China Mountain Zhang (14 page)
Read China Mountain Zhang Online
Authors: Maureen F. McHugh
I regret the offer immediately and think to myself, why’d you make it if you didn’t want to? Contrary as I am I insist more. He doesn’t want to bed her down in the dorm, she’s so tired she needs a quiet place to sleep and he has to be tired as well. The transport will be fine parked on my pull-off. I’ve a sofa that opens out to make a bed and an extra bedroom. Again it’s the little girl that decides him. I expect that he’ll put her on the couch, but he says they can sleep together in the bedroom. I’m relieved—once he says that, I realize that my offer could have been misconstrued.
He has to go out to the transport and get their little bag of things, then he sits her on the edge of the bed and pulls the shirt over her head. She is passive and limp, her head seems too heavy to support. He is matter-of-fact, helping her hands find the sleeves with an air of practice. Then he pulls the blankets over and sets the bed to keep her warm.
We go back out to the front room and have two more beers. I tell him a little about Jerusalem Ridge, find myself unexpectedly talking about what it was like when I first came here and so many people had been relocated that we had a severe labor shortage. He asks intelligent questions. He has been promised his own plot in three years, but I warn him that the way things get done around here it could be five.
He’s thirty-four. I’m forty-two. Theresa is six-and-a-half.
We go to bed early. I lie awake, over-stimulated I suppose. I
can’t hear anything, but I feel as if I can hear them breathing. The house seems full. After a while the breathing turns into the ocean, and at four-thirty the bed wakes me and I have been dreaming of the Pacific. In my dream, the sky was full of crows.
can’t hear anything, but I feel as if I can hear them breathing. The house seems full. After a while the breathing turns into the ocean, and at four-thirty the bed wakes me and I have been dreaming of the Pacific. In my dream, the sky was full of crows.
My separator is on the fritz again. It is because it is built and programmed to handle five to ten cows and I have twelve nannies. It has the capacity to handle the amount of milk but I jury-rigged it to handle the nannies and it just breaks down all the time. I manage to get them milked myself and to start the damn thing manually but that means that a chore that should take twenty minutes takes over an hour. I get back in at six-thirty. My company isn’t up yet, so I stir up biscuit batter. By seven the biscuits are baking, the second batch of coffee is ready. Alexi appears dressed at a little before seven-thirty, followed by Theresa rubbing her eyes. I serve biscuits covered with cheese and raisins, rice stir-porridge with milk, and fruit juice. I can’t pretend I eat this way every morning, usually I eat a bowl of porridge and wash it down with coffee.
“Did you sleep well?” I ask, cruelly bright-eyed.
“Terrific. I can’t believe you have made all this, what time did you get up?”
“Before five,” I say.
“For us?” Alexi asks, conscience-stricken.
“Of course not, I have a farm to run. I hoped to get some honey ready to ship, but I’ll have to call Caleb and tell him it won’t be ready until tomorrow.”
He asks why and I tell him about my troubles with my separator-milker manager system. While I talk I watch Theresa who has apparently never had biscuits with cheese and raisins. She eats her porridge for a while before working up the nerve to try it. Then she puts it down and I think she doesn’t like it but after a bit she tackles it again and eventually eats half.
Alexi asks me questions about the system, eats a bowl of porridge and three biscuits, then polishes off what his daughter didn’t finish. “Maybe I can fix it,” he says, “I’m good at fixing things.”
Fine with me. Theresa is excited about going to see the goats. I send him down to the goats while I call Caleb and explain that the honey will be late. When I get down to the goats Alexi is jacked into the system and Theresa is gingerly petting Cleopatra, who is pregnant. Five of the nannies are pregnant, which is going to cut down on my income for awhile, but I’ve decided to go ahead and have more space added to the farm so I’ll be able to expand. Alexi has the absorbed look of someone jacked in, and Theresa seems happy so I decide to do bee work.
After an hour or so Alexi comes to find me. “I can fix your program quickly and it should be all right, but have you thought about when you have the new goats?”
I have but I don’t like to. “I suppose I’ll have to get a new system,” I say.
He shakes his head. “I can modify the system, but it would take me awhile and today I have to get back to the complex with the transport. But if you’d like I could come back and do it, maybe on Sunday. I have Sunday free.”
“I could pay you,” I say. “That would be great.”
“No need to pay, I owe you for all your hospitality.”
We argue about payment, and finally I agree, stipulating that he and Theresa come for lunch and dinner on Sunday.
Then we all go back to the house and I walk them to the pull-off. He boosts her into the cab of the transport, swings in himself and closes the door. I stand politely and watch them off. Then, freed, I wander back to the house now given back to me. I strip the sheets off the guest bed and remake it, then I clean my kitchen, singing to myself. I work the rest of the day, checking my little bit of vegetables, cleaning the goat pen, and spend the bulk of the afternoon straining and cooking honey. It’s good to be by myself.
I listen to music I haven’t listened to in years, some things I always think of as West Virginia music.
I listen to music I haven’t listened to in years, some things I always think of as West Virginia music.
In the afternoon I find myself planning what to cook for Theresa and Alexi. I have a fancy rice and bean dish, but if I’m going to make it there are a few things I want to buy. It’s a bit of work. And maybe a cake. Theresa would like that.
Sunday they come at about eleven, Theresa first, skating down the corridor the way children and martian-born do, the way those of us who came to maturity on Earth never learn. Alexi comes after her, smiling. “Martine!” he says, “hello!” The cake is iced, there’s a big pitcher of lemonade sitting on the table. Theresa is standing in the kitchen looking at the cake with white icing and strawberries sliced to make flowers on the top. Alexi whisks her up and says, “Look at that, Little Heart.”
“What are the red things?”
“Strawberries. Fresh strawberries. We used to have strawberries when I was a little boy. They’re wonderful.”
Theresa has never had strawberries? What were things like in a resettlement camp?
We have rice and beans and then big slices of cake. Theresa wants a flower so I cut her a piece she can never eat but she makes a pretty good-sized dent. Then her father finishes it. For a little guy, Alexi Dormov can put away the food. He eats like he never knows when he’ll eat again. Then he goes to work on the separator and I take Theresa out to the garden and teach her to pick beans. The dome is opened and the summer sun pours through the polarized glass. I bring Cleopatra in and ask Theresa to keep her from eating and the two of them run up and down between the rows. If Cleo drops a nannie-kid I’ll name her Theresa.
I’m nervous with her; she likes me but I don’t know how to act around a little girl. And I don’t want to have to entertain her. But I don’t have to, she’s busy with Cleopatra.
After awhile I go to check on Alexi and bring him a fresh glass of lemonade. He’s still jacked in, sitting mesmerized. He has a pad on his lap and he’s scribbled some symbols down on it but he’s not looking at it. I know reprogramming is complicated so I just wait until he notices me and jacks out. He grins and pushes his hair off his face.
“How’s it going?” I ask.
“Okay,” he says, “It’s going to take me awhile. Is Theresa driving you crazy?”
“No, she’s playing with one of the goats.”
“Just my luck, my kid’s best friend is a goat.”
A world of regret in that comment, although he says it lightly enough. When his smile disappears and his face is still for a moment I assume he’s thinking of Yorimitsu. I almost say, “Kids are resilient,” even though it’s one of those fallacies like middle-aged women liking children. But that’s not what he’s thinking at all. “Martine,” he says, “they’re going to transfer us again, and I don’t know what to do.”
“What?” I say.
“They’re going to transfer me again. Isn’t it enough to send us to Mars?” He never raises his voice, it is easy to miss the despair in what he says.
“They’re shipping you off Mars?” I ask. I can’t imagine where else they would send him. Or why.
“No,” he says, “not off Mars. They’re talking about the water reclamation project down at the pole.”
“What about Theresa?” I ask. Life down at the pole is primitive and dangerous.
“I don’t know,” he says. “They haven’t really said we’re going yet.”
“What makes you think they’re going to send you,” I say, and realize as I say it that it sounds as if he’s some sort of paranoid.
“I
know
. I’ve been through this now four times. I know when they’re going to ship us off.” He balls his fists and puts them
together as it all boils out of him. “First Geri and I volunteered for resettlement in Nevada because they were going to send us anyway, then the water dried up and Geri got dysentery while they were shipping us to Yorimitsu and I gave her all my water and even some of the baby’s but she still dehydrated and died. I volunteered for South Africa because I thought that a veteran would be treated a little better and because they were criticizing me for my attitude after Geri died—I thought I didn’t want Theresa to grow up with a counter-revolutionary father and now it doesn’t matter at all because everybody’s just embarrassed about the whole Cleansing Winds nonsense. When I came back they put us in Buffalo. Then when we were in Buffalo they started all this nonsense about Mars. I thought, I’m a vet, Theresa’s six, they won’t uproot us again. But they did. And now they’re talking about the water reclamation project at the pole.”
know
. I’ve been through this now four times. I know when they’re going to ship us off.” He balls his fists and puts them
together as it all boils out of him. “First Geri and I volunteered for resettlement in Nevada because they were going to send us anyway, then the water dried up and Geri got dysentery while they were shipping us to Yorimitsu and I gave her all my water and even some of the baby’s but she still dehydrated and died. I volunteered for South Africa because I thought that a veteran would be treated a little better and because they were criticizing me for my attitude after Geri died—I thought I didn’t want Theresa to grow up with a counter-revolutionary father and now it doesn’t matter at all because everybody’s just embarrassed about the whole Cleansing Winds nonsense. When I came back they put us in Buffalo. Then when we were in Buffalo they started all this nonsense about Mars. I thought, I’m a vet, Theresa’s six, they won’t uproot us again. But they did. And now they’re talking about the water reclamation project at the pole.”
“They won’t send you, they couldn’t send a man with a six-year-old daughter,” I say, thinking that the Commune couldn’t possibly.
“You don’t understand,” he says, “we’ve no
guanxi,
no connection, no string. Everybody just wants to get rid of us. We’re human trash. Disposable. Less useful than goatshit, because you can dump that back in the soil.”
guanxi,
no connection, no string. Everybody just wants to get rid of us. We’re human trash. Disposable. Less useful than goatshit, because you can dump that back in the soil.”
The Commune won’t send them, I think. How would you feel if your wife died of dehydration, I also think, and what kind of society allows that? The Commune must be better than that, must be better than earth if that’s what earth is reduced to.
I hear the sniff and look around. Theresa is standing there holding on to Cleopatra. Cleopatra looks at us with golden eyes expressionless as agates. Theresa rubs her nose with her arm and rubs her eye with her fist, crying and trying to be quiet and trapped between backing away and coming towards us. Did she hear? Or did she just fall or something?
“Baby?” Alexi says, “what’s wrong?”
“Are we going to move again?”
“Oh, baby,” Alexi says helplessly.
Theresa is easily consoled, but that afternoon she pesters her father. She tries to pick up Cleopatra—possible because the gravity is weak but not probable because Cleo isn’t interested. I don’t think Cleo is likely to get hurt, even if dropped, but a flailing hoof could hurt Theresa so I finally have to put the nannie up. Theresa plays awhile but is clearly bored and pesters her father some more. At dinner she doesn’t want soup, just cake, and bursts into angry tears when told that they can’t stay the night.
“We’re a little monster tonight, aren’t we,” Alexi says.
He carries her out to the scooter and puts her in front of him on the seat. I walk down with them, mostly because I am so eager to see them go and don’t want them to know. I send them home with soup and cake.
The program on the separator isn’t finished and Monday morning I milk by hand and manually start the separator. Then I check my bees. I’m creating queens to sell, feeding larvae royal jelly. I have to keep them separate, of course, no queen is going to let my royal larvae live in her hive. The little unit that controls environment has gone on the fritz. It’s a cheap little unit, it wouldn’t cost anything to replace on earth but we’re moving away from opposition, when earth is closest to Mars, to conjunction when Mars is on one side of the sun and the earth is on the other side. I’ll order by transmitter but it will probably be about eighteen months until we start getting regular shipments. It’s a twenty-six-month cycle from opposition to opposition and the shipping window is about eight months, we’ve got another month and a half, but many of those ships already left earth. And right now I’m going to lose some of my royal larvae.
I wonder if Alexi could fix it and decide to have him look at it when he comes in the evening to finish the separator.
He comes alone this evening. Forgive me, but I am relieved. “Where’s Theresa?” I ask.
“At the creche,” he says, “sometimes I need a little time off.”
I realize that I’m alone with Alexi for the first time and I’m nervous. My hand smooths my hair. I’m eight years older than Alexi and not interested. I don’t want him to think I’m interested, I want to be friends. I’m sure he’s not interested either, so why am I nervous? “Have a beer,” I say.
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