“If debate has to be cut off,” I said, “who does the cutting?”
Renna looked at me shrewdly. She was enjoying herself, but I had to ask, despite all their obvious sophistication, despite their time on Mars, did they truly understand how a Martian felt? “When a society can’t do the good drive, as Orianna might say — when it refuses its responsibilities — then other means must be tried.”
“Force?” I asked.
“Renna dearly loves to debate,” Paul said confidentially to Allen. “This ship has been too quiet, too polite.”
“Where Mars and Earth cannot agree, there is always room for growth and discussion,” Renna concluded, staring at me in an entirely friendly and expectant way. “Force is an old habit I do not approve of.” She obviously wanted me to counter, but something had cut deep and I did not wish to oblige her. I gave a cool smile, inclined, and tapped my plate to signal the arbeiter I was finished.
“We sometimes forget the sensibilities of others, in our enthusiasm” Paul said warily.
“It’s nothing,” Allen said. “We’ll pick up the discussion later.”
Bithras had a lot on his mind. His behavior was exemplary. He seemed more a concerned blood uncle than a boss; sometimes a teacher, sometimes a fellow student working with Allen and me to riddle the puzzles of Earth. Never the sacred monster my mother had described.
His transition, in the middle of our sixth month, came abruptly enough to catch me completely off guard. Bithras called me to his cabin for consultation. He had taken to wearing tennis togs again, and as I came in, he sat in his white cotton shirt and shorts, legs pushed against the opposite wall, slate on his lap.
“A lot of tension on Mars this week,” he said.
“I haven’t seen anything in the LitVids,” I said casually.
“Of course not,” he said with a twitch of his mouth. “I wouldn’t expect it to get that far. Not yet. Two BMs have decided to make their own proposals for unification.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Mukhtiar and Pong.”
“Not top five…” I asked.
“And not likely to attract any attention… on Earth. But I made a lot of concessions and forced a lot of favors to carry our proposal to Earth. Some people who are nervous are much more nervous now. If I am undercut, if someone decides to mount a strong campaign across Mars before we arrive… concessions to Earth, sellouts…” He lifted his hand and squinted at me. “Not fun. I worry about Cailetet. They seem to believe they have extra cards in the game.”
I shook my head in sympathy. He leaned back a few more centimeters and looked me over. “What have you learned from the Terries?”
“A lot, I think.”
“Do you know that Terries have been increasing the average age for first sexual experience for the last thirty years, and that more and more of them never have physical sex at all, up to ten percent now?” He squinted skeptically, as if mounting a speculation.
“I’ve heard that,” I said.
“Some people marry and have sex only in sims.”
I had been so calmed by his straight and narrow behavior for so many weeks that even now I suspected nothing.
“There have been marriages between thinkers and humans. Marriages physically celibate but mentally promiscuous. People who have children without having sex and without giving birth. Marvels and frights to a red rabbit.”
“We have ex utero babies on Mars,” I said quietly, wondering what he was up to.
“I prefer the old fashioned way,” he said, fixing his round black eyes on me. “There has been damned little of that this voyage. All work. You have not been very romantically adventurous either, I notice.”
Signals of caution finally broke through. I didn’t answer, just shrugged, hoping my uncomfortable silence would be enough to deflect the course of the conversation.
“We will be working together for many months.”
“Right,” I said.
“Is it possible to be completely comfortable together, working for so long?”
“We’ll have to be,” I said. “We’ll be red rabbits among the Terries.”
He nodded emphatically. “Among very strange and high-powered people. It will cause tensions far worse than what I feel now, going over these recent messages. We’re in a war of nerves, Casseia, and we might enjoy — mutually — a place of retreat… from the war.”
“I’d like to read the messages,” I said.
“I would not feel comfortable taking solace from a Terrie woman.”
“I’m not sure this is — ”
He pushed on with a little shake of his head. “What if I work very hard on a temporary relationship, and it can be only that, and discover the woman from Earth wants me to have sex only in sim?” He stared at me incredulously.
Angering by slow degrees, I kept in mind my mother’s admonition: be clever, be witty. I felt neither clever nor witty but I did not yet ramp to complete indignation.
“I like to resolve difficulties, make arrangements, early,” Bithras said. He reached up and stroked my arm, quickly moving to grip my shoulder. He let go of my shoulder and ran a finger lightly on the fabric centimeters above my breast. “You are much more… to me.”
“Within the family?”
“That is not an obstacle.”
“Oh,” I said. “An arrangement of convenience.”
“Much more than that. We may both focus on our work, having this resolved.”
“A stronger relationship.”
“Certainly,” Bithras said.
Delicately, I pushed back his arm.
“What you’re saying is, we should start our family now, right?” I said cheerily.
He drew his head back, dismayed, “Family?”
“We need to make more red rabbits, right? To offset Earth’s billions? A policy matter.”
“Casseia!” he said. “You deliberately misunderstand — ”
I cut him off. “I hadn’t planned on procreating so early, but if it serves policy, I suppose I must.” Wit or not, I forged ahead. I put on a stoic face, lifted my hand to my brow, and said, “Bithras, all that can be asked of any red doe, in this life, is to lie back and think of Mars.”
He made a face of sharp distaste. “That is not funny, Casseia. I am discussing serious difficulties in our personal lives.”
“I’ll have to update my medical nano,” I said. “Bichemistry is different in pregnant women.”
“You miss my meaning completely.” He stretched out his arms and again one hand touched my shoulder, moved to my upper breast, while his eyes held me, tried to convince me that this was not what it might seem. “Am I not attractive?”
I lifted my eyebrows and removed his hand again. “You should talk to my father. He understands family politics and proprieties better than I. Certainly in the matter of liaisons and alliances… and children.”
Bithras slumped his shoulders and waved his hand weakly. “I’ll transfer the docs to your slate. Alice already has them,” he said. Then he shook his head with genuine sadness and perhaps regret.
Guiltless, I did not feel at all sorry.
I left his cabin with a dizzy sense of lightness. Forewarned was forearmed. The lightness reverted to anger once I was in my own cabin, and I sat on the bed, pounding the fabric so hard I lifted my bottom several centimeters. Then I lay back and counted backwards, eyes closed, teeth clenched. He has no more control than a baby wetting his diapers, said a calm, cold voice in my head, the part of me that still thought clearly when I was upset. “He has no more technique than a tunnel bore,” I said out loud. “He’s inept.”
I sat up, rubbed my eyes, and took a deep breath.
Voice or vid communication between Tuamotu and Mars was too expensive to be indulged in lightly. I sent text letters instead, addressing Father, Mother, and Stan; but the last letter I sent, in the beginning of our eighth month, before he slowed for Earth orbit, I addressed to Mother alone.