Variable Star Read Free Page A

learn by listening, some read, some observe and analyze—and some of us just have to pee on the electric fence. “Jinny, you know I’m a backward colonial when it comes to debt.”
    “And you know I feel the same way about it that you do!”
    I blinked. “That’s true. We’ve talked about it. I don’t care what anybody says; becoming the indentured servant of something as compassionate and merciful as a bank or credit union simply isn’t rational.”
    “Absolutely.”
    I spread my hands. “What am I missing? Raising a child takes money—packets and crates of the stuff. I haven’t got it. I can’t earn it. I won’t borrow it. And I’m too chicken to steal it.”
    She broke eye contact. “Those aren’t the only ways to get it,” she muttered. Silver gave its vector-change warning peep , slowed slightly, and kinked left to follow the Second Narrows Bridge across Burrard Inlet.
    “So? I suppose I could go to Vegas and turn a two-credit bit into a megasolar at the roulette wheel.”
    “Blackjack,” she said. “The other games are for suckers.”
    “My tenants back home on the Rock might strike ice. In the next ten minutes I could get an idea for a faster-than-light star drive that can be demonstrated without capital. I can always stand at stud, but that would kick me up a couple of tax brackets. Nothing else comes to mind.”
    She said nothing, very loudly. Silver peeped, turned left again, and increased speed, heading for the coast.
    “Look, Spice,” I said, “you know I don’t share contemporary Terran prejudices any more than you do—I don’t insist that I be the one to support us. But somebody has to. If you can find a part-time job for either of us that pays well enough to support a family, we’ll get married tomorrow.”
    No response. We both knew the suggestion was rhetorical. Two full-time jobs would barely support a growing family in the present economy.
    “Come on,” I said, “we already had this conversation once. Remember? That night on Luckout Hill?” The official name is Lookout Hill, because it looks out over the ocean, but it’s such a romantic spot, many a young man has indeed lucked out there. Not me, unfortunately “We said—”
    “I remember what we said!”
    Well, then, maybe I didn’t. To settle it, I summoned that conversation up in my mind—or at least fast-forwarded through the storyboard version in the master index. And partway through, I began to grow excited. There was indeed one contingency we had discussed that night on Luckout Hill, one that I hadn’t really thought of again, since I couldn’t really picture Jinny opting for it. I wasn’t sure she was suggesting it now…but if she wasn’t, I would.
    “See here, Skinny, you really want to change your name from Hamilton to Johnston right away? Then let’s do it tomorrow morning—and ship out on the Sheffield !” Her jaw dropped; I pressed on. “If we’re going to start our marriage broke, then let’s do it somewhere where being broke isn’t a handicap, or even a stigma—out there around a new star, on some new world eighty light-years away, not here on Terra. What do you say? You say you’re an old-fashioned girl—will you homestead with me?”
    A look passed across her face I’d seen only once before—on Aunt Tula’s face, when they told me my father was gone. Sadness unspeakable. “I can’t, Joel.”
    How had I screwed up so badly? “Sure you could—”
    “No. I can’t .” She swiveled away from me.
    The sorrow on her face upset me so much, I shut up and began replaying everything since our dance, trying to locate the point at which my orbit had begun to decay. Outside the car, kilometers flicked by unseen. On the third pass, I finally remembered a technique that had worked for me more than once with women in the past: quit analyzing every word I’d said and instead, consider words I had not said. Light began to dawn, or at least a milder darkness. I swiveled her seat back to face me,