Here Be Dragons

by Alan, Craig

  Elena hadn’t voted since she had been twenty years old, when she had lost all interest in politics. She powered the paper down and leaned forward to put it back in its slot. The videos and games held no appeal for her either, and reading for pleasure and not the job produced a scrabbling feeling of guilt in the back of her mind, even though she couldn’t possibly have concentrated on paperwork right now anyway. Elena had absolutely nothing to occupy her mind but the secret that she had carried with her from Glenn Station.

  “Snack?”

  She jumped. There had been no footsteps, but Elena was so used to zero gee that she could usually perceive her neighbors by nothing more than changes in the air.

  “Perhaps some Pisco?”

  The attendant at her shoulder smiled sweetly, and Elena found it hard to be annoyed with someone who was trying so hard to be nice. The spaceline checked the nationality of every passenger, and arranged to have familiar food and drink for the trip. They had no way of knowing that Elena had subsisted on rehydrated Agency rations for most of the past eighteen years, and she hadn’t bothered to tell them. She’d even left her uniforms stowed in her luggage, and boarded the plane in civilian attire.

  “No, thank you,” she said to the attendant. The woman had red hair and blue eyes, and she’d practiced her smile often enough to look as if she actually meant it. “I’m not thirsty.”

  “Very well, mademoiselle.”

  The attendant took hold of the handrail fixed to the ceiling above them and propelled herself to the next seat with one hand, trailing her cart behind her. Elena watched her work. The attendant’s movements were smooth and effortless, nothing hurried or wasted. Experience with weightlessness was not as common among civilian fliers as one might expect, as the dangers of prolonged exposure to radiation discouraged repeated flights. According to the actuarial tables, a single week in outer space cost a single day at the end of one’s life—a small price to pay for a calling, but too much to ask for just a paycheck. For the civilian flight crews, assignment to outer space was like rotating over to the graveyard shift. They even got hazard pay for leaving the atmosphere. Elena had once thought of hiring on as a civilian herself, two years before.

  “This is your captain speaking.” The voice on the intercom was cool and smooth. “Our estimated time of arrival is now thirty minutes. Food and beverage service will be suspended in ten minutes, and the attendants will be around to collect your dishes shortly after that. Please prepare your personal belongings for disembarking, and we would appreciate it if you could begin gathering any loose items and stow them away in advance of the returning gravity. It might not be much, but it’s more than enough to make a mess.”

  The captain went on to remind them of the emergency kits stowed throughout the fuselage, and that there were exits at the front and rear of the cabin. She had performed this speech many times, and her voice had an easy command to it which Elena envied.

  The redhead returned to check on her, and she had to prove to the woman’s satisfaction that, yes, she was indeed capable of fastening her own safety straps. The attendant’s hair brushed Elena’s cheek when she leaned over to test the locks. Her nametag said “Coralie,” and her perfume was rose scented.

  “Do I pass inspection?” Elena asked.

  “Oui, mademoiselle. Head of the class.”

  Coralie put one hand on Elena’s shoulder to turn herself, then pushed off with her other. She hadn’t bothered with the handrail this time. Elena supposed she should not have felt too flattered. Coralie probably appreciated the one passenger who actually made her job easier. This hop had drawn a particularly green set of tourists, in more than one sense. Every single one of her fellow passengers had promised themselves before takeoff that they absolutely, positively would not vomit when gravity disappeared. Every single one of them had broken that promise, and the attendants had spent the first few hours of the flight bouncing from one queasy novice to another. Elena had prayed that they would arrive in time. Otherwise, it could go everywhere.

  She ran a mental checklist. They were now on the final approach. In the cockpit the pilot and co-pilot would have checked in with the tower for clearance, and the flight engineer would run a final diagnostic check on all the vital systems: Attitude thrusters, radar altimeter, quantum gyroscopes, landing gear, and avram. The captain’s voice returned to the intercom.

  “The seatbelt light is now on, and we ask that you remain within your cubicle for the duration of the flight. We will be on the ground shortly.”

  Elena was seated in the middle row, but she could see through the portholes if she craned her head. The ground was rushing to meet them, and soon the black sky disappeared from view. The pilot hit the avram. It was subtle, like pulling the ripcord on a tiny parachute. The plane seemed to briefly stall, but the moment passed so quickly that most of the passengers probably thought they had imagined it. Their velocity began to rapidly and invisibly decrease.

  “Beginning descent now,” the captain said.

  The avram switched off at the exact moment that the plane’s speed hit zero. For an instant so miniscule that it could barely said to have occurred at all, they hung in the air, completely motionless.

  Then gravity caught the plane and began to gather it in. They had shot right through low orbit and into the descent, and Elena could perceive her weight returning bit by bit. The plane gained another few tonnes every second, and she felt her feet fall to the floor and stay there. The spacelines didn’t build ships inside out like the Agency—civilians wanted something they could point to and call the ground.

  The landing thrusters fired, and this time everybody onboard knew it. The plane jerked up and around and pulled perpendicular to the surface. They began to glide flat to the ground, and a feather could not have fallen more lightly than they landed. Elena’s stomach dropped once more as the massive elevator dropped and took the landing pad with it, and the hangar doors slid shut above her head. The captain spoke once more.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, it is 9:30 am local time, and the seatbelt light is now off. Welcome to the Moon, and thank you for choosing Starway.”

  The attendants fanned out to check on the passengers, none of whom had yet to make a move. Perhaps they were still stunned by their own weight, though it was only one sixth of what it had been on Earth.

  “Do you think you can handle those yourself?”

  Elena was beginning to think that Coralie’s smile wasn’t just for show.

  “I don’t want to monopolize your time,” she said.

  “That is considerate, but soon enough, my time will be my own,” Coralie said. “And I will have quite much of it. I do not fly back to Earth for three days.”

  “Well, you’ve been very hospitable. I think you’ve earned a vacation.”

  Elena twirled her head, taking in the cabin around them, and tourists who were clumsily rediscovering their sense of down. Coralie laughed.

  “Yes, I believe so. And in the spirit of hospitality, I would be pleased to show you around, if you wish. I stay on the Moon quite often.”

  Elena remembered the soft touch of Coralie’s hand on her shoulder, and wondered what the rest of her felt like. Then she remembered why she come all this way. Her face must have shown it, because the attendant quickly backtracked.

  “Of course, you must have plans.”

  “I do,” Elena said. “Unfortunately.”

  “Business?”

  “Of a sort.” She wondered what the attendant would think if she knew she’d been fussing over a Chief Officer of the Global Space Agency. “Yes, business. I would have loved to have lunch with you, but I have an appointment in a few hours.”

  “A client?” Coralie stood and smoothed her uniform pants. She did not seem to want to look Elena in the eye.

  Elena laughed shortly.

  “More like the boss.”

  “Bonne chance
, madame.”

  Coralie smiled one last time, but the moment had passed. Neither offered their contact information to the other. Both knew that they would soon be worlds apart. Today was their only chance, and today they would not have.

  Elena gathered her things, and watched surreptitiously as Coralie checked on the other passengers. The attendant’s sense of balance had already returned, and she leaned over quickly and easily to take one man by the hand and help him out of his seat. Her long red hair hung in the air behind her and fell slowly over her bent back. Elena loved red hair.

  She stood without help, and turned to queue up at the opposite exit. Her only consolation was that she was leaving behind one beautiful woman for another.

  The bag held ten kilograms of Colombian arabica coffee beans, but Elena hefted it easily with one hand and had to grip it tightly to keep it from flying into the air. The Moon’s gravity was light, just enough to tease her with the memory of how the weight had been briefly lifted from her shoulders.

  “Mama, you shouldn’t have.”

  Alejandra Estrella shook her head and demurred, leaving her thick black hair to trail languorously behind her, as if she were underwater. Elena’s smile fell briefly under her envy—her civilian mother, who had required prescription sedatives just to survive the only spaceflight she had ever taken, had never endured the particular hell of stuffing long, unruly hair into a spacesuit helmet. Elena’s own hair had not touched her shoulders since she was eighteen years old.

  Elena set the bag back on the table, next to her plate. Alejandra really shouldn’t have. Coffee beans were a luxury item, and with arable land at a premium, they were heavily taxed. Ten kilos had probably cost her a week’s pay—and biochemists like her mother, who could make algae taste like nearly anything other than algae, were paid quite well.

  “One day the company will put serious effort into coffee flavors,” Alejandra said. “Until then, you’ll have to settle for the real thing.”

  “I’ll try to hide my disappointment.”

  “Be good to your mother,” Alejandra said. She raised her wine glass to her lips—slowly, so as not to splash herself in the face. Their clothes, and shoes especially, were heavily weighted to compensate for the weak lunar gravity. But it was still far too easy to forget one’s strength on the Moon. Waiters in every restaurant kept washcloths on hand at all times, and tourists were advised against hot dishes.

  “Sorry, mama. Y gracias,” Elena said, and picked up her fork. Her plate held a tangled morass of flat, broad noodles that looked like a pile of red linguine. Kelp salad with thick oarweed dressing, Alejandra’s first professional concoction. Elena never failed to order it in her presence. She lazily twisted her fork in the salad. “But it is a bit much, no? We’re only going to the Belt and back.”

  “You say that now, but I’ll bet you drink it all before you get to Mars.”

  “If you’re so concerned about that you could have bought twice as much Brazilian below water for the same price.”

  They spoke in English, but Elena used the Spanish idiom for “under the table” without thinking. Her mother rarely used their first language these days.

  “If I get caught with embargoed goods, I pay a fine. God only knows what they would do to you.”

  Alejandra lifted her own fork, laden with a heavy algae compound engineered to resemble lobster meat. Elena turned her head to the balcony while her mother chewed. The Selentine Cafe was the only starred restaurant in Maginus City, and required reservations even for a weekday lunch. Alejandra had chosen it primarily because it was the only establishment in town which did business with the algacultural corporation where she worked. But for Elena, it was all about the view.

  Maginus was nestled deep inside a crater near the South Pole, and the Selentine had been built into the lunar wall which stretched high above the colony. Beyond the balustrade was the magnificent forest at the center of the city—the giant redwoods, hundreds of meters tall, which supplied so much of the colony’s oxygen. Bred for size and without the force of gravity to hold them down, the trees were so tall that they stretched out of sight into the cloud layer, and tapered to points just beneath the armored dome which protected the city.

  “Just a salad, dear? Are you sure?”

  Her mother had grown up in the rationing days, when seaweed products had still tasted like seaweed, complete with saltwater tang. Alejandra had first tasted red meat as a teenager. Food was serious business to her.

  “I’m not really hungry.”

  “Mmm.”

  Alejandra took another bite, and Elena laughed.

  “You get me for two days after two years, and this is what you want to talk about?”

  “I’m sorry, dear. Occupational hazard, I’m always thinking of food.”

  “Well, you don’t look it.”

  Alejandra smiled.

  “Keep it up and you really will get twenty kilos next time.”

  “How is work, by the way?”

  “You’re eating it.” Alejandra smiled. She never tired of that joke. “It’s well. Our Thai cuisine line just got two stars.”

  “I hate spicy food.”

  “I know, dear.”

  Alejandra signaled the waiter for more wine, and they watched him pour. The wine flowed sluggishly from the bottle and seemed to almost hang in midair before hitting bottom with an enormous splash. Lunar glassware tended to be abnormally tall and thin, much like the Moon’s long term residents. While her mother was distracted, Elena took the opportunity to check her bracelet underneath the table. But there were no new messages from Gabriel.

  “And what about your job? Have they made a decision?”

  Elena shrugged.

  “They have candidates, I’m sure. I don’t really know. They won’t start vetting until we’re underway. Just in case there’s a problem with the ship.”

  “There won’t be, I’m sure,” Alejandra said.

  “Glad to hear an expert’s opinion, but I think we’ll test her just to make sure. Halfway to Jupiter isn’t the best place to learn that the air filters don’t work.”

  “You are being considered, of course?”

  “For executive officer?”

  “For captain,” Alejandra said.

  “Of Gabriel? A chief officer with only two years in grade? There’d be a mutiny.” Elena took another, deeper sip of her wine. “No, I might get exec perhaps. Or maybe boatswain. I’ve done it before, but this would still be a step up.”

  “But not captain.”

  With Alejandra, it was difficult to distinguish between those times when she was leading Elena, and when she really didn’t know.

  “No, not captain.”

  “Don’t they trust you?”

  “They trust me just fine, mama,” Elena said. “But this is how it works.”

  “So you’ll take the ship out on this…”

  “Trial cruise.”

  “Thank you. So. You take Gabriel out on this trial cruise. You go to the Belt and back. And if something goes wrong, you take the ship back to the station and try to figure it out. And if all goes well, another captain takes the ship instead, and you go…somewhere.”

  “Yes, I’ll definitely be going somewhere,” Elena said.

  Alejandra drained the last of her glass, and placed it down a touch too hard.

  “And you’re okay with that?”

  “That’s how it works, mama.”

  Elena raised her own glass and took a sip.

  “Mmm. Did you know that I breastfed you?”

  Elena nearly spit out her wine, and set her glass down carefully.

  “No. Jesus. Did I need to?”

  “I suppose not,” Alejandra said. “But you do need to grow up. It’s a beautiful thing, one of the most generous things you can do for another human being. You shouldn’t be so sque
amish.”

  Elena could hold her own amongst soldiers and politicians, but her mother could still make her cheeks burn.

  “I’m sorry, mama. I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “Your great-grandmother felt the same way, it’s no mystery where you get it from. She didn’t want to nurse any of her children, so she employed a local woman to do it for her.”

  “A wet nurse,” Elena said.

  “Yes. She was a lovely woman, I’m told, so close to all the children, always there at baptisms and birthdays and Christmases. But I used to feel so sorry when Mother would tell me about her. She’d had only one child of her own, a stillbirth. Carmen nursed my mother and her brothers and sister over the next few years, but she could never take them home with her. It did not seem fair that someone so full of love would not be able to share it with a child of her own.”

  Elena didn’t know what to say to this, but knew she had to say something.

  “What happened to Carmen? Abuela never mentioned her to me.”

  “Well…you know. Que dios me la tenga en su gloria.” Alejandra’s Spanish sounded strange to her daughter’s ear. Elena couldn’t remember the last time she had heard her mother speak it. “Madre didn’t know her very long.”

  Elena nodded. Her maternal grandmother would have turned one hundred years old in a few months—she had been born the year of the Storm.

  There came a silence. Alejandra would not ask if her daughter had understood, it was not her way. She cleared her throat instead.

  “And if you don’t get this ship. Will there be another? One day?”

  “I’m sure there will be. The Space Agency isn’t going anywhere, and neither are the outsiders.”

  “Then I’m sure that will be a good ship too.” Alejandra checked her electronic bracelet and sighed. “Ask for the bill.”

  Despite the protest that Elena spent roughly twenty nine days out of every thirty in a spacesuit, jumpsuit, or dress blues, Alejandra insisted on taking her daughter shopping for clothes.