Moonrise (17 page)

It’s really hot. Pissin’ suit’s cooling system must be breaking down. Feels like I’m draggin’ my ass across the Sahara Desert. Worse. At least there you have air to breathe.

A pang of fear raced through him like an electrical current. How much oxygen is left? How much time do I have?

He coughed. His throat was as dry and scratchy as sandpaper.
No more water left. Oxygen running out. Suit’s filling with carbon dioxide. I’m gonna choke to death on my own pissin’ fumes.

Keep moving! he screamed at himself. Long as you can move you’ve got a chance. You must be getting close to the tempo. It’s gotta be near here. Keep pushing.

The only good news was the chirping of the GPS signal in his earphones. Guide me in, you noisy little bird, Paul prayed silently. Keep talkin’ to me, you pile of germanium. Sing me a song.

He coughed again. Gettin’ hotter in here. No water left.

He stumbled on a loose rock and went down face-first Long years of training and experience took over and Paul put out his gloved hands, let his arms flex when they touched the dusty ground, and pushed himself to a standing position again.

And saw, through his fogged and dust-smeared visor, a single red light glowing just above the abrupt horizon.

It’s a mirage, he told himself. You want to see it so pissin’ bad your brain is painting stupid pictures for you.

But then he thought, there’s no mirages on the Moon. Least, I never heard of one.

Blinking, limping, he stared at the red beacon. That’s the kind of light they put on top of an antenna mast at the tempos.

“That’s the tempo!” he shouted, his voice cracking into a choking, hacking cough.

He heard somebody cackling weirdly. Funniest thing in the world if you ran out of oxygen within sight of the tempo. Funniest thing in two worlds. Man, you could die laughing.

Looking back on it, Joanna realized it was inevitable that Paul would insist on going to the Moon for the nanotech demonstration.

“You don’t have to be physically there,” she told her husband, time and again.

“But I want to be,” Paul always countered.

Joanna tried every tactic she knew.

“You are much too valuable to the corporation to go running off to the Moon just to watch a demonstration project.”

Paul grinned at her. “Don’t worry, Madam Chairperson; I’m well insured. The corporation won’t get hurt financially if something happens to me.”

“But what about me? What about our baby?”

He hesitated at that. But then, “This is
for
the baby. Don’t you see? I want this demonstration to succeed. It’s got to succeed! The whole future of the corporation depends on it.”

“It will succeed or fail whether you’re there or not,” Joanna insisted.

“Maybe.”

“You’ve got a god complex!” she accused.

He shook his head very seriously. “If I stay here and the demo screws up, I’ll blame myself for not being there to make sure it goes right.”

“That’s a god complex,” Joanna pointed out.

“That’s an experienced executive,” Paul retorted. “The crew always works better when the captain is on the bridge. Don’t you know that?”

“Sheer machismo.”

Since Greg was working so well with Paul, she turned to her son for support.

To her surprise, Greg agreed with Paul. “I think he ought
to be there. This is a crucial experiment and we’ve got to do everything we can to make sure it comes out right.”

His new-found professional demeanor surprised and pleased her—except that his position on the matter was opposed to her own.

At dinner one evening at the house, Paul suggested that Greg go to Moonbase with him. “You’ve never been up there. You ought to see it.”

“You want me to go with you?” Greg asked. He looked as surprised as Joanna felt.

“Sure,” said Paul. “Why not?”

“Oh no!” Joanna said. Firmly.

Paul was bubbling with preparations for the coming trip to Moonbase. He wants to go so badly, Joanna understood at last. His heart is there, in that godforsaken barren desolation. Not here. Not with me.

Greg, she saw, was nowhere near as enthusiastic about travelling to the Moon as Paul was.

“I’m not going to have both of you out there at the same time,” Joanna said. “That’s too much.”

Paul gave her a strange look. Only later, much later, did she realize that he felt she was willing to let him risk his life on the Moon, even though reluctantly, but she absolutely would not tolerate her son taking the same risk.

“I’m going to Moonbase,” Paul said flatly.

“Greg stays here,” she answered.

Dinner was served in cold silence.

Days later, Greg took Paul aside at the corporate offices and said, “I’d really like to go with you, but I can’t worry my mother so much. She’d be frantic.”

Paul looked at his wife’s son. He had a difficult time picturing Joanna being frantic over anything.

But he said, “Yeah, I suppose you’re right. I’ll go, you stay and hold her hand.”

“I can keep in touch with you through the VR system,” Greg suggested.

With a wan smile, Paul said, “Good as it is, virtual reality isn’t the same as being there.”

Greg shrugged his shoulders. “I agree. But it’ll have to do.”

“Yeah,” said Paul.

*       *       *

Greg and Joanna went to the company airstrip to watch Paul depart for Florida and the Clippership launch to the space station that was the first step on his trip to Moonbase. A contingent of San Jose technicians were waiting for him at Cape Canaveral, and a man-sized container of nanomachines rested in the rocket’s cargo hold.

“You’re crying,” Greg said as he and Joanna watched Paul’s plane take off.

“It’s just the dust,” Joanna insisted, turning from the ramp outside the hangar toward the limousine that was waiting to take them home: Joanna to her house, Greg to his condo in town.

She actually saw more of her husband over the next few days than she had for weeks: Paul called her regularly from the space station and even from the transfer rocket that took him from the space station to the clutch of buried shelters that he called Moonbase.

“Well, I’m here,” Paul’s image said to her from the display screen in her bedroom. “Landed half an hour ago.”

“I was wondering when you’d call.” Joanna was sitting up in bed, a small mountain of pillows behind her. She had been waiting for his call for more than an hour, staring at the schedule for Paul’s flight when his call finally came through, telling herself that it takes some time to get out of the landing vehicle and into the living quarters of the underground shelter, so it was silly to worry about him.

“Must be after midnight, your time, right?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said to the screen. “I’m just glad you got there safely.”

There was nearly a three-second lag while her words hurtled to the Moon at the speed of light and his response raced back to her.

Paul broke into a big grin. “Hey, it’s a lot safer here than it is in New York.”

Joanna forced a laugh. “I suppose so. I’m glad you’re all right, though.”

Again the lag. Then, “Well, I’ll be here for a couple of days, getting things set up. Then we go out to the remote site.”

“You’ll be travelling by hopper?”

She noticed, while waiting for his reply, a good-looking young woman in the background of the crowded underground shelter. For an instant she thought it was Melissa, but no, this woman was younger and either white or Hispanic.

“By tractor. We’ve got too much cargo to haul for a hopper to lift. Had to throw my weight around to get one,” Paul said. “They’re all in pretty constant use.”

“The oxygen plant?”

Were there other women up there? Joanna wondered. She’d have to check the files, she decided, and see who was with Paul in those intimate quarters. Vaguely she recalled hearing jokes about living conditions at Moonbase: something about spacesuits built for two.

“Seems funny,” Paul was saying. “The crew here is breakin’ their humps putting this oxygen facility together, and if the nanobugs work right, we’ll be able to pull oxy directly out of the rocks and even make water with it.”

They chatted for nearly half an hour, always with that annoying little delay between them. Paul looks so happy, Joanna thought. He’s in his element. He loves being there. He’s only playing at corporate business down here; what he really wants is to be on the Moon. He feels free there.

Free of me, she thought. Free to sample the younger women who have the same love for that frontier as he does.

Finally she said goodnight, pleading a full schedule and the need to get up early the next morning.

“Yeah,” Paul said, once her words reached him. “We’re gonna have a busy day, too. Goodnight, Joanna.” Then he hunched closer to the screen and lowered his voice. “I love you, baby.”

And Joanna found that her eyes were misting again.

The following evening Joanna asked Greg to come to the house and have dinner with her.

“I’d love to,” her son replied. He arrived at the house with a big bouquet of flowers. “To brighten up the place,” he said.

Faced with the choice of eating in the formal dining room or the kitchen’s breakfast nook, Joanna chose the dining room. The butler used Greg’s bouquet as a centerpiece on
the long, polished cherrywood table, and set their two places with Joanna at the head of the table and Greg at her right.

“So how’s he doing up there?” Greg asked as they spooned their soup.

“I haven’t heard from him all day.”

“He must be awfully busy.”

“Yes. Of course.”

“He’ll call later. They’re on Greenwich time up there. All the space facilities are.”

“I know.”

“So it’s …” Greg pressed a stud on his wristwatch, “… God, it’s almost one in the morning there!”

Joanna’s eyes widened briefly.

Quickly, Greg said, “If he’s out at the remote site, maybe the communications link isn’t there for a transmission to Earth.”

“He could relay a call through,” Joanna said.

“If anything had happened, we’d hear about it right away,” Greg said. “There’s nothing to worry about, really.”

With a weary sigh, Joanna said, “He knows I worry about him every time he goes into space. To him it’s fun, exciting. But it frightens me so!”

“He should have called you,” Greg agreed. “It’s not very sensitive of him to leave you here worrying about him.”

Joanna studied her son from across the dining table. Greg’s a grown man, she told herself. He’s matured so much in the past few months. Could he take the reins of the company if anything happened to Paul? Could the two of us handle all that responsibility?

“There’s no reason to be frightened,” Greg was saying. “After all, Mom, you went to the space station with him, didn’t you?”

“Once,” she said.

“It wasn’t so terrible, was it?”

“I was sick as a dog every minute,” Joanna said.

Greg laughed. “Really? I heard rumors about that, but I didn’t believe them. I guess it wasn’t much of a honeymoon for you, then.”

“Did you tell Melissa to seduce Paul?” Joanna blurted, surprised to hear herself ask.

Greg flinched with surprise. “Tell Melissa? Me? I wouldn’t even speak to the bitch.”

“Do you really hate her that much?”

His face twisting, Greg snarled, “She was one of Dad’s concubines. Did you know that? Then she switched to Paul. And then she came on to me. She’s nothing but a slut.”

“You told me that she wanted your baby,” Joanna said. “Perhaps she really loved you.”

“Love? What’s love got to do with it? It’s nothing but her biological clock ticking. She’ll have a baby with whoever she can talk into bed. Maybe she’ll have Paul’s baby.”

“I’m having Paul’s baby,” Joanna whispered.

His mouth dropped open. His eyes flared. “What did you say?”

“I’m pregnant. You’re going to have a brother.”

Greg’s face went white. Trembling visibly, he pushed his chair away from the table and tried to stand up. The effort seemed too much for him.

“You … you’re going to have his baby?” Greg was panting as if he had run a thousand meters. “His baby?”

Joanna nodded solemnly.

“Abort it! Get rid of it!”

“I can’t do that.”

“You can’t have his baby,” Greg seemed about to dissolve in tears. “Don’t you see? It’s the last straw! The final nail in my coffin.”

“No,” Joanna said. “It won’t be like that.”

“The hell it won’t! He’ll want to give the corporation to his own son, not to me!” Greg howled. “He’ll push me out of the way, and you’ll help him!”

Just then the butler came in with the main course.

“Get out!” Greg screamed at him. “Get out of here!”

Wide-eyed, the butler looked to Joanna. She nodded and he disappeared back into the kitchen.

“Greg, dear,” she said soothingly, “try to calm down. This isn’t going to change anything between us.”

“It changes everything!” he snapped. “I got Brad out of the way just to make sure. But what good is that now?”

“What do you mean? What are you talking about?”

“His baby! You’re going to give him a son so he can get rid of me once and for all. He murdered my father and now you’re helping him to kill me! Even after he’s dead he’ll still be killing me!”

Greg lurched to his feet, swung one fist across the table and knocked china and glassware crashing to the floor. Joanna jerked with sudden fear. Her son was standing over her, fists clenched, murderous rage boiling through him.

“I knew
he
was out to get me, but I didn’t think you would help him!”

“No one’s out to get you, Greg,” Joanna said, fighting to keep her voice calm. “Now sit down and—”

“You’re all against me! All of you! Brad, him, even you. But you’ll see. I’m smarter than he is. Smarter than all of you. He’ll never come back to you. Never! I’m going to be the master here, not him!”

He reached over the table and grabbed the vase with his flowers. “I’m going to
destroy
him. Like this!” And, raising the glass vase over his head, he smashed it on the table top. It shattered into bits, water and flowers exploding from it.

Joanna sat there, paralyzed with shock and fear. Greg’s insane, she thought. He’s homicidal.