China Mountain Zhang

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Fine with me. Theresa is excited about going to see the goats. I send him down to the goats while I call Caleb and explain that the honey will be late. When I get down to the goats Alexi is jacked into the system and Theresa is gingerly petting Cleopatra, who is pregnant. Five of the nannies are pregnant, which is going to cut down on my income for awhile, but I’ve decided to go ahead and have more space added to the farm so I’ll be able to expand. Alexi has the absorbed look of someone jacked in, and Theresa seems happy so I decide to do bee work.

  After an hour or so Alexi comes to find me. “I can fix your program quickly and it should be all right, but have you thought about when you have the new goats?”

  I have but I don’t like to. “I suppose I’ll have to get a new system,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “I can modify the system, but it would take me awhile and today I have to get back to the complex with the transport. But if you’d like I could come back and do it, maybe on Sunday. I have Sunday free.”

  “I could pay you,” I say. “That would be great.”

  “No need to pay, I owe you for all your hospitality.”

  We argue about payment, and finally I agree, stipulating that he and Theresa come for lunch and dinner on Sunday.

  Then we all go back to the house and I walk them to the pull-off. He boosts her into the cab of the transport, swings in himself and closes the door. I stand politely and watch them off. Then, freed I wander back to the house now given back to me. I strip the sheets off the guest bed and remake it, then I clean my kitchen, singing to myself. I work the rest of the day, checking my little bit of vegetables, cleaning the goat pen, and spend the bulk of the afternoon straining and cooking honey. It’s good to be by myself. I listen to music I haven’t listened to in years, 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 they think that the commune probably wouldn’t send Theresa to the pole.”

  I am relieved, I wanted to deny that anything could go so wrong, and now I learn that I was probably right. “I think that’s true,” I say.

  “So I’d probably go on a two year assignment and she’d stay with the creche. That’s not so bad, I haven’t been much of a father. It’s just that the separation is bad for her, she’s already withdrawn and immature-at least that’s what all the counselors say. She’s shy, but so was her mother and after all the moving around… “

  “They wouldn’t send you and leave her here,” I blurt out.

  He shrugs. “They’ll say it’s temporary and that some sacrifices have to be made to open up Mars. I hate to leave her, when I came back from Africa she didn’t know who I was and then she had tremendous separation anxiety.” His soft voice goes on and on and I discover that the flatness is really bitterness.

  I didn’t ask you to come here, I am thinking. I didn’t ask you and your daughter to stop for a drink of water. And at the same time I am understanding why he takes her with him when he goes to New Arizona. He talks about temper tantrums in the creche when he leaves. I think of her behavior yesterday, when she was upset, the tantrums and tears.

  Finally he doesn’t say anything more. The silence is thick, but I can’t think of anything to say into it. He finishes his beer and says, “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to dump my troubles on you like that.” But he’s only apologizing because he’s supposed to, when he leaves he looks around my house, and then he looks at me as if he hates me. It’s not fair, I am thinking, I worked for this. My life wasn’t easy either. I don’t walk him down to the pull-off where the motor scooter is parked.

  When I go to bed and set the alarm for five, I realize that I forgot to thank him for re-programming my separator.

  McKenzie comes Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday to pick up milk. She gossips a bit, I look forward to her coming. She helped me impregnate my nannies. (My billies are just company for my nannies, I get seed from Earth.) I tell her about Alexi reprogramming my separator.

  “Would he do it for someone else?”

  “Sure, he doesn’t have a business. It would help him generate credit for when he’s assigned a plot.” Actually I have no idea if Alexi would do it.

  McKenzie has wild curly hair and a stub of a nose. She brushes her hair back. “Nearly everyone who has goats has a separator programmed for cows,” she says. “I bet a lot of them would love to have their system converted.”

  “I’ll ask him and let you know,” I say. Then, because the subject of the Dormovs makes me uncomfortable I ask her about the last council meeting.

  “Boring. I’m stepping down, I’m sick of it. I don’t know where they’re going to find a land-holding newcomer to take my place.” She starts the pump and my milk is drawn into her tank as we talk. “It’s nothing but a headache,” she says. I’ve told her this for years.

  The council is twelve people; by common consent, six are people from before the shutdown, those who went through the Cleansing Winds (including Aron Fahey who is sort of unofficial Head) and six are from after. I’m one of the oldest newcomers, they used to ask me to be on.

  “Maybe I should serve a term,” I say.

  McKenzie laughs, and then looks at me quizzically when I’m not laughing. “Martine,” she says, “you’re not serious?”

  “Well, if it’s not me it’ll be that horse’s ass Waters.” Lilith butts me and I reach down and fondle her long, leaf-shaped ears. She spreads her legs to brace and lowers her head a bit in pleasure. Maybe I should get a cat, I’ve got a family of mice in my garden. Some things come from earth whether you want them or not. “Do you know anyone whose cat is going to have kittens?”

  “Sure, I’ll bring you a cat. Are you really going to run for council?”

  “Maybe,” I say. “Bring me a calico, if you can.” Calicos are usually female. McKenzie asks me why I’d serve and I tell her I guess that I can’t keep letting other people do all of the dirty work. Which isn’t true, I could go the rest of my life and let them worry about who gets how much land and air and water. When she leaves I go back to the garden and check the CO2 levels in the air. I open the dome and the normally blue sky is red with the violence of a dust storm. The sand shushes softly against the dome.

  Alexi Dormov, I’m doing something. That will wipe out the anger that was in your face when you left last night. I’ll deny that I’m joining council to help you and Theresa, but you’ll know. You’ll be grateful, aware that you misjudged me. I feel a surge of self-righteous anger, how dare you have looked at me and thought that I have it soft.

  At the same time I know that I’m being the perfect martyr. “You’re pathetic,” I say outloud. Who is this Alexi Dormov that his opinion matters so much? I’m angry all morning, and I make the mistake of working with the bees. Sure enough, I get stung.

  I don’t see Alexi and Theresa for awhile. I talk to him by transmitter and thank him for fixing my separator, but it’s a hectic week. Two airleaks, and that means the next council meeting they’ll have to decide if the problem warrants an investigation. Three of my larvae hatch into queens and I box them and send them north to Calhoun to a woman named Jessup who does a little bee-keeping. Calhoun is out of the sector so she won’t compete with my honey sales. My nannies start dropping kids and that means a lot of interrupted sleep. Cleo drops a nannie-kid. So do Hai-hong and Machina Jones. Angela and Lilith drop billies. I’ll get rid of the billies as soon as they’re weaned; someone else can raise them for slaughter, I’m a dairy operation. McKenzie brings me a tiger-striped female kitten, and it cries all night for the first four nights. It sounds like a baby and I grit my teeth and stumble around half-awake all day while it sleeps curled up in the strawberries.

  And there is the council meeting. I haven’t been to a council meeting in years. They hold them in the commune cafeteria at the long hour on Thursday nights. I don�
��t know who decided that since the martian day is 37 minutes and 23 seconds longer than the Earth day we should have the long hour from 8:00 to 9:00 last one hour 37 minutes and 23 seconds. If we’re going to have a long hour I’d rather have it in the morning. But it’s a bureaucrats dream, an hour and 37 minutes to have an hour meeting.

  The cafeteria is red and gold. Across the back wall are the words “The force at the core of the People is the Revolution” in English and Chinese characters. At least I suppose that’s what it says in Chinese but it could say “Western Barbarians Have No Revolutionary Spine” for all I know. It’s been there since the days of the Cleansing Winds Campaign and nobody really likes it but nobody really has the nerve to suggest we take it out.

  The meeting is opened and they discuss the problem of Aron Fahey’s eldest girl who is twenty and has applied for a plot of her own. It seems to me that she should just go on the list like any newcomer but there is some question about whether the work she has done with Chen, her mother, qualifies her for any work credit or if that work goes to Aron and Chen’s household. After twenty-five minutes of discussion they decide she should go on the list like any newcomer. It’s almost 8:30. I usually go to bed around 8:60.

  The meeting drags on, trivializing anything it touches. They talk about the two air leaks and decide not to investigate, but to put a note on the next calendar to see if there has been an unusual number between this month and next. That takes fifteen minutes.

  Phillipa makes a report stating that the commune has been asked to come up with five people to send to the water reclamation project at the pole for two years. I sit up. Aron asks that a committee be formed to look into the matter and report back with a list of names for next month. He asks for volunteers. I stand.

  “Martine,” he says, “you wish to be recognized?”

  “No Aron,” I say, “I wish to volunteer.”