Chapter 11: Exile

Idleness...

Alpha did everything well and better than anyone else. Sometimes he sowed too early, but it turned out he had done his best. Without being told, he changed the water well’s filter. Ada was starting to think he was more intelligent than anyone here.

This left the village without meaningful work. During the warm seasons, which occurred three times per HS year, the inhabitants of Clelia would descend to the lake for picnics, organize public Bible readings, or speed up the bagging of minerals extracted by the mining robot.

In the cold seasons, when snow fell, hard times came. The Jespersen god forbade all drugs except alcohol, and Paul exploited this theological loophole to import strong raspberry-flavored liqueurs extracted from nebulas. The first winter after Alpha’s arrival left its mark. Paul had started drinking. He became melancholic, launching into monologues about the emptiness of their project. Then he would deprecate himself. Then he would say God had abandoned them, that He was silent, that they were insane. At first, the family responded. Inevitably, the tone escalated, and he began smashing objects, then striking people. By the end of the cursed month, Marie spent two nights at the Hibotz family’s house. And with the return of the sun, everything went back to normal, with vague apologies from the patriarch, whose sincerity was dulled by his hazy recollections of his fits of rage.

Then came the second winter, and Paul broke his promise not to drink. He drank in secret, first at night, then in the morning. Ada spent her days answering “Yes” with her eyes downcast, even when he called her the worst names. She realized this vast empty planet was, in many ways, a prison no better than her room at the administrative center.

One evening at the end of winter—with ten centimeters of snow still outside but likely to melt by tomorrow—the sun had already set. Paul, drunk, complained that the table wasn’t set and began hurling insults at Marie. Ada had just come back, still wearing her white coat. In such episodes, she felt only contempt for her adoptive father and confronted him. Drawing on her excellent memory, she shouted at him, word for word, the Genesis passage where Noah shamed his children by drinking too much.

Paul overturned a table and looked for something to strike Ada with. She ran out the door, her small legs pushing through the snow. Paul followed her, a metal pot in hand, while Marie and the children begged him to stop. Fortunately, Paul stumbled and fell, giving Ada a chance to get ahead. Instinctively, she ran to the large greenhouse—perhaps Alpha, the Xeno, could protect her. He was there, pruning trees with his sharp limbs. She ran to him, slipping between his legs. Paul arrived, shouting profanities at the Xeno (who didn’t understand the situation), threw the pot, grabbed a shovel, and struck Alpha, who nonchalantly deflected the blow with a single motion of his arm.