13 Cover
Tarsi and I sat in the cab of our tractor, alone. Kelvin had to work late on the launch pad, as the first of the canopy-clearing missiles had been moved up the timetable and was scheduled to launch that night. We had asked to watch from the pad shelter, but there were concerns about how much bombfruit would fall after the explosion.
The food, of course, would be a welcome bonus, even if much of it would be wasted. After the tremors, we had learned bombfruit meat didn’t stay fresh, even with refrigeration. Hairy worms appeared in them after a while, and even though we knew a ton of fruit was rotting on the ground beyond the fence, nobody was allowed outside. With work on the farm halted, the hope around the colony was that the missile would do more than clear a hole for the rocket—it might see us through another week.
“What do you think Mica and Peter are doing right now?” Tarsi asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I hope they’re able to find some cover.”
“Me too. And I hope they found something different to eat.”
“That would be nice.” I leaned forward and looked up through the glass at the absolute blackness above. “It must grow fast to have closed us in like this.”
“The canopy?”
“Yeah. Don’t you think the lander had to burn a hole through it?”
“It’s been fifteen years,” Tarsi said. “I personally think we should wait and clear the canopy when the rocket’s almost done.”
“Hickson’s pissed,” I said. “He needs to blow something up.”
“Speaking of pissed, please don’t be.”
I turned to Tarsi. “What is it?”
“I spoke to Kelvin after dinner. He’s dead set on getting out. Maybe tonight.”
“And you’re going with him?”
Tarsi shook her head. “No. I told him I was staying with you. I begged him to reconsider, and he said he wouldn’t go without coming by and seeing us and getting his stuff, but I think he was hoping we would both come.”
“And you’ve changed your mindAre you sure?”
Tarsi reached out and took my hand with both of hers. She held it in her lap. “I want to be with you,” she said.
I nodded, thinking I knew what she meant.
She leaned forward and pressed her lips to mine—showing me I had absolutely no idea what she had meant.
We kissed. I’d seen a few other couples around base do it, and knew of it like I knew of earthquakes, guns, and beehives. But once again, conception gave me a mere glimpse of reality. Actual things kept proving louder and more dangerous than the idea of them.
Our lips moved together and it felt electric, but only for a moment. Then it felt wrong. Incestuous. I thought of Kelvin and pulled away. I held her back, my hands on her shoulders.
“Was I doing it wrong?” she asked, her face a mask of seriousness in the cab’s dim glow.
I laughed. “How should I knowI’ve never done it before.”
“But you didn’t like it,” she said.
“No. I loved it. And I love you.” I turned to the side and pulled her close, her head resting on my shoulder. “It’s Kelvin,” I said.
“There’s nothing between us,” she told me. “I prefer sleeping with him because I can trust myself with him.”
“He really likes you,” I said, realizing she had missed my point.
I wondered what my point had been.
“I know.” She reached up and stroked my arm, rubbing me from my shoulder to my elbow. It felt even better than the kiss. The comfort and intimacy. The newness and the familiarity. “But I get to decide for me,” she said. “And I choose you.”
I squeezed her tight, trying to picture the two of us together. As a couple. And it didn’t fit in my brain. There was no place to slot it. Familiar doubts surfaced, telling me why the thought of Kelvin made our being together impossible. It wasn’t because I was worried about taking Tarsi from him—it was because she wasn’t him.
“I don’t want to mess up what we have. The three of us,” I said.
“There is no three of us if he leaves tonight and you and I stay behind.”
“Do you want to go?”
“Yes, but I want to be with you even more.”
The words stabbed at my heart, slicing me with their sweetness and sincerity—crushing me with confusion. I saw no easy way to explain how much I loved her and how it wasn’t in the same way. How it probably couldn’t ever be.
“And if I wanted to go?” I asked.
“I would love that even more.”
“What would we doWander the wilderness?”
“We’d get away from base. We’d make a shelter, gather food and grow some Terran stuff. Be free.”
“Free,” I said. “Sounds like a lot of work being free.”
“Probably more work than we’re doing now, but it would all be for us.”
She was right, and I knew it. It went to the heart of my conversation with Colony, the talk that had given us guns instead of concessions for our well-being.
“Maybe we could find Mica and Peter,” I wondered aloud.
Tarsi shook my arm, practically vibrating in her seat. “So you’ll come!” she yelped.
“Yeah,” I said, speaking the decision and thereby making it, and wondering how I had reached it, if maybe my present emotional state qualified me as temporarily insane.
“We need to gather a few things,” I told her.
“Kelvin has a kit and I stashed some seeds away today. Plus a few other things.”
“Were you expecting me to agree to this?” I asked her.
“No, I promise. I had already planned to do it after we talked last night, just in case. I told Kelvin he could take them with him.”
I got down from the bench and went to the cab’s door; I peered across the floodlit base toward the power module. “There’s a few small things I should grab—”
A flash of orange light off to the side interrupted my thoughts. I watched as a streak of plasma lifted up, rising high above the base before exploding with a distant rumble. Tarsi stood and joined me by the glass, both of us peering up at the ball of fire overhead. A moment later, the whistling began, followed by the thudding impacts of bombfruit.
Not as many fell, however, as during the tremors. Not nearly as many. We stood together, our arms around each other as we listened to the odd impact here and there.
“So few,” Tarsi said.
“The trees are big,” I told her, “but how many of those can they produceAnd how fast?”
She leaned her head against my shoulder as the canopy burned overhead. The flames from the incendiary missile spread out in a wide circle of destruction as golden embers rained down, fading to ash long before they reached us, very much how I imagined a meteor shower might look.
“We need to get out of here,” Tarsi said sadly.
I agreed. And from a more rational stance, this time.