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"I'll have to miss it."
"You're quitting school?"
"Family emergency sabbatical," he said. "I'll be on call until the crisis
passes."
"That could put you a year behind ..."
"Martian year," Charles said, patting my arm. "I'll make it. Just my luck to
be in a vulnerable BM. If you're going into high-level govmanagement, maybe we
can transfer your contract ..."
Suddenly that wasn't funny. I turned away, unable to hide my irritation, and
Charles was dismayed. "I'm sorry," he said. "I'm not being disrespectful. I
really wanted to come here and persuade you to ... and you said ... I know,
Casseia, I'm sorry."
"Never mind." He was missing the cause of my anger, couldn't possibly
understand not yet. "We have a lot to talk about, Charles."
102 Greg Bear
"So serious," he said. He closed his eyes and leaned against the headrest.
"This isn't going to be a vacation?" "Of course it is," I said. That wasn't
quite a lie.
Charles arrived in the middle of a most unusual paucity most of my blood
relations and relations by marriage, who normally trooped through Ylla and our
warrens like a herd of friendly cats, had trooped elsewhere, spreading out
across
Mars on errands or vacations. We would have a rare time of privacy, and
neither Charles nor I would have to suffer the
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Bear, Greg - Moving Mars UC FR.htm staring eyes of curious urchins, impolite
questions from my aunts, hints of liaisons from my elder cousins. Even my
brother was away. Ylla Station would be empty and quiet, and for this I was
supremely grateful.
Ylla occupied sixty hectares of an almost featureless prairie of little
interest but for aquifers and solid ice lenses.
Prospectors had mapped out a chain of stations along the Athene Aquifer in the
first decade of the Mars expansion, thirty years ago; three of a possible six
had been built, Ylla the first. It had originally been known as Where's Ylla.
The lack of sentient Martians had disappointed few. Martian settlers landing
on their new home, and taking station assignments, quickly became hard-bitten
and practical; it was no picnic. Keeping a station open and staying alive was
tough enough in those decades without having to deal with unhappy natives.
Still, I had played Ylla as a girl, and my brother had played the defensive
Mr. Ttt with his gun of golden bees, stalking human astronauts ...
I related much of this nervously to Charles as the small train whined over the
ditches and onto the main prairie, trying to keep an appearance of calm when
in fact I was miserable. I had asked Charles to come to Ylla to ask him a
question I now thought rude and unnecessary; rude, because he would have
mentioned his desire to be enhanced had he wished to, and unnecessary, because
I was determined to end our brief relationship. But I couldn't simply tell him
on the train.
And I couldn't tell him at dinner. My parents of course
MOVING MARS 103
went all-out with this meal, celebrating the first time I had brought a young
man to our station.
Father was particularly interested in Charles, asking endless questions about
the Terrie embargoes on Klein. Charles answered politely and to the best of
his knowledge; there was no reason to keep any of this secret from someone as
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highly placed as Father.
My parents generally eschewed nano food, preferring garden growth and syn
products. We ate potato and syn cheese pie and fruit salad and for desert, my
father's syn prime cheesecake with hot tea. After dinner, we sat in the memory
room, small and tightly decorated as most old Mars station rooms are, with the
inevitable living shadow box from Earth, the self-
cycling fish tank, the small, antique wall-mount projectors for LitVid.
I loved my parents, and what they felt was important to me, but their
immediate and natural affection for Charles was distressing. Charles fit right
in. He and my father leaned forward in their chairs, almost knocking heads,
talking about the possibility of hard financial times ahead, like old friends.
Inevitably, Father asked him what he planned to do with himself.
"A lot of things," Charles answered. "I'm much too ambitious for a Martian."
Mother offered him more tea. "We don't see any reason why Martians shouldn't
be ambitious," she said, lips pursed as if mildly chiding.
"It's simply impractical to do what I want to do, here, at this time," Charles
said. He shook his head and grinned awkwardly.
"I'm not very practical."
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"Why?" Father asked.
He has come all this way to be with me, I thought, and he spends this time
talking with my parents ...
about what he is going to do in physics.
"Mars doesn't have the research tools necessary, not yet, perhaps not for
decades," Charles said. "There are only two thinkers on the planet dedicated
to physics, and a few dozen
104 Greg Bear
barely adequate computers tied up in universities with long waiting lists. I'm
too young to get on any of the lists. My work is too primitive. But .. ." He
stopped, hands held in mid-air, parallel to each other, emphasizing his point
with a little jerking gesture. "The work I hope to do would take all of
Earth's resources."
"Then why not go to Earth?" my father asked.
"Why not?" I put in. "It would be a marvelous experience."
"No chance," Charles said. "My grades aren't perfect, my psych evaluations
aren't promising, to work on Earth they make outsiders pass rigid tests ... We
have to be ten times better than any Terrie."
My father smelled a young man with ambitions but insufficient drive. "You have
to do what you have to do," he said gruffly.
Instantly I was on Charles's side, saying abruptly, "Charles knows what to do.
He knows more than most Terrestrials."
My father lifted an eyebrow at the vehemence of my defense. Charles took my
hand in appreciation.
"Worse scholars than you have filtered through," Father said. "You just have
to know how to handle people."
"I don't know anything about handling people," Charles said. "I've never known
anything but how to be straight with them."
He looked at me as if that were a trait I might admire, and though I thought
it disingenuous, not admirable, I smiled.
Concern passed from his face in a flash, replaced by adoration. His brown eyes
even crossed a little, like a puppy's. I turned away, not wanting to have such
an effect on him. I wanted to be away from my parents, alone with Charles, to
express my affection but tell him this was not the time. I felt horrible and a
little queasy.
"Casseia would go to Earth in a moment if the opportunity arose," my mother
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said. "Wouldn't you?" She grinned at me proudly.
I stared at the fish tank, sealed decades ago on Earth, lov-
MOVING MARS 105
ingly tended by my father and given to my mother on the day of their nuptials.
"Nobody's offered," I said.
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"You're good, though," Charles said. "You can jump the hurdles. You have a way
with people."
"Our sentiments exactly," Father said, smiling proudly. "She just needs a
little self-confidence. Support from people other than her parents."
Father took me aside while Mother and Charles talked. "You're not happy,
Casseia," he said. "I see it, your mother sees it Charles must see it. Why?"
I shook my head. "This is going all wrong," I said. "You like him."
"Why shouldn't we?"
"I asked him here ... to talk with him. And I can't be alone with him to talk
..."
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