Riddled Space Page 13

  “What?” asked John, startled. “Oh, the smile. I was just remembering your 'fight' with Charles Imperiale.”

  Celine relaxed. “A hundred bucks was cheap. Nobody ever bothered me again.” Celine suddenly smiled, and John felt the temperature go up at least five centigrade. “I didn't think of that. Get this—Commander Daniels ordered me to put down the hundred the next time someone wouldn't take no for an answer.”

  “That's why the punishments for the enforcers weren't that severe. I wondered at the time. So now, you're safe.”

  “Yes, but a phalanx forms up wherever I go, hoping that someone else tries to make a play.” She sighed. “It gets old real fast.”

  John considered. “Well, you do have a reputation for being, well…”

  “A bitch?” she said sweetly.

  “I was going to say 'standoffish'.”

  “It doesn't matter. Alone is good.”

  John sighed, then velcroed his tools back onto their carrier and turned away from his work to face her. “Celine, this is your first hitch, right?”

  “You know it is,” she said.

  “You think alone is good. I can tell you from personal experience that it is not. Space gets to you up here. You look down on the Earth, so green and blue and inviting, but sometimes it looks huge and about to squash you. Or you watch the Moon outside the window, or the stars, and you can feel the Earth, like a giant balloon just over your shoulder, ready to crush you.

  “I've been up here, on the Moon, and groundside for twenty years, Celine. I've seen men and women by the hundreds. Most get through just fine, and spend the rest of their lives trying to describe the majesty of space to the grounders. But a few never adjust. They brood about the spectacle outside. They become agoraphobes, frightened by the wide-open spaces, and we have to send them back downstairs before they get critical. I had to clean up one suicide, and that was quite enough for me.

  “Alone is not good. We don't want to lose you, Celine. You should connect to others besides me. I would recommend talking to Commander Daniels about being alone. Don't worry, I won't say anything to her about it.”

  “I'm doing just fine, though I will talk to the Commander.” She drifted upward until she was face to face with him.

  “Don't worry about me, John. It's nice to know that someone cares about me, platonically. Everyone else just sees me as a target.”

  “And you must be heartily sick of it,” he said, picking up the circuit probe again and turning back to the conduit. “This circuit won't fix itself.”

  He went back to work. Celine went back to her scan of the boards, running over the words in her mind.

  Was John Hodges just following orders; being a friend because Commander Daniels' said so? Or was this a more elaborate move on his part? It was hard for her to tell. The image of Garth, speckled with his own filth, screaming at her from the simulator chair, was never far away. She resolved that day to never be under the thumb of a man again. Maybe it was possible to be side-by-side, instead.

  ***

  Celine did talk with Commander Daniels about the agoraphobes. In the weeks that followed, Celine tried to be less standoffish, the crew still widely regarded her as the Ice Queen. She had shown no romantic interest in any man or woman. She rarely sat and chatted with anyone during off-duty time.

  News of Garth's attempts to get to space eventually leaked up to the Chaffee. His newest tactic was trying out for a space-bound job with any contractor that would have him, but every time he seemed have it locked, UNSOC, through the Astronaut Office, had the man tossed off the project. The mood towards Celine transformed as the story spread. The women instantly understood and respected her. The tough guys, secure in their manhood, were furious at Garth for being such a bully. The sensitive guys, knowing that Garth waited Earthside, stopped trying to hook up with Celine. The catcalls subsided. They never went away, of course, but now they were more playful than serious.

  Invasion of the Ankle Biters

  UNSOC Control Room, New York City, January 11 2082

  “Aw, dammit, is it really that time of year again?” growled Gus Blukofski, Head of the CAPCOM “C” shift in the UNSOC Control Room. “Overrun with spoiled brats.”

  Gayatri looked over from her seat at the right-hand side of the Control Room. “What kids?”

  “It's another one of those Science Sleepovers, but this one is for the dips,” said Gus. “Diplomats' kids are the worst. They soak up that attitude from their parents—they are the voice of their country, disrespect me and you disrespect the great and glorious state of Brokenstan.”

  Gayatri Vedya held her finger up to her lips. “You are too harsh, Gus.”

  “You don't know. I've been CAPCOM for almost three years now, you're just a few months along. Every April, it's Bring Your Spawn to Work Day, but that date is tolerable—the Astronaut Corps and Controllers have a tight bond. Even if one individual kid gets a little loony or asks a broke-dick question, we can handle it fine. It's when these oh-so-sophisticated diplo-crumb-crushers start making you justify your existence that it gets on my last nerve.”

  “I guess I'll find out, then. When are they due?”

  “June, this flier says.”

  Gayatri laughed. “It's only January! Gus, only you would spend six months fretting over something that's only going to take an hour, more or less.”

  “Spawn Day is closer—April.”

  “Then schedule some vacation days,” she said.

  “Can't. I've already put in my annual slate. You know how Subby is—if you can't foresee that you need a day off at least six months in advance, then you have no vision at all.” Gus flexed a pencil dangerously close to the breaking point. “Sixteen more years. Then I can retire.”

  Gayatri glanced at the status panels, then leaned back in her chair. “Is it really that terrible here? After all, you should be going up there again pretty soon. You're going for that open selenologist position, aren't you?”

  Gus gripped the arms of his chair. “Yes. But that doesn't mean that's where I'll get assigned. Subby knows I hate him, and that alone is enough to get me assigned to External Stores on the Chaffee. Floating around outside, waiting for some flake of paint or a bolt from the Gemini era to drill into my chest isn't my idea of a fun day.”

  Gayatri stole a glance at his office, but the windows remained dark, the blinds drawn tight. “He can't last forever, you know. He's never going to get promoted—he's in the one area where he can maximize the graft for everyone above him. Besides, if they do promote him, the Chaffee graft stops, which means his income drops.”

  Gus grunted. “He'd refuse promotion?”

  “Unless they can make up for the lost payola, and I don't think they really know how much he is skimming. But one of these days, he's going to do something too stupid for the UNESCO D.G. to ignore. Then he's going to be out on his ear.”

  “We'll both be in rocking chairs on the porch by then, Gayatri. God, I hate this whole stinking setup. Subby, and these freaking know-it-all kids. Gah!”

  “Time for shift change, Gus. Remember how Subby chewed Fred and me out for dawdling. No telling if he's going to look at the log to see when we changed.”

  “We're all co-enablers, you know.” Gus stood and theatrically saluted Gayatri. “I relieve you, Controller Vedya.”

  Gayatri wore a faint smile as she rose from her seat. “I stand relieved. Ah, Gus. One day you will look back on this and wonder how we stood it at all. The reason is the same for all of us. Space.”

  “You know it. Freefall or Lunar gravity, I don't care. Just off of this ball, and out where people are real. Now get out of here before Subby starts snipping at you. Safe home, Gayatri.”

  Roque

  UNSOC Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, March 3 2082, 0930 EDT

  Roque Maximiano Zacarías scowled at the message on his screen. The crystal was growing nicely—a perfectly round bar of yttrium-aluminum garnet doped with some neodymium—was being pulled slowly out of the cruc
ible by a thin wire. Two meters long, ten centimeters across, and made entirely from Lunar materials. The fact that it could shoot a lethal bar of laser light really didn't matter to him. He just wanted to see how long he could grow it.

  Roque was the top materials scientist in the UN Space program. For twenty years, his home was the Chaffee. Normally, Roque would never have been allowed to stay aboard for so long. But around the halfway point of his first tour, a piece of space junk the size of a rice grain plowed into the back of his spacesuit. The impact sprayed hot metal droplets into Roque's spine, paralyzing him from the waist down.

  He once said, “My legs might be useless, but my brain is unhurt.” Commanders come and go, UNSOC veterans said, but Roque will stay in space forever.

  It was Roque who perfected the process that The Works used to break down Lunar rock into aluminum, iron, oxygen, and common sand. When McCrary told Roque about finding the carbonaceous chrondite meteor, Roque saw not just a source of carbon dioxide for the oxygen extraction system. Carbon was difference between brittle iron and ductile steel. The tarry substance, with careful manipulation, became nylon and other plastics.

  But Lisa Daniels, Chaffee's Commander and his close friend, was concerned about something much different.

  “Roque,” she said. “We've got to have this space for paying tenants. Besides, what do you want with such a large crystal?”

  “Oh, I suppose that if I really wanted to, we could make a few dozen and terrify the world with an orbital weapons system,” he said. “But that would earn us a missile or hundred. I just want to see how big I can grow it, that's all.”

  Lisa smiled as she patted his hand. “Roque, they don't care about lasers, they just want the rare earths. UNSOC is pushing us to maximize the income generated from the Chaffee. If you take over a manufacturing space just to grow a big crystal, it better be a hunk of diamond.”

  Roque smiled back. “Even if I did make a diamond, old Subby would saw off a quarter of it for his own piggy bank.”

  Lisa darted a quick glance towards the hatch. “Better watch it. Some of the new spacers might be reporting to Director-General Herr Doctor Subramanyan Venderchanergee. And he's petty enough to order you shipped home.”

  Roque groaned. Just mentioning the name of Subramanyan Venderchanergee tended to do that.

  “Yes, Lisa, I will be a good boy,” he said sadly. “I remember when space was somewhat pure, before the bureaucrats and their fees began dirtying it.”

  “You will never lose that romantic streak, Roque. That's why you're such a pleasure to work with.” She straightened up from her zero-gee crouch and spoke with all the authority of her office.

  “Roque, as your commander, I request that you limit your crystal growth experiments to your own lab compartment. And no lasers!”

  Roque levered his body upright. “Understood, Commander Daniels.”

  She hugged him briefly then turned to go, leaving Roque with a faint smile and a baseball-bat-sized crystal floating in the air.

  Reach Out and Touch Someone

  UNSOC Space Station Roger B. Chaffee, April 7, 2082, 1900 hrs

  Tuesday night. Tyra's probably home. Let's see, it's 2300 GMT, which should make it just after seven at night on the East Coast. Good time to call.

  John Hodges floated into Astrogation. Kaity Hatfield was on duty, and John relaxed. Kaity was a good egg, in her mid-forties, and was cool about personal calls.

  “Hey, Kaity,” John said as he floated in to the cubic. “Any problem if I make a call downstairs?”

  “Work or home?” she asked.

  “Home.”

  “Sure, no problem. CAPCOM reports Subby's gone home, so there's no static from there.”

  “Ah. If you could,” John began.

  Kaity looked at him and peered closer. “Encyrpt and scramble, sure. No record and no eavesdroppers. Give me a minute to set it up with the ground. I can repeat these screens to the work cubby, give you a little more privacy if you want.”

  John smiled sadly. “Thank you, I'd really appreciate that.”

  Five minutes later, John was looking into the weary face of Tyra.

  “Good evening Tyra. It's so good to see you.” He smiled into the camera.

  “John. What do you want?” Her voice was absolutely flat, completely neutral.

  Oh, damn. She's pissed at me.

  “I haven't talked to you in about a week, I thought I'd call and see if there's anything you needed.”

  Tyra dropped all of her pretenses. “And what if there was? What if I needed a new water pump for the boiler on this ancient furnace in this palace you've stuck me into? Are you going to fly down from your perch in heaven to make it all better?”

  I don't deserve this shit. “What, is the furnace acting up? Wait, it's April. Why's the furnace on? I've been following the weather—it's late spring—you should be having great weather!”

  “It's so kind of you to look down on us earthworms and notice our little troubles,” she said. “No, I'm doing just fine. That is, I would be if I had signed up for a convent instead of a husbandless marriage.”

  John carefully sighed so the camera wouldn't pick it up. So we're back to that. How many laps are we going to run around this track tonight?

  Ten minutes later, Tyra had run out of steam and turned the phone over to the children. John talked lovingly to them. If Tyra was not receptive to his overtures, he wanted to ensure that his kids knew he loved them.

  “Did you get the moon rocks I sent down?” he asked them.

  “Yes, Dad. Why are they green? I thought you said that the Moon wasn't made out of green cheese.”

  John chuckled. “That's just a saying. The rock is olivine. It's a mineral made out of aluminum, silicon, magnesium, and oxygen. Some of this air that I’m breathing came out of a rock just like that, roasted on the Moon and sent here in big tanks. Without it, we'd probably have to abandon the station and come back to Earth.” In the distance, he heard the front door open and close. The kids all turned and looked before Tyra snatched the tablet back from them.

  “Maybe it would be a good thing if they did. Then I'd have a husband, instead of a stranger that comes home every six months for an oil change and lube job.”

  “Let's not go back there tonight, Tyra, please?”

  “All right. I have to go. Look, everything's fine down here, no problems with the furnace, kids are getting good grades. I know you're coming down sometime this summer. We're going to have to talk. And do something more than talk. I want you on the ground, Mr. Hodges, get me? Or else.”

  John knew better than to ask what 'else' meant. Divorce. In the back of his mind, his mother's image cavorted.

  “We will talk. There has to be a solution, Tyra. We can't keep doing this to each other.”

  “Got that right! All right, I'm gonna go. Good night.”

  As her finger came into frame to stab the 'off' icon, John heard a burst of sound. It was almost like a male voice. But it could also be just an artifact of the encryption software.

  Yeah. That's it. She'd never do that to me.

  Told you! his mother's image chanted, over and over. Married a whore! Banging someone eeeelse, she's banging someone eeeelse. He gripped his head with both hands, trying to squeeze the sound out. The voice continued, over and over, wearing a rut in his brain. Married a whore! Told you! I told you, but you wouldn't listen!

  “John!”

  “Huh?” He looked up to see Celine in a hastily pulled-on jumpsuit. Her hair formed a blonde halo around her features. Whatever else was running around his brain, it was blasted away by the sight. So was his ability to speak. The communications headphones were hanging in midair, drifting away from him.

  Celine reached down and drew him, limp and unresisting, off the perch he inhabited. She turned and tapped her foot on a support stanchion.

  She's really getting good at freefall maneuvering, a dispassionate part of his brain noted. She got him going in a straight line behind her, the
n let go of his hand. He drifted after her as she went down a corridor. She passed some off duty spacehands who grinned at her appearance. They then looked at John and their faces registered shock.

  She tapped the wall, opening up a bit of distance between him and her. She whirled suddenly, braced against a wall, caught John, and redirected him ninety degrees into the galley. Eventually, she got him strapped to a perch, with a table-top in front of him and a cooling bulb of coffee in front of him.

  John saw that she was studying him, carefully. He made no effort to return the scrutiny. His mind was curiously blank. He knew he was in a fugue, but he had no way of knowing how to get back to, what, normal? What was normal? Normal was a loving wife, a supportive family, and no male voices at the end of phone calls.

  His mind rebelled at that line of thought, returning to a blank state. Wait. Something will happen.

  A sharp crack, and John's nostrils filled with burning ammonia vapor. He reared back suddenly, trying to escape the stench. His body bounced off padding and would have gone rebounding around the compartment if his legs hadn't been strapped down.

  He blinked several times, trying to quell the stinging in his eyes. Several sneezes cleared the ammonia from his nostrils and the eye irritation. He could feel his mind snap back into command from its brief vacation. He looked around quickly.

  He was strapped to a gurney in the small cubic allotted to medical events. The physicians' assistant was putting a white lozenge into a plastic bag and sealing it. John looked around. Lisa was across the room, concern stamped onto her face. Celine—what was she doing here, she hated him!—was further back, leaning on a bulkhead. He looked behind, above and below him, but the four of them were it.

  “I think he's going to be okay, Commander. I'll leave you three here—you need to bring him up to speed.” The PA left the cubby, and velcroed the privacy curtain over the opening.

  Lisa held up her hand. “Let us tell it first,” she said, turning to Celine.

  “I was just getting ready for bed when Kaity Hatfield called me. You were just sitting there on the perch with a blank look. Kaity couldn't leave the board, so she asked if I could come and wake you up.”