“It’s just spindrift,” Helga said. “You’ve got to expect that. We won’t get too wet.”
Ralph said, “Besides, the water will get you clean. I know you don’t see much water in your Ship.”
That was another thing that irritated me about Ralph and Helga. They had all sorts of misconceptions about the Ship which they insisted on trotting out. Ralph was worse because he was dogmatic. I thought at first he was being malicious until I realized he actually believed what he was saying, like that bit about going naked—that wasn’t completely wrong; some people do go without clothes in the privacy of their own apartments, but I would like to see somebody trying to play soccer while completely bare. The point is that what he said wasn’t quite right, either, and he wouldn’t listen. He would just say his misconceptions flatly and expect you to agree with him.
Right at the beginning he’d said something about how it was too bad we had to live in crowded barracks—something along that line—and didn’t I like all the space here? I tried to explain that that was only the way it used to be on the Ship, right at the beginning, but then I made the mistake of bringing in the dormitories, which are a little bit that way, trying to be honest, and that only confused the issue. Ralph finally said that everybody knew what things were like, and I didn’t have to try to explain.
Helga was a little more bearable because she only asked questions.
“Is it true you don’t eat food on your Ship?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, they say you don’t grow food like we do, that you eat dirt or something.”
“No,” I said.
And: “Is it true that you kill babies who are born looking wrong?”
“Do you?”
“Well, no. But everybody says you do.”
The thing that really annoyed me about Ralph and his “water to get you clean” remark is that we on the Ship had very clear memories of how dirty the colonists had been. Ralph apparently wasn’t even able to notice the horrid odors that clung to the whole harbor, which demonstrated how defective his sense of smell was, but I still didn’t like the blithe, “of course” way he said it.
Ralph and Helga got the sail up in short order, while I watched, and then Helga came up by me, untied the bow, and sat down. Ralph untied the stern and we pushed off. He had a little stick tiller to steer with and held the boom by a line. He put the boom over and the breeze filled the sail with an audible flap.
We started from the right-hand curve of the harbor with the wind behind us, and sailed across the long width of the harbor. The chop of the waves and the spray were annoying, and the grayness of the day wasn’t very nice, but I thought I could see how, given better weather and time to get used to this sort of thing, sailing could be fun.
Uncharitably, though, I couldn’t help thinking that we handled weather much better on the Third Level than they did here. When we wanted rain, everybody knows it’s coming ahead of time. We throw a switch and it rains until we want it to stop, and then it stops. None of this thick air with its clamminess.
As we were sailing, Helga started a conversation, trying to be friendly, I think. She said, “Do you have any brothers and sisters?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think so. I never heard of any.”
“Well, wouldn’t you know? I mean half-brothers and half-sisters, too.”
“I don’t know for sure, but I was never told of any. My parents have been married so long that if I had a brother he’d be all grown or dead years ago.” This may seem strange, but it was an idea that I’d never entertained before. I just never thought in terms of brothers and sisters. It was an interesting notion, but I didn’t really take it seriously even now.
Helga looked at me with a slightly puzzled look. “Married? I thought you didn’t get married like regular people. I thought you just lived with anybody you wanted to.”
I said, “My parents have been married more than fifty years. That’s Earth years.”
“Fifty years? Oh, you know that isn’t so. I just saw your father and he isn’t even as old as my dad.”
“Well, how old is your dad?”
“Let’s see,” she said. She did some obvious figuring. “About fifty.”