weight that Earthies carried around all the time. It would be like carrying a slightly overweight twin on your shoulders, and I wasn’t looking forward to it.
I heard a few sighs of relief, and one prominent cry of “Oh, god, not again!” followed by retching. Then the lights dimmed slightly, and a man came out onto the stage. He was dark brown and dressed in a really snappy white uniform with lots of gold braid and patches, the winged Mercury and the old Royal Caribbean logos prominent among them. There were gold stripes on his sleeve.
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Sovereign of the Planets, registered in Oslo, Norway,” he said, in a reassuring baritone. “I am Captain Swenson. I have a whole routine I usually deliver at this point in the cruise, a little opening ceremony, but considering what has happened, none of it seems appropriate. I know some of you have lost loved ones in the disaster, and many more of you are worried about the fates of other loved ones. This ship will, of course, be at your service with all our communications facilities to help you find out what can be discovered, but I am not optimistic about learning a great deal before our arrival. Let me fill you in on what I know.
“The loss of life is very large. Speculations are running very high indeed, but I don’t want to indulge in those here. What is confirmed is that infrastructure damage has been catastrophic. The systems we refer to collectively as the cyber-sphere have been crippled by power outages and the inundation of many large central computer installations. It’s going to take time to repair that sort of damage. Large areas of the Caribbean and the North Atlantic are going to be back in the pre-electricity era for quite some time. Maybe as long as a year in America, probably longer in places like Haiti and other of the poorer islands. News reporters and government agencies and the United Nations are having to go physically to the affected sites to assess the damage and plan the rescue and recovery operations. Needless to say, things are chaotic at this point. So don’t expect to know much for quite some time.”
I swallowed hard. The last time I’d looked at the news somebody was talking about fifty thousand dead. Somebody else said five hundred thousand. Anyone want to try for a million? The fact was, nobody knew crap at this point, but the talking heads have to say something.
Captain Swenson shrugged helplessly, and motioned to the side of the stage. Other uniformed crew members came out of the wings and solemnly joined him in a line, all snowy white and gleaming brass and spit and polish.
“I really don’t know how to carry on from here,” he said. “My engineer knows his job, the cooks and the stewards will continue to do what they would have done on any other voyage. The bars will be open in ten minutes. So will the casino. But you signed up for a pleasure cruise, and I don’t know what to do about that. It’s going to be hard to organize the sort of fun things you have been expecting. So much of it now seems inappropriate. I know I wouldn’t want to be one of our stand-up comics right now. But should I cancel the entertainment? Should I cancel the dances? The fact is, a long space voyage is pretty boring without some sort of diversion.
“Here is what I’ve decided. All normal entertainment will be canceled for the first twenty-four hours of the voyage. Memorial and religious services will be held here in the theater and in the other meeting places as you desire them. The cruise director will be happy to help you organize them in any way she can. Just ask. After that . . . we’ll play it by ear, okay?” He sighed again. “Lifeboat drill will be held in one hour. All passengers are required to attend. Please consult your ticket for the location of your proper station. That is all.” He turned on his heel and walked off, followed by his crew.
THE ELEVATORS OUTSIDE the theater had long lines of people waiting to get on, so we headed for the stairs, like a few others. On the way up, Mom suggested that we take the stairs all during the trip, and I groaned a little, but I knew she was right. Every hour we were going to weigh a little bit more, so we might as well start adding in that little extra bit of conditioning.
Didn’t mean I had to like it.
The theater was on the lowest passenger deck, the first deck.
Our stateroom was on the fortieth deck.
Could be worse, I realized, as we exited through the pressure door onto our deck. I walked to the circular railing that overlooked the atrium and looked down forty floors to a bubbling fountain in a parklike setting. Each deck was a concentric ring, tapering slightly toward the bottom. I looked up, another forty decks or so, to the multicolored glass artwork hanging up there, beyond which were all the dining rooms and shops and most of the other facilities. Ouch! I’d be paying for my meals in sweat.
It was quite a vista, and we all paused to take it in.
“Makes you feel sort of old, doesn’t it, Kelly?” Dad said, with his arm around my mother’s waist.
“A little,” she admitted. “But only if I worry about it.”
I realized they were taking about the old Red Thunder, which hadn’t been exactly cramped, but didn’t have anything aboard that wasn’t really needed, bare insulation on the walls, and indoor-outdoor carpeting on the floors. For amusement, when they weren’t standing watches, they’d had a box of dominoes, playing cards, and a Monopoly board. Or so they said.
The designers of the Sovereign of the Planets had spared no expense to make you forget that you were in a spaceship at all. It might even be an ocean cruise ship, like Royal Caribbean’s Sovereign of the Seas II. I checked out their website, and the interiors look a lot alike.
It’s all gleaming brass and wood paneling and tasteful color schemes, easy-on-the-eyes lighting fixtures. The potted plants stuck here and there are the same species that thrive indoors. The art hanging on the walls in one ship are fanciful tropical scenes and in the other, planetary vistas, but they were done by the same artists who use much the same color palettes, and make everything look slightly shiny. Even most of the music is the same. By that I mean, uninteresting, suitable for folks my parents’ age or older. Lots of Beatles, lots of Crosby, Stills & Nash, lots of toned-down rap.
And, of course, Celine Dion, whoever she is.
There was a red and yellow and blue macaw with a beautiful brass cage just outside our stateroom door. His door was open, and he was sitting on a bar outside, eyeing us as we approached.
“Welcome aboard!” he squawked. “Welcome aboard!”
A steward came hurrying around the curve of the deck, pushing a trolley exactly like
the ones we use at the hotel back home, piled with our luggage.
“Sorry, sorry,” he said. He was a small man, possibly Japanese but more likely a mix of races, which Dad says is getting a lot more common than when he was a kid. He likes that, because he is mixed race himself and apparently it was a bit of a problem for him when he was young. I won’t say we don’t have any racism on Mars, but it’s usually not a big deal for just that reason. So many of us are more than one race. Most of the racism we do have is brought by Earthies.
“I’m running a little late. We’ve got a large complement of passengers this trip because of . . . well, you know why. My name is Peter, and I’ll be your steward on the whole voyage. Anything you need, anytime except from eleven in the evening to six in the morning, just ring and I’ll be there. On the late shift, ring for the deck steward.”
Dad introduced us all as Peter unlocked the door. Throughout the voyage he never missed our names once. He held the door open for us, and we entered our new home for the next six days.
I hadn’t known what to expect. Mom had of course booked at the last minute, and had taken what she could get. Which turned out to be a two-bedroom suite with a large living area, not bad at all. Far from the most luxurious suite on the ship, but a long way up from economy class. The furniture was comfy though unremarkable. There was a small wet bar and a fridge with liquor, which Dad kept the key to. There was only one small bathroom—shower, no tub—and I imagined it would be cramped for the four of us, but we’d have plenty of spare time.
Peter pressed a button, and the airtight shutters drew back very quickly from a wide picture window. We all went over there and could see already that Mars had gotten smaller. I felt a lump in my throat. Sure, it sucks, but it’s home . . . and I wasn’t looking forward to getting to a planet which, truth be told, sucked a lot more.
“May I ask . . .” Peter was saying, hesitantly. “May I ask, Mr. Garcia, if you have friends or relatives at risk in the tsunami zone?”
I realized he was talking to me.
“Call me Ray,” I said. I’d spent all my life around porters, which are just like stewards only on land, and I wasn’t about to let one older than me call me mister. “Yes, we know a lot of people in Florida, it’s where my parents grew up. My grandmother is there . . .” I couldn’t go on. Peter didn’t say anything but left the room quietly.
I went into the first bedroom, where Mom was busy already unpacking our stuff and stowing it away in the various closets and cupboards. I looked around. There was no wide window in here, just a round porthole. There were two folding bunks, like I once saw in a Pullman train car in an old movie. I think Cary Grant was in it. I presumed Elizabeth and I would be sharing the room. All in all, it wasn’t as nice as the cabins I remembered from our trips when I was smaller. Now I was a typical Martian teenager, six feet six inches tall, and Elizabeth was about six-two, though she’d never say exactly. Martian girls have some trouble with that, especially around runty Earthie boys. I was pretty sure the bunks were about six feet long, which meant sleeping scrunched up or with my feet hanging over the edge.
Oh, well. I’m sure Dad could tell me lots of stories about the hardships of growing up poor on Earth if I complained about it, so I wouldn’t.
That’s when our roommates arrived.
THE CRUISE LINE has a policy of not allowing doubling up in accommodations, just as the Red Thunder Hotel does not allow groups of vacationing college students to share a single room. If you’d ever seen a room after a group of them were through with it, you’d know why.
However, when Mom sets her mind to something she is a very hard woman to say no to, and while the rest of us were still running around like chickens with our heads cut off—do they really do that?—Mom was busy getting passage on the first flight leaving Mars not only for our family but for the families of other Red Thunder Hotel employees who had relatives in the tsunami zone.
Others were sharing rooms, too, taking the ship a bit beyond what was the strictly legal complement of passengers, but silly rules are made to be broken, according to my mother. Silly rules, of course, are the ones she disagrees with or that get in her way. The extra souls aboard should have no effect on the ship, which carried enough food, water, and air to make several round trips from Earth to Mars without restocking.
Well, there was the matter of the lifeboats, but even those could handle a few standees if it came to that, which it never had in the history of passenger space travel except for that fire aboard the Carolina, which was put out within an hour and everyone was off the lifeboats and back at their dinner an hour after that.
OUR SUITEMATES WERE the Redmond family. I didn’t know them very well. The father was a chef. I don’t know what Mrs. Redmond did, but the whole family had come to Mars for the high wages.
The most important thing about the Redmonds though, from my point of view, is that they had three children. There was Anthony, age six, and William, age eight. Then there was Evangeline, age sixteen, one year younger than me. She also just happened to be about six-foot-one, with straight, pale blonde hair and a pale complexion, deep brown eyes, and a real stunner.
We worked out a shift system for sleeping. Elizabeth and Evangeline got the room from right after dinner to four in the morning, and the brats and I got it from four to noon. After the first night of them fighting in the upper bunk, I mostly wandered the ship while they were pretending to sleep and caught naps during the free hours between noon and eight, much to the annoyance of the maids who wanted to make up the room.
And, okay, I admit it, I wasn’t actually wandering all that time. During the times that Evangeline was awake, I might have been sort of following her around.
It started as soon as they moved into the suite. Mr. Redmond was so apologetic that I was embarrassed for him. He kept thanking Dad and Mom. They just said, think nothing of it. The brats were running around like hurricanes, smearing the big window with their greasy fingers, knocking stuff over, and making it as awkward as possible for their mother and father to gracefully thank my mother and father.
It was a bad scene, all around, and I could immediately see that of all of them, Evangeline was taking it hardest of all. She blushed furiously every time one of the little terrors did something noisy or rambunctious and did her best to corral them and make them shut up, which would last until she turned her back. Those kids were into everything. So it was What’s in here? and How long till we get there? and Stop hitting me! and I didn’t hit you! and, of course, always, Mom, Mom, he hit me! pretty much nonstop. And each time Evangeline would cringe.
I hate this class business, but Dad says there’s no way to get away from it. He was on the other end, growing up, not having any money, unable to go to a good school.
Working class.
Dad doesn’t talk about it a lot. I know it annoys him to think back about it, he’d prefer to focus on the future, but I know it was also hard to have a rich and beautiful girlfriend. I think he wasn’t sure of her love for a long time. I think sometimes even now he’s not sure of it, though they’ve been together for years and years.
Evangeline’s family was working-class, no doubt about it, and it clearly bothered her. She went to Nelson Mandela High School, which I’m told is a fine place, certainly better than most public schools on Earth. I know they have a better basketball team than my school does; they beat us every year. Well, they have a larger enrollment. Basically, they have everybody who doesn’t go to one of the private academies that the more-well-off Martians, like my family, can afford.
Money’s a bitch. I’m sure glad we have it, but it doesn’t bring people together, except within their own class, and that’s not good, is it?
It’s especially bad when you think you might be falling in love, and the girl you want to be with is so ashamed of her baby brothers she can hardly bear to look at you.
I’d have to talk to Elizabeth about it.
EVEN FOR A trip as short as Mars to Earth, you get into a shipboard
routine very quickly. Pretty soon, it seems like you’ve been doing it all your life.
Memorial and prayer services replaced the normal shows for the first twenty-four hours. But you can only mourn so long, so normal entertainment was resumed fairly quickly. The comedians in the lounges even found they were getting more than the normal amount of laughs, though the audiences were smaller. Not all the passengers were going back to look for survivors, of course. The rest maintained a respectful distance from the emergency passengers at their dinner tables, but they had paid a lot of money for their tickets, and you couldn’t expect them to give up their merrymaking just because some people had died on Earth.
But how many? That was the question. We knew we would not be likely to know much about specific survivors until we got there, but we’d expected to learn more about the scope of the disaster in the first day or two.
It didn’t happen.
That was almost as shocking as the disaster itself, in some ways. We live in the information age, we’re used to a steady stream of it. Sure, in the first hours after a big event the news is dominated by rumors or flat-out inaccuracies, but usually the true story begins to emerge fairly soon.
We were learning some things. No tsunami can keep helicopters and airplanes out of the air. But governments can.
Many of us were gathering in a Starbucks near the observation lounge that had been converted into a meeting place that was more or less restricted to those of us “going home” to see about our loved ones. We found it was better to sit together and watch the news on the multiplex screens on the wall rather than explore in the isolation of our personal stereos. The coffee was better, too.