“Never learned to swim,” he said, completely deadpan. (Well, they do call them jokers.) “Actually, I signed up when Tominbang hired a friend of mine. Who wouldn’t want to be part of the first flight to the Moon?”
Which made me feel bad that I had ignored his messages. When I learned that he was the specialist in charge of space suits, that he had wanted me to come in for fit checks for a suit of my own, I felt even worse.
Fortunately, we got to work, and within two hours I learned more about the operational aspects of the flight to the Moon than I had in three weeks. The silver suit, made mostly of heavy rubber, was one of half a dozen originally developed for the X-11A program a decade past, acquired, no doubt, through some shady contact of Tominbang’s. “We’re adding special boots, a white coverall and a special helmet visor for use on the lunar surface.”
“I’ll be out on the surface?”
“At the moment, only Dearborn and Tominbang are scheduled to walk on the Moon. They will erect the relay station. But if they have trouble, you will have to help them.” Somewhat ashamedly, I found myself hoping they would: why go all the way to the Moon and not walk on it?
I bent myself into various shapes in order to get my head through the helmet ring. Then I was zipped tight, and immediately began to perspire. I could not stand up straight, either. “You’ll be sitting most of the time,” Sobel said, taking some measurements, like a tailor, then helping me out of the garment. “You’ll either be hooked up to Quicksilver’s cooling system, or to a backpack.”
Then a more practical question arose. “What about sanitary facilities?”
Sobel smiled and held up a metal bottle and tube. “Standard USAF catheter.”
“And what about… other functions?”
“You’ll be on a low residue diet for the last few days prior to the flight.”
“How long will I be in this thing?”
“Two days, tops.”
That was some relief.
When I returned to my office, I found Bacchus leering all over an alarmed Eva-Lynne. (I couldn’t help noticing that she had, indeed, changed clothes from the previous night.) “I’ll be with you in a minute, Doctor,” I told this sex-crazed joker. “Eva-Lynne, I need to talk to you in private.”
As I closed the door, she said, “Thank God. I’ve met some aggressive men in my life-” I could only imagine. “-but he is by far the worst. I don’t even like having him breathe on me.”
“Sorry. I should have warned you.”
“I’m not sure a warning would have done much good. I probably wouldn’t have believed you.” She favored me with the same smile that had so bewitched me that first time I saw her. “But it’s very sweet of you to protect me.”
Seeing that she was about to leave, I cleared my throat and prepared to subject myself to bad news. “Speaking of protection, did you get home all right last night?”
She whirled to face me, and I saw a look on her lovely face that I had never seen before. One lovely golden eyebrow rose slightly. The effect was far more womanly, if that’s the word. Knowing. “Let’s just say, I got where I was supposed to get.”
I must have blushed. I certainly had no idea what to say. And I never, in fact, got the chance to respond, because Eva-Lynne prevented it. She took me by the hand and said, “You know, Cash, I think you and I need to have a picnic.”
My protest was truly feeble. “There’s nowhere to eat.” Most of Tominbang’s team packed lunches, or ate the offerings of the tiny cafeteria over at the airport.
“Don’t be silly, Cash. It’s not about food.”
“I hope you weren’t under the impression I was a virgin,” she said, once we’d reached our picnic grounds, a flat area halfway up the hill a hundred yards beyond the fence which ringed Tominbang’s hangar complex. In one last stab at being a masculine provider, I had bought two bottles of Dr. Pepper from the building’s vending machine as we walked out.
“No,” I said, telling the truth. This was, after all, 1968. Virginity had ceased to be in fashion about the time of my sophomore year at Harvey Mudd some years earlier. I had been married, and had been in several shorter sexual relationships myself, so I should have been beyond the adolescent fear that my sexual skills would not measure up, so to speak.
“But you were hoping I wasn’t a slut,” Eva-Lynne said, articulating my next thought before I could. My blush confirmed her statement.
She exhaled. “Have you ever heard of Diamond Butte, Arizona?” she said.
“Should I?”
“No reason. When I get through telling you about it, you’ll probably wish you still hadn’t heard it.” Diamond Butte, she explained, was a tiny town in the northwestern corner of Arizona a few miles south of Utah. “It’s cut off from the rest of Arizona by the Grand Canyon, but technically not in Utah. It’s kind of like-what’s that television show? The Twilight Zone. Nobody knows which set of laws to apply, because no one’s there to enforce them.
“Let me guess,” I said. “Nobody enforces either set.”
“Right.” She grimaced. “Which is why, for years, most of the people in the area were polygamists. My family, for example. My mother was my father’s seventh wife. I had twenty brothers and sisters. And I was literally sold to a man-my future husband-when I was fourteen. I became his eleventh wife when I was sixteen.”
“And that’s what you ran away from?” I said, hoping that was the end of the story.
Eva-Lynne ignored me. “It was bad. Polygamy may work for some. I think my family generally got along. But Roderick, my husband, was a bastard. I think he would rather have beaten us rather than slept with us.
“All of us tried to run off at one time or another. We all got caught and taken back, and it would be even worse.
“Finally one of the other men in the town heard what was going on, and challenged Roderick. But Roderick killed him and took his wives for his own.
“Which left him free to get rid of us. He sold us to the Gambiones, Cash. They dragged us off to New York, Jokertown, where they had a brothel just for jokers.” Her voice had grown quieter as she spoke. By this time there were tears rolling down her cheeks. For her sake and mine, I wanted to her to stop. But no. “I spent three years there.” Now her smile was savage. “I was very popular with the clientele.
“Eventually one of the girls died; a joker killed her. The Gambiones had to lie low for a few weeks; they shipped most of to San Francisco.
“I’d saved a little money.” She hesitated for a moment, then said, in the smallest possible voice, “I used my charms. And I got out. You wanted to know how someone who looks like me winds up in Mojave? That’s why.”
“I had no idea.”
“I’m glad. But now you know. And now you have good reason not to fall in love with me.”