Cracking the Sky

by Brenda Cooper

  Noticing the world for him became habit, like green tea steeped for exactly three minutes and like running in the park and chanting his name as her feet hit the ground one after the other. When the distance built in a tiny time delay, she used the seconds to contemplate her next words.

  Every morning, when she and Sulieyan shared cross-shift data over tea in the neglected break room, the older woman asked her about her plans for the day.

  Kami said she would run through the park and she would find something beautiful. Tea with Sulieyan made a zen transition in her day and gave her someone else to talk to besides Lance.

  On one of those mornings, Sulieyan said, “There is almost no rebellion in you anymore.”

  “I am in love.”

  “Are you?”

  “Of course. I think of Lance all the time.”

  “Can you be in love with someone you can’t touch?”

  “Aren’t your parents in India and hasn’t it been five years since you touched them?”

  Sulieyan nodded, and smiled, and sipped her tea. Kami couldn’t really read her face so she decided Sulieyan agreed with her.

  When she took the job, Kami had been told that travel to the asteroid belt was a story of slow ships and far-away places.

  One September evening after she and Lance shared a meal together (using the valuable virt screen that he bargained for with free interviews when he could get them), he told her, “I never expected to get back. It’s not like a government ship or anything, or the long arm of the taxpayer. They chose me because I was willing to sign papers that said no one would sue them, ever, if anything happened. The company may stay alive for the fifteen or twenty years it will take, they may not. They could get sold or go bankrupt or a key player could die and then where will all the publicity and money go? A faster ship could get built and pass me and come home before I even get to the belt.”

  “Why did you go?” she whispered, although she would never have known him if he hadn’t. He was famous and she was a shift-girl at a two-bit rocket company with no real fame except for Lance and this trip.

  “I was lonely, so I didn’t care if I came back.”

  She held her breath.

  “And now I’m not lonely any more, but I’m no more likely to get back.”

  She had known he might never come back, but the knowing felt deeper after he said it to her. Running was harder, and sometimes she stopped and bent nearly in two and heaved air sour with longing to hold him.

  He almost never cried or seemed sad, except sometimes she heard those things in his smiling voice, pale as the whispers of wind against her cheek in the early morning on days she wanted to hold him so much she couldn’t sleep through the afternoon heat. But some nights the loneliness piled up on him, so heavy she could see his shoulders struggle to bear it and his head bend under the weight. He would only talk about it a few times a year. Although she didn’t ask him why, Kami thought it was for her, so she wouldn’t feel his loneliness so hard that it drove her to stop coming to him every early evening with her dinner in a brown bag and a cup of hot chai clutched in her hand, and a bit of memory from her day on her tongue.

  Once, in spring when Kami looked forward to the first ornamental cherry blossoms against a blue sky, she patted Sulieyan on the shoulder and wished her good luck with the sleepy day shift, and walked away from work. It had been a tender night and she ached with emptiness. It was not yet morning, even though spears of light from the solar collectors beamed power down onto the city, a sign of coming true-dawn.

  She liked this quiet time, the pad of her footsteps soft on the soft sidewalks, the first birds rustling and warming their throats, the cool nip that would fade early this time of year. Far away from her, Lance would be settling in to sleep through day shift, his way of choosing her.

  A dark shadow separated from a dark wall and came toward her.

  She clutched her backpack close.

  “Kami,” the voice said.

  “Do I know you?”

  He shook his head. “No. But you could.”

  He was getting close enough to reach for her. She took a few steps away, keeping some space between them. She started to stretch her calves, getting ready to run if she had to, watching him closely.

  He stopped. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “You did.”

  “Not. I mean, I didn’t mean it.”

  She shook her head and let herself relax a little bit. “Who are you?”

  “I want to interview you.”

  She blinked stupidly at him. Her contract didn’t let her do interviews, and Lance never talked about her to others. She and Lance were each other’s secret. The company knew, of course. Techs that supported the connection. Sulieyan.

  She liked being invisible.

  “I’m Hart. I’m also Sulieyan’s grandson.”

  Oh. “I’m probably too old for you.”

  It felt like an awkward thing for her to have said, but he laughed. “No. She started young. Why else would she still be working at dead end jobs?”

  As if that was a bad thing. Kami said nothing.

  “Grandma got pregnant when she was nineteen and had to drop out of vet school.”

  She should know more about Sulieyan than her patience and her way of making tea and that she never missed a shift. But Kami could think about that later. “Why do you want to interview me?”

  “Because my grandmother said it might teach us both something about love.”

  Now he had startled her. Her voice shook. “We can have coffee together.”

  In the too-bright light of Morning Blend, Hart looked far less threatening than he had as a dark silhouette in a place she expected silence from. He remained dark on dark, dark hair and dark slightly almond eyes over dark skin. He had a broad smile, and he looked both totally earnest and as uncomfortable as she felt.

  After they’d ordered coffee and scones and sat down across from each other at a window table, he didn’t seem to know how to begin.

  “Who do you want to interview me for?” she asked.

  He looked down. “I blog at Celebrity Love.”

  She couldn’t stop herself from wrinkling up her nose.

  He saw it, and he laughed, brittle. “I’m trying a small column about relationships we don’t usually see. I’ve done two of them, and I want to do a third. Grandma told me you have the best invisible relationship in the world.”

  “Why do I want to be interviewed for a place frequented by teenage crushes?” She took a sip of her coffee, savored the bitterness. “Why do you write for them?”

  He shrugged. “What else do you do with an English degree?”

  “Does it pay more than teaching?”

  “No.”

  “So why?”

  “It’s writing. It’s what I want to do, what I love. I’ll get better jobs. But for now I have to do this one well.”

  “Shhhh . . . don’t be defensive.” She imagined him sitting at home working on novels. She didn’t want to do the interview, but he was looking at her so expectantly, and she hadn’t done anything different in a year. Maybe two. God. More. “What do you want to ask me?”

  “Is it true? Grandma says you love a man you’ve never met and never held and never will see, and she says you are so loyal it’s got to be true love.”

  She’d thought of it as a miracle. Famous Ship’s Captain loves a pretty little nobody. She looked into Hart’s eyes and she didn’t know how to answer him. She couldn’t do an interview. “It’s private.”

  “Do you love him?”

  Whatever she said, Lance could see it someday. Strange things got sent to the ship, the choices made by people she didn’t know. Being asked about her feelings made them seem as if they couldn’t be real. She fought dizziness by putting her palms flat on the table and taking a deep breath. “I can’t, I’m sorry.” She’d gotten her coffee to go, maybe out of instinct, and he had a white porcelain cup in front of him. She grabbed her cup, taking her pastry nak
ed into her hand and said, “Look—this isn’t for the world. I’m sorry. Good luck.”

  Ten minutes later she shut her door behind her, sank to the floor, and finished her breakfast, spilling white crumbs on her chocolate brown carpet. Lance loved her. That’s what she sang when she ran. And she loved him; she loved hearing his voice every time she worked, she loved laughing with him about small things, collecting the world for him and whispering of leaves and beetles and babies.

  She changed everything about her routine except where she lived. She ran in a greenbelt with a long quiet path that was nearly always empty except for a few old women from nearby apartments walking dogs.

  One Tuesday at midday, she stopped by a small bronze statue of a curious deer by a stream where no real deer ever came any more. She was running her hands across the nose, registering the feel of petting bronze, noticing that even though it was cold she felt like it might move under her fingers.

  “Kami.”

  “You again.”

  Hart nodded.

  “I can lodge a complaint and keep you away from me.”

  He spoke so softly he might have been trying not to spook a real deer. “I am your friend’s grandson and I won’t hurt you.”

  He was right. She wouldn’t offend Sulieyan. There were many mornings she’d asked for something special for Lance, and known she could count on Sulieyan. “I won’t give you an interview.”

  “May I run with you?”

  For answer she started off, curious to see what he would do. The path was wide enough for two, but she ran in the middle, keeping him behind her for the first mile. He kept up well. Only then did she move to the edge of the path. When he came up she spoke to him through the heartbeat of her runner’s breath. “Tell me about your love life.”

  His breath was sharper and shorter than hers, and she could almost feel how his legs must be hot and the sweat must be slicking his back, but she didn’t slow down. Finally he managed to gasp out, “I don’t . . . have one.”

  “When did you last have a girlfriend?”

  “Pretty.” Pant, heave, pant. “Personal.”

  “You wanted to interview me.”

  “Not . . . any . . . more.”

  She slowed down to a fast walk, letting him catch up with her.

  When he could talk more normally, he said, “I dated the same girl for all of our senior year in college, and my mother and grandmother started giving her little gifts for a household like kitchen towels.”

  She hadn’t expected him to answer. “Did you love her?”

  He nodded. “But I wasn’t ready to settle for just one person. I didn’t want to choose then for my whole life. Not then.”

  He must be thirty now. “No one else?”

  “Yes. I told you the beginning of my love life. That was part one. Part two was a woman I fell in love with three years ago. Emily. A nurse. I loved her order and her brains and her compassion. After we had dated for a year I saved up for a special weekend and a moondust ring, and she turned me down.”

  A small laugh escaped Kami’s throat. “Because she wasn’t ready.”

  They ran while, the sun dappling their skin as it penetrated the leaves above them. “Do you have friends?” she asked him.

  “People I work with.”

  She out-raced him for a bit, lost in thought, and then let him catch up to her again.

  They slowed down to pass an old woman clutching a tiny designer dog with purple ears close to her. The woman made soft mothering sounds in the dog’s fur, and the dog stayed quietly settled in her arms, sniffing the air as Kami and Hart walked by, but otherwise only reacting to her owner.

  Once they rounded the next gentle bend, Kami stated, “So you are more alone than that woman now.”

  “Dogs are what old people choose when their children and lovers have all gone on, and only return for Christmas.”

  “You sound awfully bitter.”

  “Grandma says I’m like an old man.”

  Lance was probably ten years older than Hart, and he would never come back to Earth and she would never actually meet him. But he was more hopeful than Hart, who didn’t need someone else to pet a bronze deer and report back. “Do you think she’s right?”

  “She told me you’re an example of love. That love is steady and that it lasts as long as a life.”

  “That woman will love her dog as long as it’s alive.”

  “But that isn’t the same,” he protested.

  Maybe it was better than loving and leaving. She had never really done that. She’d drifted through dates when she was young, but no one had touched her heart before Lance. And she would not leave him for this man, either. At first she’d thought that was what Sulieyan wanted her to do, but now she was sure Sulieyan must have known Kami had been drifting like an un-tethered kite. “If you would like to run with me once a week or so, and if you will never print anything I say, I will meet you on Tuesdays. That will make your grandmother happy. But you must know I love someone else. I will not fall in love with you. But I will tell you a little of what I tell Lance and I can share how it is for me.”

  “And how will that help me?” He looked earnest, actually curious. “Other than I will get into shape.”

  “You will see that commitment exists.” Her throat tightened. “And you will have company, which seems as uncommon for you as it is for me.”

  Just like she would not betray Sulieyan, he wouldn’t betray Sulieyan. The old woman’s love would bind them to good behavior.

  He didn’t answer her, but he followed her for the last mile. He would show up the next Tuesday and she would have company, and Sulieyan would worry less about her grandson. Perhaps it would be enough to keep Kami in this world while she loved a man who had left it.

  That night, Kami ate her meal with Lance. She told him, “I touched a bronze deer and it felt so real I expected it to tremble under my hand.”

  He smiled, patient always. If she looked forward to meals with him, he must look forward to them even more. She had the park and the trail and the old women with purple-haired dogs and he had metal and electronics and propellant and stars. And now, maybe, she also had a friend besides Sulieyan. If she made her world bigger, she could help him keep his big enough. “I hope you make it home some- day,” she whispered. “You know that.”

  “I know that.”

  “I will love you until you do.”

  “And I you.”

  BLOOD BONDS

  I hesitated in Aline’s doorway. As soon as I stepped through, my sis’s minibots would whisper to her and she’d leave wherever she was and come into real to see me. Tonight, the step toward her might be off a cliff.

  For now, she lay blissfully unaware, gone to some virtual place. With luck, she was in the arms of a lover or climbing Olympus Mons. Anywhere but in her broken body living in VR contact gel.

  Her face had survived the terrorists’ bomb. She’d been walking away from the Marin County Fair, on Earth, north of San Francisco, and if she’d walked just a little faster, she might be able to walk today. But terrorism or not, it was partly my fault. I was the one who talked her into applying for a trip to Earth. I’d wanted her to be happy, and she wanted to see forests and butterflies and elephants and oceans. Sure, we’re identical twins, but she needed to go to Earth, and I longed for Mars. At the time, we were both on the moon.

  And now the next thing that happened was going to be my fault, too. I wanted a choice and there wasn’t one.

  By the time I stood beside her bed, she’d opened her startled blue eyes, her face swimming up above the blue-green gel and the myriad contacts that kept her body fed and exercised. Her warm smile played across my heart like a soft blanket and I wanted to melt into the chair beside her bed.

  “Lissa,” she said. “How was your day?”

  I couldn’t bear to tell her yet. “No, Aline, you first.”

  She blinked—code for a nod. “I went for a long hike with the virt club, around some Earth-like mountai
ns Rudy designed. Even with laws-of-physics design rules, he made a two-story tall waterfall that spilled a rainbow into the sky, and a flock of blue butterflies as big as my hand.”

  Aline always started her day with exercise. Before Mom died when we were twelve, she used to take me and Aline running and playing through the tunnels every morning. Saturdays, we went out on the surface and played moon-gravity bounce before breakfast. So hearing about Aline’s morning virtual workouts was like being a kid again, when she was whole. But Aline’s day was a lot longer than a real one—time flew differently in virtual worlds. “So then what did you do?”

  “A photo shoot in New Mexico and a . . . a few meetings with friends. That’s all. Nothing you want to know about.” She glanced away from me for a moment. She’d gotten more and more to skipping over what she did. Like I wouldn’t understand it? Or I wouldn’t think it was good? How could I think she was anything but good? I ran my fingers over her forehead. It was dry and cool, her skull naked. “Did you get any pictures you want to show me?”

  “Maybe later. Tell me about your day.”

  “This morning was bad as ever. Jack-o called in sick, so we had Cherie for shift super and she wanted to set some kind of record. Our yields were low ’cause the soil’s shyer of H3 where we’re mining than it is on exposed slopes, but she didn’t care. Her face was purple by lunch.”

  Aline grinned. “You’d think Helium-3 was the best of everything.”

  “It gave us the power to get to Mars.” I looked away, swallowing.

  “I bet you were spitting mad at having Cherie.” She arched an eyebrow and winked. “You always are.”

  How did she get so much from my stories? “Me? Sure. You should have seen Davey and John-boy and Mark. I thought they were going to kill her by the time the lunch bell rang. They didn’t show it to her, but Davey was secret-telling John all afternoon—they must’ve spent half what they made for the day on privacy. It was actually kind of funny.”

  “That was the morning. What about the afternoon?” she asked, her eyes shining as if she knew what I was going to say and was trying to help keep me from having to say it. But she couldn’t know.