Everyone kept conversation focused on the children. Jason ate cake and helped Colin to open his presents. Colin cried. During one of his rare exhausted periods, Marianne held him on her lap. Tears stained his tired little face. She played a game of snapping her fingers to the right, to the left, above his head. Colin tried to grab them, until he again began to cry. Whatever his upset was, the baby didn’t have hearing problems.
During dinner, Colin blessedly slept. The adults, plus Jason in his booster seat, sat around the table, eating too fast, trying to get through the meal before Colin woke up. Tim had spent much of the afternoon prowling around the outside of the house, in the woods, and below the windows. Ryan and Connie were polite to him but basically uninterested. Elizabeth, however, kept glancing from Tim to Marianne. Marianne had made a big point of saying that Tim was her administrative assistant’s boyfriend. It did not stop Elizabeth’s glances. Conversation did not flow well.
Into a lull, Tim said, “I saw a wolf in your woods. Do you have a pack?”
“Yes,” Ryan said, “down from Canada. Just this winter.”
Connie said, “I worry about Jason every minute he’s outside.”
Jason, his mouth rosy with beets, mumbled, “Don’t worry, Mama.”
Tim smiled. “If there’s an adult with Jason, ma’am, then wolves won’t attack.”
Elizabeth said, “Are you a woodsman, then?”
“Was.”
“And you’re licensed to carry all three weapons you have with you.”
Tim’s eyes narrowed. “Yes, ma’am. But I’m curious how you know there’s three.”
Marianne hastened to blur the battle lines before they could harden. “Elizabeth’s with Border Patrol in Texas. And Tim’s ex–Special Forces.”
Elizabeth and Tim regarded each other even more closely, but with grudging respect. Ryan, however, frowned. Connie was still fixated on the wolves.
“Are you sure a wolf wouldn’t attack an adult? I saw ours, just last week, and it looked skinny and hungry enough to eat anything.”
Ryan said, “That’s because there are no mice for them to eat. In fact, I’m surprised wolves have survived at all.”
Tim said, “Wolves are survivors. They can make it no matter what happens.”
“Well, no,” Ryan said. “They almost didn’t survive humans. By 1940 there were only a handful of wolves left in the entire United States.”
“Don’t matter,” Tim said. “Like you said, they just retreated to Canada, ready to invade whenever the time was right. Biding their time. I hear other species do that, too. Can’t stamp ’em out, so you got to live with ’em.”
Ryan put down his fork and said evenly, “You’re talking about purple loosestrife.”
Tim said, “About what?”
Elizabeth said, “No, he’s not, Ryan—not every conversation is about purple loosestrife. He’s talking about Mom’s aliens.”
Tim said, “What’s purple loosestrife?”
Marianne said, “They’re not my aliens.”
“Sure they are,” Elizabeth said. “You helped make them welcome and now you want the ship built to go visiting.”
Ryan, for once his sister’s ally, said quietly, “She’s right, Mom. The Denebs were an invasive species, and now we’re reaping the consequences of having them here. You know that as well as anyone.”
Jason looked from his father to his grandmother. Marianne pressed her lips together and said nothing. Let the discussion die here. Connie, uncomfortable with friction of any kind, said brightly, “Who’d like more cake?”
But Tim said to Ryan, “Your mom’s right, you know. We should go to the stars. I mean—wow!”
Elizabeth said tightly, “No matter what the cost.”
“We already paid the cost,” Tim said. “So why not at least get what we paid for?”
“A great philosophy,” Elizabeth said. “The Children’s Crusade is already slaughtered, so why not have tea with the Saracens.”
“Who?” Tim said.
Ryan said, calmly but with a little too much emphasis, “An invasive species always disrupts an ecology. In this case, the ecology is the entire globe. It may end life as we know it. What, in your opinion, Tim, is worth that?”
Tim’s blue eyes glittered. “I didn’t say it was worth it. I said it was done. Take an even strain, man.”
Ryan said, “I’d rather you didn’t tell me how to behave in my own house.”
“Or more coffee!” Connie said desperately.
Elizabeth said, “The Deneb visit was a disaster. The follow-up is a disaster. Any return contact will be a disaster. That’s just the fucking truth, and you, Mom, won’t face it.”
Jason said, “Aunt Lizzie said a bad word!”
“Yes, darling, she did,” Connie said. “Elizabeth—”
“All right! I apologize for the word but not for the sentiments! Tim, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Come down to Texas and see what the Denebs’ ecological interference has done there. If you were anything but an urban New Yorker, you’d realize the full devastation.”
“I’m from Oklahoma,” Tim said. “Don’t patronize me.”
Marianne said, “The starship—”
“Will never be built,” Elizabeth said. “The plans are too different, too alien. Don’t you read about the difficulties human engineers are having in interpreting them?”
“Of course I do. Don’t patronize me, Elizabeth. Difficulties are not permanent impasses. Along with the advanced physics the Denebs gave us, we—”
“We what?” Ryan said. “Are farther ahead? The entire global ecology is becoming untenable. Invasive species—”
“We are the same species as the Denebs!” Marianne said. “The same species as Noah!”
She hadn’t meant to say it. It just burst out, driven by… everything. They all looked at her, even Jason, from wide eyes. The silence stretched and stretched, like taut cable. Before it could snap, Elizabeth murmured, “Let’s not discuss Noah. Connie, I will have more cake, thank you.”
Everybody reached for food, or resumed eating, or pretended to eat. Connie said to Jason, “You ate all your beets! Good boy!”
“I like beets,” Jason announced. “They’re red.”
“So they are,” Ryan said.
“Carrots are orange.”
“Clever boy!” Elizabeth said.
“Oranges are orange, too.” This struck Jason as funny; he giggled.
The adults exchanged strained smiles. Marianne avoided Ryan’s gaze. Did you? Did you?
In the next room, Colin began to wail.
All the way back to New York, after a night when Tim slept on Ryan’s sofa and Marianne barely slept at all, neither of them said a word. Grateful for this uncharacteristic tact, Marianne dozed, or gazed out the window, or turned on the radio to a station of classical music, without words. She’d had enough words. Fields and towns and boarded-up malls flew by.
One good thing: between exhaustion and worry and disappointment, Tim’s nearness did not disturb her at all. Sometimes you had to be grateful for what you could get.
CHAPTER 14
S plus 3.6 years
Marianne burst into the office of the Star Brotherhood Foundation. Her face shone. Sissy half rose from her chair—what could have happened to make Marianne look like that? Not that Sissy wasn’t happy to see her all lit up for a change! She said, “What is it?”
“Harrison,” Marianne said. “They’ve bred a strain of P. maniculatus that was exposed to R. sporii without contracting it! Finally!”