Jumping Off the Planet

by David Gerrold

  "So?" he said.

  "So what?" I answered.

  "Now do you believe me? He's gonna do it."

  I shrugged. "You can't prove that." And then another thought occurred to me. "Do you want to go back?"

  "Do you?" he countered.

  "I dunno."

  "If we could prove it, we could tell someone ... " Weird offered half-heartedly.

  "Oh yeah, get Dad arrested. That would go down really good. Mom would like that. A lot. But Dad would never forgive us. Not that it would matter. But we'd probably never get to see him again. The courts would terminate his rights. Is that what you want?"

  "No. But it isn't right for him to do this without asking us what we want to do."

  "Well, what do we want to do? You tell me, Douglas."

  Now it was his turn to shrug. "I dunno."

  "Well, what do we have to go back to? At least, this is ... something."

  "Maybe," he admitted. "But I don't like being pushed into it like this. Do you?"

  "Maybe we don't know all of what's going on. Mom has been really angry about a whole bunch of stuff she won't talk about. What's that about?"

  "Mom is always angry." Douglas said. "That's why Dad gave up on her. Dad was raised different. He doesn't like arguments."

  "Well then, he must really love being around us. That's all we ever do."

  "Not always. We're not arguing now."

  "No. But we're not doing anything else either, are we?" I said one of those words that Dad doesn't like me to use. Just in time for Dad to hear it as he and Stinky came back downstairs.

  ONE-HOUR

  The one-hour platform is called that because it takes exactly one hour to get there. It's also the legal limit of the atmosphere, so anyone who visits One-Hour can say that he or she has traveled into space.

  One-Hour is also one of the biggest of the platform cities. Seven stories thick, it's suspended from all three cables; it fills the space between them and extends quite a ways out beyond as well. It's a city floating in the sky. If you could stand away from it, you would see that there are towers projecting up from it and more towers hanging down.

  And the view from One-Hour is spectacular. You're high enough to see the curvature of the Earth in all directions. You can see as far as Mexico to the north and Peru and Bolivia to the south. To the west, the Pacific Ocean curls away out of sight under a frosting of clouds.

  There are balconies and observation posts all around the edges of One-Hour and all over the bottom, so there are places where you can look straight down ... if you want to.

  I didn't want to, but everyone else wanted to see the storm, so we went—except it wasn't a storm anymore. Now it was a hurricane. And it looked ferocious. It was a great whorl of white, so big it covered more than half the globe visible below us. From up here it looked as peaceful as a swirl of whipped cream on top of a big lemon pie, but if you watched long enough, you could see the banks of clouds moving majestically around a common center. The attendants said that the winds were already up to 200 kilometers per hour and expected to rise as high as 250 or maybe even 300 by the time the storm started inland. Somebody else said that the winds might get as high as 350 klicks before the storm hit the coast. They said the eye of the storm was expected to pass very close to the beanstalk. In fact, the storm was the only thing anybody was talking about up here.

  The U.N. Weather Authority had tried seeding the storm's western edge in an effort to steer it southward, but this storm had a mind of its own and was still moving east. The Line Authority was beaming microwaves into it too; that wasn't helping either. The news was calling it Hurricane Charles, but I didn't feel honored.

  Then Stinky asked the important question: "Can we call Mom now? And tell her where we are?"

  "No. Let's wait until we reach Geostationary," Dad said. "Like we agreed."

  "But I wanna talk to Mommy now." There was something real frantic about the way he said it.

  Dad looked uncomfortable. He glanced to both Weird and me as if looking for help—but Weird just said, "It might not be such a bad idea, Dad. Mom might be a little worried about us. We should let her know we're out of the storm."

  This made Dad even more annoyed. "I said no."

  But Stinky had already run to a phone booth, one of the ones with the glass bottoms, so you could see all the way down, and he was already punching for Mom. "I wanna show her my monkey!" He'd already put his phone-home card in the slot, so there was nothing for Dad to do except step sideways out of camera range. Me, I studied the walls, the ceiling, anything but the floor, until the screen finally lit up. First it showed a map of North America, and then it zoomed down in as it tracked her location.

  Mom wasn't at home; she was in San Francisco. She answered almost immediately; she looked tired but happier than we'd seen her in a while. Behind her we could see somebody's apartment, and out the window, we could even see what looked like trees or bushes. In the background, I got a quick glimpse of someone—a woman, Mom's age—but I didn't see her clearly.

  "Hi, Mom!"

  "Bobby! Where are you calling from?" At first her expression was surprised—as if she hadn't expected to see any of us for a while, but then her eyes flicked down as she read the information at the bottom of her display. Her expression darkened immediately. "Put your father on!"

  Dad stepped into view then. "Hello, Maggie," he said grimly.

  "You're doing it, aren't you!"

  "I told you I would. It's the only way to be fair."

  "You son of a bitch! The court said no."

  "The court said not without your agreement."

  "And I said no! So that means the court says no too!"

  "Maggie—" Dad was keeping his voice deliberately calm. "I will not let you abuse the children as a way of getting even with me. They're old enough now, they're entitled to make up their own minds." Douglas shot me an I-told-you-so look.

  "I'm going to stop you, Max—I'll see you in jail, you lying pig!" Abruptly, she remembered that Weird and Stinky and I were there too. She said, "You kids—Bobby, Charles, Douglas—why did you let him do this? You stay where you are! Don't you go anywhere with him. I'm calling the police." Behind her, a woman's voice was asking, "Maggie? What's going on—?" And then the screen went blank.

  There was silence in the phone booth for a moment. Finally, I said, "So this wasn't such a good idea, was it, Dad?"

  "Shut up, Chigger!" said Weird.

  "I wanna talk to Mommy!" Stinky wailed.

  I realized then that after her hello, she hadn't said a thing to any of us kids, except to order us to stay put. For some reason, that made me feel really angry at her. If she really cared about us as much as she said she did, why was she yelling at us? At least, Dad didn't yell. He just went silent.

  He was silent now. He looked uncertain. Actually, he looked old. Beaten up.

  "Dad?" asked Weird. "Are you all right?"

  "No," he said. "Look. I need you to understand something. All three of you. Your Mom didn't want me to bring you on this trip. So I did it without her permission. Maybe it wasn't the smartest thing to do. But I needed to do this. I really did." Dad dropped to his knees in front of Bobby and me and put his hands on our shoulders. "I've made a lot of promises to you kids, and I haven't been able to keep all of them. Maybe none of them. And I know you resent me for it. You're probably right to do so. I guess I haven't been the best dad in the world. I'm sorry about that. It hurts me something awful to know that I've let you boys down. You mean more to me than anything else in the world. That's why I did it. Just once in my life, I wanted to do something extraordinary for you. And this is it. And I wasn't going to let anybody say no."

  He looked so sad and vulnerable—and for a moment, he even looked old—that I couldn't help myself. I flung myself into his arms. And so did Bobby. And Douglas. Not because he was right, but because he was Daddy. And he needed us. And suddenly it was very scary, the whole thing, and I guess we needed him too, and then Stinky st
arted crying. And I have to admit, even I—

  Dad pulled back and looked me in the eyes. "Are you all right?" I guess he'd felt me trembling.

  "Yeah," I said. "I'm fine. I just don't like her yelling at us all the time. That's all."

  "Me neither," said Stinky petulantly.

  Dad looked at Weird. "Douglas?"

  Weird shrugged noncommittally. "It's just Mom. That's just the way she is."

  "Do you want to go back?"

  "She's going to call the cops on you."

  Dad sighed and nodded. "I hope she doesn't. For your sakes—" he added sadly. "Because then we could both lose custody. And you guys would end up in foster homes. And that wouldn't be good for anyone. That's why." He looked sorry he'd said it, but it was too late to take the words back.

  Abruptly, he looked at his watch as if he had an appointment to keep. He straightened up. "So? Are we going to Geostationary? Gotta make up your minds now."

  I looked to Weird. He gave me a half-and-half expression, and finally said, "Well, it'd be silly to come all this far and not go all the way."

  "Yeah!" I said. Because I really did want to go, no matter what Mom said. And so did Stinky.

  We were going up again.

  CHANGE OF PLANS

  No, we weren't.

  At least, not right away.

  "What's the matter, Doug?"

  "Mom said she was going to call the police." Weird looked genuinely worried.

  Dad nodded. "We're seventy-two hundred kilometers away ... and sixteen klicks up."

  "She could phone someone," I suggested.

  "She could," Dad agreed. "But it's a question of jurisdiction. She'd have to get the local authorities to agree to detain us. And that would require a judge's order and an international warrant. And that would require—" He looked at his watch and thought for a second. "It won't happen this late on a Saturday. Tell you what, though. Before we start looking around the station, let's check our reservations"—Dad led us over to a customer service desk; the woman who was working there had almost no hair at all—"just in case that storm screws things up."

  Dad shouldn't have said that. Stinky looked worried. "Are we going to feel the storm up here, Daddy?"

  Before Dad or Weird could answer, the hairless woman said, "Nothing to worry about, young man. The orbital elevator was originally designed to withstand wind forces of more than four hundred and fifty kilometers per hour. Since then, its strength has been upgraded to five hundred and fifty."

  "Yes, but what are we going to feel?" I asked.

  The woman was annoyingly cheerful. She pointed. "Over there by the information center, there's an educational display that will show you exactly what will happen the entire length of the cable. You'll see these big leisurely waves that rise gently up the Line. They're hundreds of kilometers long. We'll get some rocking up here, but the waves will come in such long slow cycles that you won't be able to feel them. If you feel anything at all, it'll be like being on a very large boat on a very gentle ocean. We had a storm four years ago as big as this and it wasn't any problem."

  "So there's no danger—?" Dad asked.

  "None at all. Only a little inconvenience. But just for safety's sake, everybody is locking down all up and down the Line. It's a standard procedure. Most of the platform towns are already secured. Terminus might take a beating, they did last time, but nothing that couldn't be set right in a few weeks of regular repair duty."

  "Will they still be sending up elevators?"

  "Only cargo and supply pods. No passengers. It's too uncomfortable. Not the ride, the view. And it takes too long to get above the worst of it. They'll probably be sending up some scientific teams in one of the maintenance pods to look at the inside of the storm, they usually do, and of course the cable engineers like to look at the situation first-hand, but no—we won't be sending up any passengers."

  "We were supposed to catch the 2:15 up to Geostationary—" I started to ask.

  "Mm," she said, and touched her ear to listen to her communication channel. "Let me check on that for you." She made a face as she listened. "It's likely to be cancelled. Or they might send it up empty. But they're getting some pretty high winds already, so they're more likely to send up a water-pod in that time-slot. Let's see if we can get you onto another car instead." She turned to the workstation at her desk. There was a big vertical display behind her, showing the progress of all of the cars between Terminus and One-Hour. Already the cars lined up at Terminus were colored blue for water-pods instead of pink for passengers.

  "The 12:15 will be here in forty-five minutes," she said. "It looks like a full load. 12:30 is full too. A lot of people were trying to get out before the storm hit. They shouldn't have waited so long. All right, let me see if I can do anything earlier. Hm, I can put you on standby for the 12:00, that'll start loading in fifteen minutes. Let me do that right now, but don't get your hopes up ... and then let's see what else we have. You were lucky you came up when you did. The last car out will probably be the 12:30; it's just launching. I'll try and grab you space on the 12:45 or the 1:00, in case they get out, but don't hold your breath. It looks like they're locking down early. There's no danger, but they don't like to scare the passengers." She frowned.

  "Is there anything sooner?" Dad asked. "Is there anything open on the car loading now?"

  "I don't know. Wait a minute—" She studied her screens, biting her lower lip thoughtfully. "How fast can you run?"

  "Huh?"

  She picked up her phone. "I've got a cabin open on the 11:00. A no-show. I guess they'll forfeit their deposit. The car is already loading. It's a first class booking, but we'll upgrade you. We don't like sending them up empty—" She explained. "You've got ten minutes left before they seal it for launch. Down this corridor, the gate is at the end. I'll call ahead. They'll be expecting you. Go now! You should be able to make it."

  We ran.

  It wasn't that far, but halfway there Stinky suddenly started crying and screaming, "Aren't we gonna see One-Hour? You promised! You said we were gonna see One-Hour! I don't wanna go up in anymore elevators! Daddy, you promised! I wanna go on the rides!" Weird tried to shush him, but Stinky was on reverse—the more you shushed him, the louder he got. Then he went limp, refusing to move at all. I'd have walloped him, but then Weird would have walloped me and Dad would have had to break us up and we would have missed the elevator, so I grabbed Stinky's other arm, and Weird and I carried him along, him screaming bloody murder all the time, while Dad ran ahead, shouting and waving our boarding cards.

  The elevators up to Geostationary run every fifteen minutes. As each one arrives, it slides off the track and into a loading bay. It has a one-hour layover, during which time it's serviced and loaded for the rest of its journey up to Geostationary. Fifteen minutes before launch, it's sealed and weighed and checked for hull integrity again—same like at Terminus. If it doesn't get triple green lights, a standby pod goes up instead; then depending on the seriousness of the problem, it either has to wait until the slack time at the end of the shift, or every other pod on the Line gets delayed fifteen minutes.

  We made it—in fact, we made it with five minutes to spare, but Stinky was howling like a banshee, and if there had been an open balcony—not likely at this height—Weird and I would have been happy to toss him over the edge. Well, I would have, but I suspected Weird was starting to think like a grownup and would have probably hesitated on the third swing over the railing.

  Anyway, we made it—almost—except right next to the boarding ramp Stinky broke free of both Weird and me and went running back down the ramp, his monkey bouncing along behind him. "Run away, Toto!" He shouted. "Run away!" Weird threw himself after Stinky, catching him in a flying tackle, but the monkey kept going. Of course. Stinky had given it orders. I went chasing after it, careening around people and robots, while behind me Stinky crowed, "He got away! He got away!" I don't know how Stinky had programmed the little monster, but I couldn't get near it—
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  I stopped where I was, gasping for breath, and looked back to Dad. He pointed and gestured. "Get that damn thing!" I couldn't believe it. I chased the monkey around and around the souvenir booths and the newsstand and the little pizza kiosk, but I couldn't get near it—and the monkey started singing and whistling like a calliope. Only after a moment did I recognize the song and realized that everybody who was watching was laughing like crazy. Pop Goes The Weasel. "All around the cobbler's bench, the monkey chased the weasel ... "

  "Three minutes, Chigger!"

  The hell with it. It was Stinky's monkey, not mine. I stopped chasing, took three deep breaths, and then started loping back toward the boarding ramp. If Stinky started screaming about his monkey, it was his own damned fault. And sure enough: "Where's my monkey? I want my monkey—"

  "Go get it yourself," I yelled at him. So of course he did. That is, he tried to, but Weird grabbed him in mid-leap and pulled him backward off his feet. He screamed in rage, as loud as he could, and people all over the lobby turned to stare. Then Dad demanded as I came running up to the door, "Where's the goddamned monkey?" And I said, "Screw the goddamned monkey! Stinky programmed it to run away. You want it? You go get it."

  For a moment, Dad looked like he was going to hit me—

  "Go ahead!" I shouted. "Prove Mom right!"

  He put his hand down, glaring at me.

  "It's not my fault, Dad. He's a goddamned spoiled brat and you shouldn't have bought him the goddamned monkey in the first place. And now that it ran away, the hell with it—he's had his three hundred dollars worth of fun. Let it go for all I care. Isn't it about time he learned about consequences? I never got a goddamned programmable monkey—" I pushed past Dad into the elevator.

  Dad looked like he wanted to kill something, but he knew I was right. He also looked like he wanted to go after the monkey, but the attendant said, "I'm sorry, sir. We're closing the door in thirty seconds. You won't have time." So Dad and Weird and screaming-Stinky came grumbling in after me. Dad looked apoplectic. And justifiably so. But I'd just about had it with Stinky shrieking and Stinky running away and me always being expected to chase after him and drag him back. Dad was treating me like a full-time baby-sitter, and instead of paying me, he bawled me out whenever anything went wrong. Well, the hell with that!