Ivo could hear that he had frightened her. He had meant to say it in a better place, with time to sit down, although he had also spent the entire morning choosing places where he would not have to say it yet.
Mara folded the boarding slip. The precision hurt more than if she had torn it.
“You know what I'm here to do.”
“Shut the ring down.”
“Yes.”
“I know.”
“And you thought you'd mention this when?”
He glanced at Nessa. She looked straight back. No assistance there, and none deserved.
“I thought we'd talk when you got here.”
“I'm here.”
“I can show you.”
Her eyes moved from his face to the net behind him. He knew what she was seeing: the commons, the dying ring, a man proposing to stand in it when the air went out. He almost put his arms around her to stop her seeing that. But that was what he wanted, not what she needed.
“Kestrel,” he said. “The survey habitat. It's attached to the hub, outside all this.”
“I remember Kestrel.”
“Then come and look.”
A student caught his sleeve as they left. He had promised another lesson before dinner. Ivo opened his mouth to apologize, and the student said, “Tomorrow's all right.”
The student had seen Mara fold Ivo's boarding slip too.
He led Mara upward through the terraces. A warm draft lifted the loose hair at her neck. Years ago he would have tucked it under her collar. He wondered when the last time had been. Earth, perhaps, where she wore her hair differently and they had exhausted a weekend avoiding the meaning of his return ticket.
“Eight of us,” he said. “At the moment.”
“Children?”
“No. All adults. Everyone with children is going.”
She nodded. He'd had a defense ready and no use for it.
At the upper cupboard, Alma was extracting a folded length of dark red fabric from a shelf. It drifted around her like the inside of a wound.
“Do you need hands?” Ivo asked.
“No. I need fewer occasions on which I think something might be useful.”
She saw Mara. “Oh, good. You can tell him not to bring that entire net.”
“I haven't said I'm bringing it.”
“You haven't said it aloud.”
Alma's laugh came late, as it always did, a reward she considered before bestowing. Mara smiled at her. Ivo was absurdly pleased by that smile.
He had imagined her stepping into his life and recognizing it. The version of the imagination in which she found it smaller and poorer hadn't lasted long. He fed people. He made dances. If Dev disappeared into a communications repair for hours, Ivo brought food and remained until Dev admitted whether he wanted company. If Alma needed a body to lie in the wrong position while she fitted a hammock, he lay there and complained entertainingly. Here he was useful in ways that had grown around the shape of him.
On Earth he could teach. He knew that. He could find another neighborhood, meet new people, be happy in circumstances he couldn't yet picture. When Mara said these things, he heard the word another as if it meant the first life was a failed rehearsal.
They passed the kitchen, where Nessa had labeled a tub DO NOT IMPROVE.
Kestrel's hatch was open. Beyond it Suri hung from a ceiling rail with her boots hooked around a crosspiece. Dev floated beside an uncovered communications panel, listening through one earphone. Oren, Lida and Bess were moving boxes out of the way. Alma arrived behind Ivo with the red fabric still trying to escape.
The habitat had been a survey outpost before it became an attachment nobody quite knew how to use. Its independent shell and panels had outlived two projects. Ivo liked its windows. He had spent an afternoon at one, watching the Earth's night edge move beneath him, then learned that the person who had painted over the opposite window had wanted a dark place to sleep. Even here people had disagreed about what made a room good.
“Everybody's already in?” Mara said.
“Except Nessa,” Suri said. “She's putting things in other things.”
Dev removed his earphone. “Hello, Mara.”
“Hello. I see you've still got the little speakers.”
“And apparently everybody's still got ears.”
“Not for long,” Suri said.
Ivo caught a loose sack before it bumped Mara. “It looks worse than it will. Once we clear the gear, we can have the commons here. The teaching. It'll change, of course.”
He felt the word commons do too much work as soon as he said it. Mara looked through the hatch into the short passage beyond, then back at the room.
“What have you tested?”
“The shell and basic power,” Suri said. “The loop needs work.”
“Which work?”
“Come look.”
Ivo watched them move toward the service cupboard. The exactness of their talk was reassuring and lonely. He had loved watching Mara do this even when he resented how much of their life it took: attention becoming something that could hold other people safely.
He hadn't promised anybody a number she would prove false. He hadn't concealed a defect. Everyone knew they needed the examination, the repair, the trial. Yet he had said keep often enough to make it sound like a thing that had already happened.
Alma brushed a floating corner of fabric out of her face.
“Room for a chair of some kind?” she asked him. “Mine's going with the families.”
He grinned automatically. “We'll see.”
“No,” Mara said from the cupboard. “We'll measure.”
Alma laughed and caught a handhold. Ivo felt himself grow hot.
A few minutes later Mara came back, wiping her hands on a clean rag. “I'll assess it with Suri. Properly. I'm not qualifying anything because you're in it.”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“You asked me to come look.”
“Yes.”
She hesitated. “I wanted you to come home with me.”
He had known it. Hearing it made his whole body want to move toward her.
“I wanted you here,” he said.
For a moment they were as close as the small room allowed, close enough for him to see a pale travel crease at her jaw. Then Mara put her rag in the service bag.
“We'll begin tomorrow.”
He watched her go and tried not to turn begin into another promise.