But the second piece of translated garbage made Nathaniel’s face crease into a frown. He gnawed on his lower lip and finally cleared his throat. “Say … Since you know, would you be willing to send her a message for me? I can reuse her code.”
I had been waiting for this opening since I began to translate the text. Oh, that wasn’t my initial thinking. Then, I had just wanted the man to stop trying to work. Fortunately, or unfortunately, I can’t stop looking for angles and opportunities. A kinder person would have said yes without hesitating. But he had offered me a lever and I intended to use it. If I hadn’t been to his apartment, I probably would have used that lever to insist he tell Elma about what was happening with his health, but … I wanted him to be alive to meet her when she got home.
I sat up straighter. “On one condition.”
“I’m not telling her. Not now.”
“Lucky for you, that’s not my condition.” Crossing my legs, I sat back in my chair as if I had nothing at stake. “I’ll send your messages and pick up your mail until they ship me to Brazil, if and only if you agree to let Hershel come out and promise to eat on a regular and regimented schedule.”
“That’s two conditions.”
I tilted my head and delivered a death glare with mildly pursed lips.
Nathaniel shrank a little in his pillow. “The hospital has control of my meal schedule.”
My expression stayed flat and I blinked at him. Once. Silently, I counted in my head, making a bet that he would crumble by the time I got to five. He lasted until four.
“By the time I’m out, it’ll be Passover. Hershel shouldn’t be away from his family.”
“Hershel is your family.” I stood up, collecting my bag. “You can stop pretending to be a bastion unto yourself, just because Elma is away. These are my conditions. Do you want to write to your wife? Or do you want me to write to her.”
It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t nice. I cared too much to be bothered by either.
Nathaniel wiped a hand down his face. “You’re a cruel woman.”
“Yes. I am.” From my purse, I drew out a pair of white gloves in order to dramatically tug them on and delay the moment at which I actually departed.
“Fine. Yes. Hershel can come—but only if he volunteers. You can’t ask him to.”
“He already volunteered.” I sat down and shoved my gloves back into my bag, swapping them for my IAC notebook. “I’ll even do the cipher for you.”
The sigh he gave sounded more pained than anything the surgery had triggered. “You’re not going to let me do any work, are you.”
“I’ll be generous enough to let you write the plain text yourself.” I handed him the pencil and my notepad. “But only because I’m worried about the strain all that blushing is going to put on your circulatory system.”
He caught his laugh with a grunt and a small wince. While he wrote, I pulled out my IAC binder and studied up on the mascons between the main lunar base and the new mining locations. Mass Concentrations of gravity could throw navigation off if you weren’t prepared for them. It was not quite like knowing how thermal updrafts affected an airplane, but similar enough that I was happier to do the work before I got into the cockpit of my spacecraft.
When Nathaniel finished, it wasn’t a long letter.
(30 7 4 I cleverly left Kipling at the office, so I’m reusing your code tonight. Sorry about that. I understand your concerns about the duty rosters, but Mission Control has reasons for making the assignments that they do. You don’t realize how bad it is here. I’m glad of that, but we’re sending the rosiest possible news to keep morale up. Trust me when I say that this isn’t something we should push right now.)
Dear Elma,
You’ll be proud of me. I actually left the office early on Friday in order to go to the Wargins’ for poker night. Don’t ask me how I did, it’s best not discussed. And yes, I am well aware that I should not be working on a Friday night anyway. As I have reminded you on more than one occasion, you knew when you married me that I was a terrible Jew.
The exciting thing is that the lunar team has figured out a way to cast lunar dust into machine parts. We think. We’re sending a prototype up on the next launch to be sure, since things never work quite the same way in lunar gravity as they do on Earth, even with vomit comet testing.
I’m rambling about work after starting off by bragging that I had taken an evening off. I can hear you laughing from a million kilometers away. Did you do anything on the ship to celebrate the halfway point?
All my love,
Nathaniel
(I’m not sure that there’s an hour in which I don’t think about you. What I want most is to curl up in bed with you and ignore the rest of the world. I don’t need a launch. I just want to be in the same orbit again.)
* * *
I’ll give him this. Every word Nathaniel sent to Elma was true. It’s amazing how many lies one can tell with the truth.
TEN
CYCLONE IN ALGIERS KILLS 43
ALGIERS, March 30, 1963—(AP)—Forty-three persons were reported killed today by a cyclone that ravaged the town of Mascara in western Algeria. Officials said that over a hundred people were injured and much of the historic town center was destroyed.
The Governor’s Mansion in Topeka used to be an old pile of a Victorian, but after the Meteor, it had been replaced by a bunker with ballrooms. That was before Kenneth was governor, or he would have stopped that foolishness. But people were so scared of another Meteor they just buried everything. It wasn’t entirely underground, but built into the side of a hill to create safe zones.
The exterior had a porticoed facade that led down a few steps to the front door. It was a terrible design that had all the grace of a fart and collected water on the landing when it rained, which it was doing now. My driver came around to my side with an umbrella, which did little to help as the wind kicked up and snuck water under the shield.
As I came down the stairs, I tugged off my gloves, glad to be free of them in the humidity. Tu Guanyu Chu, our butler, opened the front door to greet me. As always, his tuxedo was impeccable, and the starched white collar set off his polished tan complexion beautifully. His gaze flicked to the bandage on my chin and then straight up to my eyes. “Good evening, madam. The governor is just sitting down in the dining room.”
He stepped back to let me enter, and my driver retreated up the stairs to take the car off to the garage.
“Very good, thank you, Chu.” I handed him my bag and kicked off my shoes, sighing with relief.
From the stairs, a small dark streak bounded up, tail held high. Marlowe meeped as he trotted to me.
I crouched to greet my cat. “Well, hello, handsome.”
He meeped again and shoved his head against my hand.
“Yes, I know. The state of the world is worrisome.” I scooped him up. “What should we do?”
“Mrroo? Mrrp. Mrrrrrooo.” He shoved his head under my chin and mixed purring in with his meeps. He doesn’t meow so much as monologue.
“That’s a very sound plan.” I rubbed his dark ears as his golden eyes closed with pleasure, and then I turned back to Chu. “Sorry. Is there anything that I should attend to before dinner?”
“No, madam. The correspondence that requires your personal attention is on your desk, and Mrs. Pelletier would like your approval on the menu for next week. She’s concerned about creating The Garden Club tea within the ration book stricture.”
I winced and shifted Marlowe to my left arm. He balanced, paws holding on to my shoulder like a baby as I unpinned my hat. Next week I would be getting ready to go to Brazil and thence the Moon. “I’m sorry … I’ll talk to her, but I’m afraid I have to cancel the tea.”
His brows twitched up, but that was all the reaction he gave beyond: “Of course, madam.”
I sighed and closed my eyes, resting my head against the warm body of my cat for a moment. I had not given myself time to react to Nathaniel’s collapse last night nor t
o my own stupidity this morning. I was still so angry at myself that I could cry.
At minimum, I needed a few moments to myself. I am fortunate in that I can often delay my reactions to intense events. For instance, when Kenneth had nearly severed his finger in a car door, I was completely calm. There are sounds you never want to hear your husband make, but I was cool and businesslike through the whole thing. The next day, I came apart.
I opened my eyes and smiled at our butler. “Right. Thank you, Chu. Will you let the governor know that I’ve run down to change and will be in—”
“Darling, I was beginning to wonder if you’d make it.” Kenneth appeared from the dining room, dressed in his tuxedo. We’re old school that way, still dress for dinner and all. But honestly, you never know when some diplomat is going to turn up. In any event, Kenneth always looks so dapper that I enjoy our little ritual.
I let Marlowe hop down and crossed the marble floor to kiss Kenneth on the cheek. “I’m so sorry I’m late. I went by the hospital to see Nathaniel after work today.”
“I was wondering what had kept you.” The concern in his gaze was for me, but his posture and tone was unruffled for our staff. “Thank you for the message, by the way. It had not occurred to me.”
“I’m glad it was a false alarm.” I needed to get away before I fractured. I’d curl up with Marlowe on the bed, weep a little, and then come in for dinner. “I’ll just run change.”
“Nicole, it’s all right. You don’t need to dress for dinner on my account.”
“Nonsense, dear. We aren’t heathens.”
He caught my arm before I could turn away and opened his mouth. Forming on his lips, I could see some version of the question, “Are you trying to skip dinner?” But Kenneth closed his mouth, smiled, and nodded. He squeezed my arm. “Then I’m glad I took the trouble of putting on the tux.”
If he had pressed, I would have dug my heels in. As it was, I blurted, “I blew it today.” I stared down at Marlowe as if I had never seen a cat before. “Halim asked me to sit in on a Sirius sim, in the middle seat, and I—I hadn’t…” My throat was raw with longing. “I hadn’t eaten. I fainted and—”
Kenneth pulled me into an embrace. The world vanished in the deep black wool of a well-crafted tuxedo. Beyond the circle of his arms, quiet footsteps exited the room. Kenneth murmured into my ear, “We’re alone.”
“Oh, hell. I was so close and—” I clung to that wool and sobbed. It had just been a sim, but if I had done well, then maybe next time they would have scheduled me on purpose and maybe one day I’d get to fly one of the big rockets. I had known when my hands were shaking what the problem was. I fainted because of a series of choices that I had made. As often as I railed against the system that kept women from advancing, when the opportunity finally came … “I blew it.”
He held me tight and swayed with me as if we were dancing and the band had just begun to play, neither of us sure of the rhythm yet. Kenneth pressed his cheek against my head, breathing slowly and steadily. He smelled of citrus and cloves.
My outburst did not last long. I am not a woman who cries except under certain very specific conditions. Funerals. Weddings. A properly executed play. The right kiss in a novel. Other people’s grief and other people’s joy can tip me over into cathartic weeping.
Anger. When it is self-directed. And tonight’s bout of weeping was almost entirely anger at myself with a modicum of rage-infused tears directed at the IAC for creating new inner sanctums of a boy’s club modeled upon centuries of boy’s clubs. I know the system. I can work the system. That doesn’t mean I don’t loathe it.
I had been so close and I wouldn’t need to push so hard if they hadn’t put up those damn barriers in the first place. Well, screw them. Next time I would be ready. I sniffled and lifted my head. “Thank you. I’m just so mad at myself.”
He withdrew his pocket square and wiped the skin under my eyes. “I’m sorry that happened.”
I kept waiting for the “I told you so” even though I knew he wouldn’t say that. Hell, he wasn’t even dragging me into the dining room or asking questions about when I ate last. I straightened and ran my hands down the satin of his lapels. “Shall we have dinner?”
Kenneth smiled at me, but there was a heartbreak behind his gaze. “Whenever you’re ready.”
It’s the small things that make me love him and damn it all if I didn’t start crying again.
* * *
The smell of coffee burrowed into my dreams and dragged me back toward the surface. Marlowe purred in a warm puddle between my shoulder blades.
Kenneth kissed my cheek before he sat up in bed next to me to greet our housekeeper. “Morning, Thelma.”
“Morning, Governor. Morning, Miss Nicole.”
I grunted. They were lucky to get that much. All I wanted to do was to sleep until the end of time. I shoved my face against the cool satin of the pillowcase. There was a damp spot where I’d drooled. Grimacing, I opened my eyes and glared at the pillow.
“I think she’s awake.” Kenneth tugged on my earlobe.
“Well, I let y’all sleep as long as I could.” Thelma came around the bed carrying a breakfast tray for Kenneth. “Be right back with your tray, Miss Nico— Good lord.”
Clenching my fists in the fabric, I dragged the covers over my face. “Juggling accident.”
“All … all right. I’ll be back with your tray.”
“Maybe later.”
“You should…” Kenneth rested a hand on my shoulder. “We need to leave for church in about forty-five minutes.”
I groaned. The thought of going to church and pretending to a piety I did not possess felt like a zipper waiting to peel down my spine. “I’d forgotten it was Sunday.” Beneath the covers, I squeezed my eyes shut as if that would save me and mumbled into the pillow. “I can’t get up, it would bother Marlowe.”
Kenneth clinked some porcelain with his fork and the bed shifted. “Marlowe. Want some eggs?”
My cat vanished, mrowing as he hopped across the bed.
“Traitor.” I hauled myself up to sit slumped against the headboard. New aches presented themselves from my fall. My knees. My shoulders. Those I could mask, but I wasn’t sure I could handle an entire congregation of people asking about my chin. “Can we just pretend that I’m still at the IAC?”
With my cat next to him, nibbling on a bit of egg from his saucer, Kenneth scritched Marlowe’s ear. “I’m sorry, baby. I need you to go.”
“Even with this?” I tapped the bandage.
He hesitated and for a moment I thought I’d found an out, but Kenneth shook his head. “I’m afraid so.”
I sighed and screwed my eyes shut, thunking my head back against the mahogany headboard. I knew how this worked. If I was home from the Moon and he went to church without me, it would send a message that our marriage was in trouble. If not for that, I would skip it every single chance. Instead, I went to church with my husband as faithfully as anyone in the congregation. “Tell me, at least, that Linda Salvatore isn’t doing a solo this week.”
To his credit, he did not respond to me like the whiny teenager I sounded like. Kenneth’s knife rasped against toast as he spread butter on it. “I wish I could.”
“Ugh. Her vibrato sounds like she’s using a jackhammer as a dildo.” I threw the covers back and slid out of bed. “If I’d remembered, I would have stayed in Kansas City last night.”
His knife clinked against the plate as he set it down. “People are already looking for signs that our marriage is in trouble because of how much you’re gone.”
I stopped, with one hand on my dressing gown, trying to review our conversation from last night. I’d been so caught up in my own upset that I had missed something. Kenneth picked up his creamer and carefully added some to his coffee. His expression was so mild that it felt like a slap, because he was giving me his public face.
“Are we?”
He picked up his spoon and stirred the coffee. “Are we what?”
>
“Are we in trouble?”
Thelma walked in, carrying the second breakfast tray. The last thing I wanted was food. Scrambled eggs glistened on the plate. I clenched my jaw against the surge of bitter saliva that filled my mouth. Swallowing, I smiled at Thelma. “Thank you.” I scooped Marlowe up and carried him to the table at the foot of our bed. “I’ll eat here, if you don’t mind.”
“Of course.” With a practiced economy of motion, she folded the tray legs under and set it on the white lace tablecloth.
I sank onto the chair and settled Marlowe on my lap. He squirmed and jumped down, which was no wonder. My posture was so upright that my back came nowhere near the white lacquer chair. Picking up a piece of toast, I turned it over until Thelma had left. The clink of Kenneth’s cutlery seemed to fill the room. I took a bite of the toast and my teeth crunched through layers of sandpaper greased with butter.
I swallowed that bite. Ate another. I was very conscious of Kenneth watching me from the head of the bed, and it took everything I had to not wave the toast at him. For crying out loud, he’d seen me eat dinner last night.
He cleared his throat. “Do you think we are in trouble?”
“I didn’t.” I did not want to cry. It would be hellishly manipulative if I did. “Is that why you don’t want me to go to the Moon?”
He snorted. “An active saboteur isn’t enough?”
That wasn’t an answer to my question. That was a sidestep. I took a bite of the eggs I did not want before I spoke again. When I was certain that I was calm, I set my cup down and faced Kenneth. His mild face was still on and I lifted my chin to greet it. “Is it the saboteur or politics that’s the problem? Or is it me?”
The Relentless Moon Page 9
