They all wear diapers, to keep the mud from becoming too biologically complex. The association with shit is strong and inevitable. I kept trying to get them interested in constructing mud pies and mud houses, but all they wanted to do was squeeze it through their little fists and giggle at the pseudoturds.
If I’d had the sense to remain standing, I would have stayed pretty unbesmirched from the navel up. But I sat down to get closer to the abstract assemblage Sandra was absorbed in, and some little bastard snuck up and scored a double handful on my head, improving my hair and filling up one ear. I smiled and told him what a big boy he was, and wondered what he would look like completely buried in the muck, with only his cute little feet showing.
Hosing them down in the shower was fun. Everything is fun to them unless it’s an earthshaking tragedy, only solvable by adult attention. They were a handful, trying to elude the water and then luxuriating in it; I would have done them one at a time, but I was certain they’d just dive back in the mud if I didn’t keep them all together.
They should put some toys in the stall to distract the little darlings. While I was shampooing myself, Sandra took a sudden deep interest in pubic hair, and started her collection with one painful yank. Not supposed to express anger; that’s Robin’s job. So I just told her she was going to be in for a big surprise in about ten years. Mother! Are you some kind of pervert? No, dear. Just reliving your childhood.
I don’t know whether she’ll ever call me Mother. It’s Mair Ann now, or just Mair.
I almost wish I could take her home with me. It would be worth the bother, to be able to watch her grow, touch her, pick her up. She changes so fast I’m afraid I’m going to miss something. But that is Robin’s job and she’s good at it. When Sandra’s eight I can have her part time. What will she be like then?
I had lunch with Charlee down in the new picnic area they’ve opened on the ag level. They serve only raw vegetables, but it’s a bright, airy place. She’s got a birthday coming up, thirty-eight, in two weeks. We talked about milestones and such. She opted to stop cycling a couple of years ago, because for some reason the cramps got worse and worse. I’m going to let the thing run its course, even though it’s just the body fooling itself; no eggs to make the monthly journey. I told Charlee I like the sense of the body’s seasons, the womanliness of it, and will miss it. She thinks I’m a lunatic. Maybe so, given the etymology of that word.
All of us women bringing the memory of Earth’s Moon to another world. Epsilon’s moon has a month that is less than two days shorter. I wonder if there will be some effect, over generations.
We felt so damned healthy after eating all those carrots and turnips that we had to get a drink. The dispensary was closed, of course, but I knew Dan had some boo. I called him up at work and told him we were going to raid his supply. It wasn’t so much to get his permission as to make sure he wouldn’t be in the room with whoever that redhead is that he’s fucking now. Rhoda, Rhonda? Wanda. They sometimes use the lunch hour.
We just had a quick toast and Charlee went back to work. I decided to leave it at the one shot and come back here to type and look up some stuff. We’ve reclaimed a few diaries of famous people; I thought I’d look up what they said on their fortieth birthdays. It was more of a milestone when you couldn’t expect to make it past seventy.
Not too much luck with women. None. Margaret Mead, Leslie Morris, Dorothy Wordsworth, and Anaïs Nin were too busy at age forty to keep diaries. What does that say about me?
Even the garrulous Mr. Boswell had only one line: “I hoped to live better from this day.” By God, Sir, so shall I. Chastity. Industry. Modesty. Though it’s hard to be modest when you know that you will go down in history as The Woman Who Had The Longest Fortieth-Birthday Diary Entry In What’s Left Of The English Language.
So we’re coming up on six years aboard this hollow rock; about fifty-eight years to go, at the current rate. I’ll be not quite old enough to be useless when we get there. Of course the people down at Propulsion keep talking about further increases in efficiency, but after the scare we had last time, I’m not sure they’ll get permission to try, even from the Engineering track.
Prime says we’re 1,850,000,000,000 kilometers from Earth, about seventy-three light-days. So if somebody wished me happy birthday, it would take seventy-three days to get from there to here, by which time, Prime says, we’d have gone almost four million kilometers. That’s another three hours, forty-one minutes. I’ll bet Zeno could prove that the message would never get here.
So it’s June on Earth, a month I never experienced. I got there in September and left in March.
What else to record on this milestone birthday. Well, as remarked before, my husband Daniel will be moving into the Engineering Coordinator-elect slot in January ’04. So he’ll be Coordinator in ’06, Senior Coordinator in ’08, and history in 2110. We’ve agreed it would be prudent for me to wait until ’10 to place myself on the block for Policy Coordinator-elect, since it would be unwise to have husband and wife working together at the administrative level, or at least unseemly. I don’t agree with the logic of this, except in terms of appearances—Dan and I don’t collude all that well even on a day-today basis—but don’t mind waiting six years. It would have bothered me when I was thirty.
Am I less ambitious? I don’t think so. I guess it’s partly that what I’m doing now is plenty important. And it’s part of the lesson that Purcell and Sandra wanted me to learn, by observing the process from the Cabinet leveclass="underline" that being on administrative track is a six-year migraine. (Some people do get addicted to the headache, though. Eliot is stepping down this year but says he’s going to “let himself pickle” for two or four years and run again. Tania is going back to Labor/Management and says she wouldn’t run for office again as long as there were three people left alive on the ship—two of them might vote for her!)
I’m getting better at delegating authority, not hanging all over my subordinates all the time. That’s partly a matter of sorting out who’s good at what and who enjoys what kind of work. If only the two factors would match up. But trusting other people to do their jobs gives me more time for the lit project and for my music.
That’s mostly clarinet and a little keyboard for theory. It will still be a while before I can play the harp again.
But it’s been more than two years. Think I’ll take it out now, and tune it, and see.
2. NIGHT OF THE LIVING DEAD
It was seven in the morning, 10 September 2103. O’Hara was asleep in John’s bed; John had been up reading for about an hour. Suddenly his console went blank and a loud buzzer sounded.
O’Hara sat up and rubbed her eyes. “What is it?”
“Trouble.” She unwound herself from the sheet and crawled sideways to read over his shoulder. The screen was blinking orange letters on a blue background:
10 Sept 03 | 9 Conf 304
“Oh shit. What’s it going to be this time?”
“Good news, I’m sure.”
“You don’t have any idea?” She drifted over to the sink.
“You’re sleeping with the wrong guy for inside information.” He typed four digits and Dan’s image appeared, unshaven, blinking, groggy. “What’s up, bright eyes? You expect this?”
“No couple of things… but no. Look. I’m not alone.” He looked to the right and nodded. A woman’s faint voice said, “I won’t tell anyone,” and he watched, evidently until the door shut.