Abdhiamal smiled politely. His glance touched the scarred surface of the table, the floor, searched the room again; the smile grew taut. “You know, I sometimes have the strange feeling that I'm livin' in a dream; that somehow I've forgotten how to wake myself up.” A trace of desperation edged into his voice.
“Bird Alyn said the same thing to me. Except that I think she meant it.”
“Comin' from the Main Belt, she probably did.… Maybe I do too.” Abdhiamal cleared his throat, an oddly embarrassed sound. “Welkin, I'd like to ask you a personal question. If you don't mind.”
Clewell laughed. “At my age I don't have much to hide. Go ahead.”
Abdhiamal paused. “Do you find it—hard to take orders from your wife?”
Clewell straightened away from the table. “Why should that make a difference to me?”
Abdhiamal looked at him strangely. “Frankly I never met a woman I'd trust to make my decisions for me.”
Clewell remembered what he had seen on the monitors of Demarchy society, saw why it might make a difference to Abdhiamal. “Betha Torgussen was chosen to command the Ranger because she was the best qualified, and the best at making decisions. We all agreed to the choice.” He tightened the jaws of a table clamp, not sure whether he was amused or annoyed. “Answer a personal question for me: What exactly do you think of my wife?” He watched an instinctive reaction rise up and die away before it reached Abdhiamal's lips. An honest man …
“I don't know.” Abdhiamal frowned slightly, at nothing, at himself. “But I have to admit, she's made better decisions since I've known her than I have.” He laughed once, looking away. “But then she chose space, instead of …” His eyes came back to Clewell; the frown and confusion filled them again.
“Why doesn't the Demarchy have women in space? My impression of Belter life was always that everyone did as they damn well pleased. Men and women.”
“Before the war, maybe. But now we have to protect our women.”
“From what? Living?” Clewell picked up the piece of wood, shifted it from hand to hand, annoyance overriding amusement now.
“From radiation!” It was the first time he had heard Abdhiamal raise his voice. “From genetic damage. The fission units that power our ships and factories are just too dirty. In spite of everythin' we've done, the number of defective births is twenty times as high as it was before the war.”
Clewell thought of Bird Alyn. “What about men?”
“We can preserve sperm. Not ova.”
“You've lost more than you know because of that war.” Abdhiamal stood silently, expressionless. Clewell unstrapped the leather wristband that had been a parting gift from one of his sons, and held it out. “Do you recognize that symbol?” He pointed at the design enameled on a circle of copper, as Abdhiamal took it from his hand.
“Yin and yang?”
He nodded. “Do you know what it stands for?”
“No.”
“It stands for Man and Woman. On Morningside, that means two equal halves merging into a perfect biological whole. A spot of white in the black, a spot of black in the white … to remind us that the genes of a man go into the creation of every woman, and the genes of a woman go into the creation of every man. We're not men and cattle, Abdhiamal, we're men and women. Our genes match; we're all human beings. It makes a lot of sense, when you stop to think about it.”
“Odd—” Abdhiamal smiled again, noncommittal. “Somehow I didn't think yin and yang would have been a part of Morningside's cultural heritage.”
“Your people and ours all came from the same Old World in the beginning. In the beginning yin and yang didn't mean much to us. We had a lot of symbols to separate us, then. We just need one now.”
“Yin and yang and the Viking Queen …” Abdhiamal murmured; his smile turned rueful. “And Wadie in Wonderland. Why were there more men than women in your—family?”
Because it happened to work out that way. Clewell almost answered him with the truth. He paused. “Son, if you have to ask me why a marriage needs more men than women, you're younger than I thought you were.” He grinned. “And it's not because I'm slowing down.”
Abdhiamal drew back, disbelief ruffling his decorum. He held out the wristband.
Clewell shook his head. “Keep it. Wear it.… Think about it, when you wonder why we're strangers to you.”
Betha reentered the control room; Shadow Jack and Rusty still lay head-to-head on the grass-green rug. She moved quietly past them, sat down at the control board, and pulled Discus into focus on the screen, a small silver crescent like a thumbnail moon. All that mattered now, and nothing else. She would get this ship home; this time they would succeed. Nothing must get in the way of her purpose, no man, living or dead, no memory.…
Her torn hand burned. She pressed it down on the cold panel, leaving a spot of blood. Her mind crossed three light-years and a half a lifetime to a factory yard on the Hotspot perimeter, where she had burned her hand on hot metal, inspecting the ideal made real. She had gone outside to see her first engineering design passing in sequence on the assembly line—unbearably silver in the blinding noon light, unbearably beautiful. She was in the third quarter of her twentieth year, fresh from the icy terminator. The golden rain of heat, the battering flow of parched desert air on this, the perimeter of total desolation, dazed her; pride filled her with exhilaration, and there was a certain student-worker.… She waited for him to stand beside her and tell her that her design was beautiful. And then he would ask her—Rough gloves caught her arms and turned her back, “Hey, snowbird, you want to go blind?” She saw Eric van Helsing's adored, sunburned face laugh at her through the shield of his helmet, as she caught the padding of his insulated jacket. “They always said engineers were too quirky to come in out of the sun. You'd better go back.”
“For a social scientist, you haven't learned much about motivation, Eric van Helsing.” Angry because he had ruined everything—and because, like a fool, she had waited for him—she pulled away, almost ran back across the endless gravel yard, escaping into the cool, dazzled darkness inside the nearest building. She stood still in the corridor, fighting tears, and heard him come through the doors behind her.…
Someone entered the room; Betha smelled the scent of apples. She looked for Claire's smooth moon-round face and golden tangled curls … found Bird Alyn again, thin and brown and branch-awkward: a dryad in a pink pullover shirt and jeans, with flowers in her hair.… Bird Alyn, not Claire, who tended hydroponics now.
Shadow Jack stirred as Bird Alyn dropped down beside him, her freckled cheeks blushing dusky-rose. Betha turned back to the screen, hiding her smile.
“… like some apples?”
“Oh … thanks. Bird Alyn.” He laughed, self-conscious. “You always think of me.”
She murmured something, questioning.
“What's the matter with you? No! How many times do I have to tell you that? Get out of here, leave me alone.”
Pain knotted in Betha's stomach; she heard Bird Alyn climb to her feet and flee, stumbling on the doorsill. Betha turned in her seat to look at Shadow Jack; kneeling, he glared back at her as he pushed himself up.