As if she hadn’t just come back from a lunch break. “Thanks.” She turned to Paulo. “Let’s go to Central Park. There’s a board set up there.”
Faustino watched them go, chewing on his lower lip. As soon as Paulo and Helen rounded the curve of the “street,” Faustino stepped closer to me and lowered his voice. “Frisch wants to see you.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at the intercom. “And yet, he didn’t call for me.”
“He says that this is simply convenient. You are his secretary, et cetera.” Faustino looked over his shoulder and lowered his voice. “When the power went out, you knew something that the rest of us didn’t. You said you would tell me ‘later’ and you still owe me an explanation.”
God, I wanted to snap that I didn’t owe him a damn thing, but I needed to deescalate this and redirect him. I sighed and loosened my body language, tilting my head so the rod up my ass wasn’t as visible. “I had a hunch it might be related to the legacy system.” I shrugged. “I was wrong. I’m sorry, but I don’t know why we lost power.”
God, I wished that weren’t true.
* * *
Going between modules, even as someone who had been vaccinated, had required a meteoric level of antiviral scrubs. My hands still stung by the time I got to Frisch’s office. I clapped my hand against the plastic sheeting of his door.
“Enter.” Frisch’s voice creaked with fatigue.
I pushed the sheeting aside and stepped in. The air in his cubby stank of sweat and old breath as if the scrubbers had failed. Frisch had pale stubble on his cheeks and sat hunched in his chair. Stacks of reports cluttered his desk, held in place by uneaten meal packs. A blanket was wadded in one corner.
He looked up as I came in and his eyes were deeply bloodshot. “Nicole. Have a seat.”
I picked up the blanket and shook it out. “Have you been sleeping here?”
He gestured vaguely at the intercom. “If someone calls and I’m unavailable…”
“You could delegate that, you know.”
The corner of his mouth quirked as he watched me fold the blanket. “Yes, well. My secretary has been overseeing Midtown.”
“There’s the secretarial pool.”
His skin had a jaundiced cast to it. “Staffing is not a high priority at the moment. Do sit down and let’s get on with our discussion, shall we?”
“Maybe we can troubleshoot the problem together?”
Frisch closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “No.”
“Excuse me?”
“I said ‘no.’ Whatever the problem is, simply tell me and I will handle it, but you will not be involved in troubleshooting of any sort.”
“Now, now…” I waggled my finger at him. “Clemons specifically asked me to work on—”
“Shut up!” Frisch slapped his hands on the table, shocking me into silence. “I tolerated your bullying and grandstanding for years and finally—”
“Bullying and grandstanding? You mean fighting to be heard. If I were Stetson Parker, tell me a single thing I’ve done that would be cast as anything less than desirable.”
“You have overstepped—” Frisch cut off and straightened the pages on his desk. His nostrils were constricted and his mouth pinched into a hard, flat line. After a moment, he took a breath and continued in the sort of calm upper-crust voice I’d heard from British officers during the war. “Please sit down. I regret raising my voice. I invited you here as a matter of courtesy and I was discourteous. We are colleagues and I am aware that this will not be an easy conversation for you.” He pushed back from the desk and turned to his kettle. “Please sit. I’ll make some tea.”
The first thought that went through my head was that something had happened to Kenneth. I sank into the chair while my heart tried to fill my throat and suffocate me. The part of my brain that puts pieces together pointed to Frisch saying that I had “overstepped.” This would be job related.
It had to be job related. That was acceptable. I could talk my way out of a problem there. I couldn’t “bully” a heart attack.
Frisch puttered with his kettle, slowly releasing the valve to bleed off pressure. Steam whispered out. Frowning, he opened the spout and poured hot water into two cups. “Do you take anything?”
“No. Thank you.” A knot of tension formed below my right shoulder blade as I waited for him to clip the tea bags into each cup.
A part of me did not want to accept anything from him, but I also needed to deescalate the situation. In the moment, his disdain for me was not as time sensitive as either the polio outbreak or Icarus.
I did not give a full smile when I took the cup, but I made sure my expression was soft. “Thank you. Have you heard from Eugene and Myrtle?”
Frisch settled in his chair, hunching over his cup. “I will be succinct and then answer any follow-up questions I can. I must remind you, the subject of this discussion is Classified Top Secret.” He blew on his tea and then set it aside, looking directly at me. “You have been accused of sending coded messages.”
My brows came together. “Yes … you know I have. Clemons sent me to the Moon with codebooks—can we retrieve those yet?”
“I’m not speaking of the sanctioned use of codes. It has since come to light that these are not the only coded messages you’ve sent or received.”
I took a sip of my tea, which was still mostly just hot water, and considered my options before I spoke. “My husband and I have a code to exchange private messages related to his political career, yes.”
“Those are a concern, but I was referring to the messages you sent to the First Mars Expedition using Dr. Nathaniel York’s passkey. Those have been leaked to the press, which is lending credence to the conspiracy theories of Earth First.” Frisch steepled his fingers together and stared at me over them. “To counter that, the moment quarantine is lifted, you will be placed on the next ship back to Earth. Until then, you are suspended without pay and confined to quarters.”
The room seemed to fade around me, leaving only the heat of the ceramic mug in my hands. A webwork of responses sprang out, each pulling for my attention. I lifted my chin. “We’re being played for a fool.”
“Are you denying you sent the messages?” He settled back in his chair and picked up his tea.
I was married to a politician, and that meant never directly admitting guilt. “I am pointing out that this question coming up now is meant to hamper our investigations. The timing is suspect.”
“Be that as it may, the press has picked up the story and run with it. Do you have any idea how much damage you have caused?” He sipped his tea again and shrugged as if all of this were out of his hands. “I have instructions from Clemons. You are to be confined to quarters.”
I sipped my tea back at him. “How many people do we have who are immunized against polio and can do suit maintenance?”
Frisch stared at me, steam curling out of his cup. He blinked and looked down at the papers on his desk, as if counting through a roster. He probably was.
I already knew the answer because I’d helped him come up with duty rosters via intercom. “There are five of us. Just to refresh your memory.” Leaning forward, I set my cup on his desk. “Wherever you confine me, I suggest my quarters is not the appropriate place. With all due respect.”
TWENTY-FIVE
SECRET MESSAGES IN SPACE— WARGIN SEEN AS TARGET OF PLOT
KANSAS CITY, April 26, 1963—The wife of Governor Wargin, of Kansas, appears to have been sending coded messages to the First Mars Expedition. Documents shared with The National Times by a source within the IAC reveal an internal investigation into Mrs. Wargin’s activities.
However, William J. Reed, Democratic State Senate majority leader, charged on the floor of the Legislature today that this leak came from the Denley Administration with the intention of embarrassing Governor Wargin’s administration. The Governor is considered the front-running opponent of President Denley in the 1964 election.
Mr.
Reed said agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were “honeycombing” the state “under the guise of a conspiracy investigation.” He said the work of the agents involved “wiretaps galore” and “willful misinterpretation of what are clearly love letters.”
“The ruthlessness of the Federal Administration is beyond all believing.” The purpose, Mr. Reed said, was “to embarrass a great American.” He said the Denley Administration was afraid of Mr. Wargin.
I was not confined to quarters, but I was confined to the science module, which isolated the polio patients from the rest of the colony. Near the door of the repurposed biology lab, I knelt by Guillermo’s bed, holding his left foot in my right hand. My plaster cast was shrouded in a giant black rubber machinists’ glove, since I could wash that. It was hygienic, but I looked like a comic book villain and had to keep resisting the urge to laugh maniacally. “Push against my hand…” Nothing happened, but I said, “Good.”
Guiding his knee with my cast laid gently against it, I pushed his leg up the way Ana Teresa had shown me. My back ached from bending over beds, helping exercise the patients in the men’s ward. The lingering musk of rabbits underlay the smell of sweat and vomit. The rabbits were in Midtown now, along with our flock of lunar chickens, and in their place were six of the polio patients.
Some of them only had a little muscle weakness. Others were … worse. “Now pull. That’s right…” A muscle twitched under my hand. “Good!”
Across the aisle from us, Kadyn watched me, mimicking the exercises. Fear tightened his face, but beneath the blanket his left knee drew up a little. He’d been getting function back in his legs as the fever dropped.
Guillermo grunted, fists clenching his blanket. “Pathetic, huh?”
“Better than yesterday.” I looked up as Ana Teresa came into the ward and went to the crate I’d set on the counter earlier. “Let’s see what the actual doctor thinks, hm?”
“Thanks … Hey, doc! You remember about the game?”
She nodded to Guillermo, beckoning to me. “If you stop griping about your exercises, I get a radio so you can listen to the game.”
It would be more than just a radio. It wasn’t like a regular radio could pick up a station from the Earth, especially not when we were buried in regolith. We had a selection of five stations broadcast up from the ground via our satellite system. To get the game, Ana Teresa would have to send down a request to the IAC for them to add a new station. But the boys had nothing else to do with their time. I had no doubt Clemons would approve it. The IAC took care of their own.
“Nothing will be sweeter than listening to France lose. Brazil will trounce them.” He plucked at the blanket covering his limp legs.
“That is definitely something to work for.” Patting his leg, I stood and walked back to Ana Teresa.
She dug through the crate and pulled out a strip of torn insulation, scowling. “Well, we’ll make it work.”
I looked into the crate, worried that I’d screwed up the instructions. “You wanted ten-centimeter strips, didn’t you?”
“Yes, yes. They’re fine.” She waved her hand to clear the air, before lifting the crate. “I just want wool, which I can’t have. Thick and absorbent. One layer. Here, I have to do two.”
“Can I do anything to help?”
“Hot water? With you in a plaster cast?” She made a loud raspberry of a snort. “Use the centrifuge room. When was the last time you were on there?”
“I meant with the wraps?”
She gave me a look my mother would have been proud of. “When. Was the last time. You used. The centrifuge room?”
“I … I don’t remember.”
The terrier of space was about to grab me in her teeth and shake me. “Go. The last thing I need right now is to reset a malformed bone.”
The thing is, running in Earth gravity hurts my feet. Oh, on the Moon, the arthritis is still there, but it takes so much less effort to move that my toes don’t flex as much or take as much weight or … If I said any of this to Ana Teresa, she would put it in my file that I had arthritis. Clemons already thought I was old hat. I didn’t need my body proving it to him, not if I wanted to get back into space after this suspension. I smiled at her like a good little girl scout. “I’ll do that now.”
“Good.” She carried the crate back to Guillermo’s bed. “All right … ready for some more torture?”
From another bed, someone laughed. “I think you’re enjoying this.”
“I am.” Ana Teresa set the crate by Guillermo and threw the blankets back.
I stepped into the hall and leaned against the smooth rubber wall for a moment. At the other end of the hall, just outside sickbay proper, one of the nutritionists rested his head against the wall. He’d had polio as a boy, recovered completely, but lost his kid sister. Got lifelong immunity, though, so, like me, was assigned to helping with the sick.
He raised his head and wiped his hand across his face. “Wargin. How goes it?”
“Oh, you know.” I pretended not to notice that his eyes were red and that his cheeks were damp as I lifted my cast. “I’ve just been told to go jog in the centrifuge room.”
He snorted. “Have fun with that.”
“Right…” I walked past him to the supply closet where my gear was stashed. I’d rigged a hammock from the ceiling and had the relative privacy of a room filled with blankets, saline, and scalpels. I didn’t have running gear here so much as I had my flight suit. Not that it mattered. Everyone in the science module was so exhausted, I could have jogged naked and it would have gone unnoticed.
* * *
I walked along the centrifuge track and the floor curved up in front of me like a hill I would never climb. I was supposed to be jogging, but no one was in the centrifuge room and I wanted to spare my feet. It is a hateful thing to weigh Earth normal for an hour. Usually, there would be people jogging up the curve and out of sight “above” me, but it was a week into the outbreak and no one else was visible. Even if there were a nurse or doctor exercising, the curve of the room and the faint thrum of the motor and flywheel gave me the illusion of privacy.
If I were lucky, maybe I could get through my entire hour without having to run.
Ahead of me, a pair of feet came into view, standing on the curved floor. Swell. Grimacing, I stepped into a slow jog. Each footfall ground my bones together. Another meter forward and I could tell that there were three people standing. Two women and a man. Eugene crouched down to peer past the curve of the ceiling. He waved at me and stood up, waiting for me to reach them.
Myrtle and Helen stood with him, talking in a tight group. I slowed down, feeling simultaneous relief and dread. Being told that they had returned safely from the inventory trip was different than seeing them in the flesh.
“Fancy meeting you here.” I stopped next to them, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I could not imagine a benign coincidence that would lead to the four of us having the centrifuge room to ourselves. “What’s going on?”
Helen gave me a quick hug. “Are you all right?”
“Tired and currently worried.” And my feet were throbbing in time with my pulse. I cocked my head at them. “How did you get this cleared and why?”
Eugene’s grin was not innocent. “As some of the people immunized, it made sense to help with delivery of supplies to sickbay. And while here, it’s only sensible to get in our exercise routine.”
“Speaking of…” Myrtle gestured to the track. “Let’s go.”
I gawked at her. “You want me to jog when you clearly have news.”
Myrtle shook her head, pointing at my cast. “That needs to heal right and this is the deal we made with Ana Teresa.”
“So, she knows…” Before I could finish, Myrtle began a slow jog away from me. Helen and Eugene paced her, forcing me to follow. “All right. So Ana Teresa knows … what, exactly?”
“I implied it was related to Kenneth and our concern for you as friends meant that we wanted to talk to you
privately.” Myrtle had a scrape near her hairline and a little bruising on her cheek. “And while that’s true, I’m deferring it.”
“I’ll give you the quick brief.” Eugene jogged along easily as if he weren’t getting ready to tell me that something had gone wrong on their inventory trip. “Then we have questions.”
“Shoot.” My brain slowly caught up and wondered why Helen was here and who they were worried about overhearing us.
“First, the item we were tasked with, inventorying the blasting stores at the outposts. Everything was present and accounted for. It all matched the inventory lists we had been given, which also matched the on-site lists. However…” Eugene glanced at Myrtle. “My brilliant wife raised a question.”
“I used to be a computer at a chemical company. We made beauty products mostly, hair-straighteners, lightening creams, and the like, but some of the supplies had to be carefully tracked because they had explosive or corrosive properties. I wondered if someone who was interested in blasting stores might not have an easier time masking their tracks with other components.”
“So we inventoried the fertilizers and oxidizers at each site.” Eugene took a deeper breath. “Those numbers did not match.”
Myrtle added, “The chemistry lab here is also missing an entire bottle of perchloric acid.”
“Shit.” With those, Icarus would have no trouble making a bomb. Multiple bombs, in fact. “What else?”
“En route to our first stop at Marius Hills, the right-hand controller failed. Eugene used the copilot controls to set us down at one of the emergency way stations.”
“Frisch didn’t report that.”
Eugene said, “It happened during the blackout here. We thought we’d lost comms as well, and by the time we realized that wasn’t the case, we had also developed reason to delay reporting. Myrtle’s hand controller had been hastily and clumsily damaged.” Eugene’s mouth set in a grim, tight line. He took a breath and slowed to a walk. “Hell. You should see this.”
The Relentless Moon Page 23
