I should note for you generations yet unborn that gift giving is necessarily rare in this pseudoeconomy, at least gifts of objects. We were allowed to bring aboard only two kilograms of personal items. Otherwise, everybody owns everything equally.
You can make things, though. The computer keeps a running list of objects scheduled for recycling; if you can find a use for something that’s broken, you can petition to intercept it. So Sam collected bits and pieces over the months and pieced together a musical instrument, a kind of harp. It’s an arched trapezoid, the sides and bottom made of shiny metal stock. The curved top is a piece of golden wood, from Earth. From New York, where in a desperate time we had been lovers.
I supposed we would be again, another thing that left me temporarily speechless. We had been working together for most of a year on the literature project, and he had never hinted at anything romantic—though I had, at least to the extent of making sure he knew I was not unavailable. He was always reticent about sex, though, even when we were doing it.
He wanted more than that. He wanted to marry me; join the line.
I told him I had to think about it, and then talk to him, and then ask the others. It had to be unanimous, and I wasn’t sure that Dan or even John would go along with it. I wasn’t even sure that I wanted it, as dear as Sam is to me.
He kissed me and left me alone there in the editing room. I came up here to think into the keyboard.
So much of the literature we’ve been trying to reclaim or recall has to do with love. Old-Fashioned romantic love, often, with its sinister subtexts of ownership, male superiority, female manipulation. A sexual and emotional union that not incidentally reinforced the power of the church and the state over individuals and families.
I guess my first love, with Charlie Increase Devon, involved a strong element of that. Maybe he also cured me of it. Or maybe it was like other childhood diseases, that you contract once and then become immune. Even as I wrote that down, I saw how silly it was—some people never experience romance and some never grow out of it—but I’ll leave it. I’m going to erase all this anyhow.
Could I love a third man without diminishing what I have with the other two? I wish we had more precise words for love, dozens of them, like the Eskimos supposedly had for snow. I do already love all three of them, in three distinctly different ways. Daniel needs me and I need to nurture him, protect him. John is my comforter, and still my mentor. (People who don’t know us well would probably assume that the relationships went the other way, because of John’s deformity. But I don’t even see it anymore, except as a sign of the patient strength, the calm acceptance, that drew me to the man in the first place.) And what about Sam?
On Earth, where we were working with groundhog survivors, he saw how upset I was when Daniel and John called down to ask me to allow Evelyn to join our line. I knew and liked Evy but resented the timing, the handicap of not being there to physically confront them. I would have said yes anyhow, so I gave permission as gracefully as I could. As soon as the comm link was broken, though, I started to mope and growl and bitch. Sam offered himself and I jumped his lanky bones.
We grew pretty close pretty fast. We have the same kind of intelligence, shallow but broad, and therefore many enthusiasms in common. We make each other laugh. The sex wasn’t all that great, but he had youthful enthusiasm and recuperative power.
Then the project turned into a disaster, a bloodbath and plague that we barely escaped. A grisly nightmare the reward for months of backbreaking labor. During the week of quarantine outside New New, Sam and I kept making love with frantic desperation. (There wasn’t much privacy, and some people were scandalized. They were people I didn’t mind scandalizing, though.)
I thought then of asking him to join the line. It would have made an interesting symmetry, since he was the same age as Evy, nineteen. Twelve years younger than me—and a damn sight younger than my lecherous husbands! Sorry, Evy. I do love you like a sister but still sometimes get angry at them. Even thoughtful hunchbacked philosophers get pulled around by their dicks sometimes.
Dramatic memories aside, how do I feel about Sam now? Admittedly, I’ve been a little annoyed that he didn’t respond to my gentle hints with instant lust. But his proposal puts that into perspective. He’s the kind of man who makes timetables and sticks to them. When he worked for me on Earth, for all his wacky humor, he was about the most dependable person I had. He was also physically brave and showed infinite patience and compassion with the Earth children, who could be real monsters.
Okay, I’m trying to talk myself into this. It didn’t help that I dropped by Creche to look at the baby this morning. Her little hand curled around my finger.
I have a bad case of softheartedness. Prime, I have to talk to you.
4. ADVICE TO THE LOVELORN
Prime appeared in the usual corner, leaning back comfortably in a nonexistent chair. Sometimes she was unsettlingly nude; this time she was wearing the gray labor fatigues that Sam and O’Hara had worn on Earth. Since Prime looked only six months younger than O’Hara had been at the time, the effect was as startling as she had intended.
“I thought you’d never ask,” the image said.
“So talk me out of it, Use that binary brain of yours.”
“First you ask for a favor and then you insult me. If my brain is simply binary then yours is a lump of jelly.”
“Should I do it?”
“Yes and no and maybe. Should I elaborate?”
“I’ve got time and you’ve got electricity.”
“Take ‘no’ first. Daniel is having a real uselessness problem. He has a title that makes him technically part of the ruling class, but the thing he’s in charge of doesn’t exist anymore. Your declaring interest in another man is not going to help his image of himself.”
“He gets a certain amount of solace from you, and even more from Evelyn—”
“Really?”
“The ratio is one point three to one. Now you propose to bring into the relationship a man the same age as Evelyn. He will see this as an act of sexual aggression.”
“Hold it. All these years you’ve known how often Dan has sex with me and with Evelyn?”
“And with other women, yes. Only women, in case you’re interested.”
“I think you know a lot that I would rather not know.”
“Everything the ship knows, I know. I only brought this up because it’s important to the discussion you initiated.”
“What’s the ratio with John?”
The machine paused. “That’s complicated, as you know. He has been intimate with you two point eight times more often than with Evelyn, since Launch.”
“That’s an interesting locution, ‘intimate with.’ You’re protecting my feelings.”
“It’s not my job to make you feel bad. The question you’re not asking is one you already know the answer to.”
“He’s more likely to have actual sex with her.”
“He loves you fiercely, and has since you were married. His attraction to Evelyn is obviously physical. If by ‘actual sex’ you mean a contact that includes ejaculation…”
“What else would I mean?”
“With her it seems to be always.”
“Thanks. Thanks a lot.”
“You knew that.” The image sat forward. “Which brings us to the ‘yes’ part. If you bring Sam into the line, John may relax. He may see it as spreading out the responsibility for keeping you happy, and so when he does come to you, it will be with less anxiety, and he will be more likely to… complete the sexual act.”
“You know a hell of a lot about sex for somebody who’s never done it.”