Khan: “A candy emergency.”
Alisa: “This is my project and I decide what constitutes an emergency! Do I need to remind you that I report directly to the secretary of state? If anything goes wrong here, it’s your neck on the line, Khan!”
Khan: “Terrorists are attacking the Moon, Doc. I’m sure State has more important things to worry about than whatever lab animal you’ve got caged up in there that needs to have its sweet tooth satisfied.”
Alisa: “Just get us out of here and get me some damn candy.”
* * *
As soon as I hear Khan moving toward the cockpit again, I strike up a conversation with Hong.
“She’s coming back,” I say. “Pretend you’ve been teaching me about the controls here.”
To his credit, he doesn’t miss a beat, and starts speaking a split second before the cockpit door slides open. “Normally the stealth coating will absorb all incoming energy, including visible light and radio waves, but the override pops open a hatch to do passive sensing for four hundred milliseconds. That’s long enough to confirm the ship’s position from stars and navigation beacons.” He turns to look at Khan. “All done?”
Khan looks at me. “You were listening, weren’t you?”
There’s really no point lying to her. “Yes. But it’s not like she told you anything I couldn’t hear anyway.”
“No,” Khan agrees. “But I had to pretend to play her game to get her talking.”
“I notice you didn’t tell her we’re out of immediate danger,” I say.
“She doesn’t need to know that.” Khan turns to Jessica. “You have any idea what her project might be?”
“You seem to already know that it involves live animal test subjects,” Jessica says.
“They can’t hide all their supplies,” Khan says.
“They wouldn’t need to hide it so badly if it wasn’t highly sensitive,” Jessica says. “I’m guessing it’s either nanotech with biological components—”
“Swarms?” Hong says, with more than a hint of terror in his voice. Ever since the Fruitless Year, the public has been understandably skittish about hybrid biotech. Robots, cool. Cyborgs, not so much.
“—or some kind of noninvasive gene therapy delivery system,” Jessica continues. “Her Ph.D. thesis dealt with artificial airborne viral vectors.”
“Wait,” I say. “You went to school with Alisa Garro?”
Jessica sighs. “We’ve known each other for a long time.”
“How long?”
“Save the backstory deep dive for later,” Khan says. “Kangaroo. Do you have any candy?”
“Yeah, I can spare a couple of—”
“Good. Hong, status?”
“Found us a crater to land in,” Hong says. “ETA four minutes.”
Khan turns back to me. “Let’s finish those radio checks, Kangaroo.”
* * *
Five minutes later, we’ve confirmed that all the other ships in the pocket are doing just fine, and Hong has set us down in a crater half lit by sunlight. Khan and Jessica and I move back into the cargo bay and start putting on spacesuits.
“How concerned are we that someone’s going to spot us out there?” I ask while stepping into the bottom half of my suit.
“Minimally,” Khan says, climbing into the top half of her suit. Why is she so much faster at this than I am? “I’m more worried about someone noticing when you pull an entire shuttlecraft out of the pocket.”
“Fair point.” I pick up my helmet. “Anything we can do about that?”
“This ship was only designed to hide itself,” Khan says. “No detachable camouflage devices.” Some military spacecraft carry their own stealth canopies to hide certain maneuvers or deployments from external view. I definitely prefer to use the pocket out of public view.
“Maybe there’s survival gear here,” I say, waving around the cargo bay. “We just need some sort of opaque covering, to hide us from potential orbital observers.”
“You have emergency structures in the pocket,” Jessica says. “Survival shelters, triage tents—”
“Oh! Yeah.” I blink my eye to bring up Oliver’s list of supplies. I can’t remember all the stuff he makes me pack into the pocket for every active mission, so we always make a list and check it twice. “Here we go. Three work shelters. Each one stands three meters tall, with a hexagonal canopy three meters across. We can fit them together to hide the shuttle.”
“We’ll also need to raise them higher than three meters,” Khan says. “You can’t open the pocket into solid matter, right?”
“Right,” I say. “Solid objects will stop the event horizon from expanding any farther.” That can be useful sometimes, when I want to pop open a portal that fills an entire hallway, for example. Don’t even have to think about controlling the dimensions; just open it until it stops on its own.
“Pull all three canopies,” Jessica says. “We’ll take the support struts from one and add them to the other two. That’ll get us six meters of height, which should be enough to bring the shuttle through.”
“Should we get Hong to help us?” I ask.
“Negative,” Khan says. “He needs to be ready to fly us the hell out of here if anyone does notice us.”
The work shelters are packed into pretty compact cases, so I open the pocket inside the ship’s cargo bay—we’ve already opened it to vacuum, so I can open portals without the barrier—and pull all three items. Khan and Jessica help me drag out each one—the cases are weightless inside the pocket, but once they cross the portal threshold the Moon’s gravity takes over and pulls them to the deck.
We quickly assemble the canopies just outside the open cargo bay doors, planning to open the portal perpendicular to this ship’s ramp so Mapalé has plenty of runway for a dead-stick landing.
“Good to go,” Khan says after testing the last strut she lashes into place. “Six meters by three.”
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s hope nobody’s looking in our direction.”
I stand at the edge of the canopy that ends next to the cargo ramp and visualize my reference object—a blank prescription pad—and open the portal on the other side of the next canopy, six meters away. I push the portal open, without the barrier, all the way up to the canopy and down to the Lunar surface.
The shuttle comes sailing out of the portal, headed straight for me. It’s not moving fast, but it’s big, and it gets bigger by the second. I can’t close the portal until it’s all the way through, or bad things will happen.
“Slowing down?” I say over the radio. “Slowing down would be good now, Mapalé!”
I see Khan working the wrist controls on her suit at the same time that the thrusters in the nose of the shuttle fire, sending Lunar dust flying everywhere and obstructing my view of the approaching spacecraft.
“Got it,” Khan says over my suit radio. “Just hold tight.”
I bite my tongue and will myself not to throw up my arms in a reflexive but futile gesture of defense. The Lunar dust doesn’t hang in the air—no atmosphere, so nothing to hold it up—and I get glimpses of the shuttle, looming ever larger, as the thrusters pulse to slow its forward motion. Then gravity drags it down to the surface of the Moon, and the ground shudders as the hull of the shuttlecraft slides along the rocky ground, kicking up even more dust and rattling me in my space boots. Literally.
A moment later, the shuttle grinds to a halt, and I open my eyes again. When did I close my eyes? At least I didn’t throw my hands up. That would have been really embarrassing.
The nose of the shuttle rests about half a meter from where I’m standing. Behind it, I can see the outline of the portal still shimmering, a white ring glowing against the blackness of space. I can also feel a familiar dull ache in the back of my skull—the beginnings of a pocket hangover. I close the portal and turn my head, nudging the helmet controls to extend a drinking tube, and suck down some water.
“Any landing you can walk away from, right?” Khan walks a
round the side of the shuttlecraft and waves at me. “Okay, give me the candy and I’ll take it inside.”
I bump my head against the in-helmet controls and put away the drinking tube. There’s a reason I didn’t pull the sweets before we did this little stunt.
“Negative,” I say to Khan. “We go in together.”
“I’m coming, too,” Jessica says.
Khan sighs. “She’s not going to like this.”
“She can join the club,” I say.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The Moon—farside—shuttle Mapalé
Let’s say 3 minutes before shit gets real
Alisa Garro is waiting for us when the shuttle’s airlock cycles open. She’s standing just inside the inner door, arms folded, the fingers on one hand tapping her elbow. The tapping stops when she sees all three of us—Khan, Jessica, and me—standing in the airlock with our helmets off. Rich Johnson, standing behind her, looks very nervous.
“He can’t be here!” Alisa points at me, then shakes her finger. “They can’t be here!”
“Hello,” I say, waving. “We’re here for the petting zoo tour. I’m going to feed the animals!” I smell smoke. I hope Project Genesis doesn’t involve airborne psychotropic compounds.
Alisa walks up to Khan. “Get them out of here.”
Khan shrugs. “Your problem, Doc. By the way, we’ve got ten minutes before we need to leave.” They’ve silenced the audible alarms, but red alert lights are still flashing all around the cabin. A warning message on one screen says they’ve got less than fifteen minutes of life support remaining.
Alisa fumes and turns to me with a fiery glare. “You are not authorized—”
“Let me explain the situation,” I say. “It’s real simple, Doc. I have something you want. You have something I want. We make the exchange, and everyone’s happy.”
“I can’t do that,” Alisa says.
“Well, then, I guess we’ll be leaving,” I say, moving to put my helmet back on.
Jessica steps forward. “Ali.” She pronounces it like “alley.” Why are you on a nickname basis with this person?
“I’m not talking to you,” Alisa says.
“Then you’re going to listen,” Jessica says. “I know you’ve got some kind of live animal specimen back there.” She points to a sealed compartment behind Alisa. “And if this shuttle really is losing oxygen, you’re risking that life to keep a secret that isn’t even yours.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alisa says.
“What’s more important?” Jessica says. “Keeping your animal alive? Or keeping your job with State?”
“You have no idea what you’re asking.”
“Stop being so dramatic,” Jessica snaps. “Just tell me. Tell me what’s so important you can’t attend your own mother’s funeral.”
“Wait,” I say. “Wait, what?”
“Six years!” Alisa says, her hands balled into fists. “I have been on this rock for six years straight! I couldn’t tell anyone. That was the deal. I had to give up everything so I could—”
She slaps a hand over her mouth and screams into it. Jessica waits for her to finish before speaking again.
“Why?” Jessica asks, in a softer tone. “Why didn’t you rotate back to Earth?”
“I chose to stay. There was a window, but then—” Alisa shakes her head. “We had a breakthrough, and I had to choose. I couldn’t just hand off the project to someone else and go away for more than a year. I couldn’t leave—” She squeezes her eyes shut. “I chose to stay. So now I can’t go back. That’s why I couldn’t be there.”
“You could have said something,” Jessica says. “Anything. We would have understood—”
“Like you’re understanding now?” Alisa snaps.
“I’m working on it,” Jessica says. “I’m here, aren’t I?”
They stare at each other for a while.
“Okay,” I say. “What the hell is going on?”
“Let them talk,” Khan says to me. “Haven’t you ever seen sisters arguing? Just give them a minute.”
I feel lightheaded for a second. Then I step closer to Jessica and say in a very loud voice: “SISTERS?” No wonder her personnel file was so light on personal information.
“Half sisters,” she says without looking at me. “We had the same mother.”
“I’m sorry,” Alisa says. “I know it’s not worth much, but I am.”
Jessica puts a hand on her shoulder. “It’s a start.”
I turn to Alisa. “ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?”
Khan grabs the collar of my spacesuit and pulls me back. “You’re not helping, Kangaroo. Doctors, we need to leave in less than nine minutes.”
“Understood,” Jessica says. She’s still looking at Alisa. “What’s the candy for?”
Alisa shakes her head. “I’ll show you.” She points at me. “But not him.”
“No deal,” I say.
“Dr. Garro,” Rich says quietly, “Kangaroo might be able to offer some insight into our issue—”
“No,” Alisa says. “This is not happening.”
“We never anticipated this particular situation,” Rich says. “You know that term you’re so fond of? A ‘failure of imagination’? Well, I would really argue that’s what we’ve run into here.”
Alisa puts her face in both hands and mumbles something that might be severely profane.
“We’re in trouble,” Rich says, “and the two people who might know how to help are standing right in front of you.” He glances up at me. Still creepy.
Alisa drops her hands and shakes her head. “This is not happening.”
“Remember that other saying you like? ‘No secret keeps forever’?” Rich shrugs. “Maybe you’ve kept this one long enough.”
“State will not like this,” Alisa says.
“Which do you think State will like less?” Rich asks. “Sharing the secret? Or letting it die?”
“Fucking Sophie’s choice,” Alisa groans.
“Hey!” I didn’t think anyone else knew that antiquated reference. “I know what that is!”
I look at Jessica. She’s not nearly as excited about this as I am.
“You know what?” Alisa throws up her hands. “Fuck it. I’m losing my job anyway at this point. I might as well go out in a blaze of glory.” She glares at me. “It’ll be better than the last time I got fired, anyway.”
“To be fair,” I say, “I was just the whistleblower.”
Alisa jabs a finger at me. “Fuck you.” She turns the finger on Jessica. “Fuck you.” Then Khan. “Fuck you.” Finally Rich. “Fuck all you motherfuckers.”
I lean toward Jessica. “Are you sure you’re related?”
“Quiet,” she replies.
“All right!” Alisa twirls around and walks to a locked hatch. “Come one, come all! Step right up and see the show!”
“It’s going to be fine,” Rich says, walking backward to the hatch. “It’s going to be okay. Just—” He gives me a hard stare. “Don’t freak out.”
“Why would I freak out?” I ask.
“It’s going to be okay,” he repeats, as if he’s trying to convince himself.
* * *
Bright, raucous music fills the shuttle as soon as Alisa opens the hatch. Not just music, though—I also hear a cacophony of overlapping human voices. Recordings? Why do they sound familiar?
We enter the compartment on the other side of the locked hatch, which appears to be an entire separate cargo bay. But there’s no cargo here. The whole space appears to have been converted into a habitat for someone very messy. There are clothes piled in various places on the floor, computer tablets and other electronic gadgets strewn about, and at least three different vid screens playing entertainment programs.
That explains the music and voices. I recognize all the vids, too—they’re old twentieth-century animations. Some of my favorites when I was kid, in fact. There’s that yellow sea sponge in the pineapple
, there’s the duck and rabbit arguing about hunting season, there’s the moose and squirrel—
Who the hell is living in here?
I follow a trail of short-sleeved shirts around a stack of boxes. There’s a small human figure sitting in a chair—some kind of medical treatment setup, like the scanning chambers back at Lunar General, with instruments on flexible arms and a control panel on the side. A black medical-signal collar is closed around the person’s neck, and the display surface is lit up with numbers and colors indicating his physiological state.
I look closer and freeze in my tracks.
The person in the chair is a child. A boy. His eyes are closed. Looks like he’s asleep. Brown-skinned, messy mop of black hair, a face that shows its angles even through the baby fat that still clings to it. Lights in the transparent dome over his head flicker over that face. A face that I’m intimately familiar with.
It’s my face. The face I was born with, before all this cosmetic surgery—
I’m not freaking out. I’m not freaking out. I’m not—FUCK!
It feels like all the moisture has been sucked out of my mouth. This can’t be happening. This can’t be what I think it is.
And yet, some part of me is aware that this was probably inevitable.
“Who’s that?” I hear myself asking.
“His name’s Joey,” Alisa says.
I stare at the boy for a moment, then turn to give her an incredulous look. “Really?”
She shrugs. “Not my decision.”
“Really?” I seem to be shaking both fists in the air. “Joey? Really?”
“Explains why she’s ‘Dr. Jill,’” Jessica mutters.
“I don’t get it,” Khan says.
“They’re terms for kangaroos,” Rich says. “The animals, I mean. An adult male is a ‘jack,’ a female is a ‘jill,’ and a baby is a ‘joey.’”
I can’t fucking believe this.
“How old is he?” Jessica asks.
“Six years old next month,” Rich says.
This is ridiculous. This is completely insane.
“What does this have to do with the shuttle venting atmosphere?” Khan asks. That’s good. It’s good that one person here is still on task.
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