And I always had been. It had never seemed like a restriction before. But suddenly I saw those safe, scheduled years stretching out ahead of us, with Ross always telling me how things were going to be; with no chance to be myself, Melinda Ashley, ever at all. And we weren’t even married yet. Once we were married, would he object every time I tried to make up my own mind?
“Maybe so, but I’m not your property, Ross,” I said slowly. “And if I want to go with Dad, I will.”
Even then, if he had kissed me, I might not have gone through with it. I might have got back my normal composure and said, “It’s lucky I don’t want to,” or some such thing. But he didn’t. He punched the exit switch and rammed the steering wheel back into place, ready to take manual control of the car as it came off the expressway onto the next ramp.
“I’ll take you out to your grandmother’s, Mel,” Ross said icily. “I can see you’re too tired to talk sensibly. We’d better pick some other night to go into Portland.”
I didn’t object. I slid over to the far side of the seat and stared straight ahead, blinking back the tears, while the lights of the Expressway blurred and receded. Oh Ross, I was thinking, what’s happened to us? How can we be acting this way when we love each other?
It was not until I was standing in the driveway at Gran’s, with my luggage and school stuff piled beside me and the roar of the departing car drowning the familiar welcome of the surf, that I realized that I had committed myself. Somehow the argument had gotten turned around, and I had ended up defending the very thing I had wanted Ross’s help in getting out of! I looked up through the trees and saw the stars, and for the first time it really hit me that I might be going out there. Into space. Even though I hated the idea.
I pushed the thought away. After all, I wasn’t going to let it change anything! Quickly I turned toward the lighted house, and as I ran up the steps I felt warm and safe again because I knew that however far away I went, these solid redwood walls would be waiting for me.
Chapter 3
When I remember that week at Gran’s, it’s all soft colors: blues and grays and greens and, on bright days, a wash of yellow. Earth is like that, you know. On Mars colors are harsh, in spite of the weak sunlight; the orange sand contrasts sharply with the unvarying light pink sky. On Earth everything’s muted by that lovely cushion of moist, thick air.
But at the time, I didn’t know how I’d miss the gray days. It was typical Northwest weather—hours of clouds and drizzle usually do outnumber the hours of sunshine—yet often enough I accused it of having made a deliberate effort to match my mood.
On the first morning I skipped breakfast and walked several miles along the beach, stopping every so often to sit and watch the tide go out. The bay was calm and the widening swath of pebbles along the water’s edge glistened wetly; overhead the gulls wheeled. It was all the same as the picture I’d been holding in my mind for so long. It didn’t have its usual effect on me, though. The comfort of homecoming I’d felt the night before hadn’t lasted, and Maple Beach seemed as unreal as everything else did—the thought of the trip, Dad’s presence, the horrible lost sensation whenever I realized how things stood between me and Ross. I kept wondering, When am I going to wake up?
Part of the trouble, probably, was that Ross and I hadn’t ever been really mad at each other before. I actually had never quarreled with a boy, a boy I cared about, that is. I suppose it doesn’t sound very earthshaking; couples fight every day without any catastrophic results. I knew Ross would call me sooner or later. But our relationship had been so good, so smooth, and now, since it was spoiled, I didn’t see how we could ever have the same kind of happiness again. I’d have given a lot to be back in school with graduation still ahead.
Naturally, I blamed the whole mess on Mars.
One part of me knew perfectly well that it was not Dad’s fault, and that he had given me that ticket to Mars with the best of intentions. Knowing it didn’t help. Another part of me was wishing very hard that I had never heard of Mars, and that Dad had stayed away a year longer, or maybe forever. Yet at the same time I wanted to be with him; I didn’t want to give that up. It wasn’t fair that I’d never had a chance to be with my parents! And he must care a lot about having me, to go to so much trouble. Suppose I refused to go; would he turn the job down? I’d hate that, but then, underneath I’d hate it if he didn’t.
I really wanted to make Dad happy. I might have come to Mars on that account, even if Ross and I hadn’t fought; I like to think I would. But I’ll have to say that I might not have. To me, the prospect was in itself disturbing, aside from the question of the year I’d miss.
It’s said that there are two kinds of people who don’t like the idea of space travel: people with acrophobia—fear of heights, that is—and people with claustrophobia. I’m sure that’s true, because in a spaceship a person’s literally falling through millions of miles of emptiness, and at the same time tightly enclosed. But there’s much more to it than that. I was never particularly bothered either of those ways; what troubled me more was just the thought of leaving Earth, even temporarily. It may be stating the obvious, and I may sound like somebody’s grandmother, but for countless ages billions of people were born, lived, and died on Earth who would have been simply horrified at the mere mention of leaving. After all, it’s only in recent years that anyone’s had a choice, and the percentage of people who do leave is practically infinitesimal. A good deal’s said about how the Colonies are booming, but the actual population of the Moon and Mars is still small; and in spite of all the publicity about its being the new fad in Cook’s Tours, there aren’t as many tourists as you might think. Lowering the fares might help, but somehow I don’t think that the average citizen is terribly anxious to blast off. I don’t believe that my feeling was too unusual.
Most of the kids who say they want to go into space have never come face-to-face with the opportunity. They haven’t any real prospect of going, and inside they know it. Most of the ones who do go—homesteaders, scientists, TPC employees, astronauts, and so forth—are either so wrapped up in their careers that they wouldn’t notice if the sun turned blue, or they’ve got a very mature orientation. There are exceptions; I knew one girl who wanted to be an astronaut so much that she spent her school years ignoring earthly pursuits entirely. (They didn’t take her.) But by and large, a person needs an awfully adult outlook to be happy off our native planet.
I didn’t have it. I still equated “human” with “Terrestrial.” To me, “natural” meant “the way things are on Earth,” and anything else was wrong, somehow. So when I considered going to Mars, I started to think about all the things on Earth that people normally take for granted—trees, grass, birds, oceans . . . the list is endless—and I knew that those things wouldn’t be found anywhere else. Only I didn’t know enough to imagine what would be found instead. Then I remembered how often I’d heard Martian cities, which are domed, compared to the underground portions of Terrestrial cities; and I hate underground cities! Canned air. Artificial lighting day and night. All in all, it just didn’t sound like an ideal vacation spot.
Luckily, Dad wasn’t around much during the week before our departure; he had some people to see. So he didn’t realize that I worried for two whole days, hardly eating a thing. Gran thought I was moping over Ross, which of course was partly true. We didn’t go to church on Sunday because Gran wasn’t feeling up to it. She wasn’t hungry at dinnertime, either, and didn’t mind when I heated some soup for us and let it go at that.
Most days I spent a lot of time on the beach. It was too cold to swim and there wasn’t any sun to lie in, but I went anyway. I sat on the wet rocks below the house and looked out toward the gray, misty horizon, thinking that however far it looked, that distance was just a drop in the bucket compared to the distance between Earth and Mars. Then I thought about the cookout Ross and I might be having if it were just an ordinary summer Sunday, how we’d lie beside the beach fire after dark, and listen to the wav
es pounding the rocks . . . and when I climbed the rickety old wooden stairs back to the garden, my face was as wet as my jacket and scarf were.
On Monday morning Dad took me into Portland to apply for my passport and Colonial entry visa. We went to the medical center first, and I submitted to a computer interview, followed by an all-too-thorough examination; then we had to wait while they ran the lab tests. I was glad that Gran had insisted that I eat a good breakfast, yet in a way I hoped that maybe they would find some little thing wrong. It would be such a simple way out of the whole business! But the report came out saying that I was extremely healthy, although about ten pounds underweight, and the receptionist laughed and said the spacelines weren’t likely to turn me down for that. I knew that the results were okay, of course, when she handed me the printout without calling me back to discuss it with a doctor.
I did have to talk to the psychiatrist, Dr. Spencer, though. The psychiatric examinations they do for temporary visas are just a matter of form, nothing like what prospective colonists go through. Still, they wouldn’t let any out-and-out psychotics on board a ship; too many people are cooped up too closely, for too long. Nor, for that matter, would the Colonies want to admit anyone potentially dangerous, even for a short time.
I had to sign a file-search permit and as I went in I could see the girl entering it into the computer, so I knew that the doctor had all my up-to-date school records in front of him and didn’t need to ask me any questions at all. Still, we talked for a while, and he impressed me as a kind, friendly person, not at all like those cold, clinical interns that are sent out to school so often. I felt that I was wasting his time because we weren’t saying anything significant: just what my hobbies were and what I planned to major in at college. Then, all of a sudden, he asked me what was making me so unhappy.
It caught me off guard; I hadn’t thought it showed. Finally I stammered, “Well, I—I had a fight with my fiancé.” Technically, Ross wasn’t my fiancé yet, but it amounted to the same thing.
Dr. Spencer agreed that it was no wonder I was upset, and he didn’t get at all nosy about the sort of relationship that Ross and I had. He seemed to feel that it was my own business. But he didn’t let the subject drop there. Gently, he asked, “Do you really want to go to Mars, Melinda?”
Well, he was the first person who hadn’t simply assumed either that I did or that I didn’t, and maybe that’s why I answered honestly. Of course, I knew that anything you tell a doctor is absolutely confidential and can’t even be put in the data bank without your consent. I broke down and explained the whole thing, that I didn’t want to go, and that I would give anything to be able to think of a way out of it.
A psychiatrist doesn’t advise you; he just sits there and doesn’t indicate whether he approves or disapproves of what you’re saying, although if he’s got a sympathetic personality like Dr. Spencer’s, he manages to give you a feeling that even if it’s something awful there’s going to be a way to work things out. So I didn’t expect to be handed a ready-made solution to all my problems. I guess I did sort of hint, though, that if he were to say that he didn’t think the trip would be good for me . . . .
“Melinda,” he told me, “I’ll be frank with you. If I were interviewing you for an emigration permit, I wouldn’t approve it. Emigration’s too permanent; any colonist other than a child has got to be sure that she knows what she wants, that the way she feels about things isn’t going to undergo any substantial change. It’s necessary not only from her point of view but from the Colony’s, because they can’t afford any washouts. But in your case—”
I started to say that I was sure about the future I wanted, had always been sure, and that my chief trouble was with the whole plan being disrupted.
“That’s where we disagree,” Dr. Spencer said. “I don’t think you’re sure at all. You want to be sure, which is another thing entirely. Perfectly normal at your age, of course.”
“Would I be any more sure if I went to Mars?” I asked.
“Quite possibly. You could surprise yourself. I’m not going to help you decide whether to go or not; that’s up to you. But I have no grounds whatsoever for denying you a temporary visa. You’re in fine shape emotionally.” He smiled. “It’s obvious that you aren’t a danger either to yourself or to anyone else.”
That was the first time I’d stopped to think that happiness and mental health aren’t exactly the same. I was more miserable than ever before in my life, and he thought I was fine! Talking it out did help, however, even though it seemed rather odd that Dr. Spencer couldn’t see how sure I was about wanting to stay put at Maple Beach.
When we got home, I went upstairs to try to get my belongings into some kind of order. My duffel bags from school stood in the corner where I’d dropped them; so far I hadn’t had the heart to open anything except my overnight case. But I knew I’d have to pack for the trip, or at least do something with the things that I wouldn’t be taking. What should you take to Mars, anyway?
My ticket said “twenty kilos maximum”; and, Dad had explained, the maximum isn’t just the free allowance, it’s the total allowance. If you exceed it, you have to take something out before they’ll let you board. Moreover, it includes the clothes you wear, your purse, and anything else you want to keep with you, for they weigh you along with your luggage and subtract your medical certificate weight. That seems like carrying things to extremes, but weight is critical on a spaceship, and I suppose if they didn’t check closely people would bring on all they could carry, particularly the homesteaders.
But the weight limit wasn’t too much of a concern to me because I actually didn’t care much what I took. I put in some of my permanent fabric school clothes and the silky robe Dad had given me for Christmas, without having any idea of what would be appropriate. I came across two whole sets of washable lingerie Gran had bought for me once, and realized that at last they’d come in handy; I always wore disposable lingerie, but I’d heard that disposables aren’t available in the Colonies. At the last moment, I stuck in my dear old hand-knit sweater, the one made of real sheep’s wool. It was heavy, but so what? There wasn’t that much else I’d be needing. I didn’t give any thought to sportswear or date clothes at all, let alone the possibility that Colonial styles might be different.
As I finished putting things away, I looked wistfully around the room. I had always loved it, though it hadn’t been really mine for the past six years. Gran had used it for a guest room while I was at school, but some of my things remained in the dresser drawers and on the top shelf of the closet.
Someday, when I inherit the house from Gran, I’ll be told that the bedroom furniture is worth a great deal of money and that it would be wise to have it auctioned off. I won’t agree, though, because it belongs in that room. It’s all original, and hasn’t ever been replaced as the living room set has. It was antique in style even in the twentieth century when the house was built; now it’s antique in fact also. Gran offered to get me new furniture when I first came to her as a child, for she thought I might want something more appropriate for a little girl than a dark polished mahogany bedstead with ornate carved headboard and a heavy matching chest of drawers. But I wouldn’t let her. So she settled for new blue-figured wallpaper with matching curtains, a white bedspread, and a fluffy white rug. That rug was still beautifully fluffy and white as I knelt there packing beside an open drawer. I hate bare, modernistic things.
After I was through I stood at the window and looked out across the grayed redwood deck at the sunlight glinting off the water through a brief break in the clouds. There was a ship near the horizon, moving slowly; I wondered where it was bound. Once people traveled on ships of the sea, not just for pleasure cruises but to get from one place to another. Once the word “ship” itself evoked pictures of wind and salt water, not of black emptiness and hard glittering stars. I wished that I had lived in those times.
On the bed I’d piled some odds and ends that seemed hardly worth keeping; I gathered th
em up and went across the hall to Gran’s room to see if she wanted any of them.
Gran was sitting by the window with her feet on the ottoman. Her magazine was open but she wasn’t reading; her eyes were closed. I hesitated in the doorway, realizing unhappily that I hadn’t paid much attention to Gran since I’d been home, hadn’t offered much in the way of sympathy for the illness that had kept her away from graduation. Just then she sat up and looked at me, and I went over and kissed her lightly on the cheek.
“Hello, Melinda dear,” Gran said brightly. “How did it go this morning? Did they give you your visa?”
“Yes, with no trouble at all. I guess I convinced them that I’m of good character and not too likely to get sick way out in the middle of nowhere.” I sat down on the edge of the ottoman. “Are you feeling better today, Gran?”
“Much better, thank you. Your father wants me to come to Florida to see you off. I might do just that; I could stay overnight and come back to Portland on Sunday, if it seemed too much of an effort to do the round trip in one day.”
“That would be wonderful,” I said, though I hadn’t gotten to the stage of picturing the trip in detail. Florida, Canaveral Terminal—we’d be going there Saturday morning.
“Melinda,” Gran said, “I haven’t given you anything for graduation yet. I was waiting for a time when you weren’t so preoccupied.”
I flushed guiltily. Gran went on, “Get my jewel box, will you, dear?”
I went over to her dressing table and picked up the well-remembered green leather case that she’d shown me so often when I was a child. Gran took it from me. As she opened it, I caught sight of the locket that had been handed down from our ancestor, Melinda Stillwell, and I reached out to touch the gleaming gold.
“Do you remember how I used to play with this?” I asked.
“Very well. You used to love to hear about the covered wagon pioneers.”
Journey Between Worlds Page 3
