The three spooks were doing the various things people do when they’re getting used to zero gee—except barfing, fortunately. They practiced pushing off from surfaces and trying to control spinning. Once you get the hang of it, it’s not hard to eyeball the distance to wherever you’re going, and do a half turn, or one-and-a-half turn, to land feetfirst. You can also “swim” short distances, but nobody needs that much exercise.
There was a very distinct look in Dustin’s eye, and Elza returned it. I hoped it worked for them better than it does for most. (Paul and I first had sex in zero gee, and it worked all right. My first time with anybody, whatever the gravity, so it was a double miracle for me.)
Snowbird and Fly- in-Amber were clumsy in zero gee. The gecko slippers were less effective with them, since they had more inertia than humans—if I’m moving slowly and put my foot down onto a beige spot, it will stop me. Snowbird has four times my mass, though, and will rip off and keep going.
I went into Mars territory with her to check their garden, since it was easier for me to move around and manipulate things. It was dark and cold, as it was supposed to be. Their garden was simpler than ours; Martian tastes didn’t run to a lot of variety.
Trays of stuff that resembled fungi and a few stubby trees. As on our side, one of the trees had come loose, but it was easy to retrieve and fix with duct tape.
A screen all along one whole wall was a panorama of their underground city, which was almost all of her planet she had ever seen. Though Mars wasn’t “her” planet the way Earth was ours.
They had known for thousands of years that Mars was not their natural home. They only learned recently that they were put on Mars as a sort of warning system for the Others: when humans had advanced enough technologically to come in contact with the Martians, they were advanced enough to present a danger to the Others, even light-years away. Which led to the Others’ attempt to destroy us, thwarted by Paul and the Martian leader Red. The cataclysmic explosion that was supposed to sterilize Earth only rearranged the farside of the Moon. Killing Red in the process.
So from one point of view, the Martians were humanity’s saviors. Another point of view, more widely held, says that it was all the Martians’ fault. (And since I was the first to come into contact with them, I shared the blame.)
After taking care of the garden, we went into the “compromise” lounge, not quite as dark and cold. There was a bench for humans to sit on, not of much utility in zero gee, and a skillful mural of the above-ground part of our Mars colony, a mosaic of pebbles from both Earth and Mars. It was special to me, made by Oz, Dr. Oswald Penninger, who had been my mentor when I first came to Mars.
I told Snowbird about it. “I met Dr. Oswald,” she said. “I breathed for him.” Oz had spent some time in the Martian city, measuring the metabolism of the various families.
“I miss him,” I said. “He was one of my closest friends.” He and Josie might have been on this expedition if the Corporation hadn’t been pressured into taking three military people.
“It is difficult for us to gauge human personality. But I can understand why you would like Dr. Oz. He is interested in everything. Or should I say ‘was,’ as you did? He will not live long enough to see us again.”
“I should have said ‘is.’ As long as the person is alive.”
“He told me about Norway,” she said, “where he studied art. I’d like to go there someday. It sounds a little like Mars.”
“Maybe they’ll do something about the gravity by then.”
“I hope so. This is nice.” She pushed up gently, rose to the ceiling, and floated back down. “But you are joking.”
“Yes. Gravity’s like death and taxes. Always with us.”
“Not always. There’s no gravity here, nor death, nor taxes. Not for some time. And when we take off for Wolf 25, it will be the ship’s acceleration that presses us to the floor.”
“Homemade gravity. You can’t tell it from the real thing.”
“Ha-ha. Dr. Einstein’s Principle of Equivalence. A good joke.”
Was it I who had made the joke, or Einstein? I decided not to pursue it.
Dustin came into the lounge, sideways and a little fast. He crashed into a wall with a modicum of grace.
“Good aim,” I said. “You want to work on the speed.”
He brushed himself off, rotating toward the center of the room. “Good aim if I’d been aiming for this door,” he said. “Good afternoon, Snowbird. What’s up?”
“Carmen helped us with a tree. Now we are discussing general relativity.”
That raised his eyebrows a few millimeters. “A little beyond me. The math, anyhow. Tensor calculus?”
I had to come clean. “Don’t ask me. I’m just sitting around being impressed. What is tensor calculus?”
“To me, it was a big ‘stop’ sign. I withdrew from the course and changed my major to philosophy. From physics.”
“Pretty drastic.”
“I try to be philosophical about it. Snowbird, your family is both, right? Science and philosophy?”
“Not in the sense of being scientists and philosophers, no. We don’t experiment, traditionally. Not on things and not on ideas. I am in a small group that wants to change that. Which I think is why the others were glad to see me go.
“Traditionally, you know, we learn by rote. It’s not like human physics and chemistry and biology. Things and processes are described in great detail, but those descriptions aren’t tested, and the underlying relationships aren’t studied.”
“We’d call that Aristotelianism, in a way. If you had an Aristotle.”
“I know. It was studying the ways you classify different methods of thinking that made some of us want to change the ways we think.”
“Some of us who are not completely grown yet.” Fly- in-Amber came drifting out of Mars territory. “Not completely sane…” He gently collided with me, as I put my other foot down on the beige spot to anchor us.
“Thank you. Snowbird was not yet two when you humans came. The novelty of it made a huge impression on her unformed mind.”
“You will never win this argument, or lose it,” Snowbird said. “I know you’re wrong, and you know I’m wrong.”
“And since you are wrong, that settles it.” Fly-in-Amber crossed all four arms in a human-looking gesture. “That’s logic.”
Dustin stayed out of it, but I didn’t. “Why does it have to be one or the other, Fly-in-Amber? Your science was fine in the old days, but it wouldn’t get you off Mars.”
“And to the planet of the Others, where we’ll be destroyed along with everybody on Earth, and perhaps in Mars as well? That’s not progress, Carmen.”
“Not the example I would choose,” Snowbird said.
“But it’s relevant,” I insisted. “Human science explained everything pretty well until we met you, and found you had this energy-out-of-nowhere thing. Now we have to fit you into our universe, just as you have to fit us into yours.”
“How can you say that? If you hadn’t stumbled onto us, we could have happily gone on for an eternity, or at least until the cows came home. If we had cows.”
“Was that a joke, Fly-in-Amber?”
“Of course not. I am only trying to adapt to your idiom.”
“He pretends not to have a sense of humor,” Snowbird said, “which makes him even funnier.”
“Idiom,” Fly-in-Amber repeated. “Idiom is not humor.”
“What does the philosopher say about that?”
He grinned. “I have enough for a monograph already.”
“Humans do not understand this, and neither does Snowbird.” Fly-in-Amber made a complex gesture that started him rotating. I reached out and stabilized him. “Thank you. It’s not a concept that I can express in English, or any human language.” He rattled off about thirty seconds of noises in the Martian consensus language. I recognized three clear repeated sounds—one for negation, one for “human,” and one that signals an “if… then” statement.