“Hi, Mom.”
“Hi.” She had to try a couple of times, and even then it was little more than a croak. “Sorry. I had a rough night.” Dad took her hand.
Dora sat on the edge of the bed, wondering what to say. Finally she asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just be here with me.”
The three of them sat together, watching clouds scud by over the city outside the window and talking about nothing in particular, until suddenly Mom lurched upright, reaching past Dora for the dish on her bedside table.
I coped with fairies, I can cope with this.
Dora grabbed the dish and gave it to her mother, then held her shaking shoulders while she vomited. Dora was shaking too, but she thought over and over: Guardian spirit, gentle one, to my aid, I bid thee come. It helped, a little.
Eventually, the episode passed. Dad took the dish away, and Dora brushed the wispy hair from her mother’s cold and sweaty face. Her eyes stung with tears, but she sniffed them back.
“Thank you,” Mom said after a while. “Thank you for being here.”
“It’s part of my job.”
-o0o-
After that there were good days and bad days, surgeries and therapies, a new school year to prepare for, dishes that still had to be washed... Somehow, life went on. But the frogs’ song grew stronger and stronger. And once, just once, as she was setting down a paper cup of milk at the edge of the water on a moonlight night, Dora saw something. It was toadlike, a brown and hairy thing the size of a football, with large black eyes and a broad mouth. It smiled at Dora and slipped silently into the water.
She remembered what she had read about hobs, and so she did not thank it.
At the Twenty-Fifth Annual Meeting of Uncle Teco’s Homebrew Gravitics Club
Mirabella McAllister arrived at the meetpoint in Low Earth Orbit by submarine.
One of the new kids, a fifteen-year-old who went by the name Striker, was the first to spot her, a bright brassy glint rising from the deepening blue of the Earth so far below, just as the terminator crossed the U.S. Pacific coast. Typical Mira, to time her ascent for the most spectacular entrance. Striker called out, “Hey, I think that’s her!”, and soon the habitat’s viewing lobby fluttered with excited confirmations and speculations. Would Mira’s ship be as outlandish as the dragonfly with the sixty-meter wingspan, or as ethereally beautiful as the abstract she’d called Aurora Occidentalis? Could her suit possibly outdo last year’s feathery vacuum flower, or her co-pilot outshine the blonde who’d accompanied her back in ’53?
The whole ensemble would be something spectacular, we all knew that. After all, this was TecoCon 25, and Mira was not one to let a major anniversary pass without a major observance. Which is why none of us had expected Gary to appear.
But, of course, that’s exactly why he did.
Gary Shelton had arrived six hours earlier, at exactly 1200 hours Pacific time, exactly 400 kilometers above the summit of Mount Hood, exactly as he always had before Chimera. He was still flying the same silver-blue tetrahedron, the Edison, its every angle laser-sharp and its four faces still mirror-perfect. Sometimes it vanished from sight for long moments; other times it reflected a bright triangle of swirling clouds among the stars, or formed a hard-edged polyhedron of night against the Earth below. Technically brilliant, mercurial, and showing more of its surroundings than it did of itself: that was the Edison.
An uncomfortable silence fell across the airlock lobby when Gary removed his helmet and his beard unfurled into free-fall like a slow explosion. The beard had turned completely gray, and the hair that had been thinning the last time we saw it was now all but gone. Perhaps that reminder of our own mortality was what subdued us all, or perhaps it was the ten years of unanswered questions that came flowing out of his suit along with the beard.
I was the first to break the silence. I excused myself from the conversation I’d been in and kicked off the wall, bringing myself to a halt at a stanchion next to the suit locker where Gary was carefully folding and stowing each segment as he removed it. “Let me help you with that” is what I said, though it’s not the first thing I thought.
“Thanks, Ken,” he said, and turned his back to me so I could undo his airpack. It was still the same, a fifteen-year-old design but just as elegant and functional as the day Gary designed it. Without a word, I undid the catches as he had silently requested, both of us relying on functional routine to carry us over the awkward chasm of a friendship too long divided. Hilton and Luxus habitats have valets to help with unsuiting, but at the shabby Black Lion Inn where TecoCons were held it was strictly do-it-yourself, and helping friends unsuit is one of the convention’s traditions.
After Gary’s suit was removed and properly stowed, we shook hands as though we were business people meeting at a professional conference—which, in a sense, we were. Things had changed a lot since the days when we were both “tickling Uncle Teco’s feet.”
“So...” I said, and at the same time he said “Well...”, and we both stopped, and then we laughed a strained little laugh.
I tried again. “So where’re you living these days?”
“Boulder,” he said, with all that implied.
“Working for Gradient, then? What division?”
“No division. I have my own company now, and five employees. Most of our contracts are with the Big G, sure, but they aren’t the only game in town.”
“Probably doesn’t leave you a lot of Up time.”
“I get Up every now and again. But I didn’t see your old rattletrap floating in the parking lot. Flying something new?”
His eyes brightened a bit as he asked the question, and I had to look at his chest. “No. I, uh... I flew Skylark.”
“Ken Griswold, taking a commercial carrier? How are the mighty fallen!” He said it with that lighthearted mock-seriousness of his, but I heard the true disappointment behind the feigned disappointment.
“I still have Michelangelo’s Dream,” I said with defensive haste. “It’s just... I’ve been too busy to maintain it properly.” I swallowed, and looked out the window. “Hey, it’s the Northern Lights.”
He leaned in toward the glass. “Beautiful,” he breathed. No matter how many times Gary came Up, he was one of those for whom the view never palled.
I had pointed out the aurora to Gary so I wouldn’t have to admit that my ship hadn’t been out from under its tarp in over five years. Unlike him, I’d fallen into the gravity well of the Big G, and now I flew spreadsheets sixty hours a week. But the sight was enough to raise even my spirits. Pale shimmers of pink and blue and gold streamed over the darkened polar horizon, fluttering silently like ribbons in the solar wind.
“This is why we come Up, isn’t it?” I said, still looking out the window.
“Partly,” he replied, and turned his head so that his reflected eyes met mine. “But mostly it’s the people.”
Gary’s reflection and the aurora blurred together for a moment. “Damn, it’s good to have you back.”
“It’s good to be back.”
Six hours later, though, with Mira rising to the meetpoint, I wondered whether he still agreed with that assessment.
I was at the bar, in a crowd of old-timers catching up with Gary (but carefully avoiding the tender spots in our shared history), when Striker called out the news of Mira’s approach. Immediately we floated up to the bar’s big viewing window, a jostling flock of graying, overweight gravity hackers bumping lightly against each other like a school of tuna. Connie, a New Yorker whose ship looked like the Chrysler Building as a baby, had an image amplifier in her thigh pocket, and it got passed around in a flurry of impatient demands and gawps of wonder. Finally I snatched it from someone’s hand and peered through the eyepiece at Mira’s rising ship.
It was done up as a submarine. Not just any submarine, either—Jules Verne’s Nautilus, a Victorian confection of brightly polished copper and brass, sparkling with glass and bristling with filigree and ginge
rbread. Soft blue and green light rippled from its portholes, adding to the underwater effect. As the ship approached, details became apparent: spiraling sea shells and sensuous mermaids encrusted its hull, and for a figurehead it sported a huge brass narwhal, its unicorn tusk thrusting forward through the vacuum.
“She’s still got it,” I said, and offered Gary the image amplifier.
He waved it away. “Mira always said her work is best appreciated with the naked eye.” The expression on his face was subtle as a fine wine—sorrow and regret and anger mixed together, filtered through the mind of an engineer, and aged for ten years.
Gary and I floated side by side watching the sub grow from a fingerling to a whale. It was easily twice the size of any other ship in the parking lot, and the waves of light from its portholes made that collection of flying teddy bears, Christmas trees, and DeSotos look as though they too were under water. The force of Mira’s personality transformed those other ships into mere setting for her latest creation.
Finally, majestically, the sub drew to a halt, and there was a scattering of applause. But Gary and I exchanged a knowing glance. A moment later, the crowd gasped as an enormous chartreuse tentacle came curling up from behind the sub, followed by another, and then another, and then the saucer-eyed head of a giant squid rose into view. The squid wobbled a bit as it inflated, but the illusion was otherwise nearly perfect, and the crowd applauded with greater and greater enthusiasm as the tableau stabilized. Fully inflated, the squid was even bigger than the sub itself; its eyes leered with menace as its tentacles held the sub in a death grip.
Gary applauded as hard as anyone. But his eyes shone with tears.
We moved into the airlock lobby as the applause dissolved into a babble of discussion and speculation. Was that real brass plating over the structural foam, or just paint? Were the squid’s seven tentacles an error, or a reference to a movie from the last century? And who was her co-pilot du jour? Gary floated in the middle of it, saying nothing, his expression neutral. Connie came up to him and seemed about to speak, but her unspoken question collided with the look in his eye and she just shook her head and turned away.
Then came the whir of the inner door, and Mira floated into the lobby to thunderous applause. Her suit was done up as a diving suit, of course; a fantasia of a suit with a brass airpack as rococo as the ship. She undogged the helmet, red hair spilling into the air, and smiled her appreciation at the crowd, acknowledging old friends with blown kisses. And then she turned and gestured into the airlock.
Mira’s co-pilot poked her head out of the airlock as nervously as a guppy in shark-infested waters, but with Mira’s encouragement she slowly drifted into the lobby. “Everyone,” Mira announced, “this is Babette.”
Above the waist Babette’s suit was close-fit, painted to match her own pale skin except for the twin scallop shells over her breasts; the helmet was a transparent bubble that almost wasn’t there. Below the waist she wore a fish’s tail, encasing both legs and shining with metallic scales in iridescent green. It wasn’t much of a handicap in free fall.
I’ve never understood where Mira keeps finding such gorgeous girlfriends. This one was a blonde, slim and willowy as Mira always preferred, with large expressive eyes and perfect high cheekbones. She looked to be about twenty-five.
Mira herself, as even she would admit, was no beauty, having a long face and a substantial nose. She was fifty-one, the same age as me and a year younger than Gary. But she was a genius with clothing and make-up, her blue eyes crackled with intelligence, and her petite body hummed with creative energy. The substantial inheritance that supported her gravitics hobby didn’t reduce her allure, either. But she was a woman of powerful opinions and her temper was legendary. Perhaps that was why her girlfriends rarely lasted a year.
Most of the crowd focused on Babette, who swam through the air with a lithe unconscious grace as she unscrewed her helmet, but Gary ignored her; his eyes were locked on Mira as though she were a closing door between him and Paradise. Mira, in turn, divided her attention between admiring Babette and enjoying the crowd admiring Babette. She contained herself well when she noticed Gary, I’ll grant her that; she only nodded to him as she had to so many other old friends. But her eyes kept creeping back to him, then flicking away as she noticed he was still watching her.
Gradually the crowd broke apart, people forming knots of conversation, heading off for technical presentations, or wandering toward the bar. A few hours later I found myself at a gravity table in Foster’s, the habitat’s most expensive restaurant, with Mira, Babette, Connie... and Gary. I was surprised that Gary had wound up in Mira’s dinner group; perhaps one of their other old friends had nudged the two of them together.
The conversation was light and witty, focusing on the latest gravity hacker gossip and the details of the Nautilus’s construction, but the tension between Mira and Gary was palpable. Have you ever broken a magnet in half? The two halves, once a single unit that not only held itself together but drew other objects to itself, now repel each other. Mira and Gary were the same.
Service in Foster’s was abominable, as always, and we’d already finished a bottle and a half of wine when the appetizers came. Connie celebrated the waiter’s arrival with the traditional toast to Uncle Teco.
As we sipped, Babette asked, “So where is Uncle Teco, anyway?” Her voice had a cultured Southern sweetness, a slow expensive cadence that brought to mind cotillions among the magnolias.
Mira raised her glass to her lips, to hide her expression, and looked at Gary, who smirked and looked at me. It all took less than a second, and Babette didn’t seem to notice.
I cleared my throat and said, “Uncle Teco is a very busy man. I’m not surprised he wasn’t able to be there for your arrival, but I’m sure he’d love to meet you.”
“Probably stuck in a meeting with the habitat,” said Connie.
“Oh, that’s all right,” Babette drawled. “I’d hate to make a big important man like him waste his time with insignificant little ol’ me.”
“No, he’s a real sweetheart once you get to know him,” I said. “In fact... tell you what.” I reached in my pocket and found a data chip. “I meant to give him this the next time I saw him. Why don’t you give it to him for me? That’ll give you an excuse to introduce yourself. Oh, and it’s pronounced ‘Teeco.’ Only earthworms say ‘Tecko.’”
Babette’s eyes didn’t budge from mine as she tucked the chip in her décolletage. “That’s mighty considerate of you, Ken. But tell me now, what does he look like?”
Gary stepped into the gap. “Just ask anyone, they’ll tell you where he is.”
Babette nibbled her salad. “I can’t wait to meet him. There are so many people here that Mira’s told me all about, and they’re all so friendly.” She took a sip of her wine. “But Gary... you seem to know all the same people as Mira, but she’s never mentioned you. Isn’t that funny?” The statement seemed perfectly innocent, but in her eyes I saw a glint of the steel behind the magnolia. “And I keep hearing the name Janet Stein. Who’s she?”
Gary seemed to crystallize, his expression becoming cold and brittle. Connie’s mouth dropped open. Mira reached for the wine, but misjudged and knocked the bottle over. It rolled out of the table field and spun away, leaving a spiral of red droplets wobbling in the air behind it.
Gary didn’t notice the wine. “I can’t believe you didn’t even tell her,” he said to Mira. His words were ice-cold, but they boiled at the same time, like water leaking into vacuum.
Mira stared into her empty glass, clutching it with both hands. “I was going to. When the time was right.”
“How long have you known her?”
“Eight months,” said Babette.
“Eight months,” Gary repeated, still looking at Mira, “and you just couldn’t be bothered. Too busy with the present to acknowledge the past. How typical.”
“I couldn’t be bothered?” Mira’s voice didn’t get any louder, but her teeth wer
e clenched. “Who vanished for ten years and then came waltzing back as though nothing had happened? Who left me and all our friends to pick up the pieces and move on?”
“It took me ten years to steel myself to see you again.” He stood up. “I see it wasn’t enough.” He stepped out of the table field too quickly and went into a tumble, splashing into a glob of wine the waiter hadn’t yet vacuumed up, but he caught himself on the floor with his hand, kicked off against a railing, and shot out of the restaurant.
The four of us stared at each other for a time. Then Mira raised her empty glass. “To Chimera.” Her voice barely quavered. Connie and I touched our glasses to hers, and they rang in the silence. There was still a little wine at the bottom of mine.
“Mira, honey,” said Babette, “Is there something you want to be telling me right about now?”
Mira rolled her glass around on the table with one finger. “Janet Stein died ten years ago,” she said at last. “Ten years ago this weekend, at this very habitat. TecoCon 15. Chimera was the biggest thing we’d ever done, the biggest thing anyone had ever done. It was too big. It fell apart.” She put her head down on the table. “Everything fell apart when Janet died,” she muttered into the tablecloth.
“Janet was...” I began, then backed up and tried again. “Janet and Mira and Gary, they were the greatest ship design team TecoCon ever saw, and Chimera was their masterpiece. It was like they were one person. Gary was the brains, he pushed the technological envelope. Mira was the heart, she had the artistic talent. Janet... Janet was the soul. The fulcrum.”
“I loved her,” Mira said almost too softly to hear. The tablecloth under her cheek was dark with moisture.
“Gary loved her too,” I said nearly as softly. “And she loved you both.”
“She had too much love for just one person.” Mira might have been talking to herself. “She had enough love to keep the three of us together. But with her gone, Gary and I spun off in different orbits.”
Space Magic Page 21
