Most people seemed to assume that I was going to be the captain, when the time came. I wondered how many would be surprised when I stepped down in favor of Marygay. She was more comfortable with being an officer.
Well, being an officer had gotten her Cat. All I got was Charlie.
The meeting broke up before dark. The first heavy flakes of a long storm were drifting down. There would be more than half a meter on the ground by morning; people had livestock to manage, fires to kindle, children to worry about–children like Bill, out on the road in this weather.
Marygay had gone to the kitchen to make soup and scones and listen to music, while Sara and I sat at the dining room table and consolidated all of the scribblings on her once-neat chart into a coherent timetable. Bill called from the tavern, where he’d been in a pool tournament, and said he’d like to leave the floater there, if nobody needed it right away, and walk home. The snow was so dense in the air that headlights were useless. I said that was a good idea, not mentioning the slur in his speech that made it a doubly good idea.
He seemed sober when he got home, more than an hour later. He came in through the mudroom, laughing while he beat snow off his clothes. I knew how he felt–this kind of snow was a bitch to drive in, but wonderful for walking. The sound of it feathering down, the light touch on skin–nothing like the killer horizontal spikes of a deep winter blizzard. We’d have neither aboard ship, of course, but the lack of one seemed a more than fair trade for the other.
Bill got a fresh scone and some hot cider, and sat down with us. “Knocked out in the first round,” he said. “They got me on a technical scratch.” I nodded in sympathy, though I wouldn’t know a technical scratch from a technical itch. The game they played was not exactly eight ball.
He frowned at the chart, trying to read it upside-down. “They really snaffed your pretty chart, sister.”
“It was meant to be snaffed with,” she said. “We’re making up a new one.”
“Call it out to everyone tonight or in the morning,” I said. “Give them something to do other than shovel snow.”
“Your mind’s made up?” he said to Sara. “You’re going to take the big jump? And when you come back, I won’t even be dust anymore.”
“Your choice,” she said, “as well as mine.”
He nodded amiably. “I mean, I can see why Mom and Dad–”
“We’ve had this conversation before.”
I could hear the house creak. Settling under the weight of snow. Marygay was sitting silent in the kitchen, listening.
“Run it by again,” I said. “Things have changed since I last heard it.”
“What, that you’re taking one of Man along? And a Tauran?”
“You’ll be Man by then.”
He looked at me for a long moment. “No.”
“It shouldn’t make any difference which individual goes. Group mind and all.”
“Bill doesn’t have the right genes,” Sara said. “They’ll want to send a real Man.” That was a pun that saw daily use.
“I wouldn’t go anyhow. It stinks of suicide.”
“There’s not much danger,” I said. “More danger staying here, actually.”
“That’s true. You’re less likely to die in the next ten years than I am in the next forty thousand.”
I smiled. “Ten versus ten.”
“It’s still running away. You’re bored with this life and you’re deathly afraid of growing old. I’m not either of those things.”
“What you are is twenty-one and all-knowing.”
“Yeah, bullshit.”
“And what you don’t know is what life used to be like, without Man or Tauran to complicate things. Or make things easier, by brainwashing you.”
“Brainwashing. You haven’t brought that up in weeks.”
“It’s as obvious as a wart on your nose. But like a wart, you don’t see it because you’re used to it.”
Bill exploded. “What I am used to is this constant nagging!” He stood up. “Sara, you can supply the answers. Keep talking, Dad. I’m gonna go take a nap.”