“I’ve never shared my mind,” I said.

“I’d love to share with you.” The offer was so disarming I was at a loss for an answer. “You have a truly natural presence,” she continued. “I think you could share beautifully. I’ve been watching you since the trip began…” She primmed her lips and pulled back to the wall. “If I’m not too forward.”

“No,” I said.

She put out her hand and touched my cheek, stroking it once with the back of her fingers. “Share with me?”

I blushed furiously. “I don’t… do sims,” I said.

“Just talk, then. For the trip. And when we get to Earth, I can show you a few things you’d probably miss… as a Martian tourist. Meet my friends. We’d all enjoy you.”

“All right,” I said, hoping, if the offer were more than I could possibly handle, that I could plead an intercultural misunderstanding and escape.

“Earth is really something,” Orianna said with a wonderfully languid blink. “I see it a lot more clearly now that I’ve been to Mars.”

We were close to the ten-million-kilometer mark, three weeks into the voyage. The fusion drives would soon turn on. The hull would not be livable once they became active.

After a truly big party, featuring one of the best banquets the voyage would offer, the Captain said his farewells and crossed to the opposite cylinder. Passengers berthed there would no longer be able to visit us; we all shook hands and they followed the Captain.

Most of our cylinder’s occupants went to bed in their cabins to take the change easily. A few hardy souls, myself included, stayed in the lounge. There was an obligatory countdown. I hated feeling like a tourist, but I joined in. Acre was too pleasant and cajoling to be denied his duties.

We had returned to weightlessness, but were about to acquire full Earth weight for several hours. The countdown arrived at zero, all eight of us shouted at once, and the ship resounded with a hollow thud. We set our feet onto the lounge floor. Orianna, near her parents, seemed close to ecstasy. I was reminded of Bernini’s St. Theresa speared by a shaft of inspiration.

The fusion flare followed us like a gorgeous bridal train. Brilliant blue at the center, tipped with orange from ablated and ionized engine and funnel lining, it pushed us relentlessly to almost three times our accustomed Mars weight, a full g.

A few, including Orianna’s mother and father, climbed forward and valiantly exercised in the gym, joking and casting aspersions on the rest of us slackers.

I chose a middle course, climbing around the cylinder for an hour. My temp bichemistry treatments made the full g force bearable but not pleasant. I had read in travel prep that a week on Earth might pass before someone with temp became comfortable with the oppressive weight. Orianna accompanied me; she had temp also, and was working to regain Earth strength.

As we climbed through the cylinder, from the observation deck to the forward boom control walkway, Orianna told me about Earth fashions in clothes. “I’ve been out of it for two years, of course,” she said. “But I like to think I’m still tuned. And I keep up with the vids.”

“So what are they wearing?” I asked.

“Formal and frilly. Greens and lace. Masks are out this year, except for floaters — projected masks with personal icons. Everybody’s off pattern projection, though. I liked pattern projection. You could wear almost nothing and still be discreet.”

“I can redo my wardrobe. I’ve brought enough raw cloth.”

Orianna made a face. “This year, expect fixed outfits, not nano-shaped. Old fabric is best. Tattered is wonderful. We’ll dig through the recycle shops. The shredbare look is very pos. Nano fake is beyond deviance.”

“Do I have to be in fashion?”

“Abso not! It’s drive to ignore. I switch from loner to slave every few months when I’m at home.”

“Terries will expect a red rabbit to be trop retro, no?”

Orianna smiled in friendly pity. “With that speech, you’re fulfilled already. Just listen to me, and you’ll slim the current.”

Breathless, standing on the walkway around the bow’s boom connector, we rested for a moment. “So correct me,” I said, gasping.

“You still say ‘trop shink’ on Mars. That’s abso neg, mid twenty-one. Sounds like Chaucer to Terries. If you don’t drive multilingual, and you’d better not try unless you wear an enhancement, best to speak straight early twenty-two. Everyone understands early twenty-two, unless you’re glued to French or German or Dutch. They ridge on anything about twenty years old for drive standard. Chinese love about eight kinds of Europidgin, but hit them in patrie, and they revert to twenty Putonghua. Russian — ”

“I’ll stick with English.”

“Still safe,” she said.

The fusion drives shut off and weightlessness returned. The time had come to separate the cylinders from the hull and begin rotation. Tuamotu carefully spun her long booms between central hull and outboard cylinders. The booms were attached to a rotor on the hull, and the cylinders used their own small methane kickers to set up spin.

When extended, the cylinders pointed perpendicular to the hull; just as when we had experienced ship acceleration, to move from deck to deck one had to climb up or down, or take the elevator. The centrifugal force created about one-fourth g in the observation lounge, the outboard or “lowest” deck.

When the cylinders had cycled to maximum, the warm sleepers retired to their cubicles. A little party was given for them. In our cylinder, we were now down to twenty-three active passengers, and seven months to go…

Orianna had filled her cabin with projected picts, each leading to a sim or LitVid put on hold; twenty or more, hanging in the air like tiny sculptures, some pulsing, some singing faintly. She laughed. “Silly, isn’t it?” she said. “I’ll turn them off…” She waved and the icons disappeared, allowing me to see the rest of her cabin. It was tidy but busy. A sweater lay in one corner, or at least half of a sweater. Little sticks poked out of it, and a ball of what must have been thread — yarn, I remembered — lay beside it. “Knitting?” I asked.

“Yeah. Sometimes I don’t know where I am or what I’m doing, and knitting or crocheting brings me back. It’s the drive in Paris, where my father lives.”

“Your mother lives with your father?”

“Sometimes. They bond loose. I live with my father most of the year. Sometimes I go to Ethiopia to live with my mother. She’s a merchandising agent for Iskander Resources. They temp for skilled labor all over the world.”

“And your father?”

“He’s a mining engineer for European Waters Conservancy. He spends lots of time in submarines. I have a great North Sea sim — like to see it?”

“Not right now. Wouldn’t you like to live in just one place?” I asked.

Orianna held out her hands. “Why?”

“To get a feeling of belonging. Knowing where you are.”

She smiled brightly. “I know the entire Earth. Not just in sims, either. I’ve been all over, with and without my parents. I can fly a shocker from Djibouti to Seattle in four hours. Weather change is great. Really sweeps the sugars.”

“Have you ever gone slow?” I asked.

“You mean…” She smoothed her hand along the bed cover. “Ground speed? Double-digit kiphs?”

“Single digit.”

“Sure. I bicycled across France two years ago with some Kenyans. Campfires, night skies, grape harvest in Alsace . You’re really jammed on this, aren’t you?”

“If you mean, stuck in a rut, obviously.”

“Earth isn’t decadent, Casseia. It really isn’t. I’m not a poor little rich girl, any more than you are.”

“Maybe I’m just jealous.”

“I’d call it shy,” Orianna said. “But if you want to ask me about Earth, realtime, oral history and culture, that’s fine with me. We have months left, and I don’t want to spend it all jogging and simming.”