April 6: And What Goes Around (34 page)

"You just
happen to know the scientific names off the top of your head?" April asked
skeptically.

"It was
something I considered pursuing years ago on Earth and never did. I wanted
personal benefit from my work, and I don't mean just income. Not being a
fungus, I decided to concentrate on modifications to humans. But perhaps I'll
branch out now."

"Send a list
to my pad later and I'll see what I can do," April said.

Jelly was frowning
again, looking at her plates, although she was finished. "The first time I
had breakfast with you I remember you had this enormous four or five thousand
calorie breakfast. I knew right then you were gene-mod. Have you gone to the
trouble to have that undone?"

"No, but the
sort of tweak I have, my metabolism will go into a much lower range if I
severely limit my intake for a few days," April said. "Until such a
time that I eat a great deal and trigger it again."

"You
anticipate supply getting that short here?" Jelly asked.

"Honestly, I
don't
know
," April said, "but Gunny and others have made me
aware others do notice conspicuous consumption. I don't wish to alienate
anyone. It seemed politic."

"You look the
same because of the therapy, but you're growing up," Jelly said with a
nod.

April was conflicted. Jelly had said it with approval, but she had still
been embarrassed to admit she cared what the public thought of her. Even the limited
public of other Home citizens.

  It felt odd
being in the number two seat. Barak had never pictured himself having
opportunity to visit the bridge and observe during a burn much less sit at a
hot board. He'd never have felt free to ask Jaabir for the privilege. Even when
he first came aboard it was obvious there was a huge division of status. Jaabir
and Charlotte considered themselves professionals, barely had any regard for
Deloris, Alice or Harold, and saw Barak as a muscled menial on the level of a
janitor or scullery maid.

"Here's the
planned program," Deloris said. "We will fire the engine to which
Barak and I ran a new line. The opposite engine will also be fired so we do not
induce a tumble. I've loaded the sequence we got from our controllers. It will
start at minimum thrust and hold it for a minute. Then if the sensors all read
within the normal range they will ramp up to eighty percent thrust, hold it
there for a minute and terminate. If at any time we get a red light on the
board I will shut down both engines."

"What do I
have to do?" Barak asked.

"I'm cloning
my board to yours. If something goes
horribly
wrong, and I sit here with
my mouth hanging open, doing nothing, you may tap the big red square marked
ABORT," Deloris allowed.

"I think I
can handle that," Barak agreed.

"After the
test all the sensor data will be beamed back home and they will do a thorough
analysis. If everything looks good in the morning we will do a partial rotation
and stop then rotation. After taking a star sighting and having it confirmed
from Home we will start a thirty percent burn tomorrow evening to lift us out
of Jupiter's plane of rotation. It will be timed to retain our orbital motion
on a sunward vector. That will last forty-four hours and we will go ballistic
again for a bit more than nine days. Then we'll do a reorientation before
sighting again. If we need to we'll adjust and do a longer burn towards home.

"We can
expect to do at least two corrections on this end and a long voyage home. The
braking burn will be longer since we gain velocity going insystem, and we will run
out an antenna that swings onto our surface and anchors on our last burn. That
will keep us in contact with Home the last few weeks. If all goes well we
should be almost at rest near L2 the middle of August. A fresh crew can relieve
us and nudge it into place once we are that close." Deloris made it sound
almost easy.

"Why aren't
we running the engines up to full power?" Alice asked.

"Because we
grabbed a little smaller snowball than the maximum we could have, and we aren't
in as big a hurry to get back because with a half crew we have more supplies
available. We also aren't going to use the
Yuki-onna's
engines to actually
move the snowball. We'll push just enough to keep our nose planted in the ice without
keeping tension on our anchor cables. It'll save the stress and hours on the
engines in case something goes wrong and we still have to abandon the ball and
take the ship back to survive. Coming up on burn in two minutes," Deloris
said. That cut off any further questions.

"Count down
in the corner of the screen," Deloris told them.

When it reached
zero the readings on several screens changed, but they felt nothing. One
monitor showed the engine they had worked on but there wasn't a spare camera to
actually watch the opposite engine yet. There was plenty of data feed off it
though. The engine spat out a white hot line of plasma that looked like any
ship's engine using Jeff Singh's tech. It wasn't until the engines were near
the full eighty percent power they felt a slight hum through their couches. It had
barely began before it ended.

"Did you run
the
Yuki-onna
?" Alice asked. "I'd have thought it would be
louder even at low output."

"It wasn't worth doing for only two engines at eighty percent. They
were sure we wouldn't put enough strain on the anchor cables to matter. OK, our
new data is on the way to Home. Anybody for some lunch?" Deloris said.

* * *

Gunny came in
looking amused, and shoved his pad in front of April's face. She reached and
held the edge to steady it as she read, but she didn't take it from his hand.

"Jeremiah
Fogley, after a sudden illness. Rev. Fogley conducted services at his church
Sunday December 21 and complained of feeling ill after skipping an after
services dinner. He was found dead in bed in his apartments the following
Tuesday morning. A Christmas evening service and memorial celebration of his
life will be conducted 0100 Pacific time by his assistant pastor Zachariah Bentley."

"It's an
obituary," Gunny said when she didn't react.

"Well yeah, I
understand, but when did you pick up the ghoulish habit of reading the obits?"
April asked. "I thought that was a really old person's habit."

"Not at all,
but I added Jeremiah to my searches when we saw him expose the flu on TV."
Gunny reminded her. "Do you remember now?"

"Oh yeah. The
guy that danced around. He seemed awfully fit and healthy. Do you suppose maybe
somebody did him in for exposing the truth about the flu?" April asked
Gunny.

"Nah, I think
the simplest explanation is he was a flaming hypocrite. He fits the profile
what with the income his church produces. I bet he had life extending gene mods
himself and caught it. A lot of people would file this under karma
though."

"That's sad.
What's with the biblical names?" April asked. "Or is that just
coincidence his number two guy was Zachariah?"

"No
coincidence. Members of his church are expected to take a Christian name when
they join. Not just a church name but have it legally changed too," Gunny
said.

"Why? What
difference does it make?" April wondered.

"I'd just be
repeating what they say to tell you. It's doesn't really make any sense to me
either, but that's one of the things that they feel differentiates them from
others." Gunny said. "But other churches used to do it long ago. If
you were Hawaiian or African or Scandinavian or Asian and got baptized into a
Christian church they gave you a proper Christian name. Of course everybody
still called you by your same old name. You've heard of nick names haven't
you?"

"Yeah but I only
thought they were pet names or abbreviations like calling Dr. Ames Jelly or
Louisa Barnes Lisa, not anything religious," April said.

"Or me being
called Gunny from my work. Reasons for things change too. I doubt you'd get
away with keeping April with that church. April is from the Romans,
notorious
heathens." He looked amused at something but just smiled at her.

"Don't you
dare say it," April said, before he could slap the notorious label on her.

"No indeed...  My Lady," Gunny said, hoping to get a rise from
her. Instead she just inclined her head briefly and acknowledged the honor.
Well, wasn't that interesting?

* * *

Mo finished the
layout of the new tunnel for seed production. He did an ultrasound scan of the
walls to confirm there were no hazardous fractures. He entered a work order for
his two man crew to seal and foam it, string power along the roof and fit a
lock frame. Not a fancy powered one but a simple manual isolation lock. He was
ten minutes over time for the shift and walked back to where his cart was
parked. His crew had left at shift end although that left him alone. He never
made them stay as he figured it would kill morale. It was a very narrow window
of risk for him. So far nobody had noticed the time stamps on suits being
racked or carts being parked and jumped on him for the safety lapse.

It was another
twenty minutes back to common pressure. Mo never pushed the cart as fast as it
would go. He parked his cart tight against the tunnel wall outside pressure and
keyed in the status for it. They had no reason to cycle the carts into
pressure. Most of the time they even manually unloaded them if they had
supplies rather than cycle the one lock big enough to hold a cart. When he went
in pressure he racked his suit and made sure it was plugged in. He really didn't
want to shower. Better to shower in the morning and get back in the suit as
clean as possible.

Mo walked to his
room and just hit the stinky parts with a sani-wipe. That would hold him until
the morning and he pulled on shorts in which to sleep. There were two canned
meals left. Chicken and Dumplings and Beef Stew. He really needed to remember
to get a few.

There was a
tap-tap-tap on the door. He wasn't expecting any one. "Hang on!" he
called and pulled on a fresh suit liner. Mo was still too Earth modest and wouldn't
answer the door in stretch shorts.

When he opened the
door it was a little blond girl. It took a couple seconds as tired as he was to
remember who her parents were and that her name was Danae. She was about the
age of his boy.

"Dad says
you've been eating self-heating and you needed a decent meal brought to
you." She was holding out a small thermo-pak straight armed. "It's stuffed
cabbage today and good. I made sure they put red sauce on the rice. It's pretty
boring without it."

"Thank
you," Mo said. "That does sound better than canned chicken and
dumplings." She made a face to show what she thought of canned chicken and
dumplings.

Mo took the pack
one handed. "Hang on, I'll get you some money for courier duty."

"No! Dad told
me you work your butt off for us and I can do plenty of other stuff for money,
but sometimes you do just do stuff because somebody needs a hand." Danae
took off down the corridor without any delay. He could hardly run down the
corridor after her and press the money on her.

"Thank
you!" Mo called after her.

She just lifted a
hand to acknowledge it without looking over her shoulder.

Would his boy Eric do that, just as a kindness? Mo hoped so, but he
wasn't there to teach him nearly enough. He didn't want to ask his wife directly
if she taught the kids charity, but he could mention about Danae in a positive
light to his family. That should provoke the thought if it wasn't already
happening.

* * *

Barak sorted
through his messages. His mom was chatty and listed a whole bunch of art projects
with which she was involved. She rarely included pix, describing them by
preference. He hadn't told her about their troubles on
Yuki-onna.
He'd
kept sending messages but just told her when they did a burn or what he worked
on. He'd installed a few cameras covering areas Jaabir seemed indifferent to
for unknown reasons. He was pleased to see Jeff and April hadn't said a word about
his problems to his mom, or it would have shown up in his mom's messages by
now. Apparently she didn't see anything in his messages to tip her off that
things on the
Yuki
were not at all what had been planned..

Jeff sent a follow
up message that had a bunch of filler to make it sound like the one line in it
that mattered wasn't the whole point. That was – "I've had lunch with a
few of the snowball investors and have not heard anything of concern." He
didn't say concern to whom or what, so the message couldn't be a problem later
if revealed. It wasn't a blatant – We're doing what we can to fix this and see you
safe -sort of a message that might be pointed to as proof of undue influence.
For not saying anything specific it made Barak feel
much
better. Just
knowing it was a concern to Jeff and he was actually doing things was plenty. If
Jeff was doing something he didn't need to know the details. He had every
confidence if Jeff was acting it would be effective.

April sent her
usual note, but she sent one almost every day and didn't complain if he skipped
two or three days. She told Barak more about what Heather and Jeff were doing
than herself, and almost always lamented how she missed being face to face daily
with Heather. She reminded him of times Heather and she used to sit on the
couch with Barak stuffed between them. Yeah, that stuck in his memory too.

Barak replied with
similarly cautious wording to Jeff, and thanked him. April he reminded of some
details of her visits when he was younger that she hadn't mentioned yet. Like
when he'd been modeling for his mom's sculpture. He wanted her to know he
remembered them fondly too. He desperately wanted to say much more about how
much closer they'd become recently, but felt awkward. Alice had once accused
him of not being romantic, but that wasn't true. He just wasn't
eloquent
.
He wasn't the sort to run on and on or compose poetry. He was afraid he's just
sound needy or pushy. She sometimes signed off with – "Love you." Not
every time so it became trite. He did sparingly too. But he loved Jeff and he
loved his sister Heather. Love was a much stretched and abused word in English.

He wanted to mention the last night he's been with her before he left,
not back when he was little. To ask if she remembered how he'd teased her about
bringing a puppy as a home-warming gift would be insulting. He knew damn well
she remembered, and how shocked she'd been to find out nose to nose that he was
the puppy. But April was smart. She'd remember things on a very thin hint. A
word was plenty. So when he ended the text he didn't say I Miss You or Love You.
He ended it – Woof! - Barak... She'd know exactly to what that alluded. He
could imagine her reading it and pictured precisely the slightly taken-aback look
she'd get on her face when he surprised her with that ending. It left him
smiling.

* * *

Margaret was at
her security station early. The shuttle from ISSII was coming in and she needed
to have each of the passengers declare a name and touch a DNA reader to enter.
It was late in the off shift, slowest time of the day before the main shift
rush, but she got a premium for covering it and no duty the next day so that
suited her fine. Margaret had a lot of seniority in security but in a small
department everybody wore a lot of different hats and nobody entirely avoided
unpleasant duty.