Fallout

by Ariel Tachna

  Derek felt his cheeks heat, but he shrugged. “I was in the restroom trying to clean up, and it seemed like the thing to do.”

  “And this wouldn’t have anything to do with Sambit staying?”

  “Why would it?” Derek asked, his heart pounding.

  “I don’t know,” Lyrica said. “The fact that he’s gay, also unattached, and interested in you?”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck, Marshall. I’ve got eyes, and I know what I see when it’s staring me in the face.”

  “He didn’t act very interested earlier,” Derek muttered.

  “So that is what you’re up to,” Lyrica crowed.

  “Look, don’t say anything to make it more complicated, okay?” Derek said. “Please? He’s already not sure of me, and if he thinks I’m talking about him or us behind his back, that’s only going to make it worse.”

  “I won’t say a word of what you’ve said to me,” Lyrica promised, “but I won’t promise not to say something about anything you do, like the showers. Let me help your campaign along a little.”

  Derek wasn’t sure it would actually be helpful, but he didn’t argue. Lyrica would do her own thing anyway.

  At the door to the maintenance room, she juggled her keys until she found the right one. “Get what you need,” she said. “The plant will probably have to be decommissioned, although Tucker isn’t convinced of that yet, so it’s not like they’re going to need this stuff for regular repairs.”

  “What will happen to you if it’s decommissioned?”

  “That doesn’t happen overnight. I’ll have a job here working with the decommissioning, assuming I want one, for years, probably. There’s also units one and two, which should be fine to restart when we have the personnel to do so. I don’t know the status of any of my coworkers except Ernesto, who’s lying out there in the shed, but from the damage to the buildings, I wouldn’t be surprised if others were injured as well. There may be a shortage of qualified people for those two units as well, so I could have a job there if I don’t have one or want one here.”

  “Will it be safe to work there if the radiation here is as high as it was today?” Derek asked, searching through the tools for what he needed.

  “That depends on why the radiation was that high, but it will be safe inside the buildings unless this reactor explodes and damages the buildings over there as well,” Lyrica said. “The buildings themselves are insulated against radiation.”

  Derek found a wrench and plumber’s tape and went in search of flexible tubing he could attach to the sink faucet rather than having to tear into the wall. “Right, I knew that. But you’d still have to get from your car into the building and back out again.”

  “Which wouldn’t take any longer than it takes you to let Fido out,” Lyrica reminded him.. “Your dosimeter isn’t yelling at you yet, and as we continue work decommissioning and decontaminating this area, the risk will decrease. My guess is they’ll do like they did at Three Mile Island and contain this area more than decontaminating it until the other two units have reached the end of their useful lives. Then they’ll do all three reactors together because it’s more cost effective that way.”

  “Aha!” Derek exclaimed, finding a length of heavy plastic tubing. “One shower coming up, first thing in the morning.”

  “Not tonight?” Lyrica asked with a fake pout.

  “It’s late, and Sam’s asleep already,” Derek said. “I don’t want to disturb him when he already has a headache.”

  “Did he check his dosimeter?” Lyrica asked immediately.

  “Thank you! He keeps insisting he doesn’t need to worry because he isn’t nauseated. I didn’t check his dosimeter, but he says he did and that the levels aren’t high enough to cause headaches yet.”

  “I’ll keep an eye on him for you once you’re gone,” Lyrica promised.

  “Thanks,” Derek said, carrying the roll of tubing and the tools out of the room. “I’ll look for stuff to make the partitions tomorrow. If I can’t find plywood, maybe I can find some lengths of PVC pipe to make frames, and we can drape blankets over them. It’ll still be makeshift but better than nothing.”

  “Definitely better than nothing,” Lyrica agreed. “Thank you for doing this. Jeremiah and Thomas are solid nuclear engineers, but I’m not sure either of them has ever picked up a hammer, much less a wrench, and while I know enough to change a light bulb or paint a room, I’m not handy enough to rig a shower or anything like that.”

  “Then I’m glad I’m here,” Derek said, and he was, even if not for that reason.

  He left the supplies in the restroom for the night. “I think I’ll get some sleep so I can get an early start tomorrow.”

  “I’m not far behind you,” Lyrica said. “I’m just going to see what I can do about getting some of this sweat off me. I’ll sleep better if I’m at least a little cleaner.”

  “Tomorrow night, you can take a shower. I’ll stand guard so no one walks in on you.”

  “I’m looking forward to it already,” Lyrica said. “Night, Derek.”

  “Night, Lyrica.”

  Derek walked softly into the break room and crossed to where Sambit slept. He gave the room a quick glance, wondering what else he might be able to do to make it more comfortable. If he could find the breakers, he could get into the wiring and add a second switch so they could turn on half the lights at a time instead of having all the lights on or off. That would make it a little easier on the off shift to get some sleep, especially if he could get the partitions built. Sambit snuffled in his sleep, drawing Derek’s attention back to him. Derek drew one finger lightly over Sambit’s cheek, not nearly as clean-shaven as it had been when they’d arrived, and then stripped down to his T-shirt and boxers to sleep. Everything else could wait until morning.

  DEREK started his campaign first thing the next morning, deliberately struggling with the yoga and asking Sambit to help him get his body in the right position several times over the course of their workout. He patted the other man on the shoulder when they were done. “Thanks. That really helped. I have a much better sense of the forms now, instead of feeling like I’m just throwing my arms and legs around every which way.”

  “You didn’t seem to have this much trouble yesterday,” Sambit said.

  “I think that’s because I was so tight yesterday that I couldn’t do anything,” Derek said. “I’m looser today so I had more range of motion and had to figure out what to do with it.”

  Sambit looked skeptical, but Derek just smiled and went to eat something before getting started on the plumbing project. He’d rigged a hook from the ceiling to hold the hose and was getting ready to figure out how to attach it to the sink when Tucker came into the restroom. “What are you doing in here? You’re supposed to be working on a second robot!”

  “Has the second robot arrived yet?” Derek asked, keeping his voice level. Now that he had a reason to stay, he didn’t want to get booted out of here any sooner than was already inevitable. “There’s only so much I can do without the actual robot, so I thought I’d make a few improvements to make everyone’s lives more comfortable in the meantime. Unless you want to live here for months without showering?”

  “Does Dr. Johnson know you’re doing this?”

  “She’s the one who let me into the maintenance area so I could get the tools,” Derek said. “Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to finish up. Let me know when the robot arrives. Until then, I’m going to keep working here.”

  Tucker scowled but did what he’d come to do and left Derek to work. Sambit wandered in a few minutes later as Derek was measuring the hose for the shower. “There you are. I wondered where you’d gone off to.”

  “Hi, Sam,” Derek said. “Just doing a little home improvement. I might be going home soon if that prick Tucker has his way, but I figured I could make life a little easier for the rest of you.”

  “Is that really a shower?” Sambit as
ked.

  “Well, a rudimentary one anyway,” Derek said. “I don’t have anything to use as a showerhead, so it’ll just be a stream of water like you’d get out of a garden hose instead of a spray, but it’s running water over your head so you can get under it and rinse your hair, your body, whatever. It beats being dirty.”

  “Does it ever!” Sambit said. “I’m so happy at the thought of actually being clean, I could kiss you.”

  “You could kiss me anyway,” Derek replied, taking a step closer to Sambit. “I wouldn’t say no.”

  “That’s not a good idea.”

  “I think it is,” Derek said, advancing another step. Sambit held up his hands as if to ward Derek off, so Derek relented. “It’s okay. I’ll wait, but I’m going to get my hands on you again before I leave. Consider that fair warning.”

  “Derek.”

  “Sambit,” Derek replied, mimicking Sambit’s exasperated tone. “I know you think I’m fucking around, and I know only time will change your mind, but I’m not yanking your chain or messing with your mind or anything else you might be thinking. This shower is for you. I won’t tell anyone else that, but I wouldn’t have bothered for their sakes. I’m bothering for yours.”

  “You don’t need to do things on my account,” Sambit protested.

  “I know I don’t need to,” Derek said. “I want to, and that’s a whole different ballgame. You like football, Sam?”

  “Cricket,” Sambit replied. “The sport of kings.”

  “You’ll have to explain it to me sometime,” Derek said. “I tried watching it once and couldn’t follow the game.”

  “You want to learn about cricket?”

  “Sure,” Derek said. “You like it, so there must be something to it. It’ll give us something in common since you’re convinced that is so important.”

  “You can’t possibly be serious,” Sambit said.

  “As serious as that radiation leak,” Derek replied. “But if you don’t believe me, that’s fine. Give me six months. I’ll show you I mean it.”

  “Six months from now, you won’t remember my name,” Sambit said.

  “Sambit Patel, PhD,” Derek said. “I don’t know if there’s more to it than that because you haven’t told me, but I bet I could find out. You work at Texas A&M. They have to have a faculty web site. I’m sure I could find out more there.”

  “Let it go, Derek,” Sambit said. “I don’t know why you’re so determined to do this, but it isn’t worth it.”

  “Yes, it is,” Derek said, “but I won’t argue with you anymore. I already figured out I won’t convince you that way. Did you need me for something, or were you just wondering where I was?”

  “Lyrica said to tell you the next shipment of supplies should be here in about an hour with two more robots and parts for you to get started,” Sambit said.

  “Then I’d better hurry up and finish in here,” Derek replied. “I don’t like leaving a job undone.”

  SAMBIT left the restroom with an insane desire to tear his hair out. Talking to Derek was like talking to a brick wall. Or maybe like a jellyfish. You thought you had him pinned down, and then he twisted out a hole you hadn’t even seen. Next time Lyrica could deliver her own message. Sambit was done trying to get anything through Derek’s stubborn head. He’d just have to ignore the man for a few more days, and then Derek would be gone, and he wouldn’t have to worry about it anymore.

  The thought of taking a real shower was appealing, but every time he did, he’d end up thinking of Derek, not at all conducive to a relaxing bath. Of course that was exactly what Derek wanted. He wanted Sambit to think of him. If Sambit had any hope of Derek returning his interest, it might not matter so much, but Derek was leaving. He felt like a broken record, harping on that fact, but it was the wrench in the works, the fly in the ointment, the rain on his parade. As long as Derek was leaving, everything else was pointless because a week at most was not enough time to lay the foundation for a lasting relationship.

  “Did you find him?” Lyrica asked.

  “He’s building a shower.”

  “Oh, good. He said he was going to work on that.”

  “Then why didn’t you go tell him about the robots yourself?” Sambit asked.

  “Because he’d much rather see you than me,” Lyrica said.

  “Save your matchmaking for someone else,” Sambit requested. “It’s wasted on me.”

  “Why is that? I know he’s leaving, but you won’t be stuck here forever.”

  “Because when he gets back home, this will just be a bad memory,” Sambit replied. “There’s no point in starting something with no future.”

  “I didn’t have you pegged as a pessimist,” Lyrica said. “You strike me as more positive than that.”

  “I am,” Sambit insisted.

  “Then why aren’t you grabbing this chance with both hands?” she demanded. “That man in there is gorgeous, smart, caustically funny, and seriously into you. This could be the start of something wonderful. Even if he does leave, there’s e-mails, texts, Skype, lots of ways to keep in touch until you get out of here.”

  “You sound like him.”

  “That’s because we’re right. Think about it, Sambit. What do you really have to lose?”

  It seemed overly simplistic and overly soon to say “his heart” when Sambit had never been one to believe in love at first sight. He had grown up in a culture of arranged marriages and had always believed that a relationship worked successfully because of common backgrounds and common goals, a choice rather than something that one stumbled upon. He believed in lust at first sight, but that was a physical reaction to an attractive stimulus. He wasn’t denying Derek was attractive on a physical level. White-blond hair, green eyes, a golden tan, a crooked smile that revealed even white teeth…. There was nothing about Derek that Sambit found unattractive physically, but that wasn’t enough. He’d learned that when his first relationship, established on the basis of mutual desire, had fizzled out because they had nothing to say to each other outside of bed.

  He and Derek had plenty to say to each other, but Sambit wasn’t sure that was an improvement, not when they seemed to argue as much as they talked, and even when they did talk, their conversations only pointed out how different they were. From what Sambit could tell, they shared sufficient intelligence to earn PhDs in their respective fields, and that was about it. While that was a plus in Derek’s favor—Sambit had little patience with people who lacked enough intelligence to keep up with him in conversation—it wasn’t enough. Different sports, different areas of science, different attitudes on everything from being out to dealing with annoyances, different cities of residence. Sambit didn’t know exactly which of Houston’s many neighborhoods and suburbs Derek called home, but Sambit had driven out to NASA once. It took over two hours to get there from College Station. They might both be “from the Houston area,” but that didn’t mean they lived near each other, which further decreased the likelihood of them being able to sustain a relationship after Derek left Bay City.

  “My time, my dignity, and maybe a little self-respect,” Sambit said, realizing Lyrica was still waiting for an answer, “since I already know how this one ends.”

  “How does it end?” she asked.

  “With a helicopter picking him up in a few days and leaving me behind.”

  “I’m going to enjoy seeing him prove you wrong,” Lyrica declared. “Now, let’s see if we can get a better reading from the steam generator. We need conclusive evidence of our theories if we want Tucker to buy into them.”

  Chapter 9

  “THE shower is ready,” Derek said an hour later when he walked into the room where Sambit and Lyrica were working. “It’s nothing fancy, but it’ll get you clean. I made a sign to put on the door when someone is using it so they don’t get interrupted. It’s hanging on the paper towel dispenser inside the door. Did anyone think to ask for more paper towels and toilet paper with the supplies?”

  “I did,” L
yrica said. “They were delivered along with your robots about ten minutes ago.”

  “Oh, good!” Derek said. “New toys!”

  He disappeared before Lyrica could say anything else.

  “I swear he’s schizophrenic,” Sambit said with a shake of his head. “Too many personalities running around inside one body.”

  “You mean dissociative identity disorder, and he doesn’t have that,” Lyrica said. “Bipolar, maybe. Probably borderline ADD, but I lived with DID in high school. He doesn’t qualify.”

  “I’m sorry,” Sambit said, not knowing what else to say.

  “My parents took in foster kids stuck in the system,” Lyrica explained. “We had one kid stay with us for a couple of months until it became obvious she needed more psychiatric help than we could give her. She went into a home, and I never did hear what happened to her after that. It was freaky the way you never knew who was going to walk out of her bedroom, but it wasn’t just different moods. It was different people. They had different names. All variations on her name, so at first I thought of it as a nickname to fit the mood, but then we realized she didn’t remember things that had happened when a different ‘person’ was in charge. I really hope she got help, because she was a sweet girl, just really, really troubled. Derek isn’t like that. And think of it this way. You’ll never be bored with him.”

  “Because I’ll never be with him,” Sambit said. “Let’s get back to work. I want a shower, and the sooner we get this done, the sooner I can take one.”

  To his relief, Lyrica dropped the matter and turned back to the readings they were analyzing.

  Sambit’s stomach growling interrupted them two hours later. “I guess we ought to eat lunch,” he said, rubbing his noisy belly.

  “Probably,” Lyrica said. “You find Derek. I’ll heat up whatever field rations they sent us this week. That way we aren’t all tramping through the break room and disturbing the night shift.”