The Girl Who Wasn't There

by G Scott Huggins

  Then darkness, and welcoming shadow. He reached out, and Jael, one hand anchored to the airlock hatch, yanked him to a stop with her own considerable strength.

  A flare of light caused the edges of the dome to flash with a painful intensity. The shadows of the micro craters outside looked sharp enough to cut your outsuit open on them. It was as though a piece of the sun had come to the Moon. Just meters away, dust from Landing Pad Two and its surroundings whipped past, falling in vacuum.

  Paul could have reached out and stuck his hand into the deadly storm of light. All he could hear was the echo of his breathing, and Jael’s, in his earphones. All he could feel was his heart pounding under the uncontrolled heaving of his own lungs.

  “Too…close…” he panted, “We. Are. Not.”

  “Doing that again,” Jael finished for him. They looked at each other. Then they started to laugh, more from relief than from anything else. How long has it been since we finished each other’s sentences? Paul thought. It sometimes felt as if coming to the Moon had forced them apart, keeping them on opposite sides of everything, like the Moon did with the tides on Earth. And just now, they had come together.

  “Let’s get inside,” Paul said. He cycled the airlock door and shut it behind them.

  Pressure returned with hurricane force, by design. Jets of high-pressure nitrogen blasted the dust from their suits, especially their legs. Lunar dust was a constant irritant, and the airlocks were designed to return as much of it as possible to the outside. Vacuum slits opened in the sides of the airlock, cycling the whole atmosphere through ultrafine filters. Finally, the numbers on their helmet HUDs went green, indicating that the airlock was once again pressurized with Earth-standard twenty-one percent oxygen, and they folded back their helmets and stowed their air tanks.

  Stuffing his gloves back inside his thigh pockets, Paul saw that Jael’s face was pale and tight. “Hey,” he said. “You okay?”

  “I’m fine!” she snapped, then softened. “Sorry. I’m still a little on edge. Actually, I was just thinking it’s too bad that we’ll never figure out where he went, now. All the tracks are going to have been blown away by the blast.”

  “Yeah,” said Paul. The tracks by the port would still be preserved, if blurred, but those leading to the pad would have been scoured clean. Paul knew Jael was wondering the same thing that he was: who would stroll out across a landing pad? Or ride a robot across one. Whoever it was, they were either an insane risk-taker…or had a copy of all the flight plans and was betting they would be followed. Which meant, again, an insane risk-taker, unless it had been a legitimate maintenance worker. But one of those wouldn’t slack off to peer inside the gym, would they? And why? Maintenance crew could come to the gym same as anyone else.

  “Thanks for coming back for me,” Jael said softly. “I just bounced a little high, there.”

  “Hey, it’s all right,” said Paul. “No harm came of it.”

  But he couldn’t have been more wrong. Just then the inner airlock hatch swung open. A Secutor identical to all the others stood bracketed by the opening. “Paul and Jael Wardhey,” it said. “You will present yourselves at your family’s quarters. Now.”

  It spoke in their mother’s voice.

  Chapter 3

  Constable Mom

  The Secutor walked them all the way back to the Wardhey family quarters. That’s how bad it was. Jael met Paul’s eyes and took the lead. They walked through the outer parlor into the large main room where their father sat at his workbench.

  Gavin Wardhey was a thin man with thick glasses. His thick hair was practically all white with streaks of pepper through it. He wore comfortable faded jeans and a flannel shirt. He looked up at them, and Jael could see a worried relief light his eyes just before it faded, and his mouth set in a thin line.

  “Your mother wants to see you…” He let the words hang. “In her office.”

  “In her office?” Paul said, hope draining out of his voice.

  “Yes,” said their father, and turned back to the high-definition screen he was designing his latest part on.

  Jael swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry, and walked over to the door. She knocked.

  “Come in here.”

  Jael pushed open the door. She wanted to freeze there, but she could feel Paul at her back, so she crutched two steps forward, coming face to face with their mother.

  Chief Constable Erevis Wardhey looked up from her seat and folded her arms, facing her children. She was taller than their father by two inches, and her immaculately-pressed green uniform, which she always wore while on-duty, even in her home office, seemed to echo the lines of her sharp, elegant face under a tight, coiffed cap of black hair shot through with only a few streaks of silver. Her brown eyes might have been chips of topaz.

  She took a deep breath through her nose. When she spoke, it was so softly that Jael had to strain to hear her.

  “Do you two imagine that boredom is one of my chief problems here?”

  “No,” said Jael.

  “No, ma’am,” said Paul.

  Their mother fixed Jael with her eyes. “When you break the regulations of this colony, you do not only endanger yourselves, from which I can not save you,” her voice cracked like a whip. “You also endangered anyone who might have seen you out there and decided they had to come to your rescue. And if that person had called the tower crew, they might have decided to tell that approaching ship to wave off. Which might or might not have happened in time, and which therefore endangered every person on that ship, and every person in this colony!” Her voice rose to a shout.

  Jael’s eyes burned. Whenever she did anything wrong, it always ended up endangering the whole colony. But Jael knew she was right about the ship, and her stomach filled with a hollow ache.

  “But you didn’t think about that,” their mother went on, dropping her voice. “And when I make my report for this week, I am going to have to explain just who went through that emergency airlock, and anyone who cares to examine it, and who looks at the landing logs, will see just how close you two came to causing a major incident on Landing Pad Two. And that person, whoever it may be, will have to wonder why I should be in charge of enforcing this colony’s regulations when I apparently cannot do so within my own homestead!”

  Behind them, their father cleared his throat softly. Jael had not heard him approach. Their mother’s eyes stabbed behind them, blazing, and then cooled. She nodded. “Are either of you hurt?”

  Hey, at least that’s in the top three of things you thought of, Jael didn’t say. “No,” she said.

  “We were shielded by the colony’s outer wall from the blast,” Paul added.

  Their mother nodded again, and a little of the tension left her shoulders.

  “Report, Deputy,” she said, her voice growing clipped and official. “I will also have to append a reason for your decision to egress the colony.” And it had better be good did not need to be said.

  Paul nodded. “We were finishing up our exercise time at the dome, ma’am, when Jael saw someone peering into the gymnasium port. Jael realized that no one should be out so near the landing pad and reported it to me. I called you on your line, but was unable to get through, and…”

  Their mother held up a hand. “Did you see this person yourself?”

  “No, ma’am, by the time I turned to look, the person was gone.”

  “So whoever I saw out there was the person who endangered all those people,” said Jael. “Not us.”

  Paul winced. Jael’s mother fixed her with her eyes. “No one else used an airlock to access the landing field,” she said. “If they had, then I would have been informed by the base security logs, just the way I was informed about you. Did that occur to you?”

  “But it didn’t…” Jael began.

  “Did. That. Occur. To you?” her mother repeated.

  “No,” growled Jael.

  “You will have your turn, Jael,” her mother said. “Right now, I am talking to my deputy
.” She turned back to Paul. “So you didn’t see anything, but took a bystander’s word for it that there really was someone out there, and decided that was a good reason to break regulations and egress the station into a restricted area?”

  Paul nodded. “Yes, ma’am. I trusted my sister’s observation.”

  Not that she ever would, Jael thought, glaring at her mother.

  “Then why didn’t it occur to you that perhaps I already had the situation in hand?”

  “I reasoned that if you did have the situation in hand, I would have seen the Secutors you had dispatched quickly and I would then be able to return from the outside. However, if you had refused my call for another reason, and were unaware of the situation, I would be leaving a potentially dangerous situation unaddressed, which would be failing in my duty.”

  Their mother gave him a grudging nod. “But you decided to egress the station with your sister to investigate. You involved a bystander, thus doubling the danger to the colony’s personnel in case the danger you were worried about actually existed. Why?”

  Paul sighed. “No excuse, ma’am. I thought Jael could handle herself as well as I could.”

  “That’s not the point, and you know it,” their mother said. “As my deputy, I rely on you to think of the safety of the people of this colony first and foremost. If you were acting as my son, your behavior in exiting the colony was inexcusable. And if you were acting as my deputy, your responsibility was to protect its people, in this case, your sister, as well as anyone who may have been outside. Paul, if you act like a boy who’s letting his sister tag along for fun, that makes people question your judgment. That’s already easy enough for them to do because of your age. And if they question your judgment, they’ll question your orders. Orders you may have to give to save lives. And that endangers everyone here. Is that clear, deputy?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Good.” She sighed. “Sit down, both of you.”

  That was easier said than done. Paul took the chair in the corner, behind the apparatus that took up the bulk of the office’s space: the MARTINet. It looked like a full virtual-reality rig hooked up to an elliptical machine, which was almost what it was. When their mother stood inside it, the Manned Augmented Robotic Tactical Interface Network could directly access every Secutor in Thunderhead. The rest of the office was taken up by their mother’s mainframe console and a dozen monitor screens. Jael was left sitting so close to her mother their knees nearly touched.

  “What did you think you saw?” her mother asked.

  “I didn’t think I saw anyone; I saw someone!” Jael knew her voice was too loud, but she didn’t care.

  Her mother pinched the bridge of her nose. “Jael, eyewitness reports are notoriously unreliable, even under the best of circumstances. Could you please understand that this is professional, not personal? Now, tell me about it.”

  Then why don’t you ever ask Paul what he thinks he saw? He’s the one you trust, and it’s not because his eyes are better than mine. I’m even the older twin, and I don’t need my legs to see, Jael thought, but she described what she had seen.

  “And whoever it was, he wasn’t wearing a standard outsuit. The helmet material was black.”

  Erevis frowned. “Some people do have specialized outsuits. There’s no regulation against it.”

  “But there is a regulation against being out around the landing pads,” said Jael, without thinking.

  Her mother speared her with a hard glance. “Yes. There is.” She sighed. “Well, there’s no time like the present. We’ll just see if there’s any evidence of this person you thought you saw. Hekate,” she addressed her system. “Retrieve all vlogs of security cameras covering Landing Pad Two. Time…” she paused, “Minus fifteen to minus ten minutes.”

  The lights of the office dimmed as the blank wall of their mother’s office brightened. The screen split into four camera angles, each covering about a quarter of the huge landing field.

  “None of those cover the gymnasium,” said Jael.

  Her mother nodded absently and gestured at the wall-screen, which further split into six.

  “Add security cameras zero-zero-three-four-niner and zero-zero-three-halo-six.” The new sections showed the airlock through which they had come and a view down an arc of the gigantic dome of the gymnasium.

  Jael frowned and glanced at her brother. He met her gaze out of the corner of his eye and nodded. There’s no good view of the side of the gymnasium, where the tracks were. And therefore, no good video of whoever I saw, she thought. The camera pointed almost directly at the gymnasium was angled too low to see even the bottom of the dome, and the camera pointing down the dome’s surface was obstructed by the curve of the dome itself.

  The waiting seemed interminable to Jael. But there was nothing. Then, a Secutor trundled slowly toward the edge of the landing pad. Paul and Jael glanced at each other. That Secutor was, as far as they could tell, exactly on the track they had seen leading away from the mysterious footprints. They fastened their eyes to the screen. But there was nothing out of the ordinary about the Secutor. Certainly no one—and nothing—was riding on it. It detoured around the pad and out of view.

  “And there you are,” said their mother. Paul and Jael saw themselves exiting into the lunar surface, silently discussing where they were going. Eventually, they passed out of the camera’s view.

  The playback ended. Their mother called up the lights. “Paul, your next shift on Active Duty is noon to 1700 tomorrow?”

  “Yes.”

  “Jael, when is yours?”

  Jael called up the Emergency Dispatchers’ schedule on her phone. “About the same: 1300 to 1800.”

  “Good. Then you’re both free right now and can take some extra time doing some chores I need done as penance for your misbehavior.”

  Jael’s heart sank. “But Mom, we have school in a half-hour. Mr. Hybel’s class.”

  “You can do your work online,” said her mother. “And watch the vlog. Taking the time to go to school and spend time with your friends is a privilege: it is neither your right nor your duty. And privileges are second to rights and duties. Your educational needs are all here in these quarters. Your educational wants can be sacrificed to make sure you remember your duties to this colony and our family.”

  “But Mom,” Paul said softly, “This is the week presentations are due. It’s my slot. If I don’t present today, my grade gets penalized.”

  Their mother looked as if she had just bitten into her daily fruit ration and found it sour. “And whose fault would that be, at this point, Paul, if you had to stay home from class?”

  “Mine,” Paul admitted. “But I’ve put a lot of work into this project, and I’d like it not to go to waste.” Jael had to admire her brother. He always seemed to know exactly how to influence Mom. Now she had to either devalue their schooling or back down.

  “All right. you can go. Jael, you’re staying here with me.”

  “Actually, Mom,” Paul said, “Jael’s presentation is due today, too.”

  Their mother gave Jael a hard look. Jael managed a watery smile, hardly able to cover the shock and gratitude she felt that her brother would lie to their mother for the purpose of letting her go to school.

  “Fine,” their mother huffed. “But you’re to come straight back after the class. No Afters today.”

  Jael groaned inwardly. Afters was more than half the fun of school, but she’d known it was coming.

  There wasn’t really a “school system” in Thunderhead. Only Skygate had the kind of population to make that worthwhile. Instead, tutors offered their services, and kids of the right age took the classes they needed to cobble together what amounted to an education. With kids scattered about in minesteads over hundreds of kilometers of lunar surface, with every one of them either working for their parents or having some sort of colony-related “Active Duty,” getting together with friends was a rare treat. School was the exception, and parents rarely begrudged thei
r children an hour or two to hang out at the local canteen after school. Not even the Momstable. Unless they were in trouble.

  “I’m going to need my deputy to do some maintenance on the Secutors while I run down a problem we’re having at Wonka’s Shipyard,” she said. “Not to mention documenting the Miller family’s abuse of the Leto Laws.”

  “The shipyard?” asked Paul. “What’s going on in the shipyard?”

  “Well, if I knew that, I wouldn’t need your help,” their mother said. “It’s probably something I could solve in a few minutes if I could go there.” The deep furrow beneath her eyebrows that always showed when she was frustrated stood out starkly. Paul nodded. Even Jael didn’t have to ask what her mother meant.

  Wonka’s Shipyard was a volcano-shaped—and almost a volcano-sized—structure just a few kilometers away from the colony. A consortium of corporations, headed by spacecraft-building giant Wegerd-Dubrauni, were supposedly building the next-generation asteroid-mining ship there, to launch from the Moon. No one knew whether it would be done in a month or a year. No one knew what it looked like, or what its final capabilities would be. The consortium was keeping the project under the tightest wraps they could, lest a competing corporation or nation steal the technology and beat them to the Belt.

  As a result, no human—not even their mother, the Chief Constable—was allowed inside the giant robotic factory. Only the Secutors were allowed inside to make necessary security sweeps and ensure that no spidrones had managed to infiltrate it. Mother wasn’t even allowed to drive the Secutors or access their feeds while they were inside.

  The only other things that came out of the shipyard were requests for individual parts, crafted by family-owned 3D printers. That was what their father, along with half the rest of the families on the Moon, did for extra income. Mr. Hybels called it a “cottage industry.”