Orson Scott Card's InterGalactic Medicine Show by Edmund R. Schubert Page B

younger. She told me once, ‘I was never beautiful, and when I met a man who thought I was, I married him over his most heartfelt objections.’”
    Her imitation of her mother was so accurate that it stopped Mazer’s breath for a moment. Could it truly be that Kim had refused to come because of some foolish vanity about how she looked? As if he would care!
    But he would care. Because she would be old, and that would prove that it was true, that she would surely be dead before he made it back to Earth. And because of that, it would not be home he came back to. There was no such place.
    “I love you, Father,” Pai was saying. “Not just because you saved the world. We honor you for that, of course. But we love you because you made Mother so happy. She would tell us stories about you. It’s as if we knew you. And your old mates would visit sometimes, and then we knew that Mother wasn’t exaggerating about you. Either that or they all were.” She laughed. “You have been part of our lives. We may be strangers to you, but you’re not a stranger to us.”
    The image flickered, and when it came back, she was not in quite the same position. There had been an edit. Perhaps because she didn’t want him to see her cry. He knew she had been about to, because her face still worked before weeping the same way as when she was little. It had not been so very long, for him, since she was small. He remembered very well.
    “You don’t have to answer this,” she said. “Lieutenant Graff told us that you might not welcome this transmission. Might even refuse to watch it. We don’t want to make your voyage harder. But Father, when you come home—when you come back to us—you have a home. In our hearts. Even if I’m gone, even if only our children are here to meet you, our arms are open. Not to greet the conquering hero. But to welcome home our papa and grandpa, however old we are. I love you. We all do. All. ”
    And then, almost as an afterthought: “Please read our letters.”
    “I have letters for you,” said the computer, as the holospace went empty.
    “Save them,” said Mazer. “I’ll get to them.”
    “You are authorized to send a visual reply,” said the computer.
    “That will not happen,” said Mazer. But even as he said it, he was wondering what he could possibly say, if he changed his mind and did send them his image. Some heroic speech about the nobility of sacrifice? Or an apology for accepting the assignment?
    He would never show his face to them. Would never let Kim see that he was not changed.
    He would read the letters. He would answer them. There were duties you owed to family, even if the reason they got involved was because of some meddling jerk of a lieutenant.
    “My first letter,” said Mazer, “will be to that git, Graff. It’s very brief. ‘Bugger off, gitling.’ Sign it ‘respectfully yours.’”
    “‘Bugger’ is a noun. ‘Git’ is a substandard verb, and ‘gitling’ is not in any of my wordbases. I cannot spell or parse the message properly without explanation…Do you mean ‘Leave this place, alien enemy’?”
    “I made ‘gitling’ up, but it’s an excellent word, so use it. And I can’t believe they programmed you without ‘bugger off’ in the wordbase.”
    “I detect stress,” said the computer. “Will you accept mild sedation?”
    “The stress is being caused by your forcing me to view a message I did not want to see. You are causing my stress. So give me some time to myself to calm down.”
    “Incoming message.”
    Mazer felt his stress levels rising even higher. So he sighed and sat back and said, “Read it. It’s from Graff, right? Always use a male voice for the gitling.”
    “Admiral Rackham, I apologize for the intrusion,” the computer baritoned. “Once I broached the possibility of letting your family contact you, my superiors would not give up on the idea, even though I warned them it would be more likely to be counterproductive if you hadn’t