Walking on the Sea of Clouds
Page 11
Now, lines from that poem Stormie had brought home from the hospital ran through his head:
Would it have been worthwhile,
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
Frank had no idea what it meant to Mr. Eliot, and was not at all sure what it meant to him. The ball of sand he had held that night would not hold together to roll toward questions or answers, but that was the nature of sand. Not all of the poetry he and Stormie quoted to each other had definite meanings; they had started their poetic sharing when they were first dating, and eventually included everything from unfamiliar verses they went out of their way to find, to songs anyone might know, to passages out of books they read.
Blake had written about seeing the universe in a grain of sand, but in his heart Frank preferred good soil to barren sand. Topsoil, and earthworms—he smiled at the name—ready to grow the engineered crops that would sustain the growing lunar colony. Crops that would not only need water but help establish and maintain the cycle that cleaned the water; crops that would help purify the air for him and Stormie and all the others to breathe.
The colonization fever he had caught from her could not be quenched; it was stronger even than the artificial fever he had endured with her in the hospital. He marveled at the changes she had wrought in him. He had always had the soul of a farmer: as a young boy the magic of growing things captivated him, if only in his mother’s tiny rooftop garden in Nairobi. He was twelve when his family moved to the United States, first to Louisiana and then to California, and he loved the variety of plants that thrived in the southern heat and the mild Pacific climate. When he started graduate school, he originally planned to join the Agriculture Department to help farmers get the most out of their soil, and help them replenish the Earth so she would always yield up a plentiful harvest. And possibly, he thought at the time, he might return to Kenya and continue the same work there. He still believed in that work, but Stormie’s enthusiasm for space had changed his outlook: in space the only life was what mankind brought with them, and for man to survive everything he brought would have to thrive.
Lunar Life Engineering could have gotten the farming subcontract, he was sure; he would have been happy to try for it, but Stormie insisted air and water would be enough. Frank suspected that she had refused to bid for the farm because she did not want to be reminded that her thumb was far from green. But it was satisfactory to have parts of their worlds that did not overlap.
That was marriage—time shared and time apart, all the more precious as days started to pass a little quicker, as months and years began to look the same. As routines became habits.
But everything was going to change, starting tomorrow.
He was not afraid of the physical results; he trusted that they were fine, and he and Stormie would travel to Utah as scheduled. If that turned out to be wrong, he would admit his ignorance and look for another way to achieve his purpose—their purpose—in life. But for now he was confident in the future they had envisioned together.
He guessed that in that future, routine days would be rare. He craved order and schedule and routine in his life, but he would be fine so long as he could count on Stormie to keep him in synch. She was not as tempestuous as her name—nickname or her real name, Gale—indicated, and not nearly so much as she liked people to think. And where he wanted order, Stormie produced it. If making order out of chaos was God’s original wonder, then Stormie was surely made in His image.
* * *
Green garland festooned the grand entrance of the Doubletree Hotel. Christmas lights twined around the palm trees flanking the doors, but at least they weren’t turned on this morning. Jim Fennerling wheeled across the hotel lobby and shook Frank’s hand. Jim smiled, and Stormie took that as a good sign. She bent down to hug him.
He held up his hand as if to ward her off. “Are your hands clean?”
Stormie punched him in the shoulder. “Don’t joke about that, Jim.”
Now he took her hand and leaned forward to kiss it. At the last minute, he sniffed. “Yeah, I guess they’re clean enough,” he said.
“Jerk.”
“That’s me.”
“Please, James,” Frank said. “What did you find out?”
“You’re always so formal, Frank,” Jim said. “And you want to talk business before we even have breakfast? I can’t imagine why you’d be so anxious. It’s not like you, oh, I don’t know, have a plane to catch or anything.” He pulled out a datapad and retrieved a display. “Take a look.”
Stormie stepped in and looked at the readout. Jim had pulled up an e-mail from Dr. Nguyen, listing both their names and next to each one the evaluation: Cleared For Flight. She let out a small whoop of joy and hugged Frank, and then Jim.
“Wonderful, James,” Frank said, “thank you, for everything.”
Jim rolled backward a half meter and looked at both of them. His expression became more serious. “But there’s something else I need to tell you. Something else you need to do.” He paused, looking grim, and Stormie’s chest tightened. Then Jim grinned a little, shook his head, and positively beamed. In that smile, which she had seen too rarely the last couple of years, Stormie saw Meredith’s natural joy and exuberance mirrored in her father. Despite Jim’s obvious mirth and inability to fake them out with a serious pronouncement, Stormie’s old ache returned: almost a guilty pain she carried because she and Frank were attempting what Meredith had longed to do. It crept over Stormie’s heart like a heavy, dark spider; she shuddered, and missed exactly what Jim said.
“Say again, Jim?” she said.
“God, all that buildup for nothing. I said, ‘You need to send me some Moon rocks, preferably blue diamonds.’”
Stormie looked at Frank. His eyes were bright, and one corner of his mouth turned up a little, then more and more.
“You bet,” Stormie said. “The first ones we find.”
Jim chuckled as he wheeled himself away from them, toward the hotel restaurant. The hostess led them to a table and removed one chair to make room for his.
As they opened their menus, Stormie said, “Sorry to cause so much last-minute trouble, Jim.”
“What, you? Cause trouble? First of all, let’s call it ‘next-to-last-minute trouble,’ since you’ve still got to get through training. At least if you have to do first aid on another colonist we won’t have to worry about whether they’re carrying any dread diseases.” He lifted his water glass as if to toast. “Here’s to my two intrepid adventurers and would-be heroes, who are going to curtail any attempted heroics for at least the next twelve hours until they are accepted into the Asteroid Consortium’s loving hands … who will excel at their training so they can depart their native world for a cold, desolate, soon-to-be-no-longer-lifeless world … my two good friends, who having made my life more interesting than by rights it should be are about to make me, well, not rich, but at least somewhat comfortable.” He took a sip, and Stormie and Frank returned the toast.
He didn’t mention Meredith. And he called us his friends.
Stormie puzzled over that for a moment. She had just started grad school, and Frank was almost done, when they had enrolled separately in an astronomy class taught by Meredith, who was five years younger than Stormie and already working on her doctorate. Meredith’s enthusiasm about quasars and pulsars and all the other brands of stars rubbed off on most of the class—except the few people who had been looking for an easy A—and rubbed off most on Stormie. While Frank courted Stormie, she courted the young blonde physicist in a way, and by the end of the semester had a new roommate and a friend for life. Two, actually.
I think I’ll like having Jim as a friend as well as a partner.
“Shouldn’t that be the other way around?” Stormie said. “We’re just the brawn, you’re the big business brain.”
“I balance the checkbooks, that’s all. But, I was
disadvantaged, having grown up in the dark ages. If I’d had calculators and computers instead of slide rules when I was in school, maybe I could’ve hacked it with the big engineering brains.”
“Come now, my friend,” Frank said. “You are not so much older than we are.”
“Oh, yes he is,” Stormie said. “Look at that grey hair. Look at those wrinkles, and the way the skin sags at the corner of his eye. He’s ancient. I think we should make sure his will is up-to-date and we’re the beneficiaries.”
Jim, poker-faced, sighed. He tapped his fingers against his water glass, then stuck them in the icy water and flicked droplets at Stormie. She sat back so fast her chair jumped.
“I’m not actually that old,” he said, “and I’m still quick. And sneaky.” He looked down into his lap and tapped one arm of his wheelchair. “Okay, not as quick as I used to be, but I’m still sneaky.”
Stormie laughed. “And a good thing, too. I think that’s the only reason we got bankrolled.”
“And don’t you forget it.”
Coffee came, then breakfast, and both were excellent. Midway through his omelet, Jim asked Frank, “So how was your family?”
Frank rearranged his hashed browns. “I suppose it went well. Father did not appreciate that we did not stay through to go to Sunday service, however.”
Stormie suppressed a growl; Frank was putting it mildly. Frank’s father wasn’t a missionary anymore but he was still a devout evangelical—too devout for Stormie’s taste. She respected Benjamin for practicing his faith in practical terms—an engineer and project manager, he had started his mission work in Kenya by installing new wells and designing water purification and power plants in his off hours when he wasn’t working on the renovations to the U.S. Embassy. When the Embassy project was complete, he’d stayed in country working on other infrastructure and housing projects and gradually became a full-time mission worker who also happened to be a practicing engineer. Stormie understood his devotion and even admired it, but she did not share it and didn’t like when he pressed them about it—which he had at every opportunity during the past week. If he’d been prone to fits, Benjamin would’ve pitched one when they said they would be leaving on Friday.
“Other than that, the visit was fine,” Stormie said. It was mostly true.
“Did you warn them about what we’re doing this morning?”
“No.”
“That’s probably best—I don’t think they’d appreciate you giving me power of attorney instead of one of them.”
“Perhaps not,” Frank said. “But at least they were more supportive of our venture than I have seen before.”
“Well, that’s something to be thankful for,” Jim said.
They made more small talk as they ate: whether the Rams had a chance against the Falcons, whether the courts were going to allow individual freeholding on asteroids or just keep things limited to corporate and NGO holdings. They avoided speaking aloud the difficult truth that their lunar venture was a dream they all shared, but only two of them had a chance to achieve.
Stormie decided it had to be said, to keep everything clear and in the open. She put her hand on Jim’s for a second. “It’s too bad you can’t come with us.”
Jim toyed with his coffee spoon. “No, it’s too bad she couldn’t go with you,” he said. “I was just thinking about Meredith last night, wondering if I would be saying goodbye to her today. I know she’d want to go with you. That’s not to say that I wouldn’t mind going myself, but I’m too long in the tooth and they don’t need a number-cruncher up there. I’d just be in the way. No need for me to use up the air and water you guys make.”
Frank squeezed Jim’s shoulder. “Oh, I think perhaps we could get you a good deal. If you could afford it.”
Jim chuckled. “You two do what I know you can do, and eventually we’ll make enough that I could afford it. Even at my measly twenty-four percent.”
“Are you still grousing about your share?” Stormie asked. “As I remember it, we offered you more, but you wouldn’t take it.” She owned fifty-one percent of their company, Frank twenty-five, and Jim twenty-four. If Frank had been the majority shareholder, they would have qualified as a minority-owned business, but with Stormie in the top spot they got minority- and woman-owned business considerations. Stormie had never been one to look for handouts growing up, but she was smart enough not to look at that gift horse’s teeth.
Frank smiled and said, “I would have offered you only a ten percent share, but my wife has a thing for older gentlemen.”
Jim brightened a little. “You know, I always suspected that. She’s always asking to sit in my lap and ride in the chair with me—”
“Yeah, right,” said Stormie. In reality, Frank had wanted Jim’s share to be a full third of the company. Jim had refused, and suggested the odd step-down arrangement. “Actually, now that I think about it, you two have always been suspiciously close.”
The two men looked at each other, and Frank said, “James, my friend, I think she has discovered our secret.”
Jim sighed. “I know, but you made your choice long before we met.” He failed to make his voice pitiful enough.
Stormie groaned. “Should I leave the two of you alone for a little while?”
“You wouldn’t even have to offer, if you came out to the left coast more often. It shouldn’t always be business and big goodbyes.”
Jim’s words took the rest of the conversation with them as they faded. Once Stormie and Frank had moved east, first to Indiana and then down to Texas, they had ventured back to California only infrequently, and other than business it seemed only in response to tragedies: Meredith’s final days, Alyson’s suicide, Jim’s accident. It didn’t have to be that way. Frank would’ve come out more often, to see his family, but he stayed clear because she preferred it; the realization ate at her regularly, but she pushed it down deep like forcing a cancer into remission. Her desire to avoid the never-ending conflict with his family warred against how much she wanted Frank to be happy, but every time she brought it up he insisted that he was fine. Frank was always fine….
Stormie spoke up before the silence extended too far. “You’re right,” she said, and she meant it. They should come back more often, but the chances of that were fading fast. She struggled against the somber mood and decided a little reverse psychology might be in order to salvage the conversation. She lightened her tone. “We shouldn’t come back for long goodbyes. In fact, I’m not sure why we came down here at all. Frank, why didn’t we just go straight to Utah and do this business by thumb?”
“Hey, come on,” Jim said. “At least I’m buying your breakfast.”
“Uh, huh.”
“And while you’re playing around in Mormon country, someone’s got to hold the AC’s feet to the fire to keep up with their payments, if only to cover the cost of your interferon.”
“Playing around? Holed up underground with forty starstruck adventurers, trying to see who gives up and goes home first, is playing around?” Stormie looked to Frank for some support, but he didn’t catch on to the game. He just shrugged. She shook her head, smiled, and tossed part of a biscuit at him.
Jim laughed. “I’m going to miss you guys, too,” he said.
Twenty minutes later, the bill was paid and they had exchanged thumbprints on datapads to execute the powers of attorney. They walked Jim to his van and exchanged handshakes and hugs while the ramp extended from the side door.
“Do me a favor, will you?” Jim said. “Try to keep yourselves healthy. I can’t be there to watch over you two every minute.”
Stormie bent down and gave him a kiss. “Thanks, Jim. I’ll be more careful next time.”
Jim’s eyes twitched just before his lips curled up into a smile. “You’d better. But I know you too well, Stormie, and I’m not going to count on it.”
Jim maneuvered himself into his van; Stormie and Frank waved goodbye as he drove away from the hotel. A half hour later, they were in the hotel shu
ttle on the way to their next big step toward the Moon.
Chapter Eleven
Best to Shoot a Lame Horse
Saturday, 2 December 2034
Lunar Setup Mission II, Day 32
“Damn it, Oskar, I said I’m fine.”
Van tried to make his voice sound as normal as he could. He was standing, leaning mostly on his left leg, outside the main airlock to the Turtle. Sweat slicked his face, crawling down in slow rivulets, and he hoped Oskar couldn’t see clearly through his helmet.
“Stand on one foot,” Oskar said. He had made the long walk from the LSOV, just as he had threatened to do. He stood downrange, toward the flyer, and the Sun, just a little lower than when they arrived, threw crystal clear unbroken waves of light that shadowed most of the right half of his suit. Henry had tagged along, and stood a few meters to the left and behind Oskar. Grace, meanwhile, busied herself with the pre-trip inspection on the truck—but no doubt she was listening.
“And then what? Do a jig? Run forty meters and let you time me?”
“You’re stalling.”
“And you’re just trying to make it worse than it really is. Yeah, I fell. Yeah, I twisted my knee. Yeah, it hurts, but I’ve had worse. But we’ve got Ranger candy in the truck, and if I can’t find an Ace bandage I’ll strap it up with duct tape. It’ll be fine. Hell, if those biocapsules came equipped to pump out painkillers, all would be well.” The biocapsules were a NASA invention licensed to the Consortium: microscopic chemical factories that primarily secreted compounds to speed tissue repairs after radiation exposure. They were almost the only technology that made NASA a profit.
Oskar did not relent. “Your bull-headedness is exactly why the biocapsules do not produce painkillers. Pain is a warning, and warnings must be heeded. Stand on one foot.”