Exo: A Novel (Jumper)

by Steven Gould

  He gasped and then his arms tightened around me with desperate—almost suitlike—pressure. He lowered his face into my hair and breathed deeply.

  I stood there for the space of three deep breaths. When I let go, he did too, his mouth half open, his eyes questioning.

  “Cory is going to work you like a dog for the next ten days,” I said. “How would you like to go surfing?”

  *

  We hit the waves for three hours at Laniakea on the north shore of Oahu. When I jumped him and his short board back to his house, the press population on the curb had doubled, probably because of how he had disappeared on them earlier in the day.

  The reporters didn’t note the arrival, though, because I delivered him directly to his bedroom and, carefully not looking at the bed, kissed him lightly on the lips. As his arms closed around me, I jumped away.

  In the morning I met Jade and Tara at Jade’s house. “There’s no press here?”

  “We’ve kept low. We weren’t scheduled back from Europe yet.”

  “When do your parents get back?”

  Jade looked at her watch and made a face. “Two days, seven hours. On the bright side, Dad texted that Mom is relaxing and actually enjoying the last bit of their trip when she isn’t haranguing me all day.”

  “Well, that’s something.” I jumped them to Cory’s lab and went back for Joe.

  He was dressed and ready, but he didn’t look very rested.

  “You look like shit,” I said.

  “Trouble sleeping,” he said. “When you go to hug someone and they vanish…”

  I’d experienced some of that myself but I said, “Well, you’ll probably sleep well tonight.”

  We joined the others at Cory’s lab and he led us down to the temporary work space off of the machine shops that he’d arranged to use for the work.

  “First things first,” Cory said. “The press calls started. Joe’s status as a student working for me, a researcher in mechanical counterpressure suits, leaked out of the Cardinal Careers center. My cell and voice mail directs reporters to call university communications. They have the press release Tara helped me prepare before her trip, but we are definitely in that next phase.”

  I nodded and looked at their faces. “Everybody is still good with continuing?”

  Cory said, “You’re definitely covered by the university’s privacy policy. The campus is private property and media reps are not authorized to enter academic or residence areas unless specifically invited.”

  Joe said, “That’s better than what’s happening back at my parents’ house. I’m good.”

  Jade said, “We’re in.”

  Tara said, “Right.”

  I looked back at Cory and raised my eyebrows. He nodded firmly in return.

  “Right, then. I’ll bring in lunch, as arranged. Work hard. Ad astra per aspera.”

  Cory laughed. “Yes, maxime asperum.”

  *

  For my next appointment, I wore the Nomex coveralls and the Merrell boots I usually wore over the suit. Both were a little loose, but I wore a bright blue turtleneck under the coveralls and wore doubled socks on my feet, and they looked and felt fine.

  The receptionist was looking down at her computer when I appeared before her, but she must’ve caught some movement because her head jerked up and her mouth dropped open.

  “I have an appointment,” I said.

  “You certainly do!” She picked up the handset on her phone and pushed a button. “Fran, she’s here.” She put down the handset and said, “Ms. Wilde will be right down to get you.” She pulled a piece of paper from her top drawer. “While you’re waiting, would you mind autographing this? It’s for my daughter.”

  It was a color printout of the photo Flight Engineer Rasmussen had taken of me from the observation cupola of the ISS—side lit by direct sunlight and front lit by light reflected off the ISS, floating in front of a mostly dark Earth.

  “Uh, what’s your daughter’s name?” I finally managed, taking the marker she held out.

  “Alisha.”

  I wrote, “For Alisha, Welcome to the Womaned Space Program! Best wishes, Space Girl. p.s.—this is my first autograph ever.”

  When she read it, the woman said, “Ever?”

  I nodded. “How old is she?”

  “Eleven.”

  I reached up and ripped the Space Girl patch off of the Velcro on my shoulder and set it on the desk. “Give her this.” I tapped the shoulder of the figure in the photo. “It’s the one I was wearing then.”

  She reached out blindly to the tissue box and blew her nose.

  A woman with short dark hair came down the stairs and said, “Welcome to BlimpWerks. We are thrilled to have you here, Space Girl.”

  I shook her hand. “Pleased to be here. Nice to talk to you in person.” Fran Wilde was the person in the firm’s R-and-D department who’d first told me about their new nylon/Kevlar fabric over the phone.

  Ms. Wilde noticed tears in the receptionist’s eyes. “Is everything okay, Audria?”

  Audria nodded, tried to speak, then just tapped the photo and showed the patch.

  Ms. Wilde read the inscription and said, “Oh, my.” She squeezed Audria’s hand before saying to me, “If you’ll just come this way.”

  There were four other people in the conference room.

  “She gave Audria the Space Girl patch off her shoulder.”

  “For her daughter,” I said.

  She introduced the people, though I’d already met Mr. Papadopolis, the sales engineer Joe and I had talked with before. Mr. Eaton was their president, Ms. Quincy was their manufacturing supervisor, and Ms. Adouki was their chief of marketing.

  Mr. Papadopolis had been doing some reading. “I’m surprised you aren’t talking with Bigelow Aerospace. They’ve actually put inflatable habitats in orbit.”

  I shrugged. “Their modules are too heavy. Even their smallest unit is three thousand pounds and it’s air-lock sized. I want a bit more room.”

  Ms. Quincy, the manufacturing supervisor said, “We do not make habitats. We make blimps. Aerostats. We certainly don’t have anything tough enough to survive micrometeorites and space debris.”

  I nodded. “I’m working on that. I just need envelopes that can handle ten psi. You’ve done twice that with the smaller test sphere, correct?”

  Ms. Wilde said, “We did it with all the spheres. We needed to confirm the degree of deformation.”

  “Good,” I said. “I want those and I need some modifications. How much for the spheres as they are?”

  Ms. Adouki’s stepped forward. “How public is this project?”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “It’s not a secret, is it? Would you post video of the spheres in orbit?”

  “I suppose so. These are too big to hide.”

  “Would you object to logos painted on the spheres?”

  “That’s one of the modifications I wanted. Our Apex Orbital Services and Space Girl logos. Possibly an Iridium Communications logo. Did you want to sell ads to someone else? Or did you want a BlimpWerks logo?”

  Mr. Eaton and Ms. Adouki exchanged glances and Ms. Adouki said, “We would love to sell ads to others.”

  I shook my head. “No. Our brand. Our advertising platform.” Tara had been very specific about it. She’d said, “Buy them if you have to, but I don’t think you’ll need to.”

  Mr. Eaton said, “We would settle for BlimpWerks logos and an endorsement on your part. We would provide the spheres and modifications, within reason.”

  Tara is always right. I continued from her script.

  “We would also add a BlimpWerks logo to my coveralls or life-support backpack. We would provide video and stills of the spheres deployed, with the BlimpWerks logo prominent. If you wanted me to deploy one of your special designs, that could also work—you’d just need a bit of gas to inflate it. Without the Mylar, it wouldn’t last very long in that intense ultraviolet, but it would make a fantastic photo a
nd video shoot.”

  Mr. Eaton looked at his team and nodded firmly.

  “What are the modifications you need?” asked Ms. Wilde.

  “I need to add some aluminum flanges. Also, have you ever seen matryoshka—Russian nested dolls?”

  *

  Dad and I both changed into swimsuits before he jumped me to a tiny strip of beach in a north-facing, cliff-bracketed cove, the only beach on a tiny lava island sticking out of the Pacific off Costa Rica. The cove’s inlet was filled with sharp rocks, sheltering the beach from the northern swells but making a boat landing extremely dangerous.

  The only inhabitants on the island were seabirds and they weren’t thrilled with our presence. Fortunately, they stuck to the higher rocks and didn’t use the beach which, Dad told me, was underwater several times a month during the higher spring tides.

  “So how did you find it?”

  “I saw a picture in National Geographic. They were out here shooting the Blue-footed Booby rookeries. I liked the privacy so I paid a pilot take me on a flyover.”

  “A pilot? How far off the coast are we?”

  “Seventeen kilometers. When you look at Google Earth it doesn’t even show up. It’s on the charts as a marine hazard because those—” He pointed at the teeth-like rocks at the mouth of the cove. “—are all around the waters.”

  “I don’t recall you ever bringing me here before.”

  Dad smiled slightly. “That’s correct.”

  “Or Mom?”

  “You mother has been out here more than a few times.” Dad’s smile got bigger.

  I blushed. “Privacy, you say.”

  He nodded.

  “So, like this,” he said.

  Dad twinned between the beach and one of the taller rocks just outside the cove. As I watched, he moved his “beach self” into the low surf and water began pouring out of his “rock self,” flooding outward in all directions. As his “beach self” moved deeper into the surf, the water pouring out of his “rock self” rose higher and higher. When he was up to his neck, he didn’t go any deeper, but in the cove so much water was flowing toward and through him that the water level in the cove was a good yard lower than the water outside.

  He jumped away, back onto the beach, one “self” only, and the waters sloshed violently against the rocky arms of the cove and up onto the sand as the water poured over the “teeth” at the mouth of the cove to rebalance the water levels.

  “Is that what you did to Lawrence Simons?”

  His hand went reflexively to the scars just below his left collarbone, lighter than the rest of his skin. “Yeah. Last resort. I was chained to the floor and they had guns out and the next time your mother came into the room they were going to shoot her.”

  “So I could’ve done that when they had that wire around my neck?”

  “What you did worked better. The guy still could’ve choked you even if you flooded the room.”

  My turn for a reflexive touch. The abrasion hadn’t scarred, but the memory was still there.

  “You do it,” Dad said.

  I walked out into the water until the water was waist high before I started, but I didn’t use the rocks outside the cove. I twinned to the beach, up the slope from my father. The water knocked into him before he realized it was coming, but he did jump away before it washed him all the way into the cove.

  I stopped almost immediately, my one self up on the beach by the cliff face.

  Dad reappeared on the sand, ten feet off to the side.

  “Where’d you go?” I asked.

  “Up there.” He jerked his thumb up at the lava cliff behind us.

  There was a deep cut in the beach where the water had eroded sand into the cove. Dad pointed at it and said, “You want to be careful. Running water can be a powerful force. If you’re going to move earth or knock things over, make sure it’s what you wanted to do.”

  I felt guilty. “Will that take long to fill in?”

  He held his hand out and rocked it side to side “One way or another.”

  I eyed the cut doubtfully. “You said you had one more trick to show me, about twinning.”

  Dad nodded. “Okay. Watch this.”

  He twinned again, one self by me, the other five feet away. Then the one five feet away disappeared but I could tell Dad was still twinning because I could see faintly through him, the ocean horizon in the distance. I walked around him. When I was on his west side, I could see a distant coast.

  “Where are you?” I said.

  His twinning figure pointed up and I tilted my head back.

  His other self was standing in midair, at least a hundred feet in the air. Stationary. It wasn’t my velocity trick. He was just twinning to that place and sticking there.

  He stopped, his one self still in the air, but no longer motionless. He dropped. Before he reached the level of the cliff faces above, he jumped back to the beach, beside me.

  “Okay. That was different,” I said.

  “It has applications.” He walked out into the water as I had, but continued until he was neck deep. Then he turned back to me and grinned.

  The deluge dropped from above like a hammer, but I’d been expecting something. I jumped sideways to the far end of the narrow beach and shook the water from my hair.

  He was still twinning. I couldn’t even see his airborne self, but the water was rushing out of a spot twenty feet above the beach and pounding into the sand. Then it stopped and he was standing beside me as the last water fell.

  The eroded beach cut was even bigger, now.

  I had no words at first, but then I said, “I guess I deserved that. But look at the beach!” I jumped to the edge of the cut and had to step back as more sand collapsed into the water.

  Dad joined me, wincing. “Yeah. I should fix that. Get back.”

  I took several steps back. Dad jumped to the bottom of the cliff, at the head of the cut. He twinned again but dimmed and I realized that wherever he stood, the sun wasn’t shining. Then sand started flowing out of him, only knee high at first and then higher, his legs pumping up and down. His local self moved along the cut and sand poured out of him chest high, into the water and then rising above it, wet, then dry. He moved out from the cliff face and by the time he stopped twinning, sand was mounded three feet above the precut beach surface.

  He plunged into the water, completely immersing himself and staying under long enough that I was starting to be concerned, then his head reappeared. He walked out of the water like normal people do. “Sand gets everywhere.”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “The Isaouane-n-Tifernine sand sea.”

  I blinked.

  “Algeria—in the southeast. I dropped down the face of a three hundred-foot-high dune causing it to slide. Then it was just a matter of keeping my head up.”

  “You brought African sand to a Central American beach?”

  “Well, I wanted it to match. How do you think this beach got here in the first place?”

  “You made it?”

  He shrugged. “It was a rocky cove but I really liked the privacy and the ‘teeth’ keep out any big sharks. But it’s a safe place to practice moving water, eh? Just don’t carve the beach too much.”

  *

  “Sterling.”

  “Good morning, General.”

  “Cent.” I heard him cover the mouthpiece and say something to someone in the room, then he said, “What can I do for you today?”

  “I need an orbit that has a higher incidence of micrometeorite and small debris collisions.”

  “Excuse me? Don’t you mean lower?”

  “No sir. We’re putting up a test, uh, platform to see how it handles microcollisions and, while we’ve already tested the material with deliberate punctures, none of them were at orbital velocities.”

  “I see, I guess. How big is this platform?”

  “It’s a twelve-foot diameter sphere.”

  “Oh! An inflatable. You are okay with microim
pacts, but you don’t want anything big hitting it, right?”

  “Right. Nothing trackable. Just the smaller stuff.”

  “Unfortunately, you could probably do that anywhere inside a thousand kilometers. Well, you don’t want the orbit too low, though. A low-mass satellite with that cross section would deorbit pretty quick.”

  “Low mass? I wouldn’t call twenty-eight tons low.”

  “You said it was an inflatable.”

  “Yes. But we’re inflating it with thirty-three cubic yards of water.”

  “Water? You’re putting twenty-eight tons of water in orbit?”

  “For the experiment, yes. Is that a problem?”

  “That’s over seven times what the Dragon capsule can deliver to ISS.”

  “Oh? Cool.”

  “How many trips will it take you?”

  “That’s proprietary, General. Is there a higher incidence of microdebris in any particular orbit?”

  “The stuff we know about also has the bigger debris mixed in. Trackable. That’s why we know about it. Twenty-eight tons? That’s huge.”

  “It’s a little bigger than your average spy satellite, but not much. What are those, twenty tons?”

  “You know this from direct observation?”

  “Wikipedia. Look, I’d like to put up my test sphere tomorrow. I was thinking out about five hundred klicks. Above the ISS but below the Iridium constellation. Perhaps a straight equatorial, zero-inclination orbit. You want to check that out and I can touch base with Sergeant Mertens before I begin?”

  “Twenty-eight tons of water?”

  “And change. I’ll check in with Agatha tomorrow.”

  “Right. Jesus. Twenty-eight tons?”

  THIRTY

  Cent: 4,800 Joules

  I picked up the twelve-foot sphere from Fran Wilde of BlimpWerks. The porthole’s aluminum frame was only ten inches across but they had it sealed and clamped into the fabric.

  “We tested it at twenty PSI,” she said. “It was tight as a drum after twelve hours.”

  I hefted the entire roll. “How did you get it so flat?”

  “We pumped it out, down to a couple of psi. Compared to out here—” She waved her hand through the air. “—it’s a ‘vacuum,’ but when you’re up there it will probably expand without you doing anything.”