“I saw my mother,” Jeanette said, looking down. “She’s dead, Martin. She died when I was five. I saw her dressed in black, carrying a suitcase or something like a suitcase.”
“That’s bolsh,” Rosa said.
“Be quiet,” Stephanie said.
“Rosa, please,” Ariel pleaded.
“This is all crap! She couldn’t have seen that,” Rosa said.
“Why the hell not?” Ariel said, face red. “Does everybody have to see what you saw?”
“They just want to be in on it. They’re making it up. What Alexis and I saw—”
“That’s enough,” Martin said, raising his hand.
“We saw something!” Alexis cried out. “This is all crazy!”
Hans muttered, “Righto.”
Martin raised his hand higher, nodding his head forward, lips tight. “Quiet,
“You don’t control me,” Rosa said. “You—”
“Smother it, Rosa,” Ariel said. She looked sharply at Martin—
“Why is everybody down on me?” Rosa screamed, tears flying. “Everybody get out of here and leave us… leave Alexis and me alone.”
“No thanks,” Alexis said. “I don’t know what I saw, or what it means. I just reported it.”
Martin smelled the sweetness of flowers from Rosa’s garden, tried to think of some way to conclude this meeting without damaging delicate egos.
“Nobody knows what anybody saw,” he said. “Nobody blames anybody for seeing anything. Rosa, you reported what you saw, and that’s according to the rules. Whatever anybody sees, they come to me and tell me right away, understand? No embarrassment, no hiding, no shame. I want to know.”
Stephanie nodded approval. Hans seemed less than convinced.
“Have there been other sightings?” Martin asked. “This is not snitching. Have there?”
Nobody answered.
“I’m going to talk to each of you individually for the next hour, in my quarters,” Martin said. “There’s no time to waste now. We have to be disciplined, and we have to think of the Job. Got that?”
Heads nodding around the room, all but Ariel’s and Rosa’s.
“We have to make a judgment—if we’re going to make one before partition—by tomorrow morning. This is a very serious time, this is why we came here. Not to worry about our sanity and our egos. Think of Earth.”
One by one they came to his quarters. Martin recorded their words in his wand. Alexis Baikal came first, full of doubts, tearful in her apologies for having seen
Ariel was cool, as if regretting her tacit support of Martin in Rosa’s quarters. “I think the moms are doing something,” she said, folding and unfolding her hands. “I think they’re experimenting with us, like when they made us screw up the first external drill.”
“You’ll never trust them, will you?” Martin asked.
Ariel shook her head. “We’re trapped. That’s what Rosa thinks, too, but she hasn’t said it directly. She’s desperate.”
“You think she’s seeing things, making them up?”
Reluctantly, Ariel nodded.
“That doesn’t make sense. You think the moms are fooling with us, but you think
“I think they’re weeding out the weak ones,” Ariel said. “They might jeopardize our doing the Job. I don’t say I know what’s happening. You just wanted our ideas.”
“Rosa’s weak?”
“I don’t want to get her into trouble.”
“Ariel, she’s having real problems.”
“I know that.”
“Can she do her work?”
“She’s been doing pretty well, hasn’t she?”
“Will she keep it up?” Martin asked.
“I think she will. But the children need to accept her.”
“I get the impression she isn’t accepting the children.”
“Whatever,” Ariel said.
“You’re her friend. Can you bring her in?”
“We talk. She doesn’t tell me everything. I don’t think she’s anybody’s friend. I just make it a point to talk to her. You don’t. Nobody else does.”
Martin could not deny that. “I’m talking to her next.”
Ariel lifted her chin back. “Are you going to be her friend?”
Ariel left. Rosa Sequoia came into his quarters a few minutes later, face set like stone, eyes wide with fear and that ever-present defiance, an expression that made Martin want to kick her.
“Tell me what you think you saw. Just me,” Martin said.
She shook her head. “You don’t believe any of us.”
“I’m listening.”
“The others… they saw something different. Why should you believe any of us?”
Martin lifted his hand and crooked his finger encouragingly: Come on.
“You think I started it,” Rosa said.
“I don’t think that. Do you think you started it?”
“I saw it first.” Under her breath. “It’s mine.”
“If it belongs to you, can you control it?” The conversation was getting looser and loonier. How far would he go to bring her in? Rosa was too sharp to be deceived. “Do you claim it?”
“I don’t have it. I don’t have anything.” She hung her head. “I don’t know what I’ve been doing.”
This reversal caught him by surprise. He opened and closed his mouth, then folded his legs beneath him. “Jesus, Rosa.”
“I’m not saying I… I’m not saying that we haven’t seen anything.”
“No… Sit. Please. Just talk.”
Rosa looked to one side and shook her head. “I don’t want to go against the Job. I’m afraid this might hurt us. Hurt the Job.”
“What is it? Do you know?”
She sobbed and held her head back to keep the tears in her eyes from spilling. “I didn’t make it up. I swear to Earth, Martin. I wouldn’t do that. I don’t know about the others.”
“Is it real?”
“It is, to me. I’ve only seen it once, though. It was more real than I am. It was more real than the Job. It scared me, but it was beautiful. Should I be ashamed of that?”
“I don’t know. Talk.”
“I do my work,” Rosa said, “I try to be competent, but I don’t belong here any more than I belonged on the Ark. Or on the Earth. You don’t think much of me because I’m causing trouble… But nobody thought
“You can’t own a… Whatever it is. It can’t be yours alone.”
“If it was important, it would make me useful. People wouldn’t look through me.”
Martin asked her to relax and again she refused. “I want to go back. I want this forgotten.”
“What about Alexis? What she saw?”
“I don’t know what she saw. It sounds like what I saw, but it may not be.”
“You didn’t make this up, I know that. But is it real?”