Pandora: Liminal Space Book 2

Chapter Thirty-Three

Pandora was interminably cloudy. Despite the long-term residents gleefully assuring them all that it was actually the mild season, it rained every day, sometimes for hours. Occasionally it was a light, pattering rain that was actually kind of soothing, but more often than not it was a driving rain that slashed through the sky like tiny knives, pounding soft flesh into submission. The environmental shields erected over the city required a lot of power to run, and so unless a typhoon or tsunami was heading towards The Box, the city council preferred to leave the shields down.

The city buildings had been constructed with function in mind, not form, and very few of them were over a story tall. The roofs sloped to allow water to run off easily, and the drains beside the streets were deep and wide. Pandora City was a tight jumble of every shade between slate gray and cobalt blue, and looking down at it from the skin rooms on the Neptune, Garrett thought that it strongly resembled a bruise.

It was a strange time for everyone. The established residents of The Box were having to adjust to a vast increase in the number of people using their facilities, and not all of them were happy about that. New citizens were applying for housing and business permits in facilities that hadn't even been built yet, and Jezria was very annoyed about that particular delay. She lit into the construction company who had the contract to build and they buckled down to work, but it would be at least six months before everyone who was staying on Pandora would get a home. Jonah could have moved to the front of the list since he had a child, but he opted to stay for longer on board, something that undeniably pleased Garrett. The less he had to go out into the city, the better.

It wasn't like there was much there, after all. The entertainment complex was smaller than what was available on the Neptune, Garrett didn't need to look at the schools or educational centers, and the small greenhouses that provided fresh food for the city's populace could be seen in less than a day. Apart from that it was government buildings, row houses and a few small parks. The Box was so small that you didn't need a vehicle to get around in it, and in fact they weren't encouraged. It was a hamlet, a burg, an atavistic throwback to a time so far out of modern mankind's memory that it was bemusing just to be there.

Some of the new faces were more than passing interesting to Garrett. Meeting Martina's husband Lawrence was surprising, although given her attitude towards making every minute count Garrett supposed it shouldn't have been. The man was several inches shorter than his wife, with sloped shoulders and a pronounced curve to his upper back. He had gray hair neatly trimmed, wore actual antique bifocals of all things, and walked with a cane. His face was deeply lined through his forehead and beside his mouth, and the contrast between him and his wife couldn't have been starker.

For all that, though, they seemed surprisingly compatible. Martina very clearly loved her husband, and his calm personality brought out a side to her that was almost gentle. He helped to oversee the transfer of the most crucial scientific equipment from the ship to the lab in the city, and the interaction between them was fascinating to watch.

"I know, it's like she has a doppelganger," Lila commented to Garrett in soft tones as they watched the exodus from their part of the lab. Their particular experiments and areas of expertise were far from crucial for the time being, so they were left alone while the botanists, biologists and engineers struggled to pack up and safely move their tons of equipment. "I didn't believe it at first either, but then, they've been married a long time. I guess in fifty years you either learn to handle someone or you get a divorce."

"Fifty years?" Shekar asked in surprise. He had forgiven Lila for the sin of dating someone other than himself, at least enough to talk to her again. "That long?"

"Or fifty-one. They got married pretty young. They have some kids who live back in the Central System somewhere, I think. The kids aren't naturals, though. It's just Lawrence."

"How old is he?"

"Late seventies, I think."

Seeing the long-term difference than Regen made was almost like a punch in the gut for Garrett. In seventy years, Garrett expected to look like his father: older, a little more weathered, maybe his hair beginning to go gray, but still straight and strong and vital. In seventy years Cody would be like this, already an old man when he should have been entering his prime. And Jonah...God, Jonah would be devastated. Garrett was beginning to understand why Jezria had mandated psychological counseling for all permanent residents of Pandora, whether they were naturals or not. This kind of rapid aging would be very hard to see in your loved ones, and especially in your child.

Garrett broached the topic, in a roundabout way, to Jonah that evening. Cody was eating at a friend's apartment and the two of them had Jonah's place to themselves, at least for a while. They ordered food from the mess and ate together, nice, quiet and casual. The thing between them, whatever it was, had developed to the point where they sought each other out whenever their bizarre schedules intersected, but after three weeks on Pandora they still weren't actually sleeping together. What sexual encounters they had were furtive and rushed, not in either of their beds.

Garrett was starting to think that Jonah would never take him to bed, and he was doing his damndest to be okay with that. What they had was something he could live with. It wasn't everything he wanted, not remotely, but it was enough that he didn't feel that strange, wrenching melancholy that had dogged him during the trip here, and wasn't quite enough to make him fall in love.

It would be so easy to fall in love with Jonah and Cody, but Jonah kept holding back and after some consideration, Garrett decided he was right to. Garrett had no intention of spending the rest of his life in a backwater colony in the Fringe, and he knew with equal certainty that Jonah would stay here either until Cody wanted to leave, or until his son died. The thought of such a bright, happy little boy growing old and dying in less than a century, or of some kind of disease or in a stupid accident, was incredibly painful for Garrett to contemplate. If it was that bad for him it had to be ten times worse for Jonah, and that was why Garrett wanted to make sure he was getting counseling.

"Have you met the male half of the Doctors Sims?" he asked, rubbing his thumbs into the arch of Jonah's foot. Jonah, Garrett had found, loved to have his feet touched, and Garrett was more than happy to have any chance to touch the man, intimately or not.

"Seen him from a distance," Jonah grunted, relaxed nearly to the point of unconsciousness. "Shuttled some equipment for him a few times." The shuttle pilots were working constantly these days, either taking things into town or out to the evacuation site fifty miles further inland. It mostly served as storage these days, but was a necessary measure in case the environmental shields failed. "He seems nice."

"He is," Garrett agreed. "I can see now why Martina is a raving bitch when she's not with him. Not that I'm excusing her behavior, but I understand how not being with him might send her off kilter. They've been together for a really long time, and he's not in the best of health."

Jonah opened his eyes and peered over at Garrett. "That so?"

"Yeah. He's got some chronic issues that Martina has been badgering the geneticists and doctors about. Apparently that's not going too well for her, or them."

"I've never really gotten it," Jonah confessed, one hand weaving over and over again through his hair. It was a gesture that Garrett had come to realize meant he was disturbed. "Why none of the treatments work on naturals. It seems impossible. We can build people practically from the ground up, don't see why we can't rebuild them to work proper."

"We might be able to, but not with the current anti-cloning laws in effect," Garrett replied. "And I have to admit that I think they make sense. The capacity for abuse is just too high."

"Nah, I get that," Jonah sighed. "I know I wouldn't want any Cody but the one I got, but still..." His voice trailed off, and his eyes became distant.