Mysteries of Motion (65 page)

It occurs to him that he gets his italics from her. And that he’s here as much on her account as on his father’s. Much in the same way, she’d sent his sisters, those Cathedral School types his father had insisted on, to the midwife instead of the hospital, where they did handily, almost too quick for their husbands to take flash-shots of the births. Whee, isn’t he lovely, Elsa said, handing round to his father’s colleagues the snapshot of her first grandchild pulping from between her elder daughter’s engorged thighs. ’Scuse it, boys, his father said, red under his brown: Elsa thinks she did it. No I don’t, Moleson. But I did wear out two fans.

Bitter and saucy behind him, she picks up the models of glory and mulls them. Because of her he is pitting his body into the universe. Without coveting death.

“Hurray, he’s breathing,” Francis says. “Our living Buddha. I was beginning to wonder. Or are you just having a
BM
?”

He’s straining to drag her forward and over the miles set between him and her since a week ago Saturday. Hup, Mother, and over the stile. In a minute she’ll be here, distant maybe but as alive as he—no loophole for me, sonny. No, Elsa. Wish I could hear her on Lievering. Probably she even knows his big word. Forward, Mother, out of the past.

“Seven, come eleven,” Mole says, scooping the dice, throwing them and untangling his legs all in one graceful swoop which brings him back to the cot bed, where just as rhythmically he raises it, and holding it up, lowers himself into the box below.

“What the hell you—?”

The bed’s resisting him, like a lid. He pushes against it, panting. “Multiple Failure…Not Contemplated. Remember? On all those print-outs. Of the mission, they meant…Well, I’m—contemplating it.” He’s big for the box. But if he curves himself in, it fits.

“Get the fuck out of there.” Tuohy, straining against the upraised cot, hauls him up and out. Red to their Adam’s apples, they waver at each other like two cocks.

“I’m—gee, Frank, that lid was—weighs a ton.”

“You fool, it’s on a spring.”

Mole stands up, weaving, vibration like an undercarriage beneath his feet. He misses his old sneakers. He tries to grin. “Tuohy, you’re not shivering anymore.” His own teeth are chattering.

“I should be. Suppose you’d done that while I wasn’t here.”

“I didn’t…Hey, look.” He’s thrown a seven, and a four. Shakily, he throws again. A six. A five. “Hey—these dice loaded?”

He only meant it in fun. But the medic says gently, “Sure, Mole. That’s the pair that are. Didn’t you know? Thought you were just humoring the old guy. My kids do a lot of it.” His voice is husky. “She just wanted me to have all the luck I could. Daddy’s little baby girl.” He whistles softly.
Mammy’s li-tle ba-bee loves short-nin bread,
the tune is. Mole stands at attention. Frank’s bringing his baby girl over the stile.

Though when the elders are finished feeling, then better to make like you’re sloping off; it’s less embarrassing.

“Where you going, kid?”

“Galley. Time for—ah—that cold porpoise and purée of bog.”

“Come on. It’s not that bad.”

Actually it isn’t. Better than the airlines. Only the presentation is odd. Booger-shaped solids and virtuous essences. What he craves is a little home-style disorganization. What saddens him is he’s getting used to the other. Not without a fight. “Sure. But I still have my standards.”

“You sure do. That’s what we cherish you for.”

“You what?”

“That’s what I said.”

They are both embarrassed.

“Then level with me.”

The corona framing Frank’s eyes goes up. “Ouch.” He claps a hand to it. “About what?”

Once, playing tic-tac-toe in an office anteroom, he’d overheard his father interrogate. He reached out a finger, lightly spreading the grease on those red marks. “What else on the flight deck scared you shitless, Frank?”

In a similar silence, had his father offered the guy a cig? No—asked for one. Mole stretched. “Think I’ll have some of your pop.”

When Frank comes back with the bottle, he says: “The deck did. The deck itself. I can only tell you what I saw.”

“Please.” His father had said—“Do.”

“I never been in Outer before. But I been a rocket buff since I was in jeans. Seen every model they ever had at Canaveral. Never seen a panel like that one. Yards of it. The controls alone are like jewelery. Some of the screens longer than a man. Than a big man. And like three-dimensional. Like you could almost live in them. Who knows, maybe four dimensions, once you get the hang of it. They’ve even got that radio-communications setup broadcasts signals—you know—for pickup. In case of other peer groups hacking around the universe.”

“Like at Goldstone. That desert one? But those discs are huge.”

“They’ve brought it all down to size. Things when I was your age were spread out a whole hangar. Or like—remember the old computers? No, you wouldn’t. That’s the first rule, kid. Bring it all down to size.” He crouched forward. “That’s what we do best. And it’s marvelous. Want to know the truth? I’d pay to come.”

“And the men in there? On the flight deck. What size are they?”

“And the men are there—” the medic says in a dramatic whisper. “In their shirt-sleeves. They have perfect G-force there, perfect environment. Royalty. And don’t begrudge them it. You barge in like we had to; there they are. Like those cookie-cutter men in toy cars or like in a drag race. All profile. No full face. Because all five are glued to the panel. The three who’re on inside break can ease more, or take turns leaving deck. Or help put out a fire. They did that.”

“Dove was on outside break?”

“Yeah. He hauled me in. And my kit.”

Throughout this narration the medic’s excitement has grown on him as if it comes from an outside agent, pounding his fist in his palm for him, rolling his eyes. Now he walks on tiptoe, his arms stretched graphically, watching the story issue from between his own fingertips.

“Frank. Five and three makes eight.”

The medic stops in his tracks.

“And one makes nine.”

“So it does.”

“But the manual calls for—” A flight-deck crew of ten.

Foolish Mole. Never interrogate in a straight line. Frank’s strong fingers are at his elbow, the coronaed eyes too close. “Kid. Go eat.”

In his grasp Mole goes cunningly limp. “Frank—you like being scared?”

He’s released. “Told you I’m a buff. Maybe I do. When there’s—good reason for it.” He can’t resist a slight smile. “Sends my wife up the wall.”

“When there’s Quaker duty, huh?”

“Somebody told you about that. Yeah.”

“And I’m part of that duty, huh? You were never tapped. To watch over me. Frank? Thanks.”

Now wait. Say nothing. Let him come down on it.

“To let you come aboard like that,” Frank says slowly. “Cold. Men with boys of their own. For a joke. And when—”

“When what?”

“Nothing.”

Repeat their name, his father said once, in a rare briefing on how Mole should deal with a touchy housemaster. Names never tire. “Frank—”

“Space is curved, they say,” the medic says angrily. “That mean we people using it have to be crooked to match?” He bangs a fist against his head. “Ouch. Look, leave me be, will you? I have to write a letter home. Every week, I promised them. Hey. Hey, Mole. Don’t go all dreamy on me.” The medic’s voice softens, but like they all do when they’ve had enough of you, and hard tit to you: Like they have your interests at heart, but now scram. He can’t know of the three syllables which have entered Mole like a silver corkscrew.
Using space.

When Mole draws to his full height he’s almost six-five. Girls saw. Men noted only the shamble, and bone sockets wrong for basketball. Or if they knew his father—the flecked eyes. He’ll say “Frank” one more time, he thinks. You, Frank—answer, hear? Or else I’ll—I’ll swallow your dice. Though there’s no porthole, the sick bay has a reflector to the corridor. Out there he can see the medic’s life-support suit hanging on its hook. When Lievering goes for simulation practice on how to maneuver on the surface of the
Courier,
he wears a heavier version called an EVA Mobility Unit. It’s all the same thing. Maybe if I had my life-support on, this would be easier. Because I have this problem. I’m a joke, yes. But I’m also the Joker. “Frank—”

The medic raises his head.

“Does my father—does Canaveral know it yet. That I’m here?” Using space?

“Come here, kid. I won’t bite. But if you weren’t such a lummox I’d take you on my lap.
And
your sidekick.” He snorts. “Some of us are psycho, yeah. Some of us are only panicky.”

The dice lie on the floor. Mole kicks at them. “You’re going to tell me—I know what you’re going to say.” At what passes for night here he’s awakened and gone into the Hygiene Unit to squat and think of it. Or gone to the document box for Fred’s gift book, which dealt with all space as if it was only an architecture meant to soothe, whereby inconvenient people could be prayed away. He’s not sure what his prayer is. “Maybe—that my father’s aboard?”

The medic gets up, goes to the fridge. Instead of opening it, he leans his face to cool there. “Your age, I worked Amnesty International awhile. We talk to a guy in jail, or a woman, we always do like this, for good-bye.” He turns up his hands at the wrists, “See? Put your hands against mine. They always do like this, for good-bye. They always did it, no matter what language. Paddy-cake. Through the bars.”

Mole puts his palms against the medic’s, which are horny and greasy both.

“We don’t fly like the canaries here, kid. Everybody knows they work us from outside. Like the wardens did. That’s what shook me up. That one gray screen that’s responsible—to them. Then one little hot spot and it goes blank. Like my old Murray switch-box at home, when a fuse blows. But
they’re
the ones at home.”

Mole can see their own box in a closet under the cellar stairs.

“For a minute you’re in the dark, that’s all,” the medic is saying.

“Then what?”

“Then you repair. Or they do. And that’s the glory of it.” Tuohy removes his hands from Mole’s. At the mirror again he pats his face all over delicately, with a Kleenex, like a man using aftershave before a date. “Us—against the universe.” He drums his feet on the floor as if the universe stops there. “Glory, hear? All those wars’ve made us ashamed to say it. Teaching kids like you only bad men have it. Or want it.” He reaches behind him. “Here. Have some of my fizz.”

Mole drinks. It tastes like—fizz. “Thanks, Frank. Now I am a man.”

The medic chuckles. “Everybody needs a little…paddy-cake. You all right now?”

You’re the one needed it. “Thanks. You must be a very good father.”

“Right.” The medic brings out a pencil, free of its string. Here and there the rules break down. Here and there. “So—”

“I’ll scram.”

“Enjoy your meal. Hah—porpoise. I’ll write the kids that.”

“We had it in the Bahamas, on a rented schooner. The captain insisted.” Mole lingers.

“Honest? What’s it taste like?”

“Like the inside of a girl.”

Frank’s head comes up, slowly.

That’s right, Frank, revise me. Still think I need a lap? “Silly idea aren’t they, Frank. Captains.” Mole ha-ha’s giddily. “On a bridge, with a spyglass. Passenger idea.”

The red coronas are hard and shiny now. They still can wrinkle.

“Tuohy?”

The medic sits up.

“Which side you on?”

“Side?”

“The men or the kids?”

“Heh. Close to the bone. Very close to the bone.” He doesn’t smile.

“Maybe I should ask Dove a few things.’”

“That stooge? You ask Dove anything, Dove is what you get. Kid—” He shakes his head, flicking Mole’s breast pocket. “Okay,
Mr.
Kim. Whyn’t you just hold tight and wait till you’re called?” He mutters under his breath.

“I heard that. And pray you won’t be, you said. Then why won’t you level with me?”

“You walked into it.” He’s moving his letter page in a circle under the pencil, as if he can’t figure out how to intersect with it. “And so did I.”

“Walk—” Mole says. “When we can
fly.
Who wants to
walk
anymore?”

“You mean that?”

“Almost.” He’s dizzy with it. High—on fizz.

“I keep wondering what my kids will think about that when they’re old enough. So now I know.” He flaps his arms like wings. “Like father, like kids. So you’re a buff, too? Like the rest of us? Then settle down to it.”

“What is this fizz?” Mole said.

“Potassium juice. For the athaletic muscles. People win Olympics on it. I just take my cut. Expect to do a lot of running, out there. Be in a factory, they said. In a medical capacity. What the factory makes, I dunno.”

“Well, you have the run of the ship here. You’re crew.”

“Second crew. The others on it understudy the deck. Which means they don’t get away from it. My bailiwick’s here. I run the super-nourishment supply.” He shook the bottle. “With other supplements.”

“We don’t get this in the cabin. Cabin Six, I mean.”

“No-o. You’re administrative bigwigs. You’re not going to be athaletes.”

“Frank—who are—the rest of us?”

But the medic, taking up his pencil, is lettering a large
HOW ARE THE
HOW IS
In the first space he draws two rabbits with their ears intertwined, in the second a plump cat holding up its name. He’s quite good at it. The finished letter will be processed to wait for the return voyage and then at last go local to the Canadian border where his family lives as Americanly close as possible to his wife’s Quebec. Months may pass, more.

“You’re a talented guy. Drawing, whistling.”

“The wife takes care of their mortal souls.” Tuohy now limns in a houseboat marked
WE,
with a brace of giraffes nodding from behind its smokestack toward two horses, one bonneted, the other dropping a turd. Then come a number of auditing birds and finally a far shore with a crowd of minute button-faces, labeled
YOU.
Presiding over the deck is his own face recognizably hung in the air and rayed like a sun. Below it is a woolly-haired figure with its hind end in a tub.
YOUR DAD AND A CUSTOMER.