Moon Flights

Accidents Don’t Just Happen—They’re Caused

The 1330 shuttle from planetside rotated on its longitudinal axis to slip its docking probe into the newly designed collar. Peka, watching from inside the control blister, heard in her ear the pilot’s mutter of annoyance.

“Always somebody got to make things harder. Don’t know why—”

The status lights flicked through the correct color sequence and came up all green. The station’s sensor arrays recognized the umbilical orientation, and flipped open the corresponding inboard covers.

“I never had any accidents up here. It was somebody else—”

Peka ignored the complaint. A soothing voice from the station traffic control answered the pilot; she didn’t have to. It didn’t matter whether this pilot had had an accident; someone had. And someone’s accident was reason enough to redesign a docking collar that had allowed a ship to come in sixty degrees offline… because the tuglines that were supposed to correct an offline dock could foul. Had fouled, one coming loose to tangle in another and whack the station end of the umbilical connection, which had then popped its lid and squirted a jet of air and water at the badly docked shuttle, shoving it offline so that the aft stabilizer crumpled one of the com dishes.

In the months since the shuttles had first docked here, the incidence of misalignments had risen steadily. Stationers blamed the pilots’ carelessness; pilots blamed the workload, the hours they had to fly without a rest, the crazily shifted schedules that no human metabolism could adjust to.

Peka blamed design, which meant she blamed herself. Even though she had not designed Jacobi Station herself, she had seen the potential problem when she arrived. She had not argued hard enough; she had let the committee override her instincts, her training. Just because it was her first deep-space job, her first real job, and she didn’t want to be known as a prima donna…

“Looks good to me,” Hal said, behind her. Peka jumped; she had not heard him come in, and she hated to be surprised, even by someone she liked.

“This is only one shuttle,” she said. The moment it was out of her mouth, she regretted it; Hal looked at her as if he’d bitten into a sour fruit. “Not you,” she said, trying to soften the harshness of tone and words. “You and your crew did a fine job of getting that modification built and installed between shuttles. It’s just that one shuttle doesn’t tell us anything except that it can function right.”

“Doesn’t prove it can’t function wrong,” he said, nodding. “I do understand. Even fabrications technologists have read your mother’s work, you know.”

Peka tried not to move. If she could just freeze in place, perhaps he would never know how that hurt. Her mother, the famous engineer, whose textbooks on quality control and safety were standards in the field… I should have gone into china painting, she thought. Buggy whip-making. Anything but this.

“I guess it’s no accident that you’re an engineer,” Hal said. “And this kind in particular.”

He was going to say it. They all said it.

“After all,” he said. “Accidents don’t happen… they’re caused.” He laughed.

It might be funny to someone. It had never been funny to her. “That’s right,” she said, forcing a smile onto stiff lips. She might as well agree; no one would believe how she had fought off the family destiny. But if you have the talent, her mother had said (and her teachers, from elementary on, and the psychologists she went to, hoping for a way out). If you have the talent—that cluster of talents—and no talents whatever for other things—then it only makes sense to use those talents. Productively—one of her mother’s favorite words.

“Was it hard, having such a famous person for a mother?” asked Hal. “I mean, when you were growing up?”

She had no way to answer that didn’t sound petulant, selfish, immature, and disloyal. She had been asked that a lot, especially around the time her mother won the second Kaalin award. What people wanted to hear was more about how wonderful her mother had been, and how she had always supported Peka in her own way… and very little else.

Not about the daily frustration of living in a household where the very concept of accident was forbidden. Where every spilled glass of milk, every stain on the carpet, resulted in a formal investigation… down to the simple incident report form her mother devised for a child to fill out. To teach her responsibility, she’d said. Hard? It had been hell, sometimes, and it still was, whenever someone noticed who her mother was. Peka didn’t dare say that.

“Sometimes…” she said. “When I was too little to understand about cause and effect, you know.”

He chuckled; she must have picked the right tone for an answer. “I’ll bet she’s proud of you,” he said then.

“Reasonably,” Peka said. Again an edge had crept into her voice. She hated that edge, and the speculative look that came into Hal’s eyes. She wanted to say something to explain it away, but nothing would. She tried anyway. “I—haven’t done anything yet. Not really. She’s glad I went into this field, of course, but there wasn’t much else I could do.” That sounded lame; there was always something else, but she had limited her choices to those with good employment opportunities, a reasonable income and chance to travel. She could not have chosen to stay on one planet, could not have tolerated the monotony of a job that stayed the same month after month, year after year.

She looked out the blister, where the cargo lock had mated with the shuttle’s cargo bay. In fifteen minutes, the hold would be empty; the pallets would be snaking their way to their designated holds; in another five minutes, the shuttle would be on its way out, and shortly after that the next shuttle would be nosing in.

“Well—guess I’ll be going,” Hal said. Peka turned. He was looking at her as if he expected some reaction. She felt nothing, but a vague satisfaction that he was going to let her alone.

She was back in her office, reviewing the sensor records of the new collar’s performance, when a tap on her door brought her head up. “Yes?” she said, wondering who would be that formal.

Denial, anger—the first stages of grief, her education reminded her—but the woman in the doorway was still there, unscathed by her own emotion. The crisp dark hair, the lively dark eyes, the smooth unweathered skin… the expensive business suit and briefcase.

“Mother,” she managed finally.

“Surprised?” her mother asked. “I came in on the Perrymos from Baugarten; I’m en route to the Plarsis colonies. Sorry I didn’t have a chance to warn you, but they said one of the com channels was out—”

Peka flushed. It was out because the shuttle had knocked the dish awry. Her fault.

“—Some kind of accident, the communications officer said,” her mother went on. “I managed not to give him the family lecture.” She laughed; Peka couldn’t manage even a strangled chuckle.

“We have a two-day layover,” her mother said. “I’m sure you’re busy now, but I’d love to take you to dinner, or even breakfast, if you can make it.”

“Of course,” Peka said. She couldn’t say anything else.

“Here’s my shipboard number,” her mother said, holding out a scrap of card. Her own card, no doubt, with the number scribbled on the back of it. Peka got up from her chair, only then realizing she hadn’t made any move. Would her mother expect a hug? She couldn’t—but her mother held out only the one hand, and when Peka took the card, her mother was already turning away. “Give me a call when you’ve checked your schedule,” her mother said. “I’m free unless someone hires me.” She laughed again, over her shoulder, but turned away quickly enough that Peka didn’t have to answer.

It was the same card, the familiar name in the same style of lettering. Her mother didn’t need to list her degrees, her honors: alo attenvi, process quality ltd., consulting and the string of access numbers. Anyone who needed Attenvi’s expertise knew what process quality consulting was, knew that Leisha Attenvi had literally written the book—several of them. Had won the awards, had (even more important) saved one company after another from drowning in its own stupidity.

Peka turned the card over and over, and finally stuck it in the minder strip of her desk. She tried not to look around her office, but she knew too well what it was like, what her mother had seen in that brief visit. Automatically, her hands moved across surfaces, straightening everything into perfect alignment. Too late, but she couldn’t help it. Whether her mother said anything or not, she knew what could have been said. The professional does not confuse mess with decoration. Followed by the accusing finger pointing out this and that bit of disorder.

The headquarters of Process Quality Ltd. were of course decorated, by another professional, but her mother’s office (from which she had regular message cubes recorded for Peka) had no clutter, no personal touches. The pictures on the walls had been chosen for their effect on customers; the two photographs were of the Kaalin awards ceremonies.

“Peka…” That was Einos Skirados, the liaison from Traffic Control assigned to this project. She didn’t bother to flip on the visual; she already knew what he looked like, and right now she didn’t want anyone looking at her. Einos, in particular, would be distracting… something about the shape of his nose and the set of his eyes seemed to unhinge her logic processor.

“Yes?”

“The values on the second shuttle approach are nominal with the first—it’s looking good. Hal says they’ll have another done by the end of the shift, if there are no modifications.”

The second shuttle already? She glanced at the clock, and winced. Lamebraining wouldn’t work. She pulled the figures up onto her screen, and checked. Einos was good, but it was her responsibility. The computer’s own comparison showed no deviance.

“How much are the pilots complaining?” she asked.

“About what you’d expect,” Einos said. “But this was Kiis, who’s been in the low quartile, and if he could get it right—”

“We still haven’t had Beckwith,” Peka said. She meant it as a joke. Beckwith, whose shuttle had taken off the com dish, was off the schedule, and complaining bitterly about that.

“I can hardly wait,” Einos said. “I don’t know why they hire people like that.” He sounded priggish, but Peka didn’t mind. Einos never acted as if she were strange for being so careful about things, and she felt less guilty about being attracted to him. Perhaps it wasn’t an accident; perhaps it made sense.

“The numbers look good,” she told Einos, after rechecking the correspondence. “I’ll tell Hal to go ahead and finish the second.”

“Dinner at nineteen thirty?” Einos asked, in the tone that tweaked all her hormonal responses.

“Drat.” She’d forgotten completely. She flipped the video on and caught the startled expression on Einos’ face. “Einos, I’m so sorry—my mother just turned up—” That sounded lame, and worse than the “drat” before it. She was ready to explain that it didn’t matter, that she could still have dinner—her mother would be here for two days—but he interrupted.

“Your mother? The Alo Attenvi? Here?” He glanced around as if she might appear miraculously in his office.

The last twinge of guilt disappeared, swamped in anger and envy. Would anyone ever use that tone about her? “Yes, my mother… she came in on the Perrymos and she asked me to dinner—and I’m sorry, Einos, but I forgot that this was our night.”

“Oh, of course,” he said, releasing any claim on the evening. “You have to see her—I don’t suppose you’d introduce me… if it’s not too much trouble…”

“Maybe later in the visit,” Peka said. “Right now I need to call Hal.” Right now she needed to get far away from her mother. From everyone who hero-worshipped her mother. From the very concept of mothers. But she called Hal instead.

“Glad to hear it’s working well,” he said. “Thought it would—good clear design, and not hard to do the modifications.”

“Thanks,” Peka said.

“Listen—somebody said there’s an Attenvi listed as a passenger on that FTL that just docked… relative of yours?”

Station gossip, not just faster than light but faster than reality. “Yes,” Peka said, feeling helpless. Everyone would know, and everyone would tell her how she should feel about it. “My mother.”

“The Attenvi,” Hal said. He whistled. “Huh. Must be difficult, after you’ve been the Attenvi on station.”

“She’s not staying,” Peka said, more sharply than she meant to.

“Just wants to check up on her little girl,” Hal said, making it almost a question.

“On her way somewhere else,” Peka said. “And I have to get going—we’re having dinner.” She hadn’t told her mother yet, but the way the gossip net worked, her mother would probably be waiting at the right table at the right time even without a formal invitation.

Jacobi Station had been designed to handle outsystem transport, offering more docking and storage space than Janus, the first-built primary station. Peka had arrived before any direct docking of FTL ships was possible. She’d had to travel from starship to station in a little twelve-person hopper, sweating in her p-suit and entirely too aware of the accident rate of near-station traffic in overcrowded situations.

Someday these wide corridors would bustle with traffic; the blank spaces on either side would be filled with shops, hotels, restaurants. Only one was out here now, a pioneer branch of Higg’s, the universal fast-food chain. The concentric blue, green, and purple circles promised that its limited bill of fare would be the same as—or at least reminiscent of—that in every other Higg’s. A bosonburger… an FTL float… Dirac dip… the names were so familiar they didn’t sound silly anymore, and only third graders got a kick out of realizing that they meant something else.

Ahead, a green arch confirmed that the Perrymos was docked safely, its access available. Beyond that arch, the waiting area with its array of padded chairs in muted colors, and a TranStar employee at a desk, a young man whose shaved skull had been tattooed with the TranStar logo. Peka blinked; she hadn’t realized anyone was that much of a brownnose.

“May I help you?”

“I’m here to meet—” My mother tangled with the name, and Peka felt herself flushing, but she got out the more formal “Alo Attenvi.”

“Oh yes. Are you her daughter? She said her daughter was here… you’re lucky to have a mother like her… she doesn’t look old enough….” Peka refrained from violence and waited until the torrent ceased. The man finally quit talking and picked up the shipcom to ask for her mother.

“You’re early,” her mother said, stepping out the access hatch. “Would you like to come aboard and see my cabin?”

“No thanks.” Be trapped in a small space—no doubt immaculate—with her mother?

“Lead on, then,” her mother said cheerfully, and started toward the corridor herself. Peka had to scurry to keep up. Lead on, indeed. She stretched her legs—she was as tall as her mother—and caught up. This was her station, and she would lead the way.

“Do you like it out here?” her mother asked at dinner. They were seated in one of the little alcoves of Fred’s Place, at present the only independent eating place on the station. Since it was two decads to payday, they had the place to themselves except for another pair of passengers from the Perrymos.

Peka nodded, and hurried to swallow her mouthful of fried rice. “It’s… stimulating,” she said. That seemed the safest adjective. Her mother looked up at her.

“Is that all? What about men… are you meeting anyone interesting?”

“They’re fine, Mother, really.” She hadn’t talked to her mother about boys—men—since her sixteenth birthday, when her mother had taken her in for her first implant. I won’t pry, her mother had said, and she hadn’t. It was too late to start now.

“Well… have you heard from your father lately?”

“What brought that up?” she asked, before she could censor it. No question that her mother would notice the hostility.

“Sorry if it’s a touchy point,” her mother said, brows raised. “I only wondered… at one time, I recall, you said you didn’t want to hear from him again.”

“I don’t.” Peka tried not to let the anger out, but it was stuck in her throat, choking her. “I haven’t heard—since graduation, I think.” A graduation her mother had not attended because she was consulting somewhere, in another system, and couldn’t come back for just that day. She had understood even then, but it still rankled.

“I wish you’d tell me what upset you so,” her mother said. Of course her mother didn’t understand; her mother had had a wonderful father, a father who was there. She could not tell her mother what her father had said, those damning words that had put an end to the last of her childhood innocence, her trust. “Please,” her mother said quietly. “It’s been several years, you say. It’s still bothering you. You need to get it out.”

She had never been able to resist that voice when it was quiet and reasonable. She would have to say, but she didn’t have to say it the way he had said it. “He said it was—that I was—just an accident.”

Her mother’s face paled to the color of the tablecloth. “He said what?”

Anger surged out of control. “He said I was an accident!” Peka yelled. “An accident. The great engineer who doesn’t believe in accidents had… an… accident!” From the corner of her eye she saw heads turn, the other two diners glancing quickly toward her and away, and leaning to each other. A waiter paused in midstride, then dodged through the kitchen door.

“No. You were not an accident.” Her mother had flushed now, unbecoming patches of red on her spacer-pale skin.

“Right.” With that great blast, all her strength left her; Peka wanted to sink through the chair into the deck and disappear. She could not look across the table.

“I… loved him,” her mother said, in the same even, reasonable tone. “Louse though he was, in many ways, I did love him. He was everything I wasn’t. Irresponsible, spontaneous, gregarious… just being around him was like an endless party. And he liked me. Loved me, within the limits of his ability…”

“Love is responsibility,” Peka said, quoting. She ran her finger around and around the plate. “Love is acts, not feelings or words.”

Her mother sighed. “I taught you very well. Too well, maybe. Yes, that’s the kind of love parents must have, to be parents together… and any parent to a child, to be a good parent. Anything less won’t survive, won’t sustain the child. But there’s a… a chaotic quality, an incalculable dimension. I fell in love with him, and he with me, and together we engendered you—”

“By accident,” Peka insisted.

“No. Not on my part.” A long pause. “It’s—it’s difficult to explain, and harder now because those feelings are so far back. But—I wanted a child. Wanted his child, his genes mixed with mine, to temper my own rock-ribbed values. He said he wanted a child too, but—as it turned out, he didn’t.”

“He has others—” Peka remembered their pictures, a row of pretty children standing in front of a wide white door.

“Yes. And a compliant, sweet wife who brought them up while he voyaged from system to system.”

“You know her?”

“I met her, of course. Court-ordered family therapy, to determine whether you should be removed from my custody and given to him. Luckily—or I thought it was luckily—his wife was pregnant with twins and didn’t want you. You couldn’t possibly remember, but you were a very imperious three. You explained to the judge that it was rude to drink in front of others without offering them anything. You explained to the therapist when she tried to give you a developmental test that you didn’t make guesses… you either knew the answer or not, and it was foolish to pretend otherwise. She said you were too rigid, and Tarah said she couldn’t possibly handle you and the twins she knew she was carrying.”

Peka thought she did remember the therapist, but not Tarah. She didn’t pursue it. “But if he says I was an accident, why was he trying to get custody?” Peka asked. She had no clear idea of how family law worked, but surely the parent suing for custody had to want the child.

“I don’t like to say,” her mother said, lips tight. Peka knew that look; it was hopeless. But years of training and practice in following chains of logic led her there as if by a map.

“Gramps Tassiday’s estate,” she said. Her mother looked guilty, which confirmed it. “He was after my money?”

“I don’t know that for a fact,” her mother said quickly. She had never allowed herself an expression of bitterness; she had never allowed Peka to express anger or resentment of her absent father. Consider all sides, she had said. Everyone has reasons, she had said. “But it did seem odd that he hadn’t wanted you until after my father died, and the will became available to the public.”

Peka could think of nothing more to say. Her mother went on with her meal; Peka tried to do the same but the food stuck in her throat. She glanced around the restaurant. The couple they’d startled had left; she could imagine the story they’d tell. As her gaze shifted past the entrance again, she saw Einos coming in. She ducked her head, hoping he wouldn’t see her.

“Peka!” Too late. She had to look up, had to see the alert interest on her mother’s face, had to greet him—but he was rushing on, not giving her time. “Peka, there’s a problem with the second collar installation—I hate to interrupt, but—”

She could feel her face going hot; bad enough to have lost her poise with her mother, but to have her mother aware that her work had failed… she managed to smile at her mother. “Excuse me—”

“Of course,” her mother said. “I hope I’ll get to talk to you some more—perhaps if this doesn’t take too long…?”

“Have to see,” Peka said, struggling with a napkin that seemed determined to stick to her lap. She felt like a preschooler again, clumsy and incapable. Einos wasn’t watching her; he was giving her mother the wide-eyed look of admiration he usually gave Peka.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your dinner, ma’am, but I’m glad to have the chance to meet you.” He reached out a hand, which her mother took. “I’m Einos Skirados, in traffic control—we’re really fortunate to have you on the station—your daughter’s been a great help, but there’s this problem—”

Rage flooded Peka as she peeled the napkin off and threw it on the table. The scum-sucking rat was going to ask her mother to solve the problem because he thought she had messed up! And her mother would step in, all cool competence, and show everyone why she was famous, and why Peka would always be Alo Attenvi’s daughter, not someone with a name and career of her own.

Her mother’s voice, ice-edged, stopped her. “Excuse me,” she said to Einos. “Are you offering me a contract?”

Einos turned red himself. “Well—not me—I mean, ma’am, I don’t have the authority myself, but—but I just thought since you were here, and it was your daughter, you could sort of help her out.”

Peka had not seen her mother really angry for years; even now, she was glad when she realized the famous temper was turned on someone else. “Young man, let me make this quite clear. In the first place, I do not take on consulting jobs without a contract. In the second place, I doubt you can afford me—since, as you say, you don’t have authorization from your employer. In the third place, you have a perfectly competent engineer—not only one in whose training I have complete confidence, but a member of my family. Even if you were offering me a contract, I wouldn’t take it—you have insulted my daughter. If she had asked me first, I might advise her—but in the present circumstances, I think the only advice she needs is to have nothing whatever to do with you.”

“But I—” Einos began. Peka’s mother ignored him, and looked at Peka.

“I do hope we’ll have time to chat after you deal with your problem,” her mother said. “You have my number—”

Peka found her voice and her intent at the same moment. “Why don’t you come along to my office—perhaps this will only take a few minutes.”

“Thank you,” her mother said. “Just let me take care of dinner—”

On the way to Peka’s office, her mother said nothing. Peka walked along feeling the edges of what had happened like someone exploring the hole where a tooth had fallen out… something had changed, something important, but she wasn’t sure yet what it meant. Was it just a hole, or would something grow out of it?

In the office, Peka called up the design stats on one screen, and then called Hal. He looked a little surprised, and not much concerned.

“I thought Einos said you were having dinner with your mother… I told him not to bother you.”

“He said it was urgent—some problem with the second collar installation.”

“Yeah, but it could’ve waited an hour or so. But since you’re here—” Hal plunged into a description. As often happened during construction, the electrical and other connections in the area had been installed a little differently than the specifications ordered. “It wasn’t a bad idea, really, because someone moved the whole thing five or six meters to allow for the bulk cargo handler’s turn radius, after they decided to make this the bulk cargo shuttle dock, instead of the one they’d first planned. It makes sense, because this one’s in a direct line to service the FTL traffic when we get it. But you weren’t here when they rerouted the plumbing, and they didn’t document it in the main specs, so you didn’t know. Here’s the modification—” Hal fed in the local scanner’s analysis, and it came up on Peka’s screen.

She glanced at her mother, who was studiously ignoring the screen and looking at the framed diplomas on the wall. She could read nothing of her mother’s expression. She looked back at the screen.

“What I’d like to do,” Hal went on, “is run the connections like so—” New lines, highlighted in the standard red, green, blue, yellow, orange of the necessary components, overlaid the black and white of the original. “My question is whether there’s any reason to worry about the interaction of the control power supply with the main lines here—” An arrow showed, along with the measured clearance.

“Let me check,” Peka said. She wasn’t going to answer off the top of her head, with her mother standing there behind her. She didn’t work that way anyway. On another screen, she called up the relevant references, and considered the influence of incoming shuttle avionics as well. Close, but reasonable—but was there a better solution? She peered at the displays, thinking. Something tickled the side of her head that she thought of as the seat of new ideas. “That’s reasonably safe,” she said to Hal, “but I’d like to come take a look. There’s still a possibility, especially if someone’s onboard systems were running hot for some reason…”

“That’s why I asked,” Hal said cheerfully. “Coming down now?”

“I suppose so. Yes.” She turned to her mother. “I have to go out to the docking bay—you could wait here, or come along—”

“If you don’t mind, I’d love to come,” her mother said.

Did she mind? She wasn’t sure which she would mind more, leaving her mother here to rummage in her office, or taking her along. Five hours before, either would have been intolerable, but now…. “Come on,” she said. “We’ll have to get p-suits somewhere. It’s aired up, but—” Then she remembered whom she was talking to, and shut up. One chapter in her mother’s textbook dealt with safety procedures necessary in chambers at different pressures.

Hal greeted her mother courteously but with none of the covetous glee Einos had expressed. He turned at once to Peka. “Here’s the challenge,” he said, and then stood quietly to let her get a good look at it. She saw at once that Hal’s solution had the virtues of simplicity and directness, which made it hard to put his solution out of her mind to think of her own. She walked back around to the cargo lock side of the docking bay. The bulk handler took up most of the space… it would turn like so… it would have to have service access here and here. She squinted, her mind tickling persistently. Then she saw it.

“Hal, come see this.” He looked where she pointed. “If the bulk handler’s out of service, they’ll push it around here to work on it, and its back panel can bump into this—” she meant the control nexus for the docking collar modification. “Over time, those bumps could shift it enough to allow interference.” She looked around the whole compartment. “First, we’ll need a safety stop on this bulkhead anyway—we don’t want something the mass of that thing bumping it. In fact, we need a double stop, one on the deck and one on the bulkhead.” Hal nodded, and made a note.

“We’re still going to need to reroute things, but I think it should be the other lines. That’s not as bad as it looks—here—” She had sketched it out for him. He took the pad and frowned a moment, then nodded.

“Yes. I see. It takes a bit longer, but it avoids the problem entirely. It’s not a patch but a redesign. Good. Thanks, Peka.”

“You’re welcome,” Peka said. “It’s my job…”

“If you wouldn’t mind—could you come back and give us a go-ahead when we’ve got the rerouting done and the stops in? Just in case?”

“Of course—got an estimate?”

“Couple of hours, I think. If that’s too late—”

“No… you’re already working over shift. Just give me a call; I’ll have my beeper this time.”

Peka led the way out; she signed her mother off the site, and they turned in their p-suits at the section storehouse. Now she was hungry—the dinner she hadn’t eaten left an empty hole in her midsection.

“I don’t know about you,” her mother said, “but I’m still hungry. Is there any place where we can get dessert?’

“Fred’s is the only thing, other than the company mess hall. And they’ll be through serving dinner by now.”

“Ah. Fred’s, then—if you don’t want to come, don’t worry about me. I can find my own way.”

“No… I’ll come too, but I need to go by the office first and log the changes we’re making.”

“Who was that very officious young man who interrupted us?” her mother finally asked, as Peka entered notes into her workstation.

“Einos.” Peka considered her options and made a clean breast of it. “I’ve been going out with him—to the limited extent that’s possible on this station.”

“Oh.” Her mother chewed that over in silence.

“It’s not… um… serious,” Peka said. It might have been, but at the moment she wanted to wring his neck.

“Good,” her mother said. “I mean, it’s your own business, but—backstabbers don’t reform.”

“Then how did you fall for my father?” Peka said, shocking herself. Her mother gave her a look she could not read. “Or was that an accident?”

Her mother laughed. “I thought so, at the time. Not my fault, I told myself. Could happen to anyone, bolt from the blue, I told myself. You weren’t an accident, but he was, I told myself.”

“And now?”

Her mother sighed. “I had years, Peka, to argue that out with myself after you were born, after he left. What is an accident? The effect of a cause you didn’t recognize, you didn’t anticipate. That’s what I was taught, and that’s what I had to face. Why did I fall in love with a bright-eyed, laughing, charming young prince with honey-colored curls and blue eyes?”

“Hormones,” said Peka drily, amazed at her own temerity. Her mother’s laugh this time was almost a bark.

“Excuses,” she said. “Not hormones—that would explain falling in lust, maybe, but not what I felt, for that man. Animals have reasonable ways to choose mates, or the species dies. It was no accident… it was the direct result of my family and my beliefs. Because deep down, I let myself think it was no accident, but that other form of causation, destiny.”

“Destiny?”

“Fate. Luck. Or, in my grandmother’s vernacular, the will of God. Her God, at least, was wont to impose his will pretty firmly—or so she said when imposing it on me. I wanted to believe that there was some supernatural intervention which could get me out of the logical trap I’d built for myself… which could rescue me—”

Peka saw it all, in one flash of insight. “And so you blamed me,” she breathed. “For proving it wasn’t that at all, and you had after all done it to yourself…”

“Good grief, no!” That with enough force, enough stunned surprise and horror, to convince. “I never blamed you. You were the one good thing that came out of it.”

“But you always said—”

“I didn’t want you to make my mistakes, of course. That’s all. I had my family’s mistakes to avoid: women who had married obvious losers out of duty to some social scheme, women who had buried their brains in the waste recycler. A family—a culture really—which believed that accidents not only happen, it’s almost impious to prevent them. After all, how can you work up a good case of blame-and-guilt if there are no accidents?”

Peka had never heard this. She wondered if she were being cozened; her mother had always been smarter. But her mother went on.

“You asked one time why we never visited my relatives that much—I know you thought I disapproved of them.”

“Yes…” Peka said cautiously.

“I was scared of them,” her mother said. “I can’t—even now—talk about my grandmother’s beliefs, her influence on me, without getting a cold sweat.”

Her mother? Her famous, much-honored, much-published mother? Still that twitchy about people from her past? That didn’t bode well for Peka’s own middle and old age. She didn’t say that.

“It was all reaction,” her mother said. “And it always is, generation after generation, and you don’t know it before you’ve gone and had children and started another daisy chain of complication. Accidents have causes. Actions have consequences. I reacted to my family, and—by no accident, but the logic of human development—fell in love with your father. Wanted his child—you cannot know how much, or how dearly, until you want a child of your own. Brought you up to avoid my mistakes, and presented you with the opportunity to make your own, equally grave ones.”

“Like what?” Peka asked, her mouth dry.

Her mother looked at her, that appraising dark eye that had been scanning the inside of her head forever. “So far, my dear, you haven’t… but I can’t assume you won’t. The thing is, you aren’t an accident: neither in your conception, nor in your birth, nor in your upbringing, nor in your self as you are now. You are the result, the consequence, of causes and actions which, if you know them, may allow you more leeway than most. At least you understand—really understand—how causation works.”

“You’ve made me,” Peka said.

“I gave you half your genetic material and all your early training,” her mother corrected. “But you began making yourself from the joining of egg and sperm—and you withstood a good bit of my influence even as a small child.” She grinned, the most relaxed look yet. Peka had always known that grin meant the storm was nearly over; her mother’s good humor, once aroused, lasted far longer than her tempers. “And the further you go, the more you will be your own creation.”

“Another safety expert,” Peka said, not quite as a question.

“Not like me,” her mother said. “I didn’t hover, while you were in college, but they kept telling me—and I’ve looked at your work here. You don’t solve the same problems the same way I do. You have a… a quirk, a twist, to your work that I find startling—but very elegant, once I understand it.”

“You do?” Peka couldn’t keep her voice from squeaking. She choked back the Really? Really? that wanted to beg for more.

“Yes,” her mother said. She wasn’t looking at Peka now; she was looking at the plots on the wall. “Look at this—this collar redesign. I’d have changed it from the annular orifice to a linear slot, perhaps with one end square—something different from the other end. That would have meant redesigning the shuttle docking probe and the collar, classic lock-and-key design. Your solution would never have occurred to me.”

“But it—” She didn’t want to say “but this was obvious” to her mother, her sainted and brilliant mother for whom it had not been obvious.

“You’re not me; I’m not you.” That platitude came out with all the force of divine decree. Peka wondered if her mother’s head still echoed with her grandmother’s religious fervor. “Your work is elegant, my dear—not only right, but right with a flair all your own. That’s not an accident either—I suspect your father’s genetics did exactly what I’d hoped, and gave you some abilities I don’t have.” Her mother smiled at her, a smile without an edge. Then she yawned, and blinked. “On the other hand, I’m thirty years older than you, and I’m running out of steam. If I want morning to feel like good fortune, I’d better skip dessert and go back to my berth.”

Peka came back to the shuttle docking bay three hours later, when Hal called. She had walked out to the ship with her mother, then stopped on the way back for a bosonburger at Higg’s. Now, as she nodded over the changes Hal and his crew had made, and entered them all in the main stats file, she felt better than she had all day.

Not an accident. Ladders of causation fell from the windows of the burning tenement, step after step leading to safety… her mind might be going up in smoke, but she could still escape. Acts have consequences. Accidents don’t just happen.

When Einos Skirados showed up in her office the next day, with a box of her favorite candy and a bouquet of apologies, her first reaction was the old familiar one that had made her so happy to go out with him.

She looked at the bright brown eyes, the sleek dark hair, the composed face; her mind brought up his resume. Here was her accident, if she lied to herself; she had the hormones, and plenty of them.

“Not only accidents have causes,” her mother had pointed out as she left. “So do the best plans ever laid, the ones that come to good ends.”

She smiled at Einos Skirados with no more than professional courtesy. “No, thank you,” she said. “I already have plans for this evening.”

And so she did. Somewhere in her future loomed the fortunate accident she wanted… and she had better start causing it.