I abandoned my car and wandered along the highway until I found an off-ramp. I walked for hours, passing people who were crying, people who were screaming, people who, like me, were too shocked, too dazed, to do either of those things.
I wondered if there was an entry in the Encyclopedia Galactica about Earth, and, if so, what it said. I thought of Ethan McCharles, swinging back and forth, a flesh pendulum, and I remembered that spontaneous little eulogy Chiu, the security guard, had uttered. Would there be a eulogy for Earth? A few kind words, closing out the entry on us in the next edition of the encyclopedia? I knew what I wanted it to say.
I wanted it to say that we mattered, that what we did had worth, that we treated each other well most of the time. But that was wishful thinking, I suppose. All that would probably be in the entry was the date on which our first broadcasts were detected, and the date, only a heartbeat later in cosmic terms, on which they had ceased.
It would take me most of the day to walk home. My son Michael would make his way back there, too, I’m sure, when he heard the news.
And at least we’d be together, as we waited for whatever would come next.
Relativity
Mike Resnick edits a lot of anthologies, and I’m always thrilled when he asks me to contribute to one of them. In 2003, he did a pair of fascinating books for DAW entitled Men Writing Science Fiction as Women and Women Writing Science Fiction as Men. Mike said I could only be in the first, as I was “biologically disqualified”from the second.
I’ve always been fascinated by the effect of time dilation on relationships (one of my all-time favorite SF stories is John Varley’s “The Pusher”), and so “Relativity” was born.
I’m rather happy with the way the story turned out, but whenever I look at the anthology it originally appeared in, I feel a pang of sadness. One of my best friends, Robyn Herrington, contributed to Women Writing Science Fiction as Men. She had been mentored through her career by both me and Mike, and we both loved her a lot. Sadly, though, on May 3, 2004, shortly after her story was published, she passed away after a battle with cancer. I’ll always miss Robyn, and my latest novel, Rollback, is dedicated to her.
You can’t have brothers without being familiar with Planet of the Apes. I’m not talking about the “re-imaging” clone by Tim Burton, apparently much ballyhooed in its day, but the Franklin J. Schaffner original—the one that’s stood the test of time, the one that, even a hundred years after it was made, boys still watch.
Of course, one of the reasons boys enjoy it is it’s very much a guy film. Oh, there had been a female astronaut along for the ride with Chuck Heston, but she died during the long space voyage, leaving just three macho men to meet the simians. The woman ended up a hideous corpse when her suspended-animation chamber failed, and even her name—“Stewart”— served to desexualize her.
Me, I liked the old Alien films better. Ellen Ripley was a survivor, a fighter. But, in a way, those movies were a cheat, too. When you got right down to it, Sigourney Weaver was playing a man—and you couldn’t even say, as one of my favorite (female) writers does, that she was playing “a man with tits and hips”—’cause ole Sigourney, she really didn’t have much of either. Me, I’ve got not enough of one and too much of the other.
I’d had time to watch all five Apes films, all four Alien films, and hundreds of other movies during my long voyage out to Athena, and during the year I’d spent exploring that rose-colored world. Never saw an ape, or anything that grabbed onto my face or burst out of my chest—but I did make lots of interesting discoveries that I’m sure I’ll be spending the rest of my life telling the people of Earth about.
And now, I had just about finished the long voyage home. Despite what had happened to Apes’s Stewart, I envied her her suspended-animation chamber. After all, the voyage back from Athena had taken three long years.
It was an odd thing, being a spacer. My grandfather used to talk about people “going postal” and killing everyone around them. At least the United States Postal Service had lasted long enough to see that term retired, in favor of “going Martian.”
That had been an ugly event. The first manned—why isn’t there a good non-sexist word for that? Why does “crewed” have to be a homonym for “crude”? Anyway, the first manned mission to Mars had ended up being a bloodbath; the ebook about it—The Red Planet—had been the most popular download for over a year.
That little experiment in human psychology finally taught NASA what the reality-television shows of a generation earlier had failed to: that you can’t force a bunch of alpha males—or alpha females, for that matter— together, under high-pressure circumstances, and expect everything to go fine. Ever since then, manned—that damn word again—spaceflight had involved only individual astronauts, a single human to watch over the dumb robotic probes and react to unforeseen circumstances.
When I said “single human” a moment ago, maybe you thought I meant “unmarried.” Sure, it would seem to make sense that they’d pick a loner for this kind of job, some asocial bookworm—hey, do you remember when books were paper and worms weren’t computer viruses?
But that didn’t work, either. Those sorts of people finally went stir-crazy in space, mostly because of overwhelming regret. They’d never been married, never had kids. While on Earth, they could always delude themselves into thinking that someday they might do those things, but, when there’s not another human being for light-years around, they had to face bitter reality.
And so NASA started sending out—well, color me surprised: more sexism! There’s a term “family man” that everyone understands, but there’s no corresponding “family woman,” or a neutral “family person.” But that’s what I was: a family woman—a woman with a husband and children, a woman devoted to her family.
And yet …
And yet my children were grown. Sarah was nineteen when I’d left Earth, and Jacob almost eighteen.
And my husband, Greg? He’d been forty-two, like me. But we’d endured being apart before. Greg was a paleoanthropologist. Three, four months each year, he was in South Africa. I’d gone along once, early in our marriage, but that was before the kids.
Damn ramscoop caused enough radio noise that communication with Earth was impossible. I wondered what kind of greeting I’d get from my family when I finally returned.
“You’re going where?” Greg always did have a flair for the dramatic.
“Athena,” I said, watching him pace across our living room. “It’s the fourth planet of—”
“I know what it is, for Pete’s sake. How long will the trip take?”
“Total, including time on the planet? Seven years. Three out, one exploring, and three back.”
“Seven years!”
“Yes,” I said. Then, averting my eyes, I added, “From my point of view.”
“What do you mean, ‘From your point …?’ Oh. Oh, crap. And how long will it be from my point of view?”