Saving Mars (20 page)

‘In a couple of minutes,” said Pavel, “The New Terra Space Station should pass overhead.”

“I thought space exploration was banned,” said Jess, feeling confused.

“A hundred and eighteen years ago. But the space stations still circles. Hardly anyone remembers it’s up there.”

“You do.”

“Yeah. I’ve got … reasons.” Pavel was quiet for a few minutes, then raised a finger. “That’s it. See?” Another silent half-minute as he followed the bright spot across the sky with his finger.

“I see it!” said Jessamyn.

“My parents died up there,” said Pavel, his voice dropping low.

“I thought—” Jess paused, curious, but not wanting to give away her ignorance of Terran law. “Wouldn’t that have been illegal—going to visit the space station?”

“It was.
Is
,” said Pavel, correcting himself. “They took risks. They paid for those risks with their lives.”

“I’m sorry.” Jessamyn tried to imagine life without her parents. She couldn’t. “Has your aunt been a good … surrogate parent?”

Pavel grinned lazily. “That’s a very expensive question. If I had a credit for every time a reporter asked me that, I could build my own illegal space station.”

Jessamyn flushed and turned away, murmuring, “Sorry.”

“No, it’s okay.” He twisted onto his side to face her. “Hey.” Nudging one of her feet with one of his own, he said softly, “I’m the one who should apologize. I just implied you’d sell my answers for credits.”

“Of course I wouldn’t,” Jess snapped.

“I know. Forgive me.”

She raised her eyes to meet his—so earnest, so dark and lovely—and she felt herself softening inside. “I only meant to say,” she murmured, “That I don’t know how you survived growing up without your parents.”

A furrow grew between Pavel’s brows. “I had them my first ten years. And Lucca’s okay. She tries hard, anyway. We’re just … we’re very different from one another. Even though we believe in a lot of the same things. I don’t know if that makes any sense at all.”

“It does,” Jess replied. “You should see how different my brother is from me. But we get along great.”

“Hmm. Yeah, that’s the thing. I don’t think anyone would say Lucca and I get along well. We argue a lot. Junk harvest is a perfect example. She
says
she’d never want to see me go into something like that because of how my parents died up there. But really, that’s not why. Really, she hopes I’ll get a more prestigious apprenticeship, because that will reflect well on her. I mean, Lucca doesn’t want her nephew taking an apprenticeship that actually accepts
volunteers
.”

He glanced quickly at Jessamyn. “I don’t mean to imply that I look down on trash harvesting. I think it would be a great job.”

“I’m not offended,” said Jess. “Even if I were planning to volunteer for it.”

Pavel smiled, relieved. “Well, my aunt’s attitude towards junk harvesting is a perfect example of where we don’t see eye-to-eye. Her public policies are fine—but privately, she’s a bit of a snob.”

“I’ve met someone like that,” said Jess, thinking of Kipper. Although, at the moment, she was having a hard time feeling hostility toward the Captain. Every time she remembered Ethan’s mission, her stomach sloshed and she felt a downward
whoosh
, like riding the elevator, which left a hollowness behind. She wished one of the crew had remained with her. Even Kipper.

“You’re quiet again,” said Pavel, after a couple of minutes passed without either of them speaking. “Do you want to go back inside to the party? They’ll be bringing out desserts now that it’s almost midnight.”

The idea of further food (and she was fairly certain
desserts
meant food) made her feel ill. Better to remain outside, with Pavel and conversation to distract her from unwanted worry. “I’m fine here,” said Jessamyn. “I want to enjoy the night sky one last time.”

Pavel sighed contentedly. “Me, too.”

It was true, Jessamyn realized—she was exactly where she would choose to be, lying on her back, breathing out-of-door air, staring into the heavens.

“That moon is amazing,” she said. “It’s like someone cut out a piece of mirror and hung it in the sky.”

“I wish it were still legal to fly to the moon,” said Pavel. “If I were in my aunt’s shoes, that’s a law I’d bring before parliament.”

“It must’ve been amazing, back in the day,” said Jess.

“Can you imagine being Neil Armstrong? Or Roberta Zubrin-Trujillo? That was the golden age, Jess. I mean, I know there were wars and poverty and life was awful for so many people, but can you imagine being the first person to set foot on the Moon? Or Mars?”

Jess smiled.

“Tell you what. I’ll run for Head of Consciousness Transfer when I’m a threebody, then, once my political career takes off, I’ll see about re-opening the Terra-Luna shuttle runs. And you can be a shuttle pilot. Deal?”

“Sounds great,” said Jess. “But what about you, don’t you want to pilot, too?”

“Shuttles? Nah, where’s the fun in that? I’ll hold out for a flight to Mars.”

Jess turned sharply to face Pavel, her brow furrowing.

“Just kidding,” he said. “Anyway, it would be too sad. For me, at least.” He paused to brush sand off his chin.

“You can see Mars over there,” he said, pointing. “It’s as close as it’s going to be for over a year, which makes it bright. I wonder how long the last survivors hung on for, anyway?”

Jess held her breath. This wasn’t a conversation she wanted to fake her way through.

“There’s Arcturus,” said Pavel. He pointed to a bright stellar cluster. “Did you know ancient peoples used that star for navigation? One group traveled all the way from Tahiti to Hawaii with only that single star in view to keep their course true. Can you imagine that? Weeks in a boat on the sea, guided by the heavens?”

Jessamyn could imagine it in some detail, if you substituted “ship in space” for “boat on sea,” but she kept her thoughts to herself.

Another bell sounded from inside the hall and Pavel sat up, checking a device which flashed a readout of the local time.

“Almost midnight,” he said.

Jess couldn’t remember what time her body—still accustomed to ship time—thought it was now. “Do we have to go back inside?” she asked. “For the kiss or whatever?”

Pavel shook his head.

“Good,” said Jessamyn, settling back into the sand.

“Hey, Jessamyn, can I tell you something?”

Jess looked at him. “Isn’t that what you’ve been doing all night?”

Pavel’s eyes looked bright, animated. Jess waited but he didn’t speak.

“What?” she asked, finally.

Licking his lips once, he spoke. “So, I know it’s a load of shizer, what they say about the midnight kiss being good luck.” He paused and took a deep breath, then spoke very quickly. “But if I’d met you this year at school, well, I’m pretty sure my last kiss would have been a lot more recent than the one when I turned eight, assuming you’d said okay, because obviously I wouldn’t have just grabbed you in the halls, even though I would have wanted to very much.” He laughed and covered his eyes with one hand. “I
cannot
believe I said that out loud.”

“You want us to kiss?” Now Jess laughed, too, shaking her head at Pavel, his face half hidden under his hand. Then, more quietly, she asked another way: “
You
want to kiss
me
?”

“Pretty much since I saw you standing there in line, all dressed in black,” he said, looking at her through parted fingers. His hand dropped away from his face and he met her gaze.

Her skin tingled like it had when the woman doused her with spray-shrink. She thought she liked the feeling, this time. She smiled at Pavel’s dark eyes, turned upon her. She fingered her
sari
, slippery against her skin.

“I’m shallow,” groaned Pavel. “Go ahead. Hate me.”

“I don’t hate you,” said Jess. She thought about New Orbit countdowns back home where Marsians kissed at midnight for good luck. As a child, Jess had always hidden behind Ethan, covering her eyes against the thousand kisses. Last New Orbit, she’d watched. It hadn’t looked all that bad.

“I’ve never kissed a boy,” she whispered. “Not when I was eight. Not ever.”

A tiny smile broke upon Pavel’s face. “I don’t think that one counted for me.”

“Come closer,” said Jessamyn. As she shifted toward Pavel, burnt-orange silk cascaded from over her shoulder making a
sh-sh-sh
sound.

Pavel gathered a handful of the silk where it had settled between them. The
sari
whispered susurrations once more as Pavel tried to arrange it correctly over Jess’s shoulder. “It’s as soft as parachute-silk,” he said, voice quiet with wonder.

“It
is
silk,” said Jess. “At least that’s what they told me.”

They were very close now and Jess detected on Pavel’s breath things he’d eaten at the banquet.
Nice
things, she noted. A shout went up from inside the Banquet Hall.

“The countdown,” murmured Pavel.

Jessamyn scented the moisture humming between them.
Remember this
, she told herself.
Pavel, the moon, the moisture-laden air.
Hundreds of voices chanted
five-four-three
—

“I probably suck at this,” Pavel whispered.

Distantly, from inside the hall, a clamor rose.

“Hush,” said Jessamyn. As she shifted to meet his mouth, her dress whispered
shhh
.

Jess’s heart beat faster than it should have for so small an effort, the pressing of her lips against Pavel’s.
This is what
sweet
tastes like
, she thought. And then she stopped thinking and simply felt the kiss: silk-soft, honey-sweet, Earth-moist.

They pulled apart, eyes flickering down. Then, in turn, their two pairs of eyes darted back to take in the
other
before them—lips warmed red, cheeks flushed, eyes shining. Pavel laughed first, and then Jessamyn did, and they passed happy echoes back and forth until both sighed and laid their heads back upon the sand. Overhead the stars wheeled in an ancient dance.

“Do you know any constellations?” Jess asked Pavel, running her fingers in a sweeping motion across the sky. She wondered if they would be called by the same names as back home.

“Sure,” Pavel said. “But the moon’s so bright that most of the constellations are hard to see. Can you find Mars?”

“I hope so.” Jess couldn’t help herself—she giggled.

“What’s so funny?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Keep going. Mars.”

The side of Pavel’s mouth quirked and he showed her how to draw an imaginary line from where Mars sat over to a bright star in the Milky way. From there, he began outlining constellations:
Bootes
,
Cygnus
,
Ursa Major
and
Ursa Minor
. “Mom used to tell me this story about that bright star in
Cygnus
. Well, she told me lots of stories, but I asked for this one often because she would only tell it outside. Which meant prolonging the time before I had to go to bed.” He chuckled at the memory.

“Tell it to me, already,” said Jess, smiling.

“Okay. It’s a Chinese story about two lovers—
Niulong
and
Zhinü.
Niulong
was a herder of cattle, and mortal, while
Zhinü
was the daughter of the goddess of heaven. They fell in love and married secretly, having two children. For years, they lived happily together on Earth, but when the girl’s goddess-mother found out, she punished them by placing the two on opposite sides of the Milky Way.”

“That’s a sad story,” murmured Jessamyn, her eyes on Pavel’s lips. She wondered if
Zhinü
found
Niulong’s
kisses sweet and soft.

“Wait, that’s not the end,” said Pavel. “The goddess of heaven felt sorry for them after awhile. Or maybe popular opinion was against her. Either way, she made it so that, once a year, the pair could reunite. Magical magpies flock to the heavens and create a bridge for the lovers across the Milky Way.”

Jess thought how much she would enjoy telling the
improbable
story to her brother.

“See the bright star at
Cygnus’s
tail? That’s Deneb. The Chinese say that’s where the bridge can be found. And down there and there,” here Pavel pointed out two bright stars astride the Milky Way, “You can see
Zhinü
and
Niulong
.”

Jessamyn frowned, thinking about Zhinü’s mother. “What’s it like, living with a powerful woman as your guardian?”

Pavel shook his head. “I couldn’t possibly do your question justice in the next couple of hours.”

“How much time do we have left?” She felt a rope-tug of sadness with Pavel on the other end of it.

Pavel checked and smiled. “Enough time for a few life-with-Aunt-Lucca stories. They won’t start calling for us until nine in the morning.”

Jess yawned. “It’s a stupid idea, making everyone stay up late the night before such an important exam.”

“The food at the banquet is enhanced to increase concentration,” said Pavel. “Didn’t you catch that in the brochure?”

“No,” said Jess. That would account for the gluttony, she thought. Eat more so you can score higher. She yawned again. She should have eaten more, obviously.

“Okay, let me think,” said Pavel, chuckling. “So, when it comes to Aunt Lucca, the biggest difference I’m aware of between me and my peers is that I have a lot more unsupervised time. Lucca’s a busy woman. We don’t sleep on the same continent, most nights when she’s campaigning. You know how in that story
Zhinü
gets away with being married and having a couple of kids and her mom doesn’t catch on for
years
?”

“Yeah, that was completely unrealistic.”

“No,” replied Pavel. “I totally get that. If I’d been inclined to, I could’ve gotten away with all kinds of stuff.”

“Oh,” said Jess. “I see. And you never once took advantage of that?”

Pavel’s mouth curved upward. “Well, I didn’t say that, did I? Flying’s a good example. You’ve probably heard how Lucca wants to pass legislation that restricts first-bodies from flying anything that goes faster than the speed of sound.”

“Boring,” murmured Jess.

“I know.” Pavel laughed. “So, when I got my first license, Lucca gave me a motor pool pass and forgot to place restrictions on it. It’s a classic example of her parenting style.”