She shook her head. "It isn't going to happen, Jeron," she said, and explained why. Years before she had had a kid-not implant in her Fallopian tubes, as had nearly every nubile teenaged woman in Puget. Childbearing in Puget was almost always intentional, requiring an act of decision on at least the woman's part. He looked skeptical, then tolerant.
"We could always do it in vitro," he pointed out. "Or Aunt Eve will know how to reverse it. Or we could do tissue clones, like with Uncle Ghost's old blood specimens when we wanted to breed him after he died."
"Who's Uncle Ghost?"
"The one who died," he explained, and then, his face brightening, "Oh, Darien! We can do so much for you people!" He took another quick swig from the bottle, while Darien reflected that the last person who had said anything like that in her hearing was the commander of the Japanese warship across the bay. He swallowed hurriedly and went on. "Like Uncle Ski taught," he said, "Zen! You go through a couple of years of that and you're really able to handle things! Anything! And we can teach you— And all that waste space we flew over, why, with the vegetable wombs, we can fill that up in no time. And—"
"Can we tome in?" piped a voice from the door, interrupting him. The voice didn't wait for an answer but opened the door and entered, he oldest of the girls, Molomy, and one of the younger ones, perhaps the one called Ringo. "Been fucking?" Molomy asked politely. "They said you were up here, Jeron. Listen. You better come down to the ship. Uncle Ghost's there, and you won't believe what he's got with him!"
30
ON THE MORNING OF DAY 9563 I WOKE UP NEXT TO A perfect stranger. Well, I think it was Day 9563— somewhere around there, anyway—maybe as much as ten days after we had finally set down on Earth—how can you tell for sure, with all the relativistic corrections and complicated counting? Close enough. And Toby wasn't wholly a stranger, and not absolutely perfect.
But close enough.
He had sprawled one big thigh over my (big enough) thigh, which was friendly but inclined to cut off the circulation. My whole leg was asleep but, as 1 slid myself out from under and sat briefly on he edge of the bed, the part of me I sat on was happily awake and reminiscing of good fun gone by. Not perfect? Compared to what I'd been waking up next to for the past twenty years or more, Tobias Pettyvass was perfect enough.
So I woke up feeling like rather a different woman—no, not like a different woman. Like the woman I used to be when I was saucy young Eve Barstow, Queen of the Space Rangers, back around Day 250 or so when we were all young and medium innocent and very very scared of what we were into. Those were about the best days of my whole life, with Jim and me taking our turns in the Honeymoon Hotel and Eve and Ski tossing the ruble and Flo just beginning to play games with the hydroponics plants. Up to then, growing up. After then—God! But in that little time while we still thought we were doing something fine and never suspected anyone was manipulating us, yes, those were days to be glad to be alive in. . . .
And the funny thing was, when I caught a glimpse of myself in Toby's bathroom mirror, I looked like that little fresh Mrs. Eve Barstow! I had lost at least five kilos. I looked like somebody who was getting laid nicely. I wasn't any spring chicken—you might guess I was past the big Five Oh and you might even suspect the ten thousand liters of alcoholic bevs that had poured past those cupid's-bow lips. No Miss America! Not with the sagging stuff behind the cheekbones and under the chin, not to mention the eyes— And yet, you know, not bad! I wasn't a puddle of Silly Putty that walked like a woman any more. The drag of one-G exercise had sucked some of it off me, and there was a sparkle in the old blue eyes.
The sun was well up over the gorgeous blue Pacific, which meant it was late morning, pushing noon; I thought about waking Toby, but that peaceful bearded Toby mug lay so happily on the pillow that I didn't bother. And in the shower I found I was singing to myself. Softly. I didn't want to wake the man who had been guiding me so nicely around the wonders of Puget by day and the wonders of his bedroom by night. It was really astonishing what a few days had done for me, not just physically, not just mentally, not just emotionally— I don't know in what way. For instance. I'd been clinging to the illusion that I was the one person around Alpha Centauri who was essentially the same as the common run of humanity on Earth. Not flying off into the peculiar, like the rest of the grownups. Not raised to be bent, like the kids. Just normal. . . . But I wasn't! The experience had changed me too. Although I was the dummy of the group, I had learned the knack of learning and there was much to be learned: Toby was impressed, I could tell, by how much I knew and how much I could do as he showed me around the sleepy police station and the self-tending sewage plant and the parks and the bars of Puget. I wasn't Aunt Mommy—the kids were off on their own. I wasn't the wife of the famous astronaut, or even the local drunk and easy lay; I was just me, Eve Barstow, and me, Eve Barstow, seemed by then to be a very good thing to be. Good enough, it struck me, to have goodness to share.
Why not share it?
Why not spend the rest of my life right here in Puget, helping these people get their world together?
The more I thought of it the better I liked it; and so I stepped out of the shower, wrapped a towel around me, and shook Toby's shoulder. "Wake up, it's morning," I caroled, "and I'm going to stay here in Pugetl"
There was another nice thing about Toby Pettyvass. He woke up nicely. He didn't snort and struggle, like my whilom husband, or jerk like a galvanized frog leg, like Ski, or sulk, or glower, or do any of the other things my few recent bedmates had taught me to expect. He just opened his eyes and woke up. "That's nice," he said.
"But you'd better get up!" I leaned forward to let my hair hang down, then wrapped it in the towel. Toby was just lying there, admiring me. Fair exchange. I was admiring him, too: big man, former football player, now Darien's Chief of Special Services, which meant, mostly, that he was in charge of Puget's police and firefighters. And squiring around visiting ladies. "Look at the sun," I scolded.
Then I looked at it myself. The confounded thing was distinctly lower than it had been. "Oh, God," I said, "wrong ocean! It's the middle of the afternoon! We've been in bed all day!" So much for the swift and impressive Eve Barstow. . . .
But it was not for my brain alone that Toby admired me. "I like your outfit," he said, and grabbed. Since my outfit consisted of a soggy towel wrapped around my hair, I understood at once what he had in mind. Quel homme! Older than I was, waking up out of a sound sleep after an unusually active night, and he grabbed! Well. I knew what to do about that. 1 grabbed back, and the sun was lower still by the time we were conversational again. He at least had known well that it was afternoon, because he had been up for a couple of hours in the forenoon while sated Eve replenished her powers in sleep, had checked with the department to see if he was needed, wasn't, came back to bed without waking me.
"But don't they need you now and then?"
He shrugged. "They'll call me on the beeper if it's important. There was a little brushfire in the hills—we don't get them often, and they kind of appreciated the chance to handle it by themselves. How else are they going to learn?"
Now, do you see how quick and intelligent Eve Barstow is, after all?
I wasn't listening to him, I was listening to the urgings inside my own head. "I guess you didn't hear what I said," I told him, taking his hand off my breast and kissing him to show that he wasn't to take it personally. "I'm going to stay here, Toby."