It wasn’t just that. Part of what had made his work better in the Shimizu had been the heart-stopping grandeur of space itself, the bliss of zero gee. Space was as magical as Provincetown, in a different way; maybe more so—surely Rhea would see and respond to that, just as he had.
You hope…
Anyway, what was so great about P-Town? Okay, it was beautiful; sure, it was timeless; granted, it was magical. This chair he was rocking in, for instance: beautiful and timeless and magical. But it made noises like rifle fire, and leaned ever so slightly out of true, and wasn’t especially comfortable without the pillows that always slipped out of adjustment. So what if it had belonged to Rhea’s great-grandmother? So what if it had been the chair in which the infant Rhea had been breast-fed… and Colly too?
The answer was all around him—hanging from every wall, perched on nearly every flat surface. Pictures of eight generations of Paixaos, as far back as imaging technology allowed, ranging from faded black and white daguerrotypes of Cap’n Frank and Marion to paused holoblocks of Rhea, Colly and himself. Hundreds of Paixaos and their kin, in dozens of settings… and every single image had Provincetown somewhere in the background. Beautiful. Timeless. Magical…
On the mantle, amid the more recent Paixaos, was a holo of Rand’s parents, Agnes and Tom, taken just before their divorce. The background was Newark, New Jersey.
There was no point to this: he already knew he wanted the job badly enough to take it; whether he should want it that badly or not seemed irrelevant. Nonetheless he flogged himself, as his penance, endlessly replaying the argument until it became a loop that annihilated time.
I want to be great. Is that so terrible?
Just as he felt that his brain might explode, thirty-five kilos of eight-year-old reality landed on his lap like a tonne of bricks, shouting, “Boo!” and his heart nearly exploded instead. Daylight and his daughter had crept up on him.
“I scared you, Daddy!” she reported with glee. “I did, didn’t I?”
For an instant he was tempted to use Colly as a new club to beat himself—how can you ask a child to go pioneering?—but he shifted gears instead, grabbed her in his arms and stood up. “That you did, baby,” he said, clutching her close. “That you did.”
“Did you catch it, Daddy?”
“Huh?”
“Whatever made you stay up all night. Did you get it?”
“Oh. Uh… not yet, sweetheart. I got a look at it, but it got away.”
“Don’t matter about it,” she advised him. “You’ll get it next time.”
Her optimism—and the boundless, unquestioning faith that underlay it—floored him. I can’t be a bastard, he thought. I’d never have fooled her. He hugged her even closer, making her squeal. “That I will,” he agreed. “Right now, let’s you and me get us some grub.”
“I cook,” she said quickly. Her faith in him had practical limits. That was why he could trust it.
“Deal,” he agreed.
And she did cook a better breakfast than he could have—albeit somewhat more messily. Rhea came in while she was doing it, and stood in the doorway in her bathrobe watching and trying not to smile. Colly refused to let either of them help, or even coach. By the time they were all sitting down eating together, it seemed to have been decided that today was a happy day. Rhea’s eyes were unguarded when they met his. The Issue was still there between them, but it was on hold for the moment.
After the meal, it was Rhea who said, “Colly, sit back down. You can be a little late for playgroup today. Your father and I need to talk about something with you.”
“Aw, Mom—do you have to? Sarah’s gonna bring her cat in today, and she swears it has thumbs!”
“Yes, honey, it’s important.”
“Four of ’em! Oh, okay, go ahead.” She sat back and adjusted her nervous system to fidget mode.
Rhea handed the ball to him. “Rand?”
He cleared his throat. “Colly… have you ever thought about… living somewhere else?”
“You mean I’m going to grandma’s house again? How long this time?”
“No, honey, that’s not what I meant. I mean… all three of us moving away from here, to a new home.”
“And not coming back?”
“That’s right. Not ever.”
The notion did not seem to shock Colly. “Where?” she asked practically.
“Well, remember that time we went to visit Uncle Jay?”
She got excited. “Go to space, you mean? And stay there? In that cool hotel? Oh, wow!”
“You really liked it that much?” Rhea asked, surprised.
“Da! Si! Ja! Oui!” Colly said. “I’m not little in space!”
Both parents were startled into laughter.
“It’s true,” she insisted. “I can reach everything there, and look grown-ups in the eye, and I’m as strong as anybody and not clumsy like everybody else. Besides, it’s fun! When do we go?”
Even Rand was taken aback by support this enthusiastic. “But baby… you know if we stay in free-fall for long, we have to stay forever?”
“Sure.”
“Well… won’t you miss your friends?”
She thought about it. “I could still call them up, right? We could holo-play. And they could come visit me realies, sometimes. And I’d make lots of new friends. I’m good at that.”
Rand squelched a grin. “Well… yes, you are. But won’t you miss… this house, and P-Town… and everything?”
“And the beach?” Rhea prompted. “And the ocean?”
Colly looked around her. “I guess. But if I do, you can just make it for me, Daddy. Anyway, you can’t play six-wall here. I tried.”
He didn’t have to look at his wife to know that she was looking faintly stricken. Her only potential ally had defected. He wanted to put an arm around her, but was not sure whether that would make it worse.
Colly had gone from fidget to bounce mode. “Can I go tell everybody now, Daddy? How soon are we going, Mommy? I gotta go get dressed! Oooh, Kelly’s gonna be so jealous—”
“Hold your horses, young lady. Nothing’s been decided yet. Your mother and I are still discussing the idea—”
Colly wasn’t listening. Her eyes had gone wide. “Wait a minute—this means you got the job, didn’t you, Daddy? You get to work with Uncle Jay now! They picked you! Oh, I knew they would! I told you they would!”
Rhea winced.
“We are going, we are! Can I go tell Kelly now? And Sigrid? And Bobby?”
The choices were let her go or strap her down. “Maybe you better get dressed first,” Rhea said.
Colly looked down at her rumpled pajamas, and giggled. “Oh, okay, if you insist,” she said, and ran for the stairs. She was naked before she reached the top.
Rand and Rhea looked at each other. Each waited for the other to speak, with voice or expression.
“We have to laugh,” he said finally.
“Oh yeah? Why?”
“Because if we strangle each other, who’s going to take Colly to playgroup?”
And so they laughed.
“Come on, somebody,” Colly called from upstairs. “Get dressed! I’m almost ready already!”
They laughed harder, and then got up together and sprinted up the stairs, shouting, “Yes, ma’am! Right away, Your Highness!”
“I still don’t see why you have to live there,” Rhea said thirty minutes later. They had dropped Colly off at playgroup in the West End, and now were sitting in the car at the edge of the sea at Herring Cove, half watching a group of eight or ten Trancers in sleek thermal clothing dancing on the shore, spinning and jumping in the December breeze, falling and recovering but always springing back up at once. They made Rand think, as always, of birds trying to batter their way through an invisible ceiling. Provincetown had been a magnet for Trancers since the strange fad had begun and spread around the planet with the speed of a catchphrase. P-Town had always been a Mecca for all kinds of odd behavior.