Gardner Dozois: The Years Best Science Fiction, Vol. 18

After that Eva no longer tormented herself with impossibilities. Jack stayed with her every minute of her time on the surface. Despite her heartache, she still hoped Carey’s body would turn up so she could figure out what had happened. But when a further week of searches still brought nothing, she asked that they be called off. The official inquest ruled Carey missing, presumed dead by hazard of fortune.

She turned to her work. The project was her only hope now. It was more than a matter of demonstrating the value of Cousins’ science. Over the next months, the first assemblies using scans of organic compounds were completed. They produced edible soy protein and worked their way up toward apple sauce.

At meetings in the boardroom that looked out over the green fields of Fowler basin, the other matrons watched her out of the corners of their eyes. Eva controlled her voice, operated her body as if by remote. Everything is normal, she told herself. Some mornings she would wake and listen for Carey thumping around the apartment, only to hear silence. She hid his pictures. Although she would not empty his room, she closed its door and never went inside. She went to watch the hockey team play. Other Cousins sat beside her and made a show of treating her normally.

Hockey was such a violent game-a boy’s game. Had the Cousins adopted it for that very reason, to go against the perception that women were soft? Eva watched Roz throw herself around the ice like a demon. What would drive such a shy girl to compete so hard?

At night she lay awake and thought about Carey. She imagined him out there on the surface, running out of air. What was it about boys and men that they always took such big risks? You couldn’t protect them.

If you tried to, they got sulky and depressed. She had never questioned the place the Cousins had prepared for boys in the world, how their aggression and desire for dominance had been thwarted and channeled.Keep your son close; let your daughter go, the homily went. Had she been fair to Carey? If she had him back with her this minute, could she keep herself from smothering him?

Jack went back to his own work: His team planted a copse of junipers, pinon, sage, and wildflowers on the east slopes of Fowler, hauling loads of their new soil that promised a better growth rate than the chemically prepared soils. He came home each night with dirt under his fingernails, scrubbed himself raw in the shower and fell into bed exhausted. Jack and Eva had not made love after that night Carey disappeared. At first Eva had no desire, and then, after her need returned and she might have felt it a comfort to have Jack hold her in his arms, he was so depressed by Carey’s loss that he would not touch her. Eva saw that worrying about her had taken Jack away from Roz.

“I’m sorry,” she vowed to Jack’s sleeping form one night. “I can do better.”

Since Carey’s disappearance, Roz spent less time at home. Eva saw the pain in Jack’s eyes as he watched Roz. She wondered what it must be like for Roz, to have this single strong male presence always there in her life. She owed Roz and Jack better than she had been giving, and the effort to engage them would help her stop thinking about Carey.

She arranged for Roz to spend her second-semester practicum in the colony’s materials cooperatives.

What to do about Jack’s relationship to Roz was harder to figure out. Eva was a physicist, and had never paid much attention to the theories of Nora Sobieski and the other founders. It wasn’t as though a man taking an interest in his daughter’s upbringing was necessarily unnatural. But Eva realized that-just like her with Carey, out of his fear of losing Roz-Jack ran the risk of smothering her.Keep your son close; let your daughter go: Whether Jack could see it or not, it was time for Roz to begin to find her own place in the world.

Jack had taken to bringing home chard and romaine lettuce and carrots from the gardens. He brought a potted juniper for the balcony where they ate their meals. There one night at dinner Eva suggested to Jack that Roz move out.

Jack looked frightened. “She’s only fourteen, Eva.”

“If she doesn’t begin to break free now she will have a much harder time later.”

“I understand that. It’s just-it’s not the way she grew up. She and I haven’t been here that long. And with-with Carey gone…” his voice trailed off.

Eva watched him. “Jack, I know I’ve been distant. I know it’s been hard for you. If you don’t want to be alone with me, I’ll understand. I just hope you won’t live with Roz.”

“For pity’s, Eva! Don’t you believe in love?”

She was taken aback. “Of course I do.” She poked her fork at her salad.

“Well, I love Roz. I love…I love you.”

Eva felt out of her depth. What did he mean when he said the word “love”? She looked into Jack’s handsome face: blue eyes, curly blond hair, square jaw. How much, when he looked so hurt, he reminded her of Carey. Jack watched her intently. He was trying to communicate something, but she had no idea what it was.

“I know you love us,” Eva said. “That’s not the question. But if Roz is ever going to fit in here, she needs to begin to network…I might even say the same for you.”

“Network.” He sat still as a stone.

He acted so wounded; he was putting her on the spot. Was this about sex? “I’m not trying to push you away, Jack. It’s not me who’s been turning away every night in bed.”

“I realize that,” he said defensively. “I thought that you were still grieving for Carey.”

God, she was no good at this interpersonal stuff. She looked away. She tried the salad grown from the gardens he and his team had planted. “Let me handle my grief in my own way,” she said.

He said nothing. He seemed more sad than angry. They ate in silence. After a while he asked her, “How’s the salad?”

“The best I’ve ever tasted. And the pine nuts-are they from the new trees?”

“Yes,” he said.

“The juniper smells wonderful.”

“It’s yours,” he said. “I grew it for you.”

Transformation When Roz told Jack about Carey’s plans to meet the First Imprints Club, Jack picked up Carey’s pressure suit. He laid the suit on the floor, adjusted it so that the locator lay flat against the concrete, and ground his heel into it until the chip snapped. “OK,” Jack said. “You take his things and lose them some place on the surface where they’ll never be found.”

Roz knew that Jack’s real reason for rushing her out was to keep her from seeing him dispose of Carey’s body. She did not object. She stuffed Carey’s clothes into the suit, sealed it up and, while her father turned back to the body, headed for the airlock.

“Wait,” Jack said, “take this.”

Fearfully, she turned. Jack had taken something from Carey’s hand. It was Carey’s ring.

She shoved the ring inside her own suit, then hurried through the airlock onto the lunar surface.

The shadows of lunar afternoon lay precisely as they had when she had entered the lab an hour before, a girl seeking to apologize to her dad. Between then and now, something had broken.

Jack had looked so surprised, so guilty-so old. The skin beneath his eyes was dark and papery, as if he hadn’t slept in a week. Had he looked this tired when she had argued with him in the plaza? It made her wonder just what had been going on all this time. How could Jack kill Carey? Had he been so near to breaking all along? As she shuffled across the humped, dusty surface, Roz fought to keep from crying again at the awfulness of Carey’s death and the precariousness of their situation.

For most of her life, it had been just her and her father. Roz’s mother Helen had been a graduate student in plant pathology when Jack met her at Purdue. Roz’s first memory was of sitting in the bathtub as her mom taught her to count on her toes. When Roz was six, her mother’s increasing bouts of depression broke up the marriage. Helen had custody of Roz for more than a year before Jack rescued her, and Roz remembered that year vividly: afternoons hanging out with the kids in the neighboring apartment, suppers of corn flakes, Helen coming back from her classes unhappy, Roz trying to wake Helen to get her to work in the mornings, Helen shouting at Jack every time he came to pick Roz up for visits. When Jack had stolen Roz away, though he never said anything bad about Helen, Roz felt that she would never miss her mother again.