Chapter 12

A quick note: if you had read Gaudy Night by Dorothy Sayers, you may remember when writer Harriet Vane faces a decision whether to keep her emotions out of her writing and produce a perfectly serviceable potboiler, or be honest and write with emotional depth, and produce a better book. This book is my Harriet Vane moment. I could have written less honestly about some of the physical and emotion things I went through for the many years I was involuntarily single, but it would have been a lesser book. Anita is not me, but a lot of her sensations and thoughts are ones I have dealt with.


Chapter 12

The first scrunch of the carbon-bladed scissors through the suit material was the most exciting sound Anita had heard in a very long time. Every pattern piece had been measured, checked, re-measured, and checked a final time before Anita was ready to begin cutting. It was a challenging puzzle: the fabric had been specially constructed to keep the chill of Titan at bay, and was not reversible. Every square centimeter of it was costly and hard to acquire under the best of circumstances, which these were definitely not. None of them could afford a single slip of the scissors or any carelessness in laying out the fabric.

Anita welcomed the intense focus that cutting out the first suit pieces required of her. If she could focus on this, everything else could be kept at bay. It kept her mind in tune, and let her ignore her body for hours at a time. When she did stop work, the back and arm aches that came to the surface drowned out other bodily needs for a while.

The nights were still the worst. The weighted blankets used in most low-gravity situations normally kept her from tossing and turning, but she almost didn’t notice the weight anymore. No position felt comfortable. Her arms felt wrong whether she held them against her body or spread them out on the bed. One night, she had stuffed an empty pillowcase with a couple of spare sheets, and slept with her arms around that, and it had helped, a little.

Nothing stopped the flames. Every night, it felt like her skin was on fire, flames that tickled and burned all along her body. Sometimes it felt more like bugs under the skin, but most of the time, fire was the closest descriptor she could get.

It might be a little more bearable, she thought, rubbing her hands along her arms in a vain attempt to get some relief, but I didn’t choose any of this. I suppose technically I could have chosen to give in to Perses and stayed where I was, with normal human contact. The little touches that happen in everyday life. But that wasn’t really a choice.

Sleep wasn’t coming any time soon, so Anita got out of bed and wandered out into the kitchen area. The suit was spread out across the table, fabric pieces on one end and electronics on the other. There was so much work to do, and this was just one suit. They needed seven.

She dropped into her chair and picked up two of the pattern pieces. While the fabric could be cut by regular scissors that had been outfitted with carbon blades, it could not be seamed with needle and thread. Any hole in the fabric could be a weak spot to let the cold in, even if it could be pierced with a needle in the first place. It was possible, but not easy. Tohru had left another small machine with the fabric, which heated the seams of the suit and sealed them perfectly. It fit in the palm of her hand, and had to be moved slowly down the edges of the fabric. One pass would seal the seam, the next would flatten the edges into the inside of the suit, to leave it free from bulging seams that could create chafing and discomfort.

It took well over forty-five minutes to finish one seam on the suit, a section less than twenty centimeters long. Anita ran her finger down the seam, feeling the residual heat from the join, fading rapidly into the chilly air. The line was smooth and felt almost like liquid under her finger.

She was beginning to feel sleepy again, and didn’t want to try to seal any seams if she wasn’t fully alert. The sensation of flames had died down enough that she thought she could sleep. She double-checked to make sure the seamer was turned off and disconnected from the power, then went back to bed. It took another half hour for her to drop off entirely.

Over the next few days, the suit began to take shape on the table. As the fabric began to assume a vaguely human shape, she began integrating the electronic. It was a rough product, nothing like the sleek and elegant form she had created back at Kerguelen, but it would work. The seams were solid, the electronics and controls all functioned perfectly. It took all her self-discipline not to start rushing. Time was of the utmost importance, yes, but small mistakes could lead to injury, or worse, death. She wouldn’t sacrifice any of her scouts for this. Everything had to be as correct as possible, and that meant taking all of the precautions she would take when there was no pressing danger.

Her fingers were beginning to lose the rawness that they had had for the first month or two that she had been working, and were now rough with callouses. Anita missed some of the sensitivity she’d had in her fingertips, as well as the dexterity, but it was much easier to work now that she wasn’t in pain most of the time.

Her body had begun to show the results of the increased exercise regimen, and was now taut with muscles. She could see the difference when she changed clothes, and was glad there were no mirrors in the base. I like the strength, she thought, but I’m not sure I feel like myself any more. I knew my body. I liked my body. This doesn’t feel like me anymore.

We change cells in our entire bodies every few years. None of us stay the same, even in appearance, and stress and other life conditions can take a toll. It’s not like I could have stayed in what I thought of as “my body” anyway. But now I’ll never know what that body would have become. We’ve taken a new path, my body and my mind. This isolation is changing my mind down to its very fundamental elements, and my body is having its own reactions.

What will I be when this is all over?

But Anita found she couldn’t cut back on the exercise, either. She found herself bored, unable to focus on work, and otherwise unsteady. It is what it is, she thought, and went back to her routine. It’s a strange thing, she thought as she went through her usual stretches after intense exercise, realizing that you are never going to get to know what you would have become, if The Thing hadn’t happened. I didn’t mind not knowing the me that never went to Titan. That was a Good Thing. Same with relationships: I didn’t mind not knowing the me that let myself get attached to someone. But this is a Bad Thing, and it feels unfair that it took that other version of future me away from me. It must happen to most people to some degree or other, but I don’t suppose it’s usually this dramatic. The potential and actual selves remain fairly similar. But I would have continued being a happy field academic, moving between the lab and the moon’s surface, in my usual body that was soft in some spots but still tough enough to do everything I needed. I didn’t mind being single, but I had friends, I Now I look like a soldier, all hard edges, and I know there is more to come.

She laid down to rest, and allowed her mind to wander. What would she be doing, right now, if nothing had changed? She had to check her computer to see what day of the week it was. Thursday. Then she would have probably been either on a field test, working in the lab, or taking a break from both to spend time with friends. Probably Jay. She could see it now: the two of them in the cafe, Jay with a black coffee and Anita with her favorite tea. She would be dressed in one of her favorite comfortable dresses, all kind of things jumbled in the pockets, enjoying the relative warmth of the cafe and laughing as Jay told the story of something that had recently come up in their work, sensationalized and hilarious.

Jay hadn’t sent a message in over a week. Anita knew it was hard for them to get time to take all the precautions needed for a message, and there was probably nothing new to say anything, but it didn’t stop her from being irritated. They knew that Tohru had been gone for nearly two weeks, they must have some idea of when the next supply run would be. And they had to know how desperate Anita was for human contact, didn’t they? They knew that she couldn’t send a single message back. What kept them from contacting her?

She sighed, and returned to the mental image of the two of them in the cafe, enjoying their hot drinks and chatting about nothing. She could see Jay’s curls bounce as they moved their head, the ringlets animating their speech even further. She’d always loved how Jay told stories, even when she knew they might be more than a little exaggerated. It was also what made Jay such an effective teacher; they had an incredible ability to connect with an audience with their unique blend of humor, storytelling, and compassion. More than once, she had seen Jay take a struggling scout aside and talk; the scout’s training performance always increased as a result. She had never asked anyone what Jay said to them during those difficult times, but it seemed to be effective.

“You can do this, Anita,” Jay said in her mental picture. She saw herself turning to her friend with a quizzical expression. “What you’re doing right now. I promise you can get through this. It’s going to really fuck you up, and you’re never going to be the same again, but you can get through it. And then you can figure out who you’re going to be.” They took a sip of their coffee, and looked at a table full of young scouts in training nearby. “I wish we’d keep talking to everyone about what they want to be when they grow up. It’s change or die, Anita, and if we become too afraid of that change, or feel like we’ve moved beyond it, that’s when things get dangerous.” Jay reached out and covered Anita’s hand with their own. “I’m not saying this isn’t traumatic. It is. We’ll get you into therapy when this is all over. But you can keep going. You can keep growing, and you can grow into someone even more amazing from all this. I’ll help you.”

Anita shook free from the daydream. The flames had started along her arms and belly again.