wondered whether a new project had been selected for research. Pitch fell back on his reclining chair, cupped his hands over his mouth, and let his face fall towards the ground. After a long time the celebration settled, but the energy did not. Pitch asked for permission to check his communications.
“You’re expecting someone from the Credit?” his supervisor said holstering his voltmeter.
“I. Ah. There is a message I never responded too, and I would like to do that now. Before we dock.”
He sat before the recorder and shut the compartment for privacy. At least one hundred people stood in line behind him. He felt the pressure like he felt the heat from bodies piled into a transmission room made to hold half the number. He began recording.
Silence and more silence. He tried again. And again silence. He couldn’t even make his voice groan. He tried again.
“I should have responded sooner. But, what do you say to a message like that? I don’t know. Maybe time has patched old wounds. And I’m sorry. But I want you to see us again. If not for me then at least for Ingot. If you get this. You’ll get this before we dock,” he was too nervous to ask, his hands and arms shivered, “meet me at the old Cold War Era malt shop ‘Tesla’s Backyard.’ You remember where it is. I hope.”
After school that day Pitch sent Inga to stay with the Dross’ family. Doctor Dross had a wonderful polarizing microscope and a set of at least a thousand mineral slides. The doctor had his daughters and Inga drawing the crystals and identifying angles for a few hours. Neither party minded as spinning the slide gave a gorgeous heliotropic flare that looked like the crab nebula’s waving sped up a million times.
That was part of the plan. By the Earth calendar it was December tenth and after this rotation it would be the fifteenth, the next rotation would be the twentieth. Pitch rushed through the door to his pod carrying three brown crates in his right arm and towing a hoverboard with a half dozen larger boxes with his left. Though it strained his muscles he gently lowered the antiques to the sofa not knowing how valuable some of the items were (but he knew anything from the starborn decks would cost at least a month worth of joules if he broke it). He smiled as he rearranged the furniture overflowing with the same energy the core crew felt with the news of the docking.
Inga returned from the Drosses earlier than her father expected. He heard the door ding and rushed to shut the library door. When she came in the pod looked like a forest exploded in the family room. She thought it must be a game. Maybe dad hid exotic plants in various and sundry places. She dropped her backpack on the sofa beside the opened boxes and rushed to the Douglas fir sitting in the corner. The pod smelled exotic, sweet with a sharp edge. She breathed in the air and ran her fingers along the threadbare limbs.
“Daad! Is this a game for me?” she bounced around the room running her hand along the garlands strewn over the cabinets and tracing a circle around the wreath hanging over the large rectangular AV-pad.
“Well yes it is. Actually it’s for all of us.”
“What do we do here? It looks like we should be exploring some-what are we exploring? This looks like those old nature magazines in the library.”
She rushed to the library door to find it locked.
“Why did you lock this?”
He thought for a moment stuck in a moral dilemma more than a parenting problem. Finally he chose equivocation and circumlocution over lying. “Ah, that’s the rest of the game.” He comforted himself; technically it is a game which the parents win until the children are old enough to know the rules.
“Why can’t I see what’s in the library.”
“Because honey you just can’t.” She shivered with anger for a moment. For the first time in her life she had been told an answer was off limits.
“Come here. All questions will be answered in time. Okay?” He placated her through dinner and her evening story. After Inga had vanished to her room, Pitch hung a single mistletoe over the door to the library. It was almost time. He grabbed his wallet and tablet and rushed to the malt shop.
The shop felt more crowded than he remembered, but the medical staff had taken their break and he planned the timing poorly. That coupled with the docking and the tourists from the Credit made it difficult to find a spot. He imagined sitting in their old booth, but any seat would have to do. Seeing her again, that was the important thing. He waived at every tall brunette in her late thirties that came through the door. He would be right eventually. He sat. The decor had changed. Tesla’s Backyard looked more like a memorial to the Desert Wars of the early twenty-first century than to the Cold War museum he remembered from his youth. Time moves quickly in the void, and early twenties became mid-thirties too fast for Pitch.
He waived again, and she appeared like a spirit invoked by seance.
“Petri! I tried to get our old spot!”
Perhaps it was the light, or perhaps it was his memory idealizing the past, but Petri seemed to age differently than he hoped. It took a moment to remember her beauty, and a conscious effort to tell himself they once shared a spark.
“What did you tell her?” Petri said settling into the seat across from Pitch. “Does she know how important my work is?”
“Not much-Not much more than you asked me to. I was leaving it to you to decide how you wanted her to see you. In person. You can’t touch a compression, so I-she doesn’t know much about you. But I think she will be happy. She has asked the question you know. And I tell her, your mother is a very important person, she’ll be with us one day.”
“And you wanted to choose that day for me.”
“I thought we could make it a celebration, something for us.”
“I don’t know. Do you think we should taint a family reunion with the promise of a tradition?”
“We’ll make it our own.”
“It won’t be a tradition. A tradition happens at regular intervals, depending on the Credit’s course we could be back in a few months or a few years. It’s not fair to her to create a fictional expectation I can’t live up too,” Petri paused for a moment and stirred her malt. “That’s why I’ve been hesitant.”
“But I spent the day yesterday planning your homecoming.”
“This. This” she held her head in her hand and shook with a touch of anger, “Why do you always to this.”
“I won’t argue so I won’t answer. But you owe it to her. I wasn’t planning on trying to make you stay.”
“Yes you were. That’s exactly the point of starting a tradition. What happens when I ask for a leave from the Credit? You think I’ll have preferred projects?”
“You’re doing it for selfish reasons.”
“If I’m gone now, maybe-maybe we can defy gravity,” she said raising her voice with hope for the first time, “I’m doing more for her staying gone than coddling her by putting pictures on the wall and patronizing her. Unless you’re telling me you can’t raise one child by yourself.”
“Are you joking? You are joking. I wanted Inga to have a memory of joy and cheer like I did. Photos may be pretty, but how much can a photo mean?” He threw his napkin on his plate. He could not stand to look at his ex-wife. She had the same knot in her stomach as when they said goodbye eight years ago.
“If that’s true,” she said with the low brush of anger swelling in her voice, “let us make this visit a single celebration for its own sake.”
“She’s been overcome with curiosity these last few nights. I told her, ‘It’s a secret but you’ll find out in a few days and it will be magical.’ Every year families get together and sing and laugh and love-”
“Oh you’ve got to be kidding me. I can’t figure out what is wrong with you. What are you telling my daughter lies for? - teaching her to be deceptive or making promises you have no way to keep. Except with more manipulation and deception.”
Petri was sorry she came to the Flower. She was sorry she responded to Pitch’s message.
“I’ll come. But you’ll deal with the fall out for what you
told her. And you have to promise me you won’t try to make me turn my entire life around.”
“If that’s what it takes to give her a memory of her mother so be it.”
“Do you remember me?” Petri said standing in the gentle golden glow of the sun rising through the windows of the family room. Ingot wiped the sleep from her eyes, rubbing them red as if to blur the familiar ghost from her morning. Petri stood still, waiting for her daughter to approach. Then she waited for her daughter to speak. Her brown hair had fuzzied during the night. She matted down the cowlick.
Her father stood next to the woman so she must have been safe. He clicked a button on his tablet and the window shade descended to hide the morning in a veil of sunset. The white lights entangled in garland and tree sparkled like distant stars as close as a telescope could make them. There were two boxes wrapped in brown paper, decorated with designs of stars, leaves, and animals. The penguin, that is Petri’s favorite animal, or was. The elephant, that’s what Inga loved. The girl stood in the kitchen wiping her eyes though she no longer needed too. She was smart enough to understand the meaning of the blonde woman’s question.
“How could you remember? You were just a year old. Not even that,” Petri said sitting on the sofa, falling back in the bulky down stuffing.
“It’s alright,” Pitch said walking towards the stove. “I planned this for you. This is your