The Quiet Pools

“Sometimes I see a two- or three-year-old toddling along with a parent and it’ll make me smile. But a little older and I don’t know how to talk to them. A little older than that and I don’t trust them.”

“Why not?”

“I was one, remember?”

“What kind of kid were you?”

Christopher laughed, surprised. “You’d have to ask someone else. I was busy being the kid.”

“You don’t have any notion?”

Frowning, Christopher considered. “A pretty good one, I guess. I wasn’t much of a problem, wasn’t much in the way. I liked learning, liked my ed plan and my schools. I spent a lot of time in the woods.”

“Tell me what kind of father you think you’d be.”

A wry smile. “Not a very good one,” Christopher said. “I’m dividing myself too many ways already. I have an A job and my music and my family, and they all need more than I seem to be able to give them. If I divide myself four ways, I’ll have even less for everybody.” He shook his head. “I have too much growing up still to do. Look at why I’m here talking to you. Maybe someday. But I’m not ready now.”

Meyfarth pursed his lips. “Christopher, the nastiest secret in life is that there’s never a time when you understand it all, never a time when it’s as easy as you were sure it was going to be. If that’s what you’re waiting for, you’ll never be ready.”

Blinking, Christopher stared at Meyfarth blankly. “I’m only twenty-seven. Jessie’s twenty-five. We have lots of time.”

“Every year you wait, you’ll find more reasons to say no. Why not have the child and just let Jessie worry about it?”

“It’s not fair—”

“I think if you ask Jessie, you’ll find out that would suit her just fine—”

“No,” Christopher snapped. “You’re not listening. It’s not fair to the boy. If I have a son, I’m going to be there for him. I’m going to be part of his life, not a sidelight to it. I’m going to watch him grow and make sure he knows how much I love him. I’m not going to raise him by remote control, turn him over to some kind of secondhand mom-for-hire.”

“Like your father did with you?” Meyfarth asked gently.

There was a moment of soft-eyed surprise, a glimmer of hurt, a tinge of puzzlement, and then Christopher’s face closed down hard. “Damn you, I told you I didn’t want to talk about my father,” he shouted, jumping to his feet and waving clenched fists. “I told you and you kept pushing me back there. My father’s one person, and I’m another. And what I do has to do with me, not with him.”

Meyfarth did not flinch or shy from Christopher’s angry demonstration. “Then why did you start talking about a ‘son’? Who were you thinking of when you spoke so passionately about the right and wrong way to parent? It wasn’t a friend. It wasn’t a neighbor. Wasn’t it your father?”

“You said that,” Christopher insisted. “You said ‘son.’ ”

Meyfarth stood, half blocking the way to the trail, holding the younger man’s eyes with his gaze. “No. I said ‘child.’ You’re lying to yourself, Christopher. You brushed up against something that hurts and now you’re lying to yourself.”

“I don’t have to explain my father. I don’t have to apologize for my father. And I fucking don’t have to talk about my father if I fucking don’t want to.” As he spoke, he shouldered Meyfarth out of his way and stalked down the trail toward the elevator.

Meyfarth caught up with him there. “You have to look at it, Christopher.”

“Shut up.”

“You said you were willing to risk discovering yourself.”

“Some other time, thank you,” he said sarcastically.

“This has been playing in your head for twenty years. Don’t you want to have a chance to decide if it belongs there?”

The doors opened. “My father loves me,” Christopher said, backing one step into the car so that he blocked Meyfarth from entering. “Why do you want to make me think he doesn’t?”

“This is about loving yourself, Christopher.”

“What floor?” asked the elevator.

“Then what’s my father got to do with it, goddammit?”

“Because he’s inside your head. It’s his voice you hear when you think you have to make your life perfect, yourself perfect. Did you hear yourself? You were a good kid because you liked school and stayed out of the way? I’ll tell you why you don’t want to have a child with Jessie. You’re afraid that your son will disappoint you the way you disappointed your father. And you’re afraid your son will think of you the same way you think of him.”

“What way is that?”

“Answer that question yourself, and the answer will be worth something.”

Christopher’s bitter rage, which had momentarily faded as he listened, flowered in full blossom. “Goddamn you assfucker,” he snarled, one many-syllabled word. “Otis—lobby.”

The doors closed, the car began to drop, and Christopher closed his eyes in relief. I’m not coming back, he thought angrily. We can find someone else. Or Jessie and Loi can find someone else. I almost don’t care which. But I’m not coming back to have more tricks played on me.

That resolve helped calm him. But he could not release all his anger, for the infuriating thing was that Meyfarth had been right. Christopher had brushed up against something that hurt, a black wraith that lived in an ugly place inside him. And try as he might to escape it, it shadowed his consciousness all the way back to the compound.

Work proved no amulet, anger no talisman. The wraith shadowed him all through the afternoon and into that early winter night, fragments of the session playing tag-gotcha! in his head until half a flask of Loi’s Glenfiddich finally silenced what lies and bluster could not.

CHAPTER 18 —GCA— “There is only one history…”

It was ten days until the end of ground training, and excitement was building in the village at AT-Houston. It was obvious to Thomas Tidwell, still sharing a house with three Memphis colonists. But it seemed to him that even a casual visitor to the compound could not fail to notice, would see it in the self-delighted smiles, the surreptitious winks and thumb-in-fist salutes.

Soon, the winks and smiles and salutes said, soon.

Soon the staff would scatter across the globe and throughout the orbiting worlds on a last sojourn home, for a final farewell to family and familiar. Even though the sailing date was still three months away, it seemed to Tidwell that the whole planet must soon echo with the ache of the tearing away, that the pain of those good-byes would surely more than cancel the giddy pleasure he was seeing on the faces of the villagers. But if that were so, he was the only one who saw it. When Evans or Colas said, “Ten more days,” it was said with potent anticipation, as a promise and a bond between the elect.

The selection sociometricians had explained their strategy to Tidwell in effusive detail—how the ground training had less to do with technology than with psychology, with forging emotional links through shared homes, shared labors, shared goals. The demanding schedule only intensified the effect, an old workshop leader’s trick carried off on a much greater scale. The colonists would part on the last day saying, “See you on the ship.” and that vow would help assure that most would keep the appointment.

Ten more days, they said. Ten more days until tomorrow begins. Ten more days until we can finally close the old book, open a new one.

And for Tidwell, ten more days until he could return to Half-whistle, the episode over, his mission concluded,