Originally published in Borderlands Magazine, Issue 8, October 2006.
“It’s the moons,” Eleanor said as soon as Steve got home. “That’s what causing it.”
Steve had not been expecting a greeting like this. He had a bad day at work. A remote-controlled Martian rover he worked with had fallen over and couldn’t get back up. From the main base, he had to divert another rover over to flip it back, and that one had turned over as well. He sent a third and fourth to help the first two, else someone would have to go out there and set them back manually. Regardless, many hours of data gathering had been lost.
He came into their apartment, listened impatiently to his wife then while she was still talking to him, he walked over to the couch, kicked off his shoes, and put his feet up.
Eleanor followed him over. “Well, it’s not the moons themselves, but rather the lack of moons.”
Steve removed his socks, and tossed them towards the bedroom. “Moons cause what, exactly?”
Eleanor’s hands shook with excitement. “Infertility.”
Steve looked over to his wife, wondering what went on in her head. This baby obsession of hers had taken over her life. It had taken over their lives until Steve learned how to distance himself. It was amazing how appealing work became, compared to a hormonal wife. He sighed and played along, knowing he wouldn’t get any peace otherwise. “Okay, what happened at work today?”
Eleanor excitedly sat next to him. “We finally got in the reports from the other colonies. Sure, they’re a year old, but they’re the latest news, practically. Well, actually we got them last week, and we’ve been crunching them ever since, but today’s the first day we got any results.” She blathered on. “I looked over all the analyses, ran them through the computers, compared this and that, and all sorts of things, including gene pools, any strange minerals, plant sample information–“
Steve waved his hand in her face. “Yes, yes. But what did you learn?”
She waved her hands in the air. “Absolutely nothing! Except for one… little… thing.” She shook her finger at him to emphasise each point.
Steve stared off. He could see the TV on the wall, and wished he could turn it on. “And what is that?”
“Fertility levels and birth rates on some planets are perfectly normal. And then on others, almost non-existent, just like here on Mars.”
“And?” he said, bored.
“And? And what? That’s it!”
Steve sighed. He knew his wife to be an educated, yet flighty creature. Sometimes, her brain went too fast for her mouth, or anyone else, to keep up. “You didn’t tell me what was causing it.”
“Yes I did,” she said. “It’s the moons.”
“The moons cause infertility?”
“No, the moons cause fertility. Planets without moons have a low fertility rate, though if a woman is able to get pregnant, she carries to term normally. But that’s due to environmental factors.”
Steve looked as if he didn’t believe her. “The… moons?”
She nodded, excitedly. “It would explain why Mars has such a low fertility rate.”
Steve got up. He needed a drink. “That’s ridiculous. Mars has two moons.”
Eleanor followed him. “No, Mars has two asteroids circling it, that people just happen to call moons, because they either haven’t fallen to the surface, and they haven’t floated away yet–um, I mean the moons, not the people. Well, you know, Phobos has been spiralling inwards slowly and some day it’ll crash.”
“Actually, it’s Deimos.” Truth be known, Steve didn’t know which moon it was, nor did he care. But he felt spiteful towards his wife tonight. He pulled a can of cola out of the fridge and poured it over a scotch and rocks.
She shook it off. “No matter. Thing is, the only common factor we could find was that if planets had large enough moons–large enough to noticeably affect ocean tides–then the population growth was within acceptable parameters. But if that planet didn’t have a moon, then the fertility rates of women went down.”
Steve took a drink, then another one. “We could find… you mean others think it’s a possibility?”
Eleanor squirmed. “Well, not really. I only figured it out myself on the way home. But I’m going to share my ideas with them tomorrow. It’s the only common factor we can find!”
Steve swallowed the rest of his drink before regarding his wife. “In other words, It’s just one of your crazy ideas, with no scientific backing.”
That burst her bubble. Eleanor grew quiet. She looked first at the floor, then up at Steve through her eyelashes. She’d gone pouty again. “It’s not a crazy idea. It may seem a little far-fetched, but until proven contrary, it’s not classified as a crazy idea.”
Steve left his wife in the kitchen, walked into the living room, and flipped on the TV. The news would be on soon.
Eleanor remained in the kitchen and let the tears run silently down her face.
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It wasn’t fair. Eleanor pressed her fists into her infertile belly. It wasn’t fair at all. How dare he behave like this, after all the suffering she’d been through. Eleanor had always wanted children. It went so far that she studied reproductive endocrinology and genetics, and became a research scientist in the field of fertility.
She herself had tested as fertile. Fertile women with useful degrees were wanted, even encouraged, to enter the colonization program.
Not for the first time, she wondered if Steve had married her simply because she was a good colonization candidate. Married fertile women with useful degrees were top of the list. If a man wanted to become a colonist, the best way was to marry a fertile woman and hope she had a useful degree.
Eleanor helped herself to a soda with a shot of fruit juice. How long had it been since she had tasted alcohol?
She did not even peek back into the living room. It was only six o’clock at night, but Eleanor went to bed. She tried to read for several hours, but ended up thinking instead.
She had been fertile–wonderfully so. Eleanor even conceived within four months of marriage. And then came the miscarriage. While she had only been pregnant for about six weeks, the loss of a potential life was no less devastating.
And then the move to Mars. Something happened to her. Eleanor, at first, thought something was wrong with her hormones, due to the miscarriage. She tested to be anovulatory–infertile. At first, she thought they would be sent back to Earth, but they weren’t.
“Lots of women are turning up infertile,” a friend at work confided in her. “I know you were expecting to be working with pregnant women, but we just don’t have any.”
When the opportunity came up to join a research team looking into infertility, she jumped at the chance.
She continued to test infertile. She went through the whole process. Timing, temperature-taking, Fertinaid shots in the hip, IUI, everything.
Despite everything, Eleanor failed to conceive. All Steve ever did was show up to his milking appointments and enjoyed being locked in a comfy room for half an hour with Traci Lords and a plastic cup.
It just wasn’t fair.
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Steve, when he came to bed many hours later, noticed his wife had fallen asleep with a novel on her chest. He let her lie there, turned off the light, and climbed into bed.
Why did he ever marry her? Sure, she was fertile, intelligent and had a degree. But that didn’t make her clever or beautiful. He thought she looked quite plain. But she was the only woman who ever gave him the time of day, who could get him off of Earth and into a good job.
Granted, their marriage had never been the same after her miscarriage. They say it was pre-moving stress, after they had been approved to move to Mars Colony. She had only just discovered she was pregnant–about a month or so–when she lost it.
She cried for days and days. He didn’t understand what the fuss was about. It wasn’t like she looked pregnant, or felt anything. If he didn’t know better, he would have sworn it was another period. Sometimes he wondered if that were what it really was, but she didn’t want to admit it.
He knew how much she wanted children.
He sighed, and stared at the dark ceiling. Steve wasn’t too keen on having children, but that was the price of a good job on Mars.
She was gone the next morning. No doubt she had left for work early. Steve didn’t think twice about it and got ready for his own job. All that mattered to him was that he didn’t have to wake up to her face or her voice.
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Eleanor returned late that day.
“How was work?” he asked from the couch.
“Oh, fine,” she said, distracted. She glanced over her husband, dressed in his comfy sweats, microwave dinner on his lap, watching TV.
Eleanor let him be and fixed the same dinner for herself. Then she sat at the kitchen table, ate, and spread a load of manuals and textbooks before her. Eleanor spent the rest of the night studying.
Steve did not come in once, to see what she was doing, or even to give her a kiss.
Several hours later, Eleanor cleaned up her study materials, and went to bed.
Steve found her asleep, with the same novel across her chest.
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Eleanor came home late, as she had every night for the past two weeks.
Steve glanced up from the couch. “Hi,” he said. He had grown used to her working extra early and extra late. He had learned to fend for himself.
Eleanor did not return the greeting. “I’ll have you know that we have compiled the results of our research, and have come up with a hypothesis. My co-workers believe that my moon idea may have some merit.”
Steve looked up at her. “They what? Are they all women?”
She shrugged. “Most of them. But nobody laughed at my idea. We’ve decided that testing the hypothesis is the only way of proving it.”
Steve sighed, and waved a hand in her face. “Whatever.” He returned to his TV program.
“I’ll be going with them. After all, it is my idea.”
“Okay.”
Eleanor sniffed. “That’s all you’re going to say? ‘Okay’?”
He scowled. She was interrupting his program. “What do you want me to say? I don’t know anything about your little baby-doctor stuff.”
Eleanor said nothing. She studied him for a moment, then went into the kitchen.
He heard her fix something to eat, then pull out her usual books to study for the rest of the night.
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The next day, Steve received a surprise at work. It came by courier and Steve had to sign for the packet of papers, and then the courier had to stand by and witness while Steve opened it.
“Sign here,” the Courier droned, X-ing another line. “This signature acknowledges that you have opened the packet and you are aware of what is inside.”
Steve stood there, for a few moments, staring at the contents, then slowly signed the courier’s clipboard. The courier left Steve to stare in shock at the legal documents before him.
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“You’re DIVORCING me?” he yelled. His voice bounced off the smooth surfaces of the kitchen.
Eleanor stood with her arms wrapped tightly around her. “Yes,” she said, in a small voice.
“You can’t divorce me!”
Eleanor turned from him. “I can. I told you, I’m going with the research team to research the validity of my hypothesis.”
“What hypothesis?”
She crossed her arms even tighter. “The moon and fertility.”
Steve took a few breaths. Anger was getting him nowhere. “Surely you don’t need to divorce me if you’re just going to do a little bit of research in your laboratory?”
Eleanor avoided his gaze. “This is… field research.”
Field research? “What are you going to do?”
“We’re taking a sample of infertile women from known infertile planets, and recolonizing them to known fertility planets–at a random draw, of course–and see whether or not their fertility levels increase. It’s going to take quite a few years.”
“So?” insisted Steve. “Why does this mean we have to get divorced?”
“It means travelling to another world, Steve.”
Steve thought this over for a moment. “Well, I can go with you, can’t I?”
Eleanor, arms still crossed, eyes still on the floor, shook her head. “No, Steve. You can’t come with me.”
“Why not!?” he insisted angrily.
“Because I’m one of the women in the study.”
Steve came forward, and tried to grasp her arms for a good shake.
Eleanor avoided his grasp. “I don’t think you’ll be a good father.” She slipped past him, and went into the bedroom. He heard the door close, and the lock click.
Despite all the beggings, poundings and threats at the locked door, Steve ended up sleeping on the couch that night.
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Eleanor moved out the next day, taking only essentials with her.
She returned a week later, to finish sorting out the rest of the stuff.
Steve watched her go through their things. His temper had cooled and he hoped he could talk some sense in her. He still had a week to go before he had to return the divorce papers, signed. To his surprise, he noted that she left several things behind that belonged to her, not him.
“You’re not taking this?” he said, hefting a lovely vase. “Your aunt gave you this.”
“We have limited cargo space,” she admitted.
He looked it over. “Eleanor? I don’t want it either. Perhaps you could give it away to friends, or possibly sell it…?”
She paused in her sorting. “Sell it?”
“Well, I’m sure you could, um, use the money.”
“Sell it…” she mused. “I’ll think about it.”
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He sent her email. He called her on the phone. He dropped by her lab. He stopped by her friends’ homes, just in case she was there.
Every chance he got, he tried to talk her out of this divorce. Every time she responded coldly, without emotion.
This was not the Eleanor he knew.
By the end of the week, he knew he had no choice. Sign the papers, or go to jail. He returned the papers to his lawyer and returned home to the apartment he and Eleanor once shared.
That night, he slept in a cold lonely bed, knowing she probably would never return.
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When Steve returned home the next day after work, he received another surprise.
Half of everything in the apartment was gone. Half the furniture, half the CDs, half the dishes. He didn’t dare open the computer CPU, in case half the cards were missing.
On the microwave was taped this note:
“Dear Steve,
“Thank you so much for the idea of selling my half of everything. The much-needed money will go towards the research. You had a good idea.
“Eleanor.”
Steve thought he’d break out in a rage of anger. But he didn’t. Instead, he slumped to the floor. He left the note taped to the microwave.
He couldn’t do anything. Legally, half of everything did belong to her. Even if he did fight it, by the time it went through the courts, she’d be half-way to wherever.
He couldn’t even get angry. All he could do was stare at the place where the fridge once stood and wonder what he was going to eat for dinner.
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Steve never saw Eleanor again. After five years, he even forgot what she looked like.
Then the letter arrived. At first, he couldn’t think of anyone he knew who had colonized on Hera. It wasn’t until he opened the letter and recognized the handwriting.
It was from Eleanor.
“Dear Steve,” it said.
“I just wanted you to be one of the first to know that it looks like our hypothesis was correct. Every single woman in our program fell pregnant within a year.
“I myself conceived within six months of arriving…“
The words on the page stopped making sense. He skipped through the letter, looking for anything else he wanted to read.
“I thought I’d send a picture.” Sure enough, she had included a photograph. He recognized her, though only just. She had a small child, a toddler, and her belly appeared swollen. “This was taken when I was seven months along. So far, it looks like I’m carrying to term…“
He didn’t want to read any more, but one final paragraph caught his eye.
“Since we’ve had so much success with the program, we were wondering if you would be willing to approach some of your engineering colleagues. It is too costly to keep bringing women to planets with moons. We wondered if it would be better to bring moons to planets. I know it sounds crazy at first, but we’re not talking a short-term plan. If we plan on living on the planets from here on out, we’re going to have to establish living, growing colonies…”
Only then, did her idea sink into his head.
“…ask them if they’d be willing to consider a plan involving a massive engineering project to move asteroids of certain sizes or even the smaller moons of other uninhabited planets into the orbits of these settled worlds…“
He didn’t finish reading. Slowly, Steve ripped up Eleanor’s letter, envelope included. The picture, he burned, as soon as he found some matches.
He sadly shook his head, dumped the remains into his trash can, and got on with the rest of his life.
Eleanor and her silly ideas.
The End
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