Minor continuity edits have been made...
5
Endurance Base, Mars-
Certain things became obvious to Linda Bennett in the ensuing weeks; less so to her crewmates, and to John, not at all. Besides tunneling through stratified layers of dense, hydrated rock, performing experiments and charting the bluish 'blooms' that were forming in all of their oxygenated boreholes, John Tracy had his hands full with the colony's computer system.
He had to set up and network a bunch of cut-rate, out-of-the-box hardware, install and debug a god-awful, committee-designed operating system (swiftlypushed asideand replaced), then get everything here and on Earth talking together. And then, when the legitimate work was done, came all the back doors and worm holes for International Rescue, and himself. Just like the Moon Station... and more work than there were hours in a Martian sol.
Staving exhaustion off with alertness tablets and strong coffee, (Linda introduced him to the concept of cinnamon as an additive, which at first he didn't like, but later grew accustomed to) John rolled up his sleeves and plunged in. For awhile there, he honestly forgot what it felt like to fall asleep lying down, instead of at his work station.
Amid all this, and the occasional coveted chance to explore, he considered the thorny problem of Doctor Bennett, and what she required of him. Coming into the situation, he knew two things:
A: sometimes she wanted attention
B: sometimes she didn't.
The difficult part was deciding which option to choose for any given scenario. He'd tried constructing a sort of mental 'truth table', with the inputs being: John, Linda, presence/ absence of others, relative work load and estimated mood. (The last part was the least quantifiable.)
Outputs were simple… or should have been: engage or ignore. She was stubbornly non-recursive however; not following his algorithm, and hardly ever returning the expected solution. Women.
It was far more often ".not. engage", than anything else.
Mission Elapsed Time stood at 03.01.04.21 when he entered the dank cavern where Dr. Bennett was stocking the frozen embryo zoo. Shelving had been installed, and a dehumidifier, but with exposure to Earth-like temperatures and atmosphere, acidic salt water just about poured from the grey rock. Dry as a quart of sand on the surface, matters were very different, within.
Linda stood in an ankle-deep puddle, hammering at the refrigeration unit and muttering to herself. John stepped through the open hatch with two heavy titanium cylinders; embryo thermoses, basically.
The overhead lighting flickered and spat uncertainly, attacked by another dribble of former sea. The smell was decidedly Martian. Not gun-powdery, like the Moon. More… tangy. Sort of Thousand Island dressing gone very far south. The alien scum-blooms weren't helping any. They added a yeasty, locker room reek all their own.
Linda consulted her databoard, after first wiping away the condensation.
"Pachyderms?" she asked him.
John nodded. At last, a safe topic.
"Elephants to pyrotherium, and I brought the Piniped cylinder along, as well. Didn't know whether you're alphabetizing, or still hung up on cladistics."
She stepped out from under another spurt, longing for her pressure suit.
"No... Seals next to mastodons makes as much sense as anything else. Hand them over."
Really, Kim Cho should have been doing this job, but the exobiologist was hard at work trying to classify the Blue Stuff, and its new cousin, the Brown Strain. John gave Dr. Bennett his first cylinder. It was heavier than it looked, due to a dark energy refrigeration system, and environment-proof insulation.
He thenwatched as, like an old-style librarian,Linda conveyed the pachyderm cylinder to a certain slot on its computerized 'shelf', and filed it away. The cylinder locked into place. A diagnostic light dithered briefly, then flashed up green. Live babies, 46 million miles from home.
She stared at the light, standing in rank water, surrounded by the stench of an alien world, arms wrapped tightly about herself… about both of them.
John came forward with the next cylinder. Slightly scruffy exhaustion looked good on him, but so did everything else, or nothing at all. He held the frozen sea mammals out cautiously, like a peace offering.
Linda accepted it, then took a deep breath (bad idea- she coughed for several minutes afterward, whileTracy slapped her too hard between the shoulder blades). When she could speak again, the doctor set her cylinder down upon a handy instrument panel and said,
"John, we need to talk."
His entire aspect changed. He stepped backward, face going blank, arms folding across his slim chest. Withdrawal. Not at all what she'd hoped for.
"Okay, listen: that probably came out all wrong. So, I want you to tell me, before I try again, exactly what you thought I meant. If you don't mind, that is."
You had to ask, with John.
He shifted his stance, arms moving away from his chest to his sides, hands seeking refuge in his pockets. A little more open, anyway. His reply surprised her, though.
"I'm waiting to find out which version of 'this isn't working out' you're going to deliver. The brisk 'we can still be friends' variant, I'm guessing."
After a flustered moment, Linda closed her mouth. He'd have been funny, if he hadn't seemed so touchingly resigned.
"Um… No, Sunshine. Negative on that. I've got… well, there's a situation, and… I need to tell you about it, but… but I want you to know that I can take care of myself; that I'm not trying to trap you, or anything. You just… you deserve to know, is all. Okay?"
Linda's brown eyes were downcast, and her arms were suddenly folded, protectively low. From these signals, he was able to construct a startling hypothesis.
Pointing toward her belly, confused as (fill in the blank) hell, John blurted,
"There's a…?"
"I'm fine," she insisted, her voice gone low and scratchy. "We're fine. I just wanted you to know, is all."
His first response, 'How the hell did that happen?' John at once rejected. The mechanisms were fairly obvious, actually…
His second, 'I thought they'd rendered that medically impossible', also went into the bit bucket.
Third response, 'Now what?' didn't seem like a real prize-winner, either.
She was looking at him, lower lip between her teeth, hugging herself. Waiting. He wished it didn't smell so badly in there, and that his constant, low-grade headache would take a long and fatal hike, but…
Hug? Good, safe option. Probably.
An ages-old question, dating to the dawn of the species; when, hand at her belly, a female would look at the male and ask, through gaze and gesture,
'Are you a likely mate? I am vulnerable, unable to gather and hunt as I once did. Will you defend us?'
...got asked, again.
He put an arm around her, and she leaned against him, head resting comfortably against his chest. His hand went to hers, where it lay upon her belly. Answer given.