In Antarctica, the greenhouse had been one of the most popular places to hang out: the warmest, the best smelling, the prettiest. People strung hammocks so they could sleep there. During Helen’s winter-over, so many couples had used the greenhouse for sex that a warning system had to be devised. A sign was posted outside: CLOSED FOR FILTER CLEANING.
This greenhouse would not provide such comforts. The structure—inflated and attached to Primitus—was a seriously challenged endeavor, and certainly its current psychological benefits were negligible. This greenhouse received its light from ground LED sensors, and was nearly opaque, its walls treated with UV-filtering transfers, and its roof covered with Martian regolith. A millimeter growth of hairy vetch did not provide much in the way of mood-enriching fecundity. The best you could say about it right now was that it was warm.
“GAIA,” says Helen. “Someone told me that the first recorded greenhouse was created for the Emperor Tiberius in 30 AD so that he could have cucumbers all year long.”
“Okay, Helen,” says GAIA. “Would you like me to verify that?”
“GAIA, no thank you.”
You had to say the robot’s name to get its attention, otherwise it would ignore voices. This conserved energy, and reduced the occurrence of the robot misapprehending directives.
GAIA was not her daughter.
Helen had started out a pretty good mother. She thinks she did well that first year, at least. Meeps had been a small, sweet, stubborn baby, very skeptical but with a sense of humor. Helen had felt like they understood each other and made a good team. She’d loved how much her daughter accepted her and took her for granted. She hadn’t even been terribly bored by the endless repetition, despite Eric’s assumptions. “Poor Helen. This isn’t quite your thing, is it?” and, “Mireille, love, Papa is going to give you a bath so your mother can do something easy, like rocket science.”
She’d stayed as long as she could. She tried to be extra present when she was with them, and when that proved annoying to everyone, she tried to be unobtrusive in an interested way. She acquired a sense of apology to her daughter, to her husband, a sense of never quite accruing enough credit to make up for her absences. But she’d always thought a time would come when her daughter would find a use for her, for her particularly, and all would be well and they’d be a team again. And then, before you knew it, Meeps was nine, ten, fifteen, eighteen. Then standing by Helen’s side as they put Eric in different kinds of boxes and Helen wasn’t what her daughter needed or wanted at all.
? ? ?
EVERY SOL ON MARS, Helen has said to herself, Oh let me be free. It is like she is cursed, or something. Her entire career, this has never happened to her, these continual slips, these plagued memories, these little struggles. It’s like something is clinging to her.
“My dead husband told me that flat glass hadn’t been invented in Tiberius’s time,” Helen says. “So the architects put together small sections of transparent mica sheets.”
GAIA, unaddressed, does not respond. The robot comes up to Helen’s ribs. Meeps had once been the size of GAIA. Maybe at eight? She’d been small until high school, was still shorter than Helen though she wore high heels often. GAIA’s height is adjustable. All four of her arms can extend to the top height of the greenhouse, if need be.
Meeps at eight. Helen had been flying a desk that year, more available to her family than she had been in the past. Meeps at eight took karate and played soccer. She also performed in her school plays, and sang in the chorus. Meeps was a natural athlete: confident and not self-conscious. If she fell, she got up, kept running. Watching her was a pleasure, was easy, was play. But the actual plays were difficult to watch. All of Meeps’s teachers, and other parents, praised her daughter’s theatrical skills. “So talented,” they said. “What stage presence. A natural.” Helen understood this might be the case, but could not see it. She saw that her daughter was louder, larger, more emotional than the other children. Helen saw naked need, and vulnerability. It made her nervous.
Helen would not have selected acting as a career pursuit for her daughter, but not because she didn’t value the arts. She believed acting specifically wrong for Meeps. It played to her weaknesses: her ability to manipulate emotions and her need for approval, and ignored her strengths, like her mechanical dexterity and ability to conceptualize objects in three dimensions. Meeps was smart, very smart. Too many things came easily, and she gave up too quickly on the things that didn’t. And she’d ended up wanting to do something that Helen could not help with, advise on, or even intelligently discuss.
Of course, Eric had encouraged it. It was too much to be hoped for that his keen eye had not detected Helen’s discomfort with their daughter’s theatrical displays. Her uneasiness probably amused him.
Eric had wanted a child with each of his two previous wives and it had not happened. Helen had known his expectations when they married. She had thought, If I have a child now, then I will not have to stop later and have it. The timing was right. An advanced degree and those critical bonding years could be achieved simultaneously. By the time she would be pursuing astronaut candidacy, Meeps would be in school. It was amazing to Helen, now, that she’d allowed herself to be so vague and optimistic about the whole enterprise.
Eric had been a wonderful parent. When he was alive, Helen had said he was a wonderful husband. She could still do that. Or she could say something else. Helen could tell GAIA all about it, if Prime wasn’t listening in somewhere. It would be nice to say it aloud. GAIA would listen and then say, “Okay, Helen. Would you like me to verify that for you?”