He was speechless. “Ah...” he began.
Mrs. Doughby filled in for him. “He’s my knight in shining armor! He could be sitting comfortably in his penthouse over in Huygens, but instead he knelt here and s—s—stroked my hand until I stopped crying. G—g—god bless you, Mr. Bickham!” she said through sniffs and tremblings.
Oh, god.
The medal ceremony seemed to take for frickin’ ever, and Frank thought it was in poor taste, since there were people still being treated for their injuries at the medical center. But Governor Ladro had insisted, and blathered on for what must have been for over an hour about the heroics and compassion of Mr. Frank Bickham, Martian Citizen Number One—according to the inscription on the medal—before hastily adding thanks to the rest of the emergency responders, who all sat in the first row gazing up adoringly at Frank sitting next to the governor at the podium.
That was earlier in the day—making him miss his morning coffee on Bickam Boulevard, dammit—and now he was back at the bedside of the youngest victim of the blast, Wixam Hanuman, age six. Exactly the same age as little Samantha. “Did you miss me?” he said, leaning over from the bedside chair, waggling his ears—Wixam always laughed hysterically when he did that.
“You were here this morning, Grumpy.” The boy’s eyes drifted to the medal hanging against Frank’s chest, and grew wide. “Ooo! Is that for saving Mrs. Doughby?”
“I didn’t save Doughby, kid. She wasn’t even hurt.” He handled the medal and fingered the inscription. Martian Citizen Number One. “No idea why they gave me this sh...” He trailed off, catching his profanity.
“Shit?”
“What? Uh ... no! Shamwow!”
Wixam eyed him skeptically. “Grumpy, that’s not a word.”
“What the hell do you know? You’re six.” He lazily traced the ‘Number One’ on the medal with a finger, the phrase reminding him that if he was going to be successful, if he was going to win the race, he needed to act soon. Very soon. All the survivors of the blast were doing very, very well—even Wixam, who’d developed a few mysterious complications the day after the accident, was looking like he’d be just fine. But he couldn’t afford to wait any longer. The next accident might be worse. Or there was Ed Smith. The man claimed he was in perfect health, but looked more frail by the day. The old welder might just keel over and buy the farm the next time he tripped on the sidewalk. And where would that put Frank’s meticulous plan? Tits up. That’s where.
“You shouldn’t swear around a six-year-old, Grumpy.”
Frank let the medal drop to his chest and grinned a lopsided smile. “You said ‘shit’ first. I only said ‘hell.’”
“Hell’s bad too,” Wixam said earnestly.
“It’s in the bible. It can’t be bad.” Before the kid could respond, Frank reached over to his chart and perused it, nodding approvingly. Any other person would be kicked out of the hospital for looking over the chart of a non-relative, but he was Frank frickin’ Bickham. “Looking good here, kid. I bet they’ll get you out of here later today. Tomorrow, tops.” He set the chart down. “Where are your parents, anyway?”
Wixam shrugged. “Getting sissy from school,” he said, probably referring to his sister.
“Good, then they’ll be here any minute—school’s only a block away.” Frank stood up, and formally extended a hand. “Mr. Hanuman, it’s been a pleasure.”
“Bye, Grumpy.” Frank turned to leave, but Wixam added, “You know, you’re not really grumpy.”
Frank turned back, raising an eyebrow. “What did you say?”
“You’re not really grumpy.”
“All my grandkids and great-grandkids call me Grumpy. It’s my nickname. Don’t you like it?”
“You’re just pretending to be grumpy. I can tell.”
Frank had no response to this, so he frowned, and gave a small mock-salute. “Catch you later, kid.”
The walk back to Huygens Dome would only take ten minutes, and he didn’t need to be anywhere until his noon meeting with the city council and the corporate board, so he decided to head to the emergency airlock just outside the city park. The site of his plan’s impending execution. The place he’d find his way into the history books. Second man on Mars? Screw that. First man to die on Mars, coming right up, baby.
Only a few people strolled the green park grounds under the huge transparent dome of the city park. Red light filtered down through the foliage from the inhospitable paper-thin atmosphere beyond the composite glass. The atmosphere that would kill him. The atmosphere that he’d be hailed as a hero for saving the population from.
Once inside the emergency airlock, he checked the automatic visitor log. Sure enough, no one had been there since the last time he’d checked his handiwork. No one would have noticed the imperfection in the inner airlock’s door, which would surely cause a major spark when shut in an emergency. No one would have noticed the constant background drain on the outer airlock door’s battery, which, inexplicably, was not connected to the central computer—Interplanetary’s singular focus on the stock price knew no bounds, apparently. And no one would have noticed the fact that the oxygen line over in the corner was clogged. And several other pieces of the Rube Goldberg-esque series of technical problems that would culminate in the appearance of the colony being put at grave threat of catastrophe, and his own death as he sacrificed himself to save them all.
It would be glorious.
And by all accounts, quite painless, given that the near vacuum would put him to sleep far sooner than it would kill him.
He double checked his handiwork before exiting the room, being sure to use his special security access to erase the record of his visit. The perks of being a hero—they trusted him with top secret security clearance and all-system access.
Lunchtime was approaching fast and he hurried to Huygens Dome, but a glance at his watch told him he still had twenty minutes to burn before the meeting. According to the street sign he was just a block from Ed Smith’s apartment, and so he decided to make an unscheduled visit—the unannounced kind, where the visitor peers in through the window from under a bush rather than take the more obvious route of knocking on the door.
Before long he found himself on the flimsy plastic sidewalk staring up at the apartment building. Luckily, it was surrounded by bushes, and Ed’s unit was on the ground floor, so with a surreptitious glance to either side he wandered around the side of the building, and assuring himself no one was watching, plunged into a hydrangea bush under what he supposed was Ed’s kitchen window.
“—told you, Marie, there’s nothing to be done about it. Look, sweetie, yes, I could come back to Earth and have the operation. But what would it get me? Three more years? Five? And if a new aortic valve lasts twenty more years, it’ll be the diabetes that gets me. And if that doesn’t, the prostate. We talked about this before I left, and I thought we understood that I was mortal, and I was old, and that this was a one-way trip. Plus, I signed the contract. No one leaves unless congress approves a spending authorization to shuttle someone back, and that ain’t happening for some eighty-year-old welder who—”
Frank yelped and almost jumped as his pocket started chirping with an incoming call. He breathed a curse, jabbing it through the cloth of his pants to silence it.
“—hold on, sweetie...” Frank could hear the other man in the kitchen stand up from his chair with a labored grunt, and approach the window. He squeezed up against the siding underneath as best he could and held his breath. A creak from above told him the old man was leaning against the windowsill. Labored breathing filtered down through the leaves of the hydrangea.