Dream Dance

Day 393 - YC1: Departure

Today my glider is unmanned, and I'm the only passenger. It'll drop me in my field in 22 hours and I'll unload my own packages and supplies.

I think I prefer it that way.

Day 392 - YC1: Confusion

I'm due to leave tomorrow, and suddenly I feel like I haven't done anything. I've taken notes furiously even though it's stuff that I don't understand and can't possibly affect me. I was giving it my best effort to pay rapt attention to a discussion of the northern cyclonic process, of all things.

My last night with Wald had a similar feel, intense because you know it has to end. He was giving me a grand send-off, but I was working on him too. After a few hours of my teasing -- my pushing here, stroking there -- something snapped. Suddenly his reserve, his slightly too-gentle deference, his need to please me, evaporated. There was only his desire, his need, and what he needed was to merge his body with mine. He bumped me like a madman, a wild look in his eyes and feral growl deep in this chest. It was a little scary, and I liked it.

We lay close and quiet for a while, and I was nearly asleep when he began to nuzzle my neck. I couldn't believe he wanted to go again after all that but I suppose I was game. It didn't matter how sore I was tomorrow, I was just going to sit in a glider all day. But then he started to talk.

"I don't think I've ever told you," he whispered, "what I think of you. I don't know how you manage to do what you do. I can't stand the thought of you being gone for another year. I think I've always felt..."

This had to stop. "Wald," I interrupted, "I don't love you."

"What?" he mumbled.

"We don't love each other. This is an endorphin vacation, nothing else."

"Yeah," he said, looking like a puppy that's been smacked for peeing on the floor. "I know that. I was just saying that I'll miss you."

"We'll still talk," I said.

"Sure," he said. Then he flipped over and pretended to sleep.

I'm an idiot. Why do I do this to myself? Of course everyone's a colleague, but Wald's more than that: he's a co-author. He has the same boss. If I was so desperate to have a man I should have bumped Nat when he offered -- he's in mission support.

I didn't sleep well. Although he's a good faker I don't think Wald did either.

Day 391 - YC1: Loss

Today was supposed to be fun. In the morning we had cooking lessons, complete with a noontime feast on the delicacies we helped to prepare, such as they were. Some were good, although overall there was an odd flavor profile. Unfortunately it appeared that most of the ingredients were either not available in my region, or would require many hours to gather. I could probably manage the braised frillstalks although perhaps without so much garnish, but other than that it looks like I'm stuck with boiled tangroot.

It went downhill from there. Talks on process were organized more like a roundtable, and the support crew began with a plea for everyone to economize. I guess core production wasn't ramping up quite as predicted, but not in a dangerous way. Well inside the red line.

The discussion had mostly turned away from conservation, so at an opportune moment I made my case for a third fuel cell, and the room collapsed on me. Predictably Bea turned rather bitterly ad-hominem, as much as suggesting that I was somewhere between selfish and traitorous. But instead of objecting to the rhetoric, everyone else piled on. Even Foel started going on (like he always does) about the power requirements of the two-person hab. and that clinched it. If a two person hab can get by on three fuel cells, then a one-person hab obviously only needs two.

Maija had been listening quietly, but now delivered her final verdict. "You've done well so far," she opined, "you should be fine."

And that was it. In one autocratic, arbitrary and evidence-free decision, our PI had denied me the chance to do the science properly. My power graphs, my fuel cell model, nothing at this point was relevant.

The world seemed very distant the rest of the day, as if anywhere I sat was several meters from where I actually was. I ran it over and over in my mind, trying to find where things had gone wrong. I didn't know whether to feel despair or anger, so I felt nothing.

Day 390 - YC1: Wedding

The wedding was a two kilometer hike from campus, over volcanic rubble and through spiky shrubs. I'm not sure why I bothered to get cleaned up first. My dress outfit was a tidy version of my field gear with a colorful wide-brimmed hat, so I was at least better prepared than some. Quin tried to wear a dress. Once we got to the site, however, I could see why the couple had been insistent.

The hot spring had been bubbling up carbonates undisturbed for millennia, building up shelf upon shelf of steaming basins. Microbes tinted the rock every color the rainbow, and large crystals glittered jewel-like from the sides and bottoms of pools. Centuries of erosion had weathered away previous layers leaving caverns and chasms in the hillside with active pools growing up over them. The whole effect was that of a fairy wonderland. Humid and smelling somewhat of sulfur, but breathtakingly beautiful.

Volunteers had built a gazebo and pews in sweeping fractal shapes, mimicking the landscape. Finally it was clear where all the blue dot stock has disappeared to; they must have had the printers running full time for weeks! Every surface was covered in quotes from, or tiny busts of, famous physicists, scholars and poets. I had my elbow in Albert Einstein's eye most of the ceremony.

Bell officiated, albeit remotely. There were pauses during the vows due to the G.Agricola's orbit, some awkward and some funny. He wore his traditional uniform, which also got quite a few snickers. I found myself staring at the little patch of fabric over his left breast that read "va-Maudlin". If technology has failed so badly that I resort to reading things stitched into cloth, I'm guessing the captain's name is not the most critical thing I'll need to know.

Laser and Bianci seem very young to be getting married. I don't know them well -- they are both under Arch ur-Zurekler in physics -- but they seem like nice kids. They took the ceremony with a mixture of seriousness and humor, which I imagine is a good sign. I always cry at weddings. This was no exception, but my tears betrayed a little tang of the tragic.

Nothing to do with them. It's just something about spending a decade or more getting to some place, and then not knowing if it's the right place to be.

Day 389 - YC1: Bad Questions

I missed a bunch of talks yesterday -- talks I really should have attended. Bek mentioned that he missed me and I could only apologize without hopefully blushing too much. No matter how important cerebral matters might be, they can be easily trumped by the promise of an orgasm. Instinctive payoff schedules never seem to weigh in on the intellectual side.

As if to prove the point, even with everything else significant going on -- the presenter at the front of the room and my own technology talk looming this afternoon -- my mind kept fixating on Wald's hands. His hand on my waist; his hand on my thigh, his fingers gripping my buttocks; his hand on my neck, his fingers tangled in my hair; his hand on my back; his hand between my thighs, his fingers inside me; his hand cupping my breast, his fingers pinching my nipple; his hands on my wrists holding them down; his hands on my ankles holding them up. I probably missed half the damn conference losing myself in fantasies about Wald's damn beautiful hands.

When Doul called my own talk I felt like I wasn't even there. I went through it in a waking dream. Fortunately I had rehearsed enough that it went off pretty much without conscious intervention. Q & A, on the other hand, knocked me way off balance.

The questions had started taking a critical tone right off the top: my methods, my objectivity, and finally the very possibility of science at all. I think it was Guion who first posed the Mendo criteria.

"But seriously," he started, inauspiciously, "how can any species or a people of any kind, regardless of how complex their other behaviors, have the need for rights if they can't argue for their own rights?"

I screamed internally. I didn't want to be having this discussion, not at this point. I love arguing philosophy, but with people who are genuinely interested in the truth -- not people who want to find a flimsy excuse to colonize someone else's planet. "Good question," I began, "but there is not a single test that can give a simple yes/no answer like that -- especially not to such an anthropocentric question."

"Why not?" he spat. "Whether we can stay is a yes or no question. Ultimately that's the one that needs answering."

I continued, but my brain had curled into a fetal position. I don't think, in retrospect, that anything I said made sense to much of anybody. Least of all me. Remarkably, Evo chimed in.

"That's the whole point of semi-sentience," she explained. Her high bell-like tones made it all seem clear and obvious. "The boundary between sentient and non-sentient is less black and white when dealing with extraterrestrial life. It's more of a continuum. In the end we'll see which hypothesis has more evidence behind it, and we'll have to make a judgment call."

Controversy diffused, there were a few more easy questions and I was thankfully dismissed to a smattering of applause. I sat in a daze the rest of the day, and skipped dinner.

I did, however, knock on Wald's cabin door late at night. I needed to feel those hands in person again.

Day 388 - YC1: Flood Tide

I'm not sure what triggered it. I was sitting at lunch with Wald and Foel. We were laughing, and then they started to argue about something trivial and overly technical. I was thinking Foel was kind of an idiot about stuff like that when I was suddenly chilled to the bone. I felt dizzy and my skin was clammy with sweat. I pushed myself up and went outside to get some air.

Leaning against a railing in the warm sea breeze, I heard Wald come up behind me. My heart started to pound in my chest and I became feverishly hot. Adrenaline raced through my system in a fight or flight response, but I knew that I needed neither to escape nor to defend.

"Are you OK?" He asked.

"I need to lie down," I said shakily. "Will you walk me to my cabin?"

Once there I invited him in and closed the door. I leaned into him and he put his arms around me to support me. "I need you," I said.

I didn't need to ask twice. He helped me the to bed. My fingers were trembling too much to work my own buttons so I lay back as he helped me out of my clothes. I could feel stress toxins from months of repression seeping out of every cell. They left me weak and confused, and I would have had a terrible headache soon without some relief, inevitable now.

He stroked my waist and breasts, positioning himself over me. I could sense his own desire; his speeding heart and his somewhat reckless eagerness lit my blood on fire. It wasn't the most sophisticated lovemaking I've ever had, but it warmed my body and soul with its earnest intensity. As we lay panting afterwords my fingers and toes tingled.

Ten minutes later -- or maybe an hour; I wasn't totally sure -- I rolled to face him and we started again. This time it was a little more sophisticated.

Day 387 - YC1: The Naming

I didn't sleep well last night. I don't think the cabins maintain temperature very well. I was too cold then I was too hot. Also, I miss my hammock. It doesn't get bunched up, or lumpy, or sweaty, and it dissipates my own body heat so it doesn't keep waking me up.

In any case it was hard to concentrate on the talks this morning. Umam really caught my attention with an analysis of mimicry in mesocline creatures. Twine fish are rather like eels that have been split in half part way, or squid with two very long tentacles instead of ten. Extremely poisonous they are striped in orange, which is quite visible to predators in the murky depths. Umam showed us a dozen or so other species that tried to mimic the look of the twine fish. The fascinating thing was not just their attempts to look like two long tentacles, or to replicate the color, but also to reproduce the overall twine silhouette and the gastric bulge at the base of the bifurcation.

This is quantitatively different from the types of mimicry we see on our own planet. Terrestrial predators can be fooled with a couple of simple eye spots. It seems that the carnivorous fish of Sigma 957 are somewhat more discerning. Ranmandeep wondered, during the Q & A, if it might have something to do with the emerging picture of the common animal nerve model. I don't know what he was talking about.

The naming session was scheduled late in the day when everyone was tired, but it was still the best attended. I ended up with some references I hadn't expected. My little plateau is now officially Walkran Valley. To the north Su-che River. To the south -- well in this case someone thought to twist the knife by naming it Robinard Gully. So I'm overshadowed by my famous grandmother. Fabulous.

Bell Valley is also official, which was pretty much a sop to our beloved captain anyway. A couple of people made a show of pushing for Agricola, but it didn't amount to anything. It's far too soon.

Although everyone's hoping.

Day 386 - YC1: Fantastic Planet

I've been down on the ground, mostly in one small area with a very limited set of features, and however exotic they might be I'm used to them. Every talk today had my jaw dropping farther and farther. Sigma 957 is a beautiful planet.

I'm not sure where to begin. The geology team spent a long time in what they called Bell Valley (technically region VF-031), which is the ancient floor of a huge crater -- or at least that's what we thought. In fact it's a caldera, a volcanic basin spanning half a continent. The massive mountains at the perimeter have weathered away in towering crags disappearing into the clouds and cut with lush cracks that held spectacular waterfalls in the rainy season.

In one image Mori, Jes and Quin posed at the base of a giant wall of what looked like alabaster. It was actually a mineral formed from the shells of untold trillions of sea creatures, eons dead and cooked into hard, translucent stone. In the long shot you could see the sun brightening the limb of the entire cliff. The rock must be close to transparent in small quantities. Gregol joked about that being a good place for a summer home, although I couldn't help noticing the Tanzen settlement visible at the far end of the cliff.

Gregol did a lot of the presentations, which seemed a bit odd. Mostly the team leads let the junior members of the expedition give talks for their departments. It's a courtesy to let them build up cites for their work. He also kept calling the planet "Agricola," which is really just wrong. He seems in a great hurry to name things what he thinks they should be called.

Speaking of things named after Gregol, the "Luplakisaur" has been talking a lot of people's free time. Jayln gripes about how she has no time for her family, and yet she seems pretty content letting others look after little Chia and acts awfully grumpy when she has to take a break to feed her. I think Princeton may spend more time with his daughter than her mother does.

Chia is also beautiful. When she's not crying or eating she sits quietly, taking it all in. She's like a tiny wise monkey in a world where monkeys are not exactly an everyday occurrence. I hope she someday comes to appreciate how special she is to be here now.

Day 385 - YC1: Fieldwork

Lots of good biology talks today. Lieff on phenotypic variation in tube-bats. Umam showed some fantastic reef-dwelling species, including what seemed to a be a very intelligent animal a bit like a starfish. Mingrui gave a lot of detail on ecological energy flux, and finally there was something on mutt genetics that I could understand.

My talk came late in the day. I had chosen videos based on behavior types: common animal behaviors, human-like behaviors, and uncommon, non-human behaviors. The last were of course the most interesting so I tried to use them as punctuation in the narrative.

The presentation went fine, but the Q & A surprised me. Everyone was asking about things they had seen in their own fieldwork. Tanzen are everywhere. With the exception of those stationed in Iceland and the four in orbit, all members of the team has had run-ins with the native "dominant animal form," some of them a lot more intrusive than the guidelines generally allow.

Segaes and Jinyong described an incident while they were surveying coastal plants near a settlement. The Tanzen seemed to be gathering and foraging on a line facing them along a hillside. Each day the the line was closer. They were getting a little spooked, but when the Tanzen all stood still and seemed to be swaying in unison, Segaes yelled at them to try to scare them off. The swaying stopped, and the implacable scientists headed back to their camp at a run.

Human/Tanzen interaction is inevitable. It would be nice to have a better model for how to make it non-threatening on both sides.

Day 384 - YC1: Evo

I think whoever is doing the scheduling got the message last night. No more boring talks. The morning sessions were quite technical but it was a long night so no one really noticed. Wald came on right before the break and gave an update on his dorsofocillus research. He brought the house down.

First he had found even more great video of the Jijibugs acting out their funny mating dance. Even better, though, he interspersed it with actual clips from The Incredulous Adventures of Jiji and The Bug. I don't remember these particular episodes, but I'm guessing they were in the sixth season, after they had found the abandoned science lab but before Bug had sunk it to the center of the planet trying to make his doomsday weapon. He was trying to convince Jiji to sleep with him using a series of bizarre euphemisms, which Jiji mistook for descriptions of genetic science. She kept calling recombination "free combination", and he kept thinking that meant she wanted to bump him.

But I digress. In any case it was very funny.

Wald added nuance to the results he published a couple of months ago, but with little in terms of new conclusions. It was basically a review piece with tremendous pizazz, and a hard act to follow.

Evo came next.

Her presentation was really quite good. I have to admit she made a case for the importance of planetary oceanic hydrology as it relates to every other possible field of study, even mine. There was not, in the end, a huge amount of novel data but she took what she had and tied it to everything under the sun. It was a nice survey lecture and if it had been yesterday she would have been the highlight of the day. Today, following Wald, there was an obvious lack of depth.

At least to me. Everyone else thought Evo was the star. People kept saying "Wasn't she great?" I couldn't really stick up for Wald since I was a co-author, but I wish someone had.