Mars is a Dangerous Place

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At the Hab, Sharon's nervous anxiety transformed into relief as I stepped through the airlock. "Thank God. I was beginning to wonder if you were coming back or not."

"And your boyfriend Andy--aren't you concerned about him too?"

A funny look crossed her face, and her voice was low. "I... I don't think he's coming back, Graeme."

"True enough. I left him out beyond the rim with no ride. He's probably running short of air about now. And guess what else?" I found I was barking at her. "Turns out I've been right the whole time. That asshole wouldn't tell me the goddamn password. After you let him screw you for weeks, that's how he repays us--with certain death. You should have listened to me!"

There was pity in her eyes, and I couldn't tell if it was for Andy, or me. "No honey... he gave me the password before he left."

At some level, I suppose I already knew that. There had been enough clues in Andy's words and Sharon's behavior. But I hadn't allowed myself to believe it. Illogical though it was, what I'd really wanted was to be right. To learn that all her concessions to the man had been in vain, and that we were doomed, and that my jealous fury was entirely justified. So, hearing that she'd saved us didn't make me happy--it felt like a gut-punch. "What? Why...?"

"You need to sit down Graeme. I need to tell you something."

I crumpled into the closest chair, mind racing and innards churning. What more could she possibly have to tell me, on top of everything I'd already witnessed?

"Graeme, this is going to be hard to take. But in time, it... it'll get better. I promise."

"For Christ's sake, Sharon, rip the bandage off." My chest was tight.

She hid her face in her hands, just for a moment. Then she exhaled and met my gaze again. "Well... after Andy and I started... you know... having sex, I felt like our communication improved. Not that I had feelings for him--not like I do you. But... physical contact did make him bond with me, emotionally, and... and maybe helped me understand him better too. Anyway, it let us talk in a way that was deeper and more honest than before. And at some point along the way, I realized that... you were right. He wasn't going to let us live. It wasn't possible for him to see beyond the horizon of his own death, to make a gesture like that."

"So?"

"So--I knew we wouldn't survive unless I arranged a different future. One that could capture Andy's imagination."

"What the hell does that mean?"

Her voice fell to an even softer key. "You remember when I stopped coming to be with you at night...?"

"Yeah, it's hard to forget a knife in the back like that. That's when I knew our marriage had always been a sham."

"It hurt me too, Graeme. I hated it. Hated for you to be alone; hated to know what you must think of me. But it was the only way I could see to save us. Andy needed to know, for dead certain, that you and I weren't, um... intimate."

"Oh, that's what he needed, huh?"

"Just listen to me. Please. During our conversations, I learned something about Andy. I learned that one of his biggest regrets was never having kids. You know, 'carrying on the family line' and all that. In fact, it seemed pretty much the only thing he did care about anymore. So... that's when I knew how we were going to survive. You see... if I was carrying his child..."

Icy fingers clutched my heart. "But you can't... you're on the..."

She glanced down at the floor and her voice was flat. "I took it out. Asked him to watch. So you see: you and I couldn't spend any time alone after that. I couldn't risk him having any suspicions."

"It wasn't true though, right? You tricked him?"

This came out more hysterical than I would have liked, but she responded with compassion. "No, I didn't trick him... Sweetheart, I'm pregnant. The child is his. We looked at the heartbeat this morning, and that's when he told me the password--showed me how to reset the system. Then... he just put on his suit and left."

I blinked stupidly, trying to count the weeks, and wondering if the time I'd watched them was the time she was impregnated. As if that mattered somehow. "But... you could still do something? End it?"

She gave a heavy sigh. "You know I could. The med-kit has pills. ... I'd planned to take them, once he was gone. But Graeme, now that it's over, and I've seen the images, I... I can't do it. It'd be like the final ugliness. Like stamping out the only constructive thing to come from this mess. And... I just don't have that in my heart anymore. Does that make sense?"

It did not make sense, at least not then. Her refusal only stoked the anger and self-pity that threatened to consume me. And instinctively, self-destructively, I probed for the subtext she resisted putting into words. "Jesus... you still feel like you owe the guy something, don't you? You fell in love with him, didn't you?"

Her face reddened and she tripped over her tongue. "No, I..."

"Don't lie to me. I saw you with him--heard you with him. You were begging him to fuck you. He made you moan like a goddamn animal. Made you come like a bitch in heat. You lapped it up."

She looked despairing. "That wasn't love. That was..."

"Yeah, what was it?! 'Cause it sure as hell wasn't nothing!"

"It... how can I explain it to you? I'm not going to lie; there was a physical response. It felt... you know, really good. Not better than you, but ... different. So, yeah, my body did respond. I did orgasm. And... damnit, yes--there was an emotional part too. I'm not a robot. Spending weeks on end with him? Constantly probing his thoughts? Having him inside me every day? Always hoping this time he'd get me pregnant? Of course I got closer to him. How could it have been otherwise? It would have driven me insane..."

She was wringing her hands now, but seemed determined to pour it all out. "So maybe I do feel some obligation to Andy. Maybe that is part of why I want to keep the baby. He was a very sick man. It was touching to see how excited he was about the ultrasound, and about the idea that a part of him would live on. What he did was evil, but I made a bargain with him. It would feel... I don't know--really cold and cynical to abort the baby now." Her eyes were damp. "I'm sorry to hurt you this way. But you asked, and that's the truth. And for me, the most important truth is this: whatever I may have felt for him, you're the only one I ever loved."

By now, the jealousy and helplessness and pain of weeks and months were raging through my body and thudding in my ears. Tears pricked at my eyelids. "What kind of love do you call that?! Can you hear yourself? Can you see how fucking selfish you've been? While you were busy saving your own ass, and soothing your own feelings, and cozying up to that fucking bastard, I was ready to die for us. Don't you get that?"

Salty drops rolled down her cheeks, first one, then a trickle, and finally a flood. "I know you would have chosen death, Graeme. I know it." She was blubbering now. "But how could I let that happen? Whether you believe it or not, I didn't give in to Andy to save myself, or because I loved him, or was attracted to him. I did it to save you. ... And I'm not an idiot--I knew you wouldn't thank me for it. Knew you'd despise me, and that our marriage would be finished. But, in my heart... I still wanted you to go on. As long as there was something I could do, that would allow the universe to continue with you in it, then that's what I had to do."

She broke down into uncontrollable sobbing. And suddenly, at some level of my brain, it clicked. Throughout this ordeal, my actions had been conditioned by my care for her. I'd been willing to die, but never willing to take the action that would seal her death sentence. Up until this moment, however, it had never even crossed my mind that Sharon's decisions might have come from a similar place of concern for me--that she might have ceded herself to Andy not chiefly for her own benefit, but for mine.

With that insight, the world seemed to turn at right angles to itself. Fuck. It now seemed quite possible that I'd been the selfish one. That it had been convenient to let her carry the burden of choosing our fate. If she chose for us to die, I wouldn't have to be responsible. And if she chose for us to live (chose for me to live) I could salve my ego by reviling her for it.

As this new perspective dawned on me, I bent my head in shame. I had been so absorbed in my own hurt, that in many ways I'd become just one more weight piled on Sharon's back, added to all the others she bore. Somewhere along the way, I'd let myself lose sight of the fact that she was never the author of our harms--that had always been Andy.

Well... I wish I could say that next I initiated a soppy reconciliation and we lived happily ever after. But of course, the situation was far too complicated to be tied up with a simple ribbon like that.

Still, I made a start at rebuilding the bridges between us. And honestly, given the sorry state I was in, I have to give myself some credit for being able to do that much. "I-Sharon, I... please don't cry. I don't despise you. Whatever else I'm feeling, I know you're not a cruel person, and I don't think you're selfish either. ... Look, I-I'm not ready to write off our marriage, ok? Not yet. We're both too raw. Too injured. Let's not decide anything today. Is that all right with you?"

She glanced up at me, and the light of a shaky, tentative smile began to dawn through her tears.

* * * * *

Slowly and fitfully, we came together again as a couple. We never did have some big flash of reconnection. For us it was a process--a day-to-day grind.

By unspoken agreement, we abandoned the wiring cabinet. And that night, when I folded down a bunk to catch some sleep, Sharon came to lie beside me. I let her stay. It was the first step.

As the months rolled on, we both labored to keep the station patched-up--pooling our technical skills to approximate one Andy's worth of engineering know-how. We started working together closely on the question of Martian life too. We still don't have all the answers, but our collaborative geo/bio approach has prompted some big strides forward. The really important thing, though, was that sharing projects and tasks helped us to rekindle a sense of connection and common purpose--something we had all but lost during our ordeal.

It was nearly a year until we had sex. Sharon tried to initiate a few times, gently, but I was still too much in my own head, and too hung up on images of what had happened. When the baby came, of course I did what I could to help her deliver, and survive those early days of insanity. And by the time she had healed, and the kid had started sleeping most of the night, it felt like the slate between us had been cleaned. At last I was ready to start rebuilding our physical relationship.

It took a damned long time for the rescue mission to arrive. They knew someone was alive at the site; but after two unexplained blasts, MCT wouldn't put another ship in the air until a full mission review had been conducted. We'd been on Mars over a year and a half before Gamma team finally touched down.

It was a hell of a funny scene when we met them at the airlock. We'd been living in the hothouse environment of the Hab for so long, that it never even occurred to us to put on clothes. So imagine our colleagues' surprise to be greeted by a Martian Adam and Eve, without so much as a fig-leaf to cover their unabashed nakedness. Six-month-old Red was the best dressed there, in his improvised diaper.

Nowadays, as I'm sure you've seen in the news, we're winging our way back to Earth at last.

We haven't told anyone about Red's parentage, or the events that led up to it. As far as the world is concerned, Andy died of brain cancer, and Sharon and I are the natural parents of the first interplanetary baby. Raising an infant in a space capsule is not something I'd wish on my worst enemy. But, on the plus side, our family has become a media attraction of the highest order. When we first started doing video segments for the PR team, Sharon's and my careless lapses into full-frontal nudity caused a bit of a furor. Naturally, MCT lost no time ordering us to get reacquainted with our flight suits. So confining!

I also haven't told anyone how Foster and Cho and Glover died--not even Sharon. I figured she didn't need to hear things like that about the father of her child, at least not from me. Oh, she must have her suspicions about what happened. And MCT remains very keen to explain the failures, so they'll probably piece together the truth eventually. But for now, at least, Sharon's been spared some of the nastier things that man did.

Before Mars, my wife and I had always talked about having two kids. I was willing to raise Red--but the truth of the matter is, it would've been goddamned hard not to resent him if I felt he was taking the place of one of my own. I decided to be up-front about this with Sharon, and she said she understood why I felt that way. In the end, we agreed to shoot for at least a couple more.

In fact, even though the boy only recently celebrated his first birthday, Sharon and I have grown tired of waiting any longer. So last night, when we passed the point where we're only a month away from home, we finally started trying.

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END

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