Kenjiro looked devastated. He dragged himself through the doorway with his head hanging down. His eyes were red. He must’ve read his file. Didn’t he have a little girl? Jonathan remembered how she and her mother had visited Kenjiro a few weeks before their launch, before they had to go into quarantine. The small, black-haired girl had won over the hearts of everyone in the whole training base. Poor Kenjiro.
François, on the other hand, came in looking ecstatic. He looked around, saw Kenjiro, and sat down instead next to Jonathan.
“You look good,” Jonathan said.
“Thanks. I feel fantastic too. The CSA brought my family to their headquarters. They were lucky because they all lived in the same city. All of them are doing well. They’re even supposed to call me tomorrow.”
Had the ESA done something like that too? Probably not. The families of the ESA astronauts were spread out over a whole continent. No, he wasn’t going to let himself agonize over it. He’d made his decision. But wouldn’t it be nice if his sister called tomorrow?
Yue entered the command center. He hadn’t seen her yesterday. As she came closer, Jonathan was surprised to see that she had deep rings under her eyes and walked with small, tiny steps like an old woman. What had happened? She couldn’t have learned anything more from Judith than she already knew—that her parents had died a long time ago.
She appeared not to have noticed him, because she sat down on a fold-out seat along the wall. She didn’t get herself anything to eat and simply sat there, staring out in front of her. Jonathan walked over to her and sat down next to her. Then he carefully took her hand. There was still a Band-Aid on her thumb. It had been weeks since they’d assembled the coils.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “You look exhausted.”
“I couldn’t sleep.”
“Are you sick? I might be able to help if you tell me what’s wrong.”
“I’m okay.”
“You don’t look okay.”
“Don’t worry about me.”
“But I am. Do you need something?”
“Nothing.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Really, Jon, I don’t need anything. In fact, I’ve got more than before.”
“More? What do you mean? More what? Stress? Anxiety? Depression?”
“No. Parents.”
“Your parents are dead. That’s why you grew up in a foster home.”
“No. It’s all in Judith’s file. I looked at it. I thought I had nothing to lose.”
“What did it say?”
“My parents are higher-level officers in the Chinese National People’s Army. Or were. Are. My mother died during the Great Darkness, as people are calling it. But my father is still alive.”
“Maybe it’s a mistake.”
“No, just a big lie. They gave me up because I would’ve just gotten in the way of their careers.”
“It says that in the file?”
“No, it just gives my father’s address.”
“You don’t know what compelled them to give you up. Maybe they were forced by the military. Maybe you could ask him, your father.”
“He’s not my father. He gave up that right. I have no parents.” Her hands contracted into fists. Her eyes were dry, but it looked like she’d already cried away all her tears, anyway.
“Oh, Yue, I’m so sorry.”
“Don’t be. I’ve decided that it doesn’t change anything for me. My parents are dead. Will you fly back to the moon base with me?”
Moon Base Unity. He’d already been thinking about what he would do next with his life. Did he want to help rebuild the Earth? Large parts of it would remain in darkness for decades. Mirrors could provide light to the areas that could be used for agriculture, but few people would see the sun again.
Or did he want the moon to be his final home? The base could grow into one of the most important outposts of humankind. There was still abundant sunlight and thus energy there. Maybe they could produce hydrogen as an energy storage medium and deliver it to Earth, or maybe energy-hungry industries would all have to move to the moon. Doctors would be needed everywhere, and administrators even more.
But then he’d have to give up on his family. He wouldn’t be able to search for them, and with time, any trace of them would disappear.
“Yes, Yue, I will,” he said. “When our job here is done, let’s fly back to the moon together.”
May 2, 2036 – Mars Ship ARES
“Ms. Rosenberg? It’s me, Marcia.”
Judith felt almost as if she’d gotten an electric shock when she realized to whom the voice belonged. She had decided not to stir up the past, but now here it was, coming directly to her in the form of Marcia, the au pair whom they had hired to help Lisa with Peter and Max after her departure.
“I hope I’m not calling at an inconvenient time,” Marcia said in her easy-going way. “Things aren’t so easy these days. There are only landlines now, and most of the time they’re all busy. Then I thought that you’d surely have ways to get in touch with me. But you hadn’t called yet. And then it occurred to me that you probably didn’t even know where we were.”
“That’s right, Marcia, I had no idea. But please call me Judith. After all this time, you don’t have to be so formal with me.”
After taking care of my kids for so long, Judith thought, you’re now part of our family. Maybe Pete and Max are even calling you Mom now, too. But where was Lisa? She wouldn’t have voluntarily left the two boys on their own.
“Thank you, Judith, that makes me very happy. So, we’re safe, Peter, Max, and me. NASA brought us to JPL in Pasadena. Can you believe it? We’ve been living here with all the loud scientists and academics in a closed settlement. We even have a room just for the three of us. Max’s favorite thing is to play with the one old Mars rover that’s here on the grounds. Whittaker, that crazy old man, managed to save it from being recycled. There are people, even in the government, who want to recycle everything.”
“Well, that’s probably also very reasonable, given the circumstances,” Judith said.
“Whittaker said it’s a perfect copy of the two rovers that drove around Mars. No one’s going to get back there very soon, I’m afraid, but it looks like there are some real sights to see there. Someday, people are going to thank him, Whittaker says. Obviously, you guys had to turn around halfway there.”
“Before we were even halfway, actually. Sorry, but would you mind,” Judith tried to say it as casually as possible, but her voice still caught with emotion, “letting me talk to the boys?”
The boys. Max and Peter. They must be four and six now. No, Peter was already seven. His birthday was on March 30th, and she had completely forgotten. She was somewhere between the L4 point and Earth’s orbit on that day, but she still felt bad about forgetting it.
“Oh, of course,” Marcia said. “They’re upstairs in Whittaker’s room. He’s been reading to them every night before bed since Lisa’s been gone. It’s already nighttime down here, you know. Peter thinks Whittaker has a very relaxing voice that puts them both right to sleep. He says it’s almost as good as having his real mom read to him. But let me get them. Just a minute.”
Lisa’s gone. Judith gripped the back of the chair tightly. Marcia said it entirely in passing, so it must’ve happened a long time ago. Of course, she and the boys would’ve had to move on and continue living. She shouldn’t reopen all their old wounds all over again. But for her it was brand new. What had happened to her?
Judith heard the creaking of a door, and then steps coming closer. It sounded like the person was running.
“Mom, Mom, is that really you?” a boy shouted into the phone. “It’s me, Peter.”
“I can hear you, sweetie. It’s me, Mommy.”
“We don’t say ‘Mommy’ here anymore. That’s not cool,” Peter said.
“Let me have a turn, too,” Max, the little one, yelled. “I want to talk to Mommy too.”
“Her name’s Mom, not Momm
y, or do you want to sound like a baby?”
“Hi, Max, I’m here,” she said. “Don’t worry. You can still call me Mommy. I like Mommy.”
“You see, Pete, Mommy likes Mommy. I knew it.”
Crazy. Max sounded so... grown-up. And Peter was going to school. Otherwise, he probably wouldn’t be so worried about sounding uncool by saying, “Mommy.”
“How are you two?” Judith asked. “Are you getting enough to eat?”
“Yeah, too much,” Max said.
“We’re always having to drink milk,” Peter said glumly. “And when I tell Marcia I don’t want to, she says, Lisa-Mom would’ve said to.”
Lisa-Mom. Her heart sank.
“If Lisa-Mom would’ve said to drink milk, then you should drink milk.”
“But Mom, the note that Lisa-Mom left doesn’t say anything about milk. I found it, and I can read now, too. I think Marcia’s trying to poison us with milk. And she always says no when I ask her to call Lisa-Mom with us so that I can tell her how horrible she is.”
“Will you let me talk to Marcia again, sweetie? Please?”
“Are you going to tell her what I said about the milk? Or that she should call Lisa-Mom with us?”
“I’ll speak to her about it.”
“Thank you, Mommy.”
Poor Marcia. She’d have to tell the kids what had happened to Lisa.
“Yes, Judith?”
“About Lisa-Mom...” she began.
“Oh yeah, every day Peter demands that I call her. But that’s just not going to work. She’s been on duty in Antarctica for four weeks now. If you guys are able to burn a hole into the shell, she’s supposed to fly to you on board a European Ariane rocket. Did nobody tell you that? Maybe you can explain it to Peter, so he’ll stop asking me every single day.”
“I didn’t know.”
Of course, she also hadn’t asked. Lisa was alive. She closed her eyes and put her face in her hands. It was all so... unbelievable, as if her wife had risen from the dead.
“Marcia? Thank you so much for calling me. You’ve been amazing. Please give the boys a kiss from me. I’ll do my work as fast as I can, so that I can get back to you real soon. But now I think I need some time to process all this new information with some peace and quiet.”
She ended the call. Then she beat her fists against her pillow until dust rose into the air. She was so angry—at herself, at the shell, at the Earth, and also at Lisa, and at the same time, she was endlessly happy.
May 3, 2036 – Mars Ship ARES
“May I?” Wayne asked.
Judith nodded, and Wayne sat down in the command chair that was free next to her. Ever since she had spoken with Marcia, life had been so relaxed and simple that not even Michael had annoyed her. She genuinely wished that his dream of living on Mars would come true for him. On the other hand, Wayne wasn’t especially good at respecting other people’s personal space, but otherwise, he was nice enough.
“So, how are you doing?” Wayne asked.
“Very well, thank you,” she said. “My wife and kids are doing well too.”
“That’s great,” he said, running his hand through his hair.
“And you?”
He had probably been waiting for her to ask him. She pushed her computer screen back into the armrest. She could always complete her daily report later.
“I spoke to my mom last night.”
“Oh, she’s still alive?”
“Yes, she was fortunate. My dad had a heart attack when all the light went out. She was able to get him to a hospital, but he died there. Then she stayed at the hospital to help out because they were full, and more and more people just kept coming. My mom’s a trained nurse. So she stayed there, and she’s still there now.”
“I’m sorry about your father.”
“Thanks, we were, uh... not very close. My mom seems to have only started living now that he’s gone. She’s even met a new man. Can you believe that? At 72! He’s six years younger than she is and was just about to retire when the shell appeared. Now everyone down there’s needed for jobs, even the older people.”
“Will you go visit them?”
“I doubt it. I don’t think anything’s going to get me to voluntarily drop myself into a dark hole of eternal night. America’s in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s going to be a long time until they see the sun again.”
“I understand. Then everything’s worked out reasonably well for you?”
“I guess you could say that. Poor Giordano, though.”
She hadn’t seen the Italian engineer today yet. “Why do you say that?” she asked.
“He seemed to be devastated after reading his file. I haven’t seen him since.”
“Thank you for that information, Wayne. I should go find him then. Will you excuse me, please?”
She found Giordano at his telescope in the workshop. It was still his favorite instrument. Quietly she approached him. His head was lying unnaturally against the telescope tube, and his eyes were closed.
Was he...? No, he was still breathing. Giordano was asleep. She started to back away from him and bumped into a chair, which fell over with a crash. Giordano woke up with a start and snapped his head back so that he hit it against the wall. There was a dull, hollow sound.
“Ouch,” Judith said.
Giordano put his hands on the back of his head.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Well, at least I’m awake now.”
“You look like you never went to bed.”
“Could be. I don’t remember.”
“Do I need to be concerned, Giordi?”
“No, I can handle it.”
“Handle what?”
“I’m sure you’ve got your own problems.”
“Well, I’m still your commander, and I’m still responsible for you.”
Giordano sighed. “Okay then. My wife died in the Great Darkness.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Thanks. Anyway, my son’s still alive. He’s just turned eighteen.”
“That’s wonderful. Will you go see him?”
“That’s the problem. He doesn’t want to see me. He thinks I’m partially responsible for his mother’s death, because if I hadn’t been away, like always, then maybe I could have saved her somehow. All he could was watch her die. He was helpless.”
“He blames himself, and now he’s also trying to make you carry some of that blame too.”
“Yeah, and that hurts. But he’s also right. You know, I don’t even care if he puts all the blame on me. At least that’d take it off of him. He shouldn’t have to live with that kind of guilt.”
“That’s very kind of you. Someday he’ll recognize that.”
“Maybe. I would really like to see him now and wrap my arms around him, but he doesn’t want that.”
“He needs some time.”
“I know, Judith. Don’t worry about me. I’ll get over it. I just need some time too.”
“Okay. But if you ever need any help, tell me.”
May 10, 2036 – Mars Ship ARES
“Attention, everyone. Something’s happening with the shell,” Atiya reported over the speakers.
She had been alternating with Giordano at the telescope for three days now. The ring that the antiprotons had punched in the shell appeared to have been completed about 75 hours ago, but there must’ve still been some small parts holding the piece to the rest of the shell. The fact that these small parts, which couldn’t be seen in the telescope, were still preventing the piece from breaking away from the shell was a good sign. It meant that the piece wasn’t as heavy or dangerous as they feared.
“The Earth’s axis is not in a favorable orientation right now,” Kenjiro said.
“Not favorable for what?”
“For the moon, Commander. If the piece detaches from the shell within the next 180 seconds, there’s a risk that it could impact the moon.”
They’d already talked about th
is scenario several times. Depending on the mass of the piece of the shell, the impact could destroy half the moon, create a new crater along with moonquakes, or just stir up some dust.
Judith bit her bottom lip. “Is there a current prediction on possible effects of an impact?” she asked.
“I looked at Atiya’s most recent photos of the ring, and my best guess is that it’d be a rather soft impact,” Kenjiro said. “The moon as a whole is definitely not in danger. It might create a crater at most 50 kilometers wide. But if that thing hit somewhere close to the lunar South Pole, the base might be destroyed.”
Shit. There was almost nothing they could do to change the trajectory of any piece that flew off the shell. Almost nothing, that is, and that was the catch. The one thing they could do would be to steer the ARES so that it would strike the piece of the shell and push it, even if only slightly, so that its trajectory would be changed, and it would miss the moon.
It’d be improbable that the crew of the ARES would survive that, however.
That was why it was also just an option of last resort. Losing the moon base, as the CIA director had already told her that morning in her own uniquely charming way, would be a setback for all of humankind. Alison had even converted it into a number of human deaths—a six-digit number over the next twenty years—because the moon wouldn’t then be able to provide as many resources. Therefore, according to her purely utilitarian viewpoint, sacrificing the ARES and all those on board would be the most sensible solution. The ESA’s Ariane 7 rocket could then bring a new crew to the moon base.
Judith imagined Lisa in the Ariane rocket floating past the destroyed debris of the ARES. No, she couldn’t bear to think of that. This couldn’t have been what Alison meant by ‘You owe me,’ could it? Or did she really want all those lives on her conscience, just because she hadn’t prevented the moon base’s destruction? Would that question haunt her year after year? She scratched the back of her hand. Lisa would’ve handed her the aloe vera cream.
The Wall: Eternal Day Page 26