The Relentless Moon Read online

  “Sacre bleu!” Reynard gaped at me. “What have you done to yourself?”

  “Ballet accident.” I actually had kicked myself in the face once, but that was decades ago. I leaned in to kiss Reynard on both cheeks in the Parisian fashion and snuck a look at Nathaniel. The shadows lining his face did not come solely from his hat. “I’m surprised they could pry you out of the building.”

  Nathaniel looked at the sidewalk, hunching into his suit jacket, and I could see his shoulder bones poking through the fabric. He always ran to lean but he looked absolutely gaunt now in ways that were uncomfortably familiar. “Reynard turned the power off in my office.”

  “Clemons told me to!” He showed his passport to the security officer and stomped through the turnstile. “You would have stayed until dawn, and I have made promises to your wife.”

  “So have I!” I chirped and waved my ID at the guard, stepping through the turnstile when he nodded.

  Nathaniel winced and pressed his hand to his side. “We lost a rocket today. I should be there, not playing poker.”

  Poker night. I had forgotten, but the relief that he wasn’t there to brief Kenneth on some new and worse development made me ebullient. “Let the backrooms do their jobs. Come upstairs and I’ll ply you with martinis.”

  He handed the guard his ID and followed us through the turnstile. Dark circles ringed Nathaniel’s eyes and exhaustion dragged his face down. Today had been distressing, but he carried more than one day of fatigue. When we reached the elevator, he stood with his eyes half-closed as if he were dead on his feet.

  I had been a terrible friend. I’d promised Elma that I’d keep an eye on her husband and I couldn’t even remember the last time I’d seen him. And now I was going away and—oh. Oh. Nathaniel knew. He was one of the handful who knew about the saboteur because, as lead engineer, he had to know that the failures were not accidents.

  We got in the elevator and I pushed the button for our floor. Here’s the funny thing about our post-Meteor building. It extended down as far as it did up. The most expensive apartments were all the way down. Kenneth and I lived on the top floor because I was damned if I was going to spend my time on Earth buried under rock. I spent enough time living under regolith on the Moon, thank you very much.

  Reynard leaned against the side of the elevator. “In the paper, I saw that you were caught in the riots last night.” He gestured at my chin. “Is that…?”

  “No, no. We were fine.” My ears popped as we arrived at the twenty-fourth floor. “We stayed with the Lindholms last night.”

  Nathaniel smiled, stretching the skin over his cheekbones. “They are good at taking in refugees.”

  “That they are.” I led them down the hall to our apartment and nodded at the bodyguard who kept watch outside our door in the evenings when we were in town. “Will Eugene be here tonight?”

  “No. He said something had come up.” Reynard sighed. “Alas.”

  I had the new crew schedule Clemons had given me in my purse and it gave a likely reason. The Lindholms were headed back to the Moon with me and—oh, damn. Helen’s name was on that list too, and Reynard clearly hadn’t spoken to his wife yet. “How’s Helen?”

  “She is in Chicago at the Adler. No—wait.” He looked at his wristwatch. “She should be landing at Sunflower shortly, if she is not already on the ground.”

  “You might want to skip tonight.” I opened the door to the apartment and a wave of masculine voices swept out into the hall. Reynard’s head came up and his shoulders tightened. I held up a hand to calm him. “She’s fine.”

  “What is happening?”

  If he didn’t know about the sabotage, I couldn’t tell him, but he should damn well know his wife’s duty assignments. “Clemons is rotating us back to the Moon early. We launch from Brazil, which means they’ll need to ship us out next week.”

  “Merde!”

  Nathaniel closed his eyes for a moment, wincing. “Sorry.” His voice was hoarse. “I argued for grounding everything. I didn’t think Clemons would … I should have told you that was a possibility.”

  Reynard waved the apology away and looked back to the door. “Please give my regards to the governor.”

  I saw him out, and moments later, my husband appeared in the hall. “Nathaniel! I see you brought my wi— Nicole? What?”

  I leaned in to kiss him on the cheek and whispered, “Training accident. It looks worse than it is. Tell you later.”

  The pressure of his lips against my cheek and the touch of his hand on my arm softened my shoulders just a touch. I wanted to sit with him and talk about everything, but we had company.

  Pulling back, Kenneth turned to Nathaniel and extended his hand. I saw the moment when my husband really looked at Nathaniel and at the hollows of his cheeks. I tried not to see the following moment when his gaze turned to me and the specter of my past self. “How’s Elma?”

  “Good.” Nathaniel cleared his throat. “She said she’s reading The Gods of Mars and enjoying it.”

  “And yourself? How are you holding up with … everything?” Kenneth steered Nathaniel out of the foyer and into the living room of our apartment. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you look like hell.”

  Nathaniel laughed and the sound terrified me. It had a wheeze and tore at the edges like it was about to become sobbing that might not stop. “Clemons made me leave the building on the day of a rocket failure.”

  I followed them into the living room, which was filled with the men of the Astronauts’ Husbands Club. It was still a small group and they tended to only come when their wives were away. Most of them were clustered around the dining room table, with cards dealt out, but a few were down in the sunken living room, sitting on the sofa or in an easy chair, talking.

  “Come in. Do something social and we’ll ply you with sandwiches and enough martinis that you’ll get a good night’s sleep.”

  “That would be nice.” His voice was low and rough. “You know how it is.”

  “I do.” Kenneth squeezed Nathaniel’s shoulder and glanced at me again.

  This fear was different. In that silent look, I saw boundless space reflected in his dark eyes and had a moment of clarity about what he goes through when I’m gone. All of the husbands worried. I saw that at every launch I attended as an astronaut escort. My job there was to make the family comfortable and to be their rock in case of a “contingency.” Contingency. It’s the IAC’s way of referring to death. Kenneth and Nathaniel had been founding members of that club, which was built of equal parts pride and terror.

  And this time it was going to be worse because Kenneth would know that someone might sabotage my launch.

  “La madre que te parió, Ken. What did you do to your wife?” Florina Morales’s husband stood next to the hors d’oeuvres set out on the sideboard.

  “He finally showed her who was boss,” Mandy Self’s husband replied. “Am I right?”

  “Hey, Nicole!” Deana Whitney’s husband sloshed his martini as he gestured. “What’d you do to piss Ken off?”

  “Now, Mr. Whitney.” I laid a manicured finger along my bandage in a classic modeling pose. “Tell the truth. I got this head-butting you. I just forgot that I was wearing heels.”

  The men laughed and Mr. Whitney turned a little red. There’s nothing wrong with being short, and under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have hit an area that he was sensitive about, but let me tell you a joke that is not funny. When you see a woman with stitches in her chin and ask her what she did to make her husband angry.

  There are two scenarios. The first is that she’s happily married and you’ve insulted their relationship. The other is that her husband is abusive and she will not thank you for endangering her by drawing attention to it. In the range of possibilities in between, there’s not a single one in which a joke about being a battered woman is funny.

  I was done dealing with jokes about the stitches so I sashayed out of the living room and into the kitchen. I would pour a gla
ss of scotch for myself and then have whatever our housekeeper had set out for dinner.

  A few minutes later, Kenneth followed me into the kitchen. “Sorry about that.”

  “I’m fine.” I picked up the sandwich she’d left for me and took a bite so he’d stop worrying about that at least. Ham and cheese with mustard. “Don’t abandon Nathaniel.”

  He nodded and rubbed the back of his neck. “I got him set up with a sandwich, and Fernando Morales was making him a martini.”

  Setting the sandwich down, I opened the cabinet and pulled out the single malt we hid on poker night. A sixteen-year-old Abelour. I like the astronaut husbands, but not that much. I grabbed a rocks glass. “Want one?”

  “I’ll have a sip of yours.” He leaned against the counter next to me. His tie was undone and his sleeves were rolled partway up to his elbows. “Want to tell me about the training accident?”

  “I was demonstrating the POGO and the hydraulic line gave.” I shrugged. Pulling off the cork released peat and the dark resin of heather on the heath. “Clemons checked my clearance level today and then he told me everything.”

  “Shit.” Kenneth turned and grabbed a glass for himself after all. Given the sabotage implications, I was not surprised. “Did he show you the report from the lunar rocket misfiring two years ago?”

  “He mentioned it.” Myrtle had been coming back from the Moon and a thruster misfired during docking at Lunetta. No one had died, but it had done a fair bit of damage. I poured the beautiful amber liquid into my glass. “Told me to ask for your copy of the report. How long have you known?”

  Kenneth sighed heavily. “This morning.”

  I poured a finger of whisky for him. “Did you have to yell to get them to brief you?”

  “No. No … Clemons needed my help with dama—”

  Someone shouted from the living room. “Oh God!”

  The cries of alarm rippled from multiple male throats. Setting the glass on the counter, I ran into the living room. Men clustered near the sideboard, framing Nathaniel.

  He was on his knees, half-doubled with blood streaking down the front of his shirt. For a moment, I thought he’d somehow split his chin open.

  Howard Brown held his shoulders as Nathaniel vomited. Bright blood sprayed from his mouth. The husbands all stood frozen, with horror stretching their features. I ran toward them, as if I were on the triage team in a contingency procedure. On my way, I grabbed the ice bucket and dumped the ice and water on the carpet.

  Kenneth followed me at a run. “Do you want the car or an ambulance?”

  “The car. It’s faster.” Sliding to my knees next to Nathaniel, I shoved the ice bucket under his mouth in time to catch the next wave of retching.

  A male voice said, “Jesus, Nicole. This isn’t the time to worry about your damn carpet.”

  “Fuck you. The doctor might need to see the condition of the blood in his vomit.” It was bright fresh red. He was bleeding inside.

  SIX

  DEVICE IS TESTED THAT SCANS SEAS

  Satellite Sensor Can Check for Plant Life in Oceans

  By WALTER RUSSELL

  Special to The National Times

  BRUSSELS, March 30, 1963—Scientists of the International Aerospace Coalition have developed a method for aerially monitoring one of the most vital activities on Earth—the biological productivity of lakes and seas. The device watches for the telltale signs of chlorophyll. The drifting plant life of the oceans is vital not only because it feeds the fish eaten by man, but also because it replenishes the oxygen of the atmosphere.

  Hospitals all have the same smell of disinfectant and stale air barely masking old bandages. Kenneth and I sat in molded plastic chairs across from the waiting room’s one phone booth, trying not to rush the happily weeping young man who was using it. He had been calling a list of family for the last hour to let them know about his new daughter. I tried not to hate him, but I needed to make a call.

  On the other hand, I wasn’t sure what news I had. I looked up at the clock on the wall: 2 a.m. Nathaniel had been in surgery for five hours.

  “He’ll be fine.” Kenneth rested his hand on my knee.

  “I know.” We were both lying to each other because it was anyone’s guess how it would go, but you take your comfort where you can. “Have you given any more thought to the Moon trip?”

  His bodyguard sat at the end of the row, ostensibly reading a book but really scanning the room for threats. Kenneth glanced to that end of the room before sighing. “I don’t want you to go.”

  “Kenneth.”

  “You asked.” He pulled his hand from my knee. “I don’t want you to go. I know you will anyway.”

  I shouldn’t have started the conversation in a place where neither of us could speak freely. “Brazil hasn’t had any problems.”

  “Yet.” He leaned forward. “Phone’s about to be free.”

  A nurse entered the room, walking briskly toward the young man. He stepped out of the phone booth, blowing his nose on a handkerchief, and followed her off to see his new daughter.

  I really did try to rejoice for him, but I just hoped that Nathaniel would escape the operating table with all of his internal organs intact.

  Sliding out of my chair, I hurried to the phone before another patron could grab it. I had Elma’s brother’s number in my purse because I had been her family’s astronaut escort when she launched for Mars. Slipping into the phone booth, I dialed 0 and waited for the operator so I could place a long-distance call. It was 2 a.m., which would be midnight in California.

  “Operator.”

  “Long distance, please.”

  “Surely.” In my ear, the sound changed subtly and a different woman said, “Long distance.”

  “Operator, I’d like to place a call to Los Angeles: Rockwell five-four-nine-seven-five.”

  “Please deposit one dollar and five cents for the first three minutes.”

  I shoved a series of quarters and a nickel into the slots at the top of the machine and waited, twisting the cord around my fingers as the operator connected the call.

  It rang four times before a drowsy baritone answered, “Wexler residence, Hershel Wexler speaking.”

  “Hershel, hello. It’s Nicole Wargin.” I heard his intake of breath as keen as a knife cut. “Elma’s fine.”

  He sighed. “Oh, thank God. Sorry. It’s just that when you call—”

  “I understand. Listen, I’m on a pay phone, so have to keep this short. Forgive me for bluntness. Nathaniel had a bleeding ulcer they couldn’t stop and he’s in emergency surgery now. I have your contact information, but I don’t know his family at all.” This was life after the Meteor. We never asked about people’s families anymore, because of the hundreds of thousands of people who had died. “Does he … Who should I call?”

  “Oh God.”

  “The doctor was confident going into surgery, I just don’t have any news yet.” Five hours and counting.

  The phone rustled as he lowered it. “It’s all right, Doris. Go back to sleep.” Then he was back in my ear. “He doesn’t have a lot of family. Only child. At the wedding, aside from a couple of cousins, there were mostly just college buddies or friends from work.”

  “Should I call one of them?”

  “He … he worked out at Langley.”

  Langley. Langley didn’t exist anymore. It hadn’t been directly under the Meteor, but with the airblast and fires it might as well have been. “All right. I’ll—”

  The operator cut in. “Please deposit ten cents to continue the call.”

  I shoved a dime into the slot. “I’ll round up folks from here to look after him.”

  “Thanks. Tell me the hospital? I’ll book a flight as soon as I’m off the phone.”

  “Oh. I just didn’t know who to call. You don’t have to come out.”

  “He’s family.” He gave a half-laugh. “Besides, you’ve met my sister.”

  “Fair point.” And honestly, it would be a relief to
let someone else be responsible. If Hershel were here to manage Nathaniel’s recovery, then I wouldn’t have to feel guilty about going off to the Moon. Except, of course, that Hershel was a polio survivor and wore braces on both legs. “But … well, I mean. Will you be able— I’m sorry. That’s a—”

  “I can cook. I can clean. I can even change a diaper if it comes to that.”

  My face went hot with embarrassment that I’d even raised the question. “I have no doubt. But wait until he’s out of surgery and we know what’s what. They’ll probably want to keep him for a couple of days.”

  “Sure. Okay. Sure, that makes sense.”

  The damned operator cut in again. “Please deposit ten cents to continue the call.”

  I scrabbled in my wallet for another dime and only came up with pennies. “Shoot. Out of change.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Washington Memoria—” The operator cut us off. I wasn’t sure if he heard the last syllable.

  I hung the phone back on the hook and leaned against the wall for a moment before stepping out of the booth. The person I should have contacted immediately was nearly halfway to Mars right now. But to talk to her required a teletype with a twenty-minute roundtrip for messages.

  And that’s why I was waiting: because she would ask questions and I wouldn’t be able to answer them. As soon as Nathaniel was out and we knew the score, I would go straight to the IAC and send her a message.

  In the nature of things, as soon as I stepped out of the phone booth, the doctor walked into the waiting room. My husband straightened and stood to meet him, his calm politician’s mask settling around him like a shroud. At the end of the room, his bodyguard stood as if he could protect us from this danger.

  “He’s in recovery and doing well.” The doctor was a blond British man who looked as if he’d be more at home on the cricket pitch than in the operating room. He glanced at the bandage gracing my chin with professional interest, but mercifully said nothing about it. “Would Dr. York have had a recent diagnostic procedure?”

  I looked at Kenneth, who shook his head and shrugged. “Not that I know of.”