Chapter 3. Joe
Quarra changed her. I can't get her to talk about it - it's always been hard to get her to talk about herself - but she's different. Like duranium where there used to be .. something softer, warmer. Oh, not that she's cold, at least not to me, and never to Naomi. But something that those mindwipers stripped away from her has never fully come back.
I'm not sure anyone else has noticed - I'm not sure how many people ever really notice Sam; she flies under the radar that way. They see a patient mother, a competent science officer, and their eyes slide on to someone more interesting, less predictable. But I see it, even if I can't quite put my finger on it. It's like she says and does all the right things, all the things she's always said and done, but if you pay attention you can tell that underneath it all she's done with everyone's bullshit. Or like she's not wholly here, some part of her mind always preoccupied now with other matters, other concerns.
A couple weeks after Quarra, the first chance we had to be alone together, I tried to draw her out, and she did talk, just a little. She said I deserved to know what was wrong with her - that's exactly how she phrased it: "You deserve to know what's wrong with me, Joe." She told me about the brain scans, the neural damage during her childhood.
I didn't ask what caused it, just kept rubbing her back slowly, and after a while, she went on. "My mother was an addict." Then silence - she tensed, held her breath, like she was waiting for me to say something harsh. I just kept rubbing her back, and she finally released her breath slowly and then told me a little more. "She wasn't there a lot. There were … boyfriends, sometimes." Her shoulders tightened, some memory triggered. A beat, then she consciously relaxed them and resumed. "Sometimes there was no one. I spent time in foster care." The tone of her voice when she said that … she could have used the word "prison," with that dead edge to her voice.
I remember consciously choosing to feel angry later, deciding to stay with her now, help her stay open to me. I remember I asked her two questions, which she answered without hesitating but also without elaborating. I knew foster care shouldn't have been so awful, not on Earth at that time, so I asked her where she was living then; she named a colony, one I didn't know much about except that it was remote, poorly resourced. And I asked her, "How old were you?" And she said, "Ten when it ended."
And the way she said that, I didn't have to ask when it started. I think it had always been that way for her, at least as far back as she can remember, probably farther. I thought of Naomi, remembered Sam's patient, attentive care of her own baby, and was filled with awe. I was holding my rage back but didn't have to hold back my admiration. Her head on the pillow was turned away from me and she didn't see my tears well up.
She told me one last thing. "When she died, I became eligible for adoption. And that's when I finally got lucky. They … took care of me, then helped me get into the Academy when I was older."
I kept on rubbing her back, a slow steady rhythm, her skin warm under my hand. When I sensed that she had said all she wanted, I thanked her for trusting me. Told her this only made me respect her more. That I wanted to know every part of her that she might choose to share with me, that I always would.
We don't use the word "love," and we don't talk about the future. That is part of the terms of our unspoken agreement. It maintains this as … an affair, for lack of a better word. Before Quarra, I never found it hard to uphold those boundaries. But now …
It isn't just Sam and what happened to her, you see. It's me, too. It's what … didn't happen, really. My re-entry went smoothly. Just like my arrival there in the first place. It turns out, I'm basically the ideal worker in Quarran terms. They didn't have to undo very much in me - just the way I arrived, and what sort of ship I was on, my engineering specialties. They left me my memories of Sam and Naomi, just made them a little more removed in time - like Anne and the boys, important but in my past. They took my hope of being reunited with either family. Just those few changes, and then they put me to work. And I worked. I was … content.
When I was first brought back, I thought it had been like that for everyone. This ship is full of hard workers. I'm not unique. But when I learned how much more deeply most of the others had been manipulated … and how Sam, gentle Sam of all people, had been made to suffer, not just in her situation on-planet but in her mind - the fuckers took everything good and gave her so much new that was bad, awful - all to more or less program her to accept abuse … I don't have words for my guilt, my self-loathing.
Of course I was angry too - am angry - we all are. There is a short list of people I would cheerfully kill given the chance, and several Quarrans are now at or near the top of it.
I would kill them for Sam's sake. But part of my anger is for the truth their mindfucking revealed to me. I have a really hard time accepting how pliable I was in their hands, how easy they found it to make my personal life blow away like dead leaves in autumn. Like all it took was a nudge, a suggestion, and I was fine with being alone and unattached, because after all I had my work, my important and highly-skilled work to do. I think I would have lived the rest of my life there, a contented bachelor moving up the ranks as an industrial engineer, feeling a little wistful from time to time for the women I'd loved, the children I'd lost, but with no drive to find or replace them.
Look how long it took me on Voyager to connect with Sam. She could have used more help when Naomi was younger. It's not like I didn't see them - it's a small ship. I just never really looked , didn't think outside my own set duties, my own little world of engineering and missing Anne. Like this was any other deep space assignment, keeping my head down and my nose clean and marking time until I'd be home again. I look back now and I see a man who was deeply oblivious. Quarra's forced oblivion was a damn sight too familiar that way.
There are things Sam and I have always skirted around, ways we've kept each other at arm's length. Dreams we haven't let ourselves dream. Maybe … maybe it's time we accept that we'll be living the rest of our lives together on this ship, and we formalize things - divorces, remarriage. Maybe not. Maybe she would have a baby with me. She's let me assume nothing has really changed with her feelings since back when we started, and I've let her assume I don't want more.
This changes, starting now. It's time to stop sitting back and taking life as it comes. Life is too short for that. When I get back from this mission to retrieve the Friendship One probe, we're going to talk.
