Earth

• EXOSPHERE

Teresa rose toward consciousness and for a fey moment felt as if she were in two places at once.

With the deceitful certainty of dreams, she lay lazily, contentedly, beside Jason’s warmth. She heard her husband’s breath and felt his man-sized bulk nearby

— its weight and strength — which only a little while ago she had welcomed upon her, creating a continuum of he, she, and the world.

At the same time, another part of her knew that

Jason’s nearness was ersatz, based on a close but oh so different reality.

There’s no urgency, a third voice urged, pleading compromise. No duty calls. Hold onto the illusion a little longer.

So she tried to go on pretending. After all, can’t believing sometimes make dreams come true?

No, it can’t. Besides, you’re awake now.

And anyway, she went on, just to be mean. Jason’s on a one-way trip to some far star.

Without opening her eyes, she remembered where she was now. The ice told her. Even kilometers away, the Greenland glacier made her senses dip, tugged at her equilibrium, set her teetering. Just as the sloping mattress seemed to draw her toward the weight beside her.

He doesn’t twitch much, she thought about the man sleeping only a foot away, his mass pushing a well into the foam rubber pad. Jason used to give those sudden, tiny jerks… like a dog dreaming he’s chasing rabbits.

A woman has to get used to a lot when she marries, and so Jason’s nighttime movements had caused some sleeplessness back at the begi

It took the base surgeon and a dozen scholarly references to convince her that mild, intermittent apnea in adult males was nothing by itself to worry about. In time she grew accustomed to all of it. To the twitches, the snores, the sudden pauses. In fact, what had been irritating became familiar, comforting, normal.

But just when you get used to someone. Just when you’ve reached the point where there’s nowhere else in the world you feel safer. When you feel all is well. That’s when it all gets ripped away from you again. Damned world.

Tears offered one benefit. They washed away the scratchy, “rusty drawer” effect of opening your eyes from sleep. The liquid blur blinked away and the cabin swam into focus — an insulated prefab with ribs of cured, undressed pine. The furniture was spare and economical — a small bureau, chairs, and a table bearing two used candles, two glasses, and an empty wine bottle. An open closet held exactly six changes of clothes, including an impressive arctic suit that wouldn’t need much alteration to work on Mars.

If anyone ever got to Mars.

Pervading the room were odors, from the candles, from machinery… and others Teresa admitted feeling ambivalent about. Powerful ambivalence.

Hers for instance. Her own sweat. Her shampoo. All mingled with the overpowering aroma of a man.

“Good morning, Emma.”

She turned her head on the pillow and saw his pale blue eyes looking into hers. He’s been watching me, she realized. He was so still. I thought he was asleep.

“Mmmp,” she said, rubbing her eyes to wipe away any trace of tears. “G’mornin’. What time is it?”

Lars glanced over her head. “Plenty early, yes. Did you sleep well?”

“Fine. Fine.” She pushed her pillow back against the headboard and sat up, keeping the sheet above her breasts. They still throbbed pleasantly from his attentive study hours earlier. So intent had he been, so assiduous, one might have” thought he intended memorizing them and every other contour of her body.

It had felt good. Had been good. A woman needs appreciation, worship, from time to time. There had been a dozen good reasons to say yes to this. He was a nice man. Their quick-scan blood tests had checked out okay. It had been far too long. And Teresa knew she didn’t talk in her sleep.

Teresa lived by checklists. They were modern mantras to peace of mind. By any logical checklist, she should feel okay about this. Still, there remained an unreasoning part of her which adamantly sought excuses to feel guilty.

“I… have packing to do,” she said.

“It’s only six. I wish you’d stay a while. I will cook breakfast. I melted glacier ice already for coffee.” In Japan, they paid fifty thousand yen a kilo for the best ten-thousand-year-old blue ice. Here, of course, one didn’t have to pay freight or refrigeration charges or even a resource-depletion tax. Ancient ice lay right outside the front door, in gigatons.

“I have one more survey scan to help with this morning… and the zep picks me up at fifteen hundred…”

“Emma, I almost have the feeling you want to get away from me.”

She’d been avoiding his eyes. Now she looked up again quickly. Ah, she thought. No fair smiling at me like that!

Lars was everything the teenager inside her could hope to swoon for. Built for power and endurance, he nevertheless was gentle and tactile with those calloused hands. His face was a regular delight: rugged and yet retaining a touch of i

Hell, last night was much better than good. If ever one night’s solitary consummation can be called “good.” And clearly one right was all this could ever be.

She reached up and caressed his cheek, thrilling to the prickly touch of his morning stubble. For the moment, reality was nice enough. When his hand stroked gently up her side, settling eventually over one breast, she exhaled a sigh that was ninety-five percent pleasure. The rest could go to hell.

“No, Lars. I don’t feel I have to get away from you.”

As he bent to whisper in her ear, Teresa knew yet another way to feel good about this. “Emma,” he murmured, speaking the name on her passport, the woman she was during this brief interlude.

As Emma then, she clung to him and again sighed.

Stan Goldman escorted her to the aerodrome when it was time for her to leave. The small cargo zeppelin was already moored, its transparent flanks turned toward the sun to focus every available watt onto its internal photocells.

Together they walked the long way across the open moraine, he immersed in his own thoughts and she in hers. “Here, take a look at this,” Stan said at one point, leading her a few meters to the left. “Do you see that?”

“See what?” He was pointing at a jumble of stones.

“Yesterday those were in a stack. I put them there. Today it’s toppled.”

Teresa nodded. “Quakes.” In her valise she carried data on the recent increase in local, low-level Earth tremors, gathered with the finest instruments. “Why the poor man’s seismograph, Stan?”

The elderly physicist smiled. “Never put all your confidence in sophisticated gadgets, my dear. It’s as bad as trusting faith alone, or math, or your own senses.”

Actually, Teresa’s nickname in the Bus Driver’s Guild was “Show Me” Tikhana. She nodded in agreement. “I’ll try to remember that.”

“Good. The Lord gave us eyes and imagination, faith and reason, enthusiasm and obstinacy. Each has its place.” He kicked one of the fallen rocks. “I’m afraid it won’t be long before a lot more people suspect something’s going on.”

So far only a few obscure sources on the Net were commenting on the pickup in worldwide seismic activity. But she knew what incident had Stan particularly worried.

“Have they found that plane yet?” she asked. “The one in Antarctica?”

He shook his head. “They’re assuming it crashed. But there’s not a peep from the flight transponder. And you heard the report of that ozone scientist, who claimed seeing something flash into the sky? The location corresponds with the plane’s last known position… and the emergence point of one of our recent beams.