Almost Complete Short Fiction, page 54
Celinda winced, but kept quite. Mike seemed surprised, then turned around to see the motile, which had silently assumed its station.
“Dad wouldn’t let you get away with that!” he complained.
Captain Van Doren suddenly looked not thirty, but about seventy. “I . . . hope nothing like that will be necessary. Mikhail, please try to be more polite.”
“Or they’ll chop me up and feed me to those bots? Fat chance! If my Dad were here . . .”
Celinda’s caught her Dad whisper something under his breath and just like that, the motile’s hands were suddenly on Mike’s shoulders. The cockiness vanished from his face and he looked around for help, and, not finding any, settled back and said “Ouch. Okay, okay.”
Dad said, “I think we need to talk privately, Tara. Later.”
The woman looked miserable, and nodded.
Mike got up and left the table without saying anything. The motile stayed.
Tonya’s husband, who had remained silent all the way through incident cleared his throat and mentioned some of the more interesting trades done on the glassball’s Pluto trajectory. To Celinda’s great relief, they spend the rest of the evening discussion the orbital maneuvers.
After dinner, Celinda finally got to see the baby. Tonya invited her down to their study on the third deck, which had been converted to a nursery for the duration of the Van Doren’s stay. There, Celinda was able to change little Theodor, and watch Tonya feed him. She did the latter very naturally, without any sense of embarrassment at Celinda’s curiosity.
“It’s so beautiful,” Celinda gushed, and got a warm smile in return.
“Celinda,” Tonya began, softly, “about my brother . . .”
“It’s okay. I can take it. Willie was a kind of like that . . .”
“Willie, yes.” The older woman frowned briefly, then looked at Celinda as if she were really interested. “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I guess you’ve kind of noticed that Willie isn’t here any more.”
Tonya nodded again. Her baby fussed a bit, and she switched sides.
“He was a couple of years younger than I was. He was a lot of fun as a little kid—we wrestled, played hide and seek, word games, and everything. But as we got older, we didn’t get along—he needed so much, well, stimulation. Loud music. Violent videos. War toys. He was always doing something to get attention, to challenge the rest of us—bizarre haircuts patterned after some Earth fad, dirty language, anything he could do that was hostile and attention getting. We were always arguing about spacesuit safety and self discipline. He’d ignore me.”
Tonya nodded sympathetically. “There are certain lifestyles that just don’t fit on a family spaceship. You have to watch where your feelings are leading you, and think first. Even then . . .” a momentary frown passed Tonya’s face. “But what happened to Willie?”
“We went out one day to explore what was left of the comet. That was about the only thing we could still do together. That and work on the rock house. We were in this cave, and I was giving him a big sister lecture about keeping his back unit clean. He got mad at me, said don’t be such a reptile—that the stuff was built to take it. Then he took his unit off and rolled it around in the comet dust just to show me.”
A tear trickled down Celinda’s face now. Tonya reached for a clean diaper and handed it to her. “They’re absorbent.”
Celinda half giggled, and blotted her face. “Well, Willie got some grit in the connector, and it wouldn’t reconnect. I tried to get him to go back to the habitat—you can last five or six minutes on the air in your helmet if you’re careful.” She took a deep breath, remembering, and thinking about how nice it was to be able to breathe.
Tonya nodded.
Celinda continued. “He wouldn’t go. He kept trying to shake the dust out of his connector. I called Democritus for help. Then he got mad and tried to jam the connector on—and broke it. I got the buddy hose out of the bottom of my pack, so we could share my air until help arrived. But he’d already damaged the connector on his suit trying to jam the dirty connector in.”
“Oh, dear,” Tonya offered, sympathetically. Theodor was getting restless again, and Tonya bounced him a bit.
Celinda’s mind took time out with the distraction. Babies, she remembered reading, bounced at different rhythms in different gravities. Someone had tried to do a study on whether there was an optimum baby bouncing frequency, and what gravity that corresponded to.
“Your brother suffocated? Right in front of you, like that?”
The question brought her back. Celinda shook her head and couldn’t say anything for a few seconds. Then she took a deep breath and continued. “Democrituscould have saved him if he’d just kept still. I tried to wiggle the hose onto the connector, but he said I wasn’t trying hard enough, batted my hand away, and tried to force it on. Then he said the buddy hose didn’t work right. For all I knew at the time, he was right, so I suggested he try his own buddy hose.
“Then it turned out that he’d cannibalized his own buddy hose for a fluid analog speaker, and lied to Democritus on the check out. So he spun me around and yanked my main hose out of my pack.”
Tonya’s eyes went wide, but Celinda shrugged. “He was getting short of air now, and wasn’t thinking right. I don’t blame him. It might have even worked—we could have shared air, buddy style, if he hadn’t broken his suit connector.”
Celinda stared at the floor, unable to watch Tonya’s expression. “When it didn’t work, he screamed. I tried to hold him and get him to calm down and be quiet, but he pushed me away. Then . . . then he got this wild look in his eye and picked up a rock. I backed further away. Democritus said he’d have an emergency air ball there in a minute and that Mom and Dad were coming. If I could only have kept him quiet . . . But Willie yelled at me ‘To hell with the universe, I’m going to destroy the universe and make it go away.’ ”
“Oh, God. That’s a Nukes lyric. Mike plays it all the time.”
“I didn’t know that—we wouldn’t let Willie play his stuff on the speakers.” Celinda took a breath. “He just took that rock, got this awful grin on his face, and smashed his own faceplate with it. I screamed until I ran out of oxygen and passed out myself. Democritus and Dad saved me, somehow. Sometimes I wish . . .”
Tonya held Celinda’s hand tightly, and looked down on her baby, her face troubled.
Celinda was beyond sobbing now, and delivered the rest woodenly. “I was supposed to be taking care of Willie. I couldn’t handle it. I killed my little brother by being . . . incompetent.”
“No, no Celinda,” Tonya got her attention, “it wasn’t your fault. Please, look up.”
She did, and Tonya’s face was full of concern. Celinda looked at little Theodor. Maybe . . .
“Tonya, would you let an incompetent person hold your baby? Just for a bit?”
“I’ll let Celinda Ivanov hold him, and I don’t think she’s a bit incompetent,” Tonya laughed. “He’s a bit messy, though. Drooly.”
Celinda grinned, shrugged out of her costume tunic, and held little Theodor to her, skin on skin, letting him do what babies do, regardless of how little he got out of it. He seemed happy and skin was easy to clean. She fantasized that he was hers. She felt released and momentarily, very happy.
Celinda and Tonya took turns cuddling Theodor as they talked about Earth, boys, music, stars and babies. It was fairly late in their habitat’s artificial evening when Tonya’s husband knocked on the door, and Celinda bid the young family an embarrassed good night.
The habitat’s interior lights were low when she left, and it looked like she was the last one up. She took the pole down from the third level to the fifth, much faster than the elevator. It dropped her right in front of the spare room, where Captain Van Doren was staying. There were voices inside—her father and the Captain. Probably working out some last minute details on iceball propulsion.
She was up early in the morning, sprayed-on an exercise outfit, shivering as the smart fibers at the edges crawled around to make their hems, and got to the gym before anyone else. Democritus fed her the day’s lessons on a wall screen while she ran like Alice on the endless jogging rug. She was viewing a news dump about the first Martian crops when she became aware of someone else in the room. She turned and saw Avram.
“Hi,” she said.
“Good morning.” He gave her a quick smile and started slipping into a magnetic stress suit.
“Are you going to Earth too?” she asked.
“Not planning on it in the near future,” he grunted as he stepped onto the solenoid stage and began his Tai Chi. “All the more reason to keep in shape. What’s the limit on this set-up?”
“One point three, I think. It’s supposed to take you up to two gravities, but Dad added a software stop because the field was interfering with some of his instruments. Uh, there are a couple loose magnets on that suit—on the elbow. I’m supposed to sew them on but I keep forgetting.”
She remembered how Willie had torn the smart magnets off the suit in an angry reaction to banging his elbow one day. He’d been sure they’d pulled his arm into the wall, and no one had been able to convince him that the magnets couldn’t pull him into a fiberglass wall, even if their orientation control was off, which it hadn’t been. He’d yelled and cried and called them all liars. No need to tell Avram all that—he didn’t seem to realize how precious little brothers were.
“Uh, won’t your motiles . . .”
“I’m supposed to learn how to do this kind of stuff myself, so I won’t feel so dependent on the cyberservants.”
“Something wrong? Tonya mentioned you were upset about leaving.”
She stopped jogging, coasted to the end of the rug, and turned toward him. “Yeah. Packing, leaving, going. Ghosts.” They seemed to float in front of her eyes when she blinked, in front of all the conditioning equipment. One of them was a big five year old girl rocking her one year old brother in her arms. Hours and hours of rolling balls across the rug. That infection they both got that it took them two weeks to cure.
“Ghosts!?”
She shook her head. “Memories.”
Then she started talking to Avram about her the comet—about how nice things had been just a few years ago with her, Willie, Mom, Dad and the baby. She told him how they’d played in the comet caves, or sat in a crater and watched the castle of tubes and cylinders where Democritus and his motiles refined the comet stuff into iceballs for Mars.
“Vampira ate that crater two, no, four years ago. But we have holos. Everything was so perfect then. But Willie started . . . changing. Or maybe not changing is more like it. You know, it was like he never could slow down and think about things, or make himself do the things you should do even if you don’t feel like doing them. I mean, he was still my brother, and he could be a lot of fun in a spontaneous, outrageous, madcap sort of way. But that kind of thing gets scary on a comet.”
“Or a spaceship,” Avram agreed, “I know. Mike is a bit like that. Mom thinks it’s because of what happened to Dad, but, I’m not sure. Maybe it’s just him.”
Avram appeared to lose interest in his exercises, turned down the magnetic field, and sat on the on the side solenoid stage. He gestured to the open space next to him.
Celinda sat down next to him, put her elbows on her knees and her chin in her hand. She knew she wasn’t supposed to ask the question, but she judged that Avram wouldn’t mind—and besides he knew all her private stuff now, so it was only fair.
“Do you want to talk about your father?” she asked, trying to sound as adult and sophisticated as Tonya had last night.
He looked at her and smiled. “You’re curious about this?” he asked, and removed his left hand with his right, handing it to her, revealing a stump cap with a tiny red light in the middle.
“Oh!” She examined the prosthetic, curiosity getting the better of any social worries.
“Uh. Sure. I mean that’s kind of neat, gives a whole new meaning to the words ‘optic nerve,’ doesn’t it? It doesn’t hurt or anything, does it?”
Avram laughed softly. “No. Only when I think about how it happened.”
She put two and two together. “You lost your hand when your father died?”
Avram nodded. “Yeah. We’d just finished transshipping an iceball to a lunar methane tankers. Mom had a social engagement lined up at Ceres for as soon as we reached orbit. She had just lost ten kilos and had some clothes that she thought would fit her again in a storage module on the other side of the ring.” He shook his head. “If she could get them before we picked up the deceleration beam, she’d save an hour or so after we reached orbit. We were going through the belt with a relative velocity of forty kilometers per second. We could have sent a motile, but Dad was feeling cooped up and wanted to get out. I went along. We disabled the guard lasers for the trip so we wouldn’t accidentally put a hand in front of one just as a piece of rock went by.”
He gave her a bitter smile.
“Well, a piece of rock went by. We’d just gotten the container and closed the compartment. I felt a sharp tug on my wrist, like a cramp, then nothing. I actually reached for the container, didn’t feel it then looked down at the stump, not believing it because I felt like I could still move my fingers. But it was gone. The stump was foaming blood in the vacuum, I got scared and couldn’t remember what to do. I called to Dad.”
Celinda put her hand on his real hand.
“Dad wasn’t there,” he finished. “Dr. Zarkhovfound two pieces on radar, outbound at five klips.”
Celinda nodded. “Space.” she said. “How did you get back?”
“I pressed the stump into my stomach and ran along the inside of the ring. I lost consciousness before I cycled through the lock, but the motiles got me. It was a bit of a mess.
“Do you want to know something funny?”
It didn’t sound very funny to Celinda, but an inner voice told her to listen instead of comment, so she just nodded.
“I was still holding onto the container with Mom’s dress. They said I wouldn’t let it go.”
Celinda was quiet for a while, then asked “How long ago?”
“Two years. Mike’s blamed Mom ever since, and she feels so guilty she lets him do anything he wants. I’m the one that has to say no—and he hates me for that.”
Celinda nodded. She knew that kind of hate. “Deep down, they know you mean the best for them. And they feel as bad about not fitting in as you do.”
“They?”
“The ones that don’t belong out here.” Her voice was calm and adult, but her eyes were glistening. “The ones that should never have been out here in the first place, because of what’s inside them. The Willie’s and the Mikes.” There, she’d said it. She loved Willie—but he didn’t belong.
“And Peetie?”
Celinda just shook her head. “Too early to tell. I can still cuddle him and . . . Say, would you let me put your hand back on?”
He nodded and showed her how. She wanted to do something intimate, and, well, that seemed to work for her. Besides, it was a clever piece of engineering.
Democritusinterrupted them.
“Avram, Celinda. We have an emergency. Mikhail and Peter are in trouble outside. People are meeting at the top level, by the air lock entrance.”
Celinda jumped up and started out the gym door, then, remembering that Avram was unfamiliar with their habitat, turned, said “this way” leading him to the right; away from the elevator and toward the pole. They were both in good shape and could use their arms to haul themselves up to much faster than the elevator could have.
When they reached the top level, they found both families clustered around the airlock. Tonya’s husband, who had said so little at dinner the night before that Celinda couldn’t remember his name was putting on vacuum overclothes. “Avram,” he called out as soon as the younger man popped up the pole hatch, “suit up. The auxiliary skycycle’s already chasing them, we’re going to follow.”
“What happened?” Celinda said, “Where’s Peetie?”
Her mother rushed over to her and started to smother her. Celinda grabbed her hands.
“Mom, what happened?”
“The Van Doren’s sky cycle ran away, dear. Mike was bored and he was taking it back to their ship to listen to his music where nobody would bother him about the noise. Peetie was with Mike.”
“I want to go after him, Mom.” Celinda ran for her shipsuit and helmet. “Please?”
“Celinda!” her Father’s voice was sharp. He was clearly going to object.
“Larry,” Avram interrupted, “she’s lighter. That’ll give the cycle more delta vee.”
Tonya looked Celinda’s father in the eye and pleaded her case silently. Dad tightened his lips, and gave a nod. “Very well. If it’s all right with Greg.”
That was Tonya’s husband’s name, Celinda remembered now. She felt a momentary hesitation—she needed to be there for Peetie, to try to make up for losing Willie. But she hadn’t thought far enough ahead to realize that would mean bumping Tonya’s husband from the rescue mission.
But he smiled gallantly. “Tonya told me, Celinda. And I hear that you’re as good a cometeer as they come. Dr. Zarkhov will be looking out for you too, so it should be safe enough. As safe as anything out here.”
Everyone was silent on that for a second, but Celinda kept getting dressed. The shipsuit fitted over her athletic sprays easily enough. Democritus had her overclothes ready, and she was running a goo-smeared finger around the inside of her neck seal by the time Mom broke the silence.
“I’ll talk to you later, Larry,” she said sharply, and headed for the elevator.
Dad looked pained, and Captain Van Doren came over and placed her hand on his arm. They looked at each other briefly, then Dad looked Celinda in the eyes.
“Keep your head, young lady. Maximum effort until everyone’s safe. Understand.”
“Yeah, Dad. I’m good to go.” They gave each other a thumbs up.
