The Only Words That Are Worth Remembering (20 page)

Those same Bosom men had been assigned to guard our trailer, although nothing about them suggested they were up to the job. They were nervous, overfed, obviously third-tier. One man showed a fondness for word-search puzzles. I watched him suck on a pencil for an hour without once marking the page. I listened to his partner talk about the causal relationship between dust mites and stupidity. The links, he said, are manifest. To protect himself from mites, he slept every night on a rubber life raft. The men passed a single gun between them, an aykay that they handled like a venomous snake.

In Umma's absence it was down to me to tend Pop's injuries. I poured rum on a clean rag and taped it to his cheek. I swabbed the grease off his chest with steamy water and dish soap. Through the entire procedure Pop sat shivering on the foot of his bed, naked and docile as can be. Remarkably, his arm had not been broken but only crimped under the wheel of the Vanster. The rest of the rum I gave him for the pain and put my father to bed like he had done for me so many nights.

The following morning we were summoned to Launch Control. We entered the classroom to find strangers in our assigned seats. Three were grown men, unquestionably brothers, plump and shiny as cooked beans. Two scabby girls bickered over a bag of jerky. Two boys fought over the girls. A woman paced behind the lectern. She sucked on a cigarette, swatting away her own smoke like it was someone else's fault. Her hair was wet and she wore nothing but a one-piece bathing suit with a pattern of naked ladies. She looked annoyed, as if she had been called away from crucial sunbathing.

“Who in tit's name are you?” demanded the woman. “And I thought we was ugly.”

I said we were astronauts, but she just laughed.

Terry Nguyen entered at a bounce despite the gauze circling his head. A brown stain showed the contour of one ear. His nose was a glossy mound of purple. He carried a binder and a Styrofoam cup half full of dark fluid.

“Lettie, if you wouldn't mind.” He shooed the gal in the naked-lady swimsuit to her seat and assumed his usual place behind the lectern.

“A breach of contract,” he began, reading from the binder, “may include any of the following: desertion, insubordination, failure to complete training, theft, assault, illness, or suicide.” He spoke with difficulty, as if through a drinking straw. “Any member of the team found in breach may, at discretion of Program Director, be dismissed; in exceptional circumstances the entire team may be disposed of. Punishment of dismissed parties shall be determined by the Program Director and may include: a) immediate transport to the Cuba Pens, where they shall serve out their remaining sentences as outlined in section D, part 4; or b) other remedies as determined by the Program Director.” He closed the binder, snorted, and spat blood in his cup.

Lettie, on her feet again, demanded to know precisely what was happening. “Exactly who is getting fired here? I for one didn't breach dogshit.”

The three beans chuckled: “Here we go.”

Terry apologized. Had he been entirely forthcoming? No, he had not. Did he now regret his dishonesty? Again, no. Two teams had been readied for travel to Europa. We were Team A; Lettie, the beans, and their ugly children, they were our replacements.

“Replacements?” said Lettie. “I never replaced nobody, and I am not about to start now.”

“This is a high-value enterprise,” said Terry. “Failsafe measures had to be implemented. I see now that I was wise to do so.” He had, he said, overlooked a number of failings and indiscretions, including the “cowardly departure of Ms. Van Zandt,” and “unauthorized fraternizing among conscripts.”

He had gone easy, Terry said, “too lenient perhaps. But physical assault on the person of the Program Director cannot be ignored.”

He stepped to the door, then paused. When he turned back to face us I saw moisture in his eyes. I hesitate to call it tears. “I tried to do everything right,” he said, his voice pinched and petulant, “so that you would respect and perhaps even grow to like me. This could have been so much fun.”

He was gone several minutes before Lettie piped up: “Well, shit dice and roll a seven,” she said. “I guess we're still going to Jupiter.” The beans slapped five.

Terry's goons appeared in the hall to escort us back to our trailers. A van, they said, would arrive the following afternoon to transport us to Hiya City. From there it was another gunboat to the Cuba Pens, where we would commence a life sentence of hard labor in the rum fields.

Bill pressed in close behind me. “That's a laugh,” he whispered.

“What?”

“Terry would never let us back into the world—not even Cuba—not with what we know.” His stubble scraped the back of my neck and I felt him like a virus. “Bosom has protocol, you know, cleanup agents who manage cases like us. They show up in a van and boom.”

“Who shows up in a van?”

“God, you are dumb.” I jerked upright as his bristles dug in. “Six a.m., boy. Tomorrow. Boot up and prepare for liftoff. I will radio Launch Control from the cockpit when it's time to reset the clock.”

*   *   *

It was hardly necessary for the Bosom guards to sedate Pop. My failure on the Crawler Road had sapped all the fight out of him. After our father had fallen asleep, Faron called me into the bathroom.

“You swear you know how to launch that thing?” He backed into the shower stall.

“I guess.”

“I been thinking,” he said. “Hell if Sylvia is going away with that creep.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I have to do what Bill says. He'll kill you if I don't.” Faron laughed. He liked that idea. He peeled back the vinyl paneling. The Bushmaster hung there on a pipe.

“You can do just as Bill said, brother, but me and Sylvia, we want to be in that cockpit, not Bill and Mae. All you have to do different is be at Launch Control an hour earlier. Bill says six? Have your finger on that button at five.”

“I can't do that, Faron.”

“I know you liked her,” he said. “I know I messed up and you would rather not see us together. But think, Rowan: either way you lose her. Don't make me live without her, too. I am your brother, Rowan, and I am asking.”

“Bill says they come in a van.”

“What?”

“In a van, I said. Are you dumb?” I wanted to punch him right in his pretty teeth. Instead I shoved my brother so hard, he tripped backward into the stall, tearing down the curtain as he fell. I knelt and spat in his face: “Bill said it was a protocol. Cleanup agents. A van. Terry means to kill us all tomorrow.”

Pop moaned. I looked to the master bedroom as he swung a heavy arm at the nightstand. The resin lamp thudded on the floor and he resumed snoring. Faron got to his feet.

“Terry won't kill shit. Not me anyways.” He elbowed past me into the kitchenette. “Or you if I have anything to say. When that rocket takes off, he's going to be too busy pulling out his hair to see you slip off into the woods. You'll be halfway up the coast before Terry even knows you're gone.”

“Great. Then come with me,” I said. “Let the Reades take off if they want to so bad. You and me will run. We ran before, Faron.”

“Look how that worked out.”

My brother smiled. It wasn't just Sylvia. He wanted to be on that rocket for his own reasons, for Faron reasons. He thought he would go to Europa, set himself up with a new life.

“There is nothing good waiting for me down here,” he said. “Nothing.”

 

17.

It was summer in the Arizone, early September, when the Copernican League, weighed down with tents and cookstoves, departed fourteen strong from the Lowell Observatory. The telescope Raoul set his sights on lay five thousand miles south, on a hilltop called Cerro Paranal in the Atacama Desert. The Very Large Telescope was, he promised us, the final unmolested, nonransacked array on Earth, with four 8.2-meter optical telescopes and a warren of mirrored tunnels that siphon the starlight into an underground chamber.

By morning we made the gravel city of Two-Son, where we boarded a train bound for Mexy Town, spreading out across six different coaches to avoid suspicion. Raoul forbade open talk with our fellow Copernicans; instead messages were conveyed on slips of paper, which we inserted in the folds of sticky buns. These were for sale in the café car, wrapped in plastic, and when one was delivered you had to eat it right away, along with the note. Some mornings as many as fourteen buns appeared on my overhead luggage rack.

Our leader's paranoia had lain dormant on Mars Hill. Now it emerged like a hermit crab from its seashell, impotently snapping at every imagined threat. His worries were not entirely unjustified. What I had seen and done at Cape Cannibal made me an asset. I knew more about the dull mechanics of Astronomy than just about anyone alive. But knowing can make you a liability. In me, the Copernican League harbored a saboteur, a man on the lam from certain incarceration, a fugitive in possession of proprietary corporate secrets, and therefore a person of interest to either Bosom Enterprises or its rival.

For my part, I felt safer in the company of the Copernicans. Raoul was widely regarded, if at all, as an idiot. Still, I kept a blade in my sock, M-80s in a paper bag. If there was any trouble, I intended to slash and bang my way off that Mexy locomotive. To protect your baby eardrums, I kept two small wads of cotton in my breast pocket. I would tape shut your eyes if need be to preserve you from the meanness in this world.

Just below the border our train lurched through the toiletry and detergent hub of Nogolly. Glass towers swayed on either side of the railbed, throwing a silvery glow of commerce over the train. I cracked the transom window to let in the famously perfumed air of the Scented Valley. Breathed deep, because people said you could take that sweetness with you for the rest of your life. That the vapors could cure pleurisy and lameness, self-doubt or sloth. We chugged slow through zones of fragrance: Minty-Fresh breath, Citrus shampoo, Sanitary Pine like the cleanest motel restroom you ever relieved yourself in.

A responsible father would have hopped off the train right there. He would have orphaned his baby girl in the lobby of one of those bright buildings, snug on a white leather sofa to be discovered by a hygienic female CEO. To be raised, as the saying goes, rich and right.

We hissed to a stop beside a frosted-glass depot. On the platform opposite, a crowd waited for their own train. Women and men, they shared a fellowship of good grooming. They smiled at one another without speaking, as if the object of their pleasure were too obvious to mention. Suit jackets slung over one shoulder; hosiery scrubbed white. Despite the oppressive heat there wouldn't be a single sweat stain on those pricey fabrics. You held my pinkie finger. Your diaper had wanted changing since we crossed the border.

Had I skipped Faron's invitation to Zoo Miamy that day, I might have offered you a decent life, Little Sylvia. No Scented Valley, mind you, only regular. But regular was not the sort of life Terry Nguyen stuck me with. At least, I thought, you won't grow up a fool. Look at those people on the platform, I said, wagging your damp fist with my pinkie, “every one a fool and they don't even know it.”

Early the second morning we entered the badlands of Upper Mexy. Most of the fink I had used had been cooked up on that sorry stretch. I looked out on the sun-red desert and saw an anti-heart, an organ that pumped black tar. When you are old enough I will give your grandmother's canvas bundle to you so that you may burn it.

Another night arrived, still on the train. You cried. You slept. You gazed up at my face, at the sky outside our window. Orion's Belt. The Sierra Mama. Mountains move slow, I sang, stars hardly at all. I named the ones I knew, and your feet kicked at the sound of my voice. I would find a hole in the Night Glass where I could lift you through. I would follow you up and stamp on the sky till it shattered into pieces across the Earth.

Morning returned. You were hungry. I fed you formula thinned with water from the lavatory. Your mother did not ask to hold you, and I was glad she kept her distance. You were all mine, Sylvia.

The whole way to Mexy Town, Raoul sulked in the bar car, inserting one frightened message after another into the sticky buns. Eventually his gloom alienated the Lowell cleaning staff. By the time we reached the capital, our number had been reduced to eleven. He decided it was rail travel that was killing morale. No more trains.

Penny asked around and found a previously owned school bus for sale. While the others waited in the zocalo, me and Raoul met the seller out back of a mattress wholesaler. She was a grandmother of almost perfectly spherical proportions but fit. The bus less so, though Raoul judged it sufficient. After she showed us under the hood, the old woman popped a compartment beneath the dash. Inside she indicated us a bullwhip with beads on the stinger end and said you never knew. Raoul nodded.

“Yes,” I said. “It's going to be a long ride.”

“You going out looking for schools?” the lady wanted to know. One side of the bus was painted with the words
ROMA NORTE VOCATIONALS
.

I thought it was a joke, but she did not laugh. “No,” I replied. “Just regular sightseeing.”

“Because you could pull up in front of any elementary school in Mexy,” she said, “pick up some kids, and nobody would bat an eyeball.” Her brow wrinkled and she stuck out her bottom lip. I guessed she was right about that, although I said we didn't plan to give rides to children. “Okay,” she said with a dirty laugh. “You got it, man!”

She wondered how we were set for lodging. Her husband was a licensed travel agent, and he would be happy to make some calls. Raoul told her we planned to camp out. “Ha!” Her eyes narrowed. “He's the smart one. Keep to the shadows until you find the right school. Then:
ding
,
ding
,
ding
,
ding
,
ding
!” She pinched the air with each ding like it was something actual.