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The Maretian

by Kris Overstreet

Chapter 82: Sol 129

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AMICITAS FLIGHT THREE – MISSION DAY 128
ARES III SOL 129

Mark sat and read the message on his computer. While the crew of Amicitas had all gone to the cave farm the day before (Cherry, Dragonfly and Spitfire to farm, Starlight and Fireball to mine crystals), he’d spent the day using up another CO2 filter, disassembling control panels on the MDV in his space suit. The disassembly had revealed damage not previously visible, and so he’d taken photos and sent them back to Earth. Now he was examining the revised procedures to either repair or bypass the broken electrics so that power could be safely restored to the MDV.

Absorbed as he was in reading the detailed instructions and writing them down in tiny letters on one of the few remaining sample box labels, he didn’t notice the two ponies next to him until the second time Starlight tapped him on the knee. Blinking, he looked over at them. “What is it, Starlight?” he asked carefully.

Starlight pointed a hoof at Spitfire, who stood next to her. “Spitfire wants to tell you something,” she said, her words spoken deliberately but not stilted. “And she wants you to listen, so she asked me to translate for her.”

Mark frowned, turning on his stool to face the ponies. “Okay,” he said. “What is it?”

Spitfire’s slightly raspy voice rattled off a soft, calm-voiced stream of pony language. Mark caught bits and pieces of it, but not enough to make it a clear message.

“Spitfire says that you treat her- that you treat all of us- like little children,” Starlight said in English. “You don’t give us the respect we deserve. She’s tried hinting at this, and she’s even said it straight, but you don’t seem to listen.”

Mark nodded, gesturing at Spitfire to continue.

Spitfire said a bit more.

“How many decisions do we get to make?” Starlight translated, a little less calmly. “When do you stop explaining everything to us, like a teacher and a school… school…”

“Schoolgirl?” Mark suggested automatically. “Schoolfilly maybe?”

Spitfire jabbed a hoof at him. “That! THAT!” she barked, followed by rapid-fire pony talk that took Starlight several seconds to silence.

“I think you got that?” she asked, once Spitfire subsided a little.

“Yeah,” Mark nodded, “I got it.”

Spitfire returned to the calm tone of before, but Mark could hear that it was a forced calm. He’d had experience determining the various tones of pony-speak. They weren’t that different from human tones, if you worked around the whinny vowels and the snort consonants.

“You don’t have to teach us like you would children,” Starlight continued. “We may not all speak your language well, but we understand enough of it that we don’t need baby talk anymore.”

“Aa, aa, aa,” Spitfire added mockingly.

“Right,” Starlight said. “We’re all tired of that at this point.”

Spitfire waved a hoof around the Hab and continued her soft words, soft words which were about one small provocation from becoming a rant.

“And it’s not just the teaching,” Starlight continued. “How much are we trusted around here? We can open the doors and work the microwave, we can answer email and watch television. And that’s it. We teach you all about our ship. When are you going to teach us about your Hab? Your rover? Your anything?”

Mark nodded. The ponies had a point.

Spitfire pointed to herself and talked. A plaintive tone crept into the words.

“Spitfire is the oldest of us here,” Starlight continued. “She’s new to space, but she’s a responsible adult. She’s a leader back home. She can understand things. She can take care of herself, if you’d just let her.”

Spitfire’s last sentence came out very softly.

“What will it take,” Starlight said slowly, “for you to treat me like I know what I’m doing?”

Mark gave an inquisitive look at Starlight.

“That’s mostly what she had to say,” Starlight said. “Most of us have similar concerns. Dragonfly doesn’t mind how you treat her, and you and I went to Pathfinder. But the others, yes. And me a little bit.”

Mark took a deep breath. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m not a good teacher.” He looked at Spitfire and continued, “I’m not a pilot. I’m not an officer. I’m not even a medic, beyond the emergency training I had. You and I don’t have much in common.”

Spitfire tilted her head, looking a little confused.

“The problem is, I don’t know how to treat you,” Mark said. “If you were human and we spoke the same language, it’d be easy. We’d know how to talk to each other.” He sighed and added, “But you’re not human. You’re the first aliens my species have ever met. Do you know how important that is?”

“I learn,” Spitfire said haltingly. “I learn how talk to you.”

Mark shook his head. “Not the same thing,” he said. “You’re learning a language. That’s just words. But how do I use my words to talk to you?” He held out a hand. “What is a joke? What is an insult? What’s allowed, and what isn’t?” He sighed. “You girls should have had a diplomat, or an anthropologist, or at least a doctor, to meet. What you got was a guy who grows plants and fixes doorknobs.” He put a hand on each pony’s shoulder and added, “You are the single most important thing that’s ever happened to my species. Ever. And I don’t know how not to fuck it up.”

Spitfire’s eyes brightened a little. “What means ‘fuck’?” she asked.

“Ahhh, ah-ah-ah!” Mark admonished, holding up an index finger. “Not fair! Do you want me to treat you like an adult or not? You just said-“

“How I going learn English if you not say?” Spitfire stumbled angrily over the words.

“And how do I teach you without talking down to you?” Mark snapped, equally frustrated.

“You- you- you… you do!” Spitfire stumbled. “You only do! Not hard! I teach all time home! Teach adult pony be best flies!”

Mark couldn’t help squirming. “Starlight, help me out here,” he said.

Starlight rolled her eyes and said something in Pony, in which the word ‘fuck’ popped up three times.

This didn’t calm Spitfire. “Why you tell Starlight and not me?” she demanded.

Mark rubbed his eyebrows just above the bridge of his nose. “We were in the rover for three weeks,” he said. “I watch my mouth around you guys, but it slipped out.”

Starlight added something in Pony to explain it.

Spitfire raised an eyebrow. “Watch mouth?” she asked. “Watch what you say? Why?”

“Didn’t you hear- no, wait.” Mark took a deep breath and forced himself to marshal his thoughts. “You know buck and other pony bad words, right? Do you say them in front of big shots- important people?”

“What? No!” Spitfire said. “Wrong! Not place! Not respect!”

Mark slid off his stool and knelt down to put himself at eye level with Spitfire. “For humans, right now, you five are the most important people in the universe,” he said. “And you’re here in my Hab. I’m responsible for you. I have to keep you healthy and happy-“

“You not-mmff!”

Starlight kept her hoof pressed hard into Spitfire’s muzzle. “Why are you responsible?” she asked over Spitfire’s protests. “We’re just as able to take care of us as you are.”

“I’m responsible because you’re in trouble and I can help you,” Mark said simply. “You’re stuck here on Mars. In my Hab. In my universe. Nobody else is here to help you. And you might die if I don’t. Even if you were humans from Earth, I’d still be responsible.” He added in a solemn tone belied by the corner of his mouth that kept turning up, “With great botany comes great responsibility.”

Spitfire went silent, and Starlight took her hoof off her mouth. “I sorry,” she said once her mouth was unplugged. “I not-“

“No, don’t apologize,” Mark said. “I fucked up- I mean I bucked up.” He let out a long breath of air. “The question is, where do we go from here?”

The three stood and thought about it in silence.

[11:51] WATNEY: Guys, I need some advice. I think I’ve gone about as far as I can with English lessons for my friends here. Starlight and Dragonfly are almost fluent, and the others aren’t getting any better than they were. What can you do for English as a second language classes for adults? (Those last two words are important, guys.)

[12:05] JPL: We’ve had that problem on the back burner for a while, Mark. Do you want us to make it a priority?

[12:20] WATNEY: Please. We need to bring the other three up to speed on English, or else we humans all need to learn how to write and speak a language where we can’t pronounce at least three vowels and four consonants.

[12:35] JPL: Okay. We’ll have something for you in a few days. Right now we need to focus on getting the MDV powered up for flight sims. Any progress on that?

[12:50] WATNEY: Morning repairs got hijacked by a parent-teacher conference. I’m ready to go out and get to work now.

[13:05] JPL: I have one suggestion, Mark. How do the ponies like Potter?

[13:21] WATNEY: They put up with it. Starlight’s divided between “Magic doesn’t work like that” and taking notes on the whiteboard. Spitfire makes me re-read all the quidditch chapters. Fireball hated Hagrid at first, but now he kind of likes him, even if he calls him Hagrid P. Coltrane half the time. Dragonfly… I don’t know if Dragonfly really likes it or is pretending for my sake. Cherry Berry is kind of bored with it.

[13:36] JPL: Have them take turns reading aloud. Don’t correct them. Let them correct each other.

[13:51] WATNEY: I’ll try it, if you think it’ll work.

[14:04] JPL: It worked for my kids. Get back to work, Mark.

Author's Notes:

No time or energy for writing tonight. Apparently I picked the day before a 1000-mile drive to come down with the crud. By setup time Friday morning I should be nicely spaced out, dammit.

Tomorrow's post might be very, VERY late. Because driving and sick, of course.

But in the meantime, my radio show must go on. (It won't happen next week, because I just haven't got the time to prerecord the show for next week.) DementiaRadio.org, beginning 9 PM Central (almost) every Wednesday night! (And again, tonight's the Pony playlist...)

Next Chapter: Sol 134 Estimated time remaining: 21 Hours, 23 Minutes
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