on the committee. He's middle-height and stocky, an old-timer. During the height of Cleansing Winds he was publicly accused and convicted of anti-revolutionary behavior in one of the infamous 'People's Trials,' a polite euphemism for trial by unruly mob. He was badly beaten, I'm told. It explains his attitude toward the commune.
We don't like each other. Cord doesn't really care for anyone, he and his wife are still married but the gossip is that their eldest son sleeps in the front room so his father can have a room away from his mother. I don't care for Cord because when the Army moved against the W.P.B. (Winds of the People Brigades) we arrested people who'd run those trials and I'd seen the Army allow them to be tried by the same mob. That eye for an eye justice doesn't seem right to me. As an officer I allowed it because it served as a kind of catharsis for the people, but Cord reminded me of decisions I'd never been proud of.
Phillipa is a teacher, a newcomer; she's been here six years. She's married to an old-timer, a man twenty-five years older than she is. She's in her early thirties but her hair is graying and she wears it pulled back. It's a matronly look. I don't know her very well, our paths don't often cross. We were in the dormitory together or I wouldn't know her at all.
First we discuss the requirements, or at least Phillipa and I do. Five people to be sent to the reclamation project at the pole. It's understood that landholders don't go. What would happen to my goats, or Phillipa's corn if we were gone for two years?
'So it'll have to be five from the dorms,' Phillipa says. 'And it probably should be newcomers who've been here a year or less since the others are eligible for a holding after three years.
'But we never have a holding ready,' I point out.
Phillipa shrugged. 'We might.'
We have a list of all the newcomers who've been there a year or less. There are four. Alexi's name is first on the list.
'Well, that's four,' Phillipa says. 'What happens if we can only come up with four?'
'This man, this Dormov fellow, I know him,' I say. 'He's been relocated four times, he's a widower and he's got a six-year-old daughter. The counselors on Earth said that all this dislocation was bad for her.'
'But we've only got four,' Philippa says. 'Besides, he'll earn credit. They get hazard credit. That'll help him get started when he gets back, and we'll keep the daughter at the creche. What I'm really worried about is that there's only four. New Arizona will give us hell if we don't come up with five.'
'So much for equality,' Cord mutters.
'What?' Philippa says.
'Send the newcomers. It's like a draft. The people like Aron Fahey never go.'
'Aron Fahey is a landholder,' Philippa says.
'So whose to say he's any better than this comrade with the daughter?'
Cord is an unexpected and not altogether wanted ally.
'So you think landholders should be considered, too?' Philippa says dryly.
Cord sits up, 'Yes, I do.' He looks straight at her, malice glinting, 'I think you, Martine, and I should be considered. And the Fahey clan and the Mannheims and everybody else.'
'I suspect that would be thrown right out of council,' Philippa says.
'Perhaps it should be brought up, anyway,' Cord says.
'Well then, why don't you make the report,' Phillipa suggests.
'I'll do that,' Cord says.
And that is the committee meeting. I don't know what to do. Cord's idea is ridiculous. He'll raise it, everybody will be made uncomfortable. Aron or someone will quote 'The good of the many outweighs the good of the few.' And the four newcomers will go. We'll discuss what to do about the fifth person and what will happen if we only send four.
I go home. I'm tired and I keep thinking about the look on Alexi's face the night he came alone to fix the separator. How different he turned out to be than the way I thought of him when I first met him-the hidden bitterness, and the awkwardness the last time I saw him.
The bitterness doesn't surprise me, scratch the surface and it seems a lot of people are bitter.
And why not?
I go down and feed my goats. I spend some time down there just fussing so as to be near them. I like goats. People have the wrong idea about goats, about how stubborn they are and all. Goats are just smart, that's all. My goats are mostly even tempered and they aren't hard to deal with. God knows, a person who can't outsmart a goat is in pretty sad shape. I am cleaning up, shoveling manure to be used to make alcohol for fuel and used as fertilizer when I think again of Alexi swinging up into the cab of his truck, the easy strength and agility in martian gravity. And I think of the duffel bag. He could probably get nearly everything they own in that duffel bag.
What if he has? What if he doesn't plan to come back?
Martine, use your head, this is Mars. Where could he go? New Arizona where my beer comes from? Then west to Wallace which would put him on the big north-south artery. Sure, he could run, but where would he get fuel? (He's a clever man with machines, but a thief?) And even if he could get fuel, there's just no place to run. There aren't more than seventeen, eighteen million people on the whole planet. He's not stupid, he wouldn't try it. When they caught him they'd take Theresa away from him, execute him if he wasn't lucky, sentence him to reform through labor if he was. That would mean mining, or the real hazardous duty on the water reclamation project for the rest of his short life.
It's foolishness to think he would run. I think about Alexi too much, I have middle-aged fancies. He's young and attractive and friendly and yes, I'm lonely and goats aren't enough.
None the less, I fret.
Tuesday he should be back from his run. Surely they'll stop on their way in. At least say hello. Tuesday comes, slides past. In the evening I call the dorms. Dormov isn't in, he's running late. Do I want to leave a message? No, I don't want to draw attention to his absence.
He could have had transport trouble. They could have stayed an extra day because he has a little money in his pocket. She has a cold, maybe, or ate something that disagreed with her. Or he did. Although the thought of him sick and them alone bothers me. I imagine him sick in a dorm and Theresa in a creche in a commune in New Arizona.
He wouldn't run, I tell myself. He knows they'd put a bullet in the back of his head. Theft of a transport, he
It's hard enough to protect myself from my own stupidity, how can I be expected to protect myself from someone elses?
Wednesday evening, watching the kitten chase across the floor, batting a plastic spool across the tiles. The transmitter says, 'Martine?'
'Alexi?' I say.
'Yeah.'
'You came back.' The words are out of my mouth.
I expect him to laugh and say something about it took them long enough, but instead he just says, 'yeah.' It's like a sigh. It's full of regret, it doesn't pretend that we don't both know.
'Are you at the pull-off?' My voice is so matter of fact, I'm astounded. None of my relief is in it.
'About twenty minutes out.'
'Come by, you can sleep here tonight.'
'Okay,' he says. 'Theresa's asleep.'
'Okay.'
And then I'm in the kitchen, digging out tofu, bread, running down to the garden for a tomato and parsley and a handful of strawberries. I cook onions, slice in the tofu, the tomato and the parsley. Basil from my kitchen plants. I slice cheese onto brown bread, slice strawberries under the cheese, put it on a plate to flash when they get in. And coffee; decaf, or I'll be awake all night. I scrub the cutting board, the sink, the counter, water the plants, clip off the dead leaves, fill twenty, then twenty-five, then thirty minutes with activity. Finally, thirty-five minutes later I hear him call, 'Martine?'
