Walking on the Sea of Clouds

by Gray Rinehart

  She closed the notice, which uncovered the log queue. She stared at it for a long time before she opened Frank’s last entry.

  He’d typed it while he was taking his last breaths. His CommPact had recorded every letter, and held onto them for safekeeping until it automatically copied the entry to their data module when someone brought it into the lab. If she wanted, she could probably figure out a way to have the system replay the entry in the time sequence in which he typed it. It would be more like hearing the words, and more than anything she wished she could hear his voice again. But if he had spoken … to redirect that line of thought, she added a new pain to her awareness by clenching her fist so her nails dug into her palm.

  The first few lines were all business, so typical of Frank, although more telegraphic than his usual complete sentences. Then it changed, and threw everything Stormie knew about her husband into disarray.

  SP’s suit compromised. Patch ineffective, still leaking.

  No time to retrieve another.

  Suits connected. Insufficient supply 4 2.

  Help requested. No time.

  FP tank plumbed to SP. Cut off personal supply.

  Waiting.

  Forgive me, Gale, for I know not what I do.

  I miss you already

  forgive me, father, for i know what i have done

  my only choice.

  bad headache

  other pain all gone my love / no fire

  hard er to type now. hard 2 think

  hard 2 breathe

  breathe

  breatheonme bbreathofgod

  fil me w lif

  The flames of anger rose again inside her, high enough that the backs of her eyes tingled with heat. Was it petty of her to be angry more than thankful? She pushed that thought away. She didn’t care.

  Why, Frank?

  She hated herself for her failure.

  She was ashamed of ever wanting him to rescue her, like a knight on horseback set to challenge a dragon threatening a damsel. She was no damsel, and didn’t deserve such a knight. Scenario after scenario—Frank going back for another stickypatch, or driving the MPV over to her, or trying to carry her to the truck—all ended with Frank still alive. Even if she ran out of time, he wouldn’t. He didn’t have to. Except he did.

  It didn’t help that she knew she would have done the same for him. If anything, that made it worse: she would’ve preferred it that way. Her knight deserved to live, precisely because he was so good and pure and noble.

  Damn you, Frank.

  But beneath her thoughtless, inconsiderate rage at him for saving her was a more profound and disturbing sense of … she had no other word for it than betrayal. The way he so blithely retreated into blind faith … if he had cried out aloud, she might think he was panicked and thrashing like a drowning man, but he had typed that message. Typed it, and managed to make it sound almost casual.

  She couldn’t understand it, and couldn’t relate to it. He’d told her he wanted to have a church wedding not because he believed in it, but because his parents did; he’d nodded in silent agreement every time she pointed out the hypocrisies of the hyper-pious; he’d been as orthodox an evolutionist as any direct descendent of Darwin. But, there on the screen, what came to him in the end? A hymn as old as any Mother Mac would’ve sung. Had he needed some comfort at the end, and was it a comfort that he had denied himself because of her?

  It was not a comfort she could share. The only comfort she took was that he said his other pain, the recurrent pain they shared, was gone. She supposed she should be grateful to the universe for that, even though she still carried the pain with her.

  A miniature roar warned Stormie before Dusty the cat rubbed against her calf. The wastrel looked up at her and repeated its greeting.

  She turned off the monitor, and gathered the cat up in her arms. Stormie was tired of thinking, and wondering, and wishing Frank had found a way to live. She needed to talk to someone. She thought about tracking down Barbara Richards—Frank had trusted her with some of their work, maybe Stormie could trust her, too. Central Control would know where she was, but she was probably working.

  “That’s what I need to be doing,” she told the cat. “Working.”

  She didn’t want to, but it would do her good.

  She set the cat down and shooed it away, pulled up to the bench, and started tearing into the half-repaired filter unit.

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Such Affinity for This Barren Place

  Monday, 28 January 2036

  The junction tunnel shone like the interior of a diamond. Every surface gleamed, and smelled of antiseptic. The FDD chamber rested, erect in its place on the wall. It loomed over the already small space, a vulture waiting to devour anyone unwary.

  Barbara hated the damn thing. She sat on the floor, back against the bulkhead opposite from the torture chamber for the dead.

  “Excuse me, Ms. Richards?”

  Barbara cringed at the voice, and immediately regretted her reaction. She hoped Stormie didn’t notice; she might not understand it. Barbara looked away from the hatch where Stormie stood, which unfortunately brought her gaze back to the desiccator.

  “It’s Barbara, Stormie, you know that.”

  “Is this a bad time?” Stormie asked.

  The corners of Barbara’s mouth turned up of their own accord. The question was more the type of courtesy that Frank would have offered; Stormie was known more for direct, forthright contact. More forceful than tactful.

  If it was me, I probably wouldn’t know how to act anymore either.

  “No,” Barbara said. “I’m just thinking.”

  Stormie came into the junction and sat cross-legged to Barbara’s left. “I’ve been wanting to thank you for helping Frank in the lab when he got so sick,” she said.

  Now Barbara smiled fully. “He was so determined to keep working, he never would’ve gotten better. He wanted desperately to help figure out what was wrong.”

  “That sounds like Frank.”

  “After that, I just stopped by and helped with what I could.”

  “I appreciate it,” Stormie said. She fidgeted, twisting her ID ring around and around on her finger. “I wish I’d been here to help.”

  “You were dealing with troubles of your own, I think.”

  “I wanted to pay you for your time, but we’ve got some company issues. Once things settle out, maybe in a couple of weeks, you can add up your hours and I’ll make it happen.”

  Barbara shook her head. “No need for that. It’s just the way I was brought up—you help your neighbor when they need a hand.” She found the words hard to say; they bound up with memories of the ranch until they were as big as apples and stuck in her throat.

  She changed the subject. “What company issues?”

  Stormie had a hard time keeping her composure. Her response came slowly. “The insurance company refused to pay out on Frank’s policy. And the Consortium is threatening again to buy out our investors. Our partner—my partner—no, our partner is trying to stop them. And fight the insurance company. And keep me from losing my mind.” She laughed the kind of laugh you use to cover the pain of extracting a big splinter. “He’s not doing a good job with any of it.”

  “Why won’t they pay?”

  Stormie took a deep breath and held it for a second. Then, almost inaudibly, she said, “Insurance policies don’t pay out for suicide.”

  Barbara put her hands flat on the cool floor and leaned forward, tense from toes to forehead. “That’s ridiculous. That’s like … not paying out for the person who pushes someone out from in front of a car, or pulls somebody out of a fire but goes back in to look for other people. That’s just … wrong.” She leaned over, reached out, and grasped Stormie’s hand. “Your husband was a good man. Van told me a few days ago how impressed he was with Frank’s self-control. His determination. He said he didn’t think he could do what Frank did, not with the same kind of composure.”

  Barba
ra knew she couldn’t have done it. To have kept under control and typed out a cogent message while suffocating … she didn’t think she knew anyone with that sort of will power.

  Stormie hung her head, and Barbara gathered her into her arms. She shook, but Barbara wasn’t sure if she was crying or struggling not to.

  Barbara remained silent. It was better not to talk too much, and she probably already had; even saying good things had a way of backfiring. She reflected again, for at least the hundredth time, on how it would be for her if she was in Stormie’s place. The seedling of resolution that had sprouted in her heart spread a few new branches.

  “We’ll help you fight this,” Barbara said. “We’ll call people, blast every portal on the Net. We’ll make it right.”

  Stormie sat back and wiped her eyes. “Thank you.”

  “Frank was a good man,” Barbara repeated. “That’s why I did it myself.”

  “Did what?” Stormie asked.

  Barbara sighed. Again she had probably said too much. She wasn’t supposed to tell; she couldn’t remember the details of the nondisclosure agreement, but as her resolution blossomed and grew she found she didn’t care what the AC might do to her.

  It was supposed to make it easier on everyone, especially the next of kin, not to know who processed a loved one’s body. Barbara and Stormie’s names were probably on the bottom of the list after working on the dead miner last September—Stormie would’ve been exempted anyway from mutilating her husband’s body—but that experience had bonded her to Stormie in a way Barbara barely understood. Every other interaction she had with Stormie and Frank had been good: their first meeting in the training facility, when Stormie joked with her; the card games and parties that BD and Maggie organized; working with Frank to collect samples and keep the air and water flowing. Maybe her bond with Stormie was part of what led her to help Frank when he got so sick.

  Barbara nodded at the upright coffin, the FDD, standing like an Iron Maiden against the far bulkhead. “I thought it was wrong that they would hold a lottery,” she said, “so I volunteered.” Tears welled up in the bottoms of her eyes; she looked up and blinked, and they traced ticklish paths down her cheeks. “I think the last person who sees you should be a friend.”

  Stormie stared at Barbara. Her face was devoid of emotion: no anger, no sadness, no pain showed on her dark features. She scooted back a little bit, and looked from Barbara to the recovery station and back again.

  “I’m not sure what to say.” Her voice, like her face, was flat and hid all feeling.

  Barbara looked down, ashamed at Stormie’s scrutiny. It was her turn to fidget, and she didn’t waste it. “I’m not, either. I think it might have been partly because of what you said to me when we first met.”

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “You asked me about Van’s accident, and said you would forgive Frank anything as long as he came back to you alive … I said I thought—”

  “—sometimes we love them too much.…”

  “Yeah, but that’s not really right. I mean, it’s not really possible, and it’s not right. We shouldn’t conditionalize it. It should be that you would forgive Frank anything, that I would forgive Van anything.…” Barbara paused, and wiped her eyes and nose. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t lecture, and I wasn’t supposed to tell you at all. I don’t quite know why I did. I do know one thing: I can’t ever do that again. That’s why I’m leaving.”

  Barbara slid back until she touched the wall again, and leaned into it for support. Before the silence became any more uncomfortable, she said, “I haven’t told Van yet. But when the next shipload of people gets here, I’m leaving. Whether he comes with me or not. I’ve already talked to my dad, and he’s going to help me pay the penalty for breaking my AC contract and I’ll work the ranch to pay him back.

  “I thought I had what it takes to live here, but I’m going back where I can see blue sky and feel the wind and the Sun. I’m not strong enough for this. I’m not as strong as you.”

  Barbara turned her head to Stormie, who was still looking intently at her. She imagined all possibility of friendship evaporating around her like morning dew, and wished she was already gone, away from the immediacy of this awful place and the feeling that she had betrayed and hurt someone she liked.

  Stormie stood. She stepped across the junction and rested one hand on the desiccation chamber.

  Without looking back at Barbara, she asked, “Did you … take care with him?”

  The junction lights hurt Barbara’s eyes. She blinked away tears. “Yes,” she said. “I think so.”

  Stormie walked out the same way she had come in.

  * * *

  Thursday, 7 February 2036

  Van wondered if this would be the last sunrise he would see on the Moon.

  He was outside early for his shift. He’d driven one of the little electric carts out away from the colony complex to a clear spot for a good view of the sunrise. As the first bit of the Sun appeared, he checked his time display.

  In a little over an hour he would ride out with the rest of the crew to lay another couple dozen meters of acceleration rails for the launch system. Within six months the rails would stretch another twelve kilometers across the plain of Mare Nubium. Every kilometer of new rail would reduce the amount of fuel needed to launch supply and cargo ships from the colony, because the vessels would accelerate along the rails by ground power; every kilometer meant less and less fuel consumption and more and more cargo capacity. In the end, he supposed, the fuel savings might mean more than the added cargo since the fuel could be broken down into other constituents for the colony’s use. The bottom line stayed the same, though: every hour he spent working on this project was an investment in the colony’s long-term survival.

  And he might not be around to see it survive.

  It had been a little over a week since Barbara told him she wanted to leave. She seemed as determined as he’d ever seen her, and he’d taken it all in without speaking. She’d been smart to tell him at suppertime in Grand Central with a dozen people eating and talking around them. Even though she’d been quiet and he’d been silent, everyone figured out what was going on.

  When they got back to their room, she cried in his arms. Holding her gently was one of the hardest things he’d ever done. He wanted to squeeze her until she yelled. That wouldn’t help, though—him or her. He held her, and she cried, and her tears evaporated on his anger and froze inside his soul.

  He hated the cold feeling that developed inside him, and in the past week he’d done everything he could think of to thaw it. He started by trying to talk Barbara out of leaving, and when that didn’t work he had Beverly Needham talk to her—she’d been so instrumental in keeping Barbara in the program to begin with. But Belladonna came up empty, too. He knew he’d lost the battle when she agreed that Barbara should go home—and encouraged him to go with her.

  After three days of icy coldness, Gary wanted to know if he was staying or leaving. Van didn’t know what to tell him.

  He wasn’t sure he could stay, legally, and he hadn’t asked. He was afraid that, since their contract with the Consortium was a joint contract, he wouldn’t have any choice.

  When his alarm signaled time to go, Van drove the short way back to the colony. Around him the shadows had just started retreating. It always took so much longer than on Earth, which made it all the more exotic. He didn’t know why he felt such affinity for this barren place. Why should a sunrise on the Moon affect him so? He could see the light from it, and get some of the heat through his visor, but that was it. On Earth sunrise would bring more definitive changes: wind shifting, birds waking up, fog or dew appearing or burning off. Here, nothing much … but he believed it wouldn’t always be that way.

  He climbed aboard the second MPV, with Paul Timmons driving, and rode out to the prep site. He assigned only part of his brain to the usual banter; he was too busy still thinking about whether he could legally stay on if Barbara l
eft.

  If she was breaking the contract … and she was … would that leave him free to negotiate his own agreement? Pretty soon the AC would be done with the silly “first fifty” rule and wouldn’t require incoming colonists to be married. But did he want to be a geographic bachelor again, here? He thought back to the torment he went through on the setup mission—damn, was that really over a year ago?—wanting more than just to look at Grace, and at the same time not even wanting to look at her.

  He didn’t want to go through that again. His sense of honor wouldn’t allow him to cheat, no matter how much his gonads might want to. But he was afraid that too much time and distance might degrade his honor.

  What other option did he have, then, besides leaving with Barbara? Divorce? The idea left him as frigid as the bottom of Faustini Crater, and made his temporary coldness toward Barbara seem balmy by comparison. That wouldn’t be an accidental broken promise or lapse of judgment, it would be an admission that the promise just wasn’t that important anymore. And maybe it wasn’t. Divorce would be easy enough, since they didn’t have kids: he’d been the only one of his friends at school with one set of parents, and wouldn’t want to put a child of his own through what his friends went through. But if his word was his bond—and maybe he was old-fashioned to think it was—would he throw away his integrity for a dream, and especially a dream he had at least partly achieved?

  “Van? You going to join us?”

  He hadn’t noticed that the truck had stopped and Paul had dismounted. “Sorry, Paul,” Van said. It had become his new normal: he could hardly concentrate on the task at hand for the twists and turns his brain made. On this crew he should be okay, though; Timmons was nuts on safety and would look out for him.

  The routine was the same as every other shift: half of the team set rails in place while the other half surveyed and set the next supports. They leap-frogged across the Sea of Clouds as long as they had supports, rails, and hardware. Every third shift delivered what the next two building shifts needed, so long as the smelters in the ARPOES kept producing titanium and aluminum from the lunar soil, and so long as the rails continued to roll out of the foundry.