The Sunspacers Trilogy (2 page)
“She was talking about other stuff.”
“I know, that’s what I meant. Where is she going?”
“Hawaii, I think.”
He shrugged. “It’s not known for anything besides some history.”
“I don’t think she got in anywhere else.”
“What’s she going to do?”
“Art, I think. Who cares?”
“She’s not too happy with herself, so she came over to pick on you.”
“Yeah, I know.” She still wanted me to be someone else, and for a moment she had made me feel that I didn’t know myself at all. I didn’t like the feeling.
“How are your parents?”
“They seem to be getting along.” Morey was beginning to irritate me. “Time to go home.” I stood up and clipped my flatscreen to my belt. “See you tomorrow.” There was no way I would be able to concentrate on two o’clock physics.
A plate clattered somewhere as I made for the exit, and the cheering started up again.
As it got closer to graduation, I began to suspect that Mom and Dad would not be back in time. They hadn’t been home during the last week of school. Dad had taken a leave from his job at the Institute and followed Mom to Brasilia after their last fight, on the day their marriage contract had come up for renewal. This bothered me in ways I didn’t want to examine, so I tried to push it away.
I went to the exam terminals for five days of tests and got my A’s, but there was little fun in it, even when I got the scholarship. I would have had to get double A’s, if there were such a thing, to impress my parents or advisers. I knew one thing, though—I had to work much harder than Morey.
On the night before graduation, I was eating dinner alone again. There had been no calls or messages. I didn’t even know if invitations had gone out to relatives. The only good thing about it all was that it kept me from thinking too much about Marisa. Cruel as it may sound, I had wanted her to fade away in my mind, but her talk with me in the cafeteria had made getting over her harder.
I got up and walked over to the window in the living room. The lights of Manhattan were blurry in my eyes. Maybe my parents would be back late tonight, I thought as I began to pace. I stopped after a moment and looked at the empty chairs around the triangular table in the dining area. The old-fashioned three-bulb chandelier seemed to be hanging at an angle. I hadn’t eaten much of the tuna and crisp bread I had prepared. The split of white wine was unopened.
I looked out the picture window again, and saw myself in the dark glass. Suddenly, I was surprised by the fact of being
me
. Dad had once told me that the sensation would fade as I grew up, but I still didn’t see how that could happen. I was separate from other people, locked up in my own skull, unable to enter their heads any more than they could invade mine. So how could Marisa know me better than I did? But maybe she knew enough; after all, I knew Mom and Dad, and cared about them, even if I didn’t know
everything
.
The person staring back at me from the night seemed thin for five eight. His muscular arms were pale in the sleeveless blue shirt. He stooped a bit, and some of his light-brown hair fell over his right eye. His lower half faded away into the city rights.
—Why should I bother going to graduation?
—You were looking forward to it.
—No big thing. College is more important.
—Morey will expect you.
—He doesn’t need me to graduate.
—But he’s your best friend.
Maybe that was the only reason I was going off-planet to school. That and to get away from my parents. I was sick of them not getting along. So I would have to work a bit harder than Morey—so what? I would see a new way of life, human beings building new worlds among the stars. If it meant studying physics for a career, then I would do so. I was looking forward to being on my own, to not having to worry about anyone else for a while. I needed a big change, and this was going to be it.
I stepped closer to the window, feeling a bit lost; the floating figure disappeared.
Graduation
I got up the next morning, put on the one-piece blue corduroy suit Dad had bought me for the ceremony, and rode the boost tube up to the Educational Center on 210th Street West. It was almost 10:00 A.M. when I arrived on level two above the street and came out into a hot, sunny day.
I felt lost as I looked out over the emptiness of the giant square around the hundred-story pyramid. Its east face caught the sun with a million windows, giving the structure the appearance of a cheerful ornament, but I wasn’t in any mood to appreciate it. Maybe Mom and Dad had shown up at the last minute and were waiting inside. I would have missed them if I hadn’t come, I told myself.
I wandered down the ramp and marched across the deserted square, working up a sweat by the time I reached the main doors. They slid open and I went into the lobby, loosening the stick seal on my collar as I looked around at the crowd.
I turned and saw Morey with his parents.
“Good morning, Joe,” Mrs. Green-Wolfe said. I noticed some familiar faces behind them, but everyone was so dressy I couldn’t be sure.
I nodded absentmindedly to Morey’s mother. She always seemed to be smiling as if she knew some silly secret.
“Where’s your folks?” Mr. Green-Wolfe asked loudly. Nearly everything he said sounded as if he were asking you whether you wanted a dessert. It was obvious where Morey got some of his manner from, except that he was smarter than his father.
I continued scanning the crowd. “Oh … they’re here somewhere, with some relatives, I think. They were coming back late from a trip,” I added, preparing the excuse I might need later.
“Your dad’s a sharp econometrist,” Mr. Green-Wolfe said, looking around as if he expected to get some business advice from him. “Your mother is a charming woman,” he added. “I’ll be so glad to see her again.” He put his arm around my shoulder. “Do you think you boys will be able to stand sharing one dorm room together?”
“Sure,” I managed to say, realizing that my parents weren’t here. My face was flushed, and I felt cheated. Suddenly all their excuses from other times added up into one big pain. I took a slow deep breath and tried not to show it, but it hurt just the same.
“Good!” Mr. Green-Wolfe said. “You two are real pals.” The time came to go into the auditorium. Scholarship winners sat together near the front, so I just tagged along automatically after Morey, not paying much attention to anything as we took our seats. Parents sat in the balconies, like elder gods gazing down on their creations. Maybe Mom and Dad were up there, but I was afraid to turn around for even a quick look.
Holo cams cast 3-Ds of speakers and students above the stage during the ceremony. Havelock “Burning Bush” Bearney, our red-bearded principal, delivered a dull talk about brains and courage and leadership, though he seemed to want us to opt for cooperation if we couldn’t be leaders. Toshiro Saada, the class president, whispered a speech about sacrifice that seemed to exalt self-punishment. Elene Chen, valedictorian and math prodigy, gave a vague but well-organized address on setting your mind toward the right individual goals. My mind wandered as our names were read out in reverse alphabetical order.
“Joseph Sorby!”
My name echoed through the auditorium. Morey nudged me when I failed to react.
I went up to get my diploma, sleepwalking all the way. A giant image of me gazed at the blue ceiling as I marched up and took the tube of silvery plastic from “Burning Bush” Bearney. He shook my hand and grinned at me with threatening teeth. Strangers applauded for me as I went down on the other side. I imagined Marisa making fun of me from her seat among my nine hundred classmates. Morey clapped me on the shoulder as I sat down, and that made me feel good, but I was still anxious to get it over with.
We finally marched out into the lobby. The doors slid open as the picture taking and gift giving began, and the whole show pushed out into the glare of the noon sun. No one noticed as I slipped away toward the station.
The tubeway boosted me down to 125th Street in a few minutes. I changed for the local and floated over to West 87th. Anything would have been better than going home just then; I was mad and getting madder by the second.
A cool breeze was blowing through Central Park when I came up to street level and started down the block to our housing complex. I came to our outside elevator doors and pressed my palm on the print lock. The doors slid open, and I stepped inside, feeling apprehensive as the elevator climbed the side of the building. I would be angry if my parents were home, angrier if they weren’t. The breeze rolled the tops of the trees in the park. Afternoon sunlight cast sharp shadows between the tall buildings. The elevator rushed to the ninetieth floor, and the inner doors opened.
I hesitated, staring southward to the blue ocean beyond lower New York. Finally I turned away and went inside, wandering slowly down the brightly lit hallway to our apartment.
Queasiness flooded my stomach as I thumbed the lock plate. I didn’t know what I was going to do or say if they were home.
Mom jumped me as the door slid open. “I’m so sorry, dearest!” I tried to step back, but it was too late. “We just got back.” She hugged me.
“Missed a connection,” Dad said.
“Sure,” I mumbled. My arms hung at my sides.
“Congratulations,” Dad said.
Mom was looking into my eyes. Her black hair was piled on her head in a strange swirl. Her face was pale, sad, without makeup, and her eyes were slightly red.
They had tried to get back, a part of me said, but I wanted to hurt them for making me feel like nothing, even though I could see that they had already been hurting each other.
“There are messages for you,” Dad said as I pulled free of Mom and went past him into the living room.
“Thanks, I said coldly, suddenly grateful for something else to do. I sat down by the phone and pressed in my thumbprint. The wall screen lit up with my first message:
MR. JOSEPH SORBY:
PLEASE REPORT JULY 1, 2056,
BERNAL HALL, DORM ROOM 108,
O’NEILL COLLEGE,
DANDRIDGE COLE UNIVERSITY AT L-5.—
OFFICE OF THE DEAN OF STUDENTS
JUNE 21, 2056
The second message appeared:
DEAREST JOE
: [FLASHING LETTERS]
CHEERS FOR OUR FAVORITE
GRANDSON! WE CALLED EARLIER.
HERE’S SOMETHING TO HELP YOU
ON YOUR WAY, RIGHT INTO YOUR
NEW ACCOUNT #000-112-2-34789.
WE’LL CALL YOU WHEN YOU’RE SETTLED
AT SCHOOL. LOVE,—ANTONIA AND JOHN SORBY
LONDON, JUNE 21, 2056
“Can I see?” Dad asked. The message flashed three times and blinked off. “Oh—is there anything from your mother’s parents?”
END OF MESSAGES
I ignored him. The screen went dark.
“There will be one along,” Mom said, sitting down on the arm of my chair. “I told them.”
“Don’t,” I said as she touched my shoulder.
“We love you very much,” she said with difficulty, leaning back next to me and closing her eyes. I remembered playing with her when I was small, sitting on her belly and shouting for her to surrender. She still seemed as beautiful, but she wasn’t the same person.
There was a long silence. Dad stood nervously in the center of the room, as if waiting for something.
“Your mother and I will be separating,” he said finally. “Sorry to have to tell you now.”
Mom sat up and looked at me. “We waited until you were ready for college.”
“Why?” I demanded, feeling my anger rising again. “So it would be easier on you? Maybe you were planning to leave me a message about it?” It was obvious to me that they were still concerned solely with each other, and I was just another obstacle.
“You’re older now,” Mom said, ignoring what I had said. “You’re ready to be on your own. The marriage contract happened to expire now. You can understand that.”
I looked at Dad. He seemed lost. I wondered again why he had been so opposed to my going off-planet to school. Maybe he had thought that if I had gone to Columbia or NYU, it would have helped keep the marriage together.
“When you come home,” Mom continued, jumping past any consideration of my feelings, “you’ll come here for part of the time, and to your grandparents in Brasilia, until I get a place of my own there. Eurico and Agata were very excited when I told them you would visit them.”
“We’ll always be here for you,” Dad added tiredly.
Mom let out a deep breath, and I could tell that she was relieved. Dad wasn’t about to start arguing again.
“When do you have to leave?” she asked me. Her lid was on tight, and nothing was going to blow it off.
“About ten days,” I said, struggling to control myself.
Dad slumped down in the sofa. “How was the ceremony?” He was emotionally drained and physically exhausted from the trip. There was no fight left in him, and I saw my chance.
“Pretty boring. You didn’t miss much.” I tried to sound as sarcastic as possible by putting myself into Morey’s million-year-old man mood, but it went right past them.
“We should have been there,” Mom said sternly as she stood up. She looked thinner in her slacks. “We know and we’re sorry. You don’t have to excuse us.” She sounded as if she were talking about some other people.
Dad was looking down at his feet. “Nothing can excuse it,” he said as if he were speaking to Mom. I might just as well not have been in the room. “We’ll make it up to you.…”
“Sure—how are you going to do that?” I demanded, feeling crushed. “You don’t listen to each other or to me. It was shitty of you not to make sure that you would be back in time. You could have done that! Do you hear me?”
Dad looked at me in surprise.
You don’t need us anymore
, his eyes seemed to suggest,
so it doesn’t matter what you say
. Well, maybe he wasn’t thinking exactly that, but I was sure that he had no energy left to worry about me or my feelings. A small, distant part of me wondered if I had ever listened enough to understand their problems; but it was too late for me to care. In ten days I would be free.
“You probably didn’t have any breakfast,” Mom said.