Red Planet Run (16 page)

I’d never begun a naming ceremony before, and I strove for the sense of calm purpose and absolute certainty that always radiated from Mother when she began one. For a while I was afraid it wouldn’t come, that I wasn’t worthy enough.

The wick of the little candle flickered. The twins didn’t move. It did come at last, quietly, padding in like fog on little cat feet, to curl up in the corners and beneath the bed, a force that comforted and reassured and strengthened. It was almost like speaking to the Librarian, hearing a voice without words, seeing pictures without form, a presence that seeped into my skin, though I remained Star Svensdotter. I was not so much forced onto a path as I was shown the way and left to take the first step on my own. The decision was mine.

Once, at another naming long ago and a hundred million klicks behind, my grandmother had told me the storyknife had its own spirit, that the hand holding it was only a medium for the truths it had to impart. I believed her then. I believed her now. I believed her because I wanted to, because I needed to, because I had to, and I willed my children to believe, too. The haft of the storyknife slipped into my right palm and my fingers closed over it. The carved figures pressed into my skin—sun, whale, eagle, salmon, drum, otter—the ivory warm and tactile. Two houses appeared in the tray of red sand. “It was not the custom of your father’s family to choose their own names. His parents gave his names to him. Therefore I will tell you of his mother, and of his father.”

I drew the figure of a woman in one house. “His mother, your grandmother, is Uhura Mbele. Uhura means freedom, I think. She is a tall, slender woman, and beautiful. Her skin is black and polished. Her hair is thick and dark. Her eyes are large and brown and they look right through you to the truth behind. She’s the daughter of one of the oldest Zulu families of New South Africa, and serves the government as minister without portfolio, specializing in foreign affairs. Occasionally, New South Africa loans her out to the United Nations as an arbitrator. She negotiated the settlement that put Cyrus the Second of Persia on his throne.” I had to smile. “I only know her to talk to over the trivee, but even secondhand she seems a competent and formidable person. Very controlled, very dignified. The first time I talked to her from Ellfive, I was glad she was downstairs and I was up. Sometimes, Sean, when you’re especially determined, you look a lot like her. Sort of paralyzingly dignified, and, I don’t know, ungetatable, I guess.”

That surprised a giggle, quickly stifled, out of Paddy. I drew the figure of a man in the other house. “Caleb’s father, and your grandfather, was Sean O’Hara. Sean is John in Irish; it means ‘God is gracious.’ Sean was a mercenary in the New South African War of Independence, and in the Diamond War, in which he was killed leading the liberation of Mandelaville. He was a soldier, like your father. He died before I met Caleb, but I’ve seen some tapes. Big man with a bigger laugh that reminded me of my father when I heard it. He looked like someone who took only big bites, and made sure to sample everything that came his way. Sometimes, Paddy, when you laugh that belly-laugh of yours, you look and sound just like him.”

I drew a path from the door of each house and brought them both together to form a single line. Beside it I drew another figure, a male. “Caleb Mbele O’Hara was their son.”

Sean’s breath expelled on a long, queer sigh. Paddy reached for his hand and gripped it tightly.

“Caleb is a biblical name. It means faithful.” I drew the symbol for friend, as close as I could get to faithful in storyknife.

“Mbele is an African name. It was your grandmother’s family name. It means forest spirit.” I drew the symbol for anua.

“Like a kobold?”

I shook my head. “A German kobold is more like an Irish leprechaun, mischievous, malicious, often dangerous. An mbele is like an Aleut anua, a thing more of the heart, and of the soul, and of the essence of all living things.”

“O’Hara is an Irish name. It was your grandfather’s family name. It means Irish chieftain, or that the first O’Hara was one—I’m not sure which.” I drew the symbol for chief.

“Caleb was a soldier, like his father, and then a minister, like his mother. He was a friend of your Uncle Simon’s downstairs, before either of them came upstairs to work for me.” My grip tightened on the storyknife.

“We met in January of 2006, on Ellfive, the habitat now known as Terranova. We were about to commission, a month away from the arrival of the first Terran colonists.”

I told them of my first sight of their father, my new security supervisor, spiraling out of control in free fall across the warehouse lock. “It was not a sight to inspire confidence,” I said, smiling a little. “As first impressions go, it wasn’t very accurate, either. Your father was the best at whatever he did.”

I told them how Caleb charmed their cousin Elizabeth with limericks.

“Limericks?” Paddy exclaimed.

I nodded. “When we first met, he used to make them up. Bad ones. His life was threatened from time to time over them.”

“Tell us one,” Sean demanded.

“One about you,” Paddy agreed, nodding.

I couldn’t remember any about me, but I could remember one about Elizabeth, and I recited it for them.

At Ellfive the resident elf
Put her gravity one day on the shelf
In a single bound
She reached the speed of sound
And inertia ran away with herself.

“Whew,” Paddy said, and Sean looked pained.

“I warned you.” I told of the evening Caleb came calling and found me skating alone on the tiny lake above my house in the Big Rock Candy Mountains on the South Cap, of the orchids he seduced me with. As I drew their outlines, I could see their burnt-orange blush, could smell their bittersweet fragrance.
Cattelya labiata biensientes.
October orchids.

“Dad was a gardener?” Paddy blurted. A tiny smile curled the corners of Sean’s mouth.

“An amateur one. He specialized in orchids. He used up most of his baggage allowance to bring them upstairs.”

“Most of?” Sean said. “What did the rest go for?”

“A Remington scattergun. Your father was always practical.” I laughed, surprising myself and, from their expression, the twins as well. “I was furious with him. At that time there were no weapons allowed on the habitat. My orders. But, unbeknownst to me, Helen and Frank had sent Caleb up as my bodyguard.”

“Bodyguard?”

I shrugged. “There was some trouble with Luddites and other crazies. Helen and Frank were worried, so they sent Caleb up to keep an eye on me. I thought I was getting a new security supervisor, when in reality I was getting my very own personal Doberman pinscher.”

“Mom?”

“What, Paddy?”

She hesitated only a moment. “What’s skating?”

I must have gaped at her, because she flushed, but she continued to stare at me challengingly out of my eyes and her father’s face. “You said Dad caught you skating. What’s that?”

I floundered. “Skate on the ice, uh, on metal blades attached to boots. It’s a sport, on Terra. There are different moves, jumps, spins… Paddy, I know I told you about my skating.” She remained uncomprehending. I shifted uncomfortably. “I, uh, well, I even made it to the Anchorage Olympics.”

Her eyes widened and she sat up straight. I held up a hand. “I didn’t win; I barely placed.” Ruefully, I added, “Even then, I didn’t have a whole lot of finesse. I was too big and too slow and I had a fatal tendency to skate from jump to jump. I doubt that I would have made the Olympic team at all if Harriet Dabney hadn’t fallen three times in the nationals.”

“Yes, you would,” Sean said. He shifted beneath our stare. “At Leif’s naming, he said something about your being in the Olympics,” he mumbled. “I was curious. I had Archy look it up.” He raised his head and said earnestly, all embarrassment aside, “Archy has you on tape. You were
good
.”

Of all the compliments I had ever received in my life, that was unquestionably the sweetest. Paddy’s expression was harder to define, and took me a moment to recognize. It was pride. And she was looking at me.

“So Dad caught you skating,” Sean prompted, “and he brought you orchids. Then what?”

At first I wasn’t going to tell them, and then I thought, Why not? It was the truth. “And then we practiced making you.”

Sean blushed to the roots of his hair, but Paddy demanded, “And all he did was bring you flowers? Boy, Mom, you were easy.”

But I heard her tone, and we exchanged our first woman-to-woman grin.

Thoreau said most men lead lives of quiet desperation. I’d always lived, or wanted to live, a life of noisy joy. The noise had always been there, but the joy had been made conspicuous by its absence for some time. This was what Helen had tried to tell me, back on Outpost. This was what Charlie had been trying to tell me for the last ten years. This was why Mother had given me the storyknife. She hadn’t known I would need it, but she had hoped.

That night, for the first time in twelve years, I opened up the floodgates to memory, and Caleb’s presence became a living, breathing force on board the
Kayak,
until I could almost see him, standing straight and stocky, the wide, teasing grin splitting his dark face in two, the scar drawing his right eyebrow up into a satanic twist, the green eyes serene. Caleb never got excited about anything.

Well, not often. I told the twins of the first visit to the
Conestoga,
which I was glad to learn they didn’t remember, when Captain Lavoliere had removed patches of their skin to add to his colony’s genetic pool. “It was the first and only time I saw your father lose his temper. I had to tackle him on his way back to the
Conestoga,
and believe me, your father didn’t tackle easy. He didn’t speak to me for weeks.”

Until the night before he died. The memory hurt. I faced it, accepted it, and kept talking.

An hour passed, two. In all that time neither twin moved from their position or tried to stem the flow. Silent tears dripped into the tray of sand, wiping out lines even as I drew them, smoothing over figures until they softened and blurred. Neither twin moved to stop the tears, either. I talked until my voice was hoarse, until I ran out of words, until the makeshift wick burned up the last of the oil and the room was plunged into shadow.

“I’m glad you killed him, Mom,” Paddy said suddenly, passionately. “I’m glad you killed Lavoliere.”

Sean squeezed her hand. I took a deep, shaky breath. “It didn’t bring your father back, Paddy.”

Sean spoke. “Tonight did, though. Didn’t it, Mom?” He gestured. “He was here. Dad was here. I could feel him. For the first time since he died, I could really feel him.” His hand tightened on Paddy’s. “He was here.”

The storyknife was warm in my hand. “Maybe he was,” I whispered. “Maybe he was.”

We sat still for a moment, before Sean rose to his feet, moving stiffly after all that time sitting on the floor. He tugged Paddy around the tray of red sand to stand before me, and reached out one square hand, already calloused, already capable, to cup my cheek. He leaned down and kissed me, as much of a salute as a caress. “Thanks, Mom,” he said simply. “I love you.”

He looked at Paddy. Something slid down her cheek. She erased it with an annoyed swipe of her hand. “I guess you really did love him, Mom.”

“I guess I really did,” I replied.

We stared at each other. “Okay,” she said at last. “Okay, Mom.” She leaned over and kissed me, too, twice, once on each cheek, and again, like her brother, there was as much tribute as affection in the gesture. She leaned her forehead against mine, just for a moment, eyes closed, before allowing Sean to pull her towards the door.

“Guys,” I said as they turned to their room. “What I said before still goes. We operate on the assumption that whoever killed the Tallshippers is still out there. Outside this craft we go armed. We start standing watches tomorrow, too, and from now on the infrared sensors are set every night at sunset. And target practice for all hands at 1700 hours every Monday.”

All my little homily on crew safety and ship’s security got me was two identically raised eyebrows. “Don’t spoil it, Mom,” Sean said, a little smile kicking up one corner of his mouth.

“You can’t anyway,” Paddy added.

“Good night, Mom,” Sean said.

“ ‘Night, Mom,” Paddy echoed. “Sleep tight, and don’t let the bedbugs bite.”

The door closed behind them. I went to my own bed and fell straight to sleep and didn’t wake up until the alarm blared in my ear. If ice slid off the roof, I didn’t hear it. If Kwan tried breaking into our airlock, he did so quietly. I had no dreams, either. Or none I remembered.

I guess I really did love him. I guess I didn’t know how much, until then.

For my part, I travel not to go anywhere, but to go. I travel for travel’s sake. The great affair is to move.

 

—Robert Louis Stevenson

 

I’D BEEN KEEPING A LOG
, partly because that’s what ship’s captains do during voyages, partly to fill in time between walks and books. And let’s face it, if you work at it hard enough, just being in motion can disguise, for a while at least, the dismal fact that you aren’t getting anywhere.

At any rate, the following morning, a Monday, I made an entry in my log: “Taking the day off. Maybe tomorrow, too. Maybe the whole week. Don’t call us, we’ll call you.” I saved it and bounced it, and wasted at least a full minute savoring Helen’s reaction when she read it two weeks from now. I sat at CommNav for a while longer, scanning the horizon for signs of life, and was relieved to find none. Kwan was on Mars, of that I was convinced, but from the dust that layered the devastation of the Tallshippers’ habitat, he was long gone from the area. The freighter he’d hijacked on Ceres wasn’t capable of planetfall. I wondered how he’d achieved the surface, and in what, and who he’d stolen it from.