Analog SFF, September 2010 (21 page)

He didn't expect a response from the high school class. It was the middle of the night in the Ukraine. But a couple of hours later he checked his email and found a reply from one of the students:

"Dear Mr. Bebe,

"I think not you have the mental problem. I think you have allergy. I have same problem with crocus, also iris and freesia. Is growth canister leaking airs?

"Wishing you luck the best,

"Anita Yelokovna"

He stared at the screen for a full minute, trying to wrap his brain around the concept that he might not be damaged goods after all. An allergy? How could it be an allergy? Tears were an emotional problem, not a chemical imbalance.

A little voice said,
Tell that to a chef slicing onions.

But slicing onions didn't lead to emotional instability. Being teased about crying, on the other hand . . .

His mother had grown crocuses. And irises too. They'd been all around the house when he'd been growing up.

The space station had emergency oxygen packs in every module. Michael removed the one beside his bunk space from its Velcro harness and slipped its mask over his face. He cracked the valve and made sure oxygen was flowing, then clipped the tank to his belt and pushed his way out of the Zvezda module and down the station's long central axis to the science modules.

Quentin was in the Columbus lab. He looked up when Michael came in, saw the mask, and flinched as if he'd heard a meteor strike. “Is something wrong with the air?"

"That's what we're going to find out,” Michael said. The mask muffled his voice, but not so badly that Quentin couldn't hear him.

He disconnected the crocus cylinder and pushed it ahead of him across Node 2 and into the JEM module, where he opened the inner door of the airlock that led to the vacuum exposure facility.

Quentin had followed along behind him. “Dude, you're going to space the flowers?"

"No,” Michael said. “I'm going to seal them up in their own atmosphere, and you're only going to open the lock to water them when I'm on the opposite side of the station breathing through an oxygen pack.” While he attached the canister to a tie-down inside and closed the airlock, he told Quentin what he'd read in the Ukrainian girl's email.

"Allergies?” Quentin asked when he was done. “That doesn't seem like—"

"I didn't buy it at first, either, but the more I think about it, the more sense it makes. What if the allergy gives me all the symptoms of crying—the sniffly nose and tears in the eyes and tight throat and all that—so I'm right there on the physical edge of it already when I get an emotional trigger. Normally the trigger would just push me a little bit toward tears, but not enough to actually bring them on. But if I was already near the edge, it could push me right on over."

Quentin nodded. “Yeah, okay, I could be convinced."

"And I could stay up here for four more months if it's true. Sorry, buddy."

"Hey, it's your tour if you can beat this thing."

"Consider it beaten,” Michael said.

It took three days to convince the flight surgeon, but after breathing pure oxygen for two hours to flush his system and changing all the air purification canisters on the station, Michael knew. He could feel it. Where before it had seemed like he had an unseen companion looking over his shoulder, ready to attack him at any moment—exactly the way he had felt in grade school too—now he felt the security of a teenager in a shopping mall. He was in his element again, with a huge buffer zone between his emotions and trouble. He could look straight out the window at the Earth, watch the clouds swirling past beneath him, and not even blink.

For the acid test, he pulled up the picture of his son, David, his cheeks flushed red from playing among the autumn leaves. He smiled and wished he could reach out and run his fingers through the boy's hair, but he felt nary a sniffle. Not even when he went down to the JEM airlock and looked through the porthole at the yellow crocuses—three of them in bloom now—did he feel the slightest urge to cry.

At the end of the week he watched Quentin leave on the supply ship and welcomed Quentin's replacement, Olivia Rhodes, on board the station. She was everything Larisa was not: exuberant, friendly, talkative, and full of questions. Michael gave her the tour, but as he showed her through the station, he realized that she was everything
he
was not as well. A lifetime of fearing his emotions had given him more self-control than he'd realized, to the point where he must have come off as cold and distant to her, and probably to Larisa too.

He floated awake that night in his sleeping harness, wondering if he actually had the capacity to feel emotion like a normal person anymore, or if his lifelong overreaction to a simple allergy had robbed him of something basic. Maybe he needed to cultivate crocuses and keep one on hand in a sealed baggie for those moments when emotion was appropriate.

He was still wondering a week later when the Moon slid in front of the Sun, causing a total eclipse for people on the ground in a line running from Oregon to South Carolina. The space station raced through the shadow in less than a minute, but the real show was below, as the fuzzy pool of darkness slid across the face of the Earth, blotting out clouds, mountains, cities, and lakes in its relentless eastward sweep.

Olivia was snapping pictures through the cupola windows and squealing with delight. Larisa and Michael shared another window, quietly watching the display of celestial mechanics unfold beneath them. He wanted to take her hand in his, just for the human contact in such a once-in-a-lifetime moment, but he was afraid of how she would interpret it.

Then he heard her sniffle and looked over to see her rub a tear from her eye.

"Eta prekrasna,"
she said. “It's beautiful."

"Yes,” he said. “Yes, it is.” Something blurred the view for a moment, and it wasn't until he blinked and it cleared that he understood what it was.

Throwing caution to the winds, he held out his arms in invitation. Larisa arched her eyebrows in surprise, but she smiled and snuggled in next to him. Arm in arm, they watched the shadow recede behind them.

Copyright © 2010 Jerry Oltion

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It can be nice to have someone else do your work for you, but their criteria for making decisions may not be the same as yours. . . .

Quinton silently crept along the dark hallway until he reached the door to the projection booth, but before he could slip inside, Mark emerged from the shadows. The two graduate students glared at each other, their faces barely visible in the dim glow of a light strip. Faint voices leaked through the door to the projection booth—the secret faculty meeting in the conference room had begun.

"We seem to have had the same idea,” said Mark.

Quinton nodded. It had happened often in the year and two months since Quinton enrolled in the biophysics program at the University for Advanced Research. Although he and his chief rival had more or less observed a truce since classes had been canceled indefinitely, Quinton had not forgotten the sometimes-messy battles they'd fought. Ideas fueled careers, but ideas were easily stolen. Mark had sticky fingers.

"There's room for two in the projection booth,” said Quinton.

"It's locked,” said Mark, moving to block the doorway. “How do you propose to get in?"

"With the keypad. I'll show you if you step aside."

Noise from the conference room intensified. People were raising their voices.

Mark didn't move. The dim light strip, already beginning to flicker and die, washed out the color of Mark's shoulder-length auburn hair and gave his face a veiny, bluish tint. Quinton's southern tan had long since faded; now, with his dark hair and pale complexion, he had a gothic, cloistered appearance.

"How do you know the code?” asked Mark. “The projectionist left a week ago."

"He gave me the code before he went. In case we needed to use it before he returned."

Mark shook his head. “He knew he wasn't coming back. He was headed for the really bad part of town. I'll bet you didn't try to talk him out of it. You wanted the code—"

"If you'll let me get to the keypad,” prompted Quinton. When Mark finally moved, Quinton punched the numbers. Mark watched closely.

Too bad for you, thought Quinton, that the projectionist also told me how to change the code. It won't be the same tomorrow.

The deadbolt whirred. As the door unlatched, Quinton wondered how Mark had intended to get inside. Out of the corner of his eye, Quinton saw Mark quietly lay a thick screwdriver against the wall. Typical, thought Quinton. Brute force approach.

Quinton pushed the door.

"Don't open it so wide,” said Mark. He nudged Quinton inside and quickly closed the door. The cramped booth was dark, but the stark light from the conference room fluorescents streamed in through the plate glass at the front of the booth. “They could have seen the door move. You might as well announce we're here while you're at it."

Quinton saw that he was right. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He crouched in the midst of racks of audiovisual equipment, along with a useless computer that hadn't been touched in weeks. The Internet routers were the first things that DCC had crippled, isolating every computer in the world.

The voices became more distinct. Quinton and Mark leaned against the forward wall, just beneath the glass. When Quinton put his ear against the clapboard, he heard Professor Borden Timms saying, “. . . can't change the past, we have to deal with the present."

The comment didn't go over well with the other faculty. A farrago of angry voices erupted.

Quinton recognized another voice breaking through the din. “This is what happens,” shouted emeritus Professor Grange, “when you put a machine in charge. It's murder, nothing short of murder. Don't call it downsizing."

Raised voices.

Grange's booming voice overrode the others. “. . . don't care what that machine says. It's murder."

More shouting.

Quinton found his breathing had become labored. Not enough air? No, he thought. He was just scared.

Chairman Timms restored order. “Terminology isn't important. Yes, it's infuriating, but it's also irrelevant. We need to focus on how we should respond. And what we should tell the students and staff."

"My God,” whispered Mark. “The rumor's right."

Quinton turned to look at him. The light coming from the conference room highlighted Mark's hair, leaving his face in shadow. But Quinton could sense the fear that was no doubt etched in Mark's expression. And his own.

"Is DCC going to nuke us?” said Mark, his voice trembling. “I saw someone on the roof earlier, adjusting the antenna. Timms might be trying to contact our satellite. For defense, maybe."

"How? It gathers data, it doesn't have any weapons."

"But we could . . .” Mark groped for words. “Alter its orbit. Yeah. Smash it into another satellite, a military satellite. If one comes overhead."

Quinton had also heard rumors that the shortages and service disruptions had been a prelude to something even more sinister. Why had DCC gone berserk? “You think that's how it would attack?"

Mark raised his voice. “How else would DCC do something global? If population reduction is its goal—"

"Quiet, they'll hear you."

Quinton put his ear back on the wall.

". . . trying to get a signal,” somebody was saying.

Then the conference room got quiet. The silence stretched for an unbearable minute.

"What's going on?” whispered Mark.

Quinton didn't say anything, although he was afraid he knew the answer. In one ear—the ear turned away from the wall—he had heard Mark's question. But the ear against the wall also seemed to pick it up—through the wall.

Quinton remembered all the times he'd sat in the conference room listening to a professor deliver a lecture. A communication system permitted a two-way conversation between the speaker at the podium and the projectionist in the booth who was in charge of visuals. All the speaker had to do was flip a switch. “Busted,” he said.

"'Busted’ is right, Quinton,” said a voice that rang like a bell in the projection booth. “Mark, is that you in there with him?"

Quinton stood up and looked out the window. Professor Timms waved his arm, indicating that both students should enter the conference room. Mark opened the front door of the projection booth and stepped out.

"He made me do it,” said Mark, pointing to Quinton. His grin didn't last long.

Quinton felt the overwhelming tension in the room. Clustered around the dais were twenty somber professors, ranging in age from Grange's eighty years down to a young assistant professor who'd just been hired before the trouble began in earnest last autumn. Timms, scarcely older than the assistant professor, stood at the podium in front of the crowd. With long blond hair past his shoulders and a tendency to skip the top three buttons of his shirt, Timms often got caricatured in students’ doodles with a guitar strapped to his shoulder and a colorful tat on his forearm.

Also on the dais, close to the maintenance closet, sat Professor Sandra Rebbin, balancing a small screen and keypad on her lap. Nearby was a table covered with food packages and cans—the only thing available to eat was packaged or canned food, since everybody had long since run out of fresh fruits and vegetables. Most of the packages on the table were still almost full.

"So much for secrecy,” muttered a professor as Quinton and Mark walked sheepishly down the aisle.

"I hope not,” said Timms. “These two outstanding young men are currently working in my laboratory, and I can vouch for them. If not for their character—for as you can see they're not the best behaved of our students—then for their superb intelligence and inquisitive nature.” He gave Quinton and Mark a pointed look. “You both understand that this information is strictly confidential?"

The tone of voice admitted no objection, and Mark nodded eagerly. But Quinton bit his lip, and Timms and everyone else noticed.

"Don't worry,” said Timms, in a gentler tone. “The moment the other students need to know, we'll tell them. But let's not panic anyone unnecessarily."