Danae's show turned out to be the last party of the season.
The mail began to deal out frequent Perihelion gifts. First a couple per week, then nearly every day. Then one or two with each afternoon's supply delivery. Households exchanged care packages and treats baskets before everything closed. A few were addressed to Jasha and me, and we picked through them with alacrity -- clothes, candy, entertainment packs and the kind of games that could be played with low tech. It was a yearly tradition, and it felt like being a kid.
As usual, I calculated how long I'd ration out the junk food, completely in denial that I'd have it eaten up by the end of the month.
I received an even better surprise in the week before mail slowed down. One morning, my bedroom-suite comms unit lit up. The indicator was a shade of purple that only one person had.
Marseline.
She sends messages when she can. It can take ages for intermediary satellites and ships to pass data all the way here, from the places she travels. Mars works as one of the younger research scouts for PASE, Planetary Association of Space Exploration, the Luna-based survey agency. That was her passion, and it has been ever since the organisation was consolidated from the various space programs, when she was just a girl. They are the crewed missions designed to follow up on drone exploration of possible habitable worlds.
Messages go across the surface of this world in moments, even Linear-link communication. Roxi takes a few minutes, and live video is cheap. Things become odd once you start trying to communicate with ships, even ones in orbit, let alone farther out in the system. And outside it? If you're just a citizen, you receive your messages when someone feels like picking them up and passing them on. Fortunately, nobody in PASE waits too long for that sort of service -- once they get anywhere near human habitation again.
"Jessyn, I'm sorry it's been so long!" Mars recorded.
"This past trip to a surface had us collecting way more samples than we thought. It all had to be arranged and categorised. There were some treasures! We had to expand our taxonomies. You'll just have to read the report when it's published, instead of the messages you actually deserved. You've been in my thoughts, of course. Every time we push off to go down there, I run through all the family faces. It gets baffling sometimes, to think there are no humans but you and your team anywhere for light-years. But mostly it's about scooping things and passing them to people, cursing when somebody drops a sack you were filling, and being distracted by the weird shimmer of the mud on your suit legs."
"I'm tired of these uniforms. I know I've complained about that before. They're easy to ignore while I work, which is the point. But once it's back to waiting, it is the same grey and white, cycle after cycle. I'm determined to set down somewhere in our system at least, once we get there. Get something new. I'd say I hope I can see you, but you haven't mentioned your issue in a long time, is there any progress? Nothing replaces being able to hug you in person..."
The message went on to report on her crewmates, and describe the calm breakup she'd managed with one of the women on board. And then it segued into a truly boredom-driven ramble about how fastidiously over-lubricated she kept her armour, when there wasn't much else to do.
It was everything I could have wanted, really. Just her voice, describing whatever popped into her mind. I could be her record. I know she longed to talk about details of their mission, but couldn't until their report was officially registered. With any luck, I'd hear about it firsthand.
The next day, I created a message to send in reply, as I flew the aircar out to bring in a shipment from Jasha's outbuilding:
"Hey Mars! I'd heard your post out there was done, and wondered if you would be coming close enough to talk. How packed is the ship with specimens, anyway? Isn't this like the fourth assignment you all have had? I hope you got some of that sparkling mud. Who knows what lives in that."
I paused the recording, and thought for a few minutes. After landing by the barn, I went on. "I'd like to see you too. Really see you, not just video from Sahr, either. I can't say for sure how much I can help with that. I will try. I've been..."
Another pause to collect my thinking.
"I've been kinder to myself about it. It has been a good summer. I've had time to think."
I switched to general news about the family after that, Jasha and Arind and Dionyz, because I honestly didn't have anything to tell her. But it was a hunch, and I'd learned to trust those. I finished the message, stamped it with my code and hers, and deposited the data in the regional node. Her ID would be seen, and it would hopefully get selected for the next transmission.
She'd never pressured me about my inability to reach space. Unlike others had done. I couldn't be sure, but she might even have been the voice on my behalf when we were kids, during the stalemate I'd caused in the terrible battle of where we'd live. People had listened to Marseline even then. But she'd still had to go.
She did everything she could to keep me from becoming a stranger. So did I.
I knew it would be at least a week or two before I heard back from her, at the soonest. Even the tiny documents she was allowed -- no video, just voice -- had to bounce between unknowable crisscrossing ships. In the meantime, there was plenty to do.
Arind, for all that he could get lost in his work and documents for days, never put off preparing for Perihelion. Some people waited until the last minute, and then dealt with the hassle when it was already killing-hot. Sometimes I think Ari did it simply to make the actual lockdown into a pleasant rest, after weeks of labour. It's harder to fret when you're exhausted.
Arind and Dio handled most of the core preparations for the estate, the things he didn't want Jasha and me to have to risk messing with. This included all the generators and their batteries, the water recaptures and purifiers, pulling the property temporarily off the pipes and regional wastewater system, and making sure the well pump had multiple backups.
I didn't mind being left out of that. At first, all Jas and I were responsible for was moving into the bottom-floor summer bedrooms, and bringing any household shipments down there to the cooler storage.
But once the outdoor supplies started appearing at the barn station, they had to be inventoried, including the replanting and irrigation stocks. And then all of it had to be hauled out to the garage and stored. Jasha had the responsibility of carrying repair tools and protective clothing out from his barn to the house. And I spent an entire day with Dio, cursing and trying to properly fold down and stow all the solar panels. Any left stranded would end up in the next region over from the wind.
My least favourite Perihelion chore, the clearing of underbrush and harvest debris, was an all-hands job. It had to be done before daylight temperatures rose past the completely ridiculous.
Then the worst of the big outside jobs were finished. Jas made sure our shelter on the ring road was stocked up with supplies for any unlucky travelers, as the law asked us to do. There would be no more shipments from off-world, once the Alert began. And few enough from other parts of Daltia. What we had was what we had.
It had always been enough.
Since the accident, I've lived either at school or university, or here at Arind's home. But I do have memories, hazier by the year, of Perihelion at my parents' estate, my birthplace. I remember my father taking Marseline and me outside, one sweltering night, to watch the aurora shiver across the sky, green and yellow like an old bruise. I remember my mother slapping the radio in annoyance when it would periodically go out, as if that would bring back its robotic voice. It wasn't as hot up there in the wetforest, or as bright. And some days, Mars and I were allowed to play outside in the morning, as long as we stayed under the tree canopy. That freedom sounded better than it held up -- we'd run outside after days of confinement, only to trudge back in after a bare hour, sweating and ready to fall into a bath. Mars would sometimes get migraines.
I received a reply from her only a day or two later than I'd hoped for.