The rest of my shift went quickly. I rather liked my job. I’d started on Cameron as a pilot, flying other people’s ships into their assigned berths on the liners. But I’m a climber, and first chance I took the test and made it to assistant loadmaster. As a senior loadmaster, I was only one rung on the ladder away from having my own office.
I don’t know if Mom and Dad ever understood me. For them, every horizon crossed just egged them on to go and cross the next one. Sure, Dad’s trading company had made us a wealthy family, and helped to quench some of his thirst for traveling, but once he’d retired as president, he and Mom were going to be on the go for the rest of their lives.
I like the sea of space just as much as they did, but I’m perfectly content to stop on an island just offshore within sight of the mainland, and make a life for myself there.
No way was I going to go with my parents.
Just like on the big starship transports, visitors to Cameron have the option of either staying at a room at the spaceport or staying in their ships and using them as apartments. In fact, almost everyone willing to make a star journey buys a ship big enough to serve as home along the way. Although a family-sized spaceship isn’t large enough to spend half-a-year in if you can’t go outside, on board the big liners they’re just right to serve as home when you have a portable world five kilometers long to walk around in.
When I got to the berth, Dad showed me around his new ship. “See? Master bedroom right here for your mother and me. This other room is for Penny, and we have all of her course work loaded in her workstation so she can continue her studies.”
“Did you include a sandbox so she can work on her digging skills?” I asked.
“What? Oh, hah hah. Always with the jokes, you,” he replied then took me up to the control bubble and then insisted on showing me the drive room. Even though I’d seen thousands of drive rooms and control panels, I muttered the usual comments about how nice and special the ship was. Hell, it was a fine ship, no doubt about it, but hardly novel to someone like me.
We went to eat at the Last Exit Saloon, and it was fun to have dinner with the whole family again.
“Is there anyone special in your life, Joey?” Mom asked during dessert.
I’d disappointed her twice before when she and Dad had visited, but this time I had more hopeful news. “I think so. Her name is Angela. I would have invited her to eat with us, but she’s at our sister station a hundred twenty degrees around the outer Belt.”
“How serious is this?” Dad wanted to know.
“Neither of us is seeing anyone else. I’d like to keep it that way,” I said.
“I guess I won’t bring up you coming with us again,” Dad said. “I don’t think I can overcome your attitude and a woman’s charms. Congratulations, Son. I hope you make that life for yourself here that you say you want.” He hoisted his wine glass. “To Joey and his future here.”
We drank up and I couldn’t believe how good I felt. Fighting with my folks about my future had been going on since I was fifteen. To have Dad finally call a truce and accept my terms was a welcome but unexpected victory.
Penny drank the toast with us and smiled, but somehow it seemed to me it was a sad smile. After dessert she said, “Take me dancing, big brother?”
“Dancing?” Dad exclaimed. “Not me. I’m beat. You kids go along. Your mom and me will go back to the ship.” Dad never noticed that Penny hadn’t asked him to come along, but there wasn’t any reason to point it out.
Our folks went their way and Penny and I went ours. “You don’t really want to go dancing, do you? You just want to talk?”
“Yeah.”
“We’ll go to my apartment.”
We went through my door and Penny flopped down on my bed. She used to do that when we were kids. “I can’t go with Mom and Dad. I don’t want to go with Mom and Dad. My life has to be on Earth. I can’t live it anywhere else!”
“Bad as all that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m an archeologist, dammit! What am I going to dig up on some other planet? We haven’t found another world yet with a civilization on it. The Phinons saw to that. And so what? I want to figure out what our ancestors were up to, not some other species.” She rolled over onto her stomach. “But it’s no use. Dad isn’t going to let me stay. I’m too young to just up and leave, and I sure can’t afford school without Mom and Dad’s money.”
“But Penny, even if you can’t get them to agree now, in less than a year you’ll be twenty-one. And you’re already way ahead of your peers.” Penny had finished high school at fifteen, her undergraduate work by nineteen. She was in her second year as a graduate student while most of her friends hadn’t even gotten through college. From my advanced position of five years her senior, I smiled at the impatience of youth. “You could go with Mom and Dad, finish your course work with them, then come on back after you’re old enough. They know they can’t stop you forever. You have to remember that you’re the baby of the family. I bet a lot of Dad’s objections have to do with that more than with any rational arguments. I mean, what exactly did he say when you told him you wanted to stay?”
From Penny came a most unexpected and disconcerting pause.
“Oh, shit. You didn’t tell him anything, did you? He said you’re all going and you sulked silently while you packed your bags and didn’t say a peep to him about staying.”
“No, I didn’t! Oh, poop! I’m a wimp. I admit it. It’s learned helplessness. I knew that if I said anything he’d just talk me out it. You know how convincing Dad can be. I’m not like you, Joey. Mom and Dad were always proud of you. Even after you said you were leaving, and did, they admired you for it. Dad would make jokes about you fleeing the nest rather than leaving it, but he never sounded like he was bitter or hurt. I think he did the same thing to Grampa himself.”
“You think they aren’t proud of you? C’mon, Penny. One of the reasons I left was because I couldn’t compete with my baby sister. When we were in high school together my teachers used to ask me why I couldn’t be more like my little sister. I knew you were going to make a huge mark in the world. I don’t begrudge you that. But the last thing I wanted was to be close enough for comparisons to be made. I would have been just a junior executive in Dad’s company while you were making headlines around the world.”
“I find it hard to believe that you left home so you wouldn’t have to suffer in comparison with me,” Penny said, sounding for all the world just like Dad. Higher voice, but the same choice of words.
“OK, no, it wasn’t just for that. But that was a part of it. I wanted to go and do my own thing and it didn’t have anything to do with Dad’s business. I also didn’t want him and Mom constantly trying to sell me on the romance of going to the stars and all that. They’re dreamers—I’m not. But you still haven’t answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Why does it have to be now? Why can’t you go with them for a year? Our folks aren’t getting any younger, you know. And you are their baby. Would it be such a big deal to humor them for one year of your life? Like I said, you’re way ahead of all your friends in school. Even if you took three years off, you’d still have your doctorate before any of them are done.”
“I can’t go now because there is this really big find that I want to be a part of,” Penny said.