‘I'm not. And if I am, I have reasons.’
‘What reasons? Come on, now. You're not a little kid any more. You've got to be able to express yourself.’
Marlene lifted her eyebrows. ‘I am quite articulate, thank you. My reasons are that I would like to travel.’
Aurinel laughed. ‘You've traveled, Marlene. You've traveled more than two light-years. No-one in the whole history of the Solar System has ever traveled even a small fraction of a light-year - except us. So you have no right to complain. You're Marlene Insigna Fisher, Galactic Traveler.’
Marlene suppressed a giggle. Insigna was her mother's maiden name and whenever Aurinel said her three names in full, he would salute and make a face, and he hadn't done that in a long time. She guessed it was because he was getting close to being a grown-up and he had to practice being dignified.
She said, ‘I can't remember that trip at all. You know I can't, and not being able to remember it means it doesn't matter. We're just here, over two light-years from the Solar System, and we're never going back.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Come on, Aurinel. Do you ever hear anyone talk about going back?’
‘Well, even if we don't, who cares? Earth is a crowded world and the whole Solar System was getting crowded and used up. We're better off out here - masters of all we survey.’
‘No, we're not. We survey Erythro, but we don't go down there to be its masters.’
‘Sure we do. We have a fine working Dome on Erythro. You know that.’
‘Not for us. Just for some scientists. I'm talking about us. They don't let us go down there.’
‘In time,’ said Aurinel cheerfully.
‘Sure, when I'm an old woman. Or dead.’
‘Things aren't that bad. Anyway, come on out of here and into the world and make your mother happy. I can't stay here. I have things to do. Dolorette-’
Marlene felt a buzzing in her ears and she didn't hear exactly what Aurinel said after that. It was enough to hear - Dolorette!
Marlene hated Dolorette, who was tall and - vacuous.
But what was the use? Aurinel had been hanging around her, and Marlene knew, just by looking at him, exactly how he felt about Dolorette. And now he had been sent to find her and he was just wasting his time. She could tell that was how he felt and she could also tell how anxious he was to get back to that - to that Dolorette. (Why could she always tell? It was so hateful sometimes.)
Quite suddenly, Marlene wanted to hurt him, to find words to give him pain. True words, though. She wouldn't lie to him. She said, ‘We're never going back to the Solar System. I know why not.’
‘Oh, why's that?’ When Marlene, hesitating, said nothing, he added, ‘Mysteries?’
Marlene was caught. She was not supposed to say this. She mumbled, ‘I don't want to say. I'm not supposed to know.’ But she did want to say. At the moment she wanted everyone to feel bad.
‘But you'll tell me. We're friends, aren't we?’
‘Are we?’ Marlene asked. She said, ‘OK, I'll tell you. We're not ever going back because Earth is going to be destroyed.’
Aurinel didn't react as she had expected. He burst into a loud squawk of a laugh. It took him a while to settle down, and she glared at him indignantly.
‘Marlene,’ he said, ‘where did you hear that? You've been viewing thrillers.’
‘I have not!’
‘But what makes you say anything like that?’
‘Because I know. I can tell. From what people say, but don't say, and what they do, when they don't know they're doing it. And from things the computer tells me when I ask the right questions.’
‘Like what things it tells you?’
‘I'm not going to tell you.’
‘Isn't it possible? Just barely possible’ - and he held up two fingers very closely together - ‘that you're imagining things?’
‘No, it isn't possible. Earth won't be destroyed right away - maybe not for thousands of years - but it's going to be destroyed.’ She nodded solemnly, her face intense. ‘And nothing can stop it.’
Marlene turned and walked away, angry at Aurinel for doubting her. No, not doubting her. It was more than that. He thought she was out of her mind. And there it was. She had said too much and had gained nothing by it. Everything was wrong.
Aurinel was staring after her. The laughter had ceased on his boyishly handsome face and a certain uneasiness was creasing the skin between his eyebrows.
Eugenia Insigna had grown middle-aged during the trip to Nemesis, and in the course of the long stay after arrival. Over the years she had periodically warned herself: This is for life; and for our children's lives into the unseen future.
The thought always weighed her down.
Why? She had known this as the inevitable consequence of what they had done from the moment Rotor had left the Solar System. Everyone on Rotor - volunteers all - had known it. Those who had not had the heart for eternal separation had left Rotor before takeoff, and among those who had left was-
Eugenia did not finish that thought. It often came, and she tried never to finish it.
Now they were here on Rotor, but was Rotor ‘home’? It was home for Marlene; she had never known anything else. But for herself, for Eugenia? Home was Earth and Moon and Sun and Mars and all the worlds that had accompanied humanity through its history and prehistory. They had accompanied life as long as there had been life. The thought that ‘home’ was not here on Rotor clung to her even now.
But, then, she had spent the first twenty-eight years of her life in the Solar System and she had done graduate work on Earth itself in her twenty-first to twenty-third years.
Odd how the thought of Earth periodically came to her and lingered. She hadn't liked Earth. She hadn't liked its crowds, its poor organization, its combination of anarchy in the important things and governmental force in the little things. She hadn't liked its assaults of bad weather, its scars over the land, its wasteful ocean. She had returned to Rotor with an overwhelming gratitude, and with a new husband to whom she had tried to sell her dear little turning world - to make its orderly comfort as pleasant to him as it was to her, who had been born into it.
But he had only been conscious of its smallness. ‘You run out of it in six months,’ he had said.
She herself hadn't held his interest for much longer than that. Oh well-
It would work itself out. Not for her. Eugenia Insigna was lost for ever between worlds. But for the children. Eugenia had been born to Rotor and could live without Earth. Marlene had been born - or almost born - to Rotor alone and could live without the Solar System, except for the vague feeling that she had originated there. Her children would not know even that, and would not care. To them, Earth and the Solar System would be a matter of myth, and Erythro would have become a rapidly developing world.
She hoped so. Marlene had this odd fixation on Erythro already, though it had only developed in the last few months and might leave just as quickly as it had come.
Altogether, it would be the height of ingratitude to complain. No-one could possibly have imagined a habitable world in orbit about Nemesis. The conditions that created habitability were remarkable. Estimate those probabilities and throw in the nearness of Nemesis to the Solar System and you would have to deny that it could possibly have happened.
She turned to the day's reports, which the computer was waiting, with the infinite patience of its tribe, to give her.
Yet before she could ask, her receptionist signaled and a soft voice came from the small button-speaker pinned to the left shoulder of her garment, ‘Aurinel Pampas wishes to see you. He has no appointment.’
Insigna grimaced, then remembered that she had sent him after Marlene. She said, ‘Let him come in.’