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gladness and sorrow and love and
     42Marion Zirnmer Bradley
     sex and misery ... he turned away toward the window opening on space and the returning space station, and said, “Let's talk about it some other time. All right?”
    “No,” Ching said, “that's the one thing we can't do — walk out on this kind of disagreement. Moira's right, we do need regular musical sessions, and we can't have them without you, Peake; that would take all the point out of having them. The whole purpose of making music together—”
    Peake shrugged and dropped into a chair. The DeMag units were low enough in here that he did not sink into it, but he did not float away either. “Okay. No arguments.”
    “That's not the point —” Moira began.
    “Hold it,” Fontana said quietly, “I think this is turning into the first of those once-a-day sessions we agreed to have, and I think we need it out into the open. We start holding back on gripes and grievances, trying to be too polite, and we'll get explosions. Ching, you said something earlier that made me really angry; you said you'd hoped for Chris or Mei Mei or Fly or, as you put it, somebody with some computer sense; and here's Peake sulking because he doesn't have Jimson to play duets with —”
    “I am not sulking.'” Peake yelled, with such violence that he bobbed up from the surface of his chair in the light gravity.
    “I know what Fontana's driving at,” Moira said, “I think we ought to make it a rule that we don't talk about anyone — anyone we left behind. They're dead to us, whatever happens. Let the past go.”
    “I refuse to do that,” Ravi said. “We need to remember. We need roots, a sense of our past. We have a right to remember.”
    “To remember, yes,” Fontana said, “but not to hurt
     each other making comparisons with people who aren't here — people we never had to meet under this kind of strain. People who might, or might not, have turned out more congenial than the ones we have. Look, all six of us are going to be together for a long, long time; close-quarters together, hothouse together, too damn much together; and the one thing we don't need is to rub elbows with the idealized memories of people who aren't here!”
    “Now listen —” Peake began, but Moira went on:
    “No, you listen, I'm not finished. I don't even mean you, personally. I'm trying to establish a principle, not get personal about anybody, I think every one of us could have picked what they'd consider a perfect crew, and somehow I doubt if any one of us would have picked any one of the others here—”
    “What you mean is, you wouldn't,” Ching said precisely. “Nice to know what you think of us, Moira.”
    She brushed that aside too. “I refuse to get into a fight with you, Ching, don't try to provoke it. I mean, here we are, six of us, none of us consulted about our preferences for the others —”
    “They must have taken compatibility into account,” Teague said. “I doubt if they would pick six people they knew couldn't stand one another!”
    Moira shrugged. “Oh, I'm sure they trusted us not to murder each other, took real antipathies into account. But —”
    Ching wasn't so sure. She said in a low voice, “I think they chose people who had demonstrated that they could conform if they had to.”
    “But whatever they decided,” Moira said, "we are here. It's like those arranged marriages they used to have, hundreds of years ago, it's done and can't be undone. What God, or the Academy, has joined to-
    gether, let no man put asunder. The six of us are here, and there are no others, and we'd better work out a way to care about each other; because there's nobody else for any of us, and we are not going to get any second chances!"
    That, Peake thought, was laying it right out on the line, putting into words what they all knew and which he, at least, had never really faced. He set his jaw tight and said, “All right. Agreed.”
    “Agreed,” Ching said promptly, adding,