The Unwinding House and Other Stories

by Jared Millet

  After parking in Luna’s LaGrange point, I took the kids to the aft control knob, the only place on the ship with a window. They’d seen Earth before, but it had been a long time. Judy held Merc in her arms and let him gaze at the dead world with us.

  I’ve always wondered if cats remember Earth. It’s silly, I know. No living cat has ever set paw there, but still I’m not so sure. When he closed his eyes, did Mercury dream about chasing birds and squirrels? Did he climb trees or get caught in the rain? Did some part of him remember the taste of grass, the feel of dirt, or the crunch of dead leaves? Did he miss it? Did he long to return?

  We got word that the new animal habitat at Copernicus was ready and Species Preservation staff were waiting for Mercury’s arrival. We would leave Duck behind as well, but even though he was getting old there was still a chance we’d see him again. With Mercury, we assumed that this was the end.

  ~

  For eight months we ran supplies to stations in the Inner System. The ship felt empty with only Rosie and Gilly to keep us company. We checked in on Duck and Merc via SolNet, but as the days slid by we adjusted to our new situation. When we headed back toward Luna, we were met with good news: on our next run to the outer planets we would take Duck with us, along with a batch of kittens. In the intervening months, Duck and Mercury had eagerly expanded their species’ population via their own personal harems. The SPC, however, had decided not to stuff all its hens in one henhouse, and Old Man Duck was needed to propagate cat-kind at a new facility on Ganymede.

  Mercury wouldn’t be going. I got news of his condition a week before we made orbit. He was having difficulty breathing, he wasn’t eating, and he was moving as little as possible. The vets would have put him to sleep already, but they knew we’d be making port and decided to wait.

  As we rode to the surface, it was different than on Titan. There we had been in shock. This time we’d had over a year to prepare for Mercury’s death. I’d thought that would make it easier, but instead it made it worse.

  Under the dome at Copernicus, there was a field of grass with real Terran soil. We spent an hour there with our little monster. He perked up to greet us, but he quickly ran out of energy and laid in the grass while we took turns petting him. The SPC would bury him there and plant flowers over his grave. He looked like he’d gained weight, but the vets explained that it was fluid building up around his lungs.

  They gave him a sedative, then rolled a table onto the field so we wouldn’t have to squeeze into an exam room. Merc looked at it with a mixture of interest and trepidation. I picked him up myself and laid him on a blanket. The vet, who’d already shaved a patch on Mercury’s leg, started looking for a vein. I stepped back to let Judy pet him one last time.

  The doctor approached with a needle. In a final act of defiance, Mercury hissed and swiped with his claws. I reached over Judy to scratch the back of his head. He looked up at me and thwacked his tail. The vet slid the needle in. Mercury cried once. His head drooped to the blanket, and he was gone.

  I don’t remember what happened next. I only know that a few moments later I was on my knees in the grass with my arms around Jennifer’s waist, sobbing like a child.

  ~

  We sail now past Mars and on toward Ganymede. It’ll be five more months before we catch up to Jupiter with our boatload of kittens. Duck has asserted himself as Lord of All He Surveys and keeps the younger brats in line. Rosie and Gilly have taken to camping on top of the storage cabinets and look down on the next generation with queenly disdain.

  We’ll have to say goodbye to Duck at Jupiter, but the SPC has asked us to keep a male kitten for breeding as we travel to the far outer stations. I know which one I’ve got my eye on.

  One of the kittens is a brilliant silver tabby. He’s skinnier than the others, wilder than the others, and his tail seems a little too long. When he wants to play, he bites my ankle. The he looks into my eyes and I know just what he’s thinking.

  You want me? Come and get me.

  The Transit of Venus

  Earth's Orphans: 2

  In my earliest memory I’m flying. I’m two years old and my mother is dragging me down a corridor, running as best she can in the lunar gravity. I hang on to her wrist and my feet don’t touch the ground. Ahead of us, a panicked mob is squeezing through the hatch to the next wing of living modules. Mama pulls me to her chest before I drift to the floor and tells me not to be afraid.

  But I am. I’m afraid of all the shouting. I’m not old enough to recognize the hiss of pressure hatches or the piercing whistle of a vacuum breach, but I know I want to go home. In all the shoving, someone crushes me against Mama’s chest. I cry but she shushes me.

  “Everything will be—”

  A shockwave wrenches the floor and someone yanks me from her arms. My mother shouts. My ears pop, hard. I can’t hear, but I feel myself scream.

  “Vee!”

  I wake up with a jolt. I’m lying on the floor, where I must have finally fallen asleep. I haven’t slept for days. Israel Delane kneels beside me, his warm, brown hand on my shoulder. The rest of me is freezing.

  “When is it?” I ask.

  “Seventeen-thirty. They’re about to open the auditorium, but we can still cancel the show.”

  “No. It’s okay. Is there news?”

  Izzy shakes his head. “The rescue tug just docked with your dad’s ship, but they’re not inside yet.”

  I nod and give in to the cold. It’s the only thing that’s keeping me together. There’s been no word from the Orpheus since my father took off from the ruins of Buenos Aires. There’s hope that the ship’s silence has been due to a mere electrical problem, but I learned to be wary of hope long ago.

  Izzy steers me to the kitchen where our bandmates, Johnny and Amber, are watching the news on a holoset. Amber gives me a smile, but her makeup is smudged. She knows what it’s like to lose a parent. Johnny never knew his family at all.

  “Look,” says Izzy, “We can’t play tonight. They’ve got to let us reschedule.”

  “We aren’t rescheduling,” I tell him. “We’ve waited too long for this. We’re not going to cancel just because...”

  This wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Our first live concert was supposed to be a celebration: not just for us, but for our fans in Copernicus and all those waiting for our vidstream on the Net. And Papa was supposed to be there – he’d promised he’d come as soon as he landed.

  I want to scream at the unfairness of it all, but I can’t. I physically can’t. Something claws up inside me, chokes me, forces its way out. For a moment, I can’t breathe. My shoulders start to tremble and I can’t make them stop. Izzy takes me in his arms and I bury my face in his chest.

  ~

  I was born after Earth died, but before they coined the phrase “mercy bombing.” Then, just before my third birthday, a man named James Wesley Nolan used a shuttle full of mining charges to blow himself and Base Aldrin into the lunar sky. Before doing so, he posted a manifesto declaring that humanity’s days were over and it would be best if we were put out of our misery. I didn’t understand any of that at the time. All I knew was that I missed Mama.

  Papa and I went to live with Mama’s brother, Anton Komarov, in a ten-foot habitube at Copernicus. Back then Papa was a shuttle pilot, which left Uncle Anton to raise me on his own. He was a great guy, if a little shady. He worked in public security, but he also ran a black market in bad moonshine and memorabilia from Earth.

  The first time I saw the Earth I was nine years old. After months of begging I’d finally convinced Anton to take me on one of his scrap hunting trips. Girls my age weren’t allowed outside (we weren’t as expendable as boys), but Anton found me a spacesuit that almost fit once he’d shortened its arms and legs. There was a homemade patch on the suit’s right shoulder and I was barely tall enough to see through the visor, but Uncle told me not to worry.

  I followed him into the lunar morning, wishing I could see my feet. Anton assured me the pa
th was level as long as I kept right behind him. I tried my best, but I couldn’t help looking around. At Copernicus the Earth isn’t straight overhead, but it’s pretty close. That day it was half full – one face ash gray, the other an unforgiving black. A boy at school once claimed he’d seen a patch of ocean through the clouds, but no one ever believed him.

  “Venera,” snapped Anton. “Keep up or I won’t bring you again.” I put my head down and trudged after him.

  “The Dump” was the name Anton gave the tarp-covered crater where Lunar Administration stored all the unclaimed junk that was rescued from Earth in the final days. It was supposed to have been a temporary storage facility, but no one knew what to do with the stuff until my uncle and other black marketeers came along.

  Anton loved to talk about the crazy things he found: bicycles, rocking chairs, picnic baskets, vinyl records. One of his buddies swore that he’d seen a box of “pent-houses” but couldn’t find them again. I asked Anton what a “pent-house” was, but he never gave a straight answer.

  “Are you getting the hang of it?” he asked as we marched down the crater’s slope. At the bottom was a security fence with a coded access gate. “Turn on your helmet light. We’re going in.”

  Inside, the Dump was a wonder. I’d expected it to be gray with moondust, but everywhere I shone my light there was an explosion of color. The deluge of shapes made me dizzy, and I didn’t know what anything was.

  To my right leaned a red sheet of metal. “Car hood,” said Anton. To my left stood a tall blue box. “Soda machine.” I almost tripped over a green device with four wheels. “Lawnmower.” Behind it was some sort of abstract sculpture. “Christmas tree. That’s what we’re taking today.”

  Beyond the scrap pile was a labyrinth of boxes stacked three and four high. The plastic ones had survived exposure to vacuum, but those made of cardboard had frozen and crumbled, spilling their contents into the aisles. While Anton wrestled his ungainly “tree” toward the exit, I climbed the nearest pile of crates, careful not to snag my suit. I shouted in victory when I reached the top, then screamed as the boxes below me broke apart. Their contents shifted in a dozen directions and I fell, helpless, in an avalanche of paper bricks.

  Not bricks, I realized once the flood had stopped moving. One of the items landed face-down on my visor, with the words Gulliver’s Travels on the cover. No alarms rang in my helmet, so the only noise was Anton’s desperate squawking in the radio.

  “I’m fine,” I said, “but I’m stuck.” The books had buried me, and even in Luna’s gravity their collective weight was too much for me to budge.

  “I’m coming,” said Anton. “Don’t move.”

  I looked around while I waited, unable to hear anything except my uncle’s breathing. My fall had broken another crate behind me. I twisted to see what was in it, but I didn’t understand what I saw.

  There was a piece of lacquered wood shaped like the shadow of a melted vase. Extending out from it was a plank as wide as my hand. Wires stretched from the end to a small metal plate in the middle. Two had snapped, but the remaining four twinkled in my helmet’s light.

  “Venera, where in heaven’s name are you?”

  “Under the books!” I shouted. “The suit says it isn’t punctured.”

  “Hold still and keep that way.” Slowly he uncovered me, treating each book like a priceless work of art. “We must be careful. These are very brittle. A good find, though. We’ll come back for them later.”

  “Can we take any today?”

  “Not unless you want one. How about this? This was good one for girls.” The book was small with a bright yellow spine, and the name “Nancy Drew” peeked around his glove.

  “What’s that?” I asked instead, pointing at the stringed contraption behind me.

  “Aaaah,” my uncle sang. Even through his visor I could see his eyes sparkle. “Very good, Venerochka. Very, very good.”

  ~

  I cradle the guitar in my lap. It’s a 2025 Gibson Les Paul Wireless. I tune it while listening to the newsfeed.

  “The tug has docked with the Orpheus,” a woman’s voice says, “but the rescue team is waiting for clearance to board. Their instruments read atmosphere inside, but apparently they’re having trouble getting the computer to activate the airlock cycle. This is a real problem, isn’t it, Gary?”

  “That’s right,” says Gary. “They can’t board the Orpheus if they can’t depressurize the airlock; the escaping gas would throw both crafts out of their trajectories. They also have to make sure that the inner airlock is secure. Otherwise they might depressurize the Orpheus and endanger Captain Popov, assuming he’s alive.”

  I start to play scales as soon as they mention my father. I don’t care if it annoys the others; I don’t want to hear any more. It hardly matters. The commentators haven’t said anything new for at least twenty minutes.

  I still feel cold. I know it’s not the room. It’s something deeper. My fingers go numb even as I play. My nerves feel like they’re shutting down one by one. Izzy watches as I stumble through the simplest chord progressions.

  “This is stupid,” he says. “We should cancel the show. You can’t play with all this going on. It’s crazy.”

  I look him in the eye. “Why? What’s going on? Do you know?” I point at the holoset. “They don’t know. The rescue team doesn’t know. I don’t even know. So sure as hell you don’t.”

  “Vee.”

  “If Papa’s dead, then he’s been dead two days. But for all we know, he’s just stuck in that ship and the airlock won’t work. It might take hours for the rescue team to get inside, and until then he’s nothing but Schroedinger’s stupid cat.”

  “Vee, baby,” says Amber. “It’s okay. We don’t mind putting the show off, really. It's all right to be scared.”

  “I’m not—” I shout, then lower my voice. “I’m not scared. I’ve been through this before. We all have. It’s nothing new. I’m just saying that until we actually know something, we should all go on like normal.”

  “Will you guys shut it?” says Johnny. His eyes haven’t left the news. “They got the airlock online and it’s about to open up.”

  ~

  It took Anton several hours to reacclimate the guitar to atmosphere. The Christmas tree, which was nothing but metal and plastic, we could bring inside right away. It took up the entirety of our hab’s dining nook, and when we plugged it into a power jack it blazed with a hundred tiny lights.

  “I’ll get Bud Jones make some new strings at the fabricator plant,” Uncle said while fiddling with the guitar. “These are all useless.”

  “You can really make music with that?” I asked. “Why not just use the programs online?”

  My uncle spat. “Is this what they teach in school? Let computers do everything?”

  I shrugged. I’d learned it was better to let him show off than to debate him.

  “How does it work?”

  “Well, you hold down string like so, then pluck it.” The guitar warbled like a defective warning chime. I wasn’t impressed.

  “Computers are better.”

  “Bah. Computers are programming. This...” He held up the guitar. “This is poetry. Do they teach poetry at stupid school of yours?”

  Not really, but I didn’t want to admit it. Instead I tried to match Anton’s scorn. “What, like ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’?”

  He grinned. “Computer, video search: Twentieth Century. ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ by Stevie Ray Vaughn.”

  The holoset flickered to life and after a moment there appeared a long-haired man with a black hat, a ridiculous shirt, and a guitar not unlike the one we’d rescued. He held his instrument almost absent-mindedly and started to play the first notes.

  Mother of god, as my uncle liked to say, the sound was nothing, nothing like that of our poor Dump guitar, and as different from computerized music as a real human voice was from that of an auto-recording.

  And it sang. Sweet Earth, how it sang. I tried
not to blink, as if I could listen with my eyes as well as my ears. The musician lovingly tickled the strings and the result was glorious. I hardly noticed when he sang the nursery rhyme; I was already in a different world. When the verse was over, his hands began to dance.

  It was like a ballet. The fingers of his right hand skipped from string to string and his left hand slid down the neck to join them, twisting in little pirouettes that made the guitar squeal like a child at play. The dance quickly became a chase, his hands attacking the notes faster and faster in a blur my eyes couldn’t follow. But I heard it. By all the angels in heaven, I heard it.

  The song eventually stumbled to a halt like a dizzy little boy who’d worn himself out. I felt dizzy myself. The audience in the video cheered as the musician got ready for the next number, but the picture cut out and the sound shut off.

  “So what do you think?” my uncle asked.

  I stared at the guitar with newfound wonder and an ounce of fear. It wasn’t some old piece of junk any more. It was a living thing – a sick and broken living thing, but alive nonetheless. I wondered if we could make it better, and if I could ever coax out of it the sounds I’d just heard.

  “Can we fix it?” I asked. “So I can learn to play?”

  A mix of emotions tumbled across Anton’s face. I knew he meant to sell the guitar – that had been the whole point – but I also knew he’d do anything to make me happy. There was a touch of fatherly obligation in the set of his chin, and a sagging expression of ‘What have I got into?’ in the bags beneath his eyes.

  He sighed and nodded. “That’s my girl.”

  ~

  “What the hell are they waiting for?” I ask. The screen shows two suited figures floating near Orpheus’s airlock that haven’t moved in what feels like forever.

  “It takes time for the air to cycle out,” says Johnny with deliberate patience. “You know that. Just wait.” Izzy puts a hand on my shoulder, but I shrug it off.