Walking on the Sea of Clouds

by Gray Rinehart

  He took solace in the routine, and lost himself in the repetitive motions of moving, sighting in, and attaching the rails. Time slipped away in the blissful monotony.

  “Hey, Van?”

  The shift was only half over. Momentary static blurred the speaker’s voice, but his suit indicated the signal came from George Herbert.

  “Yeah, George, whatcha need?” Van asked.

  “Just wondering. Is it true the Pastorelli chick never thanked you for saving her life?”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  “I’ve got my sources,” George said. “Story goes that she bitched out your old lady for disposing of Frank’s body, and that’s why Barbara’s leaving.”

  “Strike one, strike two, and strike three. You’re out.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  Van didn’t want to go into details. He didn’t think George had earned them. True, Stormie had avoided speaking to Van for almost two weeks after the incident, until the inquest that Gary convened back the fourth of February. It wasn’t a real inquest, but that’s what Gary called it. It was more a response to the ruckus Barbara had raised on Stormie’s behalf.

  Van and Barbara had both come to Frank’s defense, as did Jake Adamson, the Stewarts, and a number of others. Everyone heard from Stormie’s partner down on Earth, Jim something-or-other, and some high-rollers in the Consortium and a couple of government commissions. In the end, the man behind the AC’s curtain—Morris Hansen himself—got on the line and personally vouched for the Jim guy and through him for Frank. He asked if they could recover from the loss of public good will their refusal to pay would cause, which Van took to mean the loss of Morris Hansen’s good will.

  Nobody wants to lose favor with the fifth or sixth richest man on the planet. It didn’t surprise anyone that the insurance company rep agreed in short order to release the benefits to Stormie.

  That was a pretty classy move on Hansen’s part, he had to admit. But Van had always thought that who you are is one thing, but what you do is a lot more important.

  Afterward, Stormie thanked Van for the good things he said about Frank. “That’s why you should’ve saved him instead of me,” she said.

  Van shook his head. “I would’ve saved him if I could, but he was already gone. Truth is, I didn’t save you: he did.”

  She touched him lightly on the arm. “Thanks anyway,” she said. And that was enough.

  All of the inquest stuff was public record, so Van gave George only enough additional explanation to shut him up. “Stormie thanked me on Monday, after the inquest,” he said. “The same day, she thanked Barbara for taking care of Frank at the very end. And Barbara … she just wants to go home where you can die under the open sky and the Earth will take your body in its own good time.”

  And nobody can blame her for that.

  Van thought maybe, just maybe, he should’ve said those last words out loud instead of just thinking them. But that would mean he accepted, or maybe understood, why she wanted to go. Did he really? If so, he wasn’t sure he wanted to admit it.

  Paul Timmons said, “So what are you going to do, Van? You going back down below? Become a ground pounder again?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe.”

  “You guys keep your minds on your work,” said Sonny Peterson, the crew foreman.

  “I hear a couple of the asteroid miners want out,” George said. “You could get put on that rotation.” Under his breath, but still on the radio, he added, “It’d get you out of our hair, at least.”

  Van stopped in the middle of rigging a rail section for lifting. He ignored George’s last jibe. He had considered asteroid mining once before; maybe it was time to consider it again.

  Van smiled, and resumed rigging the rail with new enthusiasm. He’d have to look up Henry Crafts.…

  Chapter Thirty-four

  To Make This Reality Match the Dream

  Friday, 15 February 2036

  A half-dozen flimsy red paper hearts hung around Grand Central the day after the Valentine’s party. Stormie wondered where Maggie got the red paper.

  She had avoided the area while the party was going on the night before, the way she avoided so many social situations lately. The aching tug that threatened to pull her heart down into her bowels intensified as she watched the simple decorations flutter in the ventilation system breeze.

  Not that she had gone without a party at all, thanks to Maggie.

  Maggie and the other ladies had tried repeatedly over the three weeks since Frank’s death to coax Stormie back into playing cards, but she demurred. To keep up with the responsibilities she and Frank had assumed, Stormie had immersed herself in work. Even with Barbara helping for a few hours every other day or so, Stormie had to build new routines to complete all the work she and Frank together had done before. The routines had the added benefit of keeping her mind occupied; unfortunately, they were also bastions and ramparts that kept her isolated. But she was willing to pay that price, because above all she had a promise to keep to Frank: that she would not give up, and the colony would not fail.

  So on Wednesday night Maggie, Harmony, Beverly, and Barbara, along with Rosaria Morera and Angela Beacon, crowded into the Lunar Life Engineering lab and wouldn’t let Stormie get any work done.

  “It’s ten o’clock,” Harmony said, “you’ve done enough work for the day.”

  Stormie started to protest. “Well, I still have—”

  “No, you don’t,” Yvette yelled from the hallway. “Doctor’s orders.”

  “And it’s Valentine’s Eve,” Maggie said. “Perfect for a girls’ night out. Or in. Or something.”

  They “kidnapped” her then, as if there were very many places to take her. They did it right, though: they blindfolded her and marched her through the tunnels for what seemed like half an hour. When they removed the blindfold, she found herself in the 600 block of Fourth Avenue, which was in the middle of being torn apart and re-built from the inside. Some of the interior partitions had been removed and the kitchen area was being reconfigured and attached to a lunch counter spanning two adjacent cubicles.

  They had never tracked down the exact cause of the food poisoning that had laid everyone low while Stormie was gone, but since Gary centralized the food preparation the problem hadn’t recurred; so he’d given Gabe Morera clearance to start another eatery to reduce the crowding in Grand Central. On Wednesday night, it was more a mess than a mess hall, but the girls had set up a couple of tables and a flat screen so they could eat and watch movies.

  As they settled in, Beverly said, “Here, I think you could use this,” and put a shot glass in Stormie’s hand. She poured it a little over half full of vodka. Stormie didn’t bother to ask how much it cost to get the liquor shipped up. She held her breath and tipped the vodka down her throat. She choked a little on the vapors, but the burn comforted her.

  Beverly poured a bit into all the mugs and shot glasses they had, and raised her own to Stormie. “A toast,” she said, and her eyes glittered, “to Franklin Jefferson Pastorelli. May our husbands love us half as much as he loved you.”

  “Hear, hear,” the others chorused, and they all drank together.

  The liquor was the same as before—its thin consistency, pale color, and faint hint of citrus—but this time her throat closed around it like a valve. She choked, and for an instant remembered the feeling of not being able to breathe. She sputtered and coughed and caught her breath, grateful for the lungfuls of air and even for the girls laughing as they pounded her on the back.

  The movie night had been fun, and it had taken a little of the sting out of knowing the Valentine’s Day party was the next night. Now, in the aftermath of that party, Stormie doubted anything would ever take the sting out completely. But, life was full of stings—like yellow jackets living in rotten logs, minding their own business until you walk by them through the woods. Sometimes you get a single sting, sometimes a swarm … and sometimes you develop anaphylactic shock. The sti
ngs she would have to learn how to handle; the shock she would keep trying to avoid.

  Stormie nodded at Maggie, who waved from where she was standing next to Rex. They were still the unofficial welcoming committee for new arrivals, since Gary okayed it and nobody else seemed quite so well suited for the task. Stormie was still uncomfortable around them at times, but she couldn’t begrudge them the effort. They had been nicer to her than she probably deserved, and never seemed offended by the cold shoulder she gave them. She smiled a little as the first newcomers came through from Gateway into Grand Central, and the Stewarts converged on them with handshakes and grins.

  Stormie turned away from the greeting ritual, and almost bumped into Barbara.

  “Sorry, Stormie,” said Barbara. “Here to see the new arrivals?”

  “I guess,” Stormie said. “It doesn’t happen every day. I should make sure they fit the profiles I have on them. See if my calculations are going to cover them okay.”

  Barbara nodded, but her face betrayed her disbelief. “And you can verify that by looking at them?”

  Stormie looked back over at the newcomers, and wished her heart would lighten enough that she could make up some fantastic story about the exercise habits of the young—oh, almost absurdly young—Asian couple now talking to Rex. She stopped for a second before she decided that, no, it wasn’t Marilyn Chu and another man, and in that instant she lost even the wish to carry on with any banter.

  “No,” she said, “I guess not.”

  Barbara touched her on the arm. “I’m sorry I won’t be around to help you much longer,” she said.

  “I appreciate all you’ve done,” Stormie said, and realized she meant it more than she intended. “Not just in the lab from time to time, which I would still like to pay you for—”

  “No need.”

  “—but really, for everything. For taking care of Frank. For helping Maggie keep me attached to the land of the living.”

  “That’s okay,” Barbara said. “We don’t leave for another couple of days, so maybe I can do some more.”

  “Don’t worry about it. So you’re really leaving on Wednesday?”

  “That’s the plan. Preflight briefing Tuesday evening. Are you going to be okay? You’ll be able to handle everything okay after I’m gone?”

  “I think so. For a while, anyway, at least until Jim finds someone we can add to our contract.” They stood in silence for a moment as two more couples went through the Stewarts’ receiving line. “Where’s Van?” Stormie asked.

  Barbara rolled her eyes. “He came in from his shift, ate supper while his suit recharged, and went out for another.”

  “I want to make sure to thank him again, too, before y’all leave. He is leaving with you, isn’t he?”

  “He’s supposed to. I’ll believe it when I see him suited up and in the airlock. Or maybe when I see him climb the ladder into the ferry. Until then, I don’t know. I do know he’s going to be looking for you before we leave, though.”

  “Why?”

  “He’s going to give you the little cactus he brought up here—there’s a whole story behind it, I’ll let him tell you.”

  “Oh,” Stormie said, flooded by grief for Frank at the thought of the tomato plant Maggie had given him, on its little shelf in their room, now to be joined by a cactus. Taking care of them was something he would have loved. She caught herself before the emotion swept her away, and hoped Barbara heard the sincerity she wanted to express more than her nervous sadness. “I guess taking it is the least I can do, since he got Gary and the AC to cancel their buyout. Frank would’ve liked that.”

  “I heard Van and Gary had less to do with the AC backing off than you getting some new capital. From a real princess?”

  Stormie shook her head and flushed, surprised at the depth of information that grew on the grapevine and ashamed to be reminded of Santa Barbara, where Frank implored her to be careful and after which … it was better not to think of that.

  Another pair of new colonists entered Grand Central, and she changed the subject. “I heard Van was talking about shipping out again.”

  Barbara nodded. “To Aten-Galliani, yeah. He thinks he wants to work inside the asteroid. I suppose I should feel lucky that he’s not talking about shipping all the way out to retrieve another one. We’ll see what happens.”

  Stormie glanced up at the lunar mid-day sunlight streaming in from the high horizontal windows. “You think you’ll let him?”

  Barbara laughed. “As long as he doesn’t expect me to go with him.” She walked to one of the little tables and grabbed a couple of small carrots. She nibbled the first one, and said, “Van wouldn’t last a whole season on the ranch, it’d drive him crazy. This really is where he belongs, here or someplace very much like here, and we both know it.

  “You know, when we were in the service, I used to integrate satellite payloads onto rockets and get them ready to launch. And I thought I wanted to come up here, too—that this was the place I belonged. Whenever I had my doubts, Van or BD or whoever would listen and let me work out whatever was going on in my head. They didn’t push me, one way or the other, and I don’t feel them pushing me now. I don’t feel like they’re ‘letting’ me go home, really … so I don’t know if I’d be ‘letting’ Van go off to the asteroid mine.”

  “I didn’t really mean it like that,” Stormie said.

  Barbara waved a dismissive hand. “I know. I’m a little touchy about it. I’ve decided this isn’t the place I want to make my legacy, but I know it still is that place for Van. It’s the difference between a dream and reality, you know? In the dream, it’s perfect and will always be perfect. And when reality doesn’t match the dream, we either accept the differences and move on, or work to make the two match up, or look for another dream. If it was worth it to me, I might work to make this reality match the dream I had, but instead I’m looking for another dream. A simpler dream.”

  Stormie looked up again at the high windows. Dust motes—harmless lint and flakes of skin—moved in Brownian irregularity in the sunlight.

  She didn’t understand Barbara’s attitude, and didn’t want to. It reminded her of the old quatrain,

  I’m folding up my little dreams

  Within my heart to-night,

  And praying I may soon forget

  The torture of their sight.

  Over a century ago, a woman had decided that she had outlived her dreams, that it was better to stash them away out of sight and live out the rest of her days without spending her strength trying to achieve them. What were her little dreams, and did she have any big dreams? Did she hide those away, too? Was that what Barbara was doing?

  Stormie shook her head. She didn’t want to understand, because she was afraid she might convince herself to stash away her dreams, big or small—and, by default, that would mean stashing away Frank’s dream as well. She couldn’t do that. Not now, not yet, maybe not ever.

  Barbara had a faraway look in her eye as she chewed on the last bit of carrot. Stormie imagined that she was seeing the farm or ranch or wherever she was going. If that was her new dream, Stormie would not gainsay it; she just hoped it was a powerful enough dream to compensate for giving up this one. We are the dreamers of dreams, and all our dreams don’t have to be the same.

  “‘Each age is a dream that is dying,’” she quoted, “‘or one that is coming to birth.’”

  “Hmm?” said Barbara. “What’s that?”

  “Nothing,” Stormie said. “Just a poem.” She reached out and took Barbara’s right hand in both of hers. “Just my way of saying, I hope you find the dream that makes you happy.”

  “Thanks. And if I ‘let’ my husband come back up here, as you say, I’ll have him bring you something nice. That is, assuming you’re staying.”

  Stormie looked at the newcomers milling about, talking with some of the veteran colonists and sampling the food the Stewarts had set out. Her stomach tightened with the memory of their first day: their arrival and the
ir summons to Gary’s office. She sniffed. Was the slight staleness in the air her imagination?

  “Yes,” she said, “I’m staying. I can’t leave now. The air systems are balanced for the new numbers, but that won’t last. And then you and Van are leaving on the same flight with the next mining rotation, so I’ll have to re-balance. And Bruce is bringing a new load of ice back on the Turtle in a few days, so all the water systems have to be updated.…”

  “I get it, I think,” Barbara said.

  Stormie wasn’t sure Barbara got it, but doubted if she could explain it. “It’s not just that there’s work to be done,” she said. “It’s that this is the dream that Frank and I shared. And,” she took a deep breath so she could continue, “this is the dream he died for. If I leave, I’m not just leaving my dream behind. I’m leaving behind him and his dream.”

  “A dream that is ‘coming to birth’?”

  Stormie smiled. “Yeah, you might say that.” Maybe she did get it, after all.

  The End

  Acknowledgments

  I owe thanks to so many people for their help with this book that I can’t remember them all. I could take the easy way out and say a general thank-you, but instead I will risk leaving someone out so I can publicly thank as many as possible.

  The idea of writing about environmental engineers on the Moon came from my experience as Chief of Bioenvironmental Engineering and later as Deputy Director of Safety and Health at the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory at Edwards Air Force Base. With that in mind, I must thank the colleagues I worked with most: Ted Evans, Paul Mattson, Jack Sprague (to whom I owe apologies, for I was a stupid new lieutenant), Dan Berlinrut, John Coho, Jim Unmack, Rick Riccardi, John Shirtz, Scott Allen, David Williams, and Sam Burrell.

  Many of my other Air Force colleagues influenced parts of the book, notably Rob Robertson and my neighbor and good friend Dave Bergeron. Double thanks to Gill Paszek not only for his influence on the story but for his careful feedback on the draft manuscript.