by V R Tapscott
I took a breath. “Yes, in the end, we are sculpted by our pains. Our failures, our foibles and sometimes our successes. They all come together to make a human.”
She nodded.
We sat there silently for a while, then she rose and went up the path to the house - but halfway she turned and said, “Good night, Mom.”
“Good night, Olive.”
Chapter Seventeen
On being a Moonie.
Iwoke up the next morning relaxed, refreshed and ready to eat tigers. Or at least tiger striped pancakes. I could smell something like that cooking, so decided to have a trip downstairs. I pulled on some shorts and a tee shirt and headed for the kitchen.
I was greeted by an interesting sight. Olive was juggling the pancake turner between pancake turns. Then she slid it under a pancake and tossed it to Cai, who was waiting expectantly. She caught sight of me and grinned. “Grab a plate, I’ll toss you breakfast!”
I got a plate down from the cupboard as Bailey walked in. I gave her a plate too, and we both sat and stared at Olive. She was back to juggling again, but the most disconcerting thing was that when she popped out from behind the island, the bottom half of her was missing. It was really strange, since she was moving like she had legs, but ... she didn’t. Also hips. It was very disconcerting to see her walking around, but without legs.
“Go back behind the island again, you’re making me dizzy.”
She rolled her eyes, but scurried back behind and I felt better.
“Thanks, sweetie.”
She beamed. “Pancakes for both of you?”
We both nodded and she set about pouring batter. I glanced at Cai, but he only had eyes for her. I have to admit it was entertaining, her shifting about in the kitchen, handling the ladles and turners with aplomb. A bit later, she flipped pancakes in the pan, then a golden-brown moment after that, she flipped them to us, one to me and another to Bailey. I like plenty of butter, so I got up and grabbed the butter. Bailey put some on but she’s a wimp with butter. It’s one of my few extravagances, so I take it to town.
I forked into the cake and took a bite. “Olive, that’s amazing! Where did you learn all this?”
She giggled excitedly, “You really like them? I made about five thousand of them virtually before I felt confident enough to bring them out here.”
“They are fabulous!”
Cai and Bailey echoed my sentiments, and we all ate in happy gluttony. After finishing the cooking, Olive reformed her lower half and sat with us, eating virtual pancakes with a virtual plate - and real gusto. I noticed that her pancakes had at least as much butter on them as mine. I’m teaching her right, apparently.
After we all finished and had done the obligatory leaning back and groaning, I said, “Well, today is the day, I guess.”
Cai looked a little grumpy, but everyone else reacted with happy looks.
“So, what’s the plan?”
Cai muttered, “Go to the moon, get the thing, and come back.”
“My goodness, someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.”
“I’ve spent a good part of my life wondering about that piece of ... whatever it is. And now that I have a chance to go to the moon on a spaceship I helped FIND, I’m not allowed to.”
Bailey spoke up at that point, “I’m more than willing for Cai to take my place, he deserves a chance to do what he’s always wanted to.”
“He’s got a bad heart, it might kill him just going there, “Olive said. “The lighter gravity might stress him into an attack.”
I shrugged. “If Bailey doesn’t really care that much about going, maybe Cai should be the one to go with us, Olive. This is his one chance to do this. You should be familiar with impossible dreams if any of us is.”
“Fine! Let him go along and ... and let him die if it happens!”
There were tears flowing down her cheeks, and even though I knew it might be artifice, I suddenly wondered if she felt something for him - something more than just friends. It crossed my mind too as to what her little tattoo said - had it been ‘Jane’, then ‘Laney’ and now ‘Cai”?
We all sat in silence, and then Olive threw up her hands in disgust. “All right, I understand. But this won’t be on me if anything happens.” She stalked out of the room, leaving all of us staring uncomfortably at each other.
I gathered Bailey in with my eyes, “Let’s go get snacks and drinks for the trip. And you can have whatever’s left to pig out on while you’re here.”
“Yeah. Alone. No one to be with me. What happens if I get lonely?”
“Watch TV. Or the beach. Or you could sit and whine and feel sorry for yourself. Or sunbathe, it’ll be a great day for it.”
Bailey glared at me, then stuck her tongue out. “I’ll get changed.”
As I’d said, it was a great day for it, the weather was perfect. So far it was sitting at about 85 at noon, and that pointed to it being no more than 90 or 95 later. Heck, if I wasn’t going to the moon, I’d be laying out myself!
We trekked out to the barn and got in the Jeep. It was large enough that we had to park it outside, maybe I’d build a lean-to for it, or the like. A carport, I guess. We wound our way down the hill and onto the main road below, rolling into downtown Chelan a few minutes later. The weather was so perfect that many of the people were off enjoying the day and not bothering with touristing duties like picking up groceries and buying liquor. We wandered through Safeway, looking at this and that and just having a nice conversation together. I liked having a family such as Cai and Olive had become in such a short time, but I missed my alone time like I’d had before all this happened. We’re so seldom happy with “today”, are we?
“Bailey, dear, have you missed the Seattle life yet?”
“Nah, I’m reveling in being able to sleep in, wear whatever I want and drink whatever I want whenever I want. Maybe someday I’ll miss it, but not yet. Also, thanks to your bit of seed money I have enough additional cash in my retirement account to put off having to consider another job for some time yet.”
I rolled my eyes. “You have a job, Bailey.” I frowned. “You are collecting a paycheck, aren’t you?”
“Of course not. I’m not DOING anything.”
“You definitely need to be collecting a paycheck though, Bailey. You’re part of the startup, you did the research and once we get past this ... this adventure we’re currently involved in, we’ll be up to our asses in detective clients.”
“That sounds promising, although I’d want them to be good looking if they’re going to be next to my ass.”
“I’ll keep that in mind when I go hunting for clients. Maybe we can put that in the ad.”
“Put in the ad that they’ll be close to my ass?”
I snorted. “No, but I guess we could do that. If we put a picture of it, we’d get a lot more clients. But I’m not sure they’d be looking for detective work.”
“Mm, yeah. On consideration, let’s leave my ass out of it.”
We picked up wine, some vodka, a little bottle of Sailor Jerry’s rum (mostly ‘cause I liked the picture) and some various mixers and other liquors. I’d thought we were getting trip snacks, but it seemed that Bailey had more in mind than that.
“You know, we could probably find a way to get us all to fit in the ship.”
“No way, I’m looking forward to a whole night alone! I’ll binge on whatever HGTV has on tonight and drink my way through a lot of Rum and Cokes.”
“I think that’s the wrong kind of rum for that, sweetiecakes.”
“Are you thinking about my ass again?”
“Heaven forbid.”
“Most likely.”
We picked up more rum. More chips. More salsa. Geez, at this rate, I was going to have to go the gym twice a day rather than twice a week. After paying the national debt for the “road snacks” we headed back home.
When we rolled in the driveway, I could see that Olive and Cai had made up. She was sitting in her chair
in a bikini and he was sitting in his, working at not staring. We stopped at the house and unloaded, Cai helping with the boxes.
I frowned at him, reminded him of his heart, but he said, “It’s mostly in her imagination. It’s never been an issue, no one’s ever told me to cut back on anything.”
At that point I dropped it. He’s an adult, and in charge of his own life. I doubt I’d be much of a friend if I kept sniping at him.
We unloaded the car and loaded up the fridge and the cupboards and sat back for a well-deserved lunch of chips and salsa. We virtuously said we’d wait until at least 3 to start drinking. Or that’s what Bailey said - the rest of us figured we’d be on the moon by then. Or at least on the way.
After sitting around talking, laughing, eating and drinking for a couple hours, Olive finally said, “Hey, are we going to the moon or are you people just chickening out?”
After a few chicken imitations from Bailey, I admitted I was a little scared by the thought. I mean, yeah, I’d been to the moon before, but it was only about 45 minutes and it was by accident anyhow. And I was naked for part of it, which wasn’t much fun.
Cai was curious about the naked part, so of course Olive filled him in, and he had a good laugh. But the upshot was that he was nervous as well, so I felt better. After the four of us got into a stare-down, I finally just got up and lead the way into the garage. Olive had moved the ship there earlier to facilitate loading and leaving undetected.
I vanished into the shower/bathroom/changing room and came out in my skinsuit. Cai didn’t whistle, but I could tell he was tempted. I’d forgotten he’d never seen me ... erm ... “dressed” in it before. Olive pointed him toward the closet on the ship and he looked inside - like a kid at Christmas he pulled out a black male-style skinsuit of his own and left to put it on.
Pretty soon I saw the changing room door open, but nothing happened. It just stayed like that. Then he poked his head out, saw us all looking and ducked back inside.
I yelled, “Hey, mister moon man, come out here. If I can do it, you can do it!”
A little shamefacedly he stepped out into the hallway and seeing him from the outside made me blush at what I must look like. I mean, it was reasonably tasteful, but it sure didn’t leave much to the imagination. Dale had just flat out refused to wear his, and considering what it didn’t cover (basically the old style men’s skinsuit was just a speedo and a lot of black paint) I didn’t really blame him. Of course, I was used to wearing next to nothing in public, and I was showing less in my skinsuit than in most of my bikinis. But Cai - he’d shown up wearing a three-piece suit. It had taken him a couple days to get used to even wearing jeans. Shorts had taken another week after that.
Anyhow, a little chivvying around and we wound up standing next to each other. A slightly tipsy (since it was nearly after three by then) Bailey took pictures of us and then we went into the ship and sat while we waited for Olive to do the cross-checks and make sure that the runway was ... never mind. She didn’t do any of that. I swear, that flock of seagulls must be getting thinned out by now, since that’s the only way that Olive seems to know how to launch - straight up at least a million miles an hour. Maybe she just doesn’t like seagulls. My Steve used to call them rats with wings - although I thought some of them were kind of pretty.
We opted to take the scenic route this time, since Cai had never been to the moon before. And here I am talking like an old hand, and I’ve only been there once.
Olive took things a good deal more gently this time. I suspect it was from her concern for Cai, but it might have been that she wanted to update her own maps. I have no idea and I’m not going to speculate. At any rate, we cruised along, looking at the various landing sites on the moon. It was a kind of zig zag fashion as we visited Apollo sites 12, 14, 16, 11, 17 and then all the way up to 15. We took a close look at the various space junk left behind on the moon, and considered a ride in a lunar rover when Olive assured us she could recharge it on a temporary basis. However, we decided it would be like pushing over a gravestone to move the rovers around, so we left them unmolested, to Olive’s disgust.
We poked our heads over the top of the rise where Olive had told us to expect the part we were looking for. Of course, when we came over the top, there were already visitors there. It was only automated cameras of course, but still, it would be hard to cover up footprints, dust and other activities suddenly appearing within the view of the cameras. Cai said that in his experience they had shut down the cameras to conserve batteries after several hours of running each day, and the fact that the sun swung around and gave them nothing but glare on the screen probably had something to do with that as well. I suppose there was really no big reason why they’d leave them running, since what would you expect to change in the unchanging landscape of the moon? Except, of course, when interlopers appear in invisible spaceships.
Not willing to just sit and wait, Cai and I decided to try out the suits. Or at least Cai’s suit, since mine seemed to be in tip-top shape. We left the ship, and Olive followed us in her identical suit. I suppose she could have left footprints like we did, but she didn’t bother. I think she was still miffed that I’d pulled rank and had taken Cai along.
We waved at each other, bounced up and down the hills in the one-sixth gravity, and in general made loonies of ourselves. The suits allowed us to talk back and forth, so we could hear the laughing and joking as we toured our bit of the moon. Finally tiring of playing in the dust we stopped and went back to sit in the ship.
There, we sat and gnawed at our fingernails. Figuratively speaking, of course, since we couldn’t actually gnaw our fingernails through the skinsuits. We watched the cameras not watching us. After an hour or so of this, and of us being driven stir crazy, the cameras nosed down as they turned off and that was that. We had a free hand.
“Ok, I’m going to maneuver us in closer, it should be ... yes ... “
“Yes, what?”
“Yes, I see it. It’s embedded in the wall. What a miracle that it just buried itself in there where we could see it.”
“Han Solo would say ‘I call it luck’ but I dunno. Maybe we were meant to find it.”
Cai said, “In my experience, there is no such thing as luck.”
We both turned and looked at him.
“Hey, I am not THAT old. I like Star Wars too!”
We both grinned at each other, then turned back around to face the front.
Olive was watching as we flew closer - finally she said, “Imma gonna park us here. I can’ get much closer without bein in the camera view. They could wake up and I can’ cloak you two out there.”
I scowled out over the landscape. “It’s a couple hundred yards to the crater wall, so we should only take a couple minutes to get there. I guess it’s harder to walk on the moon though, so we should be prepared for that. Instead of just bouncing around maybe we should have taken a walk. Ever walk in 20% gravity before, Cai?”
“No, but I have taken some introductory classes. You can go in a pool of water with enough weight and it simulates much of the problems with low gravity. However, I have found that most of the problems I had in moving were caused by the suits. Here, our skinsuits are very flexible and are almost ... erm ... like being naked.” He very pointedly didn’t look at me when he said this.
“Uh huh. It feels weird to have the sand between your toes, or moon dust, I guess. I didn’t notice all that much problem when we were dancing around out there, Cai.”
We both took a breath at about the same time and looked at each other, laughing. Olive rolled her eyes, but I thought she was amused and probably stored it away as something human to do someday.
“Open the pod bay doors, Olive. Let’s do this.”
“We don’t talk anymore after what happened.”
I grinned again. “Thanks, Alexa.”
In a robotty voice - “No problem.”
So, with no further ado, we stepped out onto the surface of the moon. It wasn’t bad at a
ll walking, just had to remember to step carefully and not push off too hard or you wound up bounding around. I bounced too hard and ran into Cai, and we both wound up running THROUGH Olive, which pissed her off royally.
Even with the clowning around it only took a couple minutes to get to the wall. I could see the gadget stuck there. We all looked at it, none of us wanting to make the move. Finally, Cai and Olive said, in unison, “Take it, Jane.”
I reached out for it and got a good grip. “It’s one small pull for a man, one ...” Suddenly I couldn’t breathe and my side lit up on fire like a hot poker had just slid through it.
Chapter Eighteen
Or not.
Jane screamed and fell to the surface. She was suddenly stark naked and had a giant wound in her side, pumping out blood. Cai managed to get his hand over the wound, and wrestled her up into his arms, holding her. He began to run, but in his haste, he over bounced and hit the crater wall far from the ship.
He screamed, “Olive! Get the ship closer! Fast! She’s bleeding out, and the vacuum is pulling it out even faster!”
Olive had become so human that instead of reacting like a computer, she reacted like a human and simply stood there, rooted.
Cai got back on course and started to run again, more on target this time. Olive managed to unfreeze and got the ship moving, and triangulated where Cai would land, so he wound up basically falling into the ship. Olive slammed the doors and got the cabin pressurized, but while Jane’s side stopped gushing, it was still bleeding hard, and she was so pale.
Cai moved to one side and sat on the floor, and Olive pulled a heavy bandage out of thin air. She applied it to Jane’s side, holding her breath that it would stick and plug up the wounds. There were two of them, one appearing to be the incoming wound and the other the exit. The incoming one was under Jane’s lower ribs, the other coming out through one of the ribs in her back, a few inches up - whatever it was had gone straight through and left nothing but a hole behind.