I found Imanol next to Central Park, with Jennifer standing in front of him. She was projecting full Valkyrie aura, backed by Guillermo, who I hadn’t even seen earlier, and Christine, one of the young Black women from the computer department. Imanol was standing with his head down, chewing his thumbnail. The dandelion rested in a packing crate on the floor with a couple of other plants. It, honestly, was easy to see why it looked like he was taking things at random.
“… are we clear about why this is a problem?”
“I didn’t mean anything.” He shifted his weight. “The word is just so close to Spanish.”
Guillermo sighed and stamped his cane against the floor. “No. No, this is covered in the English-language training for any Spanish astronaut heading to the United States. Even if it were not, why would you refer to him by his race in this context?”
“Well, someone had been littering!”
“Oh, for— You did not just say that.” Christine threw her hands out. She saw me coming, and I had, in fact, started to move faster. She took a step back. “You know the acting administrator is Black, right?”
“That’s not—” He turned to Guillermo and said something in Spanish.
Guillermo shook his cane at the young man. “No. I will not back you on this. You were wrong and you will say so. In English.”
I stopped next to them. “You can practice the apology on me, and then I’ll have someone escort you to Emmett, where you can issue it.”
“He pushed me!” The young man’s face went red and hot.
“Before or after?”
He opened his mouth. Closing it again was an answer, but he didn’t apologize. He knelt and grabbed something out of the bin. “Look. See! Litter in the dandelion beds.”
In his hand, he held a candy Easter egg, wrapped in dirt-stained cellophane.
I looked at him and laughed in his face. “You know who left that there? A white man. Last month, as part—”
My brain clicked, losing everything else I was going to say. I’m fairly certain I stood there with my mouth open for a moment. Why had Curt hidden Easter eggs?
To be a nice guy?
Or as an excuse for poking around in Central Park? I turned and walked to the edge of the beds, looking at them as if I were Icarus. We’d gone through his and Birgit’s quarters with a fine-toothed comb and found nothing incriminating. If either of them had a key for the encoded letter, they hadn’t kept it with their things. I wouldn’t have either.
“How often do you change plants? Without the quarantine. What’s the schedule?”
“Um … It depends. We try to come through weekly, though, to make sure moisture levels are okay and the irrigation system is working.” The cellophane rattled in his hand. “That’s why putting things in the park is a problem.”
If it were me … The beds were filled with carefully ameliorated lunar soil, contained in a rubber liner. We’d quarried lunar granite and put retaining walls around the liner, both to reinforce it and for beauty. We were trying so hard to make this place into a home. The irrigation system meant I would have had to worry about water, but the space between the liner and the wall would be dry. A corner. There’d be a little more space there. I walked around the edges, leaning over to look at the gaps at the corners.
The second bed, in the third corner, there was a little piece of cellophane just visible. I wedged my stiff fingers into the gap to push the rubber and soil back, wrist twinging, and grabbed the little corner with my right hand.
It wasn’t cellophane. It was a plastic envelope, filled with six or seven sheets of paper. My pulse was firing as if I were trying to put a plane down on an aircraft carrier. I opened the envelope, sliding the papers out.
The top page was a list of characters from Guiding Light followed by a string of digits. “Holy shit…” I barely remembered to look back at the group. “Jennifer, I’ll get your report later.” Head down, still reading, I left the baffled group of people and walked straight for the AdminMod.
Curt was Icarus.
Curt’s “mom” had been telling him which cipher to use based on which characters she talked about with him on the phone. I had no idea how they were getting messages up to him without someone in comms flagging strings of coded text coming up— Oh.
Oh … He had recruited Birgit for that. We knew they had someone on the ground. That person must have been sending the messages up when they knew Birgit was on duty. Suddenly the affair snapped into focus. He’d created a lever to use on her, which is why she admitted it and he denied it.
I turned to the next page.
It was a letter from Kenneth.
FORTY-EIGHT
Dear Nicole,
I hope you are enjoying reading the book I recommended. The two characters at the heart of it remind me so much of some of the refugees we saw after the Meteor, eleven years ago. I know that the author is writing about life after a nuclear war scenario, but I can’t help feeling the parallels—though I’ll grant that this is only the third of these “post-apocalyptic” books that I’ve read.
It’s occurred to me that, in many ways, the Ring cycle could also be considered post-apocalypse, especially the third opera. The seven Valkyries (or is it nine) are faced with many of the same loyalty questions that people face today. Government or family? Duty or love?
You will forgive me for being a little contemplative today. At a rally with a whopping 115 people, two constituents asked me if space is really the way to recover from the Meteor. Recovery is not the point of the space program; it is about survival. If I had a nickel for every time they respond, “But how does that help me?”
I offer words such as “jobs” and “economic growth,” but the truth is that I know we are going to be abandoning people. It pains me. True, we have a score of programs that are attempting to recover and salvage life here on Earth, but even if we can use lunar technology to build terrestrial underground cities, they won’t hold everyone. Every third person I see is likely to die. Good lord, I am a melancholic man without you around to balance me. I’ll just get a cat-o’-nine-tails and do some self-flagellation while I’m at it, shall I?
Marlowe is doing well. He is curling on the pillow by my head at night, but I think he misses you. Out of thirty days this month, I’m gone nearly thirteen nights. Perhaps if we had two cats? One of my assistants reportedly has a cat with kittens.
Be well, my love,
Kenneth
PS I forgot, again, to buy flowers for the house.
I was kneeling on the floor, halfway to the AdminMod. I didn’t have any memory of kneeling. In my hands was a letter from Kenneth that I had never seen. It was filled with numbers, a coded message hidden in the conversation, and I needed The Long Tomorrow. The paper rattled in my grip. It was hard to see.
I had a letter from Kenneth.
Curt had stolen a letter from my husband and I was going to kill the bastard.
Around me, people were saying things. Someone was running.
There were more pages. There was another letter.
Dear Nicole,
The house is still without flowers for at least the hundred and fifteenth day in a row. Seven days in a week, and yet somehow, I forget on every single one. I miss you so much that I think it will take yesterday’s letter and tomorrow’s to say everything I want. Even then, I expect I will wake at some forgotten hour of the night with another unspoken thought.
The interview you did yesterday is playing very well, which is unsurprising. Medgar tells me it’s been replayed on 217 different stations. Three different people have told me that they listened to you and that’s just since nine this morning. I know it is hard on you, but, darling, you are so good at this. Sometimes I think that you should be running for office instead of me.
And then I remember that you are essentially a cat and really only tolerate people. There are, perhaps, twenty-seven people in all the worlds that you find genuinely appealing. This is one of your charms, I think, but I am somewhat biased. I might be
counting high. Maybe you only like ten.
Speaking of kittens. I’ve been told that my staffer’s cat has had six kittens. They are nearing ten weeks of age, which is the perfect time for adoption. I am sorely tempted. Not for myself, of course, but for Marlowe so that he has company. If I wanted to horrify you, I would adopt three of them and name them after famous presidents.
In all seriousness, Nicole, I miss you more on this trip than any in recent memory. Please come home to me safely.
All my love,
Kenneth
“Nicole.” Eugene was in front of me, walking backwards. “Nicole. Talk to me.”
Pins prickled along my airways with every inhalation. The dome of Midtown had narrowed to a tunnel of red edged with black. Two letters. Kenneth had sent me two letters I had never seen. Kenneth had sent two letters that Curt had stolen. Curt had made arrangements to have my husband killed.
I was walking toward the AdminMod. Curt was being held in SciMod. I turned. There were other people around us. One of the men held a garden trowel. I transferred the letters to my left, pinching them in an awkward grip, and took the trowel. He flinched but I was already moving again.
“Nicole!” Eugene grabbed my arm. “Hey … Hey. Nicole? Nicole. I need you to stop and tell me what’s going on.”
I twisted away from him, breaking the grip just the way I’d been taught. Curt had answers I needed and Eugene was in my way.
Wait.
This was Eugene. I was frightening him, which was a bad strategy. If I worried Eugene, he would try to restrain me. He was bigger than I was and he would succeed, unless I hurt him, which I did not want to do.
He got in front of me again, blocking my path. “Come on, Wargin. I need your report. What’s the sitrep?”
Situation report.
I blinked and my lids scraped over dry eyes. He was still in front of me, waiting for my status update. Wetting my lips, I handed him the first page, the one with the keys to the codes.
Eugene glanced at it, as if he were afraid to look away from me, then did a double take. “Holy…” Looking to the side, he found a person in the crowd. “You said she found these in the dandelion bed?”
Why wasn’t he asking me? Probably because I wasn’t talking. Which raised the question of how long Eugene had been here? I was … I was not right.
“Okay … Wargin. Show me the other papers?” He reached for them.
They were for me.
I stepped back. It hurt to breathe. Eugene’s eyes were wide and he looked alarmed. Not the way he was when he worried about Myrtle but as if he were assessing a threat.
Oh.
I had lifted the trowel. That had been a poor choice.
I lowered it. Eugene needed to not see me as a threat. I needed to not be a threat. I relaxed my posture, but my face was a hard mass. Lowering my gaze was the best I could do. I lifted Kenneth’s letters and held them up so Eugene could see but not touch.
“Jesus…” Eyes wide, he looked up from the page to me, and then at the people who were still around us. “All right … Okay. Nicole? I want you to come with me to the AdminMod. We’ll talk this through and come up with a plan. All right?”
Curt was in the SciMod. A trowel was not a perfect tool, but it was what I had. I didn’t like working with my right hand, but it was what I had. I turned the handle of the trowel over in my grip, weighing it.
Eugene’s gaze flicked to the trowel and back up to me. “Wargin, I need a confirmation. Do you copy?”
“Copy.” The word emerged on its own from the call and response of pilot litany.
“Thank God.” He closed his eyes for a brief moment and I could have gotten past him in that flash of inattention.
But that, too, would have been a bad strategy. I stayed still. No, wait. I needed to do more than that. I needed help, because the problem with packing all your emotions away so you don’t become a weeping mass on the floor is that it leaves you cold and dead and ready to drive a trowel into someone’s guts and watch them choke on their own blood and that would cause problems.
It would upset Eugene. It would upset Myrtle. I thought Helen would understand, but I was not certain my judgment was entirely sound. I reversed the trowel in my hand and held it out to Eugene, handle first.
He took a slow breath and reached out just as slowly, as if I were offering him a gun. “Thank you.”
I dragged language out of the crypt. “I’m sorry I am worrying you.” My voice sounded flat and wrong.
“I’ll admit that you are.” Eugene handed the trowel off to someone. “Formation flying to the conference room. Take point. I’m wingman. Copy?”
“I’m upset, Eugene. Likely in shock. I have not gone stupid.”
“Great. Glad to hear it.” His smile was off-nominal. “I still need verbal confirmation. Just reassure me. We’re going to the conference room. Not a request. Do you copy?”
“Roger, wilco.” My smile hurt, but his shoulders relaxed a fraction, so that was good. “Is The Long Tomorrow in your office?”
“Yes. We’ll get it for you.” He nodded, looking again at the letters clenched in my hand. “What else do you need?”
I needed my husband. I needed to not screw up. “A tube of applesauce. I forgot to eat lunch.”
“All right.” He shot a glance to the side and nodded. I heard someone moving off at a run toward the cafeteria.
“Thank you.” I turned around and headed back to the AdminMod with Eugene trailing off my port side. I needed to work the problem before this dome of calm fractured.
* * *
Each letter had five sets of numbers. Ten words my husband had tried to make sure that I knew.
GOVERNMENT HEAD BACKING EARTH FIRST
TRYING TO PROVOKE SPACE WITHDRAWAL
“He thought I knew.” I slid the translated page across the conference room table to Eugene and followed the motion through to rest my head on the table next to the empty tube of applesauce. “I told Kenneth I hadn’t translated his most recent letter, but he thought I’d gotten these two.”
The paper rattled and a moment later, Eugene whistled.
“I wouldn’t have asked him to—” My throat seized and I braced, tensing on the table, until the wave of grief and anger rolled over me.
“He knew what he was walking into.” Eugene’s voice was low.
“But I didn’t!” I slammed my cast on the tabletop. “There were other solutions. Other—”
Clamping down, I held on until I could breathe again. Eugene waited. I heard him shift once as if he were going to reach for me, but he only set his hand on the table close enough to mine that I could feel the warmth.
“It’s okay to cry.”
Three horrifying sobs tore past my guard. Sounds that should not come from the human throat. Holding my breath, I tried to stop the noise. My back shuddered with the effort of managing my airflow.
“I don’t—” I swallowed. “I don’t want to.”
“What can I do?”
Wiping my eyes, I sat up, leaving my hands pressed against the sides of my face, the plaster a chalky cool. “Show me how you punch the wall?”
His brows went up, gaze dipping for a moment to the bandage on his knuckles. Surely he hadn’t thought that was subtle.
“I can’t figure out how you do it without rebounding across the room.” I swiped the skin under my eyes again and lowered my hands to my lap. Everything ached with the tension knotted in my joints. “I’m trying really hard to not murder Curt.”
“I’m not going to lie … I thought you were going to.”
“Probably was.”
The fans whirred, pushing air across the tears drying on my cheeks.
“It’s a filing cabinet.” Eugene pushed his chair back from the conference table. “Grip a drawer handle and brace with a foot against the wall opposite. But if you break your other hand, I didn’t show you how to do this and wasn’t anywhere near.”
“I’m sure Ana Teresa will be delighted th
at you’re afraid of her.”
“The doctor?” Eugene shook his head as he opened the door for me. “Myrtle will kill me dead.”
My laugh felt as if someone had stabbed me. “Leave the murdering to me.” I caught his arm before I stepped through the door. “I really am sorry I frightened you earlier.”
Eugene lowered his head and gently closed the door again. “Wargin. The problem isn’t that you want to murder Curt. It’s that you were nonresponsive. By rights, I should pack you off to medical and I’m not because … I understand blind rage.” His gaze was level and serious. “I need you to tell me that you’re okay. That I can trust you to not act without authorization.”
Things inside my chest broke and tore as I drew in a breath. I pulled myself up into perfect posture, leveling out my shoulders, and nodded. “Yes, sir.” I wished I had lipstick as a shield. “I’m compromised, but clear.”
“Okay.”
His trust nearly fractured me again. I bit my lips and looked to the wall beside the door, waiting for the burning in my sinuses to pass. I cleared my throat. “I have a suggestion you won’t like.”
“Then make one that I will?”
Snorting, I turned to him because I needed eye contact for this. “I think you should let me question Curt alone.”
Eugene laughed once, and it was breathless as if he’d tried to stop it. “No.”
“I’d want you outside the door, in case there were any problems.”
Still staring at me as if I’d lost my mind, which was fair, he shook his head. “With him or with you?”
“Either is a reasonable question. That’s why sending me in is an interesting choice. Once he knows we found the letters, I will be terrifying in ways that you could not be.” I kept my arms nice and relaxed by my sides. “It is a ploy that stands a high statistical likelihood of making him break faster, which we need.”
Honestly, I had no idea if there were statistics on things like this, but I’m good at manipulating human emotion and I knew I was right about the effect I could have on Curt. There was a twinge of guilt about trying to work Eugene, but not as much as there should be. I was retreating into that safe, calm vacuum where I could move without friction. Reentry was going to be hell later. But that was a tomorrow problem.
The Relentless Moon Page 45
