"The ACLU?" Drew echoed, shocked. "Can they close you down?"
"They can try. But we"ll demonstrate substantial losses far beyond accounts receivable for the products, and all they can do is accept what we offer."
"What are they protesting?" Lunzie asked, alarmed.
Lars waved it away as unimportant. "They"re representing the Ssli we fired last month from the underwater hydraulics a.s.sembly line. Unsuitable for the job."
"But the Ssli are a marine race. Why, what makes them unsuitable?"
"You wouldn"t understand. They"re too different. They don"t mix well with the other employees. And there"s problems in providing them with insurance. We have to buy a rider for every mobile tank they bring onto the premises to live in. And that"s another thing: they live right on the factory grounds. We almost lost our insurance because of them."
"Well, they can not commute from the sea every day," Tee quipped.
"So they say." Lars dismissed the Ssli with a frown, entirely missing Tee"s sarcasm. "We"ll settle the matter within a few days. If they don"t leave, we"ll have to shut the line down entirely anyway. There"s other work they can do. We"ve offered to extend our placement service to them."
"Oh, I see," Lunzie said, heavily. "Very generous of you." It was not so much that she thought the company should drive itself into bankruptcy for the sake of equity as that Lars seemed quite oblivious to the moral dimension of the situation. Lars levelled a benevolent eye at her. "Why, ancestress, how good of you to say so."
Melanie and Lars"s wife beamed at her approval, also entirely missing her cynical emphasis.
"Is it considered backwards to read books nowadays?" Lunzie asked Tee later when they were alone in the guest room. "I"ve only been on the Platform and Astris since I came out of cold sleep the first time. I haven"t any idea what society at large has been doing."
"Has that been bothering you?" Tee asked, as he pulled his tunic over his head. "No. Reading has not gone out of fashion in the last number of years, nor in the years you were awake before, nor in the ones while you slept in the asteroid belt. Your relatives do not wish to expose themselves to deep thought, lest they be affected by it."
Lunzie pulled off her boots and dropped them on the floor. "What do you think of them?"
"Your relatives? Very nice. A trifle pretentious, very conservative, I would say. Conservative in every way except that they seem to have put us together in this guest room, instead of at opposite ends of the house. I"m glad they did, though. I would find it cold and lonely with only those dreary moralisers."
"Me, too. I don"t know whether to say I"m delighted with them or disappointed. They show so little spirit. Everything they do has such petty motives. Shallow. Born dirtsiders, all of them."
"Except the girl, I think," Tee said, meditatively, sitting down on a fluffy seat next to the bed.
"Oh, yes, Lona. I apologise to her from afar for lumping her with the rest of these . . . these closed- minded warts on a log. She"s the only one with any gumption. And I hope she shows sense and gets out of here as soon as she can."
"So should we." Tee moved over behind Lunzie and began to rub her neck. Lunzie sighed and relaxed her spine, leaning back against his crossed legs. He circled an arm around her shoulders and kissed her hair while his other hand kneaded the muscles in her back. "I don"t think I can be polite for very long. We should stay a couple of days, and then let"s find an excuse to go."
"As you wish," Tee offered quietly, feeling the tense cords in her back relax. "I would not mind escaping from here, either."
Lunzie tiptoed down the ramp from the sleeping rooms into the common room and the dining room. There was no sound except the far-off humming of the air-recirculation system. "h.e.l.lo?" she called softly. "Melanie?"
Lona popped up the ramp from the lower level of the house. "Nope, just me. Good morning!"
"Good morning. Shouldn"t you be in school?" Lunzie asked, smiling at the girl"s eagerness. Lona was both pretty and lively, she looked like a throwback to Lunzie"s own family, instead of a member of Melanie"s conservative Alphan brood.
"No cla.s.ses today," Lona explained, plumping down beside her on the couch. "I"m in a communications technology discipline, remember? Our courses are every other day, alternating with work experience either at a factory or a broadcast facility. I"ve got the day off."
"Good," Lunzie said, looking around. "I was wondering where everyone was."
"I"m your reception committee. Melanie"s just gone shopping, and Dalton normally works at home, but he"s got a meeting this morning. Where"s Tee?"
"Still asleep. His circadian rhythm is set for a duty shift that begins later on."
Lona shook her head. "Please. Don"t bother giving me the details. I flunked biology. I"m majoring in communications engineering. Oh, Melanie left you something to look at." Lona produced a package sealed in a black plastic pouch. Curious, Lunzie pulled open the wrapping, and discovered a plastic case with her name printed on the lid.
"They"re Fiona"s. She left them behind when she went away," Lona explained, peering over Lunzie"s shoulder as Lunzie opened the box. It was full of two-D and three-D images on wafers.
"It"s all of her baby pictures," Lunzie breathed, "and mine, too. Oh, I thought these were lost!" She picked up one, and then another, exclaiming over them happily.
"Not lost. Melanie said that Fiona brought all of that stuff to MarsBase with her. We don"t know who most of these people are. Would you mind identifying them?"
"They"re your ancestors, and some friends of ours from long ago. Sit down and I"ll show you. Oh, Muhlah, look at that! That"s me at four years of age." Lunzie peered at a small two-D image, as they sat down on the couch with the box on their knees.
"Your hair stuck out just like Gordon"s does," Lona pointed out, snickering.
"His looks better," Lunzie put that picture back in the box and took out the next one. "This is my mother. She was a doctor, too. She was born in England on Old Earth, as true a Sa.s.senach as ever wandered the Yorkshire Dales."
"What"s a Sa.s.senach?" Lona asked, peering at the image of the pet.i.te fair-haired woman.
"An old dialect word for a contentious Englishman. Mother was what you"d call strong-minded. She introduced me to the works of Rudyard Kipling, who has always been my favourite author."
"Did you ever get to meet him?"
Lunzie laughed. "Oh, no, child. Let"s see, what is this year?"
" "Sixty-four." "Well, then, next year will be the thousandth anniversary of his birth."
Lona was impressed. "Oh. Very ancient."
"Don"t let that put you off reading him," Lunzie cautioned her. "He"s too good to miss out on all your life. Kipling was a wise man, and a fine writer. He wrote adventures and children"s stories and poetry, but what I loved most of all was his keen way of looking at a situation and seeing the truth of it."
"I"ll look for some of Kipling in the library," Lona promised. "Who"s this man?" she asked, pointing.
"This is my father. He was a teacher."
"They look nice. I wish I could have known them, like I"m getting to know you."
Lunzie put an arm around Lona. "You"d have liked them. And they would have been crazy about you."
They went through the box of pictures. Lunzie lingered over pictures of Fiona as a small child, and studied the images of the girl as she grew to womanhood. There were pictures of Fiona"s late mate and all the babies. Even as an infant, Lars had a solemn, self-important expression, which made them both giggle. Lona turned out the bottom compartment of the box and held out Lunzie"s university diploma.
"Why is your name Lunzie Mespil, instead of just Lunzie?" Lona asked, reading the ornate characters on the plastic-coated parchment.
"What"s wrong with Mespil?" Lunzie wanted to know.
Lona turned up her lips scornfully. "Surnames are barbaric. They let people judge you by your ancestry or your profession, instead of by your behaviour."
"Do you want the true answer, or the one your uncle Lars would prefer?"
Lona grinned wickedly. She obviously shared Lunzie"s opinion of Lars as a pompous old fogy. "What"s the truth?"
"The truth is that when I was a student, I contracted to a term marriage with Sion Mespil. He was an angelically handsome charmer attending medical school at the same time I was. I loved him dearly, and I think he felt the same about me. We didn"t want a permanent marriage at that time because neither of us knew where we would end up after school. I was in the mental sciences, and he was in genetics and reproductive sciences. We might go to opposite ends of the galaxy - and in fact, we did. If we had stayed together, of course, we might have made it permanent. I kept his last name and gave it to our baby, Fiona, to help her avoid marrying one of her half-brothers at some time in the future." Lunzie chuckled. "I swear Sion was majoring in gynaecology just so he could deliver his own offspring. With the exception of the time we were married, I"ve never see a man with such an active love life in all my days."
"Didn"t you want him to help raise Fiona?" Lona asked.
"I felt perfectly capable of taking care of her on my own. I loved her dearly, and truth be told, Sion Mespil was far better at the engendering of children than the raising. He was just as happy to leave it to me. Besides, my specialty required that I travel a lot. I couldn"t ask him to keep up with us as we moved. It would be hard enough on Fiona."
Lona was taking in Lunzie"s story through every pore, as if it was a Tri-D adventure. "Did you ever hear from him again after medical school?" she demanded.
"Oh, yes, of course," Lunzie a.s.sured her, smiling. "Fiona was his child. He sent us ten K of data or so every time he heard of a message batch being compiled for our system. We did the same. Of course, I had to edit his letters for Fiona. I don"t think at her age it was good for her to hear details of her father"s s.e.x life, but his genetics work was interesting. He did work on the heavyworld mutation, you know. I think he influenced her to go into medicine as much as I did."
"Is that him?" Lona pointed to one of the men in Lunzie"s medical school graduation picture. "He"s handsome."
"No. That one." Lunzie cupped her hand behind Sion"s holo, to make it stand out. "He had the face of a benevolent spirit, but his heart was as black as his hair. The galaxy"s worst practical joker, bar none. He played a nasty trick with a cadaver once in Anatomy . . . um, never mind." Lunzie recoiled from the memory.
"Tell me!" Lona begged.
"That story is too sick to tell anyone. I"m surprised I remember it."
"Please!"
Remembering the nauseating details more and more clearly, Lunzie held firm. "No, not that one. I"ve got lots of others I could tell you. When do you have to go home?"
Lona waved a dismissive hand. "No one expects me home. I"m always hanging around here. They"re used to it. Melanie and Dalton are the only interesting people. The other cousins are so dull, and as for the parents ..." Lona let the sentence trail off, rolling her eyes expressively.
"That"s not very tolerant of you. They are your family," Lunzie observed in a neutral voice, though she privately agreed with Lona.
"They may be family to you, but they"re just relatives to me. Whenever I talk about taking a job off-planet, you would think I was going to commit piracy and a public indecency! What an uproar. No one from our family ever goes into s.p.a.ce, except Uncle Dougal. He doesn"t listen to Uncle Lars"s rules."
Lunzie nodded wisely. "You"ve got the family complaint. Itchy feet. Well, you don"t have to stay in one place if you don"t want to. Otherwise, it"ll drive you mad. You live your own life." Lunzie punctuated her sentence with jabs in the air, ignoring the intrusive conscience which told her she was meddling in affairs that didn"t concern her.
"Why did you leave Fiona?" Lona asked suddenly, laying a hand on her arm. "I"ve always wondered. I think that"s why everyone else is allergic to relatives going out into s.p.a.ce. They never come back."
It was the question that had lain unspoken between her and the others all the last evening. Unsurprised at Lona"s honest a.s.sessment of her family situation, Lunzie stopped to think.
"I have wished and wished again that I hadn"t done it," she answered after a time, squeezing the girl"s fingers. "I couldn"t take her with me. Life on a Platform or any beginning colony is dangerous. But they pay desperation wages for good, qualified employees and we needed money. I had never intended to be gone longer than five years at the outside."
"I"ve heard the pay is good. I"m going to join a mining colony as soon as I"ve graduated," Lona said, accepting Lunzie"s words with a sharp nod. "My boyfriend is a biotechnologist with a specialty in botany. The original green thumb, if you"ll forgive such an archaic expression. What am I saying?" Lona went wide-eyed in mock shame and Lunzie laughed. "Well, I can fix nearly anything. We"d qualify easily. They say you can get rich in a new colony. If you survive. Fiona used to say it was a half-and-half chance." Lona wrinkled her nose as she sorted the pictures and put them away. "Of course, there"s the Oh-Two money. Neither of us has a credit to our names."
Lunzie considered deeply for a few minutes before she spoke. "Lona, I think you should do what you want to do. I"ll give you the money."
"Oh, I couldn"t ask it," Lona gasped. "It"s too much money. A good stake would be hundreds of thousands of credits." But her eyes held a lively spark of hope.
Lunzie noticed it. She was suddenly aware of the generations which lay between them. She had slept through so many that this girl, who could have been her own daughter, was her granddaughter"s grand-daughter. She peered closely at Lona, noticing the resemblance between her and Fiona. This child was the same age Fiona would have been if all had gone well on Descartes, and she had returned on time. "If that"s the only thing standing in your way, if you"re independent enough to ignore family opinion and unwanted advice, that"s good enough for me. It won"t beggar me, I promise you. Far from it. I got sixty years back pay from Descartes, and I hardly know what to do with it. Do me the favour of accepting this gift - er, loan, to pa.s.s on to future generations."
"Well, if it means that much to you ..." Lona began solemnly. Unable to maintain the formal expressions for another moment more, she broke into laughter, and Lunzie joined in.
"Your parents will undoubtedly tell me to mind my own business," Lunzie sighed, "and they"d be within their rights. I"m no better than a stranger to all of you."
"What if they do?" Lona declared defiantly. "I"m legally an adult. They can"t live my life for me. It"s a bargain, Lunzie. I accept. I promise to pa.s.s it on at least one more generation. And thank you. I"ll never, never forget it."
"A cheery good morning!" Tee said, as he clumped down the ramp into the common room toward them. He kissed Lunzie and bowed over Lona"s hand. "I heard laughter. Everyone is in a good mood today? Is there any hope of breakfast? If you show me the food synthesiser, I will serve myself."
"Not a chance!" Lona scolded him. "Melanie would have my eyelashes if I gave you synth food in her house. Come on, I"ll cook something for you."
Lona"s parents were not pleased that their remote ancestress was taking a personal interest in their daughter"s future. "You shouldn"t encourage instability like that," Jai complained. "She wants to go gallivanting off, without a thought for the future."
"There"s nothing unstable about wanting to take a job in s.p.a.ce," Lunzie retorted. "That"s the basic of galactic enterprise."
"Well, we won"t hear of it. And with the greatest of respect, Lunzie, let us raise our child our way, please?"
Lunzie simmered silently at the reproval, but Lona gave her the thumbs up behind her father"s back. Evidently, the girl was not going to mention Lunzie"s gift. Neither would she. It would be a surprise to all of them when she left one day, but Lunzie refused to feel guilty. It wasn"t as though the signs weren"t pointed out to them.
After three days more, Lunzie had had enough of her descendants. She announced at dinner that night that she would be leaving.
"I thought you would stay," Melanie wailed. "We"ve got plenty of room, Lunzie. Don"t go. We"ve hardly had a chance to get acquainted. Stay at least a few more days."
"Oh, I can"t, Melanie. Tee"s got to get back to the Ban Sidhe Ban Sidhe, and so do I. I do appreciate your offer, though," Lunzie a.s.sured her. "I promise to visit whenever I"m in the vicinity. Thank you so much for your hospitality. I"ll carry the memories of your family with me always."
Chapter Nine.
As they rode back into Alpha City in a robot groundcar the next morning. Tee patted Lunzie on the hand. "Let us not go back to the ship just yet. Shall we do some sightseeing? I was talking to Dougal. He says there is a fine museum of antiquities here, with controlled atmosphere. And it is connected to a large shopping mall. We could make an afternoon of it."
Lunzie came back from the far reaches and smiled. She had been staring out the window at the gray expanse of city and thinking. "I"d love it. Walking might help clear my head."
"What is cluttering it?" Tee asked, lightly. "I thought we had left the clutter behind."
"I"ve been examining my life. My original goal, when I woke up the first time, to find Fiona and make sure she was happy and well, was really accomplished long ago, even before I set out for Alpha Centauri. I think I came here just to see Fiona again, to ask her to forgive me. Well, that was for me, not for her. She"s moved on and made a life - quite a successful one - without me. It"s time I learned to let go of her. There are three generations more already, whose upbringing is so different from mine we have nothing to say to one another."
"They are shallow. You have met interesting people of this generation," Tee pointed out.
"Yes, but it"s a sorry note when it"s your own descendants you"re disappointed in," Lunzie said ruefully. "But I don"t know where to go next."
"Why don"t we brainstorm while we walk?" Tee pleaded. "I am getting cramped sitting in this car. Museum of Galactic History, please," he ordered the groundcar"s robot brain.
"Acknowledged," said the mechanical voice. "Working." The groundcar slowed down and made a sharp right off the highway onto a small side street.