It was time to undo some of the damage. As much as could be undone.
"Douglas–" I reached over and put my hand on his shoulder. "I can think of a lot of reasons why someone would care about you. And so can you. All you gotta do is be who you really are–"
Except when I said it, it sounded really stupid.
"I'm such a jerk," he said. He sounded defeated.
"No, you're not."
"I felt so lucky.I wanted to believe so badly, I really did–I thought I was smart enough to know better, but I wasn't. I'm just as stupid as everyone else."
"Then you're normal."
He almost smiled. He put his hand on mine. "Thanks for sticking by me, Charles."
"You're my brother. I have to."
"Yeah. That's the same thing I said, when I grabbed your hand back at Barringer Meteor crater. You're my brother. I have to."
Mickey came back then, still naked–we all were–in the excitement, we'd forgotten about clothes. "What's going on, fellas?" He looked from one to the other of us. From the expression on his face, he looked as if he already knew.
Douglas stood up and crossed to the rack that served as a closet. He grabbed a jumpsuit for himself, tossed one to Mickey, found a smaller one for me.
Mickey held the jumpsuit in his hands, but made no move to put it on. He looked across to Douglas, "What's going on, Douglas?"
"Who do you work for, Mickey?" Douglas's voice was very cold.
Mickey let out the breath he was holding. He sagged where he stood. He looked sad and deflated. "I was hoping I'd have more time before you figured it out. I was hoping–"
" Who do you work for, Mickey?"
"I was really starting to care and I was hoping–"
" Mickey. Just answer the question."
He shut up. He took a breath. He met our eyes. "Not all the tribes are Lunatics. There are cousins' clubs in the asteroids, on Mars, at the Lagrange colonies. On the Line. Some of the tribes are multiplanetary."
"Yeah? And which one do you work for?"
"Does it matter? Do you really care?" Mickey started pulling on the jumpsuit. "You feel betrayed. And I don't blame you. And there really isn't anything I can say to you that will make you feel different. Alexei used you; you figured that out, both of you, real fast. And everybody else tried to use you too–everyone on the Line–so, I figured it was only a matter of time until you figured out that my hands aren't all that clean either. But before you give your speech, and I know you will, let me remind you that you were using everyone else too. Everyone uses everyone. You were using Alexei and me to get to the colonies. Don't deny it, Douglas. So whatever else is going on between us, there isn't any moral superiority on either side. We used each other. You used me and I used you–we're equally wrong." He straightened his collar and pulled his zipper up. "I know this doesn't excuse anything at all, but I really did care about you the whole time. And I know you cared about me too."
Douglas pulled his own zipper up. "Between you and Chigger," he said, "you guys don't leave me a lot to say. You guys had it all figured out, didn't you? Only one thing you forgot–all this damn logic and believing and caring and all this other crap everybody's been throwing back and forth– nobody ever stops to realize how much they're hurting everybody else in the process!"
Both Mickey and I started to make noises of comfort, but Douglas held up both his hands, and said in the loudest voice I'd ever heard him use, "NO! Enough is enough. Both of you shut up already! Haven't you done enough damage for one day?!"
And that's when Stinky came in, and said, "Don't cry, Douglas, I still love you." Which was probably the one thing he could have said which would have made both Mickey and me want to cry.
Douglas scooped him up in his arms and held him tightly, and I realized that as all alone as Stinky had felt without his monkey, as all alone as I had felt these past few days, Douglas was the one who was most alone now–because everything he had wanted and believed in was forever broken. He sat down on the edge of the bed and held Stinky as tight as he could, rocking him gently. The two of them sobbed quietly together, each inside his separate loss, each inside his own particular hurt. I sat down on one side of them and Mickey sat down on the other and we all took turns crying in each other's arms about how shitty we'd all been. It didn't change anything between us, but at least it kept us from killing each other.
DOWN THE TUBES
After a while, Mickey went and got us some damp towels and we all wiped our faces clean and looked at each other and giggled in embarrassment a little bit. Maybe we'd all overreacted. Maybe it was the fear and the anger and the exhaustion all coming out at the same time. Maybe we had to test ourselves.
And maybe we were just catching our breath for the second round.
Mickey spoke first. "Look, you don't have to trust me anymore. But the way I see it, if Alexei's got the monkey now, then he doesn't need us anymore. And we're just sitting here waiting for the executioner to arrive. I think we need to get out of here."
"Oh–?" said Douglas. "How?"
Mickey laughed. "Come look at what I found." He led us up to Alexei's office and punched up a Lunar map on the big display. "This is a satellite photo," he said. "And this overlay shows where all the known settlements are. And thisoverlay shows where all the suspected settlements are. And THISoverlay shows the RF cousins–"
"RF?"
"Rock Father. Alexei's tribe."
"Where did you get all this information?" I asked.
"Alexei isn't the only one with a cousin," Mickey reminded us. "Al‑exei knows who my cousins are, and I know who his cousins are. We've cooperated enough times in the past–but probably never again, so it doesn't matter. Anyway, look at this map. Where are we? Where's Brickner 43‑AX92?"
Douglas and I took a moment to study the display, searching the labels of the different stations. Finally, we both gave up. "Where is it?"
"There is no Brickner 43‑AX92. That's a fictitious location. All the Brickner stations are false." He looked up at the ceiling and shouted. "Do you think you were fooling us, Alexei? We knew it all the time." Back to us, he said, "Just in case he's listening."
"Do you think he is?"
"If he's not on the phone, talking someone's ear off."
"So are we on the map or not?" I asked, still searching the display.
"Oh, we're here," Mickey rapped the image on the wall. "We're just not where Alexei said. Do you know why there are so many fictitious people and stations on the moon? The invisibles do that; it's the haystack in which they're hiding. False data. The more inaccuracies they can generate, the better. It drives even the intelligence engines crazy, so I'm told."
"So where are we?" Douglas asked.
"I'll show you. I'll show Alexei too. Here–look, here's Gagarin. Right here." He pointed. "And over here, this is the train line. This is Wonderland Jumble, and the line goes right straight across here–see this spot here? Wait, I'll enlarge it. See that? That's Route 66. See where it crosses the train line? Right there at Borgo Pass–and if you follow the road around here and here and here, you come to this Y‑shaped junction here that Alexei called his turnoff. Now, do you remember the zigzag flight path we took? It sort of looked like we were heading over here toward the left, remember? That was what Alexei wanted us to think. And he kept the sun bouncing around in front of us, so we wouldn't be able to look and see where we were going. All that tacking back and forth, you thought we were going northeast, didn't you? The truth is, we went southeast first and then northeast and then finally due east, and when you take out all the zigs and zags, we mostly went east. And we came down here!This is where we are."