Galaxy's Edge Magazine: Issue 3, July 2013 (21 page)

Ms. Abbot had fetched paper towels from her desk drawer. Now, she stared at him in astonishment. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’ll just mop it up.” And she laid the paper towels in the puddle to soak it up.

Rann considered the counselor with something not too short of horror before reminding himself that she was not like his own people. The sudden sorrow with which he had viewed the spilt tea itself dried up as if dabbed with a psychic towel, to be replaced with a gentle and nostalgic melancholy that he knew would never go away whenever he thought on this incident in the future.

When Ms. Abbot took the now-sodden towels to the wastebasket, Rann stood and tugged at his clothing. Strange how current events could stir long-dormant memories. It hadn’t been the space station at all; or at least not alone. “I think our time is up anyway, Ms. Abbot, and you have patients with more pressing troubles than I. I believe I understand the cause. And perhaps a solution.”

The counselor watched him solemnly. “There are coping mechanisms,” she said, “but no solutions.”

***

It took Rann a week to obtain the backhoe and secure the necessary permits, only a little longer to learn which palms at the township must be crossed with what quantity of silver. He assured the rental manager that he knew how to operate a backhoe, signed forms and releases to absolve the man of any responsibility for what might happen, and arranged to have it delivered to his home by a flatbed. From the DIY store he secured stakes, cord, chalklines, and other paraphernalia.

Then he climbed into the crawlspace below the roof and found his old positioning module. He spent the afternoon cleaning, polishing, and calibrating the unit and determining that it could shake hands with the GPS system.

The next morning Rann made himself an omelet with a side of ham and buttered toast. During the past week he had eaten listlessly, but today he felt nearly cheerful and regarded the empty pockets in the egg tray in which the three eggs had so lately nestled with only a modest amount of wistfulness for the eggs-that-had-been. He pretended that the eggs were like those at home and that the ham had been cured with the same smokes and spices as the meats to which he had once been accustomed. But a great many years had passed since then and he was no longer sure that he remembered their flavors aright. This, too, was a sadness.

Perhaps the old surgery had affected his taste as it had his features, giving him at least in his imagination a savoring for alien foods.

He entered his back yard with a certain lightness of step and drove a marker stake into the ground to step off his baseline. He set up his theodolite using the module, which had a built-in EDM to measure distance, and tuned the instrument to the global positioning system. It surprised him sometimes how similar were the tools of his trade from place to place; but he reflected that there were not too many different ways to take levels and distances and angles, and so there was nothing astonishing that the instruments might be similar. It was only a matter of transposing the numbers.

“Only” a matter of transposing the numbers.

His yard, like all those around the block, backed onto a small woodland in the center of the neighborhood. The two roads into the area curved into each other forming a rough oval that enclosed a modest copse of trees and brush, providing shelter for rabbits and birds and sundry creatures. Every day toward sunset some large, furry, flattish thing crawled slowly from the forsythia bush toward the creek that bisected the woods. A muskrat, he thought, or maybe a badger. A short walk in any direction touched on more urban landscapes, where such unruly things as lazy muskrats and meandering creeks were properly kept in their places. The woods, his neighbors had told him when he moved in, sat on township land; but because private property enclosed it on all sides, it could not be developed. He had not corrected them on the matter.

He had run a line to a stake at the far end of his property when his neighbor to the south appeared at the fence with two cans of beer. His name was Jamie Shaw and he was a legman for a private detective agency. Beyond that, and that he had a very large extended family, Rann knew little about him. “Looks like hot work,” Shaw said, and waved the second can in Rann’s general direction.

Rann did not want to take a break at the very beginning of his work—if there can be such a paradoxical thing as a break at a beginning—but neither did he wish to appear un-neighborly. He joined Shaw at the fence, thanked him, and sipped a little from the can. Shaw asked him what he thought of the Giants’ chances come fall; and Rann, who had calculated from game theory a losing season, said that a new quarterback often breathed life into a tired offense. Shaw nodded, gestured with his can at the markers he had driven into the ground.

“Building something?”

“Yes, a swimming pool.”

“Really? I never saw you as the athletic type. You’re doing the work yourself?”

“Some of it. I expect to have help later.”

“You’ve marked it pretty close to the woods.”

Rann said, “The property lines actually run a little way into the woods. I checked.”

Shaw took a swig of his beer. “Better check your deed. There are covenants. No digging, and no ‘diminishing the woods.’ I’d hate to see you get half into it and the association comes along and shuts you down. The lady down the corner…” He gestured vaguely north with his beer can. “…is mighty touchy about the trees and rabbits—or her boyfriend is. Heck, I’d rather not see them ‘diminished,’ either.”

“Jamie, are you threatening me with a lawsuit?”

The ruddy man reared back. “Me? No. I don’t confuse my personal preferences with the laws of the universe. I’m just giving you a heads-up. I’m not the only one on the block, you know.” He pointed to the houses on either side, and to the backs of those on the far side of the oval, partly visible through the summer foliage. “Now, you’re not quite encroaching, but you might want to think about those trees dirtying up your pool come the fall. That one over there is a sycamore and sheds bark all year long. Why not put in an above-ground pool and place it farther away from the trees.”

Rann said, “I’m sure everything will work out.” He took the beer with him when he returned to his work, but his stomach churned and as soon as he was able he scurried inside, poured the beer down the drain, and removed his bolus. He stood for a while gagging over the toilet bowl and wondered at the price of neighborliness. Then he rinsed, swallowed the bolus once more, and returned to work.

The sun grew hot as the afternoon wore on, but that did not trouble him. The warmth was rather pleasant, especially after the interminable winter. He was swarthy and did not burn like Jamie Shaw, who sometimes emulated a well-done lobster. Someone had once told Rann that he looked like an Egyptian mummy: delicate and rugged at the same time, tough as old leather.

When he realized that his last stake would be off by several digits, he cursed himself. The hash marks on his sights were on the
chegk
scale and he had forgotten to transform the digits at one point. It was a mistake anyone could make. Some American scientists had once confused the metric scale with the traditional scale when programming a Mars probe and the probe had not known it had reached the surface until it had already gone several feet past it.

It was a mistake that he had made only once in his lifetime.

Rann wiped his tears and backtracked until he found the point where he had inadvertently used the old
puralon
scale and he made the necessary correction. After that, the blocking proceeded square and on the level, though his hands shook more than they might ordinarily have done.

***

A few days later, the backhoe was delivered and Rann spent the day fencing off the open space between his house and the garage with chain-link. The backhoe was officially an “attractive nuisance,” and so he must put “appropriate safeguards” in place. The township inspector came around and checked everything, then recommended fencing off the woods behind as well. Someone determined enough could cross a neighbor’s yard, pass through the woods, enter Rann’s yard, and so hurt himself with the backhoe. Rann thought that anyone that determined could climb the fence as well, but he appreciated the inspector’s position. There were rules and it was not within her authority to ignore them.

Afterward, he invited the inspector inside for a cup of coffee, which was gracefully accepted. A lot of home improvement enthusiasts, Rann gathered from her conversation, spent their time arguing with the code inspectors rather than improving their homes. Rann made sympathetic noises. She had already seen and approved the drawings and levels, and had ascertained Rann’s competency to do the excavation work himself. He had earlier discovered that the inspector’s cousin owned a concrete firm and had put the cousin’s name on his subcontractor list. It was not bribery. She had never mentioned him, nor had Rann pointed it out.

Of course she noticed the picture over the mantel. It was meant to be noticed. “That’s…rather startling,” she said. “Abstract expressionism? A Pollock, maybe?”

“It’s what they call a supernova. A giant star exploded eleven thousand years ago, about the time people were just beginning to farm. Eight hundred years later, they would have seen in the night sky a second sun. This…,” Rann gestured at the picture, “is all that’s left. The shock wave. The gas flying off from the explosion reacts with the interstellar medium, knocking electrons off their atoms. When the electrons recombine with the atoms, they produce light in many different energy bands—ah, colors—and give us this.”

“It’s very pretty,” the inspector said. “It looks almost like a photograph.”

Rann said, “It is.”

“Oh, that’s right. There was a big telescope out in space for a while, wasn’t there? What’s that down in the corner?”

“A part of a ship’s hull. The equivalent of accidentally getting your thumb in front of the lens.”

The inspector nodded at this, then started and laughed. “After all that money! And they didn’t even get a clear shot.”

Rann said, “Come here. I have another photograph that might interest you.” This one hung in the entry hall facing the front door, so visitors who entered in the normal fashion saw it first of all. “This is a sinkhole on Mars, called ‘Dena.’ It’s one of seven spotted around the volcano Arisa Mons.”

“Deep,” said the inspector as she studied the picture. “The shadows at the bottom are so dark that it almost looks like an opening into an underground cavern.”

Rann said, “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? And heat comes out of the hole. Makes you wonder what might be down there.”

The inspector looked at him. “A volcano, you said?”

“A dead volcano. All seven vents give off heat,” he added, “but Dena most of all. Closest to the source, maybe? But look into those shadows. Don’t they draw you in? Don’t they make you wonder what lies in the darkness beyond?”

“More rocks, I suppose. It’s not safe to poke into shadows. Are those circular things near the sinkhole
bubbles
? Oh. No, they’re craters. Weird optical illusion. For a moment, I thought…But the shadows are wrong.”

“Lipless craters. Maybe they were domes that have now collapsed into their foundations,” Rann suggested.

The inspector laughed. “You should write that sci-fi stuff. Well, thank you for the coffee, but I have two more sites to check out today. Don’t forget to call me when you finish digging.”

After she had departed, Rann remained for a while before the photograph, staring into the depths of the shadows. Nearly everyone he had shown his pictures to over the years had had the same reaction. An incuriosity bordering on the morbid. Had something gone out of the human race in this past generation or two? Had some spark been extinguished? It had not always been that way. He could remember the excitement of the first satellites, the first men in space, the first men on the moon, the first space station. It had all been ‘first’ in those days. He had never thought that he would see the last, as well.

He wiped a tear from his cheek for lost old days, and returned to this back-yard project.

***

Neighbors drifted by to watch from time to time. Alma Seakirt, the woman down at the corner, asked him how close he was digging to the woods, and the old retired doctor on her other side traipsed through the trees and brush as if engaged on a survey of his own. He leaned on the back fence and watched in silence for a time, but asked no questions and made no comment before leaving the way he had come.

“They just want to make sure you’re not harming the preserve,” Jamie Shaw told him afterward as Rann relaxed on his patio with a lemonade and studied on how little he had accomplished. He offered a drink to Shaw and to his cousin, Sandra Locke, who was visiting that day. They came across and took lawn chairs around the patio table. Lemonade did not bother Rann as much as beer did, so long as he took a small pill with the drink. Shaw had a packet of papers tucked under his arm and Rann waited to see what surprise the man intended.

“There is something peculiar about your property,” Shaw announced as he set the packet on the patio table.

His cousin brushed a stand of hair out of her face. “Jamie has been wasting his time as usual instead of servicing our paying clients.”