I nodded. “You’re not looking forward to six years of leisure? Or twelve?”
“Sure.” She retreated into thought, expression momentarily vacant. “I had an elaborate course of research planned, the thing we talked about the other day.”
I remembered. “Delphinic and cetacean pseudosyntax.”
“The more I think about it, the more futile it seems. No new data, no experimental subjects. I could work like a dog for twelve years while everybody else in the field is working for fifty. I come up with some brilliant insight and find it’s been old news for thirty years. People are having tea with whales and sex with dolphins.”
“Better than the other way around.”
“If you haven’t tried it, don’t knock it.”
The meatballs dinged, and I took them out. “It seems to me your work would have value as methodology even if people on Earth came up with different results, with newer data.” I touched a couple, and they were thawed, still cool.
“Too abstract. I mean, you’re right, but eventually it would be old data pushed around by outdated methodology. Xenolinguistics is moving fast now that we have actual xenos.”
“None of us will be doing anything on the cutting edge.” I poured a little oil into a large pan and put it on to heat. “Can’t beat relativity.”
Even if communication with Earth were completely unrestricted, you couldn’t stay current with research. At turnaround, three years and a couple of months from now by ship time, twelve years would have passed on Earth. If you sent a message there to a colleague who answered immediately, the answer would get to Wolf 25 almost thirty-seven Earth years later. Not so much communication as historical record.
I shook the wet onion flakes into the oil, and they sizzled and popped. The cooking-onion smell was intense but faded in seconds in the thin air.
“Smells good.” She leaned back against the island and took a sip of wine, then sighed. “I just haven’t been admitting it to myself. I should table the cetacean stuff till I get back to Earth. Little Mars, anyhow. Join the crowd and study the Martian language.”
“Makes sense,” I said.
“I resisted it back on Mars because I didn’t have any special talent for it. But neither did Carmen, and she’s making headway.”
“At least you’ll be carrying your research materials along with you.”
“If they cooperate. Fly-in-Amber isn’t happy about being source material, I can tell that already.”
I shrugged. “He’s studying us. Turnabout’s fair play.”
“I’ll point that out to him.”
I shook the onions around in the pan and slid the meatballs into it.
She laughed. “They’re subtle, the yellow ones. As he says, he can’t lie. But he’s very careful in the kinds of truth he shares.”
“You’ve known him awhile?”
“Sure, since he came to Little Mars, ’79. I’m not sure I know him any better than the day we met, though.”
“He acts as if he’s just a recording device.”
“Yeah, that’s his pose. But he’s a lot more complicated than that. Mysterious. Talk to Snowbird about him sometime. He’s more strange to her than we are.”
“Really.” I drew a liter of water and dumped the tomato and wine concentrates in it.
“That’s what she told me, in those words. All the yellow family… she says they act as if they’re the only ones who are really real. The rest of us, we’re just a dream.”
“They’re all delusional?”
“Maybe. Snowbird thinks it may be true.”
I smiled at that, but at the same time had a little twist of something like fear. “If you were a dream, would you be aware of it?”
She looked straight at me, not smiling. “Not if the dreamer knew his business.”
2
YEAR ZERO
The Corporation asked us all to keep daily diaries, and gave us a program guaranteed to keep them private until fifty years after the last one of us has died. Our privacy guarded, I suppose, by the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.
I’ll pretend they’re telling the truth, and anyhow I don’t have a lot to hide. I admit that I pick my nose when no one is looking. I don’t like my body very much. I prefer masturbation to sex with my husband. I’m jealous, and a little bit afraid, of Elza, and trust her not at all. She will have every man on this boat, then come after the women. But it’s not as if I don’t have fantasies about her men. One of them, anyhow.
I’ve started writing because the trip has officially begun. We started blasting today. What a verb, as if we were miners. But it’s accurate; we’re standing on top of a matter/antimatter bomb that will keep exploding for 12.8 years plus.
Trying to get used to Earth- strength gravity. I asked Paul how long it would take if we accelerated with Mars- normal gravity. He said he couldn’t do hypogolic cosines or something in his head, then fiddled with his notebook and said it wouldn’t work; it would take umpty-ump years to get there; umpty- less-ump, but long, in our time frame. But we might get there with our backs intact. I can’t find any way to stand that doesn’t make my back hurt.
Part of the problem is associative dissonance, how nice to have a college education and have names for everything. My body feels this gravity and thinks I should be in the gym in Little Mars; an hour of sweat, then back to normal. But this is normal; all through human history people put up with weighing this much. So settle down, back, and get used to it.
(later) I heard splashing; the pool finally filled. Took a towel over. Namir had the current on and was swimming in place.
I’d never seen him naked. He looks good for a man his age. Solid muscles and only a little paunch. A lot of hair. He’s circumcised, something I’d only seen in pictures. It makes him look vulnerable. It also makes his dick look longer, or maybe it just is longer. I’ll have to ask Paul. Or maybe not.
The timer rang, and he got out. I would like to report that his vulnerable penis sprang instantly erect when I stepped out of my robe, but alas it just sat there. Perhaps he’s seen a naked woman or two before. Maybe even one with tits.
The water was cold but felt good, and I warmed up fast with the current at six knots. Turned it down to one for the backstroke. Namir did glance at my frontal aspect, cunt-al, but then politely turned away. I had a wicked impulse to tease him but don’t feel that I know him well enough. Which is odd, after all these weeks. But he’s a formal, quiet man. He jokes and laughs when it’s appropriate; but when he’s by himself, he looks like he’s thinking about something sad.
Which of course he must be. He walked through Tel Aviv right after Gehenna, millions of his countrymen dead and rotting in the desert sun. What could anyone learn, or do, or believe, to get over that?
He told us that two of the men under his command killed themselves that first day. Shot themselves. He said that like he was describing the weather.
But I think his calm fatalism gives us all a kind of strength. We will probably die on this trip. The trick is to say that without being brave or dramatic. We will probably have powdered eggs for breakfast. We will probably die in five years and three months. Pass the salt, please.
Namir cooked his first dinner last night, and it was pretty good, considering the restrictions he’s working under. Spaghetti with meatless meatballs, with reconstituted vegetables that weren’t too mushy. Before long we’ll all be staring at the hydroponic garden chanting “grow, grow.”
Actually, we’ll all be doing something more or less constructive. We talked about that after dinner. Paul’s continuing his VR course work for a doctorate in astronomy and astrophysics, to complement his geology degrees. Elza is studying trauma medicine, and also does abstract needlepoint and God knows what kind of bizarre sex. Dustin says he doesn’t have to actually do anything. A philosopher by training, he might burst into thought at any moment. He’s also practicing trick shots on the pool table, though I don’t know how long that will last. Elza asked him to limit the noise to ten minutes at a time, preferably once a year.