Robert Charles Wilson - SPIN

"You've made the transit before?"

"Twice."

"Was it difficult?"

He shrugged. "Don't believe everything you hear."

By noon many of the passengers were up on deck. In addition to the Minangkabau villagers there were assorted Acehnese, Malay, and Thai emigrants aboard, perhaps a hundred of us in all—far too many for the available cabins, but three aluminum cargo containers in the hold had been rigged as sleeping quarters, carefully ventilated.

This wasn't the grim, often deadly, human-smuggling trade that used to carry refugees to Europe or North America. Most of the people who crossed the Arch every day were overflow from the feeble U.N.-sanctioned resettlement programs, often with money to spend. We were treated with respect by the crew, many of whom had spent months in Port Magellan and who understood its blandishments and pitfalls.

One of the deck hands had set aside part of the main deck as a sort of soccer field, marked off with nets, where a group of children were playing. Every now and then the ball bounced past the nets, often into Jala's lap, much to his chagrin. Jala was irritable today.

I asked him when the ship would make the transit.

"According to the captain, unless we change speed, twelve hours or so."

"Our last day on Earth," I said.

"Don't joke."

"I meant it literally."

"And keep your voice down. Sailors are superstitious."

"What will you do in Port Magellan?"

Jala raised his eyebrows. "What will I do? Fuck beautiful women. And quite possibly a few ugly ones. What else?"

The soccer ball bounced past the net again. This time Jala scooped it up and held it against his belly. "Damn it, I warned you! This game is over!"

A dozen children promptly pressed against the nets, shrieking protest, but it was En who summoned the courage to come around and confront Jala directly. En was sweating, his rib cage pumping like a bellows. His team had been five points ahead. "Give it back, please," he said.

"You want this back?" Jala stood up, still clutching the ball, imperious, mysteriously angry. "You want it? Go get it." He kicked the ball in a long trajectory that took it past the deck rails and out into the blue-green immensity of the Indian Ocean.

En looked astonished, then angry. He said something low and bitter in Minang.

Jala reddened. Then he slapped the boy with his open hand, so hard that En's heavy glasses went skittering across the deck.

"Apologize," Jala demanded.

En dropped to one knee, eyes squeezed shut. He drew a few sobbing breaths. Eventually he stood up. He walked a few steps across the deck plates and collected his eyeglasses. He fumbled them into place and walked back with what I thought was an astonishing dignity. He stood directly in front of Jala.

"No," he said faintly. "You apologize."

Jala gasped and swore. En cringed. Jala raised his hand again.

I caught his wrist in midswing.

Jala looked at me, startled. "What is this! Let go."

He tried to pull his hand away. I wouldn't let him. "Don't hit him again," I said.

"I'll do what I like!"

"Fine," I said. "But don't hit him again."

"You—after what I've done for you—!"

Then he gave me a second look.

I don't know what he saw in my face. I don't know exactly what I was feeling at that moment. Whatever it was, it appeared to confuse him. His clenched fist went slack. He seemed to wilt.

"Fucking crazy American," he muttered. "I'm going to the canteen." To the small crowd of children and deck hands that had gathered around us: "Where I can have peace and respect!" He stalked away.

En was still staring at me, gap-jawed.

"I'm sorry about that," I said.

He nodded.

"I can't get your ball back," I said.

He touched his cheek where Jala had slapped him. "That's okay," he said faintly.

Later—over dinner in the crew mess, hours away from the crossing—I told Diane about the incident. "I didn't think about what I was doing. It just seemed… obvious. Almost reflexive. Is that a Fourth thing?"

"It might be. The impulse to protect a victim, especially a child, and to do it instantly, without thinking. I've felt it myself. I suppose it's something the Martians wrote into their neural rebuild… assuming they can really engineer feelings as subtle as that. I wish we had Wun Ngo Wen here to explain it. Or Jason, for that matter. Did it feel forced?"

"No…"

"Or wrong, inappropriate?"

"No… I think it was exactly the right thing to do."

"But you wouldn't have done it before you took the treatment?"

"I might have. Or wanted to. But I probably would have second-guessed myself until it was too late."

"So you're not unhappy about it."

No. Just surprised. This was as much me as it was Martian biotech, Diane was saying, and I supposed that was true… but it would take some getting used to. Like every other transition (childhood to adolescence, adolescence to adulthood) there were new imperatives to deal with, new opportunities and pitfalls, new doubts.

For the first time in many years I was a stranger to myself again.

* * * * *

I had almost finished packing when Carol came downstairs, a little drunk, loose-limbed, carrying a shoebox in her arms.

The box was labeled mementos (school).

"You should take this," she said. "It was your mother's."

"If it means something to you, Carol, keep it."

"Thank you, but I already took what I wanted from it." I opened the lid and glanced at the contents. "The letters."

The anonymous letters addressed to Belinda Sutton, my mother's maiden name.

"Yes. So you've seen them. Did you ever read them?"

"No, not really. Just enough to know they were love letters."

"Oh, God. That sounds so saccharine. I prefer to think of them as tributes. They're quite chaste, really, if you read them closely. Unsigned. Your mother received them when we were both at university. She was dating your father then, and she could hardly show them to him—he was writing her letters of his own. So she shared them with me."

"She never found out who wrote them?"

"No. Never."

"She must have been curious."

"Of course. But she was already engaged to Marcus by that time. She started dating Marcus Dupree when Marcus and E.D. were setting up their first business, designing and manufacturing high altitude balloons back when aerostats were what Marcus called 'blue sky' technology: a little crazy, a little idealistic. Belinda called Marcus and E.D. 'the Zeppelin brothers.' So I guess we were the Zeppelin sisters, Belinda and I. Because that's when I started flirting with E.D. In a way, Tyler, my entire marriage was nothing more than an attempt to keep your mother as a friend."

"The letters—"

"Interesting, isn't it, that she kept them all these years? Eventually I asked her why. Why not just throw them away? She said, 'Because they're sincere.' It was her way of honoring whoever had written them. The last one arrived a week before her wedding. None after that. And a year later I married E.D. Even as couples we were inseparable, did she ever tell you that? We vacationed together, we went to movies together. Belinda came to the hospital when the twins were born and I was waiting at the door when she brought you home for the first time. But all that ended when Marcus had his accident. Your father was a wonderful man, Tyler, very earthy, very funny—the only person who could make E.D. laugh. Reckless to a fault, though. Belinda was absolutely devastated when he died. And not just emotionally. Marcus had burned through most of their savings and Belinda spent what was left servicing the mortgage on their house in Pasadena. So when E.D. moved east and we made an offer on this place it seemed perfectly natural to invite her to use the guest house."