At first he had been freaked out by the whole idea of the expedition, and with good reason. Even the shrink on his dad’s ship had told him that he had had a lot to be freaked out about recently. First of all, his mom had fallen for a company exec who liked Mom fine but didn’t want any other attachments. Mom, a senior astrophysicist, had never exactly been the warm type, and Diego had spent most of his life moving with her from ship to ship, or watching her come and go from various assignments while he sat in front of a teaching computer. Lots of the places Mom was assigned, there had been no one his own age, and very seldom did he find an adult who wanted to be bothered with someone else’s kid. At the last couple of stations, he had begun to pal around with a few of the younger corps troops, listening to their casual conversation and admiring the hard-core way they handled themselves, but he was always conscious that he wasn’t really one of them, and in case he forgot it, his mother made no bones about her displeasure in his choice of company. Then, too, about the time he started to gain a little acceptance and make one or two friends, they moved to a new station. He then had to fall back on the resources he had developed since he was a little kid, a good imagination and a quick brain. He didn’t really need any friends. Both his mom and his dad were brilliant, self-sufficient people, and he was, too. All he had ever needed was computer access, and he could entertain as well as educate himself. He was good at languages, having started out speaking both Spanish and English from when he was a little kid, and he enjoyed reading actual old hard-copy stories in both languages when there was nobody he wanted to hang around with, so he got by.
He had gone to visit his dad and Steve about once every calendar year, and that was okay. He really loved his dad, even though he was a little on the perfectionistic and ultra serious side, except with Steve. Steve got him to knock it off, to relax and laugh a little. Steve was always finding neat things to share with them. He had given Diego his first hard-copy book-a Spanish-language text of Don Quixote-for Diego’s ninth birthday.
“Pay close attention to Sancho Panza and Dulcinea,” he had kidded Diego. “I’m a little of both.” He struck a flamenco pose.
No wonder Dad and Mom hadn’t gotten along. Even if Dad hadn’t discovered he was gay, he and Mom were too much alike, both studious and serious and very literal-minded. So Diego didn’t mind Dad and Steve’s arrangement all that much; it just had never occurred to him that he might end up living with them.
He had just begun to get used to that-and he had even come to find out that Dad had wanted him all along but had been second best when it came to custody because in the eyes of company management theirs was a less-preferred sexual orientation to Mom’s. Diego didn’t see what difference that made. Nobody tried to tell him which way to swing, even if he had been ready to do any swinging of any kind. So far, he hadn’t met anyone who instilled in him a desire to implement the procedures his manuals and texts described.
So he had just been getting used to his new situation and settling in when Steve had come down with some kind of virus just before Dad was due to take off for this mission to investigate something or other on Petaybee. That was when Dad had gotten the bright idea that Diego should come along, too, as his assistant instead of Steve, and “broaden his horizons.”
In fact, he hadn’t actually seen a horizon before, since he was in it, by dirtside reckoning. Pointing this out had caused Steve to rasp at him not to be a smartass and to give new experiences a chance. So he had come along, and to his surprise, the landscape of Petaybee looked more open and spacious than, well, than space.