The Fourth Science Fiction MEGAPACK ®. Айн Рэнд
get new ones.”
“But you’ll get my camera?”
“Yes, but I’ll tell you straight up, we have to keep it.”
Zora had been wondering why Sekou no longer clamored for a bathroom, but a glance at his overalls revealed a dark stain on the front. Sekou, noticing her glance, said. “It kind of smells bad, and it’s all cold and wet.”
Zora murmured, “Sorry, baby.” And then, trying to think what Marcus would say, “It’s okay. Don’t worry about it.”
Marcus stopped the rover about thirty meters from the hab entrance. He untoggled the rover door and began to open it.
“Marcus,” she said.
“Don’t, Zora. You can’t do this.”
She had thought very carefully about it. “You’re stronger, I know. But that’s exactly why I should go in and find the camera. If something happened to me while I was in there, you would be better able to care for and defend Sekou than I would be.”
“Zora, suppose you’re pregnant.”
“I’m not. I’m having a period. It just started.” This was not strictly true, but Zora felt like her period was about to start, and anyway, she used a colored-light cycle regulator had never failed her, both in conceiving Sekou and in preventing subsequent conceptions.
“Zora,” he said tiredly, “you playing me?”
She felt a flush of outrage. “You want me to take off my environment suit and show you the blood on my underpants?” Even though actually, come to think of it, she was playing him.
What could she do? If Marcus died, if he got sick and died, her life on Mars without a mate was too horrible to envision—she’d be meteor sploosh, she’d be forced to sell herself, she’d be dead. Mother and child, she and Sekou, would be like naked bacteria in the harsh UV sky of Mars. But it was even worse than that. Without Marcus, she wouldn’t want to go on living. Not even for Sekou. It would be better to venture everything, live or die now, than die slowly as the widow of Dr. Marcus Smythe.
“Let me do it, Marcus.” She heard the pleading in her voice, and the sharp knife of desperation under her groveling.
“Zora—”
“Oh, never mind! You always want to charge ahead, the big bull rover, like some stupid big male animal from Earth.”
Even through the helmet she could see him wince.
She realized just then that they hadn’t turned their coms to private channel, and that Sekou was listening intently.
Marcus said, “How you doing, big guy?”
“Okay,” said Sekou very softly. Then, louder, “It’s wet and icky and smelly in here. How long before we go home?”
Zora closed her eyes and thanked whatever gods controlled their fate that Sekou was in a bubble, because she was very close to hitting him. “We aren’t going—”
Marcus swiftly and seamlessly interrupted her. “Sekou, here’s a trick for getting over the bad parts. Make up good thoughts. Like, if you wanted to invent a toy, what would it be?”
“A camera to take smells and tastes,” said Sekou promptly.
“Those pictures you took, those were good,” Marcus continued. “Maybe help us get a new home. Your Daddy’s going to get the camera.”
“Can I take more pictures then?”
Zora focussed on the back of Marcus’s suit. “When did you tear your suit?” she asked.
Marcus wheeled around and looked at her. “Playing me, girl? My indicators say the suit’s fine.”
“It’s not torn through,” she said reasonably. “But it has a weak spot. That’s bad, baby.”
“Slap some tape on it.”
She rummaged the storage compartment and got out the tape. “I can’t handle this in my gloves,” she said.
He was quiet. “Have to pressurize the rover cabin then, to mend it. That what you want? Mend it.”
She tried not to smile. The nearly invisible spot she had seen on his suit was not likely to cause problems. “You can’t go out into the hab in a weakened suit.”
Marcus stared at her. “What kind of jive is that, Zora?”
“No, Marcus, no! Sekou, tell Daddy he’s got a little tear in his suit.”
Sekou tried to crane his neck, but of course he couldn’t see anything.
“Girl, I know you’re playing me. I know this.”
She threw the tape at his feet. “Be a fool, then. Get us all killed.”
“You’re counting that I can’t take the chance.” He stooped slowly and picked up the tape.
Zora continued, as if she had just thought of it. “You can pressurize the cabin and fix your suit. But it’ll take awhile to pressurize. A half hour at least. I’ll go get the camera with the photo while you the atmosphere builds up.”
“When you come back, we’ll lose all that good atmosphere again.”
She looked at him blandly. “It can’t be helped. You can take the opportunity to get Sekou out and cleaned up. We have no clean clothes for him, but ten minutes over the heater will at least dry his britches.”
Marcus stared back unsmiling. “You’re a jive fool, girl. You get serious radiation sick, I’ll kill you.”
“You saying don’t go?”
He stared longer. Then, “Go.”
* * * *
Zora didn’t look back at the rover as she loped awkwardly in her environment suit to the front airlock of the hab. Once inside, she felt a sense of unreality, her family home having turned alien. Odd to fumble to open the door to Sekou’s tiny room, not to feel the softness of his blanket through her thick glove. Everything was changed, charmed, deadly.
Her com still connected her to her child and her husband back in the rover. “Sekou,” she asked, matter of fact. “Tell Mama where the camera is.”
Sleepy, Sekou’s voice came back, “Under the bed.”
Environment suits aren’t built for crawling on hands and knees. Under the bed Sekou had stowed all sorts of things, pitiful toys made of household scraps and discards. A whole fleet of rovers made of low quality Mars ceramics with wobbly wheels that only a child would consider round. A doll she had made of scraps of cloth, and upon which he had put a helmet made of a discarded jar.
And way back toward the wall, where her clumsy fat-fingered glove could scarcely reach, the camera.
“The picture is still in the camera, Sekou?”
“Yes, Mama.”
She felt a flash of fury for not having paid more attention to her own child’s plaything. “How do you get the pictures out?”
“You have to develop them.”
“Say what?”
Marcus broke in. “It’s a chemical process. The film emulsion is sensitive to light, you apply chemicals to fix it. You unload the film into the chemical bath in the dark.”
Sekou had done this by himself? Mars god almighty, her boy was going to be something fine as a grown man. “Why can’t we just give the camera to Hesperson? And why can’t we do the developing in the rover?”
“It needs water, if I understand correctly. And I’m not sure Hesperson has the chemicals.”
Sekou’s voice broke in, excited. “They’re already all