The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal Read Free Book Online Page A

my old brain was just too addled to put the pieces together. I wondered if she would make a note of that and if it would keep me grounded.
    Dorothy had lived on a farm in the middle of the Kansas prairie with her Uncle Henry and Aunt Em. When Orion 27 came down in a ball of fire, it was the middle of a drought. The largest pieces of it had landed on a farm.
    No buildings were crushed, but it would have been a blessing if they had been, because that would have saved the folks inside from burning alive. 
    I closed my eyes and could see her now as the little girl I'd forgotten. Brown pigtails down her back and a pair of dungarees a size too large for her, with the legs cuffed up to show bobby socks and sneakers. 
    Someone had pointed her out. "The little girl from the Williams farm." 
    I'd seen her before, but in that way you see the same people every day without noticing them. Even then, with someone pointing to her, she didn't stand out from the crowd. Looking at her, there was nothing to know that she'd just lived through a tragedy. I reckon it hadn't hit her yet.
    I had stepped away from the entourage of reporters and consultants that followed me and walked up to her. She had tilted her head back to look up at me. I used to be a tall woman, you know.
    [Dorothy as child] "You still going to Mars?" 
    I had nodded. "Maybe you can go someday too."
    She had cocked her head to the side, as if she were considering. I can't remember what she said back. I know she must have said somehing. I know we must have talked longer because I gave her that darned eagle, but what we said... I couldn't pull it up out of my brain. 
    As the present day Dorothy tugged up my sleeve and wrapped the blood pressure cuff around my arm, I studied her. She had the same dark hair as the little girl she had been, but it was cut short now and in the low gravity of Mars it wisped around her head like the down on a baby bird. 
    The shape of her eyes was the same, but that was about it. The soft roundness of her cheeks was long gone, leaving high cheekbones and a jaw that came to too sharp of a point for beauty. She had a faint white scar just above her left eyebrow.
    She smiled at me and unwrapped the cuff. "Your blood pressure is better. You must have been exercising since last time."
    "I do what my doctor tells me."
    "How's your husband?"
    "About the same." I slid away from the subject even though, as his doctor, she had the right to ask, and I squinted at her height. "How old were you when you came here?"
    "Sixteen. We were supposed to come before but... well." She shrugged, speaking worlds about why she hadn't. 
    "Your uncle, right?"
    Startled, she shook her head. "Oh, no. Mom and Dad. We were supposed to be on the first colony ship but a logging truck lost its load."
    Aghast, I could only stare at her. If they were supposed to have been on the first colony ship, then her parents could not have died long before Orion 27 crashed. I wet my lips. "Where did you go after your aunt and uncle's?"
    "My cousin. Their son."  She lifted one of the syringes she'd brought in with her. "I need to take some blood today."
    "My left arm has better veins."
    While she swabbed the site, I looked away and stared at a chart on the wall reminding people to take their vitamin D supplements. We didn't get enough light here for most humans.
    But the stars... When you could see them, the stars were glorious. Was that what had brought Dorothy to Mars?
     
    #
     
    When I got home from the doctor's -- from Dorothy's -- the  nurse was just finishing up with Nathaniel's sponge bath. Genevieve stuck her head out of the bedroom, hands still dripping.
    "Well, hey, Miss Elma. We're having a real good day, aren't we Mr. Nathaniel?" Her smile could have lit a hangar, it was so bright.
    "That we are." Nathaniel sounded hale and hearty, if I didn't look at him. "Genevieve taught me a new joke. How's it go?"
    She stepped back into the bedroom. "What did the astronaut see on the stove? An