This might have overwhelmed someone else. The pace of change. But it brought JieMin a strange sort of calm. An inner peace. This was the correct path. He knew it.
There was a knock on his door.
Tap. Tap-tap. Tap.
He went to the door and opened it. ChaoLi came in and closed the door behind her. She pulled at her lavalava and dropped it to the floor.
“Make love to me, JieMin.”
“But we are not yet married, ChaoLi.”
Marriage customs were pretty loose on Arcadia, but that was more in the cities than in the conservative countryside where JieMin had grown up.
“Chen Zumu called my mother. She told her about you. My parents have given us their blessing.”
ChaoLi leaned forward and kissed him on the mouth. As she did so, she pulled at his lavalava and dropped it to the floor.
“The last thing Muqin said to me was, ‘Go to your husband, ChaoLi.’”
JieMin woke up around midnight. He was all atangle with ChaoLi. He looked at her as she slept, in the reflected light from the city glow off the cloud layer.
So beautiful.
He ran his hand gently down the curve of her body. She stirred and her eyes opened.
She smiled and pulled him to her.
This time they took their time.
Study In Earnest
The next morning, JieMin woke just before dawn, the pre-dawn eastern light casting a warm glow in the room. He and ChaoLi were a tangle of arms and legs. Her face was inches away, and she was already awake.
“Good morning, Zhangfu.”
Husband. That was such a nice word. JieMin kissed her, warmly, not with passion.
“Get-up time,” she said. “We both have work today.”
She extricated herself and headed off to the shower. JieMin watched her pad across the room and thought again about how lucky he was.
She was quick, and he got up and took his shower.
When he came out, she was looking in the refrigerator.
“JieMin, you have nothing in the refrigerator. Nothing at all.”
“I have not eaten here.”
“Then what is for breakfast?”
“The cafe.”
“You go out to eat for breakfast, too?”
“Of course.”
He put on a clean lavalava and flip-flops, matching her. He held his hand out to her.
“Come. Have breakfast with me.”
“I feel so spoiled, JieMin. I have never eaten out twice in the same month, and now it is four times in less than two days.”
“The same is true for me, ChaoLi. I never ate at a restaurant in my life until Thursday. I did not know what a menu was. There are no restaurants in Chagu.”
“It was always part of my chores to help Muqin. With preparing food. With cleaning up.”
She looked out at the market around the cafe.
“I also helped with the shopping, so I know where all the good things are. I will have to do shopping, but that will have to wait for after work.”
JieMin floated a trial balloon.
“You know you do not have to work, ChaoLi.”
“Yes, I do, JieMin. I must have something I am doing. Some purpose of my own.”
JieMin nodded. That was as he expected. He also knew she had passed high school and was starting to take college classes on the side from her job.
“You could devote more time to your studies instead. Take two or three years and finish your degree.”
ChaoLi tipped her head.
“That is a possibility. But for now, JieMin, I still have a job, and I must be going.”
She stood, and he stood, and they kissed briefly.
Then she headed to her job, and he to his.
JieMin took the bus down Arcadia Boulevard. From the stop at Arcadia and First, though, he walked across the street and directly into the Chen Hall of Science.
Once in his office, JieMin pulled his task chair right up to the edge of the three-dimensional display volume and watched the first two sessions in each of several classes he had not been able to take before. He watched them at one-point-seven-five speed. He did not try to understand the material, he just absorbed it all. Integration and comprehension would come later.
For lunch, he grabbed a sandwich and a cold tea from the huge cafeteria in the university main building. That cafeteria had been meant to feed thirty thousand colonists three meals a day in the early days. Of course, it had been remodeled several times in the hundred years since, but it was still a huge facility. He carried his lunch back to his office.
In the afternoon, he branched out. Klaus Boortz had mentioned physics as the most math-intensive of the sciences. He did a search on the most math-intensive areas in physics, and three popped up right away – quantum mechanics, general relativity, and cosmology. JieMin passed on the undergraduate courses, and jumped into the first session of the foundational graduate courses in each.
JieMin’s study method was simple. He watched the lectures at high speed, just soaking it all up. He poured the subject matter into his mind and let his mind integrate it.
He thought of it like driving a car. He didn’t need to know how the engine worked, as long as he knew where the fuel went in and how to work the controls.
With no time for ChaoLi to shop or cook during the work day, that night they went out to eat in the restaurant again. They were on the seventh and eighth appetizer and entree, and each got their favorite soup.
“We will go shopping tonight, JieMin. You can help me carry things home. Then I can cook for you.”
“All right, ChaoLi. But do you really want to cook after working all day?”
She pointed
