The Unwinding House and Other Stories

by Jared Millet

  Sorry. Sorry. Sorry. I’m getting cranky in my old age. We should stay positive if we’re going to keep strong and make it all the way south to where it’s warm. But I’m saying, you don’t know. You were too young. You don’t remember the stupidity of it all. No one cared what was going wrong in the world, not even the ones who said they did. Everything was always someone else’s problem. And you know what? I’m just as much to blame as anyone else.

  Where were we? What’s next? Home Repair and Improvement. Yeah, may as well. That won’t be useful where we’re going, not unless you think we’ll find construction equipment and power tools that work. Once we settle down, we’ll have to invent the wheel all over again. If you find a book on that, you can save it. Just make sure it has lots of pictures.

  It’s finally getting warm in here. That’s good. There’s a lot of night left to go. What else have you got for me? Travelogues. Distant shores and foreign lands. 50 Best Diners on Route 66. Torch ‘em. Antiques and Collectibles? Definitive Price Guide to Depression Era Glass. Light it up.

  Politics. Oh, please, bring me politics. Anything with a picture of some screaming guy on the cover. Those should burn the best. The authors should all be in Hell now; maybe the books will burn hotter. Sports almanacs? Burn ‘em. Biographies? Burn. Poetry? Science? History? Burn.

  Oh, here they are. The Philosophers. The Thinkers. The greatest minds in history, the ones who taught us how to be human. The ones who showed us how to live with purpose and responsibility. How to not let the whole human race slide into ruin. Fat lot of good they did. Bring ‘em on.

  Plato.

  Socrates.

  Nietzche.

  Decartes.

  Franklin.

  Jefferson.

  Einstein.

  Nobel.

  Clemens.

  Faulkner.

  Dante.

  Angelou.

  Homer.

  Aquinas.

  Luther.

  King.

  That’s enough. Keep it stoked and that blaze will go on until morning. We’ll be out in the wild again soon, and we’ve a long, cold trek ahead of us. Let’s take our rest while we can. If the light doesn’t attract any wolves, we’ll stay here as long as the fuel lasts. With luck, there’ll be a break in the weather. But for a while, we’ll keep warm in the cozy light of history.

  Until the last

  of the fire

  goes out.

  The Orbit of Mercury

  Earth's Orphans: 1

  I was eating lunch in the centrifuge when the captain called my name over the intercom.

  “Mackie!”

  Captain Leahy didn’t just say it. That would have meant that the ship’s neuroweb was fritzed up, or that our A.I. was threatening to fire all the thrusters just to see what would happen.

  No, Helen sang my name. “Maaaackie.” That could only mean one thing: “Come and get him.” I snarled at the com panel and shoved my plate in the cleaner, then climbed to the spin core and kicked my way to the bridge.

  The control hub of Ayers Rock was a honeycomb nightmare of holographic monitors and gee-hammocks. Helen’s husband, Jack, had added to the clutter by pulling out the navigation processor for a tune-up before our arrival at Titan. The block of half sentient crystal hung in the air, connected to a hole in the bulkhead by a dozen snaking cables.

  “Where is he?” I tried not to sound bitter. Helen grinned and pointed at the hole. The processor well was half a meter wide and twice as deep. I shone my light inside and a pair of luminous eyes glared back.

  “Great.” A series of thumps answered as the little bastard thwacked his tail against the inner hull. I didn’t think he could do any damage, but I’d send a crawler down later to make sure. The thumping meant something else – he wasn’t going to make this easy.

  I clamped the flashlight in the crook of my shoulder and reached into the processor slot. I let our resident space-vermin sniff my fingers, then snatched at the scruff of his neck. I wasn’t fast enough and tiny razors slashed the back of my hand.

  I didn’t cry out; I’d learned not to give him the satisfaction. His message was clear. You want me? Come and get me.

  I darted my hand down the hole again. Each feint was answered with a swipe, but I didn’t let him score any more hits. The thumping sped up. He was having fun. I grabbed again, this time throwing my shoulder into it. I caught fur and squeezed, and there followed a shriek like scraping glass as my nemesis dug his nails into the neurocrystal walls of his hiding place. I’d have to paint them with repair gel before Helen reset the processor, but at that moment all that mattered was getting that stupid cat out of the ship’s brain.

  He erupted from the well and landed feet first on the communication console. Thank God we’d installed cat-proofing software, or every outpost in Saturn’s orbit would have received a transmission reading {p.ol,pl {ksfstd sfdd;lc. Again.

  “Move it! Get! Scat! Shoo!” Claws clicked on monitor glass as the little monster flew like a furry, silver ramjet for the exit. I yanked on a hammock to throw myself in his direction. “Back to the ‘fuge, cat. Now.”

  He didn’t listen. We raced to the spin core, where he bounced off the walls just out of my reach until the hatch on the far end opened. Jennifer, my wife, floated through, letting my quarry dart around her into the cargo bay.

  “Damn it,” I shouted.

  Mercury was gone.

  ~

  We had four cats on Ayers Rock. Haulers like ours used to not carry pets at all, but a bunch of us turned our ships into traveling menageries in the years after Earth died. The crew of the Truffle refitted one of their cargo bays into an aviary. Mona Lisa kept a kennel and traded beagle puppies to the outer stations. None of us had facilities to match the Species Preservation Center on Luna, but it felt good to keep living reminders of the world we all had lost.

  Our oldest cat was Duck, who (believe it or not) was the first kitten born in zero-gee. The girls, Rosie and Gilly, we adopted from asteroid miners who couldn’t afford their upkeep. Our fourth we acquired during a rescue mission: Mercury was evacuated from the wreck of the Tour de France when he was barely old enough to wobble.

  Kittens that young don’t often survive when separated from their mothers, but Helen’s daughter Judy (only six at the time) kept him warm and nursed him around the clock for several weeks. Eventually our new shipmate grew from a shivering ball of fur into a lanky silver tabby with a tail that always seemed just a little bit too long.

  We thought he was so cute. What little did we know.

  ~

  “Mackie, when’s our E.T.A. for Titan?”

  “Thirty hours. That’s as close as we can shave it without burning our fuel reserve.” The skipper already knew that, but she had me repeat it for the benefit of the others. Just before planetfall, we always held a crew/family meeting. This year we even let our children attend. The twins were already helping out with maintenance, and it wouldn’t be long before ten-year-old Judy had responsibilities as well.

  “Jack,” said Helen, “how much of a load are we taking on?”

  “Thirty thousand kilos of electronics in Bay One, fifty thousand of frozen goods in Bays Two and Three, and thirty pods of Titan Soup tethered to our spine. That’s six more than we took four years ago, but they have a new design that’ll let us pack ‘em tighter.”

  Orange-striped Gilly sat in Jack’s lap, washing herself. We’d put away the kitchen table for the meeting, but there were only four chairs for the seven of us. Pagan and Chris leaned against the bulkhead, while Judy sat on the floor and scratched Mercury between his ears.

  “Jennifer,” said Helen, “how’s our credit margin?”

  She consulted her tablet. “Tight, as usual. However, I see that Stradivarius will arrive twelve hours ahead of us. If we can break orbit before they do and beat them to the Inner System, we might get a better price on the—”

  Mercury launched out of Judy’s lap and pounced on Gilly, who answered with a screech
and an explosion of fur. Jack leapt in surprise and sent both cats toward the ceiling. Gilly bounded for the exit while Merc drifted gently floorward in the centrifuge’s one-half gee. He touched down like a moon lander, thwacked his tail, and mewed at the captain as if to say, Proceed.

  Helen sighed. “Judy?” Her daughter picked Mercury up and held him. He squirmed, but at least he kept quiet.

  “Mack, is that doable?” Helen asked. It took me a moment to remember what we’d been talking about.

  “If we get fueled and loaded fast enough, sure. Our A.I.’s had a grudge against the Strad ever since she messed up our insertion at Io. I think it’d love a chance to get even.”

  “We’ll have to really push it,” said Jack. “We’ll have to pay the loaders extra, and we’ll have to cut ahead of Strad in the fueling queue. There won’t be much time to go ashore.”

  “Well, we’ll make it simple,” said Helen. “We won’t go down at all.”

  All at once, the kids started shouting.

  “We haven’t been out of this can for a year,” said Chris. “And how long will it take us to reach our next port?”

  “I’m sorry.” Helen’s tone didn’t invite debate. “You heard what your mother said. If we want to make a profit, we need to leave as quick as we can.”

  “But Dad,” said Pagan as he pulled on my sleeve, “you promised we could hunt T-fish in Kraken Mare.”

  Helen’s eyes hardened. “Kids, I’m not going to argue. We’ll get back to the Inner System as fast as we can. You’ll just have to tough it out until then.”

  “Tough it out, tough it out, tough it out,” said Judy in a bitter sing-song. Her face was a bright pink. She stood on her too-skinny legs and dropped the cat, who bolted for the door. “You don’t care how tough it is. I’ve got SolNet friends on Titan I’ve never met. I haven’t seen my friends on Luna for three years. If you keep us locked on this ship, I’m going to turn into a crazy, weirdo nutcase like Aunt Shirley. I bet that’s what you want, isn’t it? I bet you never want me to see another human being again for the rest of my life!”

  “Young lady,” said Jack, loud enough to shake the hull. “Apologize to your mother right now.”

  “What are you going to do? Ground me? Lock me up?” She was practically screaming. “I hate you all.”

  With that, she stormed out. Chris and Pagan sank to the floor and avoided eye contact with any of the adults. Before anyone spoke, Judy came back.

  “Oh, and Mercury threw up. It’s green.”

  Helen closed her eyes. “Mack? Check on the cat.”

  I didn’t object, though I wanted to. Outside the kitchen was the passage to the living quarters. Mercury was gone, but the floor and the wall were covered in a sickly green slime.

  ~

  Three days later I was covering for Jack in the aft control knob. Ostensibly I was there to supervise the loading of cargo, but in truth I was hiding from the twins. They hadn’t stopped pestering me for a trip to the surface.

  Truth to tell, I didn’t mind not landing on Titan. It was all the damned hydrocarbons – they may be the lifeblood of the solar system, but the last time we set foot down there the ship smelled like sewage for months.

  A message from the A.I. blooped on my console: “Your move.” Part of my job was to keep the computer from getting bored, so I’d been playing a war game with it for half an hour. I could never hope to beat it at strategy, but this ancient game called “Risk” that I’d dug up from the archives had enough of a random element that I could put up a fight. Currently the computer’s troops were plowing through Africa. I was about to counterattack when the com chimed.

  “Uncle Mackie?” said Judy.

  “What’s up, hon?” Despite my dislike of Titan, I secretly agreed that the kids needed time away from the ship. I’d never say that to Helen though, and I hoped Judy wasn’t calling to enlist me against her mother.

  “It’s Merc,” she said. “He threw up again. I think I need some help.”

  “Can’t you get it yourself? I’m a little busy.”

  “Well… He threw up in Bay One.”

  I bit on my lip to keep from swearing while I pictured tossing that cat into space. At least he was only vomiting and not chewing through network cables. I unhooked my harness as the A.I. bleeped impatiently.

  “Command,” I said. “New assignment. In simulation mode, compute flight plan intercepts with Pallas, Juno, and Vesta while holding enough fuel in reserve to make orbit around Mars. Execute.”

  The war game vanished and the monitor lit up in a happy blue torrent of computation. Hopefully that would keep it busy until I got back.

  I entered the storage compartment and froze. Strings of mucus drifted through a yellow mist in the light from the far end of the bay. Floating in the open hatch, Judy held the silver culprit in her arms. He saw me and thwacked his tail.

  “You and me, cat. One of these days.”

  His answering mrow sounded almost like an apology. Judy kicked away from the hatch and drifted across the compartment.

  “I think he’s sick.”

  “I noticed.” I waved my arm to ward off globs of bile and fumbled along the wall for the nearest vent control. If I could just get some air flow, it would move most of the gunk toward the bulkheads.

  Judy landed beside me. “I put some hairball formula in his food.”

  “I’m sure that’s all it is,” I said, but Mercury answered with a noise halfway between a swallow and a howl. He pushed off from Judy, convulsed, and spewed hot liquid all over my face. I tried to duck, but merely spun so that some of it hit the back of my head as well.

  I shouted a word Judy wasn’t meant to hear. By the time I’d turned back around, the force of Mercury’s ejecta had propelled him clear across the cargo bay. He curled into a sphere, bounced off the wall, and whined. He didn’t sound well.

  Beads of water clotted the air around Judy’s eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  I wiped slime off my back. “It’s not your fault. Let me talk to your mom.”

  ~

  And so we went to Titan after all. Helen located a doctor who’d had some veterinary experience, and since we were down there anyway, Jennifer took the boys shopping in Huygens. If we were bringing back the Titan stench, she reasoned, we may as well get a new holoset for the rec room. We hoped we wouldn’t have to push back our departure, but the first rule among spacers is that the health of the crew trumps everything else, even if the crew has claws and a tail.

  “Hairballs,” was the first thing Dr. Noel suggested. Judy explained that she’d treated for that. “Let me do some tests,” he said, and he grabbed the cat by the scruff.

  Mercury howled. I’ve seen a turbine move that fast, but never when wrapped around a doctor’s arm. Fur flew everywhere and some primal instinct made me cover my head. Dr. Noel recovered quicker than I did and unlatched Merc’s fangs from his hand. All four sets of the cat’s claws were clamped through the doctor’s sleeve.

  “If it’s all the same to you, I think I’ll sedate him.”

  Helen nodded, and Noel took Mercury away. Judy found a chair and hugged her knees to her chest. I tapped into Titan’s SolNet feed with one of the spare tablets in the waiting room.

  Two hours later, Dr. Noel brought us into the examination area. Merc lay stretched on his side with an I.V. in his foreleg. He lifted his head, but he couldn’t hold it steady. Judy tried to pet him, but Helen held her back.

  The x-rays on the monitor put me on edge. There was nothing unusual to my untrained eye, but the doctor wouldn’t be showing them if everything was normal. Noel looked sideways at Judy and waited a moment before speaking.

  “We’re lucky he’s still alive. The anesthesia almost killed him.” He pointed to a blob on the x-ray next to the image of Mercury’s spine. “That’s his heart. It’s twice the size it ought to be and it’s pressing against his esophagus. My guess is that’s what’s making him throw up. He has a bad arrhythmia so I can’t get a clear reading o
n his pulse, but it’s well over two hundred. Also, I did an ultrasound and you can see here…” He pointed to a pulsating display. “The aorta walls are thinner than they should be. And this…” He pointed to a blurry white shape in the middle. “…looks like a blood clot.”

  My insides went numb. Helen covered her mouth. Judy asked, “Is he going to be okay?”

  The doctor sighed.

  “This kind of thing can be treated, but I don’t want to get your hopes up. The right medication can buy him some time, but this guy won’t die of old age.”

  I started doing the math in my head. Our ship had a sickbay, but chem packs for the medication synthesizer were expensive and we only kept enough for the humans. Jennifer took care of our finances, and I wondered if it was too late to tell her not to buy the holoset. I wanted to say something, but found myself unable to speak.

  “How much time are we looking at?” Helen ran her fingers through her daughter’s hair, their feud apparently forgotten.

  “With treatment? A year, maybe two. He could prove me wrong, but that clot worries me. If part of it breaks loose, it could lodge in an artery and cause a stroke.”

  Judy reached to rub Merc’s head and caught a sob in the back of her throat. Helen took her outside while the doctor removed the I.V.

  “If you don’t mind,” said Noel, “I’d like to call the SPC on Luna for a consult before you make a decision. If you want to put him down, though, I can do that for you here.”

  I couldn’t answer with more than a nod, but I picked Mercury up and draped him over my arm. He purred as I scratched his head, and I winced as he dug his claws in my shoulder.

  ~

  Luna was halfway around the sun from Saturn, so it was almost two days before Noel called us back. The news was worse than we’d hoped. Merc being Merc, he couldn’t make things easy and have normal feline heart disease. His was an unusual case, and to keep him alive we would have to experiment with a variety of medications and continually monitor his heart, which meant buying better equipment than we owned, which would cost lots of money we simply didn’t have.