'No, of course not,' Victoria said. 'It's alt right, don't worry. Go ahead and call him direct. We'll manage.'
'What are you going to tell him?'
'It beats the hell out of me,' Stephen Thomas said. He felt not only embarrassed but humiliated. The feeling would only get worse when he called his father.
'Stephen Thomas—' Satoshi said, speaking tentatively.
'Satoshi—' Victoria said.
'We've got to work out something fair.'
'I know it! But with only my salary, we're going to be lucky if we can keep the house. If we lose it, that's five years of work and all Merit's planning down the drain. Grangrana will have to move back to the city ... '
'I'll work something out with Greg myself!' Stephen Thomas surprised himself with his own vehemence. 'And it won't be at the expense of Grangrana or the house. Dammit,
I've never pulled my financial weight in the partnership, I'm not going to start being a drain on it, too!'
'Maybe Greg will reconsider moving to Canada,' Victoria said.
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Stephen Thomas flinched. 'I don't think that's within the range of possible solutions.' He tried not to sound defensive, but failed. That made him feel guilty and angry, for he knew Victoria was not leading up to a lecture on the best ways to save money. Her family had worked hard and long to pull itself into the middle class, but she seldom talked about their history. What few details Stephen Thomas knew, he knew from Satoshi. Stephen Thomas came from a family that had been middle or upper middle class since before Victoria's ancestors escaped to Canada. It was his father's own fault— perhaps not so much fault as bad luck—that had pushed him down to an income that did not meet subsistence without his son's help.
Victoria, reacting to his defensive tone, withdrew from the conversation, turning aside and gazing across the park.
'If you thought my financial responsibilities were such a y drawback, why did you invite me into this partnership in the
* first place?''
* Victoria's shoulders stiffened, but she neither spoke nor turned toward him.
Stephen Thomas stared at her, stunned.
'We invited you because we love you,' Satoshi said. 'Merry did. Maybe you do. But dammit, Victoria, sometimes I wonder—!' Stephen Thomas rose and started away.
t / I I
'Stephen Thomas—' Satoshi called after him.
Stephen Thomas flung his hand to the side, a gesture of anger and denial, warning Satoshi off.
Stephen Thomas crossed the park. He Jammed his hands
into his pockets and hunched his shoulders. He felt hurt and
confused by Victoria's reaction. He could not think of a way /- to explain the sudden change to his father.
Back at the park table, Victoria opened her bento box and stared at her lunch. She no longer felt like eating, either.
'How could he say that to me?' she cried.
'AH he wanted was a little reassurance,' Satoshi said.
'He can't face this alone, Victoria,'
'His father isn't our only responsibility.'
'But his father is one of our responsibilities. Stephen Thomas was open with us about it.'
'He was. You're right. He's right.' She sighed. 'It's just that I get so tired of Stephen Thomas and Greg playing out
176 vonda N. Mdntyre
the archetypal American father-son relationship. And I still don't see how we're going to be able to juggle fast enough to keep everything in the air on one salary.''
'They can't impound the money for long—I'm sure Stephen Thomas is right about that.'
'Saloshi, love, you and our partner are brilliant scientists. You arc ethical people. Stephen Thomas is charmingly neurotic and too spiritual for his own good—'
'Be fair.'
'—and you are both great in bed. But between you, you have the political sense of the average nudibranch. This could take months to get resolved, and it will drain the expedition's energy the whole time. Don't hold your breath waiting for your next pay deposit.'
Satoshi had not even opened his lunch. He looked down at his hands, flexed and spread his fingers, turned them over, and stared at his palms.
'I won't,' he said. 'And I don't see how we're going to keep everything in the air on one salary, either. If we help Greg out—' He hesitated, but Victoria knew as well as he did that they had a responsibility to the elder Gregory. Stephen Thomas had already made the commitment when they invited him into the partnership. 'If we help Greg out, the house ... '
Victoria, scowling, rested her chin on her fists. 'Let's not talk about losing the house until we have to.'
'Maybe it was a dream all along.'
'It was—but it was working, dammit!'
Under ordinary circumstances, they would never have had a hope of buying their house. Nobody living on ordinary incomes—even three ordinary incomes—could atford to buy property. But several years on the expedition, with no living expenses, gave them the chance to put most of their income
against the price while they were gone. It was Merit's idea and Merit's plan. Merit even, somehow, found a decent house that a real estate corporation was willing to sell.
'If one of us went back to earth for a few days ... '
'They will have to send wild horses up here on a transport to get me otf Starfarer' Victoria said. 'This is exactly what they're hoping will happen, and it's only taken us three hours to start thinking about leaving. If they shoot down our mo-
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rale, we'll argue, we'll abandon the expedition, we'll go groundside and get new jobs. I wouldn't go back even to lobby for us—they want us out of the sky, no matter what. They're collecting excuses. They have the associates' withdrawal to hold against us already. If the rest of us leave, they'll just come in and claim salvage—'
'I wasn't talking about leaving permanently.'
'Let's not talk about leaving at all. If we lose our house, we lose our house. If we lose the expedition . . .'
'You're right,' he said. 'Of course you're right.'
'Besides,' Victoria said, trying to smile, 'if we lose the expedition we can't afford a house anyway.'
They hugged each other, then packed the bento boxes into the AS and sent it home to put the food away for dinner. Victoria wondered if anyone would be hungry then, either.
'The meeting tonight is going to be something,' she said.
His graduate students had reappeared by the time Stephen Thomas got back to the lab. He wanted to talk to them, but the tension of having to explain things to his father would emotionally distort everything he said to them. He reached his office. When he touched the door, it crashed open without his meaning to slam it. He hesitated, then turned. All three students stared at him, startled.
'Don't anybody go anywhere,' he muttered. 'I'll be back in a couple of minutes.'
In his office, Stephen Thomas asked Arachne to connect him to earth, and his father. The conversation would be awkward, because of the distance of Starfarer from earth and the resulting time delay. His father was no more proficient at holding two simultaneous conversations than was Stephen Thomas.
'Steve? I didn't expect to hear from you.'
'How are you, Greg?' Stephen Thomas said. 'My partners send their regards.'
'Oh- Well. You say hi to Vicky and Satoshi for me.'
Stephen Thomas could not help but smile. His father was the only person in the world who called him 'Steve'; his father was probably the only person in the world dense enough to keep calling Victoria by a diminutive. He was
