Instead of waving she calls, “We love you and thank you! This is one more step to the stars!”
The cheers and applause redouble. Someone yells, “Gwendy for President!” A few others take up the call, but not that many. She’s popular, but not that popular, especially not in Florida, which went red (again) in the last general election.
The crew leaves the building and climbs into the three-car tram that will take them to Eagle Heavy. Gwendy has to crane her neck all the way to the reinforced collar of her suit to see the top of the rocket. Am I really going up in that? she asks herself, and not for the first time.
In the seat next to her, the team’s tall, sandy-haired biologist leans toward her. He speaks in a low murmur. “There’s still time to back out. No one would think the worse of you.”
Gwendy laughs. It comes out nervy and too shrill. “If you believe that, you must also believe in Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.”
“Fair enough,” he says, “but never mind what people would think. If you have any idea, any at all, that you’re going to freak out and start yelling ‘Wait, stop, I’ve changed my mind’ when the engines light up, then call it off now. Because once those engines go, there’s no turning around and no one needs a panicked politician onboard. Or a panicky billionaire for that matter.” He looks to the car ahead of them, where a man is bending the ear of the Ops Commander. In his white pressure suit, the man bears a resemblance to the Pillsbury Doughboy.
The three-car tram starts to roll. Men and women in coveralls applaud them on their way. Gwendy puts the white case down and holds it firmly between her feet. Now she can wave.
“I’ll be fine.” She’s not entirely sure of that but tells herself she has to be. Has to. Because of the white case. Stamped in raised red letters on both sides are the words CLASSIFIED MATERIAL. “How about you?”
The bio-guy smiles, and Gwendy realizes that she can’t remember his name. He’s been her training partner for the last four weeks, only minutes ago they back-checked each other’s suits before leaving the holding area, but she can’t remember his name. This is NG, as her late mother would have said: not good.
“I’ll be fine. This’ll be my third trip, and when the rocket starts to climb and I feel the g-force pressing down? Speaking just for myself, it’s the best orgasm a boy ever had.”
“Thank you for sharing,” Gwendy says. “I’ll be sure to put it in my first dispatch to the down-below.” It’s what they call Earth, the down-below, she remembers that, but what’s Bio Boy’s damn name?
In the pocket of her jumper she’s got a notebook with all sorts of info in it—not to mention a very special bookmark. The names of all the crew members are in there, but no way can she get at the notebook now, and even if she could, it might—almost certainly would—raise suspicions. Gwendy falls back on the technique Dr. Ambrose gave her. It doesn’t always work, but this time it does. The man next to her is tall, square-jawed, blue-eyed, and has a tumble of sandy hair. The women think he’s hot. What’s hot? Fire’s hot. If you touch it, you might get a—
Bern. That’s his name. Bern Stapleton. Professor Bern Stapleton who also happens to be Major Bern Stapleton, Retired.
“Please don’t,” Bern says. She’s pretty sure he’s talking about his orgasm metaphor. There’s nothing wrong with her short-term memory, at least not so far.
Well … not too wrong.
“I was joking,” Gwendy says, and pats his gloved hand with her own. “And stop worrying, Bern. I’ll be fine.”
She tells herself again that she must be. She doesn’t want to let down her constituents—and today that’s all of America and most of the world—but that’s minor compared to the locked white box between her boots. She can’t let it down. Because there’s a box inside the box, made not of high-impact steel but of mahogany. It’s a foot wide, a bit more than that in length, and about seven inches deep. There are buttons on top and levers so small you have to pull them with your pinky finger on either side.
They have just one paying passenger on this flight to the MF, and it’s not Gwendy. She has an actual job. Not much of one, mostly just recording data on her iPad and sending it back to Tet Control, but it’s not entirely a cover for her real business in the up-above. She’s a climate monitor, her call designation is Weather Girl, and some of the crew jokingly refers to her as Tempest Storm, the name of a long-ago ecdysiast.
What is that? she asks herself. I should know.
Because she doesn’t, she resorts to Dr. Ambrose’s technique again. The word she’s looking for is like paint, isn’t it? No, not paint. Before you paint you have to get rid of the old paint. You have to …
“Strip,” she murmurs.
“What?” Bern asks. He has been distracted by a bunch of applauding men standing beside one of the emergency trucks. Which please God won’t have to roll on this fine spring day.
“Nothing,” she says, thinking, An ecdysiast is a stripper.
It’s always a relief when the missing words come. She knows that all too soon they won’t. She doesn’t like that, is in fact terrified of it, but that’s the future. Right now she just has to get through today. Once she’s up there (where the air’s not just rare but nonexistent), they can’t just send her home if they discover what’s wrong with her, can they? But they could screw up her mission if they found out. And there’s something else, something that would be even worse. Gwendy doesn’t want to even think about it but can’t help herself.
What if she forgets the real reason she’s up there? The real reason is the box inside the box. It sounds melodramatic, but Gwendy Peterson knows it’s true: the fate of the world depends on what’s inside that box.
3
THE SERVICE-AND-DELIVERY STRUCTURE BESIDE Eagle Heavy is a crisscross latticework of steel beams housing a huge open elevator. Gwendy and her fellow travelers mount the nine stairs and get inside. The elevator has a capacity of three dozen and there’s plenty of room to spread out, but Gareth Winston stands next to her, his considerable belly pooching out the front of his white pressure suit.
Winston is her least favorite person on this trip to the up-above, although she has every confidence he doesn’t know it. Over a quarter-century in politics has taught Gwendy the fine art of hiding her feelings and putting on a you’re-so-darn-fascinating face. When she was first elected to the House of Representatives, a political veteran named Patricia “Patsy” Follett took Gwendy under her wing and gave her some valuable advice. That particular day it was about an old buzzard from Mississippi named Milton Jackson (long since gone to that great caucus room in the sky), but Gwendy’s found it useful ever since: “Save your biggest smiles for the shitheads, and don’t take your eyes off theirs. The women will think you love their earrings. The men will think you’re smitten with them. None of them will know that you’re actually watching their every move.”
“Ready for the biggest joyride of your life, Senator?” Winston asks as the elevator begins its slow 400-foot trundle up the side of the rocket.
“Ready-ready-Teddy,” Gwendy says, giving him the wide smile she reserves for shitheads. “How about you?”
“Totally excited!” Winston proclaims. He spreads his arms and Gwendy has to take a step back to keep from being bopped in the chest. Gareth Winston is prone to expansive gestures; he probably feels that being worth a hundred and twenty billion dollars (not as much as Jeff Bezos, but close) gives him the right to be expansive. “Totally thrilled, totally up for it, totally stoked!”