“Thank you, Fly-in-Amber, but we really prefer the warmer water.” She was shivering a little. “In fact, I think I’ll go take a nice hot shower right now.”
Going from a swim to a shower seemed redundant. But nothing about them surprised me.
Namir returned with the plastic boards then, and looked at her in what I think is a sexual way when she got out of the water. I wondered if they’d begun mating but had learned not to ask.
Over the next four days, they used boards like that to build us a big waterproof box, large enough for both of us to stand in, and improvised a pump that circulated the water and filtered it.
It will make the gravity so much more manageable. And Snowbird and I will be the cleanest Martians in history.
9
ADULTERY FOR ADULTS
1 June 2088
Gone for a month now. A real-time view to the stern shows the Sun as the brightest star in the sky; the Earth is of course invisible.
The only milestone of note, dear diary, is that Elza has apparently made her first sexual conquest—I say “apparently” because who knows? Though if it had been Paul, I think he would have told me, or politely asked me first.
It was Moonboy. Meryl told me after we finished an especially frustrating session with the Martians, tracking down their elusive and totally irregular verb forms.
We were alone at the coffee tap. “So do you know about Moonboy and Elza?”
“No, what?” I knew it wasn’t billiards, of course.
“Well, they got together yesterday. In the fucking sense, I mean.”
An odd choice, I thought, but she had to start somewhere. “Is it, um, I mean, is it a big deal to you?”
“More so than I let him know when he told me. It’s always been theoretically okay. But this is the first time… for him.”
“Not for you?” I pretended I didn’t know.
She smiled and shook her head. “Back on Mars.” I knew of two men, one of them married, some years ago. Mars is like a small village with no place to hide.
“Think it’s a one-time thing?”
“It was already a two-time thing when he told me.” She looked around. “It may be becoming a three-time thing as we speak. But no, I don’t think they’re going to get married and run off to the big city.”
“I’ve been waiting for that shoe to drop myself,” I said. “The way Paul looks at her when he thinks I’m not watching.”
“But you’ve always been, what, open?”
“Sure, for years, he was in Mars and I was in Little Mars. We didn’t actually marry until we got the lottery and were going to have children. Before that, we both had considerable variety.”
“I bet you did.” She grinned. “Being famous and all.”
“Well, guys had long layovers on their way to Mars.”
“Layovers.”
“Probably half of them just wanted to be able to say ‘I fucked The Mars Girl.’ ”
“The price of fame. And Paul the most famous pilot in history? He was not exactly a monk, if I recall correctly.”
“But we’d talked it through before either of us was famous, long before we were married. I thought fidelity was a holdover from old times, when women were property.”
“Do you still?”
“Not as strongly. But yes.” It wasn’t something I’d put into words. “Things are different, now that we’ve had children, but really there’s no reason for that. Parenthood in Mars is so detached from biological reality.”
She nodded. “You don’t go through all the physical grief. And then you don’t raise them by hand.”
“Which I sort of regret. They have my genes, and Paul’s, but we’re more like an aunt and uncle who play with them now and then.” I had a cold feeling, deep. “Under the circumstances, of course, that’s for the best.”
“When you get back…”
“They’ll be older than me. Fifty years pass for them, twelve for us. In the unlikely possibility that we survive.”
“Yeah.” She leaned back and closed her eyes; she was dead tired. “I shouldn’t be so concerned about where Moonboy puts his weenie. Let him have whatever pleasure he can find.”
“For symmetry, you ought to go after Namir. He’s old, but not that old. And good-looking.”
“If good-looking was important to me, I wouldn’t have grabbed Moonboy. Besides, if Namir is interested in anyone aboard, it’s you.”
“Really.”
“Don’t act surprised. It’s pretty obvious.”
“We’ve liked each other from the beginning. But not that way.”
“Man, woman. It’s the basic way.”
“He’s never made any kind of… gesture.”
“I don’t think he ever would. He’s the kind of man who waits for you to ask.”
“Well, he’s got a long wait, then.” Or maybe not.
10
SWEET MYSTERY OF LIFE
Elza was late coming to bed. I’d just turned off my book and the light when the door opened and closed and I heard her slip out of her clothing. I touched her shoulder as she eased into bed. Cool and damp with sweat.
“Exercising this late?”
“In a way. Moonboy.”
“Ah.” I didn’t know what to say. “Meryl know?” They have both their beds together in one large suite.
“No. She was with the Martians.”
“A… sort of a milestone, I suppose.”
I could feel her smile in the darkness. “The first act of adultery outside of the solar system.”
“That presupposes an abundance of virtue on the part of extraterrestrials. We’ll put up a plaque anyhow.”
“You’re too sweet.”
There was a long pause. “So how was it?”
“It was Moonboy. Men don’t normally reveal hidden depths.”
“Or lengths?”
“Men.” She made a quarter turn and pressed her back into my chest, spoon fashion. “Get some sleep.”
“What, I don’t get sloppy seconds?”
“Thirds. Get some sleep.” I didn’t press the issue, though I found the situation curiously stimulating.
I hadn’t brought along my balalaika because I knew it annoyed Dustin, and it was unlikely that the four “Martian” humans would care for it. (Most of the actual Martians seemed indifferent to music; it was background noise to them, neither pleasant nor unpleasant.) But I hadn’t thought about all the room in the warehouse, where the four workers had lived before we arrived. It was a little cold, but large and totally isolated from our own living quarters. You could back up your balalaika with a brass band, and no one could hear you.
So I set out to make a thing like a balalaika. I could have just described it to the automatic shop machine, but there was no satisfaction in that.
No wood around to work with except the blocks of koa I brought for carving, so I asked the machine what it could simulate. My balalaika at home was made of rosewood, light and dark, and ebony. I found a picture of myself playing it, and so was able to measure it precisely from the image. I found instructions for making your own balalaika in Russian, no problem.
The three strings were easy, carbon fiber and nylon wires. The “wood” had the right color and density but wouldn’t fool a termite. The thinnest stock it could generate was two or three times too thick. So my first order of business was to take a strip of it and see whether I could plane it down.
No luck. No fibrous structure, so the hand plane would just bite out a chip at a time. But I blocked it in place and used a sander to bring it down to two millimeters’ thickness. It was still strong and stiff; I clamped it to the edge of the worktable and plucked it, and it made a satisfying twang.