My parents generally eschewed nano food, preferring garden growth and syn products. We ate potato and syn cheese pie and fruit salad and for desert, my father’s syn prime cheesecake with hot tea. After dinner, we sat in the memory room, small and tightly decorated as most old Mars station rooms are, with the inevitable living shadow box from Earth, the self-cycling fish tank, the small, antique wall-mount projectors for LitVid.
I loved my parents, and what they felt was important to me, but their immediate and natural affection for Charles was distressing. Charles fit right in. He and my father leaned forward in their chairs, almost knocking heads, talking about the possibility of hard financial times ahead, like old friends.
Inevitably, Father asked him what he planned to do with himself.
“A lot of things,” Charles answered. “I’m much too ambitious for a Martian.”
Mother offered him more tea. “We don’t see any reason why Martians shouldn’t be ambitious,” she said, lips pursed as if mildly chiding.
“It’s simply impractical to do what I want to do, here, at this time,” Charles said. He shook his head and grinned awkwardly. “I’m not very practical.”
“Why?” Father asked.
He has come all this way to be with me, I thought, and he spends this time talking with my parents… about what he is going to do in physics.
“Mars doesn’t have the research tools necessary, not yet, perhaps not for decades,” Charles said. “There are only two thinkers on the planet dedicated to physics, and a few dozen barely adequate computers tied up in universities with long waiting lists. I’m too young to get on any of the lists. My work is too primitive. But…” He stopped, hands held in mid-air, parallel to each other, emphasizing his point with a little jerking gesture. “The work I hope to do would take all of Earth’s resources.”
“Then why not go to Earth?” my father asked.
“Why not?” I put in. “It would be a marvelous experience.”
“No chance,” Charles said. “My grades aren’t perfect, my psych evaluations aren’t promising, to work on Earth they make outsiders pass rigid tests… We have to be ten times better than any Terrie.”
My father smelled a young man with ambitions but insufficient drive. “You have to do what you have to do,” he said gruffly.
Instantly I was on Charles’s side, saying abruptly, “Charles knows what to do. He knows more than most Terrestrials.”
My father lifted an eyebrow at the vehemence of my defense. Charles took my hand in appreciation.
“Worse scholars than you have filtered through,” Father said. “You just have to know how to handle people.”
“I don’t know anything about handling people,” Charles said. “I’ve never known anything but how to be straight with them.”
He looked at me as if that were a trait I might admire, and though I thought it disingenuous, not admirable, I smiled. Concern passed from his face in a flash, replaced by adoration. His brown eyes even crossed a little, like a puppy’s. I turned away, not wanting to have such an effect on him. I wanted to be away from my parents, alone with Charles, to express my affection but tell him this was not the time. I felt horrible and a little queasy.
“Casseia would go to Earth in a moment if the opportunity arose,” my mother said. “Wouldn’t you?” She grinned at me proudly.
I stared at the fish tank, sealed decades ago on Earth, lovingly tended by my father and given to my mother on the day of their nuptials. “Nobody’s offered,” I said.
“You’re good, though,” Charles said. “You can jump the hurdles. You have a way with people.”
“Our sentiments exactly,” Father said, smiling proudly. “She just needs a little self-confidence. Support from people other than her parents.”
Father took me aside while Mother and Charles talked. “You’re not happy, Casseia,” he said. “I see it, your mother sees it — Charles must see it. Why?”
I shook my head. “This is going all wrong,” I said. “You like him.”
“Why shouldn’t we?”
“I asked him here… to talk with him. And I can’t be alone with him to talk…”
Father smiled. “You can be alone later.”
“That isn’t why I’m unhappy. You’re examining him as if I’m going to lawbond him.”
My father narrowed one eye and stared at me like a prospector examining a vein in rock. “He meets my approval so far.”
“He’s a friend, and he’s here to talk. I’m not asking for your approval.”
“We’re embarrassing you?”
“I just have some important things to talk about with him, and this is taking so much time.”
“Sorry,” Father said. “I’ll try to keep the inquisition short.”
We returned to the memory room. Slowly, my father pried Mother away from the conversation and suggested they inspect the tea garden. When they were gone, Charles settled back contentedly, well-fed and relaxed. “They’re good people,” he said. “I can see where you come from.”
He could have said anything and it would have irritated me. This irritated me more. “I’m my own woman,” I said.
He lifted his hands helplessly and sighed. “Casseia, you’re going to tell me something. Tell me now. You’re driving me muddy.“
“Why didn’t you say you applied for a link?”
He frowned. “Pardon?”
“You’ve applied to link with a QL thinker.”
“Of course,” he said, face blank. “So has a third of my physics fourth form.”
“I know what a QL thinker is, Charles. I’ve heard what it can do to people…”
“It doesn’t make them into monsters.”
“It doesn’t do them any good as human beings,” I said.
“Is that what’s going wrong between us?”
“No.”
“Something is going wrong, though.”
“What kind of life would there be for someone…” I was getting myself into a mire and couldn’t find a solid path out.
“Married to a QL?” He seemed to think that was funny. “It was a whim, Casseia. It’s been talked about on Earth. Some of our senior physicists think it could help break tough conceptual problems. It would be temporary.”
“You didn’t tell me,” I said.
He tried to skirt the issue. “I’ll never get the chance now,” Charles said.
“But you didn’t tell me.”
“Is that what’s upsetting you?”
“You didn’t trust me enough to tell me.” I couldn’t believe we were getting stuck in the wrong topic… all to avoid the words I knew would be hurtful, words I actually had no clear reason for saying.
Here was Charles directly in front of me. Part of me — an energetic and substantial part — wanted to apologize to him, to take him to the tea garden and make love with him again. I would not allow that. I had reached my decision and I would follow through, no matter how painful for both of us.
“I have a lot of growing to do,” I said.
“So do I. We — ”
“But not together.”
His mouth went slack and his eyes half-lidded. He looked down, closed his mouth, and said, “All right.”
“We’re both too young. I’ve enjoyed our time together.”
“You invited me to meet your parents before telling me this? That’s hardly fair. You’ve wasted their time.”
“They like you as much as I do,” I said. “I wanted to talk to you in a place I was familiar with, because this isn’t easy for me to say. I do love you.”
“Um hm.” He wouldn’t look at me directly. He kept searching the walls as if for a way to escape. “You wanted me to tell you about future plans that might never have happened, to get you upset over something… probably impossible. And you’re disappointed.”
“No.” I thrust my jaw forward, pushing ahead despite the confusion, only now understanding the core of my response. “I’m telling you straight. Later, perhaps, when we’ve achieved something, when our minds are settled, when we know what we want to do — ”