Mariko waved to him as he came back into view, after swimming around the hut and coming back into the lagoon. Steve sucked in his breath, then powered through the water towards where she was standing, at the very edge of the water. She looked timeless, somehow, utterly beautiful despite the straightness of her body. Steve didn’t care about the size of her breasts, or the boyish hips, merely the essence that was her. He came charging out of the water and ran towards her.
Afterwards, they returned to the hut and hunted through the fridge for something tasty. Steve hadn’t expected much from the microwave, but the pre-prepared foods were actually surprisingly nice, far better than any of the TV dinners he’d eaten on leave. It had puzzled him until Mariko pointed out that most people who visited the island would be wealthy enough to afford the best, as well as absolute privacy. Steve didn’t want to think about how much they were spending, even if it was cheap compared to the constant flow of money in and out of the lunar colony. He hadn’t been raised to spend money excessively.
He smiled at the thought. His grandmother would have sneered at the very idea of going on holiday. To her, fifty or sixty miles from the ranch was foreign territory. God alone knew what sort of infidels lived there. But then, she’d been the daughter of a soldier, married to another soldier and mother of yet more soldiers. Most of her opinions of the outside world would have been shaped by their stories of the less-pleasant parts of the planet. Wars, after all, seldom showed places to their best advantage.
“I read the guidebook,” Mariko said. She nodded towards the plastic containers. “None of this is remotely local.”
Steve wasn’t too surprised. Some people travelled to experience, but others merely went somewhere — like him — to recharge their batteries. The latter wouldn’t want strange foreign food when they could have American-style meals shipped in from the United States. Steve wasn’t too sure what to make of it. He’d eaten some strange things in Iraq — and he had to admit there was comfort in the familiar — but why go halfway around the world to eat food they could have found anywhere at home?
“Maybe we should go to Mali later,” he said. They did have a speedboat, after all, or they could simply teleport to the city-island. “See what we can find that’s more local.”
Mariko shrugged as she placed the trays in the microwave and turned it on. “I don’t think I’d like it,” she confessed. “The whole island is one giant city.”
Steve nodded in agreement. It was odd, but most of his memories of large cities were marred by war. He’d spent more time in Bagdad and Fallujah than he’d spent in Washington or New York. Why would anyone, he’d asked himself as a child, choose to live in the cities when they could live in the countryside instead? But most people, he knew now, couldn’t afford to live in the country. And, when they did, they started trying to change it to fit some ideal they’d gleaned from watching bad movies and reading junk science.
He smiled at the thought. That was one thing Heinlein Colony — and the smaller Wells Colony on Mars — had already experienced, although from people on Earth rather than settlers on the moon. They whined about terraforming the planet, they whined about mining for water and HE3, they whined about setting up farms… as if they could afford to import food from Earth indefinitely. Didn’t people have enough troubles of their own to keep them busy?
Mariko cleared her throat, drawing his attention back to her. “What do you want to eat?”
Steve hastily replayed her words in his mind. She’d asked if he wanted curry or microwavable burgers. “Curry,” he said, quickly. Like most women in his experience, Mariko got annoyed if she thought she was being ignored. “It will make a change.”
“And you make better burgers of your own anyway,” Mariko teased. “Far better than anything you get in the cities, right?”
Steve nodded. Her skill at reading his face was remarkable.
He stood and walked towards the balcony as she put the food in the microwave, staring out over the endless blue sea. In the distance, he could see waves breaking over the barrier reef that shielded the island from the ocean and tiny lights where other inhabited islands were preparing for darkness. They had sometimes heard planes flying overhead, but apart from the boat that had brought them to the island they’d seen no other boats. The resort owners kept all traffic away from their islands, jealously guarding their right to ship travellers to and from the resorts.
And make sure they collect as much money as they can, Steve thought, cynically. The Maldives had been largely isolated from the Middle Eastern economic depression, but they’d once had Arab Princes coming to the islands for a holiday away from public observance of Islamic Law. Officially, the islands were Islamic, but money talked louder than the Qur’an, particularly when the area was dependent on tourists. But now, there were few Arab Princes who had the funds to spare for a holiday. The smarter ones had already fled the region for Europe. There, at least, they would be safe from their vengeful populations.
There was a ding from the microwave. Steve turned, just in time to see Mariko pull the containers out of the machine and pour the contents onto the plates. She picked them both up and walked over to the balcony, passing Steve his plate as she walked through the door. A cool wind was blowing over the sea now, something of a relief after the heat of the day. Steve sat on the steps leading down to the water and smiled at her. After a moment, she joined him and sat down to eat.
“This isn’t too bad,” Steve said. Compared to some of the curries he’d eaten in Iraq, it was downright mild. The Marines had joked that the Iraqis deliberately made the curries hot as a test of manliness. Steve, however, recalled the medic saying that the meat wasn’t always the best, which explained outbreaks of the dreaded D&V. The spice often helped cover up the poor quality of meat. “It could be worse.”
Mariko elbowed him. “It could be better too, couldn’t it?”
Steve shrugged, placed his empty plate on the floor and put his arm around her as the stars began to come out. High overhead, the stars competed with the reflected light from humanity’s vastly expanded presence in space. Two fast-moving glints of light were almost certainly inflatable space stations, while others might well be the freighters Friend had sent them or one of the captured warships. Steve smiled, unpleasantly, as he contemplated the freighters. Human ingenuity, matched with alien technology, had started preparing a few nasty surprises for anyone who wanted to invade the Sol System. He had no illusions about the outcome if the Galactics really wanted Earth, but the bastards would have to fight to take the planet. And, even then, parts of humanity would be free.
He smiled, remembering just how many men and women had gone out to the asteroids over the past month. The MSM had called them everything from dupes to suicidal fools, but Steve knew better. They understood the risks, yet they were prepared to chance everything to make a new life for themselves in the new Wild West. Many of them would die, Steve knew, but they would make history. And hidden colonies among the asteroids would help ensure the survival of the human race.
The thought made him smile. A year or two would allow him to produce a generational starship, one that could be launched out into the galaxy at STL speeds. If something really bad happened to Earth, the starship would survive and — hopefully — set up a new colony somewhere else. And, when they had more FTL starships, one of them would convey a colony mission well beyond the edges of galactic space.