China Mountain Zhang

by Maureen F. Mchugh

  Aron Fahey looks perplexed and strokes his brown beard. “All right. Anyone else?”

  No one else volunteers. Finally Philippa says she’ll be on the committee, and Aron browbeats Cord into saying he’ll join.

  Then he nods at McKenzie who has been frowning at me. She stands and announces that she’ll be stepping down next meeting and that the seat is open. I stand again.

  “Martine?” Aron says, sounding anxious.

  “I would like to announce that I am interested in taking McKenzie’s seat.” I sit down. Then it occurs to me that this sounds peremptory so I stand, “Unless the commune finds someone who would be better suited, of course.” I sit back down. My face is calm, my knees are shaking.

  “Okay, it’s on the record. If there’s no further business?” Aron dismisses the meeting. It’s 8:75.

  McKenzie makes her way over to me. “Martine,” she says, “Martine.” And when she has my elbow, “Why this sudden interest in politics?”

  “Maybe I’m tired of having no one to talk to but goats,” I say.

  “And whose fault is that,” she says.

  “Obviously I’m not going to disagree with you.”

  It is 4:30 in the afternoon and I’m in the kitchen weighing the kids on my kitchen scale when my transmitter clicks open and Alexi says, “Hello, anybody home?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “what’s up?”

  “Theresa and I are on our way to New Arizona on a run and we thought we’d stop and say hello.”

  “You’re at the pull-off?”

  “Right.”

  “Just come on in, I’m in the kitchen.”

  “What’s that noise?”

  The noise is the clatter of Theresa-the-goat and one of the billies’ hooves tapping against the tiles on my kitchen floor. “Come in and see,” I say.

  I stay in the kitchen, but I am bursting with things to say; about the chance to start his own business adapting the programs on other people’s separators, about the council meeting.

  “Hello,” Alexi says from the doorway, “the door was open-oh, my, Little Heart look at this.”

  Theresa pokes past his legs and sees the kids. I am weighing one, two are standing in the middle of the floor. They stand and the little billy waggles his head. Theresa kneels down, amazed. Then the kids wheel and bolt under the kitchen table. I take the one I have out of the bag I put them in to weigh them and put her on the floor. She scrabbles as I put her down and jets directly towards Theresa then realizes her mistake. She tries to veer, slides into the wall with a thump and bleats. The two under the table answer back and she scrambles to her feet and joins them.

  “What’s this?” I say, “new clothes?”

  Theresa is wearing a yellow shirt and a pair of pale blue coveralls. She has barretts shaped like rabbits. The difference is amazing.

  “They let me have my first draw,” Alexi says.

  “I didn’t know you were earning credit,” I say.

  “Newcomers earn a luxury allowance,” he says. “I finally earned enough to get something. I got them a little big, so she can grow a bit.” His voice is a little questioning, looking for approval.

  “That’s good,” I say. I’ve never bought clothes for a little girl in my life-ask me about goats, I know a lot about goats.

  “Well, we can’t stay long, we’re supposed to be on the way to New Arizona. He shifts from one foot to the other. He’s still in the utility coveralls the commune issues and since he’s small, they’re too big.

  “I’m glad you came by,” I say. “Listen, I was talking to McKenzie, she picks up the milk delivery, and she thinks that a lot of people would be interested in having you adapt their separator programs. It would help you earn some credit, you could use credit when you get your own place.”

  “Okay,” he says, “‘Resa, we’ve got to be going.”

  She is halfway under the table and doesn’t pay much attention. I am surprised at how blase he is about my suggestion.

  “I’m sure that there’s more than separators that need to be adapted, you could probably get quite a little business started.”

  He nods pleasantly. I bite off the impulse to add that my honey business has made all the difference, paid for all the little extras in this house.

  “Have you heard anymore about reassignment,” I ask.

  “No, just that they’ve got some sort of committee to handle it. Theresa, come out of there, we have to go.”

  “I’m on the committee,” I say, sharply.

  “What? You are?” he says, and I feel as if I really have his attention for the first time since he walked in. “Why?”

  “I volunteered.”

  Goats run across the kitchen floor and Theresa backs out from under the table, blue bottom appearing first.

  Alexi and I are looking at each other and my heart is pounding.

  He is looking at me and what is he thinking; what right does she have? Is he wondering if this is some sort declaration I am making? Is he angry at me? I want to look down and I can feel heat in my face.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” he says.

  “I’m running for a position on council,” I say, “it will help to look as if I am involved.”

  He looks away first, perplexed. “Oh. I didn’t know you wanted to be on council.”

  “There’s a lot you may not know, Alexi,” I say sharply. Only afterwards do I realize that he might mistake that to mean something about my feelings for him. Which is not what I mean at all. And then suddenly I am tired of them. I want to be finished with this conversation, I want them out of my house. Theresa has gotten one of the nanny-kids to stay still and she is petting it.

  “What’s its name?” she asks.

  “Theresa-the-goat,” I answer. “It’s Cleopatra’s baby.” I meant that to be a surprise, a big deal, but it comes out matter of fact.”

  “That’s my name!” Theresa says.

  “How many people are they sending?” he asks.

  “The request is for five, but the committee hasn’t met yet.”

  “Is it two years? Really?”

  “I don’t know,” I answer, “Philippa is going to send me the notice, but I haven’t seen anything.”

  “Come on, Theresa,” Alexi says, “we have to head on to New Arizona.” But the peremptory note is gone from his voice. He’s off balance.

  “Can Theresa-the-goat come with us?”

  “No,” he says, “she has to stay with Martine and Cleopatra, she’s only a baby.”

  “Can she come to the transport with us?” Theresa begs.

  “All right,” I say, “but I’ll have to carry her.” I scoop her up and we walk out to the transport. Goats aren’t lap animals and the kid struggles on and off all the way. Theresa skips and bounces in the martian gravity. Alexi alone seems strained. He opens the hatch on the transport and lifts Theresa in and I see a big duffel bag behind the seats. I’m surprised only because I remember how little he had the first time they came; a little bag with a night gown and a change of clothes for Theresa, a change of coveralls for himself.

  He is looking at me oddly, and I think he is going to say something. But apparently he changes his mind and says, “Bye Martine, thanks for everything.” Then he grabs the handle by the door and swings himself into the cab.

  Theresa waves energetically and blows me a kiss, but I see only Alexi’s profile as he starts the transport and shifts into forward.

  Another airleak, this one comes in at about 10:30 at night and it’s after 1:00 when I find it. When I first started it took me six, seven hours to find an airleak, but by now I know where to look. Still, I’m worn out when I finally get to bed. I wake up from a dream of forests and squirrels; the red fox squirrels from where I grew up, big-eyed and leaping from tree branch to tree branch. I am standing in the passageway that leads from the house to the goatyard, standing barefoot in my nightgown. I haven’t been sleepwalking in years and it scares me a great deal.

  The Committee on the
allocation of people for the water reclamation project finally meets. Cord has been unable to make time until a week before the next council meeting. He doesn’t bother to hide his irritation at being 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 knows.

  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?”

  “In the kitchen,” I answer.

  He comes to the kitchen door. Good thing it’s martian gravity because he is carrying Theresa and he looks done in.

  “Sit down,” I say.

  Theresa has her head on his shoulder and opens her eyes only when he shifts her to put her down. I put the bread in to flash, wait for the timer and then pull it out. “Theresa,” I say, “have a little bread and cheese and then you can go to sleep. Careful, it’s hot.”

  I pour him coffee and heap food on his plate, pour coffee for me and take some bread and cheese. At first he picks at it, then he eats. Theresa eats half of her bread and cheese and then I take her in to the guest bedroom and take off her shoes and socks, her coveralls and top. Tonight she can sleep in her underwear. I turn the bed up warm and tuck her in and she falls asleep as I am sitting on the bed.

  When I come back, Alexi is sitting at the table, the plate pushed away from him, his hands wrapped around an empty coffee cup.

  “Thank you,” he says. “I don’t know how to say thank you.”

  “What made you come back?” I ask.

  “I realized I couldn’t do it. I thought, maybe in New Arizona, or in Wallace, I could slip into the free market or something. But it’s not like Earth, there’s no where to go. I don’t know what to do. And I kept thinking, you’re on the committee, I know I’ve asked so much of you, but I thought maybe you could help.”

  I’m full of anger. Anger is boiling up inside me. Just looking at this man, sitting at my kitchen table, full of my food, asking me for help. I know that my anger is irrational, I know that it’s the flip side of fear, but that doesn’t stop me from feeling it.

  “The Commune is supposed to send five people to the water reclamation project. We won’t send landholders, because landholders are what make the commune work.” Anger makes my word come out crisp and clear. “We’ll have to send newcomers and if they’ve been here for more than a year and we send them, then we’re making them wait longer to get their holding.”