China Mountain Zhang

some things I always think of as West Virginia music.

In the afternoon I find myself planning what to cook for Theresa and Alexi. I have a fancy rice and bean dish, but if I'm going to make it there are a few things I want to buy. It's a bit of work. And maybe a cake, Theresa would like that.

Sunday they come at about eleven, Theresa first, skating down the corridor the way children and martian born do, the way those of us who came to maturity on Earth never learn. Alexi comes after her, smiling. 'Martine!' he says, 'hello!' The cake is iced, there's a big pitcher of lemonade sitting on the table. Martine is standing in the kitchen looking at the cake with white icing and strawberries sliced to make flowers on the top. Alexi whisks her up and says, 'Look at that, Little Heart.'

'What are the red things?'

'Strawberries. Fresh strawberries. We used to have strawberries when I was a little boy. They're wonderful.'

Theresa has never had strawberries? What were things like in a resettlement camp?

We have rice and beans and then big slices of cake. Theresa wants a flower so I cut her a piece she can never eat but she makes a pretty good sized dent. Then her father finishes it. For a little guy, Alexi Dormov can put away the food. He eats like he never knows when he'll eat again. Then he goes to work on the separator and I take Theresa out to the garden and teach her to pick beans. The dome is opened and the summer sun pours through the polarized glass. I bring Cleopatra in and ask Theresa to keep her from eating and the two of them run up and down between the rows. If Cleo drops a nannie-kid I'll name her Theresa.

I'm nervous with her; she likes me but I don't know how to act around a little girl. And I don't want to entertain her. But I don't have to, she's busy with Cleopatra.

After awhile I go to check on Alexi and bring him a fresh glass of lemonade. He's still jacked in, sitting mesmerized. He has a pad on his lap and he's scribbled some symbols down on it but he's not looking at it. I know reprogramming is complicated so I just wait until he notices me and jacks out. He grins and pushes his hair off his face.

'How's it going?' I ask.

'Okay,' he says, 'It's going to take me awhile. Is Theresa driving you crazy?'

'No, she's playing with one of the goats.'

'Just my luck, my kid's best friend is a goat.'

A world of regret in that comment, although he says it lightly enough. When his smile disappears and his face is still for a moment I assume he's thinking of Yorimitsu. I almost say, 'Kids are resilient,' even though it's one of those fallacies like middle-aged women like children. But that's not what he's thinking at all. 'Martine,' he says, 'they're going to transfer us again, and I don't know what to do.'

'What?' I say.

'They're going to transfer me again. Isn't it enough to send us to Mars?' He never raises his voice, it is easy to miss the despair in what he says.

'They're shipping you off Mars?' I ask. I can't imagine where else they would send him. Or why.

'No,' he says, 'not off Mars. They're talking about the water reclamation project down at the pole.'

'What about Theresa?' I ask. Life down at the pole is primitive and dangerous.

'I don't know,' he says. 'They haven't really said we're going yet.'

'What makes you think they're going to send you,' I say, and realize as I say it that it sounds as if he's some sort of paranoid.

'I know. I've been through this now five times. I know when they're going to ship us off.' He balls his fists and puts them together as it all boils out of him. 'First Geri and I volunteered for resettlement in Nevada because they were going to send us anyway, then the water dried up and Geri got dysentery while they were shipping us to Yorimitsu and I gave her all my water and even some of the baby's but she still dehydrated and died. I volunteered for South Africa because I thought that a veteran would be treated a little better and because they were criticizing me for my attitude after Geri died-I thought I didn't want Theresa to grow up with a counter-revolutionary father and now it doesn't matter at all because everybody's just embarrassed about the whole Cleansing Winds nonsense. When I came back they put us in Buffalo. Then when we were in Buffalo they started all this nonsense about Mars. I thought, I'm a vet, Theresa's six, they won't uproot us again. But they did. And now they're talking about the water reclamation project at the pole.'

'They won't send you, they couldn't send a man with a six year old daughter,' I say, thinking that the commune couldn't possibly.

'You don't understand,' he says, 'we've no guanxi, no connection, no string. Everybody just wants to get rid of us. We're human trash. Disposable. Less useful than goatshit, because you can dump that back in the soil.'

The commune won't send them, I think. How would you feel if your wife died of dehydration, I also think, and what kind of society allows that? The commune must be better than that, must be better than Earth if that's what Earth is reduced to.

I hear the sniff and look around. Theresa is standing there holding on to Cleopatra. Cleopatra looks at us with golden eyes expressionless as agates. Theresa rubs her nose with her arm and rubs her eye with her fist, crying and trying to be quiet and trapped between backing away and coming towards us. Did she hear? Or did she just fall or something?

'Baby?' Alexi says, 'what's wrong?'

'Are we going to move again?'

'Oh, baby,' Alexi says helplessly.

Theresa is easily consoled, but that afternoon she pesters her father. She tries to pick up Cleopatra-possibly because the gravity is weak but not probably because Cleo isn't interested. I don't think Cleo is likely to get hurt, even if dropped, but a flailing hoof could hurt Theresa so I finally have to put the nannie up. Theresa plays awhile but is clearly bored and pesters her father some more. At dinner she doesn't want soup, just cake, and bursts into angry tears when told that they can't stay the night.

'We're a little monster tonight, aren't we,' Alexi says.

He carries her out to the scooter and puts her in front of him on the seat. I walk down with them, mostly because I am so eager to see them go and don't want them to know. I send them home with soup and cake.

The program on the separator isn't finished and Monday morning I milk by hand and manually start the separator. Then I check my bees. I'm creating queens to sell, feeding larvae royal jelly. I have to keep them separate, of course, no queen is going to let my royal larvae live in her hive. The little unit that controls environment has gone on the fritz. It's a cheap little unit, it wouldn't cost anything to replace on earth but we're moving away from opposition, when then Earth is closest to Mars, to conjunction when Mars is on one side of the sun and the earth is on the other side. I'll order by transmitter but it will probably be about 18 months until we start getting regular shipments. It's a 26 month cycle from opposition to opposition and the shipping window is about 8 months, we've got another month and a half, but many of those ships already left earth. And right now I'm going to lose some of my royal larvae.

I wonder if Alexi could fix it and decide to have him look at it when he comes in the evening to finish the separator.

He comes alone this evening. Forgive me, but I am relieved. 'Where's Theresa?' I ask.

'At the creche,' he says, 'sometimes I need a little time off.'

I realize that I'm alone with Alexi for the first time and I'm nervous. My hand smooths my hair. I'm ten years older than Alexi and not interested. I don't want him to think I'm interested, I want to be friends. I'm sure he's not interested either, so why am I nervous? 'Have a beer,' I say.

'Let me get to that separator,' he says.

When he is finished he says he has to get back, has to get up early the next day and all, but he does stay for the beer, sitting in my living room with the little environment unit. 'I can't fix it,' he says, 'it's all fused inside.'

'Have you heard anything more?' I ask.

'About being reassigned? No.' His voice is soft and curiously flat. 'But I've talked to some of the other guys and