This logic is irrefutable.
Kathy Lundgren turns to Gwendy. “We’ll do it tomorrow. You and me. My ninth spacewalk, your first. The one that’s televised back home to your constituents will be your second, but no one has to know that, do they?”
“No,” Gwendy says.
Kathy nods. “We’ll watch the Pocket Rocket heading out toward the moon, and Mars, and the great beyond. With its cargo on board.”
“It sounds fine. What about Winston?”
“For the time being, until we can decide how he died, Mr. Winston is okay. Just suffering a touch of zero-g space sickness and holed up in his cabin. Not feeling well enough to communicate with the down-below. Or do you disagree?”
“No,” Gwendy says. “That’s fine for now.”
She’s still sorry about what happened in Jonestown, even though she guesses much of it was the fault of the Reverend Jim Jones. She’s sorry about the destruction of the Great Pyramid, and sorrier about the lives lost when it disassembled. But she’s not sorry about Gareth Winston.
“Which one of the levers dispenses the chocolates?” Reggie Black asks.
“That one.” Gwendy points.
“May I?”
Gwendy doesn’t want him to touch the box, but she nods.
Reggie pulls the lever. The slot opens and the shelf comes out. It’s empty.
Gwendy turns to Adesh. “You try.”
The tiny shelf has gone back in. Adesh hooks his pinky around the lever and pulls gently. Out comes the shelf, this time bearing a small chocolate weasel. He looks at it, but gives it to Bern. The biologist examines it, then puts it in his mouth, fingers ready to take it out if it’s nasty. Instead, his eyes half-close in an expression of ecstasy.
“Oh my God! Delicious!”
Reggie Black looks put out. “Why didn’t it work for me?”
“Maybe,” Gwendy says, “the box doesn’t like physicists.”
46
THAT NIGHT.
Gwendy is walking the outer rim of the Many Flags space station. It makes its usual creaks and groans, haunted house sounds that the other man, the bad man, didn’t like, but Gwendy doesn’t mind them. She can’t remember the bad man’s name, although she’s sure she could come up with it using Dr. Ambrose’s chain of association. I’d just start with cigar, she thinks.
The man walking beside her doesn’t seem to mind the creaking sounds either. His face is serene and he’s very beautiful. Except his beauty is a mask. Sometimes his features waver like water in a pond blown by a strong breeze and she can see his real face and head. He’s some sort of weasel, like the chocolate treat the biologist got. Gwendy can’t remember his name, either. That’s all right. She can remember the name of the man-who-isn’t-a-man, though: it’s Bobby. That’s what the bad man called him. She thinks: Cigar. She thinks, Who smoked cigars? Winston Churchill did. And there it is.
“The bad man’s name was Garin Winston,” she says.
“Close enough,” Bobby says. “It doesn’t matter, he’s dead.”
“Melted,” Gwendy says. “Like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Ooze.”
“Close enough,” Bobby says again. “What matters is this: there are other worlds than these.”
“I know,” Gwendy says. “Someone told me, but I don’t remember who. Maybe Mr. Farris.”
“That meddler,” Bobby says.
They walk. The space station creaks. They see no one, because this is sleep time on MF. Except for the Chinese, holed up in their spoke, they are alone in the haunted house.
“There are twelve worlds,” Bobby says. “Six beams, twelve worlds, one at each end of each beam. And in the center is the Tower. We call it Black Thirteen.”
“Who is we?”
“The taheen.”
This means nothing to Gwendy.
“The beams hold the worlds and the Tower powers the beams,” Bobby says in a lecturely tone. “Only one thing can destroy it, now that the Crimson King is dead.”
“The button box,” Gwendy says, but Bobby smiles and shakes his head. He makes a come-on gesture with hands that sometimes blur into paws with sharp claws at the ends. The gesture says you can do better. Gwendy starts to protest that she really can’t, she’s suffering from early-onset Alzheimer’s (probably caused by the box, but who knows for sure), then realizes she can. “The black button on the button box. The Cancer Button.”
“Yes!” Bobby says, and pats her shoulder. Gwendy shrinks away. She doesn’t want him to touch her. It makes her feel the way the station’s creaks and groans made the late Garin Winship feel. “You must not send the box away, Gwendy. What you need to do is push the black button. Destroy the Tower, destroy the beams, destroy the worlds.”
“Rule Discordia?”
“That’s right, rule Discordia. End the universe. Bring the darkness.”
“Like in Jonestown? Only everyone and everything?”
“Yes.”
“But why?”
“Because chaos is the only answer.”
He looks down. Gwendy follows his gaze and sees she’s holding the button box.
“Push it, Gwendy. Push it now. You must, because—”
47
GWENDY WAKES AN IS horrified to see she really is holding the button box, and her thumb is actually resting on the black button. She’s standing in front of the open safe in her closet, the spare pressure suit crumpled at her feet.
“Chaos is the only answer,” she whispers. “Existence is a dead equation.”
The urge to push the button, if only to end her own misery and confusion, is strong. She would like Farris to step in as he did for Adesh and rescue her, but there is no voice in her head and no sense of him. She groans, and somehow that sound breaks the spell.
She puts the button box back in the safe, starts to swing the door shut, then decides she’s not done with it quite yet. She doesn’t want to touch it for fear that horrible compulsion might come back, but she has to. She pulls one of the levers and a chocolate comes out. She pops it into her mouth and the world instantly clarifies.
She pulls the lever again, afraid the little platform will slide out empty this time, but another chocolate appears. It’s a dachshund that looks exactly like her father’s long-time companion, Pippa. She goes to put it in her pocket—it’s for later—but then realizes she has no pockets. She’s in her sleep shorts and a University of Maine tee. But that’s not all. She’s got a sneaker on one foot, a sock on the other, and she’s wearing a pair of the insulated work gloves each member of the crew has been issued. There’s probably a reason for the gloves, on Eagle Heavy and the MF station there’s a reason for every bit of clothing and equipment, but she can’t remember what it is. Sudden temperature drop, maybe? Her deteriorating condition keeps manifesting itself in different ways, and she sees now that she has written LEFT and RIGHT on the gloves.
But how long before I forget what those words mean? How long before I can’t read at all?
These thoughts make her feel like crying, but she can’t waste any time on tears. She doesn’t know how long the chocolate will keep her in the clear, and the spare is for tomorrow, right before she and Kathy Lundgren suit up for their spacewalk at 0800 hours.
Kathy.
With her mind right, she realizes what she should have known much earlier.
Gwendy goes to her phone, selects Kathy’s name from the MF directory, and makes the call. As the officer in charge of the mission, First Ops, Kathy always keeps her phone on. She’ll hear the beep and respond. She must respond, because what Gwendy has realized is that she can’t do this on her own. If she tries, Kathy will stop her. Unless, that is, she has reasons not to.