‘Why, Mother?’
‘Come, Marlene. We've talked about this. Many people stayed home. They didn't want to leave a familiar place. Almost every family on Rotor had stay-on-Earths. You know that very well. Do you want to return to Earth? Is that it?’
‘No, Mother. Not at all.’
‘Even if you wanted to go, you're over two light-years away and you can't go. Surely you understand that.’
‘Of course I understand that. I was just trying to point out that we have another Earth right here. It's Erythro. That's where I want to go; that's where I long to go.’
Insigna couldn't stop herself. It was almost with horror that she heard herself say, ‘So you want to break away from me, as your father did.’
Marlene flinched, then recovered. She said, ‘Is it really true, Mother, that he broke away from you? Perhaps things might have been different if you had behaved differently.’ Then she added quietly, just as though she were announcing that she was done with dinner. ‘You drove him away, didn't you, Mother?’
4. Father
Odd - or perhaps stupid - that she was still capable of hurting herself unbearably with thoughts of that kind after fourteen years.
Crile was 1.8 meters tall where, on Rotor, the average height for men was a bit under 1.7 meters. That alone (as in the case of Janus Pitt) gave him a commanding aura of strength that persisted well after the time when she came to recognize, without ever quite admitting it to herself, that she could not rely on his strength.
He had a craggy face, too; a prominent nose and cheekbones, a strong chin - a look, somehow, of hunger and wildness. Everything about him spoke of strong masculinity. She could almost smell it when she met him, and was struck with fascination at once.
Insigna was still a graduate student in astronomy at the time, completing her stint on Earth, looking forward to returning to Rotor so that she could qualify for work on the Far Probe. She dreamed of the wide advances the Far Probe would make possible (and never dreamed that she herself would make the most astonishing one).
And then she met Crile and found herself, to her own confusion, madly in love with an Earthman - an Earthman. Overnight she felt herself abandoning the Far Probe in her mind, becoming ready to remain on Earth just to be with him.
She could still remember the way he had looked at her in astonishment and said, ‘Remain here with me? I'd rather come to Rotor with you.’ She could not have imagined that he would want to abandon his world for her. How Crile managed to obtain permission to come to Rotor, Insigna did not know and had never found out.
The immigration rules were strict, after all. Once any Settlement had a sizable population, it clamped down on immigration - first, because it could not exceed a certain definite limit on the number of people it could support comfortably, and, second, because it made a desperate effort to keep its ecological balance stable. People who came on important business from Earth - or even from other Settlements - had to undergo tedious decontamination procedures, a certain degree of isolation, and an enforced departure as soon as possible.
Yet here was Crile from Earth. He complained to her once of the weeks of waiting that had been part of the decontamination, and she was secretly pleased at the way he had persisted. Clearly, he must have wanted her very badly to submit to it.
Yet there were times when he seemed withdrawn and inattentive and she would wonder then what had really driven him to Rotor over such obstacles. Perhaps it was not she, but the need to escape Earth that had been the motivating force. Had he committed a crime? Made a murderous enemy? Fled a woman he had grown tired of? She had never dared ask.
And he had never offered information. Even after he had been allowed to enter Rotor, there was a question as to how long he might be able to remain. The Bureau of Immigration would have to grant a special permit to make him a full citizen of Rotor and that was not ordinarily likely.
Insigna had found all the things that made Crile Fisher unacceptable to Rotorians additional inducements for fascination. She found that his being Earth-born lent him a difference and a glamour. True Rotorians would be bound to despise him as an alien - citizen or not - but she found even that a source of erotic excitement. She would fight for him, and triumph, against a hostile world.
When he tried to find some sort of work that would enable him to earn money and occupy a niche in the new society, it was she who pointed out to him that if he married a Rotorian woman - Rotorian for three generations - that would be a powerful inducement for the Bureau of Immigration to grant him full citizenship.
Crile seemed surprised at that, as though it hadn't occurred to him, and then pleased. Insigna had found it a little disappointing. It would be much more flattering to be married for the sake of love than for the sake of citizenship, but then she thought to herself: Well, if that's what it takes-
So, after a typical long Rotorian engagement, they were married.
Life went on without much change. He was not a passionate lover, but he had not been that before the marriage either. He had offered her an absent affection, an occasional warmth that kept her constantly near happiness if not altogether immersed in it. He was never actively cruel and unkind, and he had given up his world for her and gone through considerable inconvenience to be with her. Surely that might be counted in his favor, and Insigna counted it so.
Even as a full citizen, which he had been granted after their marriage, there remained a kernel of dissatisfaction within him. Insigna was aware of this and could not entirely blame him. He might be a full citizen, yet he was still not a native-born Rotorian and many of the most interesting activities on Rotor were closed to him. She did not know what his training had been, for he never mentioned how much of an education he had had. He didn't sound uneducated, and there was no disgrace in being self-educated, but Insigna knew that on Earth the population did not take higher education as a given, the way that Settlement populations did.
The thought bothered her. She didn't mind Crile Fisher being an Earthman and facing down her friends and colleagues where that was concerned. She didn't know, though, if she could quite handle his being an uneducated Earthman.
But no-one ever suggested he was, and he listened to the tales of her work on the Far Probe with patience. She never tested his education by discussing the technical details, of course. Yet sometimes he asked questions or made comments that reflected on such things and she valued them, when they came, for she always managed to convince herself that they were intelligent questions and comments.
Fisher had a job on one of the farms, a perfectly respectable job, even an essential one, but a job that was not high on the social scale. He did not complain or make a fuss about that - she'd give him that - but he never talked about it, or showed any pleasure in it. And there was always that air of discontent about him.
Insigna learned, therefore, to attempt no cheery ‘And what happened to you at work today, Crile?’
The few times she had asked, just at first, the answer had been a flat ‘Nothing much.’ And that would be all, except for a short annoyed look.
Eventually, she grew nervous about talking to him even of petty office politics and annoying errors. That, too, might serve as an unwelcome comparison of her work with his.
Insigna had to admit that her fears went against the evidence there, an example of her own insecurity rather than his. Fisher didn't show signs of impatience when she did find herself forced to discuss the day's work. Sometimes he even asked, with a pallid interest, about hyper-assistance, but Insigna knew little or nothing about that.