“You should have a creative outlet,” her mother was always saying. “You know what happens to salarymen. You need to make sure that you aren’t neglecting your soul.”
The robots had no souls, it was true, but Madoka was hardly a salaryman. She was very engaged with her work, and her work was important. There was real help that robots could provide for the lonely, the aged, the infirm. Who would take care of these people if the robots did not? Even in countries with an immigrant population willing to do low-wage jobs, you saw all kinds of horrific abuse and neglect. By people who were full of a soul, by the way. And even good people had limitations. They needed to sleep, they needed to go home to their families, they got distracted, they made mistakes and bad choices.
Fear of robots was something she could not understand.
Pumpkin is shaking Madoka’s hand and saying that she thinks Yoshi is the most awesome person ever.
Yoshi is the most awesome person ever. And Madoka is his awesome wife, because that’s the way he imagines her and that is the person that he loves absolutely. When they’d made love last night he’d been very passionate and tender to the person he thought she was.
Madoka knows what the dynamic between herself and her husband looks like to others, because it is a thing space agencies like to know and it is a thing she and Yoshi have been evaluated on, separately and together. She knows that they look solid, they look strong. Trusting. Supportive.
All of this is true. None of it is not true.
Solid is not true. She would say her marriage is solid, but only because the words people use to indicate happiness are so unnuanced. Not that her marriage is fragile; it’s more that her marriage might be only a solid surface, with nothing inside it. But all relationships between people might be this way.
Madoka looks around the room.
The American girl has been doing some kind of performance too this past week. Madoka knew better than to accept any of the overtures of friendship coming from Mireille Kane. Madoka’s adolescence, young adulthood, and early adulthood had all been marked by a close female friendship. Certainly these relationships had felt solid. She had felt seen by these friends, and had shared all the parts of herself that she could think of to share, and even invented some. Every single one of those friendships had ended, which was embarrassing because Madoka had been raised with the idea that female friendships were the most enduring kind, and friction between women was an invention of the patriarchy.
Yuko had liked a boy who had preferred Madoka, and when this was learned, Yuko had never spoken to Madoka again. Everything they had created together was gone in an instant, erased. Emi had been the best friend Madoka ever had, until it became clear that Emi never truly liked Madoka, but rather envied and resented her to the point where her only solution was binding Madoka into an increasingly uncomfortable intimacy. Madoka had been forced to end that one. Asuko had dropped her without a word or explanation. Later, Madoka heard that Asuko had done the same thing to another woman, but it didn’t make Madoka feel any better. There’d been no official break with Hana, but like most of Madoka’s women friends, Hana now had small children and had been absorbed into the world of other women with small children.
It was not an awful situation: Madoka didn’t genuinely like that many people. But still. She would not try to be friends with the American astronaut’s daughter, though Madoka had caught that moment of the girl’s rage just now, and had felt something. Relief?
“Yoshi is my best friend,” she tells people, and she knows he says the same of her. And yet, she is relieved that he is going to be away for this long period of time, in such a definitive way. It is too much for her, to keep their relationship strong and solid seeming, to protect them both from whatever might not be inside it. It is important not to hurt Yoshi.
She is a little envious too. For seventeen months he will have an audience, observers who will monitor his voice, and note his eye contact, and count his very syllables. And Yoshi will not just be pretending that he is going to Mars, he will be pretending to be the most perfect person to go to Mars, and maybe he is, almost without question, he is, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have to pretend to be what he really is, because aren’t we all pretending to be who we really are? Madoka would like, very sincerely, to ask someone this question.
? ? ?
LUKE HAS BEEN looking forward to meeting the family members of the astronauts. Prime has assigned each family their own personal liaison, so Obber contact with them during Eidolon will be limited to observing the communications between crewmember and family member. It is thought that family members will initially be self-conscious about the idea that someone like Luke is reading their mail or watching their recorded messages, but will largely forget about it after four to six weeks. (It is not expected that the astronauts will forget about it.) And really, what Luke will be reading is how the messages are received. He will be reading Helen, so to speak, reading a message from Mireille.
Luke looks over at the Helen Kane table and Mireille Kane catches him out and smiles. Luke tries to look professional and friendly and not like the legions of guys who must hit on Mireille constantly, and also not like someone who buys the Mireille that’s been on display the past ten days. Mireille is a person to keep an eye on. The girl looks like she’s ready to throw something.
Family members might end up being a more valuable source of insight into the crew than the hundreds of questions the astronauts have answered.
What is the word or image that you most associate with the word man?
Sergei, Yoshi, and Helen had all answered the same way: human. All three had given the same answer—human—for What is the word or image that you most associate with the word woman?