He laughed as well and there were tears in his eyes. I was impressed by my power to please.
That evening, as the temperature outside the station dipped to minus eighty, the walls and tunnel linings of the warrens creaked and groaned, and we dragged our beds together in the boss’s sleeping quarters. Charles and I kissed, undressed, and we made love.
I don’t know to this day whether I was his first woman. It didn’t matter then, and it certainly doesn’t matter now. He did not seem inexperienced, but Charles showed an aptitude for catching on quickly, and he excited and pleased me, and I was sure that what I felt was love. It had to be; it was right, it was mutual… and it gave me a great deal of pleasure.
I delighted in his excitement, and after, we talked with an ease and directness impossible before.
“What are you going to do?” I asked him, nested in the crook of his arm. I felt secure.
“When I grow up, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
He shook his head and his brows came together. He had thick, expressive eyebrows and long lashes. “I want to understand,” he said.
“Understand what?” I asked, smoothing the silky black hair on his forearm.
“Everything,” he said.
“You think that’s possible?”
“Yeah.”
“What would it be like? Understanding everything — how everything works, physics, I guess you mean.”
“I’d like to know that, too,” he said. I thought he might be joking with me, but lifting my eyes, I saw he was dead serious. “How about you?” he asked, blinking and shivering slightly.
I scowled. “God, I’ve been trying to figure that out for years now. I’m really interested in management — politics, I guess would be the Earth word. Mars is really weak that way.”
“President of Mars,” Charles said solemnly. “I’ll vote for you.”
I cuffed his arm. “Statist,” I said.
Waiting for sleep, I thought this part of my life had a clear direction. For the first time as an adult, I slept with someone and did not feel the inner bite of adolescent loneliness, but instead, a familial sense of belonging, the ease of desire satisfied by a dear friend.
I had a lover. I couldn’t understand why I had felt so much confusion and hesitation.
The next day, we made love again — of course — and after, strolling through the tunnels with mugs of breakfast soup, I helped Charles inspect the station. Every few years, an active station — whether deserted or not — had to be surveyed by humans and the findings submitted to the Binding Multiples Habitat Board. All habitable stations were listed on charts, and had to be ready for emergency use by anybody. Trés Haut Médoc needed new arbeiters and fresh emergency supplies. Emergency medical nano had gone stale. The pumps probably needed an engineering refit to fix deep structural wear that could not be self-repaired.
After finishing diagnostics on the main pumps, still caught up in yesterday’s trip and my deep-time shock, I asked Charles what puzzled him most about the universe.
“It’s a problem of management,” he said, smiling.
“That’s it,” I said huffily. ‘Talk down to my level.”
“Not at all. How does everything know where and what it is? How does everything talk to every other thing, and what or who listens?”
“Sounds spooky,” I said.
“Very spooky,” he agreed.
“You think the universe is a giant brain.”
“Not at all, madam,” he said, letting a diagnostic lead curl itself into his slate. He tucked the slate into his belt. “But it’s stranger than anyone ever imagined. It’s a kind of computational system… nothing but information talking to itself. That much seems clear. I want to know how it talks to itself, and how we can listen in… and maybe add to the conversation. Tell it what to do.”
“You mean, we can persuade the universe to change?”
“Yeah,” he said blandly.
“That’s possible?” I asked.
“I’d bet my life on it,” Charles said. “At least my future. Have you ever wondered why we’re locked in status quo?”
Cultural critics and even prominent thinkers in the Triple had speculated on the lack of major advances in recent decades. There had been progress — on Earth, the escalation of the dataflow revolution — that had produced surface changes, extreme refinements, but there had not been a paradigm shift for almost a century. Some said that a citizen of Earth in 2071 could be transported to 2171 and recognize almost everything she saw… This, after centuries of extraordinary change.
“If we could access the Bell Continuum, the forbidden channels where all the universe does its bookkeeping…” He smiled sheepishly. “We’d break the status quo wide open. It would be the biggest revolution of all time… much bigger than nano. Do you ever watch cartoons?”
“What are those?”
“Animations from the twentieth century. Disney cartoons, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Tom and Jerry.”
“I’ve seen a few,” I said.
“I used to watch them all the time when I was a kid. They were cheap — public domain — and they fascinated me. Still do. I watched them and tried to understand how a universe like theirs would make sense. I even worked up some math. Observer-biased reality — nobody falls until he knows he’s over the edge of a cliff… Instant regeneration of damaged bodies, no consequences, continuous flows of energy, limited time, inconsistent effects from similar causes. Pretty silly stuff, but it made me think.”
“Is that how our universe works?” I asked.
“Maybe more than we realize! I’m fascinated by concepts of other realities, other ways of doing things. Nothing is fixed, nothing sacred, nothing metaphysically determined-it’s all contingent on process and evolution. That’s perfect. It means we might be able to understand, if we can just relax and shed our preconceptions.”
When we finished the survey, we had no further excuses to stay, and only a few hours before we had to return the tractor to Shrinktown.
Charles seemed dispirited.
“I really don’t want to go back. This place is ideal for being alone.”
“Not exactly ideal,” I said, sliding an arm around his waist. We bumped hips down the tunnel from the pump to the cuvée.
“Nobody bothers us, there’s things to see and places to go …”
“There’s always the wine,” I said.
He looked at me as if I were the most important person in the world. “It’ll be tough going home and not seeing you for a while.”
I hadn’t given much thought to that. “We’re supposed to be responsible adults now.”
“I feel pretty damned responsible,” Charles said. We paused outside the cuvée hatch. “I want to partner with you.”
I was shocked by how fast things were moving. “Lawbond?”
“I’d strike a contract.”
That was the Martian term, but somehow it seemed less romantic — and for that reason barely less dangerous — than saying, “Get married.”
He felt me shiver and held me tighter, as if I might run away. “Pretty damned big and fast,” I said.
“Time,” Charles-said with sepulchral seriousness. He smiled. “I don’t have the patience of rocks. And you are incredible. You are what I need.”
I put my hands on his shoulders and held him at elbow’s length, examining his face, my heart thumping again. “You scare me, Charles Franklin. It isn’t nice to scare people.”
He apologized but did not loosen his grip.
“I don’t think I’m old enough to get married,” I said.
“I don’t expect an answer right away,” Charles said. “I’m just telling you that my intentions are honorable.” He hammed the word to take away its stodgy, formal sense, but didn’t succeed. Honorable was something that might concern my father, possibly my mother, but I wasn’t sure it concerned me.