The director of the IAC characterized the death as a freak accident. According to reports, Terrazas became mired in the ammonia cooling system while doing repairs. In an attempt to free him, the crew cut an ammonia line. Tragically, a faulty gauge indicated that the lines were empty, and when cut, the pressure caused the sharp end of the metal line to whip past his suit and breach it. The suit lost integrity, subjecting Terrazas to the vacuum of space.
Even if we hadn’t been observing quarantine procedures, there wasn’t anywhere in the colony for all 326 of us to gather. So everyone gathered in the largest common space of the module they were in and listened to Eugene on the address system.
He somehow managed to make space for grief and hope in his remarks. I don’t mean that he made us feel good or trotted out a trite aphorism about heroism and sacrifice. He helped us see the connection between our work here and the work Estevan had been doing out there and the work people were doing on Earth. We grieved, yes, but we carried on because that was what made us human.
Late, late that night, long after the shades had been drawn over the Midtown dome, so late that it was no longer the same day, Helen and I sat in Eugene’s office. Eugene and Myrtle were making the rounds, doing what politicians do in times of grief. They were comforting. They were listening. I’d done that tour of duty too many times to count.
After the Meteor, there had been too many people who needed comfort and not enough of me.
Helen nudged my foot with hers. “Do you remember when Estevan explained to Bubbles that the title of the film Casablanca just meant ‘white house’?”
I chuckled. “Bubbles’s mouth dropped so far. I thought Estevan was going to swallow his tongue laughing.”
God, he had a good laugh. The plastic sheeting stirred and Eugene pushed it aside, holding it for Myrtle. She came in, holding a bottle in one hand and four coffee mugs in another. Her eyes looked as if she’d taken too many gs.
Eugene followed and dropped into Frisch’s chair. He bent forward and buried his face in his arms on the desk. I rested my hand on his arm. There was nothing to say. I’d seen Kenneth this dragged down and all you could really do was wait it out.
Or, use Myrtle’s solution. She twisted the lid off the bottle. “Dandelion wine? I make no promises.”
“Does it have alcohol?” I raised my hand. “Then I’m in.”
“Same.” Helen raised her hand.
Eugene sat back, wiping his face with a sniffle. “God, yes.”
She poured us a vivid yellow liquid and handed the mugs around. Sweet floral notes blended with the smell of fresh earth. Myrtle raised her coffee mug. “To Estevan.”
The clink of coffee mugs was flat and harsh in the tiny room. I took a sip of the liquid, expecting it to be astringent and funky. It was sweet and tart, with none of the bitter ethanol flavors of her first batches. I lifted my eyebrows. “Myrtle. This is good.”
“At least try not to sound surprised.” She took another sip. “I’ve been working on the recipe and used the airlock to force chill it to halt fermentation.”
“So, no one believes the busted gauge was an accident, right?” Eugene stared into his mug. He took a healthy swallow. “Just so we’re clear. That’s bullshit.”
Helen shook her head. “If you are suggesting that Leonard or Rafael would be in league with Earth First…”
“It’s what the FBI thinks about Leonard. That’s why they’re investigating us.” He gestured at Myrtle and himself. “Why the hell not? One of the people I just shook hands with is probably responsible for poisoning Frisch. Why not one of those guys?”
“No.” Her nostrils flared. “No one on that crew is involved. Not on either ship.”
“They wouldn’t need to be.” I ran my finger around the rim of my coffee cup. “On a three-year mission, it would be a miracle if nothing failed. You want to make sure it happens? Someone installs something wrong. A little bit of extra stress someplace. Install a valve you know is faulty, but certify it.”
“But it wasn’t an accident.” Eugene tipped his coffee mug back and drained it. He sat forward and poured another healthy dose. “Someone killed him. On purpose.”
“There wasn’t even supposed to be a spacewalk.” I shook my head slowly. “It’s … it’s space. Sometimes people die.”
“You think they didn’t plan for someone on that mission to die? You think they want any of them to come back alive? You think they want anyone on the Moon to live? You think—” He stopped and set his coffee mug down on the desk. “Excuse me.”
He got up and walked out of the office with his fists clenched at his sides. Myrtle reached for her husband and drew her hand back without touching him. She stared at the swinging plastic after he walked through. Swallowing, she turned back to us and gave one of the falsest smiles I’ve ever seen.
Wiping her hands on her trousers, she stood. “More wine?”
“Do you need to go with him?”
She shook her head and poured a little more into her cup. “He just needs a minute.” Myrtle sat back down, leaving her mug on the table. “Let’s keep working the problem.”
“Okay.” I gripped my mug in my hands, plaster cast rasping against the cup. “The point I was trying to make was that they would not have needed to place an agent on the Mars Expedition. Any death would serve their purpose. Maybe you weren’t the target on your BusyBee and it was set up ahead of time.”
She snorted and turned her coffee mug so the handle was aligned with the edge of the desk.
Watching her, I asked, “How … how bad was that? You never gave us details.”
“Bad.” She fished in her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief, which she twisted in her hands. “We weren’t supposed to survive that.”
The fans hissed, stirring the papers on the desk. Helen shifted in her chair and took a sip of dandelion wine, looking at me over the rim. She lowered the mug. “Do we have two classes of attack? Preplanned and improvised?”
Eugene pushed the curtain open and walked back in as if nothing had happened. “Good thought.” As he walked by, Myrtle held out her handkerchief. He glanced down to take it and settled in his chair, wrapping the handkerchief around the bloody knuckles of his right hand. “The BusyBee being improvised and messier.”
I nodded and pretended not to notice that he’d apparently walked out to punch something. I understood that feeling. Although I was more likely to throw things. “That would make sense with the dehumidifier. That affected everyone.”
“The short.” Helen tapped the edge of her mug, considering. “A plan to target Nicole?”
“I don’t see how they would have…” There was something there, though. I frowned, trying to drag it out of the dark, and stared at the intercom in Eugene’s office. How would I have done that? “With the water everywhere, anyone who closed a contact was going to cause a short. So … so you’d want to create a situation that would make it likely your target was the one who would be first.”
“For instance, a ward full of polio patients?” Helen sat with her feet together now. “If you’re the only one who can walk, who else would be the target?”
“Ana Teresa? Any of the nurses? Some of the patients—” There it was … on the other side of the lightning. “Birgit.”
“What?” Myrtle leaned forward, watching me.
I set the coffee mug down and pressed my fingers against my temples. I should not be drinking on an empty stomach. “Birgit was getting leg function back. She was trying to get to the intercom but fell … They could reasonably assume I would be the first one to the intercom, but … it was almost her. No—wait. Gah. I was so scrambled. There was something—”
“She’s Swiss.” Myrtle blinked and stood, turning to the filing cabinets. “Birgit Furst. She’s Swiss and works in comms. She could be the mole.”
Helen said, “Knowing how to tune a radio is not the same thing as being able to rig a booby trap.”
Myrtle set her coffee mug on top of the filing cabin
et and yanked it open. She flipped through the files. “No, but.…” With a noise of satisfaction, she yanked a file out. “Ha!”
The riffle of pages mimicked the hiss of fans, and then Myrtle slapped the folder down on Eugene’s desk. She laid her finger on a line with an air of triumph. Eugene leaned forward to read it and whistled.
“Just so we’re clear. If that says she went to Swiss finishing school, I’m going to stab someone.” I set my coffee mug down. “Do I need to find a pen?”
She snorted and tapped the page. “Swiss Army. Munitions.”
A shudder ran down my spine. I picked my coffee mug up again and took a deeply necessary drink. “So, in theory, she wasn’t going to the intercom, she was returning from rigging it to arc.” Rubbing my forehead, I tried to press the fatigue back. “That leaves the question of Faustino. Working in league with him? I mean … he is unquestionably gone, but neither of them were in a position to do anything to the hand controller in the rocket.”
“Curt was. Or it could have happened preflight.” Eugene settled back in his chair. “There’s no reason to think that Icarus is a single person.”
“So all of them?” Helen crossed her ankles. “Earth First managed to get three people on a single ship, all of them with names that contain the letter F. The Evil League of F Names? This is too complicated. We are focusing on people with F names because of the Swiss Army knife, but carrying a monogrammed knife seems like a clumsy mistake.”
Eugene’s stillness was as alarming as yelling might be in someone else. “It was not a plant. I’m sorry you were not there to see the placement or the damage to the controller, but I will ask that you trust my judgment. It was very clear that the knife was dropped because Icarus was in a hurry and it was not possible to retrieve it without dismantling the controller.”
Myrtle laid her hand on his arm. “But they might have stolen it.”
“No one reported a missing knife—” I gestured at the wall of filing cabinets. “Look … the whole being-Frisch’s-secretary was supposed to be cover, but I still had to file a lot of paperwork. People would report losing a box of paper clips, for crying out loud. If a completely innocent person lost that knife, someone would have said something.”
Eugene shrugged. “So let’s try to reunite it with the owner. Icarus will deny it’s theirs, but I’ll bet you that someone will remember seeing them pull it out at some point. They know Myrtle and I survived the BusyBee, so the fact that I have the knife is going to be understandable. And frankly, if I encourage them to come for me instead of other people I’ll regard that as a net positive.”
“There he goes…” Myrtle reached forward to pick up her mug.
He rolled his eyes at her and turned back to me. “I’ve been thinking about Faustino. Looking for him on the sly made sense when we were concerned about Frisch, but…” Given how sick he was, even if he had been involved, he was out of the game now. “As acting administrator, I would be irresponsible if I didn’t tell all personnel that we had a missing crew member. Let’s get all eyes looking for him.”
“Smart.”
“But—I still want you talking to Danika and Ruben to see if they know anything specific about where Faustino might have gone.”
I nodded. “I agree with Helen that we’re not looking for a large team of people, but the fact that he and a BusyBee have gone missing at the same time is … a problem.” I held up a finger and turned to Helen. “Can you talk to Paulo? He was with Faustino when he returned the suit, so might know where he had been.”
Helen nodded. “Yes. I can use chess as an excuse for that.”
“Good. I’ll ask maintenance for the ETA on the report about our rocket crash.” Eugene set his mug down and pulled a pad of paper toward him to make a note. “And also find out about the failure of the dehumidifiers, both of which are easily masked as part of my purview as acting administrator.”
“Masking…” I turned my mug in my hands, thinking. “I wonder if we should stop trying to hide what’s going on. The original reason for being quiet was to keep the bad guys from knowing the FBI was on to them, but that went out the airlock when they found my codes.”
Helen tipped her head to the side, eyes narrowing as she played through possibilities. Myrtle tapped her finger on the arm of her chair and Eugene said, “Huh.”
I had told Clemons, back on Earth, that I was not a fan of the secrecy, even though I accepted it at the time. But now, it seemed as though the fastest way to flush out Icarus on the Moon was to give them nowhere to hide. It was different on Earth, where there were places you could run. Stealing a BusyBee wouldn’t solve the resource problem and sooner or later, if they wanted to live, they would have to come back.
Eugene leaned back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. “The challenge … The challenge with that approach is that the clearest example of sabotage relies on my testimony, and I’m Black. We’ll need a higher level of proof.” He sat up in his chair and studied the sheet of paper again. “Let me see if maintenance has anything useful for us.”
God, but I wished he were wrong.
“I can … I can ask Kenneth to back you.” It wouldn’t take much persuading. “If we do multiple calls to split their attention, I should be able to brief him in the morning. Politically, the timing is good, because people will be ready to draw the link to … to Estevan. If we wait, the connection will diffuse in people’s minds.”
Eugene took a long, deep breath, staring at his coffee mug. Shaking his head, he glanced across the table at Myrtle. She gave a small shrug, with an even smaller nod.
“Yeah … Probably for the best. So. Tomorrow morning, let’s do four calls. I’ll call Clemons. Myrtle, you’re on Nathaniel. Helen…”
“I’ll call Reynard. Two husbands will make Nicole’s call less obvious.”
“Copy. And let’s keep eyes on Birgit and Curt for good measure.” He grimaced and took a sip of dandelion wine. “At least that should be easy.”
Unless, of course, Birgit wasn’t as sick as she seemed.
* * *
The phone was cool in my hand the next morning. I was apparently the first one to use that booth and I came with a headache from Myrtle’s wine. I’d taken an aspirin and then, so I could answer Kenneth honestly, if he asked, I picked up a squeeze tube of applesauce for breakfast. The sticky, sweet pulp still clung to the sides of my teeth, no matter how much I ran my tongue around the inside of my mouth.
In the booths on either side of me, my crewmates were making their own calls. I tried home first, guessing that he, too, would have had a long day yesterday. I hoped he had slept in, even a little, before heading to the office. And if I was wrong, then Chu could tell me Kenneth’s schedule for the day.
Chu answered on the second ring. “Governor’s Mansion. How may I help you?”
“Good morning, Chu.”
“Mrs. Wargin. What a pleasant surprise.” He never sounded surprised, even when I was calling from the Moon. “The governor is in the breakfast room, if you’ll give me a moment.”
“Thank you. Please, please make sure he knows I’m all right.” I wrapped the cord around my fingers, the black line a sharp contrast to the unadorned white of my new cast. I pressed the phone against my ear, listening for the faint sounds of home in the background. Was that a bird in the distance, or was my imagination desperate for Earth?
The phone rattled. “Nicole? What’s wrong?”
“I told Chu to tell you I was all right.”
“That is not the reassuring opener you think it is.” But some of the tension bled out of his voice. “It’s usually followed by something like, ‘I got lucky with the angle of entry’ or ‘It was only 8 gs.’”
“You make me sound like a daredevil.”
“That’s because— Maggie, no! Come here. No.” He laughed and the phone rustled against fabric as he lowered it. “You little scamp.”
“What’d she do?”
“Made off with a piece of bacon.” He grunted a little.
“She’s under the sideboard now … Marlowe is being a perfect gentleman and sitting in his chair.”
Marlowe had a chair at the dining table and would watch us over the edge. We never gave him food from the table, but he liked to participate. In the background, I heard my old man cat give a meep.
“That’s right, Marlowe. She is, indeed, undignified.” Kenneth sighed into the phone. “I’m so sorry about Terrazas. He was a good man.”
Salt water burned the back of my throat and choked me. “He really was. Helen is pretty broken up, although she’s masking it well.”
“I can’t imagine … I’ll add her to my prayers.”
We all took comfort in the illusions of control where we could. I swallowed. I did not have time for weeping and reminiscing. “That’s why I’m calling, actually. I want to brief you on what’s happening up here and ask … We need your political weight.”
The phone rustled for a moment, Kenneth’s hand muffling it. “Chu, clear my calendar for the morning, and give me the room.” The air in the line shifted again, and it was just Kenneth’s breath crossing the distance to the Moon. “All right. Tell me what you need.”
“I’m going to skim through the big-picture details and then you can tell me the things you want a deeper briefing on. We believe Estevan’s death was not an accident, but the result of actions by Earth First. Here on the Moon, they’ve taken a number of similar actions. The faulty thruster coming in, the dehumidifier, the short that hit me. In addition, there have been several more overt—”
On the other end of the line, Kenneth gave a short, shocked breath as my delayed words reached him. “God damn them.”
It startled me into silence. I had never heard raw rage in my husband’s voice before.
The Relentless Moon Page 30
