37
SHE’S HALFWAY AROUND THE outer corridor when Adesh Patel catches up with her.
“Good morning, Senator. Mind some company?”
“Not at all,” Gwendy says.
But she does mind. The last thing she wants on this horrible morning is company. She’s cranky and frightened and filled with doubt. What if I have another Brain Fart? See, that’s not even right! What if I have another Brain Freeze, and he runs back and blabbermouths to Kathy? What then?
As if reading her mind, Adesh gently touches her on the shoulder and asks, “Can we stop for a minute? I wanted to tell you something at dinner last night, but we were never alone long enough and I didn’t want to say it in front of the others.”
Gwendy stops walking and turns to face him. “Is something wrong, Adesh?”
He lowers his eyes and shrugs. “Yes … no … I mean, I don’t really know, I guess.”
“Well, spit it out and let’s figure it out together.”
“I’ll try.” He takes a deep, wavering breath. “When Doc Glen and Commander Lundgren first came to me asking questions about you, I had no idea what their specific concerns were or what they were thinking. I figured it was because you’re … well …”
“Because I’m old? It’s okay, it’s true. And not a dirty word.”
Adesh shakes his head. “No’ ma’am. You might be older than the rest of us, but you’re not old. Now my Grandma Aanya, she’s old.”
“Point taken,” Gwendy says. “Say on, o revered Bug Man.”
“Well, it was only later, when I found out about the cognitive assessment test they made you take, that I went back to them and spoke my true mind.”
“They didn’t make me do anything, Adesh. I agreed.”
Adesh nods, then shakes his head. “Nevertheless, I was very angry when I heard what they did. And I told them so.”
Gwendy is genuinely touched. “You’re a good friend. Thank you.”
“And when I heard that you passed the test with flying colors, I marched right back in there and said ‘I told you so.’ A brilliant woman like you could never fail such a basic assessment.”
If only you knew, she thinks sadly.
“Anyway, I needed to get that off my chest. In case people tell you, ‘That Bug Man, he spoke out of turn.’ It’s the correct phrase, isn’t it? Out of turn?”
“Yes.”
“I just wanted you to know I had to speak my mind.”
She floats up a few inches to give his shoulder an affectionate squeeze—and that’s when she sees it. Maybe thirty yards behind them, where the inner wall of the corridor curves out of sight, someone is standing in the shadow of the big overhead air purifier, watching them. Before Gwendy can call out or get a better look, the figure disappears. Winston? she wonders.
“… say the word.”
She turns back to Adesh. “I’m sorry … I missed that. What did you say?”
“I said if there’s anything I can do to help you, anything at all, please just say the word.”
Gwendy’s mind—suddenly very clear, and what a gift that is—flashes to her laptop. Probably she forgot to put it away, just as she forgot her notebook on Eagle Heavy. But if she did put it away … and then it was not only back on the coffee table but open …
“As a matter of fact, there might be something.” Because of all the people she rode the rocket with, Adesh Patel is the one she trusts the most.
“Tell me,” he says.
38
THE ZOOM MEETING WITH the University of Maine faculty and staff goes well. Gwendy experiences one minor hiccup—when speaking with the Director of Athletics, she accidentally refers to the Black Bears men’s basketball team as the Blueberries—but she catches herself right away and makes a joke of it. Everyone enjoys a laugh and she quickly moves on to other topics.
The rest of her afternoon is spent writing a blog entry for the National Geographic Society (complete with a couple of Dave Graves’s photos) and video conferencing with the Vice President about climate control issues. She has always found the man well-meaning but stupid … which pretty well describes Gwendy herself these days, unfortunately. In between these chores, she catches up on emails and practices tying her shoes (murmuring the bunny song as she does). At some point, she closes her eyes and tries reaching out to Gareth Winston, but nothing comes back to her. Not even the subtlest vibrations confirming his presence on the space station. Another chocolate animal might help, but it also might be a very bad idea.
At one point, Gwendy finds herself looking out the big main window with no idea how she got there. Or when.
NG, she thinks.
At dinner, Winston sits about as far away from Gwendy as is possible. Wonder why, she thinks with a satisfied smirk. For dessert, Sam Drinkwater surprises the crew with a pan of homemade chocolate brownies, still warm from the oven. Gwendy eats two, including a crunchy corner piece, her favorite ever since she was a young girl. They’re certainly not the button box’s special chocolates—for starters, they taste nothing alike, and for finishers they possess not even a hint of magic—but the brownies are delicious just the same. A cozy and much-needed reminder of home and simpler times.
After dinner, Gwendy stops by the weather deck. Her work is done for the day, but she’s not quite tired enough to call it a night. She also doesn’t want to return to her room just yet. Ever since the upsetting incident involving her running shoes, the button box’s voice has grown louder and more insistent and more difficult to push away. She’s hoping that staring into the enormous telescope for ten or fifteen minutes will be just the ticket for her beleaguered brain. But that’s not the only reason she likes coming here.
In some ways the Many Flags weather deck—with its own gigantic window like a hanging glass ornament, and its softly humming monitors—reminds Gwendy of Our Lady of Serene Waters Catholic Church back in Castle Rock. She finds the atmosphere calming for both the body and the soul, and it provides her a sort of celestial cathedral in which to reflect. And the view is—no pun, just truth—downright heavenly.
All of this is a miracle, she thinks, staring out at the dark expanse of … everything. How many other worlds exist in this endless sea of stars and planets and galaxies? How many other life forms might be staring back at me right at this very moment?
She remembers a warm July night when she was eleven—the summer before the button box first entered her life. A month earlier, just before the end of the school year, Gwendy’s fifth grade science teacher, Mr. Loggins—who more often than not taught his daily lessons with a big green crusty booger visible in one or both nostrils—had taken the class on a field trip to the planetarium. Most of the kids, already snared in summer vacation’s web of promise, spent those ninety minutes in the dark throwing jelly beans at their friends, gossiping about who was and who wasn’t invited to Katy Sharrett’s end-of-year pool party, and making fart sounds by stuffing their hands into their armpits.
Not Gwendy. She had been fascinated. When she got home from school later that afternoon, she’d immediately begged her parents to buy her a telescope. After intense negotiations involving her weekend chore duties, Mr. and Mrs. Peterson agreed to share the cost with their daughter (75% mom and dad, 25% Gwendy). On the first Saturday afternoon of summer break, Gwendy and her father drove out to the Sears store on Route 119 in Lewiston and picked up a Galaxy 313 StarFinder at thirty percent off the ticketed price. Gwendy was ecstatic.
On the July night she’s thinking about, the telescope was set up in the corner of the backyard, just a few paces away from the picnic table and grill. Her father, who had come outside earlier, was snoring in a lawn chair, a couple of empty cans of Black Label lying beside him in the freshly cut grass. After awhile, her mother appeared and tucked the fuzzy red blanket from the den sofa over him. Then she joined her daughter by the telescope.