"'Kinder to yourself' is exactly what I want you to be, Jessyn," Mars began her message.
"I know how school goes. Stars, do I know! It takes a little while to get over that. You are in such a perfect position. The best thing you could do is create a space for your own heart to start talking, even if it disagrees with everyone. Even if you disagree with it."
There was a long pause. She didn't bother to stop the recording.
I waited.
"There have been times I've felt guilty for leaving. Maybe you guessed that. I think I took it out on the family for awhile. They still love us both so much! I know you have your own route to fly with that. I hope you wind up talking to them again. I could pass on a message, if it's easier. But that's the last I'll say about it. Except I love you. You're my heart's brother. I've brought you a few things I think you'll like, but you have to promise, no more comparing yourself. That hurt me so badly to see last year. Not even to me!"
She laughed, and it was that brash sound I recognised.
"We're headed behind a Jovian system for a few weeks, so don't be worried if I disappear. It's Peri there too, isn't it? I almost miss it, though I hated everything about it back then. I've yet to find a place as hot as Daltia gets. No, what we usually have to worry about is ice, crusting all over the shuttle wings. I broke my hammer on it once, had to resort to scraping it off with a stick..."
She went on about one of the likelier moons they'd visited, and honestly the thought of ice was blissful.
When she was done, I saved it and thought about what she'd said.
Most of the time, I tried not to contemplate our extended family too much. I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss them, all the cousins and grandparents that had filled the estate up north, or perched in their modest cliffside villa near Precipika. I knew the reasons they'd left, I knew it as a kid. Knowing why has nothing to do with accepting anything.
If I were to put Marseline's advice to work, though, and push that old anger to arm's length ... It seemed the space in my heart wanted to fill with something besides hurt.
I responded to her immediately. Among other things I told her, was this:
"I think I understand about our family. I can't decide yet. But I will decide. You won't hate the outcome. I guessed a bit of what it was like for you, and maybe I have to say thank you, though I know you won't accept it. I don't just -- don't just admire the whole explorer thing. You're the strongest person I know. Don't you dare cry, though. That makes a mess up there. We'll talk after Peri. We're almost ready, down here. All the fish have swum out to the deep parts, and I suppose I'll do something similar."
In my barely-touched summer room that night, I played back one of Marseline's childhood messages to me.
She and our family had stayed in the local system for a couple of months, as they prepared for the long ride to Mercuria. We got to where we talked nearly every day. It was the beginning of our friendship. A tentative, teasing beginning, but a beginning nonetheless.
A wiry tension that had always wound its way through her voice and touches, seemed gone. She was expansive, lighter. In my childish mind, I attributed it to the lower gravity that I assumed was everywhere except Daltia. She was in space, I reasoned, she was floating, and it made her softer, kinder.
Their system ship naturally had gravity in almost all its wings.
But one of the first things Mars demanded to do upon reaching space was get into zero-g. Her description of it, recorded only for me while she floated alone in her room, has always stayed close:
"Jessyn, it’s like those dreams where you fly. You used to have them too, I know you did. I’d see you in your covers, arms spread wide, that little smile. We all had them. They’re not just dreams. My hair floats around me like it always did underwater. Remember when we’d dunk down together and laugh as our hair floated straight up over our heads and hung there, filled with bubbles? I was always so sad to have to surface again. It’s like that, except now I can breathe underwater."
The rest of the recording is about twenty-five seconds of her laughing and squealing with absolute, young-girl delight, interspersed with thumps and the silence of concentration. It is one of my most prized possessions, that bit of data. It’s in my bonechain, it was the first thing I put there.
It bothers me -- the longer she’s gone, the fewer people in my life who know my sister. Really know her, not just from the news.
Katiat and Pach sent me amusing replies to the gifts I'd given them. They both took advantage of the sheltering-flats on the east coast, near the immense Galboa Reservoir. The city residents who didn't leave for the moon, and a scattering of people who wanted to spend the holiday with family, chose this sprawling complex of suites built into the side of a mountain. I'd never been. The idea of being genuinely underground made my hair stand on end.
And then the preliminary warning finally came, on the interior comms of every citizen who had them, and the bracelets worn by everyone else. Noon temperatures were reliably lifting over 40 C. Wildfire risk zones appeared in the small file we all could access, and the first glimpses of some ominous-looking clouds in the southeastern sea.
We had already been venturing out mostly at dusk by this point. The final preparations involved the house itself. Dio and Arind maneuvered the reflective covers over the roof and windows, and Jasha pulled similar shades down the glass enclosure of the greenhouse. His plants had small timed lights and a drip irrigation system, and he assured me that most of them would survive. Dio prodded around in the air intakes and exhaust systems, and looked pretty satisfied.
The water supply and the shield-room fell to me. Both looked perfect. I didn't linger in the windowless suite on our utility floor, with its calming decoration and industrial screens. I escaped back up to the stuffy front parlour, where Jasha was carefully arranging a thermal drapery over the piano and Ari stood checking a notes tablet beside the entrance door. The ornate cover of the server box hung open.
Powering down the above-ground electronics, then. That always felt like the real beginning of Peri to me.
I stepped outside into the last haze of twilight. A refreshing wind murmured through the trees, more sonorous than usual, and I lifted my hair off my neck and tied it back. We'd crammed all the aircars and the small groundtruck into the sturdy hangar already, in every available space. I had something else entirely to check on.
The box was right where I left it. I forced myself to shut the safe's door again, and switch on the EM shield. It would be safer out here, away from my nervous tinkering and my foster-father's curiosity.
We settled in to our new living quarters for a few days, and did our best to cultivate a tranquil routine. It was mildly diverting to have a new room, even though this one only looked out onto the now-covered pool patio. I scattered a few projects and sentimental bits around, just to make it look lived in. The official Alert sounded one morning for the start of Perihelion season, but we'd done all we could. So Ari just switched it off, and we continued eating breakfast at our smaller summer dining table.
Still, it was always morbidly exciting to know we only had ground-based comms now, and that nobody was flying -- let alone crossing the upper atmosphere. I thought of the ships at Southport, deep in their tanks. And of us pilots, amateur and specialist, all sitting at our temporary desks and couches and having the same uneasy thoughts.
Every year, it felt like overkill. But every year, someone was saved by it.
I wondered if future worlds would have to do all this? Every decade brought better geoforming, but every world it was attempted on presented weirder challenges. Nothing as catastrophic as the original Mars, thankfully.
I remembered when I first gave my sister that nickname. I was too young to understand her childish indignation, and I repeated the name whenever our parents couldn't hear. She embraced it eventually. Decided to make herself a disaster for me, as big sisters sometimes do when you poke them too hard.
As we all filled out the much-quieter lower house, it wasn't hard to pretend I was on a ship with her, in some silent quadrant that saw humans as intruders. I'd been useful, these past weeks. Maybe not scout material -- I could never be away from civilisation that long -- but more than a pesky kid brother. Comparing myself to Marseline now wasn't frustrating.
For once, the introspection didn't feel brooding or out-of-step. Heading into the deepest isolated summer, it seemed almost right.