“By the sword and shield of Ares,” she said solemnly, “I do believe I have noticed someone.”
We sat there a moment with our fingers pointing at each other, then she said, “I was told it was impolite to point.” She closed her fist with a pop of her mouth and I made a show of putting my fist into a holster.
“Nova Sunstrum,” I said.
“Diego Braddock,” she said, just as solemnly.
We watched the Earth for awhile, then I asked, “Will you be happy to be getting back?” I thought the question banal, but wanted to continue the conversation.
“Oh, yes. It has been so long, even though I got tapes on almost every ship. Mars is really growing up fast, almost too fast. There are farms now where there was only desert. An atmosphere is forming. The air of Earth seemed so heavy and thick and filled with stink. The air at home will be cold, but clean.”
She leaned back in her chair, and I couldn’t decide if the display of the richness of her body was consciously bold or innocently naive. She sighed, and the only other sounds were the faint hum from deep within the asteroid, transmitted through the rock, and the beeps and clicks of the read-outs on the repeater console before us.
Slowly her face changed expression and a shy smile formed on her lips. There was something about her look that sent the warning signals up. Without looking at me she said, “Do you desire me?” Then her eyes swiveled towards me, dark and slanted.
I waited a beat and nodded, carefully. “Of course. You are beautiful. And . . . my type.” I made a gesture with my hand. “If you are as much a woman inside as outside . . .” I left it unfinished.
“I am a type, then?”
“Everyone’s a type. Some types we respond to, for whatever reasons, and others we do not.”
“Many men have desired me,” she said.
“Yes, I’m sure, but you need not cite testimonials.” Her smile broke wide and she moved in a very self-aware and sensuous manner.
“Then you will protect me?”
I sighed. “Protect you? From men? From the others? Why? You are grownup, a woman, a citizen.”
“I’m tired of being groped,” she said. “I grew up on Mars, with space all around. Living on Earth was living in a box. I always felt confined, pressured. I had so little personal space.” She looked sad now.
“I’m so damned tired of it. I want to get home.” She looked up at me again, through her fall of dark hair. “Perhaps if I were, you know, with you, there would not be so much pressure.”
“You desire a champion, my lady? If there were some zongo aboard who really wanted you I might be ‘accidented’ to death some dark watch, or find that I had taken a walk on the outside of this pebble without a suit. So would any other man who was foolish enough to try and ‘protect’ you.”
She looked at me angrily and sat up straight, sticking out her chest. “You desire me, but you wouldn’t even try to protect me?” She made a rude sound and slumped back, and her long black hair flowed over her shoulders and fell before her face in a black waterfall.
“There were no serious fights when I came to Earth in the Armstrong,” she said, “but I was only sixteen then. I am . . . different now.”
“You must have had fun trying out your powers on Earth,” I said with a grin. She blew air at me but did not look. “Granted, the trips now aren’t like the old days when they were seven, eight times longer. But even a month in space . . . Well, for example, what would happen if you were to smile at just one crewman, the same crewman, every day?”
She tossed back her hair and looked proudly at me. “He would fall madly in love with me,” she said casually. “They always do.”
“And that’s the trouble. On Earth, on Luna, perhaps even on Mars, we would not all be confined together, in enforced intimacy, without privacy, stepping on each other’s territory. Even in those massive city-buildings, even in the most crowded archo, we would not be so contained. This is a sealed environment. You, me, everyone, must act in a responsible manner. You do not cry fire in a crowded sensatorium.”
She tossed her head and looked down at the crescent of vanishing Earth. “You sound like Primrose or Billinger, my teachers, the old wallabies. Live up to your responsibilities, dear. Act your age. Don’t make waves. What do they know of life, those wizened hags?” She sat up again, defiantly throwing out her ample chest, the lovely heritage of her Scandinavian ancestors. “I’ve spent years being controlled by others. Teachers, security people who knew what was best for me, my father’s factors, the people at the bank. I ran away sometimes, catching hell when they traced me.”
She looked at me moodily. “I thought you would be fun to be with. You look powerful and just a little deadly and as though you know a lot, but you are just dried munga like the others! ‘Don’t be like that, dear!’ ‘Behave yourself, Nova.’ ” She rose and stood over me, unsteady in the light gravity, the wet-like fabric swirling, glimmering in the faint cold Earthlight and the reddish glow from the heater.
“I will not trouble you. There will not be trouble. I am not promiscuous.”
“Perhaps it would be better if you were,” I said. “It’s when one or a few hog all the goodies that the revolutions start.”
“I—!” She left it unsaid and turned to sit down abruptly. The calm, cool woman of the world had disappeared again. What I was seeing was the protected daughter of wealth, used to the power of her beauty and personality, aching to break loose into the imagined joys of freedom, and unsure of both self and world.
Then very slowly I saw the return of that mood. Her face changed from the stern and unmoving to the serene and elegant. The posture slowly softened and she seemed more at ease.
At last she again turned her gaze toward me. Before she had a chance to speak I said, “I like you better when you are playing the Queen of Outer Space.”
She blinked and then broke into laughter and fell back against the cushioned couch. I liked her laughter, for it was full and unrestrained, and she could laugh at herself. Then she sobered and propped herself up, flipping back her long dark hair.
“You!” she said accusingly, her lips fighting a smile. “How do you know I am not the Queen of Space?”
I grinned at her. “I don’t. If anyone is qualified, you are . . . your majesty.”
“Well, I could be,” she said. “If Mars becomes free my father could be king.”
“You will be old and surrounded by grandchildren before Mars is terraformed and independent enough to stand alone. Don’t make it sound as if Mars were being ground under the heel of the Terran oppressors. You get more than your share.”
Her shoulders slumped. “Boy, you’re just no fun at all. I paint a pretty little fantasy and you rip it down. It would have been ever so nice to think that I might one day be the Queen of Mars.”
I shrugged. “There isn’t much romance in a democracy, is there?
No twin princes, no princesses stolen by gypsies, no men locked in iron spacesuits, no sudden revelations about lockets given at birth, no mistresses of the king dictating policy in bed . . .”