Asimov's SF, February 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  * * * *

  SIX: THE WEIGHT OF WORDS

  Tara had been in outer space only a few weeks when she heard that Cuba had launched a missile at her. It did not bother her as much as she might have expected it would.

  In orbit, within the International Space Station (or ISS; life was too short not to give everything an acronym), Tara felt more disconnected, more trapped than ever. The stars were a gated community, and she was quarantined just outside the airtight walls. Though she was now part of the night sky, she felt further away from it than ever before. Even the novelty of zero gravity lost its magic the second time she had to go to the bathroom.

  Video cameras and Alistair kept Tara constantly under surveillance. Alistair had been on Tara-duty since they'd discovered some mishap caused by the previous ISS crew, which lost them a month's worth of oxygen, and would cost far too much emergency fuel to repair.

  Alistair didn't suffer the babysitting of their little space tourist gladly, especially after she'd ignored his advances. For exactly three seconds, Tara wondered how bored, frustrated, or just plain curious about weightless sex she would have to be to accept an offer that reeked of body spray. She knew that straight men without alternatives might have sex with one another in prison. Would a gay woman ever take similar comfort in the arms of a man in space? Not this man, Tara decided. Not even if not doing so would get her kicked off the ISS.

  And not that it would ever come up, but sex with Pia was also out of the question. Pia treated Tara with an impatience others might have reserved for an untrainable kitten. This sometimes made Tara wonder how a disciplinary squirt gun would behave in zero-G.

  Tara, for her part, was just as paranoid as they were. The walls, ceilings, and floors (and with no absolute orientation, how could you tell which was which?) seemed cluttered with displays, vents, and lighted buttons she feared accidentally tripping or breaking, and thus somehow dooming them all. Tara thought this was what a bone parasite would feel like if it tried to live inside her brittle skeleton.

  There were no secrets on the ISS. Sound seemed to travel impossible distances in the modular corridors of the station. It was as though, because sound couldn't carry in the vacuum outside, every clank and whisper had no horizon to fade into, and chose instead to echo forever within their cramped cubicles.

  Pia, Alistair, and Mission Control all knew the beats of Tara's heart. They sent an electric pulse through her entire body once per day to measure her current body mass and muscle deterioration. They knew how often she ran the pressure-impact cushion on various parts of her body. The device used magnets to simulate Earth gravity, theoretically reminding her bones that just because they didn't need to hold her body upright didn't mean they could just go ahead and waste away. The device was loud enough that the others couldn't not know when she used it.

  They knew her body temperature at all times, something Tara had never before thought of as useful information. She considered asking for it every half hour, and seeing how many lines of a free verse poem she could write using only those numbers.

  They knew what she read. They retrieved and archived wirelessly every word of every draft she wrote on her tablet. They hadn't let her bring paper or books because of the cost in weight, and any paper the astronauts had brought was earmarked for scientific work. So she had a palmtop computer tablet with handwriting recognition and a hard drive full of digitized books and references. She found the selection limiting.

  Of her books, she missed her unabridged dictionary the most. They'd told her it would cost less to hire an army to type every entry into her palmtop than it would be to launch the dead tree version into orbit. Of course they didn't hire that army either. She'd offered to cut off the margins of the book, which should have been a savings of thousands of dollars in paper grams, but that hadn't been enough.

  Mission Control knew within seconds what words she looked up in the limited tablet-dictionary they had given her. If she searched for a word that wasn't in the database, they knew about that, too. They didn't upload the definition to her tablet either; they just kept a record of what she wanted to know. They were bastards. That was the only explanation.

  She tried to write and revise poetry in her head, but her initial thoughts—which she was used to sorting through with private freewriting—were increasingly about nothing but how much she hated people, how much she missed her home library and her favorite bookstores in Rochester, and how God had tried to create her as a bird and failed miserably because it turned out he, too, was a bastard.

  She considered giving up, just passively reading for the rest of the flight, and maybe asking Mission Control to upload some anagram games to her palmtop to keep her occupied. It wasn't her fault she was blocked for the first time in her life. She was learning to create, to think, on her public stage, but it was slow going, like learning to write left-handed after a lifetime of right-handedness crunched to a halt by a broken wrist. There was a better analogy in there somewhere about drowning, but she couldn't think clearly enough to see it through. So there.

  Pia and Alistair had no use for her. They were busy with their own projects, science experiments that they didn't have the time or patience to explain to Tara.

  Tara wanted to do experiments of her own. She wanted to flip through those hefty pages of her unabridged dictionary in zero gravity. She wanted to be the first woman on the Moon, if only to piss off Pia or at least get away from her, but of course they were both stuck in orbit with the rest of the space program. She wanted to weightlessly sip Shiraz from a traditional wine glass. It would take forever and make a mess, but it could be fun with the right drinking buddy. Tara wished she could let Bhuvana feel how firm her breasts had gotten in zero-G. Sometimes she wrote: “Muscle deterioration, my ass” in her tablet over and over, without further explanation. She was more alone than ever, and never alone enough.

  So when Alistair floated his head into her cabin and asked her to come to the command module “right now,” she thought she might be in trouble, that she'd forced them to find a way to send her home early. It was a good feeling, to be wanted somewhere.

  After every movement, Tara still had to stop and allow her equilibrium to catch up with what she could see in front of her. Although there weren't many compartments in the ISS, each one could seem foreign when what you expected to be above you was now on your right, when you had never had this or that LCD at your feet before, and when you hoped that the lever you'd just snapped wasn't anything important. She took at least one wrong turn before finding a familiar orientation and following it to the command module.

  "We don't know why,” Pia said quietly when Tara finally joined them, “but Cuba has attacked us."

  Pia was upside down to Tara as she said this, and Tara could not help but think it was a scene that belonged in an L. Frank Baum book. Cubans attacking upside-down munchkins seemed very plausible in a place like Oz.

  "Hey!” Alistair poked Tara in the shoulder with his finger, the invasive way he would when he wanted her attention. “Are you smiling?"

  "Am I?” Tara asked.

  She imagined that Alistair's skeleton was half as brittle as her own, and how far she would like to bend his finger backward. If they were about to die, who was going to care about a few broken bones?

  * * * *

  Moser originally picked Cuba as a launch base partly because he could build his project there using relatively inexpensive parts and labor, but also because it was closer to an equatorial launch than anything he could find in the United States. With Moser's revolutionary-but-limited engine, he needed to piggyback off as much of the Earth's maximum rotational velocity as he could get if he was ever going to reach orbital speed. And, just as importantly, one's launch determines one's orbit. Since Florida travel agencies were notoriously stingy about handing out permission to launch home-made rockets from the Kennedy Space Center, Moser determined that this location was his second best chance for hitting his mark.

  He knew it was possibl
e that the launch could be interpreted as an attack on the United States ("International” Space Station? Who were they kidding?), but he figured that by the time anyone worked out his trajectory they would also note his deceleration and thus discover he was no threat to anyone.

  It certainly wasn't Moser's intention to attack the ISS. In fact, he just wanted to stop by for a couple of hours.

  Then he'd be on his way.

  * * * *

  FIVE: CUBAN EINSTEIN

  When the “missile” launched from Cuba matched the speed of the ISS, and seemed more interested in joining than harming them, only Pia continued to view the object as a problem. She only seemed to enjoy the experiences that she'd already practiced in a simulator. To Tara it was the most interesting thing that had happened so far on the trip, even if it meant there would be another person that she'd have to interact with.

  They still didn't have a visual when the radio lit up and a deep male voice announced: “Saludos, Alpha."

  Alistair looked at Pia. “There's no ship called ‘Saludos,’ is there?"

  "It means ‘greetings,'” Tara said. “It's Spanish.” She felt confident in saying it. She felt useful.

  "You speak Spanish?” The question was to Alistair, not to Tara.

  "Nope."

  Pia sighed, which is what she always did before forcing herself to talk directly to Tara. Tara was still playing the role of Pia's kitten.

  "Okay, Tara,” Pia said, not making much effort to hide her predetermined disappointment. “Time to be useful then.” She sighed again. Tara wondered if kittens could sense passive-aggressive behavior.

  "I only speak a little, really,” Tara said. A few inappropriate words from high school popped into her mind, along with memories of how she couldn't wait to drop the class. She'd read a great deal of Spanish language poetry, but only in translation. She had thought about uploading a foreign language reference to her palmtop tablet earlier, but it just hadn't seemed important at the time. And, if she had, she probably would have chosen Hindi, not Spanish.

  But Pia pulled Tara by the forearm toward the console anyway, pressed a button, and nodded at her. It wasn't a request.

  "Um.” As always with new people, Tara didn't know what to say. When she got back to Earth, she planned on using the whole space thing as a conversation starter. Maybe now she should purr and at least make Pia happy. “Es usted Cubano?” she asked slowly.

  "Si!” the voice came back. And then there was a quick jumble of words Tara didn't understand.

  Tara apologized to Pia, ashamed. She sucked at being a cat. She was better at pretending to be a bird. “I didn't get any of that,” she said.

  "Dock, please?” the voice on the radio said.

  "I think he wants to dock!” Tara said excitedly.

  "Yeah. Figured that one out, thanks.” Pia said. “Ask him how many people he's got in there."

  Tara tried to focus, working backward toward remembering the language. She counted in Spanish in her head from one to six, couldn't remember seven, and drew a blank when it came to asking the question. Maybe if Alistair and Pia went on an EVA and shut off their radios for a minute, she'd be able to think clearly enough to get it back. Instead she shook her head apologetically. She sucked at Spanish. She was a bilingual failure.

  Pia grabbed the back of Tara's T-shirt and pulled her away from the radio. Tara felt as though Pia were carrying her by the scruff of the neck as she floated backward from the lighted console.

  "I don't even want to think about the sicknesses they could be bringing up here,” Alistair said.

  Pia raised her hand as if to slap him in the back of his head. This Tara could respect.

  Alistair rolled his eyes. “God, no. I don't mean because they're Cuban. I mean: we were quarantined before launch. They probably weren't."

  The radio squawked again. “Asylum, please?"

  Alistair burst out laughing.

  "Quiet,” Pia said.

  "I'm sorry,” Alistair said. “But anybody builds a rocket instead of a boat to cross to the States, they're gonna be the most valuable immigrant since Einstein. I guess I'll risk a fever.” He laughed again.

  Pia nodded, depressed the radio button, and then pressed an adjacent button. All the console buttons looked the same to Tara, with each cryptic acronym having more than one meaning she couldn't remember. She sucked at being in space, too.

  "Mission Control, we have some good news and bad news,” Pia said. She repeated the good news using much of Alistair's phrasing. The bad news, she said, was that even a fourth person on the station would tear through their resources—already depleted by the previous crew's accident—at an alarming rate. And it was still almost eight months before the next planned shuttle launch.

  "If anything else goes wrong up here or anything delays the shuttle,” Pia said, “I don't know how long we'll be able to keep four or more people alive."

  Of the Cuban Einstein, two astronauts, and feline poet, Tara knew which was most expendable. Maybe they'd be kind enough to aim the airlock at the Moon before they pushed her out?

  * * * *

  The latch opened and Moser smiled at the three residents of the ISS. There was the small white woman and the skinny dark-haired man next to her, both trying to maintain formal posture in the weightlessness. Behind them, at the far entrance to the docking bay, was a taller black woman, smiling. Even if Moser hadn't recognized them from the news photographs, it would have been easy to tell which one was the space tourist.

  "He doesn't look Cuban,” the space tourist said. She wore a T-shirt and cargo pants. Her arms were stretched above her head. She leaned forward at Moser, more curious than professional.

  "Quiet, Tara,” said the little woman in front.

  "Sorry, but didn't we decide he doesn't speak English?"

  "Un poco,” Moser said. A little bit.

  Moser pretended to struggle with broken English, and introduced himself as Esteban, a Cuban refugee seeking asylum. If the astronauts were impressed with his ingenuity, or with the way his rocket docked seamlessly with the ISS, they didn't show it. He moved slowly. He was cautious, but not overly clumsy. He knew he mustn't make them think he was capable of any harm to them or the ISS, even unintentional harm. The real difficulty, though, was in containing his excitement at having made it this far.

  Moser carried a pen-shaped device in his pocket. Even now, after years of preparation, he had doubts about this part of the plan. If any idea was laced with poison, it was this one. Perhaps he could trust these astronauts. Perhaps he could tell them his intentions, and then no more deception would be necessary. Perhaps they would have their own ideas and solutions and they could work together for all mankind. They were all Americans, after all. They were all scientists, explorers. Except for the poet, these were his peers.

  He remembered his joy when Aaron had unexpectedly embraced one of his dreams. But it was not this dream. No one shared this dream, though he hoped many would somehow benefit. He remembered his crushing disappointment when last he'd shared this dream with a person of science. He knew he was on his own.

  Moser slipped his hand into his pocket and thumbed the pen-shaped device. A few minutes into his disjointed conversation with the astronauts, he activated it.

  * * * *

  FOUR: UNDER A PIRATE'S BREATH

  "Shit,” Alistair said. “I think we just lost contact with Mission Control.” They were right outside the docking bay, attempting small talk with Esteban while Mission Control scrambled to get a Spanish translator on the line. Mission Control being in Texas, the astronauts hadn't thought it would take so long.

  Pia looked at Tara. “Keep an eye on our friend. Can you do that? See if he wants some water? Make sure he doesn't touch anything?” She turned to Esteban and poked him in the shoulder, Alistair-style. “If you damaged my station with your little publicity stunt, I will kill you."

  Pia and Alistair floated back to the command module, leaving Esteban in Tara's care. Tara had had nightma
res like this: she was an ambassador and an international crisis depended upon her underdeveloped social skills. The world was doomed. She might as well start kicking buttons on the wall.

  They smiled at each other cordially. Tara wondered if Esteban's presence had anything to do with Mission Control's silence. Had he broken something when he'd docked? In training they'd told her the ISS was pretty well armored against space debris and kamikaze satellites. Could Esteban be the reincarnated Buddha? Had his launch doomed the souls of mankind on Earth? Tara couldn't remember the Spanish word for bones.

  "Would you like something to drink?” she asked slowly, in English. She lifted her hand to her mouth, miming drinking from a glass. She wouldn't know how to mime a bladder and straw.

  Esteban turned away from her, seemingly more interested in the wall of clutter outside the docking bay. It was like enormous Velcro wallpaper, dense with tools, writing instruments, and lab equipment in a disordered array where everything was accessible, but nothing was easy to find. She watched Esteban reach out and touch it before turning back to her.

  "No, thank you,” he said quietly in English.

  His accent was not Cuban. It was American. Southern. Georgia maybe? Bhuvana was better at placing people. Tara should call her.

  "What?” Tara said. “What's going on?” She wanted to back away from him, but, floating as freely as she was, she didn't have any kind of leverage by which to push herself. She was still new enough at this that she thought she could move by swimming.

  Esteban, however, was grounded. Tara realized he had one foot hooked under a wall notch with the expertise she had seen demonstrated by Pia and Alistair. He moved faster than Tara thought possible in the weightlessness, and grabbed her by the arm.

  He pulled Tara close, and then let go of her arm so he could cover her mouth with the same hand, all this before she could think to scream.

  "Sorry about this,” Esteban said coolly. He kicked off the wall, flying them back into the docking bay.