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but happy with the joy of being alive that day and wanting to remain that way for one more day. Tex would introduce himself to every goo-green kid who joined the squad, every piece of farm-fresh. He’d put his arm around their shoulder, tell them his life story, his real name, ask them all about their hometowns, so that even those nearby had to learn shit we’d rather not. We’d get hit by these frag grenades of nicety. He took people in, Tex. Got close to them. Cried like a baby when the smoke cleared and the tags were tallied. And I thought he was fucking crazy, going about war like that. Not learning what the rest of us learned.
    But he may have been the only sane one. The human out there with all us aliens. Still living. Refusing to give up. Preferring to yo-yo up and down like grav panels on the fritz. Preferring that to the weightlessness. To the lack of gravity.
    I want to feel a little numb again. I smile at Claire. “You want to go sit up at the gwib with me? Just for a little bit?”
    A frown shatters her beautiful face. She looks sad again, but not the raw sadness of all those wounds in her life—this is sadness mixed with pity. This is her not wanting to tell me some awful truth.
    “You know it doesn’t do anything, right?” she says.
    No. I don’t know. I have no idea what she means.
    “The gwib. There’s no way it interacts with your brain.”
    “Fuck that,” I tell her. “Yes it does. It mellows me out. It’s the only thing that does—”
    She brushes her hand across my cheek, and I feel something else that mellows me. I was getting worked up just then, but her touch calms me down. I know I’m right, and she’s wrong, but I don’t need to get upset about it. Just accept.
    “You feel calm up there because it’s the only place you sit still,” she says. “It’s where you breathe. Where you let yourself relax. You can do that anywhere. You just have to choose. Just be. ”
    I shake my head. I’m about to argue with her, when she runs her hand down my cheek, down my neck, and touches the rock hanging from its lanyard.
    “What’s this?”
    I place my hand on the back of hers. I think of Scarlett for a moment, how sex and love used to mean the same thing. But this is love, what I’m feeling right now. The surest I’ve ever felt it. Romantic or not. Just human to human. Real love.
    “A memento,” I say.
    “What does it remind you of?”
    I think about this. So many answers. I want to make sure I choose the honest one.
    “That I’m not always right,” I finally say. “It reminds me to question myself. Question everything. And never stop.”
    Claire smiles. She touches my lips with her finger, then leans in and kisses me. When she pulls back, much too soon, she says, “Well, you got that part right. Never question that. Hold on to it.”
    I pull her against me, not to make love to her, but just to love her. To hold something good and imperfect and fucked up, and to feel someone holding all of that in return.
     
     

• 9 •
     
    It’s moving day. I watch on the zoomed-in vid screen as the supply shuttle makes its approach toward beacon 1529, little puffs of uncertainty as the pilot tries to line up with the lock collar. On the HF, I hear him proclaim contact and good hold. They must give these back-sector routes to the greenest fliers. I shudder to think my precious Claire is entrusting her life to this noob.
    “Gotcha,” I hear her radio back. That voice. We spent hours the last few nights chatting via the HF, after having spent hours chatting in person, and saying we should really get back to our own beacons, and then saying we should really get off the radio and get some sleep, and then waking up and making up an excuse to see each other again.
    When Claire caught me unplugging the CO2 sensor alarm in her life support module—and I fessed up to three other things I’d broken over there that might be serious enough to keep her around, fixing stuff, but not so serious that