Morning came early, as mornings all too often do. Wootten and I had forgotten to opaque the port and even at 141 million miles the sun was still bright enough to hurt my pop-topped eyes. Luckily, Wootten had some “Cork,” and soon we were eating breakfast and looking for a way to get me to the Sunstrum mine. Wootten asked around and found out that Puma was taking a sandcat out past there to Burroughs, and I asked myself along.
It was two hundred kilometers of beauty, for water from the torch was flowing down an ancient watercourse and we paralleled it for half the distance. Transplanted pines and other trees grew thickly, not in tree farms, but in realistic clusters and strings and solitary giants. With water a tiny native plant called Sprinkle blossomed into a lush dark green bush with hundreds of tiny flowers. The fabricated water looked very natural, and very welcome, winding its way through rock and pothole. It was not much more than a creek, but already it was called “the Mississippi of Mars,” and was officially labeled Athena River. Puma filled me in on Nova’s parents; his account was less formal than one of Huo’s dossiers, but just as accurate and complete.
“Sven Sunstrum came out here with the first shipload of colonists. Those were tough days. He punched holes all over the plate this side of the John Carters. Hit some iridium nodes and got himself a Chinese wife through the People’s Republic nobs. It’s been what, twelve years? That’s Martian years, of course. Nearly twenty-two Terran years. Goddamn, that Nova is growin’, isn’t she?
“Well, Li Wing turned out to be a beauty. Sven, he fought a few who wanted to buy her contract, and he lasered a couple who didn’t take no for an answer. They had Nova and they struck a goddamn manganese mountain the same year. He’s on the Council and he’s past president of the Guild. As tough an old sander as you’ll find still turning wheels.
“And don’t bypass Li Wing. That is still some woman, y’know?
Not many with that kind of class get this far out. One time, back when Nova was just a baby, there were some zongo cleanboots out here that thought this was wide-open country, that they could do as they damn pleased. This was before they had any more than a squad of Marines at Ares.
“They came up on Sunstrum’s digs when he was off in Burroughs with a load. They cut down a couple of diggers and cut power on the lift so the rest were trapped. They figured to steal Sunstrum’s fabled riches and rape his Chinese wife. But Li Wing gave them a fight and cut one of them zongos right from balls to gullet. She was about ready to whack off any protruberance that came near her when one of those burnouts grabbed the baby. Said he’d slice Nova’s throat if the woman didn’t behave. Li Wing never hesitated a second. She flipped that sticker around and threw it right through that bastard’s throat. Kid dropped into the bunk and Li Wing snatched a laser and cut the legs off all three that were left.”
Puma grinned at me. “So don’t you let that lady’s ways get you to figuring she’s out of it. I did a portrait of her about, oh, six, eight turns back. She was young and frisky then and full of hell, for a China lady, that is. They still got it over the bar.”
That brought us to a discussion of painters and he was interested in knowing what was going on in the art world back on Earth. He seemed very interested in sensatrons, but figured he could never master the electronics. Later on he added a note to his Sunstrum dossier.
“That Nova . . . well, she’s sort of special out here. We tried not to spoil her but that was pretty hard. Not many kids out here, and none as pretty as that one. Everyone wanted to teach her everything. I guess she’s handled about every kind of sandcat, transporter, scoop, pinholer, and laser rig there is. It just makes you feel good being around her, doesn’t it?”
We topped up over the edge of a crater and a small dome cluster on the far wall told us where the Sunstrum complex was. Puma took us across the flat crater floor at high speed, laughing about the bumps and the big plume of dust behind. “Let ’em know we’re coming!”
he said. The cargo slugs rattled along behind us and we came to a halt before the main dome lock after pulling three wild circles in the area in front. Puma sounded a couple of incredibly loud beeps on the signal horn and unsealed as several people came out of the lock.
The air was thin and cold here but only Puma and I wore warmsuits. I saw the big blonde man first, in a weathered gray jumper, and a couple of grinning, bearded faces beyond. Then they parted for a smiling Oriental woman with thick, piled-up hair, wearing an emerald-green dress.
“Puma!”
“Li Wing, Li Wing, you get better looking every day!”
There were cheek kisses and back slaps and hugs and then hurried, good-natured complaints as they pulled Puma back toward the warmth of the dome lock. They looked at me with tentative we-haven’t-been-introduced-but-any-friend-of-Puma’s looks, but all I saw was Nova.
She stood back by the lock, wearing something simple but thin, and the cold had brought out her nipples. She was trying to look both unconcerned and polite, her lady-of-the-manor style that didn’t come off all that badly, considering she was nineteen.
Nova.
Daughter of a tigress, daughter of a bear.
Would I ever be able to say, “My Nova”?
She stood by the edge of the lock and her elegant pose was ruined by a sudden hug and cheek kiss from Puma, who evidently had
“rights.” Then they had swept past her and I was on their heels. She looked at me with a carefully neutral face and I gestured her in. She turned and entered without comment and the lock hissed and thumped home and the air was pumped in to equalize.
Puma was as bombarded with questions as I had been, but most of them were personal, or about people they mutually knew. Nova and I were very much aware of each other.
As the inner door hissed open Sven Sunstrum came over to me and shook my hand in a blonde bearpaw. “Mr. Braddock, you honor us.” He grinned shrewdly and said, “I hope you are not going to dramatize our little operation here for some video show.”
The way he said dramatize told me how he felt about the vidtab way of “electrifying” reality, as they put it. “We take things out of the crust and we barter for the things we cannot make. It’s a simple life and we would hate to see it disturbed.”
I looked at him and said, “Minimum disturbance on all sensors, Mr. Sunstrum.” He smiled with more friendliness and released my hand.
“Nova has told us how you kept her from causing a mutiny on the ship.” He smiled fondly at her and I raised my eyebrows slightly. She looked serene and aloof. “Oh, father,” she said without rancor. Sunstrum looked back at me. “My thanks, as well.” Then he laughed. “I’m sorry, but your face is so carefully unexpressive! Li Wing!”
Nova’s mother turned from the cluster around Puma and joined us as we exited the lock. “Li Wing, this is Diego Braddock . . . Mr. Braddock, my wife.”
We acknowledged the introductions with pleasantries and then Sunstrum broke in. “I was just thanking Braddock for the way he handled the sexual situation on the Balboa.”
Li Wing smiled shyly at me and nodded. “Oh, yes. We were very worried about that long trip, with Nova grown.”