“So who’s running away now?”
“Just tired. Really tired.”
Marygay was at the kitchen door. “Don’t you want some soup?”
“Not hungry, Mom. I’ll zap some later.” He took the stairs two at a time.
“I do know the answers by heart,” Sara said, smiling, “if you want to run through the logic again.”
“You’re not the one I’m losing,” I said. “Even though you plan to go over to the enemy someday.” She looked down at her chart and growled something in Tauran. “What does that mean?”
“It’s part of their catechism. It sort of means `Own nothing, lose nothing.’ ” She looked up and her eyes were bright. “It also means `Love nothing, lose nothing.’ They use the words interchangeably.”
She stood up slowly. “I want to talk to him.” When I went up to bed, an hour and a half later, they were still arguing in whispers.
It was Bill’s turn to fix breakfast the next morning, and he was silent as he worked over the corn cakes and eggs. I started to compliment him when he served them, but he cut me short: “I’m going. I’m going with you.”
“What?”
“I’ve changed my mind.” He looked at Sara. “Or had it changed. Sister says there’s room for another guy in aqua-culture.”
“And you have a natural love for that,” I said.
“The head-chopping part, anyhow.” He sat down. “It is the chance of a lifetime, of many lifetimes. And I won’t be that old, when we get back.”
“Thank you,” Marygay said, her voice wavering. Bill nodded. Sara smiled.
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Chapter eleven
The next few months were tiring but interesting. We spent ten or twelve hours a week in the library’s ALSC-Accelerated Life Situation Computer-learning or relearning the arcana of spaceflight. Marygay had gone through it before; everyone who went on the time shuttle had to know the basics of how the ship was run.
Unsurprisingly, things had gotten simpler in the centuries since I was last in training. One person could actually control the whole ship, under normal circumstances.
We trained for specialties, too. For me it was shuttle piloting and the suspended-animation facility, which made me long for summer even more than usual.
We were through first winter and well into deep winter before word came from Earth.
Some people like deep winter for its austere simplicity. It rarely snows. The diminished sun climbs its same steady course. It gets down to thirty or forty below at night; sixty-five below before thaw season begins.
The people who like deep winter are not fishermen. When the lake is solid enough to walk on, I go out to make ninety-six holes in the ice, using hollow heated cylinders.
Each cylinder is a meter of thick aluminum with a heating element wound through inside. The cylinder is flared with insulation at the top so as not to sink. I set out a dozen at a time, upright, spaced evenly for the trotlines, then turn them on and wait. After a couple of hours, they melt through, and I turn off the power. Wait another hour or so, and then the fun begins.
Of course by the time the ice is refrozen on the inside, the outside is stuck fast. I carry a sledgehammer and a crowbar. I whang around the outside of the cylinder until there’s a cracking, sucking sound, and then I take hold of the flange and haul this thirty-kilogram ice cube up. I turn the power on that one up high and move down to repeat the process on the next one.
By the time I get to the end of the dozen, the first one has warmed enough so that I can slip it off the bar of ice it’s holding. Then I use the crowbar to break up the ice that’s re-formed in the hole, slip the aluminum sleeve back in, turn the power down to minimum, cap it, and move to the next one.
The reason for this rigmarole is a combination of thermodynamics and fish psychology. I have to keep the water in the hole at exactly zero or the fish won’t bite. But if you don’t start out with liquid water just melt through–you wind up with a cylinder of ice clinking around in it. The fish will bite the hook, but hang up and get away.