5
TURNAROUND
I sat (or hovered) with Carmen, Paul, and Fly-in-Amber for an hour, with most of the others looking on, and we recorded all of our impressions from the half hour we were in the alien spacecraft. Of course we had all of the conversation in there recorded, too.
It was pretty straightforward. Even my Elza was a little optimistic. “It could have been a lot worse,” she said. “Even an ultimatum is a kind of communication.”
Paul, floating upside down, put on his slippers and did a gymnast’s tuck to land feetfirst. “I guess we’re safe as long as we remain interesting,” he said. “For God’s sake don’t anybody be boring.” He went back to the control room to start turnaround.
One of us did become less boring. Moonboy joined us and took off his earphones.
“Has the noise stopped?” Elza said.
He shook his head. “I’ve been sort of listening since the Spy one appeared. Are we in more danger now, or less?”
“Less, in a way,” she said. “I mean, they were always out there. They didn’t have to reveal themselves.”
“Why not reveal yourself to a specimen you’re studying?” I said.
He nodded slowly, looking at the space between me and Elza, not quite focusing, drifting slightly.
“Are you feeling better, Moonboy?” Carmen asked.
“I’m feeling more sane. For what that’s worth.” He looked directly at her, then away. “I’m sorry I’ve been…”
“You’ve been sick,” Elza said. Did she not see how transparently he was trying to manipulate her and Carmen? I wanted to tell him to put his earphones back on and go sit someplace out of the way. There’s a time and a place for everything, and for this it was months ago and billions of miles away.
Meryl gazed at her newly talkative mate in stunned silence. It was clearly time to leave them alone. “Good you’re feeling better.” I excused myself and geckoed over to the kitchen. From the pantry I got a tube of reconstituted gorgonzola paste and some crackers, tucked a squeeze bottle of wine under my arm, and stepped into the warmer human lounge. I asked it for quiet random Mozart and hovered near the bookcase, extracting the large book of Vermeer prints.
There’s a kind of art to situating yourself in weightlessness. The cheese, crackers, wine, and book were all hovering within an arm’s length. As long as I was careful in picking things up and replacing them, I wouldn’t have to chase them down. Carmen and Paul did it automatically, with months of experience, but I still had to think things through and move with caution.
While I hovered contemplating this and Vermeer’s faces, I gently collided with the bookcase. The cheese and wine and book all inched toward me. I was disoriented for a moment, then realized that Paul had begun turning the iceberg around. My satellite objects and I weren’t attached to anything, but our frame of reference was moving fast enough to go through a half circle in, what, thirty hours? This seemed faster than that. I’d ask the notebook later.
The cheese wasn’t bad, considering. The “wine” was pure plonk, but better than nothing.
So we were one- quarter of the way to the next wine shop or liquor store. That put the trip into a certain perspective. Or maybe halfway to dying, which put it into another.
“Penny for your thoughts.” Carmen had drifted up behind me, stopped herself with a toe to the wall. “We’ve started moving,” she said, her face at my level but sideways.
“Just noticed.” I handed her the wine bottle, and she squeezed a dash of it into her mouth, from an impressive distance.
“Owe you one. What about our silent partner?”
I looked over toward the other lounge, and he wasn’t there anymore. “I’ll wait and see. One swallow does not make a spring.”
I offered her the cheese and crackers, but she waved them away. “I gain weight in zero gee just thinking about food.”
That made me smile. “Weight?”
“Mass, inertia, whatever. Turns into weight.” She looked back to where Moonboy had been. “You’re not… not too sympathetic.”
“Aside from the fact that he broke my wife’s nose? That he’s acting like a sullen child?” She made a helpless shrug. I tried to choose my words carefully. “His madness, or behavior, is not his fault; I understand and agree with that. He was treated abominably as a child, and I wish his father could be punished for that.”
“Stepfather.”
“If this were a military operation, he would no longer be part of it. We can’t leave him behind or send him back—”
“Or kill him,” she said quietly.
“No. But we could lock him up. Take him out of the equation.”
“That would destroy him, Namir.”
“I believe it would. But his is one life versus billions.”
She shook her head. “If I could wave a magic wand and make him disappear, I would. But imprisoning him would affect us as well as him.”
“You don’t think it affects us to have him moping around like some demented…” She flinched, and I lowered my voice. “He’s already wearing us down. Three more years?”
We’d had this argument before, from various angles. Her response surprised me. “It could be a long three years. Let’s see how he acts when we have gravity again. See whether this recovery lasts.”
“I’m glad you can see it that way.”
She smiled and touched my shoulder. “Don’t want two crazy men aboard.” She kicked off from the bookcase and floated toward the kitchen.
6
ADJUSTMENTS
I was jangled but way behind on sleep, despite the sweet nap with Paul, so I took a half pill and went zombie for about eight hours. When I woke up, Paul was snoring upside down in a corner, naked. Zero gee can do funny things to a penis, but I decided his need for sleep trumped my curiosity. And he might be low on energy. I closed the door quietly and drifted toward the gym, where Moonboy was tumbling.
It may have been weightlessness as much as the appearance of Spy that had shaken Moonboy out of his sullen isolation, into impressive gymnastics. He’s Paul’s age, but was bouncing around like a kid.
Well, not exactly like a kid. There was an element of grim determination in his constant motion, getting a maximum of exercise while honing his zero-gee gymnastic skills. I had seen him studying Paul, then trying to duplicate the ways he got from place to place. He was never as graceful but became almost as fast and accurate.
Not a particularly useful life skill, unless he planned a midlife career as a laborer in orbit. But I was hoping all the jumping around was a kind of transition back to a normal life. Or “normal,” in quotation marks.
Meryl was watching him from a distance as he practiced floor-to-ceiling, ceiling-to-floor rolls. I floated over to join her.
“He’s getting good,” I said.
“That he is.” She didn’t look at me.
“Have you talked?”
“Said hello.” She took a breath and let it out. “What should I say to him? I mean really.”
“Welcome back?”
“I don’t know that he is back. I’m not sure where he’s been.” There were beads of tears on her eyelashes. She rubbed her eyes and left wet spots on her cheeks.
“Maybe you want to wait until the gravity comes back.”
“Maybe.” Our thighs touched, and she put a hand on my knee. “You’re so lucky with Paul.”
“Yes. But Elza will get him, too, sooner or later.” Why did I say that?
She smiled. “Probably. She’ll be fucking Spy before we get to the planet.”
“A milestone for Homo sapiens.”