“Yes, Rhea.”
Terra went away, and was replaced by Provincetown.
She was back in her own writing room in her own home, looking out of the turret through her favorite window, hearing the sounds of the street below, hearing the gulls and the distant surf, seeing Mrs. Vasques, her neighbor, haranguing yet another motorist who had clipped her fence in trying to negotiate the insanely narrow street. The illusion was nearly perfect—except for the same flaw it had had weeks ago, when Rand had first sprung it on her. This time, she was able to identify the flaw. This Provincetown didn’t smell. There was no salt tang in the air—none of that rich aroma that the landsman calls the smell of the sea and the sailor calls the smell of the land, the shore smell of decaying vegetation and sea creatures at the border between two incompossible worlds.
Maybe I could get a steward to bring me some fish leftovers, she thought, and began to cry. Fetal position is hard to achieve in free-fall, but she managed it.
She never did get back to work that afternoon. But she did manage to stop crying an hour before Duncan was due to bring Colly home for supper, so that her eyes wouldn’t be red when they arrived.
Rand showed up just as they did. He had been making a major effort to eat most meals with his family these days. For some reason, his arrival relieved her. Duncan declined an invitation to join them for dinner, and that relieved her too. During the meal she found herself paying more attention than usual to her husband, asking questions about his work and listening attentively to the answers, making little excuses to touch him. Before she knew it they had made a nonverbal contract, entirely by eye contact, to make love when he got home again that night. He went off to Jay’s place whistling.
She managed to get a little work done after supper, while Colly was off playing with a friend. She didn’t understand where the story was going, but it wouldn’t let her alone; its disturbing central image—adrift, running out of air, no direction home—had been recurring in her thoughts for weeks now. The question was, of course, who was adrift, and why? She had no clear idea as yet, but she knew if she kept playing with the situation it would come out of her eventually.
As she was putting Colly to bed that night, she said, “So—was it fun playing with Jason, honey?”
“He’s okay, I guess,” Colly said. “For a boy, anyway. At least he’s gonna be here a whole two weeks.” For Colly, the biggest flaw in the Shimizu’s accommodations was its criminally inadequate and excessively fluctuating supply of eight-year-olds. Children of transient guests rarely remained aboard more than a few days; permanent guests tended not to have small children, and by evil luck all the spacer children of hotel staff were either over ten or under six—less use than a grown-up. Colly still had all of her phone friends, of course, and her Provincetown chums were all phone friends too, now… but she was chronically short of playmates she could smell and touch.
“Oh, that’ll be fun,” Rhea said.
“I guess.” Suddenly Colly looked stricken. “Hey, Mom?”
“Yes, dear?”
“I just thought of something. My birthday comes in two and a half weeks, right?”
Rhea did mental arithmetic. “That’s right, honey. Why?”
Colly sat up on one elbow. “How am I gonna have a party?”
Rhea started to answer, and stopped.
“You can’t have a birthday party on the phone,” Colly said. “And all my friends are back on Earth! I’m not gonna get to have a real party, am I?” Her voice was rising in alarm.
“Uh… sure you will, honey. There’ll be kids aboard then, I’m sure there will. One or two, anyw—”
“But I won’t know them,” Colly insisted. “What good is a party with people you don’t even know?” She started to snuffle.
Rhea was tempted to join her. Instead she took Colly in her arms and rocked her. “Don’t cry, baby. It won’t be so bad. All your friends can be there on the phone—no, you know what? I’ll tell you what: we’ll get Daddy to merge all the phone signals into his shaping stuff, and your friends can be here almost like real, holographically, walking around and everything.” As she spoke, Rhea was estimating the cost of such an event: assuming Rand had time for this, and valuing his time at zero, it came to roughly the price of two luxury automobiles back on Terra. They could afford it, now—but still…
Colly considered the offer for a moment, then resumed snuffling, softer than before. “That’d be better… but you can’t tickle a holo, Mom. You can’t throw pieces of birthday cake at a holo.”
“Sure you can—only it’s even better, because nobody really gets messy. You wait and see: it’ll be fun.”
Colly was dubious, but after ten minutes of rocking and cuddling and soothing she allowed herself to be mollified, and went to sleep. Rhea left her bedroom exhausted and heartsick. Colly was right: a birthday party aboard the Shimizu probably wasn’t going to be much fun.
Less than a minute later, Rand arrived home, shiny-eyed and eager to make love.
Since adolescence Rhea had known that a contract with a man to have sex at an appointed time must be honored, if at all possible. Feeling martyred, she pasted a smile on her face and cooperated. But she made a mental note to discuss Colly’s birthday party with him as soon as they were done; she was not a hundred percent sure the consolation prize she had promised her daughter was technically feasible.
It was just as he was entering her that it dawned on her that the question might be moot: their child’s birthday came after the date on which she was to give Rand her final decision…
It was not a terribly erotic train of thought. The act was technically successful for both of them, for they had been married for a long time—but for the same reason, Rand asked, “Want to talk about it?” when their breathing had slowed.
She burst into tears. “I don’t even want to think about it.”
He held her close, but said nothing. He knew, in general, what was on her mind—and knew that she knew he knew. What was there for either of them to say?
What could Donny Handsome have said to Patty?
She untucked her chin from his neck and pushed at him with her hands; he rose far enough on his elbows so that she could see his face. She looked at it a long time… not just the eyes or the mouth, but the whole face. He waited. “You’re staying?” she said finally.
His face went blank. He was silent an equal time. She waited.
“Yes.”
She nodded, and pulled him back down to her. They lay there together in silence, breathing in the same rhythm and thinking the same thought.
What did that nod mean?
Twice, she felt him start to ask her. Each time he changed his mind. She couldn’t blame him—but part of her wished he had asked. If he had, perhaps an answer would have come to her.
She forgot to ask him about Colly’s birthday party that night.
Rhea knew that a real window like the one in her suite was supposed to be much better than a fake one—she knew, to the yen, how much more the former cost. But she was a shaper’s wife: to her Duncan’s fake window was just as good. Better, for she could shift to a view in any direction at all simply by touching a control. Somehow it felt more correct to talk with a Stardancer without Earth in the background, overshadowing everything.