"No," he said faintly. "You apologize."
Jala gasped and swore. En cringed. Jala raised his hand again.
I caught his wrist in midswing.
Jala looked at me, startled. "What is this! Let go."
He tried to pull his hand away. I wouldn't let him. "Don't hit him again," I said.
"I'll do what I like!"
"Fine," I said. "But don't hit him again."
"You—after what I've done for you—!"
Then he gave me a second look.
I don't know what he saw in my face. I don't know exactly what I was feeling at that moment. Whatever it was, it appeared to confuse him. His clenched fist went slack. He seemed to wilt.
"Fucking crazy American," he muttered. "I'm going to the canteen." To the small crowd of children and deck hands that had gathered around us: "Where I can have peace and respect!" He stalked away.
En was still staring at me, gap-jawed.
"I'm sorry about that," I said.
He nodded.
"I can't get your ball back," I said.
He touched his cheek where Jala had slapped him. "That's okay," he said faintly.
Later—over dinner in the crew mess, hours away from the crossing—I told Diane about the incident. "I didn't think about what I was doing. It just seemed… obvious. Almost reflexive. Is that a Fourth thing?"
"It might be. The impulse to protect a victim, especially a child, and to do it instantly, without thinking. I've felt it myself. I suppose it's something the Martians wrote into their neural rebuild… assuming they can really engineer feelings as subtle as that. I wish we had Wun Ngo Wen here to explain it. Or Jason, for that matter. Did it feel forced?"
"No…"
"Or wrong, inappropriate?"
"No… I think it was exactly the right thing to do."
"But you wouldn't have done it before you took the treatment?"
"I might have. Or wanted to. But I probably would have second-guessed myself until it was too late."
"So you're not unhappy about it."
No. Just surprised. This was as much me as it was Martian biotech, Diane was saying, and I supposed that was true… but it would take some getting used to. Like every other transition (childhood to adolescence, adolescence to adulthood) there were new imperatives to deal with, new opportunities and pitfalls, new doubts.
For the first time in many years I was a stranger to myself again.
* * * * *
I had almost finished packing when Carol came downstairs, a little drunk, loose-limbed, carrying a shoebox in her arms.
The box was labeled mementos (school).
"You should take this," she said. "It was your mother's."
"If it means something to you, Carol, keep it."
"Thank you, but I already took what I wanted from it." I opened the lid and glanced at the contents. "The letters."
The anonymous letters addressed to Belinda Sutton, my mother's maiden name.
"Yes. So you've seen them. Did you ever read them?"
"No, not really. Just enough to know they were love letters."
"Oh, God. That sounds so saccharine. I prefer to think of them as tributes. They're quite chaste, really, if you read them closely. Unsigned. Your mother received them when we were both at university. She was dating your father then, and she could hardly show them to him—he was writing her letters of his own. So she shared them with me."
"She never found out who wrote them?"
"No. Never."
"She must have been curious."
"Of course. But she was already engaged to Marcus by that time. She started dating Marcus Dupree when Marcus and E.D. were setting up their first business, designing and manufacturing high altitude balloons back when aerostats were what Marcus called 'blue sky' technology: a little crazy, a little idealistic. Belinda called Marcus and E.D. 'the Zeppelin brothers.' So I guess we were the Zeppelin sisters, Belinda and I. Because that's when I started flirting with E.D. In a way, Tyler, my entire marriage was nothing more than an attempt to keep your mother as a friend."
"The letters—"
"Interesting, isn't it, that she kept them all these years? Eventually I asked her why. Why not just throw them away? She said, 'Because they're sincere.' It was her way of honoring whoever had written them. The last one arrived a week before her wedding. None after that. And a year later I married E.D. Even as couples we were inseparable, did she ever tell you that? We vacationed together, we went to movies together. Belinda came to the hospital when the twins were born and I was waiting at the door when she brought you home for the first time. But all that ended when Marcus had his accident. Your father was a wonderful man, Tyler, very earthy, very funny—the only person who could make E.D. laugh. Reckless to a fault, though. Belinda was absolutely devastated when he died. And not just emotionally. Marcus had burned through most of their savings and Belinda spent what was left servicing the mortgage on their house in Pasadena. So when E.D. moved east and we made an offer on this place it seemed perfectly natural to invite her to use the guest house."
"In exchange for housekeeping," I said.
"That was E.D.'s idea. I just wanted Belinda close by. My marriage wasn't as successful as hers had been. Quite the opposite. By that time Belinda was more or less the only friend I had. Almost a confidante." Carol smiled. "Almost."
"That's why you want to keep the letters? Because they're part of your history with her?"
She smiled as if at a slow-witted child. "No, Tyler. I told you. They're mine." Her smile thinned. "Don't look so dumbfounded. Your mother was as uncomplicatedly heterosexual as any woman I have ever met. I simply had the misfortune to fall in love with her. To fall in love with her so abjectly that I would do anything—even marry a man who seemed, even in the beginning, a little distasteful—in order to keep her close. And in all that time, Tyler, in all those silent years, I never told her how I felt. Never, except in these letters. I was pleased she kept them, even though they always seemed a little dangerous, like something explosive or radioactive, hidden in plain sight, evidence of my own foolishness. When your mother died—I mean the very day she died—I panicked a little; I tried to hide the box; I thought about destroying the letters but I couldn't, I couldn't bring myself to do it; and then, after E.D. divorced me, when there was no one left to deceive, I simply took them for myself. Because, you see, they're mine. They've always been mine."
I didn't know what to say. Carol saw my expression and shook her head sadly. She put her fragile hands on my shoulders. "Don't be upset. The world is full of surprises. We're all born strangers to ourselves and each other, and we're seldom formally introduced."
* * * * *
So I spent four weeks in a motel room in Vermont nursing Diane through her recovery.
Her physical recovery, I should say. The emotional trauma she'd suffered at the Condon ranch and after had left her exhausted and withdrawn. Diane had closed her eyes on a world that seemed to be ending and opened them on a world without compass points. It was not in my power to make this right for her.
So I was cautiously helpful. I explained what needed to be explained. I made no demands and I made it clear that I expected no reward.
Her interest in the changed world awoke gradually. She asked about the sun, restored to its benevolent aspect, and I told her what Jason had told me: the Spin membrane was still in place even though the temporal enclosure had ended; it was protecting the Earth the way it always had, editing lethal radiation into a simulacrum of sunlight acceptable to the planet's ecosystem.
"So why did they turn it off for seven days?"
"They turned it down, not entirely off. And they did it so something could pass through the membrane."
"That thing in the Indian Ocean."
"Yes."