“Like it?”
He nodded, swallowing. “Yes. It’s quite good.” He took another bite.
“You really do like it, don’t you?”
He swallowed before speaking. “Wow, this is very good. Glad I made it.”
She frowned and shook her head. “So you’re going to take credit for it.”
“You insisted.”
Her frown broke into a grin. “Fine. But you do like it?”
He nodded, taking another bite, a bite much bigger than he should have. She laughed as he choked it down. “Careful.” She handed him a thermos. He set his sandwich down and opened it, washing down his sandwich.
“Sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean to be a glutton.”
She smiled. “My father would have said you eat like a pig.”
“Like a pig? How do they eat?”
“Never mind. I’m glad you enjoy it.”
He took another drink and stared at the thermos. It was a sort of tea, but he’d never tasted anything like it. So many different foods and drinks on this world, but all of it so good.
“So this is a sandwich. Is it from Earth?”
She nodded. “Our ancestors brought it from there, but we don’t know its precise origins.”
“So they came from Earth directly?”
“They spent many generations in space, but our records indicate they came directly from Earth.”
“Fascinating.” He took a smaller bite this time. It really was delicious. These people really enjoy their food. “My people came from a colony world, and that colony came from another colony. Who knows how many exoduses there were, from how many worlds?”
“How many other worlds have you seen?”
“Four, including this one,” he said.
“Tell me about them.”
“Well, the first was primitive.”
She smiled. “You said they thought you might be tasty.”
“Not as tasty as this sandwich.”
She smiled as he continued. “The next world was also pretty primitive. They thought I was a god.” He sighed. “I tried to explain I was just a man, but they didn’t believe me.”
“You think they’re still thinking about you?”
“Probably. I wish I’d never gone.” He took another bite. “The third world I visited had Bronze Age technology. I decided to leave them alone.”
He put his sandwich down and rested his hands on his knees, thinking. “We knew from those who visited us that there were other civilizations out there, but they had only encountered a few. I was afraid most colonies had reverted to a primitive state.”
“You had your own visitor?”
“Oh yes. We were just as surprised as you.” He took another drink of tea. “Someone somewhere discovered the ability to travel faster than light. They’ve been going from world to world, looking for all the different colonies of humans.”
“Just to say hello,” she said. “Just like you.”
He smiled. “We just want to know what happened to everyone, and to let them know they aren’t alone.”
“So, who invented this engine?”
“It was a colony that is pretty distant from us,” he said. “The visitor we had was in direct contact with this colony. They came to our world to determine if we were peaceful. When they found we were, they gave us the technology for the drive along with the coordinates of several other known colonies. They asked us to make contact.”
“And here you are,” she said.
“And here I am. This world was my last contact before heading home. I was afraid this world would also be primitive.” He gestured at her. “I’m glad you weren’t.”
Her smile disappeared. “You’re leaving one day.”
It wasn’t a question. She must have known that he would leave one day. In truth, he wasn’t even sure why he stayed. He knew these people were peaceful. Giving them the technology to travel to distant stars wouldn’t pose a threat to other civilizations. He knew about them and how they lived, but some things were still a mystery. This “bliss” that seemed to be coming soon, for instance. They spoke little of it, but he didn’t think they were deliberately hiding anything. They probably just saw it as such a natural part of their lives they didn’t think to discuss it. If he saw it happen, then he would know, and then he wouldn’t have a reason to stay.
She bit her lip, as if waiting for him to respond.
“I… I don’t know.”
“You mean you might stay.”
What if he did? They could have more talks, more picnics. The thought of never doing that again made him ache. That made no sense.
“It’s so nice here,” he said. “I miss home, but there’s a part of me that really doesn’t want to leave.”
She smiled, but he knew it didn’t satisfy her. Whatever she was thinking, she didn’t push him further. “Can you tell me about your world?”
“What do you want to know?”
“Did your visitor give you that space vessel?”
He shook his head. “No, just the engine that allows us to travel faster than light. The principle was unknown to us. The vessel itself is of our design.”
“You’re pretty advanced, then.”
“I suppose. Your people do travel in space though, don’t they? I recall some orbital habitats when I arrived.”
“Yes. We also have colonies on our moon.” She looked up into the cloudless sky. “We planned on building a vessel to go to our nearest star, but now that you’re here, that may change.”
“The technology of the engine is pretty advanced,” he said, “but I’m sure you can figure it out.”
For a while, they sat and ate.
After a bit, she broke the silence. “Can you tell me about your home? Your family?”
He didn’t expect that question. He wasn’t sure how to answer. “I grew up on a small island on my world. Our… well, family, I guess is the word, was small. Only about twenty children.”
Her mouth dropped open. “Twenty? Goodness, do parents normally have that many children?”
“What? Oh no.” He laughed, and she smiled in response. “No, we didn’t have the same biological parents.”
“Oh. Well, what were your parents like?”
“My parents? Goodness, I have no idea.”
The answer seemed to confuse her. “You didn’t know them?”
“No, of course not.”
She covered her mouth. “What about brothers or sisters?”
“My classmates? Well, out of the twenty of us, I’m only in contact with Phineas these days, but that was some time ago.”
“No, I meant your family. People you’re related to.”
It took him a moment to realize what she meant. “Oh, you mean people with whom I share genetic traits. I don’t know if any were in my class. It’s possible.”
Her eyes darted back and forth for a moment, as if not quite grasping it. “You don’t grow up in families?”
“With people who share our genes? No, we…” He stopped. She was looking at him as if he slapped her. “Is that not how you do things here?”
She said nothing at first. When she did speak, her voice was just above a whisper. “I grew up with my mother and father, the ones who birthed me. I have two brothers and two sisters. We grew up together.”
Jester raised his eyebrows. “That sounds intriguing.”
“Your people do nothing like that?”
“No.”
She cringed. “Your people are quite different from ours.”
“We are,” he said, “but we’re a good people.”
She nodded and gave a quick smile. It seemed she did it out of politeness. He sighed. Her discomfort disturbed him.
“We’re human, like you,” he added. “We can’t be that different.”
“We are.” Her voice wasn’t cold, just subdued, almost depressed.
The deep ache grew worse, and not in a good way. He regretted saying anything. He wasn’t ashamed of his people. They w
ere who they were. It was the fact their ways disturbed her.
He couldn’t have that. “Can you tell me about your world, please?”
“What do you want to know?” Her voice hadn’t changed from before.
“I want to know more about the bliss.”
Sasha inhaled and held it for a second before letting it out slowly.
“I’ve noticed changes in people. Men and women spend more time together. Everyone in this park—everyone in that park we stopped at two weeks ago—they were all paired off into couples.”
She nodded.
“Your hands are always moist. You had the chills when I first met you, but not anymore. Your skin is vibrant.” He left out the part of her breast size changing. It didn’t feel right mentioning it, given the taboos they had about sex. Nor did he mention the way her voice changed when she spoke to him.
“Yes, I’m changing.”
“The men are changing too,” he said. “Their beards are fuller. They walk differently, more proudly.”
“We are all changing.”
“You said, it’s the way your people propagate themselves.”
“It’s much more than that.” She changed her position, pulling her knees closer to her while smoothing out her dress so it covered her. “It happens every two years. It’s a momentous event for us. All of us look forward to the bliss.”
He tried to be as delicate as he could. “It’s taboo to discuss it, isn’t it?”
“No,” she said. “We’re not ashamed of it. It’s part of who we are.”
“But you don’t like talking about it.”
She nodded.
Jester realized that his question had more than one meaning. “You don’t like to talk about it.”
Her lower lip quivered. She tried to smile, but she couldn’t hide her sadness.
“This happens every two years? And you’re… you’re with someone during that time.”
“Yes.” Her voice broke. She reached into a pocket in her purse and pulled forth a small container. When she opened it, she poured two small pills into her hand. She put them in her mouth and took a drink of her tea, grimacing.
“You’re not well, are you?”
“No. I haven’t been for some time.”
He left his sandwich in the container. He didn’t feel like finishing it. “What’s wrong?”
“Soon it’ll happen.”
“The bliss?”
“Yes.” She set her thermos down and looked at him. She looked haunted. “These changes you see will reach a peak. People will bliss with each other and stay together until death.”
Jester stared at her. These people mated for life. If so, did she…? “And you have a mate?”
“No. Not since Andrew.”
“Why isn’t he with you now?”
Tears rolled down her cheeks, and her shoulders shook. “He’s gone.”
“Gone?”
She just nodded. “He was a physicist working for the government. There was an accident at a launch, an explosion, and…”
He lowered his head. “Oh my God.”
“There were investigations. No one was at fault. It was just an accident. But there were so many people, just crowds of reporters, always asking questions. They wouldn’t leave me alone. They didn’t care…” She buried her face in her hands.
“Sasha, you have my condolences.”
She looked up suddenly, her eyes wide in horror. He didn’t know what he’d done, but after a moment, she calmed herself.
“I shouldn’t have brought it up.” He looked at his sandwich. He wasn’t hungry anymore. “We were happy earlier. I wish we could go back to that.”
She looked at him. “So much has changed.”
“Has it?”
“Yes.” She held up the small container and shook it. The pills inside rattled. “I met Andrew in this park. After he was gone…” She let the container fall into her lap. “I’ve taken these ever since.”
“Why?”
“It…” She picked up the pills and looked at them again before putting them back in her purse. “I need to, that’s all.”
“Sasha—” he started, but she held up her hand. She closed the container with her half-eaten sandwich and placed it in the basket.
“It’s getting late.” She pointed at his sandwich. “Are you through?”
He nodded and closed the lid. When he handed it to her, she snatched it from his hands and tossed it in the basket. She stood and grasped the edge of the blanket. He had to scramble to get off it as she yanked it off the ground.
He pointed at the basket. “Let me carry that.”
She thrust it into his arms so fast he almost dropped it.
“There’s no need to—”
She held up her hand as she left the clearing. He had to hurry his pace to catch up with her as she headed back to the main path. She sniffed and wiped at her eyes, but she refused to look at him.
They walked in silence.
~~~~
Sasha sat at the back of the classroom, watching Jester speak to the children. He handled the classroom as if he had been teaching for years.
“How far is it?” The child spoke with a sort of awe.
Jester was wonderful with them. It was ironic that a man who didn’t understand families would’ve made a good father.
“Very,” he said in response to the seven-year-old boy. “Let’s play a game to show you, okay?”
That excited them, almost to the point where the teacher would need to calm them down. But Jester had things well in hand.
“Okay. Let’s imagine that the moon was only this far away from us.” He held his hands about half a meter apart. “Got that?”
They nodded.
“Well, then the distance between here,” he wiggled one hand, “and my home is the actual distance from here,” he pointed at the ceiling, “and the moon.”
Some of the children gazed at Jester with wide eyes. Some looked confused.
“Is that far?” a little boy asked.
“It is,” Jester said. “It’s so far away we have to measure it with something called light-years. Does anyone know what a light-year is?”
They shook their heads.
“It’s the distance that light travels in one year. You see, light is so fast”—he made a circular motion with his hand—“that it can go around the planet seven times in one second.”
Some of the children let out a “Wow!” Others seemed confused, but they all listened with rapt attention.
“Yeah, that’s really fast. I bet you wish you could run that fast.” Jester motioned with arms as if he were running in place. The children giggled.
“Well, think about how fast that is. It would take over thirty years for light from your sun to reach my home.”
The children let out another “Wow!”
Jester nodded. “Yeah. You’d get really tired from all that running.”
Again, they giggled.
“Did it take you all that time to get here?” another boy asked.
Jester shook his head. “Oh no, because then I’d be really old. You see, someone figured out a way to go really, really fast.”
He pointed toward the fish tank at the classroom’s edge. “Now, imagine how fast that fish can swim. He probably couldn’t swim fast enough to get across the city in his lifetime. But what if you took the fish and his tank and put him on an airplane. He could go really fast, couldn’t he? A lot faster than he could ever swim. Well, that’s what my spaceship does. But, instead of putting the spaceship in a bucket of water, it digs out a piece of the universe itself. The ship remains perfectly still, like the fish in his tank, but the space around the ship moves through outer space, like the fish tank in the airplane.”
Sasha wasn’t sure if the children understood. She wasn’t sure if she understood, but the children seemed to like him, and that was what mattered.
“How long did it take?” a little girl asked.
“It took about six months.?
??
“Did you get lonely?”
Jester smiled and nodded. “A little bit, yes.”
Another boy spoke up. “Did you miss your mommy?”
Jester looked up at Sasha. Her smile disappeared, but his remained.
“Yes, I did,” he said.
With that, the bell chimed and class was over. Jester sat as the children filed out of the room. Some stopped and spoke with him. She couldn’t hear what they asked him, or hear his responses. But he kept smiling while he spoke to them. All of them waved good-bye when they left, and he waved in return, even calling some of them by name.
When the children filed out, the teacher went up to Jester. “Mr. Gold, thank you so much for coming.”
“It was my pleasure, Ms. Gadis.” He shook her hand. “They’re wonderful.”
She smiled in return. Sasha saw excess moisture in the palms of her hands. A wedding band wrapped her third finger.
“I have a question, though,” Jester said, “about the age of the children.”
The teacher raised an eyebrow. “What is it?”
“No one is eight or ten years old. They are all seven, nine, eleven, and so forth.”
The teacher shrugged.
“I assume that’s normal.”
“Yes, it’s normal,” the teacher said. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious.” He pointed at the door. “I’ve seen a number of classrooms, but I haven’t seen living quarters.”
The teacher cast him a sideways glance. “Living quarters?”
“Where the children stay.” He held up his hands. “I understand if such a place is off-limits, I was just curious.”
The teacher looked at Sasha and then back at Jester. “They go home to their families.”
“Oh, I see,” he said, but Sasha could see he didn’t understand. “Yes, Ms. Merigole explained the concept to me.”
The teacher’s mouth fell open. After a moment, the teacher gathered her books. She stumbled for the door. “Thank you again, Mr. Gold.”
Sasha grimaced.
Jester waited until she left. “I seem to have a knack for saying the wrong thing.”
She nodded. “Yes, you do.”
“I hope I can make it up somehow.”
She stared at the floor for a moment, not wanting to make eye contact. How could she explain it to him? She felt the moisture on her palms. She had to, somehow.
“We should go,” she said. “The PM is waiting.”