He looked older, Juna realized, older than she expected him to, and there was a hard-bitten edge of defiant bitterness that was apparent even through his gladness at seeing her again. She looked at his wheelchair and a torrent of fear, anger, and love surged through her. She wanted to tear that chair apart with her bare hands, and raise him up on two good legs. His shoes, she noticed, were smooth and unlined from lack of use.
Fighting back her conflicting emotions, she knelt down beside Toivo so that they were eye to eye. “How are you?” she asked.
“Shorter,” he said. “But my feet don’t get tired.”
He glanced past her at the Tendu.
“Moki, Ukatonen, this is my brother, Toivo.”
Moki stuck out his hand, “I’m honored to meet you, brother of my sitik.” Moki was only a little taller than her brother, seated as he was in the wheelchair.
Toivo reached out and took Moki’s hand.
“Good to meet you, Moki,” he said.
“Moki is my adopted son,” Juna told him.
“I know,” Tovio said. “Welcome to the family, Moki.”
“And this is Ukatonen,” Juna said.
Ukatonen extended his hand. “I’m honored to meet you, Toivo. Juna has told us so much about you and the rest of your family. I’m glad that we are finally here. I’ve wanted to see what a human family was like for a long time.”
“Welcome to the zoo,” Toivo said dryly, shaking the enkar’s hand. “Cmon, Juna, let’s get your bags.” He wiped his hand on his pants leg.
Juna smiled. It took a while to get used to the cool moistness of the Tendu’s touch.
“How is everyone?” she asked in Amharic, as they headed for the elevator. Toivo’s chair moved easily in the half-gravity.
“Busy with the harvest,” he replied in the same language.
“The harvest, is it going well?”
“Bumper crop this year. Weather Control optimized for wine grapes this season. Dad bought two more vats this summer, getting ready for the new vineyard. We’ll fill all the vats and have grapes left over, if we can get them in. Wermuth’s buying the surplus this year. He has the vat space. We’ve already sold him ten tons of chardonnay grapes. He’ll take some merlot, and a bit of cabernet as well.”
The elevator doors opened, and they got in. The hammered copper paneling on the elevator walls had recently been polished, and it shone. Surrounded by the rich, textured gleam of the copper, Juna knew she was home. The copper panels were a common, recurring theme in Berry Station’s public architecture, courtesy of a rich vein of copper ore that the station’s builders had discovered as they were hollowing out the asteroid that became the station’s outer shell.
“Sounds like the winery’s doing well,” Juna said as the elevator started to descend. A riffle of excitement stirred in Juna’s stomach as the increasing gravity pulled at her. They were almost home.
Toivo shrugged. “We need a good year. Dad shelled out a lot for doctors when I got hurt. Labor’s tight, though. We need more pickers.”
“I brought two more helpers,” Juna said. “Moki and Ukatonen are pretty hard workers. The sun’11 be a problem for them, though.”
He looked up at her, brown and familiar as no one else in the world was, and he smiled.
“We’ve got hats,” he said, referring to their father’s collection of tractor hats. Poking fun at the collection was an old family joke.
Juna was suddenly overwhelmed with happiness. Wheelchair or not, Toivo was still himself. Drawn and sadder, perhaps, but still her brother. She was home. She reached down and squeezed his shoulder.
“It’s good to be back, little brother,” she said.
Toivo nodded. “With you here, it’s home again.”
Juna touched his cheek with the back of her hand, tears welling in her eyes.
The elevator doors opened onto the stone-floored concourse of the shuttle terminal. A boy stood there, waiting for them.
“Hei, Juna-Tati!”
“Danan!” Juna called. She dropped her bags and ran to embrace him. He was a beautiful boy, on the verge of becoming a handsome adolescent, with his creamy-tan skin, and large, solemn eyes that were’the clear, intense green of a freshly sliced lime.
“How did you get so big!” she exclaimed, tousling his curly chestnut hair.
“He’s taking after his mother in that,” Toivo said, wheeling up to them, with the larger of her two bags on his lap. “And he eats like a horse.”
Moki, Ukatonen, this is my nephew, Danan. He’s Toivo’s son.”
“I’m Moki, and this is Ukatonen,” Moki said.
“You’re the one my aunt adopted, aren’t you?” Danan asked Moki as he lifted Juna’s bag from his father’s lap.
Moki nodded.
“Then I suppose we’re cousins.”
Moki looked at Juna questioningly.
“I suppose you are,” Juna said, grateful for Danan’s easy acceptance of the aliens.
“I’ve never had a cousin before,” Danan remarked.
“Neither have I,” Moki replied as they emerged from the station. Moki looked up and stopped dead, bright pink with surprise. Ukatonen nearly fell over him, as he too looked upward.
Juna smiled. The station arched above them, a quilt of green and brown that made up both land and sky, delineated by the bright glare of the sun windows, brilliant lines of light running the length of the satellite. The far wall of this segment was barely visible in the distance. Beyond that wall were four other segments, each a kilometer long. It was an old design, very space-inefficient, but the view was spectacular.
“It takes some getting used to, doesn’t it?” Juna said.
Ukatonen nodded. “Why doesn’t it all fall down?”
Juna started to explain about centrifugal force as they followed Toivo out to the waiting truck. Danan opened the door on the passenger side for his father.
“He’s driving his old man around now,” Toivo told Juna.
“What kind of machine is that?” Moki asked, gesturing with his chin at the pickup.
“It’s a truck. We use it to carry people and stuff around. On the farm we mostly use horses, but this is easier for going to market.”
“How does it work?” Moki asked.
“I’ll show you sometime,” Danan offered. “Right now, we’ve got to get back to the farm. We’re pretty busy.”
“Juna told us you were harvesting grapes,” Moki said.
“That’s right.”
“I’ve never seen a grape. What are they like?”
Danan grinned. “Don’t worry, you’ll get to see a lot of them over the next few days.”
“Better get back to the farm,” Toivo said. “Be needing the truck this afternoon.”
Juna climbed into the back of the truck. Danan handed the bags up to her, lifting even her heaviest duffle by himself. The Tendu swung over the side of the truck and into the back with athletic grace. Danan helped Toivo lift out of his chair, and into the cab of the truck, then carefully buckled his father into the seat with a solicitousness that Juna found heartbreaking to watch. Danan folded the chair with practiced ease and handed it up to her.
Juna hesitated for a moment before taking it. Then, doing her best to hide her dislike of the thing, she grabbed hold of the chair and lifted it into the truck. The chair was surprisingly lightweight; she had expected it to be heavier. She stowed it in the front of the truck bed, then nodded to Danan, who had been watching her from the back window of the cab.
Juna settled herself against the side of the truck as it started up. She was home at last, and as always, her homecoming held pain as well as joy. The home she returned to was never the one that she had left. She had been gone twice as long as usual, and the changes were amazing. Danan had shot up from a pudgy child to a lanky youth on the verge of puberty. And Toivo had been transformed from a strong, happy, prosperous young farmer to a bitter cripple on the verge of a premature middle age. He looked ten years older than she did.