Gravity Box and Other Spaces (39 page)

“What missions? Oh, that's right. You do that space thing. How's that working out?”

“How's this working out?”

Confusion again.

“Jeff?”

“Hmm?”

“Should we have sex?”

“Why?”

“I'm trying to make a decision. I've made three or four of them today so far. It's a cliché people use when talking about being in love: that it's forever. It's supposed to mean until death, but usually it means until one or both change enough that they either have to renegotiate the relationship or leave. Even when it works out, it's not remotely forever. I've been sitting here trying to imagine spending the next couple of hundred years with you both. I could do that now, you know. The treatments you two took still won't work for me, but there are other therapies. I could retire, stay here, live another two or three centuries. Maybe more.”

Jeff was silent for a long time. Then: “You're leaving.”

“I think so.”

“Even though you can get treatments?”

“I think especially because I can.”

“Why?”

“Because—because it might be a lie not to.”

“I remember—” He shook his head. “Where's Audry?”

“She left a message about two years ago, said she was going for a walk.”

He nodded as if that made perfect sense. He looked at her. “Were you lying when you said you wanted to join us?”

“No. But it's not that simple. We make choices among limited options, always. If it were possible to do something else at the time, would you? And if the situation changes in mid-promise, would you still keep it?”

“That sounds really cynical.”

“Yeah. It does.”

“If you go away for a while, will you come back?”

“I don't know. Let me ask you something. If I leave, will you and Audry stay together?”

Jeff shrugged.

Lora got to her feet. “Thought so. Look, this next mission is a really big deal. I might be gone another thousand years, objective.”

“Are you having fun?”

“Yes. Yes, I am.”

Jeff looked relieved. “I love you.”

“I know.”

She walked into the kitchen. She changed her mind about the second drink and went to her room to pack a small bag.

Lora came into the clinic room and found Jeff and Audry sitting side by side in cocoon chairs. They were not thin so much as insubstantial. Lora walked back and forth before them, but their eyes did not track her.

The doctor stood in the doorway, “They know you're here,” he said. “It just takes them a while to react.”

“What's wrong with them?”

“Nothing, clinically. They're just—slow.” He grunted. “Terminations leveled off about three hundred years ago. Those who still had the will to act ended their lives. Others have left Earth, flying on ships like you do.”

“I know. I've been encountering more and more of them.”

“How do they manage?”

“After a few decades,” Lora said, “they get better. More—more present.” She walked closer to Jeff and Audry. “What about them?”

“They lived past the point of will.” The doctor shrugged. “Metaphysics. It didn't seem worthwhile to terminate. So they just persist.”

“Persist?”

“There's brain activity. Something of a dream-state takes up most of their day, but—look. As part of their unit you can sign off on termination.”

“I know. But they aren't really not there, are they?”

“No.”

“Thank you, doctor.”

“You know, they were among the earliest. They're pushing six thousand.”

“They didn't upload back when that was all the rage?”

“No. They said at the time that they couldn't do that without you.”

Lora was surprised. She looked at the doctor. Not human, but then no one was really sure what that meant
these days. “Thank you. I'd like to be alone with them now.”

He nodded and left. The door closed.

Lora pulled a chair over by them and sat down.

About an hour later, both of them focused on her. They smiled.

“Lora.”

“Hey.”

“Hey,” Lora said.

“You're here,” Audry said.

“Are you staying?” Jeff asked.

“I don't know. I feel so full of what I've seen I'm not sure I could add anything more without busting.”

“Seen—?” Audry said.

“A lot.” Jeff said. “I bet.”

“All the universe, it seems.”

A few minutes passed, creamy and bittersweet.

Then Jeff said, “What's it like?”

Lora felt a mild shock. “You're asking?”

Audry nodded. “Yes.”

“You've been away too long,” Jeff said. “Tell us.”

“Well if you really want to know—”

Lora began telling them. As she spoke and recounted what she had seen, their eyes widened, a shimmer passed through them, and their color seemed to deepen. After a few hours, Lora realized that she would not be leaving on the next mission.

They had the time all saved up, and she had the substance to fill it.

She told stories. They listened.

They had all the time in the world.

Jen Cable awoke before the alarm sounded. She switched it off and sat on the edge of her bed for a few minutes, listening carefully to the apartment. No one else seemed to be up. No sounds of her father rattling about in the kitchen or her mother shuffling around, making the motions of straightening up as she always did in the morning.

Jen switched on her computer. She downloaded the work she had done the previous night for Eric, a fellow student and one of her “clients”—students who paid her for help with their work. A solid little business, but it took time away from her own studies and required long hours.

She glanced at the text she had tried to read last night—
Principles of Zero-G Construction
—and scanned a few pages till the download finished. She pulled out the chip and placed it inside the book, then shut off the machine. She folded the screen down and locked the computer into her desk drawer. The book and chip went into her backpack.

She dressed as quietly and quickly as possible. The thing she needed to do before class would have to wait.
Her bladder ached, but that too would have to wait. Jen drew a tight breath, pulled on her jacket, and looked hard at the bolted door. The apartment was still quiet. She undid the bolt—she could not leave her door locked from the inside if she was gone—and went to her window. With practiced sureness, Jen slipped behind the blinds, opened the window, and swung her legs out over the sill. Balancing precariously on the edge of the chipped wooden frame, backpack on her lap, Jen slid the window shut behind her, then jumped the six feet down. Too late she saw someone squatting against the wall below.

“Hey!” he yelled as she landed. He was tall and gaunt and glared at her suspiciously.

“I'm sorry,” she said in a loud whisper, patting the air with one hand and backing away.

“Yes, well, try to remember that gravity works next time.”

Jen snapped her mouth closed, shouldered her pack, hurried up the alley, and out onto the street. When she got to the front of the apartment building, she broke into a run. It was fifteen blocks to the polyversity.

The sun had made a brief, promissory appearance earlier but was gone now behind walls of iron-gray clouds. The flat, torpid light did nothing to soften the slowly crumbling façades of row houses. Thunder cracked. Jen looked up to see a shuttle spearing heavenward. Her pulse quickened as she watched it heave up from the Earth, escaping the grasp of gravity. It passed through the cloud cover and the sound faded. Jen lowered her gaze and continued on to school.

The sprawling school complex dominated the center of her district. Jen made her way to the entrance for A Level students. Although A Levels shared many classes with
Regular Track, they had exclusive access to their own recreation halls, showers, and library facilities. Jen inserted her ID and punched in her code. The screen at the entrance flashed green. She retrieved her card and entered.

Jen went directly to the rest room. There, she threw her pack in a locker and relieved her overfull bladder. Then she went into the shower area and stripped down. Jen turned up the hot water. She wanted to feel clean to the deepest layers of skin, clean to the bone. She let the water pour down her, soaking it in. Then she washed and washed once more until her skin was red. She dried herself with ritualistic care and checked herself in the mirror.

The lack of sleep was beginning to show. She had bags under her eyes: too much work, too much stress. Her face was a bit thin. Her high cheekbones gave her an almost Asian appearance. Her eyes were large and light brown, eyebrows slightly thicker than was stylish; dark brown hair rippled down to her shoulders. She had been told that she exhibited an intensity that disturbed people, a singular obsessiveness that seemed unnatural in someone so young. Jen did not see it herself. All she saw was a barely concealed fear of failure. She didn't linger at the mirror. Instead, she finished her morning routine quickly and stepped out into hallway.

At this early hour the school halls were still mostly empty. Some of the student residents were up cleaning or running errands for teachers or tending to the dozens of necessities of daily school function. A lot of the students lived in the residential dorms. Jen watched them and wondered again, for perhaps the millionth time, what it would cost her to move into the school. For the millionth time she dismissed the idea. She could never make that
much money and wouldn't take the welfare. Besides, her parents—at least her father—would never allow it.

She cleared her mind. Listening to her footsteps, she followed the turns of the hallways until she got to her home room. Too late to think of withdrawal now, too late to do anything other than go through with it. Jen went to her desk, sat down in the otherwise empty room and tried not to think by filling her mind with white noise.

Soon other students drifted in, talking and laughing. Jen watched them, smiling to herself, but feeling very isolated. They were aliens to her. She had never found it easy to talk with others. What they did and why made little sense to her—their lives seemed small and trite—though she ached to be a part of it all.

“Hi, Jen.”

She turned and found Eric sitting behind her. He wore the perpetual knowing smirk she disliked.

“You shouldn't be here,” she said, fishing in her backpack. “This isn't your home room.”

“I'm a little more pressed for time than usual,” he said. “You have it?”

She pulled out the download. He reached for it, but she held it away. “Two hundred,” she said.

He scowled, but pulled a sheaf of bills from his pocket. With one hand she counted it, then slid it into her backpack. She gave him the essay she had written for him last night.

“You're gonna get caught someday,” he said, voice mock-ominous.

“I get caught; you'll flunk,” she said.

He grabbed her left breast and squeezed before she could slap his hand away. He laughed, pulled back his hand, and swaggered out of the room.

The attendance tone sounded. Jen looked to the front of the room. Sheila Goddard stood there, scrolling through something on her terminal. Talk faded out. She waited a minute more. Then she looked up.

“Good morning,” Ms. Goddard said. A smattering of good mornings responded. “This is a special day for several students. The examination committee from the Space Technologies Institute is here today and, as some of you are aware, two of our own will be examined by the committee to see if they qualify for study grants.”

Jen lowered her gaze. She felt herself blushing.

“Jennifer Cable and Lewis Bender,” Sheila went on. “Let's send them with our best wishes. Hope you make it, Jen—Lew.”

Jen heard the applause, felt the warmth, but it made her all the more anxious. She wished it were already over and she could go home with her failure and stop worrying about it. Then she could get on with what she had to. She did not hear the rest of the announcements.