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The Delbosque house was a rambling old structure located behind a ranch of some sort. As they drove in, Mrs. Delbosque pointed out several barns, corrals, and pens, and a large main house near the road.
"You see those? This is a dude ranch. You know what's a dude ranch? People pay to come here and play like cowboys. Many people were here at spring break but now it’s almost deserted. Here's my house. You be safe here. I fix us lunch and you can have a nice siesta and you feel much better."
The lunch was like nothing she’d ever eaten before. The various dishes filled the house with such savory aromas that she nearly fainted waiting for them to be served. It didn’t seem a good idea to ask what each was, but she wholeheartedly thanked Mrs. Delbosque for the meal. If ordinary working people ate food this good, what would wealthier people eat, she wondered?
After Mrs. Delbosque went back to work, leaving Anneyn in the house alone, she was no longer sleepy. She felt defeated and frustrated and ashamed of herself. There was a lot to think about, too many questions and not enough answers. She could try to contact Hleo, but even if she was successful, he might not speak to her. He was such a stickler for regulations. How could he help anyway?
Tiny whirring noises—insects, she hoped—came from the trees around the house. Much of what she had seen so far she recognized from pictures, movies, and books. The reality was much more vivid. If only she had the leisure to explore.
Her profound isolation began to weigh on her. She'd been much too stubbornly single-minded when Hleo had told her about the meteoroids. It was one of her old problems, and part of the reason she had been sent on the mission in the first place.
She had the necessary rank and intelligence, so how difficult could it be when her only companion would be a station manager built into the machinery? It should have been simple. Instead, she’d followed her old impulses and gotten herself into serious trouble—and not just herself, but the mission, and her people.
Sitting on the Delbosque’s back porch looking at the silent trees in the canyon through the screen, her thoughts turned to her home, so very far away and long ago. Her father insisting she marry Herecyn, a man she couldn’t love. Her life would have been totally different then—maybe not better, given Herecyn’s coldness—but at least she wouldn’t be marooned in a world of strangers.
Fed up with what he considered her selfishness (she preferred selectiveness), her father “promoted” her and had the Tribal Council send her off on the biggest mission her people had ever undertaken. Deep down, she felt she’d been banned, sent off on an expedition that had little hope of success. The thinking was, it might teach her to value her obligations to the tribe. When she returned—if she returned, perhaps with her tail between her legs—she might be more cooperative. But no. Instead, she had found a way to ruin a difficult mission that would delight the naysayers.
To calm her nerves and explore a bit, she left the porch and walked through the nearby trees to some huge boulders at the bottom of the canyon. She leaned against a rock in the warm sun and stared at the ground.
What else could I have done?
Could she have waited until a shuttle to the International Space Station was in orbit and flown around it in the escape pod, maybe holding a sign to the window? That would have created a sensation, for sure. But a shuttle flight wasn’t scheduled as far as she knew, and time was running out on those meteoroids.
Hleo could have sent a warning by internet, but the internet was full of hoaxers as it was. Or locate another expert like Dr. Harcroft and try again to make him or her understand?
Well, no, that wasn’t any more likely to work than it had the first time. Being a young-looking female was apparently a disadvantage—Harcroft’s body language showed that he thought she was out of her mind. An older man, perhaps with a beard, might have been more credible to a self-important professional.
That being taken seriously would be so difficult hadn’t occurred to her. It wasn't well thought through. And now she was in deep trouble. Idiot!
The peaceful afternoon was interrupted only by the twittering of unseen birds until a black and white cat emerged from behind some boulders, making throaty rrroooowing sounds. People kept cats as pets, she knew, but some cats were wild, too. This one was a beautiful animal.
The cat sat and looked at her, stuck a back leg out and licked it five or six times. Then it got up and walked directly to her. To her intense pleasure, it began purring loudly and rubbing back and forth against her pant legs.
Just as she was about to bend down to touch it, there came a growing whapping sound, getting louder each second. Looking upwards she saw, and felt, a huge helicopter passing low overhead and thundering out of sight.
The cat was gone. I’ll do the same, she thought, and hurried back to the house to sit on the porch and await Mrs. Delbosque's return.
By the time Mrs. Delbosque came home from work, shadows had nearly filled the canyon. The air, still light and refreshing, had taken on a distinct chill.
But two hours later, having experienced delicious frijoles, amazingly fragrant tortillas, and with her tongue burning from Mrs. Delbosque's salsa, her mind had been diverted from her problems by the lively family. The husband, a round, mustachioed man named Gustavo, left the house to take care of some chores in the barn, and the four children clustered around the new guest and peppered her with questions.
They wanted to know her name. “Darcy” was in general use on earth, she knew. Her real name would have been too hard for them to pronounce. In all her reading on the moon she had never encountered another “Anneyn,” her given name.
The oldest daughter, Luisa, a junior at Sul Ross State University in Alpine, asked where she was from.
Quickly relying on her memory of earth’s geography to avoid further questions, she answered "Canada."
The middle two girls, Clara and Maria, wanted to know if she spoke Spanish. She had to admit she could not.
"But you can teach me," she offered, which started them giggling.
The youngest child, eight-year-old Geraldo (though he corrected his mother that it was "Jerry"), was even bolder than his sisters.
"Can I touch it?" he asked, of her long hair. She let him fool with it while she tried to copy the Spanish of Maria and Clara. Her clumsy attempts at the rolled "rr" in their nursery rhyme, Rapido corren los carros cargados de azúcar del ferrocarril, the sugar-loaded railroad cars run rapidly, made them shriek with laughter.
Luisa was too sophisticated for such silliness, shushing some of Jerry's more direct questions.
"No seas tonto, Jerry," Don't be stupid. Silly or not, all the children called her "ma'am," or "miss."
At about ten pm, Mrs. Delbosque put her hands on the table and said "Ay, mijos, es tiempo para acostarse.” It’s bedtime, kids.
The children were getting sleepy, it was Friday, and they needed to get to sleep. She showed Darcy to a cot in a tiny room containing a sewing machine, several dressers, and piles of material, and after pointing out where the back washroom was, bid her good night.
Darcy felt better than she had all day. She was tired but not hungry, and relieved that she could interact with people in a seemingly normal way. Most of the people in the movies, television, and books she had encountered on the internet depicted desperate people riddled with conflicts and problems.
That did not seem to be the case here. The Delbosque family was a lovely family, the real thing—boisterous, but congenial.
She washed up, then fell into the cot, and pulled the two quilts over herself. It took her five minutes to warm up, but by that time she was asleep.
