Jessica shook her head, sending ripples through her masses of curly light-auburn hair. “No, in the van Mook system. But we didn’t stay there long. We moved to the Sankar, Tasmania, and Madeleine systems. And we moved a lot on the planets, too. My dad…”
She paused, then sighed. “You might as well hear it from me. Trudy’s sure to bring it up one way or another. My dad is what might be politely called a drifter. He’s not a bad man. He doesn’t get drunk or stoned or anything-at least not more than most people. But he’s a dreamer. There’s always something better over the next hill, on the next planet, in the next system.”
“And your mom?” Stephanie asked.
“She’s…Well, I think at first she wasn’t much different from dad except that she was interested in different things in these new places. She really loves plants-animals, too, but plants are her thing. She always hates leaving her gardens, but she comforts herself with the idea that she’s leaving something beautiful behind her. And, then, she’s also lured by the idea of what new thing she’ll find.”
“I should have known that,” Stephanie said, “from the way she chooses to cook ice-potatoes. Lots of recipes are for how to make them taste more like Terran spuds. She appreciates the difference. But you said ‘at first.’ What changed?”
“Us,” Jessica said. “Me and my siblings. I’m the oldest of seven.”
“Wow…” Stephanie said. “I think that’s even bigger than Karl’s family. And your family keeps moving at that size? I’d think liner fees would be prohibitive.”
“They are,” Jessica agreed, “but Dad’s learned a lot as a drifter. He’s a real jack-of-all-trades and often gets a job aboard-nothing involving engines or anything, but as a steward or porter. Mom is always in demand on liners because she’s a wizard with hydroponics. I even had a job on our last trip, assistant in the kiddie entertainment lounge. I think I’m going to swear off kids…”
She laughed when she said this, but Stephanie didn’t doubt there was a grain of truth in the words. She remembered the entertainment lounges on the liner her family had taken from Meyerdahl to Sphinx. The relentless cheerfulness had driven her to their family’s cabin where at least she could read in peace. The adult lounges had almost been worse. No one seemed to value quiet or conversation.
Jessica went on. “When Mom heard about the incentives for settlers who would come to Sphinx, she talked my dad into coming here. We’re zero-balancers, so we don’t own any land or anything. In fact, the house we’re renting is owned by the Franchittis. That’s how I met Trudy. She was really nice at first, even loaned me a hang-gliding rig she wasn’t using when she learned I knew how to glide. But lately…I don’t like Stan. I think he’s a bad influence, not just on Trudy, but on the planet. I don’t like even breathing the same air as him.”
Stephanie nodded. “Stan’s come to practice high more than once. I don’t know why Mayor Sapristos doesn’t call him on it.”
“Because,” Jessica said with a cynicism that told Stephanie volumes about her life, “Stan is connected. Not only is his family friends with the Franchittis, but they have connections back on Manticore. If my dad smokes a little too much wonder weed and is late to work, then he gets his pay docked, but if Stan takes something a whole lot stronger, he’s going to have to crash his glider before Mayor Sapristos does anything. Part of being mayor is knowing how people expect to be treated.”
Stephanie wanted to disagree. After all, she liked Mayor Sapristos and he was one of her dad’s closer friends. But she couldn’t. In the four T-years she’d been living on Sphinx, she’d learned a lot about the social and political hierarchy. It would be nice if a relatively newly opened colony world was egalitarian, but so far as she could tell the truth was that such environments attracted the ambitious, and the ambitious often wanted recognition and power as much or more than they wanted new lands or a chance to discover.
“There’s my house,” Jessica said, pointing and bringing the air car in for a smooth landing. “And my mom coming out to meet us with some of the kids.”
Ms. Pherris proved to be a very nice lady. She invited Stephanie and Climbs Quickly in for a tumbler of a sweet-tart punch made with the flowers of a plant related to spike thorn. Stephanie loved it, but Climbs Quickly clearly would have preferred something else.
“I checked, and both flowers and fruit were listed as edible,” Ms. Pheriss said, “but too sour to be really enjoyable. Well, that sort of thing is a challenge to me and we have hedges of the stuff on the property.”
On the way home, Stephanie tapped out a quick message to her mom and dad, asking if Jessica could stay for dinner.
“She has a full license, so she’ll have no problem getting home.”
The reply was almost instantaneous. “Definitely!”
Dad didn’t make it back for dinner. The situation with the Lins’ capri-cows was still critical, so he was planning to camp out in the Vet Van while waiting to learn whether the medications he had given had worked.
Over dinner, Stephanie encouraged Jessica to talk about her mother’s interest in plants. As Stephanie had hoped, Marjorie Harrington, who had frequently bemoaned the fact that she had trouble getting assistants who were not either overqualified (and thus tried to run the show for her) or underqualified (and so ruined delicate experiments) was immediately interested.
“You say she’s working, though,” Mom said.
Jessica nodded. “In child care. The advantage is she doesn’t need to pay to leave the little ones anywhere. The job lets her keep them with her. That’s useful, since Nathan is still nursing.”
Mom looked thoughtful, and by the time Jessica had to leave-“I usually try to be home to help wash up the kids and stuff some of them to bed”-a plan was clearly in the works.
After seeing Jessica off, Stephanie went into the kitchen to help clean up.
“Thanks for letting Jessica come at such short notice, Mom.”
Marjorie hugged her. “I’m proud of you for taking initiative.”
Stephanie grinned. “I guess not all the kids here are total losses. Jessica is interesting. I bet she’d be almost up to my study levels if her family hadn’t had to move so much.”
Quickly, hoping she wasn’t betraying a confidence, Stephanie shared what Jessica had told her about her father and the Pheriss family’s many moves.
“Mom,” she concluded, “even if things don’t work out when you interview Ms. Pheriss, I was wondering. Jessica was really glad today to buy some ice potatoes you would have tossed on the compost. Could we, I mean, when you cull the greenhouse, could I take some of the stuff over to the Pheriss house?”
Marjorie Harrington nodded, but her expression was serious.
“Charity is a difficult matter, Steph. Sometimes it backfires-like my trying to be nice to that horrible Trudy.”
Stephanie nodded. “I understand. We might hurt the Pheriss’ feelings. Still, sometimes good comes out of even that sort of thing. I mean, if Trudy hadn’t come to the party and been such a know-it-all, I might not have found out that Jessica had a mind of her own. Even if she’d been friendly at the party, I would have thought it was just because she was a guest, but when she spoke out that way…”
“Good point. We won’t know unless we try, but let’s be cautious about how we go about it. It will be easy enough if Ms. Pherris works out as an assistant. I can just tell her to help herself-that there’s too much for three humans and one treecat.”
“Bleek!” protested Lionheart, although his comment could have been because Stephanie was pulling a casserole dish away before he’d completely scoured the cheese and meat sauce off the ceramic.
“Well, then,” Stephanie said. “I’ll just have to hope Ms. Pheriss is qualified.”
Snuggled under the covers that night, listening to the night noises through the open window, Stephanie watched Lionheart scamper out. She hoped he wasn’t too lonely for other treecats. Now that she was making human friends, it seemed even more important that her best friend not be deprived of similar companionship.