Homegoing

Chapter 24

Considered as housing, the planet Mars isn’t the kind of place one can move right into. In real-estate parlance it is what is called a “fixer upper,” but it has fine potential for tenants who are willing to do the repairs. The things that are scarce on Mars are air, water, and warmth. The thing it has plenty of is land. It has far more land surface than the planet Earth, because it doesn’t spend any precious surface area on oceans. For the Hakh’hli, that is what makes it worth having. Energy beamed down from the strange-matter engines in the big ship can boil water out of crystalline rock, cook air from oxides, smelt ores into steel to build all the habitats they want, and glassify rock to let the sunlight in. The Hakh’hli have the energy. Mars can give them the space to let their seventy-three million frozen eggs thaw, and hatch, and grow.

In the landing craft Lysander was staring blankly at the silent screen. It was only silent at the lander’s end of the circuit. Where the people on it came from, both Hakh’hli and human, they were not silent at all. They were shouting. The way they twitched and flung their arms about, the contortions of lips and jaws as they argued with each other made that certain. But Lysander had cut the sound off.

Marguery wasn’t even looking at the screen. Her attention was all on Lysander. Her first impulse was to throw her arms around him for solace, for if anyone had ever needed comforting, it was he. She hardly dared. His face was like granite. When she tentatively touched his cheek her fingertips felt the thump of a muscle pulsing under the skin.

Lysander jerked away from her touch, his face averted. He was saying something, but so softly that she didn’t realize it until he turned questioningly to face her. “What, Lysander?”

He said, in a voice like lead, “What am I, then? Am I human at all?”

She took a deep breath. “Dear Sandy,” she said, “you are John William Washington, and that’s all you need to be. The biologists say you can do everything a human being can do. You can think, you can walk, you can make love—”

“And make you sick while I’m doing it!”

She shook her head. “Not if I take my histamine blockers. We tested that out, remember? They even—” She hesitated. “They even said that it was possible you could father a child.”

He gave her a look of proud scorn. “That’s impossible!”

She said steadfastly, “No. Only, maybe, a little difficult.”

“I don’t believe you,” he said fiercely. “Why does everyone lie to me? Even MyThara did, all those years!” He put a hand to his face and felt something hot and wet. He looked at his hand, and found himself laughing. “At least I’m human enough to cry,” he said, his voice unsteady.

“You’re human enough for me,” Marguery told him. He shook his head despondently. She thought for a moment, and then said, “Sandy? Do you remember on the jet you said you were going to write a poem?”

He looked perplexed for a moment, then fumbled in his pocket. “I’ve got it here. You might as well see it, I suppose,” he said.

“Yes, I certainly want to, but what I was going to say was—”

He wasn’t listening. He had already pulled the scrap of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. It was folded and almost torn, but when she opened it up she was startled at what she saw. “Is that supposed to be a coffin?” she asked.

“It’s supposed to be a poem,” he said somberly. “Do you know what a poem is? It’s how you feel, put on paper. And that was how I felt.”

“Yes, I understand that, but Sandy dear—”

“You don’t have to read it if you don’t want to,” he said gloomily. “I don’t know if it’s any good, anyway.”

Marguery gave up. She straightened out the paper and read the poem over carefully:

Am I womanborn

or of some strange

mating in empty space?

Was I born at all or made?

Perhaps it is better if I

never know for what I do

know of the egg-hatched

or born does not cause

me to envy them, even

less to admire; evil

they do, unthinking

but wicked. Shame

I say & plague on

both your houses

& I really hope

you both lose!

She looked down at him, half-angry, almost amused. “Lysander, that’s dreary. What kind of person would write something like that?”

“Any person who took a good, hard look around him would! It’s a dreary world. Haven’t you noticed? Marguery, look at those people!” He waved a condemning hand at the soundlessly gesticulating figures on the screen.

Marguery looked, but what she saw was puzzling. Boyle was waving his arms across his face. He looked like a baseball fan trying to attract the attention of the grandstand peanut vendor. “What’s he doing? Maybe he wants to talk to you,” she offered.

Lysander shook his head. “What for? There’s no point in talking to me; they need to talk to each other. But they won’t.” The ship lurched slightly, and then they were floating free. Lysander took a quick look at the board. “We’re in coasting orbit,” he said. “That’ll last for about an hour, but you’d better be in your seat before that. Just before the power goes on again the lander’s going to reverse so we can turn around to decelerate.” Marguery made a faint noise. He looked up at her, frowning. “What’s the matter?”

She said, “I thought you were going to ram the Hakh’hli ship.”

He studied her face incredulously for a moment, then laughed. “Why would I do that?” he asked. “We’d get killed.”

“Sandy dear,” she said sincerely, “I can’t tell you how glad I am to hear you say that. But then why did you steal the lander?”

“To keep you people from doing it, of course,” he said in surprise. “Then I thought I’d just go back to the ship and try to reason with the Major Seniors.”

“With me?”

“I didn’t plan on taking you along, Marguery,” he pointed out. “But you came.”

She began to feel apprehensive. “And now?”

“What else is there to do?” he demanded. “Maybe the two of us can beat some sense into them. And—it would be an adventure for you, wouldn’t it? Wouldn’t you like to be the first Earth human—the first native Earthborn human—to visit the Hakh’hli interstellar ship?”

Marguery thought it over. “It’s—frightening,” she said. “But I think I would—with you, Sandy.”

He blinked at her. She went on. “See, I wasn’t asking to see your poem a minute ago, dear Lysander. I was trying to tell you that I’d written a poem of my own.”

“But you never said you wrote poems.”

She laughed at him. “Maybe I haven’t written one yet. Read it. Then you tell me.”

He looked at the piece of paper she was holding out incredulously, then he looked up at her. “Oh, my God,” he said.

“Read it, God damn it!”

He obeyed.

Sweet Sandy

the brick shithouse

torso & the quick, kind

heart. You say that you

love me. I think that

I love you as well.

If you invite me

to marry you

I’ll say

Yes!

“Are you sure?” he gasped.

“You fool,” she said fondly. “Don’t ask questions. Just kiss me.”

And it wasn’t until he had done it, and done it half a dozen times more, that Marguery caught sight of the communications screen out of the corner of her eye. The people on the screen didn’t seem to be arguing any more. Hamilton Boyle was holding up both thumbs. ChinTekki-tho was weeping amiably, and Demetrius and Bottom, giggling, were acting out shaking hands.

“Sandy,” she said shakily. “Do you see what I see? Is it possible that they’re trying to tell us that they’ve agreed on what to do?”

He didn’t let go of her, but he craned his neck to see, frowning in bewilderment. “I don’t believe it,” he said. But his voice was uncertain.

“What else can it be? They’re certainly trying to tell us something.”

He said sincerely, “It is impossible that two such good things could happen to me in a single day. I don’t believe that they’ve decided to cooperate.”

“Dummy,” she said lovingly. “Maybe they have. Why don’t you find out?”

He shook his head. “I don’t believe they have,” he said stubbornly; but then he turned on the sound . . .

And they had.