“In our quarters.” She sagged at the knees, and I honestly thought she was going to faint. “The airlocks are closed.”
“It’s all right…” It wasn’t all right, but I guided her to a chair. “Danika, look at me. Hey. Hey, look at me. Breathe.”
“He doesn’t like being babied. He told me to go.”
I knelt in front of her. “Are you an expert in polio?”
She shook her head. “We barely have any cases in South Africa.”
“Exactly. We’ll report to sickbay that he needs attention, but there’s nothing you could do for him even if you were there.” My heart tore into pieces as I spoke, because these were exactly the arguments Kenneth had used on me about his heart attack. “The best thing you can do is to stay here and do your job.”
TWENTY-TWO
FAMINE SAID TO IMPERIL LIVES OF THOUSANDS IN JAVA AREA
SEMARANG, Indonesia, April 19, 1963—(UPI)—Famine is threatening the lives of people in the overpopulated regions of central Java, according to reports here. About 12,000 people are being treated for starvation in hospitals overflowing with patients and in emergency camps set up by the Indonesian government. Thousands of refugees have been displaced by rising ocean levels and are streaming into central Java after having bartered their meager possessions to get food. These already overcrowded cities and towns had been stretched thin after absorbing an earlier wave of refugees during the Meteor Winter and the new influx of refugees has pushed them to breaking. Officials said 50 victims are known to have died while under medical treatment. Official estimates of deaths caused by food shortages range as high as 500 a month.
People were clustered around me as I stood at the intercom by the Baker Street airlock as per item 47 in lockdown procedure 12, subsection 3.a—Isolation. As the senior astronaut in Midtown when the airlocks shut, I had command and responsibility for the people locked in with me.
Hell … I was the senior astronaut on the Moon. There were only six people who had been in the corps longer than I had, and none of them were up here.
The astronauts and colonists waited in tense silence. Bertuska and Abdullah sat on the running track, holding hands so hard that their hands must ache. Chaffee twiddled his thumbs, leaning against the wall of the airlock. There was a cluster of people who had flown up with me, standing at the top of the stairs leading down to Lunar Ground Control.
I stood with the relaxed posture and alert, calm expression that I had perfected as the wife of a politician. I knew how to stand on a stage and look as though I could be useful while doing absolutely nothing. It was its own form of helpful, even in this circumstance.
I would prefer to have talked to Frisch from one of the cubicles erected for offices or my little gallery, but per protocol the LCA would buzz this intercom because it was centrally located in the hab.
The intercom’s buzz, when it came, made me tense inside my skin. “Midtown station, Frisch. Report.”
“This is Nicole Wargin reporting for Midtown station.” The grill of the intercom was shiny brass and had bits of dust caught on the edges. “I have taken roll call, as per protocol. We have thirty-seven people here. Let me know when you are ready for the list of personnel.”
LGC would have done their own roll call, locked into the floor beneath us. Below them, the computer department would have done the same. There were probably sixty people in the Midtown dome right now, isolated from each other as if we were in separate ships.
“Any fevers?”
Behind me, the crowd shifted uneasily, and I could see people tucking their hands under their arms as if that would keep them from touching someone with the disease. “None presently, but Garnet Cunningham and Vihaan Bhatrami report having had a fever within the last week. We also have fourteen people who have had community contact with known patients within the last seven days.”
“Understood. When you set up sleeping quarters, separate the community contact individuals from the rest of the group.” He continued, oblivious to how people shifted away from each other with unconscious tension.
Wait—I was wrong. The fourteen people with community contact were finding each other and stepping to stand apart from the rest.
“Isolate Cunningham and Bhatrami for the time being and monitor them.”
Other colonists clustered, gesturing as if they were working on sleeping arrangements. I was so proud of these people. They were terrified and still starting to work the problem. With my finger back on the buzzer, I said, “We’re making arrangements now.”
“Can you accommodate five additional people?”
I ran through the available space, thinking about how to isolate groups. I could rig old-school hammocks the way Midtown used to be kitted out. “That should be fine.”
My finger was still on the talk button when a lone man muttered, “Then what the hell’s the point of quarantine?”
I turned, looking for him. Brooklyn. Tenor. A slight nasal buzz.
“The point is to minimize risk.” Frisch’s voice was as cold as the shadow of the Moon. “The people who were training on the lunar rover will be safer if we are not asking them to shelter in an airlock or a vehicle parked on the surface. I trust that no one takes issue with this.”
The crowd was silent.
“Happy to welcome in the rover team. As you heard, I’ve got a bit of an audience here and some people are wondering about their colleagues. Any word from the outposts?”
That wasn’t something that would have been on my normal set of responses in this scenario, but I wanted to know if Eugene and Myrtle had reported in.
“Yes, I’ve spoken to them and to the pilots who were en route. They report that everything is nominal.”
Nominal, which in this context I took to mean that the Lindholms had completed their inventory at the first stop and that nothing was missing. I was deeply relieved, but it also made me wonder if I had been jumping at shadows.
On the other hand, there were two more outposts to check.
Dear Nicole,
I was privileged to attend the birthday celebrations for Mrs. Denley at the Mayflower Room in Kansas City, although I believe that I was invited in your honor as I was one of the few unaccompanied gentlemen in attendance. President Denley was courteous, although he did tease me about entering the race so soon, and said that he would try not to take it as a personal affront. Then he asked where you were, as if the fact that you are on the Moon were not a matter of public record.
Red Skelton performed, appearing out of a large gift box, to do his routine and amused us all with something like a hundred and two really good quips. He invited Mrs. Denley to join him on stage, which I think startled her, so she took three ladies with her. It was hard not to watch and imagine you in her place up there. The whole affair was quite grand, with a band that I’m guessing had at least nine trumpets. You would have liked her gown, I think, which avoided the floral motif so common these days. I inquired for you and am told it was French brocade.
Which reminds me … I was going over the accounts with Chu and there were some charges that I was uncertain about. I do hate to ask you to do something so tedious, but could you look over these numbers and tell me what they were for? Gowns? Hats? Gloves? The vagaries of keeping you dressed on Earth continue to elude me. Please tell me that you understand my puzzlement at least.
$191.14 on the 6th
$47.19 on the 1st
$10.01 on the 3rd
$215.20 on the 12th
$73.09 on the 10th
In other news, I have succumbed to the kitten temptation. One of my staffers brought a box of the fuzzballs into the office in a display of ruthless strategy. I have brought home a bundle of gray fluff with iridescent eyes like one of your brooches. Her current name is Tiny Monster, although I will try to think of something more elegant for her. Your suggestions are welcome. Marlowe is baffled by her and tolerates her clumsy pouncing.
I can’t wait to introduce you to her.
All my love,<
br />
Kenneth
* * *
I had spent the day organizing sleeping arrangements, coordinating meal pack distribution, getting instruction from medical about what early symptoms to watch for, but the people in the Midtown quarantine zone were so professional and focused that once I had delegated tasks, I had nothing to do except brood. I needed to do something concrete.
Hanging a picture in the gallery was an inconsequential act, but I wanted to accomplish one damn thing when everything else was out of my control. Using a Pistol Grip Tool with my right hand was annoying, but it was something I could do.
The door to the gallery opened and a figure stepped in. She paused as her eyes adjusted to the dim room. Aside from the skylight and five gallery lights, which I’d brought up one at a time in my personal weight allotment, I kept the gallery dark. “I thought I might find you here.”
“Helen?” Relief flooded through me at the sound of her voice. I stepped down from the bench I’d been standing on and lowered the PGT. “You were in the rover training group?”
“Correct. So … why aren’t you in the AdminMod?”
“Oops.” I gave a half-smile and shrugged. “I just happened to need to run an errand and it’s a compleeeeeeete accident that I somehow didn’t make it back to the AdminMod before the airlocks closed.”
“Mm-hm…” She dropped onto the bench. “New exhibit?”
“It’s overdue. Work built up while I was away.” Plus, my broker on Earth had managed to fetch some good prices for Ariela Housman’s calligraphic series of astronaut portraits. I wiped my hand over my face and sat down, with the world held at bay in shielded darkness. “What the hell are we going to do?”
“Hire a curatorial assistant?”
I lowered my hand. “You know what I mean.”
“Yes. That is why this was called a joke.” She sighed and rested her head against the wall. “I don’t think this is a problem we can solve.”
We sat on the small bench in the gallery and stared at the sculpture in the middle of the tiny room. Fernando Botero had chiseled a smooth, haunting figure out of lunar basalt. It had the rounded curves of a fertility figure but represented a spacewalker, seated. He’d come up from a residency in Paris, because France is still civilized and had spent the resources to send an artist to the Moon.
The rest of his sculptures had been sent down to Earth to fetch prices that were literally astronomical. I’d bought this one. There were other pieces in the gallery that I loved, but none of them made me feel as at rest as this did.
I needed that rest, desperately.
But I didn’t get to have it. I pulled the letter from Kenneth out of my pocket and passed it to Helen. A code from my husband was not restricted by the Icarus project. “What do you see?”
She tilted the thin paper into the nearest beam of light and frowned at it. “Is it … a book code?”
“Yeah.”
Do you know what it is like to hold a letter from your husband and know, know, that there is a hidden message in it that you can’t read? That string of accounting he’d asked me for gave me the page, line, and word position of text. He’d sent a six-word message.
“What’s the book?”
“The Long Tomorrow.” This wasn’t as simple as the Yorks’ code. They had used their book to pick a key for a Caesar cipher. You couldn’t brute-force a true book code. Without the book, it was just a string of random numbers. “It looks like Vicky checked it out of the library.”
“Oh no.”
“‘Looks like.’ It’s not her handwriting.” Something was wrong on Earth, something was deeply and seriously wrong in my husband’s life and I didn’t know what it was. I was willing to bet that it wasn’t directly related to Icarus, because when we’d spoken on the phone, he’d made a point that this was a conversation for just the two of us. In the letter itself, Kenneth had made certain that I knew he hadn’t had another heart attack, by mentioning the lack of a floral motif, albeit that left a whole host of other potential health issues.
I fished out the card, which I’d taken from the library, and handed it to Helen. “Can you see if any of the other handwriting is a match? The angle is bad for me.”
“Other handwriting…” She trailed off as I held my cast out to her. Nodding, she took the card and bent her head to the task.
I let my eye rest on the sculpture and traced the lines of the arm, where the soft beam from the skylight seemed to strike stars into the dark basalt. I say “skylight” and what I mean is “translucent panel” that I’d had placed in the top of the storage cubicle. At this time of the lunar month, it was artificial light, but in context it felt like the outside world was brushing the room with silver.
What was happening on Earth? I had stared at the letter, trying to will some extra meaning out of it. What I was left with were the absences. The more I thought about it, the more I felt one absence keenly.
He had not mentioned Nathaniel.
Helen sighed. “It is, perhaps, Curtis Frye or Imelda Corona. But neither of them include any common letters except the C and I.”
“And they are both sick with polio.” Was it possible to fake being sick? How would one fake the fever and the sweating and the vomiting?
Although that last one I knew the answer to.
Helen shook her head, staring at the cast. “The other possibility is that it is one of the people who signed in Arabic or Chinese.”
“Or someone I haven’t talked to yet.” I grimaced and let the cast drop back into my lap. “So, I need to interview more people and we need English writing in longer samples.” If I were in the AdminMod, ironically, I could have opened up their files and would have had no shortage of writing in various reports and documentation. I was going to need to find another rationale to get people to write things down. “What about doing an invento—”
The lights went out. The fans stopped. “Shit. Not again.”
TWENTY-THREE
ISRAELI TRANSLUNAR LINER DEDICATED IN FRANCE
TEL AVIV, April 19, 1963—The translunar liner Shalom, which is under construction in a French shipyard, is being designed to offer passengers a choice between kosher and nonkosher meals. It will be part of the fleet carrying colonists to the Moon when construction at the Marius Hills settlement is completed next year. The ship will be lifted into orbit aboard Sirius IV rockets and assembled in space. The Israeli Rabbinate has been involved in the design and construction, hoping to establish guidelines in approving and maintaining a kosher section on spacefaring vessels for a future journey to Mars while also accommodating non-Jewish passengers on interplanetary voyages.
Outside the gallery, conversation stuttered to a halt. The emergency lights kicked in, but the gallery itself was nearly full dark. I snatched the Pistol Grip Tool from the side of the bench and flicked it to drive. The guide light under the barrel came on, giving us a flashlight.
Helen was already on her feet, brow furrowed in concentration. “Do you think it’s station-wide again?”
“Assume it is.” I went to the door and stopped with my hand on the knob. Helen hadn’t been read in, but I needed an extra body. I gave instructions without context and trusted her brilliance to connect the dots. “Head to the Baker Street airlock. Tell me if anyone comes through.”
She stared at me for a moment, then nodded. “You’re looking for someone coming from the OpsMod.”
“Yep.” I opened the door, and the PGT’s light made a circle of brightness on the floor. “I’ll check the LGC.”
Once upon a time, when everything was in Midtown, it housed all the controls. Lunar Ground Control was the only operations still housed here, with their “backrooms” in the operations module. The people in either place could control the colony.
“Wargin, what’s going on?” Faustino stepped into the path in front of me.
“That’s what I’m going to find out.” I sidestepped and he pivoted with me. “You know the protocol for a power outage.”
&n
bsp; He grabbed my arm and dropped his voice. “It would help to know if there was something else going on.”
“Later.” I wrenched my arm out of his grip, pushing past him.
Behind me, I heard Faustino sigh and then shout, “Okay, people. This isn’t your first outage, so stop whining like babies. Stay where you are and let the power team do their work.”
Leaning forward, each thrust of my legs propelled me, leading with my head and shoulders. As I ran, I dipped in and out of pools of light from the emergency grid with the PGT’s light bobbing ahead of me. People stood at intersections and stepped back as I passed.
Until a door opened in front of me. I tried to swerve, but my foot seized as if I’d stepped on a nail. On the Moon it’s easy to forget that I have arthritis in my feet because I only weigh a sixth of what I do on Earth, but my mass is exactly the same.
It carried me forward and I slammed into the door.
It knocked me on my ass. What little wind remained after the initial impact got knocked out as I slapped into the floor.
“Holy Mother of God—” Luther dropped to a knee next to me. “Are you all right?”
I nodded, trying to drag a breath into my empty lungs.
He put a hand on my back. “I am so sorry. I was coming out to see … Are you sure you’re okay?”
The wheeze of my lungs reinflating burned my throat and felt like my chest had been filled with a thousand tiny knives. “Fine,” I croaked.
“You don’t sound fine.”
He was on my list. Luther was on my list and just happened to step out when I was running. Suspicious, yes, but realistically, how would he have known to be waiting for me?
Easy, if Icarus were more than one person. That would just take a wireless radio.
“Just winded.” I had dropped the PGT and it lay at an angle, its light careening across the floor. I put my good hand in his and let him help me up. Acting suspicious of him would be one of the worst things I could do. I smiled and grabbed the PGT. “Thanks. It’s really fine.”
The Relentless Moon Page 21
