He met me at the door and looked past me. “Nice to see you, Doc.”
Dorothy had trailed after me into the kitchen. “Sir.”
“You bring that eagle to show me?”
She nodded and I could see the little girl she had been in the shyness of it. She lifted her medical bag to the kitchen table and pulled out a battered shoe box of the sort that we don’t see up here much. No sense sending up packaging when it just takes up room on the rocket. She lifted the lid off and pulled out tissue that had once been pink and had faded to almost white. Unwrapping it, she pulled out my eagle.
It’s strange seeing something that you made that long ago. This one was in flight, but had its head turned to the side as though it were looking back over its shoulder. It had an egg clutched in its talons.
Symbolism a little blunt, but clear. Seeing it I remembered when I had made it. I remembered the conversation that I had had with Dorothy when she was a little girl.
I picked it up, turning it over in my hands. The edges of the paper had become soft with handling over the years so it felt more like corduroy than cardstock. Some of the smaller feathers were torn loose showing that this had been much-loved. The fact that so few were missing said more, about the place it had held for Dorothy.
She had asked me, standing outside the fence in the shadow of the rocket gantry, if I were still going to Mars. I had said yes.
Then she had said, “You going to have kids on Mars?”
What she could not have known—what she likely still did not know, was that I had just come from a conversation with Nathaniel when we decided that we would not have children. It had been a long discussion over the course of two years and it did not rest easy on me. I was still grieving for the choice, even though I knew it was the right one.
The radiation, the travel . . . the stars were always going to call me and I could ask him to be patient with that, but it was not fair to a child. We had talked and talked and I had built that eagle while I tried to grapple with the conflicts between my desires. I made the eagle looking back, holding an egg, at the choices behind it.
And when Dorothy had asked me if I would have kids on Mars, I put the regulation smile on, the one you learn to give while wearing 160 pounds of space suit in Earth gravity while a photographer takes just one more photo. I’ve learned to smile through pain, thank you. “Yes, honey. Every child born on Mars will be there because of me.”
“What about the ones born here?”
The child of tragedy, the double-orphan. I had knelt in front of her and pulled the eagle out of my bag. “Those most of all.”
Standing in my kitchen, I lifted my head to look at Nathaniel. His eyes were bright. It took a try or two before I could find my voice again. “Did you know? Did you know which one she had?”
“I guessed.” He pushed into the kitchen, the walker sliding and rattling until he stood next to me. “The thing is, Elma, I’m going to be gone in a year either way. We decided not to have children because of your career.”
“We made that decision together.”
“I know.” He raised a hand off the walker and put it on my arm. “I’m not saying we didn’t. What I’m asking is that you make this career decision for me. I want you to go.”
I set the eagle back in its nest of tissue and wiped my eyes. “So you tricked her into coming out just to show me that?”
Nathaniel laughed sounding a little embarrassed. “Nope. Talked to Sheldon. There’s a training session this afternoon that I want you to go to.”
“I don’t want to leave you.”
“You won’t. Not completely.” He gave a sideways grin and I could see the young man he’d been. “My program will be flying with you.”
“That’s not the same.”
“It’s the best I can offer.”
I looked away and caught Dorothy staring at us with a look of both wonder and horror on her face. She blushed when I met her gaze. “I’ll stay with him.”
“I know and it was kind of Sheldon to ask but—”
“No, I mean. If you go . . . I’ll make sure he’s not alone.”
Dorothy lived in the middle of the great Mars plains in the home of Elma, who was an astronaut, and Nathaniel, who was an astronaut’s husband. I live in the middle of space in a tiny capsule filled with punchcards and magnetic tape. I am not alone, though someone who doesn’t know me might think I appear to be.
I have the stars.
I have my memories.
And I have Nathaniel’s last program. After it runs, I will make an eagle and let my husband fly.
Acknowledgements
Special thanks to Jennifer Jackson of the Donald Maass Literary Agency, Beth Pratt, Howard Lyons, and the original editors who first published these stories.
Editorial Note: The stories collected herein are arranged in somewhat, although not exact, chronological order by date of publication (which may or may not coincide with the order in which they were written).
“The Bound Man” © 2005 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Prime Codex: The Hungry Edge of Speculative Fiction, eds. Lawrence M. Schoen & Michael Livingston (Paper Golem LLC).
“Chrysalis” © 2007 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Aoife’s Kiss, December 2007.
“Rampion” © 2005 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: The First Line, Spring 2005.
“At the Edge of Dying” © 2009 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Clockwork Phoenix 2: More Tales of Beauty and Strangeness, ed. Mike Allen (Norilana Books).
“Clockwork Chickadee” © 2008 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Clarkesworld Magazine, June 2008.
“Body Language” © 2009 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Orson Scott Card’s Intergalactic Medicine Show, #15, November 2009.
“Waiting for Rain” © 2008 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Subterranean Magazine, Fall 2008.
“First Flight” © 2009 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Tor.com, 25 August 2009.
“Evil Robot Monkey” © 2008 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction Volume 2, ed. George Mann (Solaris 2008).
“The Consciousness Problem” © 2009 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Asimov’s, August 2009.
“For Solo Cello, op. 12” © 2007 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Cosmos, February/March 2007.
“For Want of a Nail” © 2010 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Asimov’s, September 2010.
“The Shocking Affair of the Dutch Steamship Friesland,” © 2004 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: The First Line, Vol. 6, Issue 3 (Fall 2004).
“Salt of the Earth” © 2010 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Redstone SF, September 2010.
“American Changeling” © 2010 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Daily SF, September 2010.
“The White Phoenix Feather: A Tale of Cuisine and Ninjas” © 2012 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: Fireside Magazine: Issue 3, Winter 2012.
“We Interrupt This Broadcast” © 2013 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication: The Mad Scientist’s Guide to World Domination, ed. John Joseph Adams (Tor).
“Rockets Red” © 2015 Mary Robinette Kowal. Original to this volume.
“The Lady Astronaut of Mars” © 2012 Mary Robinette Kowal. First publication (audio): Rip-off!, ed. Gardner Dozois (Audible). First published in text form: the author’s blog on 8 February 2013. First commercially published in text form: Tor.com, 11 September 2013.
About the Author
Mary Robinette Kowal is a novelist and professional puppeteer. Her debut novel Shades of Milk and Honey (Tor 2010) was nominated for the 2010 Nebula Award for Best Novel. A loving tribute to the works of Jane Austen, but set in a world where magic is an everyday occurrence, the novel was the first of the Glamourist Histories. Its sequel, Glamour in Glass, was followed by Without a Summer, and Valour and Vanity (a Kirkus and NPR book of the year). The fifth and final volume, Of Noble Family, was published e
arlier this year.
In 2008 she won the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short story “Evil Robot Monkey” was nominated for a Hugo in 2009. “For Want of a Nail” won the 2011 Hugo for short story. “The Lady Astronaut of Mars” was honored by the 2014 Hugo for novelette.
Among other venues, her stories have appeared in Asimov’s, Clarkesworld, Subterranean Magazine, and several “year’s best” anthologies. Her debut collection, Scenting the Dark and Other Stories, was published in 2009 by Subterranean Press.
Kowal is also an award-winning puppeteer. With over twenty years of experience, she has performed for LazyTown (CBS), the Center for Puppetry Arts, Jim Henson Pictures, and founded Other Hand Productions. Her designs have garnered two UNIMA-USA Citations of Excellence, the highest award an American puppeteer can achieve.
When she isn’t writing or puppeteering, Kowal brings her speech and theater background to her work as a voice actor. As the voice behind several audio books and short stories, she has recorded fiction for authors such as Kage Baker, Elizabeth Bear, Cory Doctorow, and John Scalzi.
Mary lives in Chicago with her husband Rob and over a dozen manual typewriters. Sometimes she even writes on them.
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