"But we've only got four," Philippa says. "Besides, he'll earn credit. They get hazard credit. That'll help him get started when he gets back, and we'll keep the daughter at the creche. What I'm really worried about is that there's only four. New Arizona will give us hell if we don't come up with five."
"So much for equality," Cord mutters.
"What?" Philippa says.
"Send the newcomers. It's like a draft. The people like Aron Fahey never go."
"Aron Fahey is a landholder," Philippa says.
"So whose to say he's any better than this comrade with the daughter?"
Cord is an unexpected and not altogether wanted ally.
"So you think landholders should be considered, too?" Philippa says dryly.
Cord sits up, "Yes, I do." He looks straight at her, malice glinting, "I think you, Martine, and I should be considered. And the Fahey clan and the Mannheims and everybody else."
"I suspect that would be thrown right out of council," Philippa says.
"Perhaps it should be brought up, anyway," Cord says.
"Well then, why don't you make the report," Phillipa suggests.
"I'll do that," Cord says.
And that is the committee meeting. I don't know what to do. Cord's idea is ridiculous. He'll raise it, everybody will be made uncomfortable. Aron or someone will quote 'The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.' And the four newcomers will go. We'll discuss what to do about the fifth person and what will happen if we only send four.
I go home. I'm tired and I keep thinking about the look on Alexi's face the night he came alone to fix the separator. How different he turned out to be than the way I thought of him when I first met him-the hidden bitterness, and the awkwardness the last time I saw him.
The bitterness doesn't surprise me, scratch the surface and it seems a lot of people are bitter.
And why not?
I go down and feed my goats. I spend some time down there just fussing so as to be near them. I like goats. People have the wrong idea about goats, about how stubborn they are and all. Goats are just smart, that's all. My goats are mostly even tempered and they aren't hard to deal with. God knows, a person who can't outsmart a goat is in pretty sad shape. I am cleaning up, shoveling manure to be used to make alcohol for fuel and used as fertilizer when I think again of Alexi swinging up into the cab of his truck, the easy strength and agility in martian gravity. And I think of the duffel bag. He could probably get nearly everything they own in that duffel bag.
What if he has? What if he doesn't plan to come back?
Martine, use your head, this is Mars. Where could he go? New Arizona where my beer comes from? Then west to Wallace which would put him on the big north-south artery. Sure, he could run, but where would he get fuel? (He's a clever man with machines, but a thief?) And even if he could get fuel, there's just no place to run. There aren't more than seventeen, eighteen million people on the whole planet. He's not stupid, he wouldn't try it. When they caught him they'd take Theresa away from him, execute him if he wasn't lucky, sentence him to reform through labor if he was. That would mean mining, or the real hazardous duty on the water reclamation project for the rest of his short life.
It's foolishness to think he would run. I think about Alexi too much, I have middle-aged fancies. He's young and attractive and friendly and yes, I'm lonely and goats aren't enough.
None the less, I fret.
Tuesday he should be back from his run. Surely they'll stop on their way in. At least say hello. Tuesday comes, slides past. In the evening I call the dorms. Dormov isn't in, he's running late. Do I want to leave a message? No, I don't want to draw attention to his absence.
He could have had transport trouble. They could have stayed an extra day because he has a little money in his pocket. She has a cold, maybe, or ate something that disagreed with her. Or he did. Although the thought of him sick and them alone bothers me. I imagine him sick in a dorm and Theresa in a creche in a commune in New Arizona.
He wouldn't run, I tell myself. He knows they'd put a bullet in the back of his head. Theft of a transport, he knows.
It's hard enough to protect myself from my own stupidity, how can I be expected to protect myself from someone elses?
Wednesday evening, watching the kitten chase across the floor, batting a plastic spool across the tiles. The transmitter says, "Martine?"
"Alexi?" I say.
"Yeah."
"You came back." The words are out of my mouth.
I expect him to laugh and say something about it took them long enough, but instead he just says, "yeah." It's like a sigh. It's full of regret, it doesn't pretend that we don't both know.
"Are you at the pull-off?" My voice is so matter of fact, I'm astounded. None of my relief is in it.
"About twenty minutes out."
"Come by, you can sleep here tonight."
"Okay," he says. "Theresa's asleep."
"Okay."
And then I'm in the kitchen, digging out tofu, bread, running down to the garden for a tomato and parsley and a handful of strawberries. I cook onions, slice in the tofu, the tomato and the parsley. Basil from my kitchen plants. I slice cheese onto brown bread, slice strawberries under the cheese, put it on a plate to flash when they get in. And coffee; decaf, or I'll be awake all night. I scrub the cutting board, the sink, the counter, water the plants, clip off the dead leaves, fill twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty minutes with activity. Finally, thirty-five minutes later I hear him call, "Martine?"
"In the kitchen," I answer.
He comes to the kitchen door. Good thing it's martian gravity because he is carrying Theresa and he looks done in.
"Sit down," I say.
Theresa has her head on his shoulder and opens her eyes only when he shifts her to put her down. I put the bread in to flash, wait for the timer and then pull it out. "Theresa," I say, "have a little bread and cheese and then you can go to sleep. Careful, it's hot."
I pour him coffee and heap food on his plate, pour coffee for me and take some bread and cheese. At first he picks at it, then he eats. Theresa eats half of her bread and cheese and then I take her in to the guest bedroom and take off her shoes and socks, her coveralls and top. Tonight she can sleep in her underwear. I turn the bed up warm and tuck her in and she falls asleep as I am sitting on the bed.
When I come back, Alexi is sitting at the table, the plate pushed away from him, his hands wrapped around an empty coffee cup.
"Thank you," he says. "I don't know how to say thank you."
"What made you come back?" I ask.
"I realized I couldn't do it. I thought, maybe in New Arizona, or in Wallace, I could slip into the free market or something. But it's not like Earth, there's no where to go. I don't know what to do. And I kept thinking, you're on the committee, I know I've asked so much of you, but I thought maybe you could help."
I'm full of anger. Anger is boiling up inside me. Just looking at this man, sitting at my kitchen table, full of my food, asking me for help. I know that my anger is irrational, I know that it's the flip side of fear, but that doesn't stop me from feeling it.
"The Commune is supposed to send five people to the water reclamation project. We won't send landholders, because landholders are what make the commune work." Anger makes my word come out crisp and clear. "We'll have to send newcomers and if they've been here for more than a year and we send them, then we're making them wait longer to get their holding."
Alexi is looking at me, vulnerable in the kitchen light.
"Including you, there are four newcomers who have been here for a year. I brought up the fact that you've been relocated so many times and that it's not good for Theresa, but the committee feels that sending you will give you a chance to accumulate a good chunk of credit for when you come back and do get a holding."
He opens his mouth as if to say something, and then changes his mind.