part around her waist and sat her back down on the ground. Got the arms of the suit onto her. Happily a suit’s AI worked Jeeveslike to help the occupant into it. He considered her little backpack, there on the ground; it had to be taken. He decided to put it back on her. With all that arranged, he lifted her up and carried her before him in his arms. Her head lolled back too far for his liking and he stopped.
“Swan, can you hear me?”
She groaned, blinked. He got his arm behind her neck and head and hefted her up again. “What?” she said.
“You passed out,” he said. “While you were having the runs.”
“Oh,” she said. She pulled her head upright, put her arms around his neck. He started walking again. She was not that heavy, now that he had her help in holding her. “I could feel a vasovagal coming on,” she said. “Am I getting my period again?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It feels like it, I’m cramping. But I don’t think I have enough body fat to do it.”
“Maybe not.”
Suddenly she jerked in his arms, pulled away to look at him face to face. “Oh my. Hey look-some people don’t like to touch me. I have to tell you. You know those people who ingest some of the aliens from Enceladus?”
“Ingest?”
“Yes. An infusion of that bacterial suite. They eat some of the Enceladans; it’s supposed to be good for you. I did that. A long time ago. So, well, some people don’t like the idea. Don’t even like to be in contact with a person who’s done it.”
Wahram gulped uneasily, felt a jolt of queasiness. Was that the alien bug, or just the thought of the bug? No way to tell. What was done was done, he could not change it. “As I recall,” he said, “the Enceladan life suite is not regarded as being particularly infectious?”
“No, that’s right. But it is conveyed in bodily fluids. I mean, it has to get into your blood, I think. Although I drank mine. Maybe it only has to get into the gut; that’s right. That’s why people worry. So…”
“I’ll be all right,” Wahram said. He carried her for a while, aware that she was inspecting his face. Judging by what he saw in the mirror when he shaved, he did not think there would be much to see.
Without intending to, he said, “You’ve done some strange things to yourself.”
She made a face and looked away. “Moral condemnation of other people is always rather rude, don’t you think?”
“Yes, I do. Of course. Though I notice we do it all the time. But I was speaking of strangeness only. No condemnation implied.”
“Oh sure. Strangeness is so good.”
“Well, isn’t it? We’re all strange.”
She turned her head to look at him again. “I am, I know that. In lots of ways. You saw another way, I suppose.” Glancing at her lap.
“Yes,” Wahram said. “Although that’s not what makes you strange.”
She laughed weakly.
“You’ve fathered children?” he asked.
“Yes. I suppose you think that’s strange too.”
“Yes,” he said seriously. “Though I am an androgyn, myself, and once gave birth to a child. So, you know-it strikes me as a very strange experience, no matter which way it happens.”
She pulled her head back to inspect him, clearly surprised. “I didn’t know that.”
“It wasn’t really relevant to one’s actions in the present,” Wahram said. “Part of one’s past, you know. And anyway, it seems to me most spacers of a certain age have tried almost everything, don’t you think?”
“I guess so. How old are you?”
“I’m a hundred and eleven, thank you. What about you?”
“A hundred and thirty-five.”
“Very nice.”
She shifted in his arms, lifting a fist in a mime of threatening him. By way of a riposte he said, “Do you think you can walk now?”
“Maybe. Let me try.”
He put her feet down, pulled her upright. She leaned against him. She hobbled along for a bit holding his arm, then stood straight and proceeded on her own, slowly.
“We don’t have to walk, you know,” he said. “I mean, we can get to the next station and wait there.”
“Let’s see how I feel. We can decide when we get there.”
Wahram said, “Do you think it was the sun that made you sick? Because I must say, for being in M g, I’m feeling very sore in my joints.”
She shrugged. “We took a shot big enough to kill our comms. Pauline says I took ten sieverts.”
“Wow.” The LD 50 was about thirty, he thought. “My wristpad would have flagged it if I’d taken that much. I checked and it was only up three. But you covered me while we were waiting for the elevator.”
“Well, there was no reason both of us should take a full hit.”
“I suppose. But we could have taken turns.”
“You didn’t know about the flare. What’s your lifetime total?”
“I’m at around two hundred,” he said. They all relied on the DNA repair component of the longevity treatment to stay in space as much as they did.
“Not bad,” she said. “I’m at five.” She sighed. “This could be it. Or maybe it just killed the bacteria in my gut. I think that’s what’s happened. I hope. Although my hair is falling out too.”
“My joints are probably just sore from all the walking,” Wahram said.
“Could be. What do you do for aerobics?”
“I walk.”
“That’s not much of a test of your aerobic system.”
“I huff and I puff as I walk and I talk.” Trying to distract her.
“Another quote?”
“I think I made that up. One of my mantras for the daily routine.”
“Daily routine.”
“I like routine.”
“No wonder you’re happy in here.”
“It’s true that there is a routine here.”
They trudged down the tunnel in silence for a long time. When they got to the next station, they declared it a day and settled in to rest a few extra hours, as well as sleep through their night. Once Swan walked back down the tunnel to do something, then returned, and she fell asleep and seemed to sleep well, without purring. The next morning she wanted to carry on walking, declaring she would go slow and be careful. So off they went.
The lights kept appearing ahead out of the distant floor, then up and over them in their long arc. The effect was as if they were always about to walk downhill. Wahram tried to keep sight of one particular light, but could not be sure he had kept track of it from its first appearance to overhead. It could be some kind of unit: the view to horizon; multiplied how many times, he was not quite sure. “Can you ask Pauline to calculate our view distance to the horizon?” he asked at one point.
“I know it,” Swan said shortly. “It’s three kilometers.”
“I see.”
Suddenly it didn’t seem to make much difference.
S hall we whistle?” Wahram asked after they had walked in silence for half an hour.
“No,” she said. “I’m all whistled out. Tell me a story. Tell me your story, I want to hear more things that I don’t know about you.”
“Easy enough, to be sure.” Although suddenly he could not think exactly how to start. “Well, I was born a hundred and eleven years ago, on Titan. My mother was a wombman who came originally from Callisto, a third- generation Jovian, and my father was an androgyn from Mars, exiled in one of their political conflicts. I grew up mostly on Titan, but it was very constrained in those days, a matter of stations and just a few small domes. So I also lived in Herschel for some years as I went to school, then also on Phoebe, and one of the polar orbiters, and
