“Makes sense,” I said.

“I resisted it back on Mars because I didn’t have any special talent for it. But neither did Carmen, and she’s making headway.”

“At least you’ll be carrying your research materials along with you.”

“If they cooperate. Fly-in-Amber isn’t happy about being source material, I can tell that already.”

I shrugged. “He’s studying us. Turnabout’s fair play.”

“I’ll point that out to him.”

I shook the onions around in the pan and slid the meatballs into it.

She laughed. “They’re subtle, the yellow ones. As he says, he can’t lie. But he’s very careful in the kinds of truth he shares.”

“You’ve known him awhile?”

“Sure, since he came to Little Mars, ’79. I’m not sure I know him any better than the day we met, though.”

“He acts as if he’s just a recording device.”

“Yeah, that’s his pose. But he’s a lot more complicated than that. Mysterious. Talk to Snowbird about him sometime. He’s more strange to her than we are.”

“Really.” I drew a liter of water and dumped the tomato and wine concentrates in it.

“That’s what she told me, in those words. All the yellow family . . . she says they act as if they’re the only ones who are really real. The rest of us, we’re just a dream.”

“They’re all delusional?”

“Maybe. Snowbird thinks it may be true.”

I smiled at that, but at the same time had a little twist of something like fear. “If you were a dream, would you be aware of it?”

She looked straight at me, not smiling. “Not if the dreamer knew his business.”

2

YEAR ZERO

The Corporation asked us all to keep daily diaries, and gave us a program guaranteed to keep them private until fifty years after the last one of us has died. Our privacy guarded, I suppose, by the Tooth Fairy and Santa Claus.

I’ll pretend they’re telling the truth, and anyhow I don’t have a lot to hide. I admit that I pick my nose when no one is looking. I don’t like my body very much. I prefer masturbation to sex with my husband. I’m jealous, and a little bit afraid, of Elza, and trust her not at all. She will have every man on this boat, then come after the women. But it’s not as if I don’t have fantasies about her men. One of them, anyhow.

I’ve started writing because the trip has officially begun. We started blasting today. What a verb, as if we were miners. But it’s accurate; we’re standing on top of a matter/antimatter bomb that will keep exploding for 12.8 years plus.

Trying to get used to Earth- strength gravity. I asked Paul how long it would take if we accelerated with Mars- normal gravity. He said he couldn’t do hypogolic cosines or something in his head, then fiddled with his notebook and said it wouldn’t work; it would take umpty-ump years to get there; umpty- less-ump, but long, in our time frame. But we might get there with our backs intact. I can’t find any way to stand that doesn’t make my back hurt.