Tears of Selene

by Bill Patterson

  “Don't look at us, ma'am, we're just living our lives here. It's Garth we all have a problem with,” said Celine. “So, where does the latest intel put him?” she asked, crowding closer over a map.

  ###

  Garth was, at the moment, sheltering in an empty garage on the outskirts of a winery. A steady mist was falling, which was bad news for the grape harvest, but good news for Garth, as the polizei, like all guards in all nations, hated rain and found any reason to stay out of it.

  Garth moved with a certain amount of impunity. He had grown out his beard, but kept it as scruffily untidy as the other hikers he encountered in the youth hostels where he spent his nights.

  The beard did give him a certain amount of camouflage. The bulletins sent to the hostels spoke of a man who seemed more James Bond than bearded revenge seeker. Nobody would ever mistake the congenial, flaky, bearded drop-out going by the name of Jurgen Mittenwald with irritable, clean shaven, stone-cold escaped prisoner Garth Williams.

  People are so stupid.

  He had no trouble navigating around Europe, despite his lack of basic German, French, or, indeed, any foreign language. Young people learned English in school, and were always willing to practice on someone who was patient with their mistakes.

  Jurgen worked his way across Europe. He did it the old-fashioned way—by foot, in hitched rides, and on the occasional farm cart. He reasoned that if he took any kind of mass transit, surveillance cameras would see through the beard in an instant. So he had to keep off the grid, as it were, living in youth hostels where they didn't care who you were, so long as you came up with enough Euros to rent a spot.

  He scanned the announcement board at the hostel where he had spent the last night. He was in a part of Germany that used to be behind the Iron Curtain. The hostel seemed to still be in East Germany. Despite almost a hundred years since the fall of the Berlin Wall, the eastern half of Germany was still poorer than the land to the west.

  Nothing on the bulletin board mentioned UNSOC, but everyone knew where the Debris Response Center was. Garth had decided to approach the kaserne from the east. He was certain the guards knew he was coming, and were defending the western approaches, leaving the eastern ones relatively unguarded.

  Garth closed in on the kaserne, slowly, remorselessly, packing heat in the forms of two printed handguns, but looking to build up more of an arsenal. A voice in his subconscious was demanding more speed, more action. Come on, Garth. Hodges is fouling your precious Celine! But Garth, wary of John Hodges, was working slowly up to this final assault, confident he would think of everything this time.

  ###

  Subraman Venderchanergee, ex-Director-General of the United Nations Space Operations Command, was a man quite unused to physical toil. But washing dishes for a local gasthof along the German Autobahn was a lot better than some of the other temporary jobs he had to take as he made his way to a certain kaserne in Bavaria from his native India. He had grown a sparse and somewhat scraggly beard to hide his appearance, always taking care to mask the shapes of his ears. So far, he escaped most facial recognition systems, thanks to some small changes he had performed on his facial bones. It cost him a considerable amount of money and a lot of lost sleep, but the back-alley doctor who stuffed his face full of plastic inserts appeared to know what he was doing. Still, it was a good idea to never let your guard down.

  Subby was on break from the scullery, indulging in the one vice he still permitted himself: a small pipe with regular pipe tobacco in it. Cigarettes were hideously expensive these days, but pipe tobacco was far less costly; plus, it carried less social cost. His head was wrapped in fragrant cherry and bourbon fumes from his favorite blend when a customer passed him, headed out to the parking lot.

  The man glanced at Subby, hand on his belt near his pocket. Odd position, thought Subby, but the man turned and walked on. Something about him. The walk, the almost furtive glances all around. Almost as if he expects attack from any quarter. I have seen this man somewhere before. A lot.

  Subby wracked his brains. Where? With an almost audible click in his brain, he had an image of the man, strapped into a three-axis simulator, vomiting copiously. UNSOC Ground School, but what was the connection?

  “You have received a No-Go at this station,” called Subby. The man whirled around, arms apart, ten centimeters from his hips. He came stalking back. Closing the range. He knew then that the man was armed, even though Germans had some of the strictest gun control laws on the books.

  “What did you say?” asked the man, now three meters from him.

  “I've seen you before. UNSOC Ground School.” Subby peered closer. “Celine Greenfield. You're her ex.”

  “Not her ex. I’m still her husband. I never signed the damned divorce papers,” the man said. “Tell me why I should let you live.”

  Subby was badly frightened. Too late, he remembered the Interpol 'Wanted' poster he had seen with this man's face on it. But if he played his cards right, this man might actually be of some help to him. “I bet you're going to get Celine. Well, I'm heading in the same direction. I have someone of my own to get—someone who ruined my life. She needs to die—I've just been trying to figure out how to kill her.”

  “Indian, by your accent. Wait, you're that missing honcho, aren't you? The one who wanted them to stay up in orbit. Big reward out for you.”

  “As there is for you, Mr. Celine. You might be armed, but if you shoot me here, don't you think there will be a whole lot of people phoning it in? You can't kill them all.”

  Garth raised himself from the gunslinger pose he was in. “There is that. Perhaps you can be useful to me. Call me Garth, but I am not your friend. I have no friends.” Garth pointedly did not extend his hand.

  “Subraman, you can call me Rama,” said Subby.

  “Awww, I was going for Subby,” said Garth. Seeing him shudder, Garth added, “No?”

  “No. I have my reasons.”

  “Rama,” said Garth. “This has gone on long enough. We best fade.”

  “So, team?” asked Subby. “Not friends, but two men with common goals?”

  Garth considered it, then nodded. “If I hear the Polizei, I'm shooting you first, then them.”

  “I shall keep it in mind,” said Subby, tapping out his pipe, then waving it around to cool the bowl before he put it in his pocket. “Half a second while I get my coat.”

  “If you don't mind, I'd like to watch that,” said Garth. “No phone calls or alerting other workers, 'm-kay?”

  Subby nodded, then turned to head inside, Garth following.

  ###

  The flight back to the Moon for Bubba was a lot more carefree than the desperate escape he was on three months ago. He spent a lot of time just floating in the Tank, eyes lightly closed, and humming occasionally. He was daydreaming of South Carolina, his boyhood home.

  “Bubba,” said Duane. “Coming up on four hours until landing.”

  Bubba turned his head towards Duane, noting how the rest of his body torqued slightly in the other direction to match his head movement. “Plenty o' time. I ain't strappin' in fer at least a couple of hours.”

  “I know. I just wanted to go over the sequence again.”

  Bubba tugged on a thin line tied to his belt and drifted back to the floor of the Tank. He reeled in the line and used it as a sort of rappelling line to 'walk' back to a chair, where he strapped in. He unhooked the line and lobbed it over to Duane, who repeated the actions, strapping into a chair next to Bubba.

  “Yer more nervous than you be lettin' on,” said Bubba.

  “Terrified. Here we are in a giant iron safe, plummeting to the surface of the Moon. I don't care if it's got one-sixth the gravity of the Earth—a hundred meter fall on the Moon will kill you just as dead as a sixteen meter one on Earth. And we're coming in from thousands of kilometers.”

  “Well, Duane, I git yer point. You know we be punchin' off a nuke or two on our way in, right?”

  “Yes. I don't mind that.
I just don't want to be fiddling around the Tank afterwards, and it seems like we have to once we land.”

  “Betcha ass we do,” said Bubba. “Lookie 'ere, we'll be pounding in at a couple of klicks per second, right? Then we pop off a few nukes, slow our asses down to a hunnert klicks per hour. That's when the all the Al-Mg-LOx rockets go off. Ya notice we got more'n the Tank than we showed up with when ya snatched us?”

  “Good way of putting it. It's like they're welded on at every available spot.”

  “Gots to. Damn things burn out quick at full thrust. So we be firin’ 'em off in relays. Goal is to balance gravity—so we hover. 'Course, we ain’t gonna be floating around, but pushin' for a landing at the far end of Nifty—that new Flinger we built after the Event.”

  Duane scratched his head. “See, I don't get that. Why not at the area closest to Collins? The end is, what, ten klicks away?”

  “Durn tootin'. Smart man, that McCrary. When we scooted outta there back in Feb'rary, we made sure the launch plate slowed down and stopped at the end of the run. Programmin'. Ask Brinkley about it—that Huertas woman set it up.”

  Duane fiddled with a chain around his neck, which was floating straight out to a spot about even with his chin. “Hang on, I'm thinking this through. If anyone came back like we're doing, then McCrary obviously wanted them as far away from Collins as possible. Radiation? But wouldn't it fry the folks inside the Tank? Hmmm. How are we going to get Tank onto the launch plate? Then there's the whole dragging it back ten klicks to the launch point. I dunno—too many things could wrong for my taste.”

  Bubba had tipped his chair back and was surveying the spalling blanket on the ceiling, which was just as boring as the rest of the Tank. “I keep fergettin' that you'n the rest of 'em aren't so used to McCrary's ways. So, when we let off the last blast, we fire off all the Mooncan rockets and start slowin' down. Meanwhile, the computer is huntin' up the tail end of Nifty, and puttin' us on course to pancake down at the end. We hit around two to three Gs, but it's over quick. Then we wait a couple, maybe three days onboard. Gotta have time for the worst of the radiation to burn down. It's still pretty lethal, but by then our spacesuits kin handle it.

  “Then we get out. There's an A-frame with a block and tackle at the end of the track. We bin hoistin' loads like Tank before. There's a big 'ole eyebolt onna top of Tank. We roll the A frame up to the Tank, clip on the eyebolt, then start taking up the slack until the Tank jus’ starts to lift. Then we get back inside and continue the lift from the inside.”

  “Sounds complicated. What about power to the A-frame? Why do the lift in two stages?”

  “Tank's fuel cells got the power. We be liftin' in two parts cuz the blast plate is still pretty radioactive. So we pick up the Tank, bounce 'er a few times to get the dust off. Then we git inside so's we don' get fried. The fuel cells will lift 'er the rest o' the way and scoot 'er onna launch plate. Once that’s done, we're golden—blast plate seals the radioactivity against the launch plate. Scott gits outta Tank and hoofs it over to the controls and sets it to drag the launch plate with Tank on top back to the start of Nifty, which is purt near the Works. From there, it's jus' a couple bunny-hops to the tunnels and home sweet home.”

  Duane twisted his mouth a little. “So, what do I do when we land?”

  “Wake up is your first job. Then, you and I do the radiation check.”

  “Figured that.”

  “But it's first from inside, then the outside. Once we're on the plate, we don't git anywhere near the Tank for a month. I mean, we ride 'er in, but we git off'n it and beat feet away from it. She'll be coolin' off all month, while we’ll be doing other stuff.”

  “If you say so,” said Duane.

  “Aw, man, you worry too much. Now, if'n you don’ mind, I've still got me 'bout an hour or so to enjoy this here ride, then it's a month of work.”

  “How about I enjoy it with you? I'll be quiet.”

  Bubba reached into one of the lockers built underneath the chair, and pulled out a thin line. He tied it to Duane's chair, then onto a loop on his belt. “Float away. I'm a gonna be at the other end of the compartment, contemplatin'. Have a good nap.”

  ###

  Celine was tired and cranky. She normally never let work get to her, reveling instead in an anonymous world where she interacted with people via electronic links. She could shut down anyone with a single throw of a switch, and never had to worry about anyone invading her personal space.

  Today, though, there was a maddening glitch that almost drove her to pounding her fist into the hardware. It was a combination of static, a half-second delay, and a weird frequency shift on the voice circuits. People's conversations would fuzz out in static then come back with a transmission delay, sounding like they were calling from the bottom of a well. It wasn't on all circuits, nor was it repeatable.

  By the end of the day, though, after running all the diagnostics she could think of, she finally powered off each circuit bank one by one, never disrupting a circuit in use, but effectively rebooting the entire infrastructure. In time, the effects disappeared. But she was no closer to the cause, and it annoyed her severely.

  She took it out on the weeds in her garden. The number of UNSOC personnel in the DRC was large enough that only the senior staff were able to live in single-family houses. People like Celine and John, though, were housed in apartment complexes that were situated near parkland. As a concession to the tenants, the park had a community garden, where the renters could receive a designated plot of land to do whatever they wished with it, with the proviso that their horticulture did not affect other gardeners.

  Celine and John were not green thumbs, so they opted instead for planting flowering plants rather than food plants. They still needed weeding, if for no other reason than to avoid being a source of weeds for other plots. Celine was crouching over a particularly deep-rooted weed when she heard her name called.

  She turned around with a smile on her face. “Hello, John. Here to help?”

  “I'm not sure. Do you need help? I didn't see you in the apartment, so I came here. I had to know you were safe.”

  Celine held back, just in time, the awwww she was about to say. Instead, she walked over to the middle-aged man and hugged him, her blonde hair drifting into his face as she planted her lips on his smooth, dark brown skin. “Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.

  John hummed, and Celine picked up the vibrations through her own chest, warming her further. They had first met on the Space Station Roger Chaffee as wary peers, Celine deeply wrapped in on herself, shunning all contact with men. Her ex-husband literally hounded her off the face of the Earth through his relentless stalking, finally ending up in jail. John was uneasily married to the mother of his teenaged children, and more than suspected that she was stepping out on him every time he had to report to UNSOC for another mission in space.

  Since John was the Chief Engineer, and Celine was the Senior Communications Tech, they inevitably came into contact. Celine suddenly remembered one of those times and laughed softly.

  “What?” asked John, still holding her close there in the peace of the garden.

  “Remembering when Lisa and I were talking about cinnamon buns while you worked on the Chaffee's cooling system. You had to lie on your stomach under my console, and all we saw was your ass in a tight jumpsuit.”

  “Trying to entrap me into sex harassment. I remember. It's still not going to work.”

  Celine really laughed. “Oh, and this won't?” she said, working her way out of his arms. “John Albert Hodges, you are so full of it!”

  “Come here, my princess,” he said, reaching for her.

  “Eek!” she replied, moving away. “I'm being attacked!”

  “Little goof,” he said warmly, enfolding her in his arms once more. “I am so glad Lisa ordered us to be friends.” He relaxed his hold on her with a sigh.

  “Yes. What's the latest?” she asked.

  “Interpol has lost him again. They did co
nfirm that he’s armed, and his last known location was in the port at Bremerhaven. They grilled some lowlifes from the port. Get this—they're connected to the same gang that helped him escape from the jail in South Carolina.”

  Celine worked free of John once more and stood facing him. “That was a Hispanic gang, wasn't it?”

  “Yes. Security has no idea why they would help a white guy like Garth. But help him they did, and now he's on the continent, headed here, and armed.”

  Celine groaned. “There is no escaping him. I know that he will absolutely get here. Our apartment is no longer safe. Neither is this garden. I wouldn't be surprised if he got to me at work, either.”

  John nodded. “I know. I've been dreading this ever since I shot him back at our house.”

  Celine shuddered. Garth had attacked them there, and John returned the favor with a rifle shot to the abdomen. The bullet hit Garth's pelvis at the sacrum, the very bottom of the spinal cord. Oddly, there was no neurological damage. But when his pelvis split, his legs uncontrollably slipped in opposite directions, ending up with him crushing his testicles against the floor so hard that removal was the only option. He spent months recovering in a prison hospital.

  “I'm thinking of asking Lisa to let us into WarLand,” said Garth. Celine gasped.

  WarLand was the nickname for the abandoned section of the kaserne. Built by the Wehrmacht in World War II, WarLand was reputed to be booby trapped towards the end of the war, and the buildings had fallen into serious disrepair. The German government, rather than risk lives cleaning up the area, merely cordoned it off, built a large fence around the property, and relied on posted warnings and the occasional detonation within to keep out the curious.

  Going into WarLand to live was fantastically dangerous, but there were a few buildings that seemed safe. It was the actual commuting to and from Warland's buildings that was the main danger. For John to even consider it told Celine just how serious the situation was.