In the Red
Page 6
“My dad doesn’t think I’m ever going to get better,” he blurted out. He didn’t mean to say it, any more than he’d meant to not say it up until now. It just came out.
Lilith sat up and stared at him. “What are you talking about? Of course you’re going to get better. You already are better.”
“Well, tell him that.” Michael put his shoulders back and deepened his voice. “‘My son Peter is just amazing. He’s already been accepted into the academy. But Michael? He’s got a condition. He’s never going to be able to put on a helmet without puking.’”
“He didn’t actually say that, did he?”
“No,” Michael said. “He didn’t have to. I could see it on his face. He’s ashamed of me. I’ll bet he doesn’t want me visiting him at the station just because then someone might find out how useless I am.”
He punctuated the sentence with three hard kicks to an oblong rock that was half buried in the sand in front of them.
“Sometimes a little distance is good,” Lilith said. “Me and my dad were a lot happier after my parents separated. Of course, for us, ‘a little distance’ is a few dozen light-years.”
Michael snorted. “Earth is only two hundred million kilometers away.”
“Yeah? Seems farther.” She tilted her head back and looked up at the stars. “Which one is it?”
“There.” Michael pointed up at a pale blue point of light near the constellation Pisces.
Lilith stood up and cupped her hands around her mouth. “Hey, Dad!” she shouted. “Don’t forget my birthday this year, okay?”
Michael’s face twitched into a little smile, and Lilith plopped back down. “You don’t really talk about your dad much,” he said.
She shrugged. “Nothing to talk about, really.”
“You and your mom seemed pretty upset yesterday.”
“Oh, she was just mad about some stupid stuff he did,” she said. “But it didn’t bother me.”
Lilith might be a better liar than he was, but he could see that there was something she wasn’t telling him. “You’re sure?”
She paused for a moment, and then she sighed. “All I can say is that parents suck on any planet. Maybe someday, someone will invent something better. Till then we just have to make do.”
“I guess. But—”
“I know what’ll make things better.” She dug around in the pocket of her suit. After a moment she held her empty hand out toward him. Michael looked at her in confusion.
“This is a pretty awesome present. It’s what my aunt gave me when my parents divorced—a one-time-use ticket to do anything you want. Anything at all.” She waved her hand at him. “Go on, take it.”
Still a little baffled, he pretended to take the ticket from her. “Uh . . . thanks?”
“I used mine to get the best day ever. My aunt and I drove up to the theme parks in Orlando and rode roller coasters until they kicked us out. We ate nothing but ice cream from morning to night. And when we got back, she helped me toilet paper Jenny Bennet-Xi’s house.”
“I don’t think I want to toilet paper anyone’s house.”
“That’s only because you’ve never met Jenny Bennet-Xi,” Lilith said. “But that was my perfect day. What would you want to do? There must be something.”
What would he do, if he could do anything? He knew the answer without even really thinking about it. “I’d drive out to the station at the ice cap, knock on the door, and say, ‘Hi, Dad.’”
“That’s it?”
“Yeah,” Michael said. He kicked the rock in front of him again, causing it to topple over. “Just to show him. Just to see his face. And then I’d turn around and come back here.”
Lilith looked thoughtful. She checked her watch and then sat up straight. “Well, it’s already pretty late. We’d better get started.”
“Where are we going?” Michael asked, confused.
“Like you said—up to the ice cap. To say hi to your dad and all that.”
Michael stared at her. “You mean, right now? Lil, I was kidding!”
“You didn’t sound like you were kidding.”
“It’s two hundred kilometers away! You want to drive for six hours, tonight? Just so I can say hi?”
“No,” Lilith admitted. “I’d be much happier if you wanted to do something simple, like break into the school and eat ice cream until we pass out. But it’s your perfect day, not mine.”
“He’ll kill me. I’ll be grounded for years!”
“That’s a very good counterargument,” she agreed. “But now isn’t the time to worry about stuff like that. Now is the time to say, ‘This is what I’m doing whether anyone likes it or not.’”
Michael tried to wrap his head around the idea. Go all the way up to the station tonight? Just the two of them? It was crazy. It was beyond crazy.
But how amazing would it be to drive all night and show up there at the station as if it were the most normal thing in the world? As if there weren’t anything wrong with him at all? Maybe that was the only way to make his dad understand that Michael was more than just a kid with a condition.
“You’re really up for this?” Michael asked.
“I’ll admit—going outside always seemed so boring. But now that we’re sneaking away, and if they catch us they’ll probably send us to the Belt, it’s a lot more exciting, don’t you think?” She shrugged. “Also, I think I can go for six hours without peeing.”
“That’s your biggest concern?”
“Well, it’s right up there with not-getting-hit-by-a-meteorite.”
“All right,” he said, taking a deep breath. “Road trip. Isn’t that what you call it?”
Her face crinkled. “Road trip.”
5
“HOW LONG TILL we get there?” Lilith asked. She had her head resting on the roll bar and her feet propped up on the dashboard.
“Ten minutes less than the last time you asked.”
“And you’re sure you know where we’re going?”
“The autopilot does,” Michael said. He pointed at the compass on the dashboard. “And since the station generates the north pole of the magnetic field, the compass points right to it. So it’s kind of hard to get lost.”
“Humph,” she said. “That’s too easy. You ought to be following the north star or something.”
“Mars doesn’t have a north star.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s tilted at a different angle from Earth, so its north pole points at empty space.” He pointed out the constellations of Cygnus and Cepheus and showed her how to find the spot between Deneb and Alderamin that showed true north.
“Neat,” she said. “Where did you learn that? From your dad?”
Michael nodded.
“You doing okay? Being out here and all of that?” She said it casually, but he could hear the concern in her voice.
“I’m doing fine.”
The strange thing was that it was true. After two years of his parents making him feel as if he would collapse the moment he put on a suit, he’d started to believe it. But here he was, driving a rover in the middle of the night, fifty kilometers from the nearest colony. In a few hours he’d knock on the door to his dad’s research station, and everyone would see that they were wrong.
Lilith reached her hand out past the roll bar as if feeling the wind. “Can’t this thing go any faster?”
“No,” he said. “Not safely, anyway.”
She sighed. “Is there anything to eat, at least?”
Michael fished out an energy gel bulb from the compartment underneath her seat. He showed her how to twist the top and shake it until it had warmed up to a drinkable temperature. Cautiously she inserted it through the port in her helmet next to her chin and took a sip.
“Ugh.” She held the bulb near the light from the control panel so she could read the label. “That’s supposed to be banana pineapple?”
“It’s for emergencies. Supposedly you can live on that stuff for weeks.”
Michael was beginning to wonder whether a six-hour trip in a rover together was a good idea. “You can go to sleep if you want.”
“Yeah?” she said. “I mean, I wouldn’t mind a little nap, but I don’t want to leave you all alone.”
“I’ll probably doze off too,” he said. “Go on, get some sleep.”
It didn’t take her long to take him up on his offer. She curled up in the seat and closed her eyes, and in a few minutes she was snoring.
He double-checked the autopilot and then got out a bulb of drinking water and sucked it dry. The slightly plastic taste brought back memories of one of his first camping trips, when one of their water containers had sprung a leak and frozen solid in the middle of the night. By the end of the trip they’d gone through their rover’s entire supply of emergency water and had resorted to chipping off chunks of their frozen water supply and melting them on their little stove so they could wash their hands and faces. It had been a grand trip, even though Michael couldn’t remember exactly where they’d gone. Terra Tyrrhena, maybe?
A wisp of bluish-green smoke appeared in the sky directly ahead of them. Michael watched in fascination as it grew larger and larger until it had spread out across the entire horizon like a pulsing cloud. Randall had said that the big solar flare that was going on would cause some beautiful auroras, but Michael hadn’t imagined anything like this. Bands of red and blue and green fire rippled and twisted and curled in on themselves until they disappeared. It was the most beautiful thing Michael had ever seen.
He was about to wake up Lilith when his wrist screen beeped. He glanced down and saw a message from his father. Some amazing auroras up here.
Michael froze. His mind swirled with conflicting emotions. Eighteen hours ago his dad had suddenly flown back to the station without any explanation, without even saying goodbye, and now he was sending random messages about the aurora? In the middle of the night? What was his dad even doing up at this hour?
Michael thought for a moment, and then he typed back, I bet.
The response from his dad came back quickly. Thought you’d be out. Did I wake you up?
No, Michael replied. Woke up a while ago and couldn’t fall back asleep.
Wish you could see this.
Michael looked up at the aurora, feeling very self-satisfied. He was seeing it. He wasn’t even inside a station, looking out through a window like his dad probably was. He was out here in the middle of the northern plain, surrounded by nothing but stars and sky.
Maybe soon I can come visit you, Michael wrote back. Soon, as in four hours from now.
For almost a minute his dad didn’t respond. Finally a message appeared.
I hope so. And then: I have to go. Love you.
Michael sat back in his seat. The breath hissed through his nostrils. That was it? That was all his dad could say—I hope so? That was the sort of thing parents told you when they knew something was never going to happen. It was almost as bad as someday. He punched the dashboard with his gloved fist.
“Hey,” Lilith said, sitting up and looking around blearily. “What was that?”
“Sorry,” Michael said. “It was nothing.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t a meteorite?”
“I’m sure. Go back to sleep.”
“Okay,” she mumbled. “You should sleep too.”
She rolled over and closed her eyes again. Michael watched her enviously. He was exhausted, but sleep seemed like it would be impossible. He leaned his head back and watched the aurora and thought about what he would say when he met his dad at the station. “I told you I could do it,” maybe. Or “Hey, good seeing you all the way out here.” Maybe that was too much, though—maybe he should let his actions speak for themselves. He’d finally decided on a simple “Hi, Dad” when his eyes closed and he drifted off.
He and his dad were standing in an airlock. Early-morning sun streamed in through the windows in the outer doors. Michael was holding his helmet. He put it on and sealed it against his collar. The pumps roared and the outer doors opened. Panic gripped him, cold and familiar. His breaths came in rapid-fire bursts. He saw the silhouette of his father walking out into the sunlight. His gut spasmed, and he threw up.
“Again,” his dad said. It was late afternoon. The inside of Michael’s suit still smelled like vomit. He put on his helmet and gave his dad a thumbs-up. The doors opened. Michael tried to take a step, but everything was swaying and spinning. He saw the ground a moment before he hit, and then everything was dark.
“Again.” It was nighttime. Michael looked at his helmet. A smear of blood coated the inside. He put it on and gave a thumbs-up—
Michael sat up with a jolt. He blinked away beads of sweat and tried to focus his eyes. Where was he? He was wearing a helmet. He was outside.
“Michael,” a voice was saying. Someone was shaking him by the arm, trying to get him to wake up. “Michael!”
All at once he remembered: Lilith, the rover, the station, his dad. Michael’s lungs gasped for air in an uneven rhythm: IN out IN out IN out. The terrified feeling from the nightmare wouldn’t go away. He pleaded with himself to calm down. He pulled at the fabric of his suit, trying to relieve the tightness across his chest. What had his doctor told him? Acknowledge but don’t agree, she had said. Acknowledge that you are afraid without agreeing that there is any real danger.
One little part of his brain was terrified. That was it. One little part was screaming its head off, but there was no real danger. A wave of nausea made his stomach clench, and saliva spattered the inside of his helmet as he gasped for air.
“Michael, listen to me!” Lilith said. “What’s seventeen times fifty-six?”
He turned his head toward her. Why was she asking this now? But even as he stared at her, his mind was working on the answer. “Nine hundred fifty-two,” he stammered.
“What’s the molecular weight of oxygen?”
“Fifteen,” he said. “Fifteen point nine nine nine four.”
“How many bones are in the human body?”
“Two hundred six.”
“Deep breaths, okay? Just take deep breaths.” She squeezed his shoulders and held her helmet against his so that her face was all he could see. He nodded and tried to reassert control, but his breathing still came in rapid-fire gasps.
“Which girl in our class has a crush on you?” she asked suddenly.
“What?” he gasped.
“I said, ‘Which girl in our class has a crush on you?’”
It hadn’t ever occurred to Michael that anyone in their class might have a crush on him. “No idea,” he snapped. “How many more stupid questions are you going to ask me?”
“Just one,” Lilith said. “How are you feeling?”
He blinked. He’d been so distracted by her questions that he hadn’t even noticed that his stomach had relaxed and his breathing had almost gone back to normal. The reddish-black haze of fear that had been threatening to swallow him was back to a tiny wisp in the back of his mind.
“Better,” he mumbled. “Thanks.”
“Don’t mention it,” Lilith said, looking eminently pleased that he had.
She handed him a water bulb and he took a long gulp. His skin still felt cold and clammy, but otherwise it was as if the panic attack really had been just a part of his dream.
“Anyway, how do you know someone has a crush on me?” he asked.
“For one, because I’ve got quite the girlish intuition. I notice things.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
“Also, though, because last week she told Marcy Dagher.”
Michael paused. “Really?”
“Big crush. Her words.”
Michael tried to picture any of the girls in their class saying something like that. “Who was it?”
Lilith shook her head and mimed pulling a zipper across her lips.
>
“But—”
“Hey, is it normal that the sky is green? Because it’s halfway between gorgeously beautiful and totally freaking me out.”
He sighed. Lilith could be completely infuriating sometimes. “It’s just the radiation from the flare bouncing off the magnetic field. It’s perfectly safe.”
“Hum,” she said, leaning her head back against her seat again. After a few minutes Michael was sure she’d fallen asleep, but suddenly she sat upright again.
“This station is where the magnetic field is generated, right?”
“Kind of,” Michael said. “Underneath the station is a giant magnetic inducer. There’s some kind of weird quantum reaction with another inducer at the south pole—”
“Weird quantum reaction,” she said, waving her hand. “Got it. And the crazy green light definitely isn’t dangerous?”
“It’s completely harmless. I promise.”
She pointed up at the sky. “Then why is it doing . . . that?”
For a moment Michael didn’t understand what Lilith was talking about. The aurora was going through one of its phases where it collected into a tangle of bright lines that pulsed and twisted like a massive knot. Then he realized that all of the tendrils of light were being pulled down toward a single spot, as if some unseen force were slowly untangling the knot. Soon all that was left were a dozen flickering lines that converged directly above the glacier.
“That must be where the station is,” he said. “We’re seeing the magnetic field itself.”
He tried to sound confident, as if this was something he’d expected to happen. But inside, he was unnerved. Something about this felt very wrong.
I have to go, his dad had said. What was he doing up in the middle of the night, and why would he have to go so abruptly? Was something happening?
The colorful lines thickened and multiplied, until the sky was filled with dozens of green and red rivers of light that flowed down toward a single spot directly in front of them. The light grew brighter and brighter until only a handful of stars were still visible.