by Garon Whited
Chapter Ten
“Incompetents invariably make trouble for people other than themselves.”
—Larry McMurtry (1936- )
I’ll say this for modern therapy: It really takes the sting out of getting shot. Thirty-six hours after Anne finished sewing me up, she cleared me to stand and walk on my own—in lunar gravity, anyway. I wasn’t as eager as you might think: You’d also think that hospital gowns would improve with time. They haven’t. They’re just as drafty as I recalled from when I was a kid. Fortunately for me, an angel disguised as a pilot solved this dilemma; she brought me a fresh jumpsuit.
“Try not to do anything at all that might be strenuous,” Anne advised while I got dressed. “The drugs we use put a lot of stress on your body, and you’re marginal in your upper abdominal area. Nothing that will require heavy breathing, Max. You aren’t nearly as well as you feel you are. If you have any pain or weakness, you come right back to the infirmary immediately. Do you get me?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good. Here. Take these supplements at every meal until they’re gone.”
I accepted the bottle of pills and frowned. “I’m not so sure about the not-too-strenuous part,” I offered. “I’m supposed to be riot control during the Captain’s address.”
“I know; I think he just wants you present and visible, big guy. But I’m a doctor; I have to tell you to take it easy. Regenex treatments are very hard on a person.” She lost the serious doctor look for a moment and smiled at me; she kissed my cheek. “We’re glad to have you back in one piece, Max.”
“Glad to be here, and glad you could sew missing bits back on. Thanks, Doc.”
Kathy and I walked slowly up to officers’ country—our guests were billeted in the somewhat-less-luxurious enlisted quarters. The main difference was the size of the rooms and the plumbing. Every two rooms shared a connecting bathroom between them and each room was about half the size of an officer’s—about as small as it could get and still allow a tracked robot to get around comfortably. I doubted that a bunch of pampered rich people liked the arrangements, but Captain Carl locked the door to the officers’ quarters. Kathy gave me a card-key with an embedded holographic strip.
I found out later that Julie had spent a long six hours with the computer and a base blueprint to lock down anywhere a civilian shouldn’t go. The base wasn’t really designed for guests. A lot of doors sported fresh stencils of “Authorized Personnel Only.”
On the way from the infirmary to our quarters—I’m not entirely sure when Kathy and I started sharing quarters; maybe it was while I was napping—we were intercepted by an irate fellow with an offended air. He’d been waiting at the locked door, apparently in ambush. He focused on me when we came into sight and he approached us, pointed finger held out like a lance.
“You there! I take it that you are in some authority in this facility?”
I looked him over. I guessed him to be in his early sixties; grey salted his otherwise dark hair. Some wrinkles, not many of them from smiling. He seemed in fair shape and quite accustomed to lunar gravity; he must have stayed in the low-gee decks of the habitat. I wondered what he’d been in for.
“I have some authority, yes,” I agreed. “I’m Lieutenant-Commander Hardy. What can I do for you, Mister…?”
“Andrews. Edwin Andrews, of the Philadelphia Andrews.”
No ringing sounds for me. He seemed to think I should know him and defer to him. Civilians don’t seem to understand that military personnel are trained to be polite—and, aside from that, we tend to ignore civilians wherever possible.
“What can I do for you, Mister Andrews?”
“This situation!” he said, gesturing broadly at the base. “This is simply intolerable! Being forced to endure such conditions as pertained aboard the rescue craft might, just barely, be excused due to the necessity of haste in an evacuation—although I am still highly perturbed at both the unconscionable delay, as well as the needless risk to my health in being subjected to such frightful accelerations during said rescue! A repair team should have been dispatched to the habitat to restore power!”
“There was,” I replied, dryly. “I was shot.”
“Hardly through any fault of mine! But this total lack of even the most basic communications is not to be borne, sir! Since your commanding officer refuses point-blank to attend to any requests whatsoever—requests for the most basic and necessary amenities—I shall be forced to report his gross negligence at the first available opportunity… unless something is done immediately! Immediately, sir!”
Kathy tensed beside me. I could feel it in the hand I was holding. If she hadn’t been right there, I might have replied in a less-than-polite manner; I was feeling tempery. I gave her hand reassuring squeeze and answered.
“Mister Andrews, I’ll be happy to arrange for whatever communication is available—I’m not the specialist for that, so I’m not certain what is available—” I wasn’t about to tell him that the dust of our electronics expert had probably settled on the lunar surface, “—but please understand that there are about a hundred people who all want to try to call loved ones and such.”
“Damn their loved ones!” he snapped. “I have business that has been neglected for entirely too long—an entire corporation of which I am a senior officer! There may be millions of dollars lost while we stand here idle.” He leveled that finger at me again. “If this facility is run by a staff of incompetents, be assured that Senator Morgan will be apprised of the matter. I fully intend to seek restitution for whatever damages may have accrued during this high-handed and arbitrary period wherein I am held incommunicado!”
I glanced at his finger mildly. I could have scratched my nose on it with very little effort. The whimsical notion of biting it ran through my head. Instead, I tilted my head to look around it.
“Mister Andrews, I believe the Captain will be addressing everyone quite soon regarding the rescue, communications, and other matters. If you can wait—”
“I will not!” he practically shrieked. “I have been in this abominable hole for nearly two days and shall not wait an instant longer! I demand answers, sir, and mean to have them!”
I sighed—and sent a twinge through my side. I tried to stay polite, but he wasn’t making it easy. Kathy’s grip on my hand was starting to get painful, too; her knuckles were white and I could see tendons. I wondered if this guy would still have his eyes if I let go. I decided not to find out.
“Mister Andrews, I’m neither authorized nor qualified to give you those answers. I just got out of the infirmary after being shot while trying to rescue you from space cannibals. I’m not up to speed on where we are or what’s going on—but when I have answers for you, I’ll find you and let you know.”
He huffed at me. Maybe being shot on his behalf carried some weight; I don’t know.
“I should expect no more from a military operation! Very well. But I insist on answers, and as quickly as possible. Do you understand me, sir? Or heads will roll, I promise you!”
“I understand completely, Mister Andrews,” I replied, thinking, Maybe yours, after someone breaks your neck. I tightened my grip on Kathy’s hand.
He sniffed at me and stalked off, doubtless to find some wage-slave to browbeat. I wondered if he was a product of heredity or environment—and whether or not he’d be involved in the future human genome. Something in me hoped he wasn’t, but that’s just my petty and vindictive side talking.
Once Kathy and I were safely behind closed doors, she vented a little. “That unbelievable idiot!” was the mildest phrase she used; the rest was harsh language. I got the impression that while I’d been safely tucked away in bed, the refugees had been getting on everyone’s nerves. I asked about it.
“Oh, a lot of them are okay,” Kathy told me. “Most of the staffers at least know their way around a pressured environment and are interested in how things work here. But the residents! Oh, my God! The residents! They expect to be waited on—hand,
foot, and horse! The habitat staffers have been trying, but we just don’t have facilities for pampering guests.”
“We have the VIP quarters,” I pointed out. “The officers’ quarters also have some room left.”
“True. But if we opened them, who would get them? Everyone who didn’t would just raise more fuss.”
“A point.”
“But that Andrews guy—he’s one of the worst. He keeps trying to throw his weight around and doesn’t realize he has none on the Moon! I’m sick of him.” She sighed and rubbed her face. I moved behind her and rubbed her shoulders. “I know that he’s… I know he doesn’t know what’s happening, not the whole of it. But his attitude is just so… Max, how can someone live like that? Believing that the whole world owes them anything they want? I’ve never seen anyone so self-centered. Even I’m not that self-centered and—” she broke off, shaking her head.
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe that’s just the way his family raised him and he doesn’t know any better. Maybe he clawed his way up from the bottom and feels he’s earned it.”
She sighed and bent her neck as my thumbs went up and down under her hair. “How can you manage to be so… well, fair? I’d like to flush him out an airlock for being what he is, and to hell with the waste of water and minerals.”
“I don’t sympathize with him,” I replied. “I’d like to see him sweating in a pressure suit and trying to weld a patch on that tin can he came from. Without help. But he’s here and he partly my responsibility; I can’t just stuff him in an airlock—although it might be nice to watch his expression if I did!”
Kathy stretched her neck and rolled her head as I kept working on her. “That is a thought… and a nice one. He might have company, though. The Captain is going to explain the situation to our guests tomorrow. We’re going to have a lot of unhappy people.”
“Yeah. That whole lose-hope-gain-hope-lose-it-again process is rough,” I agreed. “What’s the plan?”
“Captain Carl and Anne are going to talk to the staffers with some counseling background—what’s left of the medical personnel, mainly some nurses. I think that’s where he is now; with luck, they’ll be prepared to help the rest of them with the shock. Anne has the tranquilizers ready for the hysterics. Julie has the messhall rigged to circulate neutral gas—no oxygen—if things start to get out of hand.”
“Isn’t that dangerous?”
“Not really. Anoxia is fairly harmless if they get fresh air quickly. All we’re after is a momentary blackout; once people fall over, we start the oxygen flow again and they should wake up a lot calmer.”
“Ah. Break up the mob before it finishes working itself into a panic.”
“Exactly. Not that losing half of them would be any loss.” She stretched a little and turned; I stopped working on her shoulders. “Max, I know you just got up after surgery, but can we have a serious talk?”
I sat down on the bed, carefully. “Sure. What’s on your mind?”
“You… you remember some days ago when you said you knew everything you needed to know about me?”
“Yep. You said I was so much better than you, or some sort of nonsense.”
“Perhaps I should have phrased that differently,” she admitted. “I admire you, Max. You care about people. You see people as valuable.”
I didn’t know what to say. I said so.
“Max, I need to explain some things to you—explain myself to you—and I’m going to fumble it. So just sit there and listen and don’t say anything until I’m done, okay? I’ve needed to do this for a while and I kept putting it off. But after you got… after our trip to the habitat, I can’t bear to wait any more. So just listen, okay?”
“Okay.”
She took a deep breath and told me about herself.
There are things that don’t wind up in a military record for various reasons. Things we think, things we say privately, things off the record, things that can’t be proven.
According to her file, Lieutenant Colonel Katherine Aideen Edwards is a superlative pilot with close to two hundred hours of flight time just on combat missions. She has over three hundred carrier landings and close to a hundred airship recovery landings. She has citations ranging from “Distinguished Flying” to “Exceptional Gallantry in the Face of the Enemy.” Her previous command experience includes an entire aerial task force—fixed-wing and rotary-wing aircraft—on a rescue mission in hostile territory. She’s considered qualified to instruct in expert-level hand-to-hand combat, has a Top Secret security clearance, and has completed just about every flight-related school the military could boast. She’s rated for single and multiple-engine planes; fixed, swing, and rotary-wing, and is one of the few with the coveted “shuttle” rating. She’s competent, thorough, and shows real zeal in carrying out her mission. She has a slight tendency to mild insubordination, but that’s not considered a major flaw in an officer with discipline, brains, and fighting spirit. She could stand to be a bit more diplomatic at times; she’s usually very direct.
Anyone who lays hands on her file will agree that she’s a fine officer.
What she told me was more personal. The details I will skip; they were given to me in confidence and I will not share them. She told me about her childhood, about her father and her mother, about some very rough and unpleasant things in her past—and some good things, some happy times, and a lot of things of which she was ashamed. I’ve never had another human being try to take off the skin and show me the soul. Kathy did.
The one thing that I don’t, can’t understand about her is this: Kathy doesn’t mind killing people.
Think about that for a second.
It isn’t that she likes to kill, beyond the satisfaction of any expert who does a job well. No, it’s that she doesn’t have any negative feelings about taking someone’s life—at least, not like I do. She’s not a sociopath; she likes some people and wants them around, she enjoys good company, she’s a good friend, and so on. She would regret having to kill a friend and miss them terribly.
But she has no moral qualms about murder. For her, it is strictly a matter of transaction price. “What are the consequences of that man’s death?” “Is it worth the effort of killing him?” “How will this affect me and the people around me?” “Is there a way to do it that will not have repercussions?”
I’ve never known anyone that ruthless. I wondered if the Captain knew any of this. Probably not.
She kept it a secret from everyone except her husband. He was the first person she’d ever really believed would understand her. He had loved her, taught her to love, and changed her life.
I wish I could have gotten to know him. He strikes me as being one hell of a guy. He had to be; he persuaded Kathy to marry him. That impresses me.
“Max… I had to tell you this, because of what you wouldn’t let me say on the habitat.” She looked down at her clasped hands, almost whispering. “I love you, Maxwell Hardy. I love you and you have to know who I am, what I am, because I won’t lie to you. I want you to love me, if you can, and love me in spite of… what I am. And… and if you can’t… then you can’t, and I’ll accept that, even if I can’t understand. I’m used to not understanding these things; I don’t understand people. I can’t, not like you do. So… so I guess I’m asking if I should stick around, or go away, or if you just want to be friends—”
“Kathy.”
She fell silent for a second. “Yes, Max?”
“What else is there to tell me?”
She took a deep breath and let it go. “That’s… that’s most of me.” She still wouldn’t look up.
“I see,” I replied, voice neutral. She wasn’t telling me everything, but so what? Nobody knows everything about me, either. Nobody lives inside my skin but me. It’s the human condition, and we all have to live with it.
There was a long silence. At last, Kathy nodded to herself and rose to go.
“I’ll leave you alone now. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you all this befo
re. I just… I was selfish, I suppose. I—I wanted more time before I had to… I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” I answered, as she headed for the door. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about knowing that she… what? Had the ability to kill? A willingness? I don’t understand that, not at all. Hell, it bothers me a lot to think about killing people—but it explains why she was so supportive when I was worried about it. She’d done her best to sympathize with me and help me through that crisis of conscience, even when she didn’t, couldn’t, understand why I wasn’t able to just do it.
Does that make me better than her? I don’t think so. After I welded Yakov and Karl into their plumbing coffin, I felt good about it. If anything, that makes me worse. I enjoyed leaving those two vermin on a dying space station—and that’s not something a nice person does.
All that went through my mind, but what made me open my mouth was watching Kathy get up to leave. That wasn’t something I wanted to see. Kathy going away, whenever, whyever, however… no.
No.
“Will you bring me something to eat when you come back?” I asked.
Kathy stopped with her hand touching the door.
“Am I—” she began, and her voice cracked. “Am I coming back?” she asked.
“I sure hope so. I’m in no shape to go running around the base trying to hunt you down. But I will, if that’s what it takes. Don’t think you can get away from me that easily, you lethal little bundle of trouble,” I said, teasingly. “I don’t trust you around most of our refugees. They get on my nerves; I’d hate to think how they get on yours. I don’t relish the idea of having to mop up a bloodbath, so I want you snuggled up to me as much as possible—maybe I can keep them safe from you.” I paused for a second to let that sink in. “Since I’m still wounded, I might even need you to protect me from them. If you will, that is.”
She glanced at me. I grinned deliberately.
“If… if you’re kidding around with me, Maxwell Hardy… I swear I… I’ll… I’ll….”
“I’m not kidding, just teasing a little,” I replied. I wiped my grin off. “But I do want you to stay. Unless you’re bringing back food. Can I talk you into the salmon and butter sauce?”
