“Oh, I’m not—”
She held up her hand. “Please. Treating a city full of astronauts is already exhausting enough. This is—I went to an all-girls school. Demonstrate to me that this is not a problem.”
I swallowed. “Yes, ma’am. I’m sorry.” I took the packet. The cube of fat and oil glistened in my hand. I lifted my chin and took a bite. This was its own form of control.
Ana Teresa watched me chew, which only made the thing congeal in my mouth, sticking to every surface. Bacon should not be in a cube. She gestured for my arm. “Let’s get that cast off. I should have done it last night.”
The plaster was dinged and had crumbled around my thumb and fingers. Underneath, the cotton gauze had turned a nasty gray-brown. The cast had my notes in the form of overlapping signatures and the stars I had decorated it with as reminders. “Oh … Oh. But you have a lot to do. This is still functional.”
“Besides being an affront, the padding underneath is probably soaked. I don’t want to add ‘infection’ to the list of your other ailments.”
“Fair. May I keep it as a souvenir?”
“After being wet for a day, it will reek, but if you wish to, so be it.” She dragged her little rolling cart of supplies closer and pulled what looked like a small rotary saw from it. “This vibrates and will not cut the skin.”
“Swell, I hadn’t been worried about that until now.”
“Quite safe. See?” Ana Teresa plugged it in and turned it on, buzzing it against her palm as if I needed to be reassured like a child. She stepped closer to lay it against the cast.
I turned my head to look at the curtain. I couldn’t make out any words through the buzzing, although I could hear the rise and fall of voices.
I kept my voice low anyway. “How is LCA Frisch?”
Ana Teresa’s lips tightened, but she did not look away from the cutter buzzing through the cast on my arm. “It is not my custom to discuss patients with others.”
“You know why I’m asking.” I chewed and watched her work. “Would you feel comfortable discussing tea?”
The saw continued to vibrate through the cast, sending soft clouds of dust to drift slowly in the air. Ana Teresa cut through the names of people who had written on the cast to wish me well. She cleared her throat. “The tea was fine. The sugar cubes were not.”
“Thallium?” They had used it on Nathaniel.
The saw slowed. Her lids flickered for a moment, but she didn’t look up from the cast. “Yes.”
The room went very cold. All I could think about was the doctor on Earth who had been grateful for Nathaniel’s bleeding ulcer. Without that, he would not have gotten treatment and it would have killed him. “It’s treated with Prussian blue, right?”
“Yes.”
“Like the paint?”
“The pigment is the same, without the oils, et cetera. Thankfully the launch was scrubbed again, which will allow them to add it. Halim will hand carry it in the command module.” Ana Teresa guided the saw across the back of my hand, grimacing. “That is the first time I have ever been grateful for a scrub, although grateful is the wrong word, since it also has the polio vaccines and I would like those sooner rather than later.”
I ignored that. “I have Prussian blue.”
She straightened, the saw dying in her hands. “Not the paint. Where?”
“Raw pigment.” I waved my free hand. “I don’t paint. I just keep supplies on hand for the artists. It’s in the gallery.”
“How much?”
I shrugged, holding my fingers apart as though I were holding a cookie. “A box?”
Ana Teresa took a deep breath, closing her eyes. With a nod, she bent back to my cast. “Good.”
“Well, let’s go!”
The corner of her mouth twisted in a smirk. “If I let you out without putting a new cast on, I will never get you back. The last thing I need is to reset your arm.” She wrinkled her nose at the smell that rose as she pried the crumbling plaster apart. “But you may have saved this man’s life.”
“I’m glad of— Gah.” The plaster snapped, jarring my wrist. I dropped the package of bacon squares. Pain radiated with cold sickness.
“That hurt?” Ana Teresa did not move her hands.
“Yeah.” My breath kept hitching. Shaking my head, I blinked back tears. “Caught me by surprise. Keep going.”
The muscles in the corner of her jaw worked. Carefully, she let go of the mangled pieces of plaster and turned toward her supply cabinet. Ana Teresa pulled a drawer open and took out a syringe. “I’m going to numb the area before we keep going.”
“It’s fine.” It throbbed in time with my heartbeat. “Really.”
“In very rare cases, the tetanic contractions caused by an electrical shock can break bone.” Ana Teresa pulled a vial out from another drawer and kept talking, as if she hadn’t heard me. Her voice was somehow clinical and angry at the same time. “Typically, with arms, it happens to small children whose bones are fragile. Like someone who has a loss of bone density due to living in space. Or the osteoporosis caused by anorexia.”
The bacon squares lay on the floor where I’d dropped them.
Ana Teresa filled the vial. “My X-ray machine is in SciMod. I will set your arm as best I can, but this is going to hurt.”
I swallowed. “What about Frisch?”
Ana Teresa snapped the vial down into the drawer and stepped closer. “After. Now? For twenty minutes, you are going to pretend that your health matters.”
THIRTY
WIFE OF GOVERNOR WARGIN ELECTROCUTED ON MOON
ARTEMIS BASE, Moon, May 4, 1963—Late last night, a malfunction of the dehumidification system in the lunar colony resulted in a dramatic rise in levels of moisture in the air to the point that the colony experienced its first rain. Far from being charming, this freak occurrence placed the citizens on the Moon at grave risk as systems designed to operate in dry environments were coated in water. Especially troubling is that the section of the colony most affected by this houses the medical wing where the victims of a polio outbreak are being treated.
Mrs. Wargin, wife of the current Democratic front-runner for president, was in charge of overnight care in the women’s polio wing when she noticed the rain. Attempting to call for aid resulted in a short, which, reportedly, threw the governor’s wife across the room. The power surge tripped multiple breakers in the module and left them without power for several hours. Despite this, Mrs. Wargin rallied the women and was instrumental in the rescue and recovery efforts.
Ana Teresa told the truth. It hurt.
It … it hurt a lot.
I let her give me something for pain and could still feel my arm throbbing inside my new cast. It was muted, but present with every beat of my heart.
What I wanted to do was go back to my bunk, take a Miltown, and lie down. But I had a meeting with Eugene to go over the inventory forms.
If I had hurt like this in training, would it have been enough to stop me? No.
During my endurance desert training, when I had turned up every morning all polished and perky, it had almost destroyed the guys. They had no idea how much I’d been faking. So I dragged my posture up to polished correctness, put on some lipstick, and headed to the AdminMod.
Eugene lifted his head from the stack of forms on his desk. “You’re looking better.”
Lipstick will do that. Back during the war, I’d once bluffed my way into a German signal office on the strength of a clipboard, my lipstick, and—
I blinked as an idea emerged nearly fully formed in my head. “Eugene…” I chased the idea back to Germany and brought it forward to the Moon. “Eugene. I think I have an idea for how to flush out Icarus.”
* * *
We ran through our plans as carefully as if it were a sim. On Monday morning, when Eugene, Myrtle, Helen, and I walked into comms, the young woman behind the desk looked up and smiled with neutral welcome, but her eyes flicked through the four of us as if comparing us to th
e schedule in front of her.
I met her gaze with an equally neutral smile. “The acting administrator needs the IAC secure line, stat. Four headsets.”
By this point, everyone knew the role that Eugene had played in organizing the relief this weekend. She did not hesitate. “Yes, ma’am.” Pulling her roster toward her, she ran a pencil down the list and made a tick mark next to it. “The secure booth is in use. One moment while I clear it.”
As she headed to the hall of phone booths to make space for us, a South African man muttered, “A Black administrator…”
Eugene pivoted and stepped past me. “Philippus Fourie. Construction. Right? PhD in material sciences from University of Cape Town.” His voice was affable, and then he crossed his arms over his chest. Eugene was an easygoing guy. He was funny and charming. It was easy to forget that he wasn’t just a pilot. He was a fighter pilot. He just stood there, looking at the guy, with this beautifully straight spine and the slightest tuck to his chin.
It was one of the finest uses of posture I have ever seen. Eugene did nothing. It was all in his stance. He waited and let the guy build the threat in his own mind. The fellow’s breathing got a little bit quicker and he shifted in his seat.
The moment he did, Eugene smiled. “See you around.”
He executed a military turn and walked back to us. Poor Fourie wilted in his seat and picked up a copy of Popular Mechanics that he almost certainly wasn’t reading. Myrtle wet her lips and put her hand on her husband’s bicep. Pretty sure that every woman in the room, and a good percentage of the guys, were envying her right then.
“LCA Lindholm?” The young woman reappeared. “The booth is ready for you now.”
“Thank you, Anne.” Eugene gave her a nod as we walked down the hall to the booth.
I raised my brows and murmured, “Do you know everyone’s name?”
“It was on her desk.” He opened the booth door and held it for us. “And I make it a point to read up on the South Africans deployed here. Most of them are fine, but some are … ‘indoctrinated’ is the kindest I can be.”
Myrtle took her place at the table. “He means racist assholes.”
“Language!” Eugene laughed as he followed Helen inside.
“There’s a time and place for cursing. Tell me I’m wrong.” Myrtle laid a file folder on the table and sniffed.
“Tell you you’re wrong? Oh, no. I’m not walking into that trap.” Eugene pulled chairs out for Helen and me, sobering. “All right. Any last questions or second thoughts before I put the call through?”
The levity sucked out of the room. I shook my head and settled into the chair, trying to find a position in which to rest my cast that was comfortable. Myrtle’s mouth thinned as she passed out the agendas from her folder. Helen’s expression settled into her chess face.
Eugene placed the call. We picked up our headsets and waited as we were patched through Lunetta to Earth to Clemons’s secretary and finally to him.
“Eugene.” Clemons cleared his throat. “Status report and then I’ll update you on the supply ship.”
During this call, we had to assume that Icarus’s counterpart was listening.
We knew they had an operative in comms on Lunetta or at an Earth-based station. We were guessing that the “sproing” was the sound of the calls being recorded so they could review them for hidden messages later. In theory, we had a few seconds before they started recording.
And we planned to make them panic.
“Understood. We’re activating the Rhode Island protocol. Code four three four echo papa. I repeat. Code four three four echo papa.” Eugene looked up from his agenda and pointed at Helen. “Here’s the message.”
Nodding, Helen lifted her agenda and began to speak in Taiwanese. Her voice was clear and moved each syllable as if it were a chess piece, sliding from square to square. I almost never heard her speak in her native language, except in times of stress when she sometimes defaulted to curses. Listening to her now, you could hear the purpose and power of each character she uttered.
You’d never know that she was reciting lyrics to the popular Taiwanese song “You Can’t Raise a Goldfish in a Wineglass” intercut with IAC acronyms and random numbers. There was no Rhode Island protocol.
The Earth Firsters tended to be Americans, so there was a fair chance they might not have a Taiwanese speaker on hand. It had the potential to increase the amount of scrambling they had to do trying to decipher our garbage.
On the handset, I heard the sound of a spring being struck. I gave a thumbs-up to confirm that we had listeners. Myrtle clicked the timer button on her Omega three and beckoned for Helen to keep going. On Earth, somewhere, her words were being frantically recorded for analysis. Someone would be trying to re-create the text they had missed.
We listened to thirty more seconds of Taiwanese incantations and then Myrtle nodded. We’d hopefully given them enough to stay scrambling and occupied, as well as buying Clemons time to figure out what was going on.
Helen stopped talking.
Eugene crossed his fingers, still looking at the agenda. “Confirm receipt of message. Repeat. Confirm receipt of message.”
The lag almost killed me, waiting for all of that to get to Earth and Clemons’s response to make it back to us.
He cleared his throat. I could imagine his cigar lowered, smoke drifting forgotten around him as he squinted at the wall. “Confirmed receipt of message.”
Eugene punched the air. Myrtle clapped her hands silently together and mouthed, “Thank you, Lord” to the ceiling.
Clemons had just told us that he was going to play along. I closed my eyes, letting out a silent breath of relief, and sagged against my chair.
“Per step twenty-four of the Rhode Island protocol, in the absence of transport, your operative has prepared a verbal report.” Eugene looked at me. “Go ahead.”
Disinformation and contention within the ranks is a good way to destabilize an enemy. Confuse them. Make them waste time trying to find a rat within their own ranks.
“Ja.” The voice was modeled on a girl I used to be. It could be mistaken for a few different Swiss German IAC employees like Johanna Lehrer or Birgit Furst. Most importantly, it did not sound like me. It made it sound like Icarus had miscalculated.
We hoped. We also hoped that Clemons would understand that everything that followed was a lie.
“The polio outbreak has had a silver lining in that one of the Earth First agents is among the patients. They have agreed to cooperate with us and send false reports to their superiors on Earth. We do not expect them to be completely forthcoming, of course, but the conversation has just begun. However, they did offer the location of the missing vehicle as a measure of good faith. That corresponds to the event on the sixteenth, which led us to the other equipment. Separately, my investigations have uncovered evidence that Herr Frisch was in conversation with the U.S. government about offering refuge in the lunar colony to several highly placed officials, including members of President Denley’s family who would not otherwise qualify for spaceflight.” Kenneth had said “government,” and while it might not be Denley including his name might confuse them. “Given the recent news about coded messages, which implicates Mrs. Wargin, I believe my cover is still in place. Permission to continue. Repeat. Request permission to return to radio silence and continue with the Rhode Island protocol.”
Sweat coated the back of my neck for 2.6 seconds. “Good job. Yes, by all means. Carry on with the Rhode Island protocol. Recommend proceeding to section twenty-seven-alpha per the black book.”
“Yes, sir.” Internally, I applauded his flourish.
“Major Lindholm, do you have everything you need to execute that procedure?”
“I do, sir.” Eugene gave us another thumbs-up.
The conversation had basically been “Things here are FUBAR. Request permission to act on our own without checking in,” and Clemons had just answered that he trusted us.
“Good. Is t
here anything else relating to the Rhode Island protocol that we need to discuss?”
“Not at this time. If you have the wherewithal to close that portion of the conversation, I have several operations questions, which are related to my role as Acting LCA.”
Up to this point, everything had been a charade. But using “if you have the wherewithal to close” was an actual passphrase from the codebooks that Clemons had sent up. We were hoping the more obvious codes would keep Earth First from looking too closely at this part.
“Confirmed. Please proceed forthwith to the next item.”
I breathed out, letting my head drop forward with relief. He’d recognized the passphrase and offered the counter. Helen and Myrtle sagged back into their chairs.
“When the quarantine lifts, I want to do a thorough tour of The Garden to look at early crop plans.” None of this was code. That was reserved for an incredibly dry teletype of the inventory that we’d sent down to Earth in a batch of other items. What Eugene had done was to tell Clemons what to look for.
“Mm … I’ll ask the agriculture department down here to recom—”
The lights went out.
There’s a difference between a quiet line and a dead line. This line was dead. In the hall, the emergency lights snapped on, giving us a dim yellow glow through the window of the phone booth. I looked down at my watch to time the blackout. Would we have another sixteen minutes this time? “Well, that was subtle.”
“We wanted to make them panic.” Helen slid an imaginary chess piece across the table. “Check.”
* * *
Sixteen minutes later, the power came back on. Eugene looked up at the light when it did and snorted. “At least they’re consistent.”
“Yes, but that was a tactically poor choice.” Helen drummed her fingers on the table. “They just tipped their hand, making it absolutely clear they can hear us.”
“Maybe it was a mistake?” I picked at the edge of my startlingly white cast. “Not just stupid, but if the power and the recording are controlled from the same hub someone might have bumped the wrong switch. If they only have a single listening post it would mean fewer operatives.”
The Relentless Moon Page 28
