Roger,I thought, pausing to look back the way I’d come. All I could see was smoke.
The Rhythm Mafia Tapes. Scene five.
We see a smiling older couple. Both are sitting on a porch in front of a brightly painted yellow door. The man is Roberto Gonzales, eighty-one, a colonist on New Sonora. He is slightly paunchy and covered with dirt. In his hands is a large white cowboy hat. The band appears to be made of turquoise. Sitting next to him is his longtime wife, Maria Gonzales, eighty. She is sitting on a rocking chair, knitting something that appears to be a shirt for an infant.
Rosita (off camera):You’re covered in dirt. How do you keep your hat so white?
Roberto (turning the hat in his hands):Maria is magic. I don’t know what she does. It gets dirty, and the next day it looks brand-new.
Rosita:How do you do it, Mrs.Gonzales?
Mrs.Gonzales smiles but doesn’t say anything.
(A time cut.)
Roberto now has the massive cowboy hat on his head. The shirt Maria is working on is much more complete.
Roberto:We’d reached orbit before I was born, but I was still born on the ship. We trained while they did the survey. Maria and I came down at different times. She got down here two years before I did. I was seventeen. I was onForlorn,but Maria was onAdios. Went straight to the peninsula. Maria came across with the trains to the peninsula, all the way from Fat Landing.
He turns and pats her leg affectionately.
Roberto:I got lucky she decided to come.
Maria puts her knitting down.
Maria:And don’t you forget it.
They both laugh.
(A time cut.)
Roberto is handing Rosita what appears to be a Popsicle.
Rosita (laughing off camera):I haven’t had one of these in years. Oh, man, talk about a blast from the past.
Roberto:I started making them again.
(A time cut.)
Roberto, pointing at a field across the road. The camera briefly turns, revealing a wide dirt road. On the other side appear to be miles of shriveled trees.
Roberto:Pedro was allocated twenty acres. Beto Junior twenty acres south of that. We borrowed some of the Lewis honeybees and started the orchard after we got the initial shipment. You know, before it happened. Now it just sits there. You’d think itwould make me sad seeing it all like that, but I like the orchard being there right next door.
Maria puts down her knitting, gets up, and goes inside.
Roberto:She gets sad sometimes, thinking about our boys. That we never had grandchildren.(Sighs heavily)I get sad sometimes, too.
Chapter 4
Isaw the dust from the quad as I approached the outer boundaries of our property. It was Lulu, and she was leaving the ranch, heading toward me. I flagged her down. She spied me and turned the four-wheeled vehicle off the road to meet me halfway. I bent over, exhausted, as she approached.
She had the broken remnants of a honeybee in the bed of the quad. I recognized it as one of the drones. It’d gotten hit by a grain transport a few days back, and she’d been planning on taking it into town to give to Fritz so he could fabricate a new leg for it.
“Ollie! Are you okay?” Lulu cried as the quad pulled up. She jumped from the driver’s seat and rubbed her hands over me. She had to stand on her tiptoes to reach toward my torso. “You’re bleeding!”
I looked into her worried eyes. My sister was twenty-three years old, two years younger than me, but she looked very much like Grandpa Lewis in that moment. In the rare moments when she wasn’t saying something caustic or sarcastic, I could see it in her face. That tired, wary intelligence of someone who’d spent their whole life struggling to maintain optimism in an environment rife with hardship.
Our mom had had the same eyes, too. I had a picture of her in my room. Her name had been Cat. Catalina.
