Charles Sheffield - Tomorrow and Tomorrow

The ship flew on, skimming the broad face of the Sun. Close up, that mottled surface was as raging and demonic as anything that Drake had encountered on his visit to Canopus. They passed through hydrogen prominences that roared and flamed with prodigal energy. Drake remained unperturbed. The ship’s refrigeration held the interior temperature at a comfortable level; in any case, Ana was at his side.

The Sun fell rapidly behind, and the outward journey began. Drake did not care where he went. It was at Ana’s insistence that they head for Mars.

“Just for fun,” she said.

It did not sound like fun. Drake recalled the fury of the Mars bombardment, the cloud-streaked sky of dirty gray and the torn and quaking surface.

But…

Twenty-nine and a half millennia was a long time. Drake’s memories were distant history. Their landing was in midmorning, on a calm world of thin, clear air and dark blue sky.

“A lot more atmosphere than there used to be,” Ana said, as Drake gazed out at a green cover of plants, a thin carpet from which jutted hair-thin stems with fat blue lollipops at their ends. “But there’s not nearly enough oxygen to breathe. Not for us, at least.”

“Why did they stop halfway?” Drake was becoming blasй when it came to planetary transformation. “I’d have thought Mars would be easy.”

“It would. You’ll see why in a minute.” Ana watched as Drake disappeared within his bulky symbiote. She tried to restrain herself, then began to giggle helplessly.

“I’m sorry. I know I’m going to be the same — but just look at you.”

Drake did. In a mirror he saw a mournful marsupial, an overweight kangaroo with a wobbling paunch and a long camel’s nose. The outsized ears stuck up to provide a constantly surprised expression. He stuck out his tongue. The face in the mirror extended a black appendage at least a foot long. He blinked. The dark liquid eyes blinked back at him, protected by an inner transparent membrane and outer lids with eyelashes long and thick enough to be the envy of any glamour queen.

Ana was allowing her own symbiote to envelop her. “Now we can go out,” she said, as her new body seemed to inflate before Drake’s eyes. “Follow me.”

To hell, if you ask me to. But he had already done that. Drake heard the hiss as the ship’s cabin pressure dropped. The hatch opened. He did nothing, but his great paunch began to move in and out with its own rhythm. He saw that Ana’s belly was doing the same.

“If you decided to live here,” she said, in a voice half an octave higher than usual, “you wouldn’t have to make a decision whether to live on the surface, where there’s not much oxygen, or in the deep caverns, where there is. You’d just let your symbsuit sort that out, and provide whatever you need. Mars surface dwellers never disengage from their symbsuits. They eat, drink, sleep, and die with them — even when they go to the caverns.”

Drake could understand why, when they left the ship and began to wander the broken plain outside. It didn’t feel anything like wearing a suit. The symbiote was his own body. It merely happened to be a new body that could endure extreme cold and make do on less than a quarter of a human’s oxygen needs.

“Eat, drink, sleep, and die,” he said. “Make love, too?”

“Can you imagine humans living for years in an environment where they couldn’t make love? See that group?” Ana was pointing to the horizon. “Go and ask them.”

Half a dozen people/symbiotes had appeared. They were moving in true kangaroo fashion, bounding along with fifteen-meter leaps in the low Mars gravity.

Drake watched them wave and point, inviting Ana and him over to an open structure beside a jumble of rocks.

“Fine,” he said. “Let’s go and chat.”

He was curious to hear about life on the surface of Mars, but he didn’t want to talk to them about lovemaking activities involving a symbsuit. He was quite capable of conducting his own experiments on that subject.

The change took place on the second day on Mars. Ana became suddenly withdrawn and remote. Drake didn’t know what it was — something he had said or done? — and she did not want to talk.

That had never happened in the old days. It was not that they had never argued. But they had a standard rule. As Ana put it, “Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight.”

When one’s feelings were hurt, the other always knew. They would sit and talk, argue as much as necessary, and get every nagging pain or upset out into the open. Once the sore point was exposed, the other could stroke it better.

But Ana refused to do it. She only said, “It’s nothing.” When clearly it wasn’t.

The return flight to Pluto, cruising out to where Drake’s Servitor was patiently (or perhaps impatiently) awaiting his return, was quiet and unsatisfying. According to Ana, the trip had been a complete success. If there had been major temporal shock, it now lay in the past.

But if it was a success, why was she so distant?

He found out on the final morning of the flight, minutes before they were due to land at the station on Charon. Ana had been a lot more cheerful during the previous twenty-four hours. He assumed that the trouble, whatever it had been, was over. Because his guard was down, the shock was so much harder to take.

“What do you mean, our last few days together?” Drake had been watching the ship’s automatic docking on Charon when Ana’s quiet statement jerked him to attention.

Had he heard right? Had she really said, “I wish we could have made more of our last few days together.”

He said, “I thought we could stay here in the outer system for as long as we like.”

“You can.” She moved to stand in front of him. “But I can’t. I made promises. The people heading for Rigel Calorans are waiting for me, but they won’t wait forever. I have to head out and join them.”

“But what about us ?” And when Ana shook her head, he went on, “Look, if you already made promises to them, I completely understand. I wouldn’t want you to go back on your word. But I have nothing to hold me close to Sol — nothing but you. I’ll come with you, join your group.”

“No, Drake, that isn’t it at all.” She took his hand in hers. “I like you a lot, and I will never forget that I owe my life to you. But you can’t go with me. Let me put it more brutally: I don’t want you to go with me. I do not love you as you love your Ana.”

“I don’t believe it. Everything we’ve said to each other, everything we’ve done—”

“Everything that you have said. We make fine, fond lovers, physically we fit together beautifully, I don’t deny it.”

“So what’s the problem? Ana, we can talk this through, we always have.”

“ That’s the problem, right there. I’m not Ana — not your Ana. I’m me. You and I have never talked through any problems together. Think about it, and you will realize that what I say is true.” She released his hand and stepped away. “Drake, this is all my fault. I should never have revivified you. I see you looking at me, and I know you are seeing someone else.”

“I don’t want anyone else. I want you.”

“No. You are blind. You want what you see, what you think I am. There’s so much background that you and your Ana shared. I don’t have that, but you don’t even realize it’s missing. Let me give you just one example. You assumed I would know why you call your Servitor Milton, so you’ve never bothered to explain it to me. But I don’t know.”

“ ‘They also serve who only stand and wait’; an ancient poet, John Milton, wrote that. It was just a sort of joke when I said it, because the Servitor—”