Building Harlequin’s Moon (29 page)

Her jaw was set tight. She finally said. “I’m sorry, love. I really am. We had hard choices to make. That’s all. Every choice had its dangers.”

It was little comfort. Gabriel frowned at himself, not wanting to ruin their first day together. “I just wish it were different—that we’d made it to Ymir. I’m tired of hard things.”

“You
are
an old man,” she teased.

“Hmmmm. I’m older than you are now.”

“Effectively. But I’ll always be a month older in real time.”

“How do you know what’s real?” he asked.

“You’ve been talking to Astronaut again.”

“And who else am I supposed to talk to?”

“Me.” She wrinkled her nose at him.

“I do—when you’re receiving. Besides, Astronaut’s moved on. When you went to sleep it was stuck in quantum physics as a sideline. I’m pretty sure the current interest is human psychology.”

Erika threw her head back and laughed. “We might drive it crazy. And as fast as it thinks and learns, if it’s been on psychology long enough for you to notice, it must be mighty confused.” In a typical lightning change, she asked, “Can we go?”

“Go?” Gabriel said innocently, watching the line of her jaw, the way her cheeks curved gracefully.

“It’s time to fly.”

Gabriel shook his head at her. “Surely you remember the rules?” he said dryly. “Tomorrow. Unless you want to sit still while I fly.”

“I’ll sit here,” she said, snuggling breast to breast, legs wrapped around his waist to keep her from drifting, her head buried in his shoulder. It left Gabriel with all the work of anchoring them to the tree.

Gabriel sighed with pleasure and sat quietly, lips resting on her light hair, right hand roaming her thigh and the soft place behind her knee, both of his calves hooked under the branch to hold them on. He whispered into her ear. “Ready to go to bed?”

She snuggled closer and ran her fingers through his hair. “Wait a bit. Let me get used to you. You’ve changed a lot this time.”

Gabriel frowned, and stroked her hair. “I still love you.”

“I love you too.” After a while she asked, “You said we had to do something else. What is it? And why do we have to do it?”

“It’s the damned flares. Daedalus gets all wrung up with Apollo, and they tangle their magnetic fields, and make flares. We knew that. You knew that. But they’re worse than we thought. The blasts are directed. The whole project could be stopped dead if a strong enough flare hits at the wrong time. The Sol-based flare categorization system stopped at X—an X-class flare is the worst that happens in Sol system. We’ve added Y and Z here. We’ve seen two Y-class flares in the time we’ve been monitoring. Neither of them hit Selene, and of course, most won’t. But it would only take one. Astronaut ran the probabilities, and they’re too damned high. So we have to make a safe place—use the water in the Hammered Sea as a buffer and build a flare shelter the likes of which we never even thought of.”

She looked him in the eyes. “You’re sure it’s not just because you love this kind of engineering so much? You’re sure we really need to do this?”

“I had another idea too. A flare kite . . .” Did she think he loved building Selene so much he’d stall to stay? The question bothered him, and he made sure to answer her firmly. “Yes, I’m sure we need to do this.”

“So how much time will it add?” Erika demanded.

“Two or three years. Not much in the overall scale of things.”

“It’s still a long time.”

“I know. There’s nothing to be done. You’ll just be cold longer—it won’t change the effective time you’re awake. At least, not by much. But it will adjust what you do this shift.” He tried to make light of the delay. “At least, if you want to go with me. It means a swing out to get a big rock.”

“Again? I thought we were done throwing big rocks!”

“Hey—I made you some rings with one rock throw. This time I’ll make you something safe in case you’re on Selene when the big one hits.”

“Make me some antimatter!”

“I know.” He tickled her, working to get her mood back up. “Let’s go look around, get you used to the changes on the ship. I didn’t mean to dump my frustrations.”

They flew through the garden, Gabriel pointing out changes, and Erika appreciating and questioning and probing. She found a new sculpture that surprised them both; a set of strings suspended from clear material edged in nanopaint that glittered with color, hues changing with the shifting sounds the manufactured wind made as it played the strings.

When Erika tired of new sights and led the way to her room, Gabriel was nearly too tired to make it down the corridor. But of course, she woke him up expertly.

Afterward, he held her softly and smiled as she drifted off to sleep.

The next morning, Gabriel slept far later than usual. He woke and reached for her, and found the bed next to him empty. Erika stood against the wall, checking ship stats, already dressed in a tight yellow pressure suit. He asked, “Don’t you want breakfast first?”

“I want to fly.”

Gabriel dressed to match Erika. They caught their hair back in nets, and Gabriel followed Erika up to the docking station, where
Erika’s Triumph
sat ready in the lock. She had named the glass ball of a ship to balance that misplaced crater; but she called the ship
Triumph
. “It’ll remind us of what we have to do.”

All by herself—barring Astronaut—Erika had rebuilt one of the slow Service Armor configurations to make
Triumph
. Fiddling with the LOX and LH engine, she teased it to use a touch more propellant than it was designed for, adding thrust. She added range with an extra water tank, and scientific usefulness with double the normal complement of cameras.

The little ship actually handled better than its unaltered counterparts. She claimed Astronaut helped her, but the AI proclaimed that Erika had made all of the design decisions herself. From the outside,
Triumph
looked like the twenty other Service Armors. It was a round glass ball festooned with robotic arms, just enough interior room for two, guts and controls visible through a clear hull laced with black carbon threads so fine they seemed more like smoke than strength.

Erika climbed into the pilot’s seat. Gabriel hung back, looking, then used his radio. “Hey, that yellow suit makes you look like a banana in a shake glass.”

She refused to answer, pulling wraparound sunshades over her eyes and gesturing impatiently for Gabriel to climb in.

Even modified,
Triumph
was designed only for travel near
John Glenn
. Never meant to fly in atmosphere, the little
ship launched simply: the lock opened and
Triumph
puffed out, far enough that problems with the initial engine lightoff couldn’t hurt the parent ship.

They dropped into open space from the Insystem Service Pod, a drum-shaped warehouse as capacious as the city of Aldrin. The ISP section of
John Glenn
hadn’t been given spin. They had to fly around it to see details. The arrowhead that made up the front cone of
John Glenn
protected smaller vehicles clamped to the forward rim of the ISP. Erika took them through a forest of tugs and miners, avoiding tall spikes of attachment legs and huge deflated bags that mining or scooping trips would fill with volatiles. She flew so close and fast that Gabriel reached out to balance himself more than once.

John Glenn
was large enough to fool the eye into seeing a horizon. Erika took them toward it, curving around the giant ISP cylinder. Blue and gold and white rings rose like a rainbow, and then the orb of the planet Harlequin itself. She flew them as far from the ship as she dared and shook her fist at Harlequin, screaming, “I WILL leave you,” into her mouthpiece.

Gabriel hesitated, thinking of Selene. But he joined her, and they turned it into a chant, and he felt more aligned with his younger self than he had in years. He didn’t tell her so directly, but after they parked
Triumph
, he held her to him, not wanting to let her go.

When they went down the corridor to find breakfast, Erika shook her hair free of its netting and said, “Wow I know I’m alive.”

M
ORNING LIGHT STREAMED
through the clear greenhouse roof, illuminating a thousand tiny curves of yellow-green seedlings. Rachel and Nick tested and poked at the baby plants, making notes to leave for the students. Three months into her first class, Rachel was grateful for Nick’s help. He came to the school greenhouse whenever his crew was in town and helped her grade work.

Rachel examined the unevenly planted sprouts, noting that some near the edges were broken at the stem. “I don’t remember ever being as sloppy as these kids,” she muttered.

“Selene was different then. We had more hope,” Nick said.

Rachel winced. Nick was twice her effective age, and yet she alone of their graduating class had been allowed to teach. The rest worked hard, raised families, and did what they were told. She’d found ways to fit in since coming back, but no ways to belong. There were so many new tensions.

She sighed. “When I started this class, I hoped it would make a difference. But look at this work!”

“It’s made a difference to me to have you back,” Nick said, smiling at her.

The first students flew over the greenhouse toward the meadow. “Wish me luck,” she said. “Drop in tonight? At Harry and Gloria’s? I promised Gloria her first history lesson, and you might be interested.”

Nick smiled wanly. “Sure,” he said. His voice was flat, unenthusiastic.
Maybe we are all different now?
she thought,
I can’t see myself, after all
.

It was the final test day for her first solo class. She would deliver an opening address before the hard work of testing began. Her notes matched classes she and Ursula had taught together. The students were surlier, less excited, and more easily distracted than Rachel remembered from her own classes. She wanted to fail half of them for inattention. They wouldn’t all pass, and that worried her.

Shane had planned to come and help today, but he’d called to postpone. A crew had rolled a planter onto its side trying to back down a small hill. He’d promised that he or Star would make it back to help her announce the results.

She glanced around the meadow to be sure she was alone, then spoke quietly into the air. “I’m scared.”

“I know,” Astronaut responded, its voice speaking softly through the Library bud.

“Do you get scared?” Rachel asked.

“I feel concern about negative outcomes. I do not undergo metabolic changes.”

“You’re being your usual certain self,” Rachel complained. “How about if
you
tell
me
if you think
you
get scared.”

“What do I risk by teaching you?”

They might wipe Astronaut’s mind, or edit it down to the level of a planter combine’s autopilot. “Are we safe?”

“Treesa’s on duty.” Cryptic reassurance that the garden woman was awake and applying her skills to make small changes in the data flow, masking conversations between Rachel and Astronaut, sometimes hiding Rachel’s talks with others. Treesa had little confidence in her work if someone looked closely. Even on Selene, the information flow was too rich for Treesa and her programs to handle every possible camera and sensor. Astronaut had no rights that would let him change data. He helped by steering Treesa to the most important data flows. Rachel spared little worry that Shane or Star had time to watch her, but idle eyes watched Selene constantly aboard
John Glenn
.

She pushed her fears way. Lessons with Astronaut were a nightly ritual. She had moved into her own small home near the greenhouses, ostensibly to tend the student greenhouses on off days. Treesa and Astronaut had convinced her she needed to begin teaching others. Her own fears were nothing compared to her fear that Council would fuel their ship and abandon Selene. What if she lost the rich resources of
John Glenn
, lost Gabriel and Astronaut and Treesa?

Treesa and Astronaut had Rachel studying Joan of Arc, Mohandas Gandhi, Martin Luther King, and Hitler. Treesa had told Rachel she needed to understand the impact a single individual could have. Rachel understood that they had all died violently.

Rachel, Nick, and Harry and his family often met and talked about ways to gain more freedom. She would begin with education, with her opening talk for testing day. Her speech didn’t break any rules she’d been told about. Shane and Star wouldn’t like it, but they wouldn’t be back until later that afternoon, when it was time to announce results.

Ali had perched on this same dais to lecture Rachel’s graduating class. Rachel sat cross-legged before her fifteen students. She had thought about what to say, had talked to Astronaut and Treesa about it, but now her mouth was dry and it was hard to start. She licked her lips, swallowed, and said, “We are important. What we do here on Selene is important. We are building a home.”

Half the class watched her closely. Some boys in the back were whispering to each other. She raised her voice. “I know it seems like we are working only for Council. We do their bidding, and in turn they feed us and clothe us—”

One of the boys in the back, Sam, raised his hand. He had been trouble all along, and his surliness reminded her of Andrew. Ignore him?

“Sam?”

Belligerently, “We don’t have any other choices. No one gives us any.”

Rachel remembered Treesa’s words. “We do have choices. We can choose how we react. Even better, we can work smarter than they expect us to. We can ask questions. We can learn as much as possible, and show them how smart we are.”

Sam interrupted, “Council doesn’t listen to us.”

He was right. But why? “When they give us opportunities to teach and learn, we can ask questions. We don’t ask enough questions even of ourselves. We accept whatever we’re told. But we—all—every one of you has learned more about what we’re doing just by being in this class.”

“Asking questions isn’t going to help,” Sam said. She heard not belligerence now, but frustration. “They never listen to us. Even most of the Earth Born won’t answer questions.”