"You going somewhere?" Dale asked. The half-full glass in front of Bartley was conspicuous.
"The Blue Pool," the old man said, "Come on, if you like and we'll stand you the line."
That was how it started.
"You seem awful content," Bartley said at the end of that first week's fishing.
"Must be the company."
"All the same," McGovern said, cocking his head towards the grey hills, "would you not see The Burren?"
"I've no interest."
"Tis a place of beauty."
"So I've heard."
"You're a strange man, Dale."
"I've been called worse."
Their lines hung heavy in the water. Nothing was biting.
"I heard once," Bartley said, "that spaceships were tiled, and that twas Irish students working over there that glued them on."
Dale smiled. "Sure, on the outside. Ceramics to survive re-entry, but I don't know who attached them."
"Pity," Bartley said. "Pity now."
Beside him, McGovern shrugged.
"Twould be nice," Bartley went on, "to think of the contribution, like."
"Twould a'course," said McGovern.
Dale looked at the two of them, this grizzled pair, then shook his head and smiled. He closed his eyes and raised his head towards the sun. So unremarkable, he thought, and still so great. Turning away, he opened his eyes and caught the ghost-face of the Moon in daylight peeking through the afternoon. He allowed himself a look of happiness.
"What's that now?" Bartley asked. He never took his eyes off his line.
"I remember he was on the radio," Dale said. "Loud and clear. His first words out of the lander were 'Man, that's beautiful'."
"Who was that, then?"
"A friend of mine," Dale said. "Rodriguez. One of the men who died."
Bartley nodded.
Beside him, McGovern asked what it was like. He too was looking at the Moon now, the withered veins on his unshaven neck coaxed back to elasticity by the tilt of his blunt chin.
"Rock," said Dale. "He went on and on about the rock, the mountains and the boulders and the dust."
"Rock?" McGovern said. "Mountains and dust?"
"Sure you could see that here," said Bartley.
Dale grinned. "Could you see the colours in the grey? The red and orange and the yellow tints from the sun?" He laughed. "God, he wouldn't shut up about that. We could hardly get him to carry out his orders."
The two old Irishmen exchanged a look. Dale couldn't read it.
"You'd get the most of it here anyway," Bartley said. "The sun on the stone and all that. No knowing what you'd see."
"Sure isn't it all they go on about above in them hills?" McGovern added. "And they don't need any of them helmets or big white suits to see it."
"They're lucky," Dale said.
"Terrible lucky," Bartley nodded.
Dale smiled. "But can they see the Earth rising over the horizon the way the moon does here? That's what Rodriguez saw. He told us he was standing there, looking up at planet Earth, this great, blue oasis in the black velvet sky, and he said it was just too beautiful to have happened by accident…"
They were listening to him now, he saw, Bartley and McGovern with their grey heads cocked, though Dale didn't know what else to tell them. Technical particulars and numbers and dry facts would only spoil it, and Rodriguez only shared so much that anyone would call poetic. Instead, he reeled in his line and watched ripples echo all across the surface as his bait broke through from underneath. Earth, he realised, was covered mostly in water. A blue pool in the night of space. Its name was suddenly inadequate, powerless to convey its sheer, inexplicable abundance. Staring into the water, he found himself speaking without realizing.
"Rodriguez was talking to us afterwards," he said, "when he was back aboard Aquarius, and he told me he'd seen the whole world, all of it, all at once. Imagine that, every human being in existence, everything we are, all of it a size that if he reached out he could have plucked it from the sky. I'll never forget that," he said. "It was almost as good as being there."
"Almost?"
"Almost." Dale laughed again. He wasn't sure which one of them had said it, but it didn't matter. "We're explorers," he said. "Or at least we were; we should be. And no explorer ever knows exactly what he's going to find when he gets to where he's going, but every time we fly we add to what's known. Rodriguez, he helped me to learn something, you understand? About the grand scheme of things. Perspective, that's what I learned from him."
"Aye," McGovern said, licking his lips, "but what have you learned from us, I wonder?"
"I've learnt," Dale said slowly, "that there aren't any fish in this pond, are there?" He looked from McGovern to Bartley and back again, but the two old men had already started laughing.
Blue skies and bright light. It was outdoors that Dale felt most at home in. All Irish people seemed to regard the world through doors and windows, he had noticed. Their view was blinkered, like the drawhorses in the etchings which hung on the walls of Catherine's dining room. When people here spoke of the land they did not mean the country or the state, they meant the field, some small enclosure within which they were snared by circumstance or greed. Whole lives here were bounded by the whitewashed sovereignties of dated bungalows or played out in discontent behind the cobweb-covered lens of guilty window panes.
And yet Dale surprised himself with what he loved about them, their history, their rancour hardening around them into flakes or scales, of all things their certainty in what cannot be seen. For everyone he had met here, a palm's rough lines were no less truthful than the dotted contours of a map. Myth and fact were interchangeable, reality a personal affliction.
"What was it like," he asked McGovern, "growing up around here?"
They sat with Bartley by the Blue Pool again, the sun baking all of them.
"I suppose it was the same as anywhere," the old man said. "We chased girls and went to matches and swam in the sea."
"Aye," said Bartley, "going round with your tongue hanging out."
"We played hurling," McGovern added. "Fastest field game in the world."
Dale squinted at him. "Is that a fact?"
"Oh yeah. But don't think we didn't know what it was ye were up to."
"Ye…?"
"Oh, he's been workin' on this one," Bartley said.
"Twas before my sister was married," McGovern began. "And she was still living with us, which is a long time ago now. I'd just started inside at Callaghan's and I was driving in and out of the city every day."
Dale turned to Bartley. "What's he talking about?"
"Your friends," the old man said, raising his eyebrows. "The men above."
"We'd to go to the neighbours," McGovern went on. "We'd still no TV ourselves."
Dale smiled. "The Moon landings," he said, getting it.
"Momentous!" McGovern was in full flight now. "No thought of course to the risks involved. Just those two lads bouncing around the place, like kangaroos the pair of them. The boys were all trying it at work the next day. I swear, old Roddy Callaghan himself, leppin' around the yard…" He looked at Dale.
"I'm sorry," the American said. "I don't know who that is."
"Ah," McGovern said sadly, "sure it doesn't… Never mind."
Between them, Bartley was shaking his head. "There was no television where I was. Had to see it in the papers next day. Yer lad Aldrin like the Michelin Man, setting up the flag as if he owned the damn place." He laughed. "I have to hand it to ye, that was a good one." He laid a hand on Dale's arm and nodded. A livery of age adorned his skin. McGovern's too, and Dale suddenly felt out of place.
"Why is it," the American asked, "that everyone's so old here?"
"Say what?"
"I mean," Dale said, "where are all the young people?"
"Sure here's one now," McGovern said, elbowing Dale gently in the ribs and indicating the path from the road where a meek spectre with a Methuselan gait
tottered in their direction. It was Regan, a venal leprechaun of a man whom Dale had seen around the village.
"Is it yourself?" Bartley asked without looking away from the water.
"It is," Regan said, standing above them as if in judgment. "And tell me, gentlemen, how's the fishing?"
"Could be worse," McGovern said beneath his breath. "Could be better too."
Regan glowered at him. He stood crooked, with his weight resting on a walking stick. One eye, Dale saw, was perpetually narrower than the other. "We've never really had the chance to talk," he said to the American, "and I've been meaning to ask you, what was it like up there?"
Dale clinched his jaw. Someone must have told him. "I don't know," he said at last.
Regan leaned closer. "Sure, how could you forget a thing like that?"
"I was an alternate," he said. "A backup. I've never been up there."
"Some other lad went?"
"Yeah, some other lad."
Regan licked his lips. "So you never flew?"
"I flew combat over Iraq. I flew experimental planes to the edge of space. I earned my wings."
"But not... up there?"
"No."
"They told me," Regan said slowly, "you were an Astronaut."
"That's right."
"But then–"
"The criteria," Dale said, "is altitude." He held Regan's stare.
"Ah now," McGovern said, "would you ever leave the man alone."
"I'll not be told what to do," the interloper snapped back.
"The fish," Bartley said quietly, "are finally biting."
Dale ignored him and turned to the newcomer. "And you are?"
"He's a Peace Commissioner," McGovern said, spitting the words. "It's nothing what you think."
"The criteria," Regan said, "is good character."
"The criteria is arse-licking," McGovern said. "And no better man for it."
"I take offence to that."
"Tis a pity you won't take it somewhere else."
Twisted over his line, Bartley cackled quietly and Dale turned his gaze back out to sea. Regan drew himself away from three fishermen, as if to say well then, so be it.
"I might see you later," he declared to no one in particular, and gradually he shuffled off until he disappeared into the middle distance.
McGovern shook his head. "Thinks he's lord and master, that man does." He leaned in close to the American. "You should fight him."
"Fight him?" It was Bartley, cackling so loud that the pipe nearly left his lips. "Tis not a movie, Gerry."
McGovern folded his arms. "Twould still be right."
"I'm not here to start fights," Dale said.
"Sure twas that begrudger started it." He raised an arm and pointed after Regan.
"There're guys like that all over," Dale said.
"The Man on the Moon," Bartley said, rocking back and forth, and laughing to himself. He stabbed at the sky with his pipe.
"Would you ever put that thing away?" McGovern said.
The old man grinned at him through yellow teeth. "Sure, why would I?" he asked. "Don't I like my poison neat?"
Regan was a troublemaker, but there was no denying he was good at it. What he said had stuck in the American's craw and the rest of the day hadn't shaken it. To most of these people, Dale realised, he was just the astronaut – the astronaut – and he had gotten used to that even though it wasn't true. To have had it called out unsettled him because Rodriguez had been the astronaut, a number one aviator with nothing ruffled but his hair. Beside him Dale was only competent, next on the rotation for sure, but not flying at anything like that altitude. Regan had shown him up, and Dale felt sick that it had taken someone like that to bring him back to Earth. He shook his head. Ego was a part of his job but he had let it run amuck here. Where was his control, the better part of being a pilot?
When he walked back into the village he was angry, angry about Regan, angry about the priest's continued absence; he was angry at himself, at how quickly he had succumbed to his own tacit celebrity. He sat in the bar until it was dark outside and thought of that damn newspaper lying in his room. He resolved to burn it and called for another whiskey.
Regan, when he arrived hours later, quickly smelt his opportunity on the American's breath. "Well now," he said, "we can finally have that chat."
"I'm not really in the mood."
"Ah, we'll have none of that," Regan motioned to the bartender for a pint.
Dale sighed deeply. He hunkered over his drink and resigned himself to Regan's company. Sometimes in flight you go into a spin; nothing to do but throttle down, flatten out your surfaces, turn your rudder the opposite way and hold. He readjusted himself to face the old man.
"What do you want to know?" he said.
"Would you have gone?"
"Yes sir, I would."
"If the other lad hadn't flown, like?"
Dale drained his glass. "If Rodriguez had been pulled, I'd have taken his seat. If the programme had continued, I'd have had a flight of my own."
"And you'd have gone –"
"Wham, bam, straight to the Moon. That's where I was going. That's where Rodriguez went."
"Jasus," Regan said. "Tis a quare thing." He returned his attention to the pint in front of him. "You tell it well though, you tell it well."
Dale couldn't figure out if he was being serious or not. He stared at the empty glass in his hand, how it caught the light. "Rodriguez," he said at last.
Regan looked at him. "What's that now?"
"Rodriguez was a better pilot than I was. Christ, he flew that bird the whole way down without a pair of wings to carry him."
"This was the crash, it was?"
"Disintegration," Dale said. "Aquarius didn't crash, it disintegrated mid-flight." Around him, the regulars had grown quiet. No one had gotten this much out of Dale before.
"I thought they all died when it came apart," Regan said gently. "Tis what the papers said."
"They didn't die until they hit the water," Dale said. "Everything else came apart, but the crew module retained integrity until it hit the ocean. Which is more than I can say for those penny-pinchers in Congress, those smooth-talking Washington slicks scurrying to avoid the blame. 'Organisational causes,' they called it, 'Poor technical decision-making.' And after all the times we tried to warn them. Ah," he said, "I don't know." He slid his glass back to the bartender who looked quickly at Regan before refilling it.
"I was the CAPCOM," Dale said. "You know, in the movies, when they say, Houston, we have a problem? Well I was the guy they're talking to, I was Houston. They like to have the alternates wear that headset. The thinking is that we're best trained to understand what's going on up there."
"And what was?" Regan whispered. "Going on up there, I mean?"
"Rodriguez and the others were alive for two minutes, thirteen seconds," Dale said. "Thermal protection failure. Loss of RCS. He couldn't alter his approach, couldn't tip the capsule those vital few degrees. And all the while they knew exactly what was happening."
"What did they say?"
"All Rodriguez said was uh-oh." Dale emptied his glass again. "The downlink went dead then and that was it."
"And?"
Dale looked Regan in his hooded eyes. "And that was it," he said again. "Aquarius suffered what they call 'failure of vehicle with loss of human life.' I saw it myself, dozens of sources blossoming on the radar. I saw it again later on, laid out on the floor of a hangar at the Cape. Everything reduced to slag. We all understood the risks, but –"
"But you thought it'd never happen to someone that you knew?"
Dale shook his head. "No, I never knew how I was going to feel when it happened. God," he said, "when I could think about it clearly, when I could process it, you know, I was relieved."
"…"
"I thought to myself, that could have been me up there." His head sunk deep between his shoulders.
"Ole human beings are strange," Regan said.
&nb
sp; Down the bar, a heavy, bovine man was listening intently. He nodded.
"You can't be expected to be rational," Regan went on. "Not with the likes of that going on around you."
But Dale wasn't paying any attention. "Rodriguez walked on the Moon," he said. "And he was alive the whole way down, I know it." He held up his glass to the bartender.
"Go home," was the reply.
"He's right," Regan said. "You'll pay no respects like this."
"Ah," said Dale, standing up. He missed Bartley and McGovern, and couldn't imagine where they might have got to. He thought of them as crewmates, strapped in beside him in the nose of some heavy-lifting firecracker and bickering about the running of the parish or talking about the weather like it was a new event. He laughed at that to himself all the way to the B&B, his mood darkening then in the vagueness of the empty room.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, he stared at the small black canister which stood upright on the dresser. "I bet you've got something smart to say," he muttered before he fell asleep.
Morning. Scraping birdsong and the hot, fierce lantern of a disappointed sun. A dull halo of the night before hung crooked on Dale's skull when he woke, a liquordog, as Rodriguez would have said. It was not without cause that Dale seldom touched the hard stuff. With great, unshaven indignity he presented himself for breakfast but by some small mercy it was quiet, his hosts tuned obsessively to the conditions of their guests. They had seen it all before, of course.
"Fr. O'Grady's back," Thomas said, nose deep in his newspaper.
"Saw him last evening," Catherine said. "He's looking forward to meeting you." There were no sandwiches from her this morning. It was as though she knew his days of fishing were at an end. "He should be out of mass within the hour," she added.
"Thanks."
Outside a soft breeze rolled in from the Atlantic. Dale took his time walking through the village, stopping along the way to buy a bottle of water. When he reached the church he stood outside for almost twenty minutes. Clouds limped slowly through the sky and it felt wrong to go in so he walked on, circling around for many hours. Bartley and McGovern were nowhere to be found, not even by the shore.
The Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of the Year: Volume Eight (Best SF & Fantasy of the Year) Page 63