Impossible Places (22 page)

Perceiving her emotion, the creature placed that by now familiar collection of alien digits against the back of her neck and gave her a gentle push forward. Turning, she looked up at it, seeing the four eyes staring back down at her. It was letting her go, but reluctantly. It had become attached to her. She could sense it; she was good at that. Nor was she surprised. Full of pride, her Joe had commented repeatedly about how she had that effect on people. Where he was gruff and brusque and downright antisocial at times, his Suzy made up for it by being open and friendly to all who came their way. Sweet and kind, she was: Everyone found her irresistible. Not a day went by that he didn’t give thanks for having her in his life. From the first time their eyes had met, he had known that she was the one for him. Her best qualities, it seemed, even worked on aliens.

Again the digits pushed. With a last backward glance she turned and exited the craft. The experience had been captivating, even enlightening, but while her interest had never flagged, she was glad they had decided to let her leave. The ache in her chest was the longing she felt for Joe. Behind her, the opening vanished and the craft began to rise silently skyward. She tracked it with her eyes for a long time, until it was out of sight and lost among the stars.

How they had managed to release her so close to her home without their sizable craft causing a general commotion among the townsfolk she could not begin to imagine. She knew only that a few familiar twists and turns would bring her out of the field and back onto the main road. By the time she reached the outskirts of town her legs were beginning to ache. Close to the house, she lengthened her stride and picked up her head. Joe would be frantic over her extended absence, and she would have to hasten to reassure him that nothing untoward had happened to her, that she was all right. There was, of course, no possible way she could convey to him the details of her experience.

He was there, all right, sitting alone in the little living room gazing glumly at the television. When she walked in he gaped at her for a moment before exploding to his feet.

“Suzy! Suzy Q, my God, I thought—I didn’t know what to think!” He opened his rough, strong arms to her, and she threw herself joyfully into them. How could she explain what had happened? How could she convey the astonishment and singularity of where she had been and what she had seen? She could not, of course, but it didn’t matter. It was a memory she would keep for herself, a wonder she could never share, not even with the one person in the world who was most important to her. All that mattered now was that she was back home, and that Joe was all right, and that she was all right, and that they were once again all right together. He hugged her so hard the breath went out of her, and she struggled to respond the best way she knew how.

Her tongue darting out from between her jaws, she began to lick his face, over and over.

THE LITTLE BITS THAT COUNT

When I was asked to do a story for an anthology
called
Moon Shots
, to celebrate the anniversary of
mankind’s first flight to our one big, fat, inescapable
satellite, I initially balked. What more was there to say
about one of humankind’s greatest achievements, and a
comparatively recent one, at that? So many words had
already been written about the enormous scientific and
economic undertaking, about the heroism of everyone
from the lowliest engineer to the most noble astronaut.
Better writers than I had written moon stories. Heinlein,
Clarke, all the giants of the field. What more could I
add, and in a short story, no less? The task seemed as insurmountable as a slippery, dangerous crater wall.

One thing I determined from the start: that whatever I
wrote, my story would treat this monumental human undertaking with the dignity and respect it deserved. After
all, I wouldn’t want Buzz Aldrin mad at me the next time
we met . . .

“Morning, Hank. Anything to declare?”

Beneath his shiny, chromed helmet the guard looked bored, sounded bored, was bored. And why not, Henry Deavers thought? His was a boring job. Not nearly as exciting as Henry’s. Nevertheless, the guard smiled pleasantly, his expression neutral as Deavers replied in the negative. Mechanical in his movements, the immaculately groomed younger man waved the technician through and turned his semisoporific attention to the next worker in line waiting impatiently to exit the facility.

Henry passed through the primary metal detector, the shape-and-form detector, the chemical sniffer, the secondary metal detector, waited while his weight was checked and his retina scanned, and repeated the nothing-to-declare routine at the last guarded checkpoint before emerging into the hallway that led to the parking lot. Waving good-bye to coworkers Ochoa Hernandez and Laura Patrick, he made his way to his four-year-old sedan, thumbed the compact remote on his key chain to unlock it, and slipped in behind the wheel. The guard at the gate let him pass and left the barrier up so Ochoa and Laura could follow, Laura in her Taurus and Ochoa on his presumptuous, growling Fat Boy. Once on the main access road they headed in different directions: Ochoa and Laura north along the coast, Henry inland. Behind them, the stark sentinels of the Cape’s launching platforms stood silent and waiting against the tepid, pastel Florida sky.

Maneuvering the steering wheel languidly with the heel of one hand, the pungent smells of sea and space receding rapidly aft, Henry Deavers relaxed. He’d gotten away with it again.

How many times was it now? More than several thousand, at least. He should know exactly, but after the first five years he had grown tired of keeping the count in his head. It was enough to have it at home, buried innocuously on his computer in the midst of a list of household items. A file inoculated with innocuousness, he mused contentedly. No one could imagine that next to the mundane columns that listed books and recordings and insurance numbers was one that kept careful track of pieces of Moon.

Because Henry “Hank” Deavers was a thief. Had been a thief for a little more than ten years now. Had been thieving nearly every week of those ten years, without once getting caught. He chuckled at his foresight, smiled grimly at his patience. It had not been easy. The temptation to steal much more each time was always great. But greed, he knew, could trip up even the cleverest thief. So he had begun modestly and remained so, knowing that time was on his side. Today was yet another confirmation of the efficacy of caution.

It was just as well that he was nearly sated. They were going to begin moving the entire facility next week, shift it to Houston. His opportunities for thievery would transfer with it, but he did not care. Ten years of stealing was enough. His retirement was in the bank, as it were, though safely stored in plain sight at home. No one had ever suspected, even though several friends and neighbors had passed right by his hoard. A few had even gazed directly at it, suspecting nothing.

His most recent pilferage reposed, as it always did, in his shoe, under the conveniently high arch of his left foot. Two fragments of stone smaller than his little fingernail. Dull grayish-white in appearance, they would automatically have been ignored and dismissed by anyone not knowing what they were or where they had come from. Chips of rock rendered immensely valuable because they had not come from the beach, had not been picked up in a supermarket parking lot, had not cracked loose from a friend’s decorative garden wall. Their origin was to be found in the sliver of silver that was just now becoming visible above the horizon behind him. They had come from a small, shallow valley called Mare Trigonis that lay two hundred thousand plus miles away.

Tiny pieces of Moon rock.

Working in the lab, slaving long, tedious hours for an unchanging salary, garnering none of the glory or recognition of scientists or astronauts, Henry Deavers had hit upon the idea some twelve years ago of stealing pieces of Moon. With the resumption of the lunar landing program and its regularly scheduled flights from orbit, Moon rock had once again become available, but only for study and exhibition in the world’s great museums and scientific laboratories. The public clamored to see it, photograph it, touch it. They had to content themselves with small samples locked away in secured glass cases, because the great bulk of material the astronauts brought back vanished into labs and institutions of higher learning and advanced study around the world. A few billionaires managed to acquire tiny fragments; the ultimate collector’s trophy. One Saudi prince had a shard the size of a pencil eraser set in a platinum ring. Among common, everyday millionaires the demand for the material was intense. It was the supply that was lacking, strictly controlled as it was by NASA and its associated agencies. This state of affairs was about to change.

He, Henry Deavers, senior lab technician, was going to change it.

Ten years he had been smuggling tiny chips of Moon rock out of the preparation lab, using a system of hide-and-seek he had laboriously perfected. Involved as he was in the initial stages of preparing specimens for transshipment to laboratories and universities around the world, he quickly discovered it was possible to adjust the records ever so slightly without drawing attention to the manipulation. No one missed the tiny slivers he slipped into his shoes, between sock and leather. Only one trip to the bathroom was necessary to make the transfer. The key was to take only minuscule fragments, no more than two at a time, sometimes only one.

His largest prize to date was not big enough to be set in a ring surrounded by diamonds, but sealed in a presentation case of polished Lucite, it would bring a fine price. Multiplied by thousands, even deducting the seller’s commission, it would be more than enough to make him rich.

Over the years he had watched everything settle neatly into place: the shadowy network of brokers who would shield his privacy when in a few months the fragments of Moon began to come onto the market, the secret bank accounts in the Cayman and Cook Islands where his share of the profits would be deposited, the falsified identity papers that would attest to the death of the rich cousin in Austria who upon passing had willed his entire fortune to Henry J. Deavers, thereby explaining the lab technician’s sudden wealth, and much, much more. He was quite confident. After all, he had been preparing for the culmination of his scheme for more than a decade.

He was whistling happily by the time he pulled into the driveway of the unassuming suburban home. Billie was waiting for him, persevering and unsuspecting as always. Kind, good-natured, unimaginative Billie. They had been married a long time. When the money began to roll in, he had no intention of divorcing her. For one thing, he was used to having her around. For another, it might draw suspicion to him. Easy enough to keep his wife and add a decorative mistress should the desire strike him. Or two.

Reaching down, he paused to stroke Galileo and Copernicus, their two grown tabbies. Billie had recently adopted a third stray, whom she promptly named Aristarchus. Ari for short. Theirs was a lunar household, in more ways than his wife suspected. She was proud of his work at the Cape, even if he dismissed it as the repetitive and deadly dull routine he knew it to be. “My Hank,” she would tell new acquaintances, “he works in the space program!” She was happy in central Florida, happy with their life together and content in its predictability.

Prepare yourself for a change, Billie my girl. Get ready for early retirement and an extended vacation. Cousin Badenhofer is going to die on the twenty-fourth of next month, right on schedule. Following a quick, preprepared probate, your easygoin’, easy-lovin’ Hank is going to take you to Europe and other wondrous points east.

Hurriedly running through the day’s requisite catch-up small talk, he left her to finish making dinner and headed, as he always did, for his workshop. Only rarely did she venture into the confusion of tools, lumber, and accumulated building supplies, just as he spent little time poking through the incomprehensible depths of the kitchen cabinets. The cats followed him, rubbing up against his legs and meowing for attention. Absently, he would bend to scratch one or the other behind the ears, or smooth out a fluffy tail.

The heavy-duty paper sack was not hidden. There was no reason to hide it. He kept it near the back of the workshop, propped up between some salvaged one-by-six planks and splattered cans of paint. It was almost three-quarters full, containing between eight and nine pounds of Moon rock in the form of tiny, inconspicuous, patiently smuggled shards, taken one or two at a time from the preparation lab at the Cape. Pounds! To this hoard he would now add the two chips riding uncomfortably in his shoe.

Like escorting fighters leaving a slow-moving carrier, the cats peeled off to inspect a possible mouse hole. Henry started to reach down to remove his right shoe, feeling the shards shift against the sole of his foot. His eyes flicked in the direction of the bag—whereupon he paused, still half bent over, and stared. Stared without moving.

The bag was not there.

He did not have to pinch himself. His wakefulness was an unequivocal, crushing, inescapable reality. The bag was gone.

Frantically, he searched the immediate area, then started on the rest of the workshop, making no more noise than was necessary. Curious, newcomer Ari helped him look, without having a cat clue as to what her master was so desperately hunting. Her presence brought him no luck. The sack, the fruit of ten years’ careful brigandage, was missing. It was not leaning up against the cans of old paint; it had not risen up on unsuspected pseudopodia and walked to the other side of the workroom; it was not there.

Stunned beyond measure, he sat down heavily in the capacious old easy chair Billie had bought for him six years ago at a garage sale in Daytona Beach. His heart was racing as he strove to calm himself.
Think!
Goddamn it. Who could have known about what he had been doing? Who might have observed him on his regular visits to the laboratory rest room?

That was it! No fools worked in the lab. Someone had seen and taken note of his surreptitious activities, had figured out what he was doing, and had decided to bide their time, letting him do the dangerous work of thievery only to steal from him in their turn. His lips compressed tightly together, and a muscle in his jaw twitched. They wouldn’t get away with it. He had friends, he did. Knew people not involved in the space program, unsavory folk who had helped him with his grand design. One of his lab colleagues was going to be receiving a visit from the bearers of serious trouble. All he had to do was figure out who it was.

If he didn’t recover the sack, that someone might be him, he knew. His “friends” were expecting a delivery of thousands of tiny fragments of Moon, had been preparing to receive it for some years now. If he did not produce it, they might very likely be inclined to express their disappointment in violently antisocial ways Henry chose not to try to envision.

A bit bewildered by the uncharacteristic intensity he displayed at the dinner table, Billie avowed as how she could not remember anyone from the lab visiting since yesterday. Yes, she had been out shopping for a few hours this morning, but why should that be occasion for comment? What was the matter? His face was so red and—

Wordlessly, he pushed back from the table and fled from her concern. A careful check of the driveway produced no clues. No skid marks left behind by tires in a hurry to leave, no telltale fragments of left-behind evidence. He went across the street, then up and down it, querying neighbors. Had they seen anyone parked at his house this morning? Had any trucks made deliveries to the neighborhood? Most critically, had they seen anyone walking in the vicinity of his home carrying a large, nondescript, reinforced paper sack?

Eyeing him askance, his neighbors replied regularly and depressingly in the negative. Disconsolate but not yet broken, he returned home and somehow forced himself to engage in halfway normal inconsequential chatter with his wife while they ate dessert. That night, the usual evening of television and conversation was pure hell. Despite his exhaustion, he did not sleep at all.

It
had
to be someone at work, someone at the lab. Realizing that he could expose them, his contacts would not have taken the cache. Why should they risk that anyway, when there was plenty of looming profit to be had by all? No neighbor would enter his workshop without him present, even if Billie would have been willing to let them in. Thieving kids would have taken glue or chemicals, while addicts looking to support their habit would have stolen tools. No, it was unarguable: No one would bother to steal a sack of splintered rock who was not cognizant of its true nature.