into lumber, and the tank- grown stuff never looks right to me. Another thing I miss from the old world.”
“Hardships are a part of frontier life,” Arthur said with a wry smile as he motioned them into chairs, a light scent of mint still hovering in the air from the crush of their footsteps. “Sarah and I have discussed it quite a bit. We gain and we lose.”
“Do you miss anything?” Jhana asked him.
“Me? Oh, certainly.” Fukuda ran a hand through his grey hair then absently picked up a bottle of wine. “We’re a rather small and isolated community as yet. For all their overcrowding and craziness, Earth’s cities still have a certain loony energy I miss sometimes. Individually, the people up here are at least as intelligent and energetic as the best you’ll find anywhere, but you have to have a certain critical mass for Earth’s sort of urban energy. We don’t.”
He poured them a red wine made from grapes grown “locally” in the greenhouse tori.
“I miss a good mature wine now and then too,” Arthur went on. “What we can’t mine on the moon or grow in the greenhouses we have to ship up the well from Earth—and that’s prohibitively expensive. Bulk luxury items like wines are absolutely last on the priority list.”
“Everything’s so new up here,” Sarah explained, “including the vineyards and viticulture. All our wines are, alas, quite young yet.”
“But they’ll mature,” Arthur said fervently, “like everything else.”
Jhana sipped some of the wine, well aware that her hosts were watching for her reaction—even if they were politely gazing elsewhere, pretending disinterest.
“It seems fine to me,” she said after a thoughtful pause—to her hosts’ obvious relief. Perhaps the wine was a bit shy in terms of crispness, a bit too long-lingering on the palate, but certainly passable.
A silence opened in the conversation. Sarah Sanchez stared past the guests partying in the courtyard, over the gardens and up the curve of the world to where the reflected sun was dimming, bringing night to the third of the habitat her home stood in.
“The sun sinking into the Pacific—I miss that.” Sarah said over her wine, fading light glinting in her long dark hair, making in her wine glass a soft-edged ruby, slowly dimming, like the thermograph of a failing heart. “High orbit is a world of light, and in a world of light you can do a lot with mirrors—but not everything. Don’t get me wrong: the engineers have done a good job. The promotional videos promised ‘Hawaiian’ climate here, and since we used to live on the islands I think we can say they’ve matched the climate pretty well. But they just can’t match those Pacific sunsets.”
From the large bowl-shaped lounger in which he’d taken a seat, Arthur nodded.
“The stars too, strangely enough,” he said, swirling the wine in his glass meditatively. “I remember sleeping under the stars way out in the sticks one summer when I was kid and we were vacationing in Manitoba. The moon wasn’t going to rise until late. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the sky was different that night. All the stars were golden, the Milky Way was a thick river of gold flowing across the heavens. Each star seemed bright and close and warm. Some of them were red gold, some blue and, I swear, with some of them I wasn’t seeing points but actual discs of light. “
Jhana looked up from studying the patterns the Corsican mint grew in, on the floor.
“And you’ve never seen another sky like that? Not even up here?”
“Nope,” Fukuda said, shaking his head slightly. “I’ve seen stars big and beautiful and colorful and clear—and in greater numbers than ever before, no doubt about that. But when falling stars shot through that sky that particular night, they weren’t the usual pale streaks—they were great golden sword slashes. Some of them calved and split fire, and I could hear them popping and breaking and burning.” He
“Hardships are a part of frontier life,” Arthur said with a wry smile as he motioned them into chairs, a light scent of mint still hovering in the air from the crush of their footsteps. “Sarah and I have discussed it quite a bit. We gain and we lose.”
“Do you miss anything?” Jhana asked him.
“Me? Oh, certainly.” Fukuda ran a hand through his grey hair then absently picked up a bottle of wine. “We’re a rather small and isolated community as yet. For all their overcrowding and craziness, Earth’s cities still have a certain loony energy I miss sometimes. Individually, the people up here are at least as intelligent and energetic as the best you’ll find anywhere, but you have to have a certain critical mass for Earth’s sort of urban energy. We don’t.”
He poured them a red wine made from grapes grown “locally” in the greenhouse tori.
“I miss a good mature wine now and then too,” Arthur went on. “What we can’t mine on the moon or grow in the greenhouses we have to ship up the well from Earth—and that’s prohibitively expensive. Bulk luxury items like wines are absolutely last on the priority list.”
“Everything’s so new up here,” Sarah explained, “including the vineyards and viticulture. All our wines are, alas, quite young yet.”
“But they’ll mature,” Arthur said fervently, “like everything else.”
Jhana sipped some of the wine, well aware that her hosts were watching for her reaction—even if they were politely gazing elsewhere, pretending disinterest.
“It seems fine to me,” she said after a thoughtful pause—to her hosts’ obvious relief. Perhaps the wine was a bit shy in terms of crispness, a bit too long-lingering on the palate, but certainly passable.
A silence opened in the conversation. Sarah Sanchez stared past the guests partying in the courtyard, over the gardens and up the curve of the world to where the reflected sun was dimming, bringing night to the third of the habitat her home stood in.
“The sun sinking into the Pacific—I miss that.” Sarah said over her wine, fading light glinting in her long dark hair, making in her wine glass a soft-edged ruby, slowly dimming, like the thermograph of a failing heart. “High orbit is a world of light, and in a world of light you can do a lot with mirrors—but not everything. Don’t get me wrong: the engineers have done a good job. The promotional videos promised ‘Hawaiian’ climate here, and since we used to live on the islands I think we can say they’ve matched the climate pretty well. But they just can’t match those Pacific sunsets.”
From the large bowl-shaped lounger in which he’d taken a seat, Arthur nodded.
“The stars too, strangely enough,” he said, swirling the wine in his glass meditatively. “I remember sleeping under the stars way out in the sticks one summer when I was kid and we were vacationing in Manitoba. The moon wasn’t going to rise until late. When my eyes adjusted to the dark, I saw the sky was different that night. All the stars were golden, the Milky Way was a thick river of gold flowing across the heavens. Each star seemed bright and close and warm. Some of them were red gold, some blue and, I swear, with some of them I wasn’t seeing points but actual discs of light. “
Jhana looked up from studying the patterns the Corsican mint grew in, on the floor.
“And you’ve never seen another sky like that? Not even up here?”
“Nope,” Fukuda said, shaking his head slightly. “I’ve seen stars big and beautiful and colorful and clear—and in greater numbers than ever before, no doubt about that. But when falling stars shot through that sky that particular night, they weren’t the usual pale streaks—they were great golden sword slashes. Some of them calved and split fire, and I could hear them popping and breaking and burning.” He
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