Once they had ordered and the human waiter was walking away from their table, Jamie started to say, “Um, Vijay, you know that Edith and I…”
“I know,” she said, her dark eyes on him. “You told me years ago.”
“I haven’t seen her since then,” he muttered. “I wonder what she’s like now.”
“We’ll soon find out, won’t we, love?”
Selene: Stavenger Residence
Like almost all of Selene, the home of Douglas Stavenger was in one of the underground corridors that made up most of the city. Up on the airless surface of the Moon, temperatures could swing from two hundred degrees above zero in sunlight to nearly two hundred below in shadow. Hard radiation from deep space bathed the barren lunar surface, and a constant infall of micrometeoroids peppered the ground, sandpapering the mountains over eons of time into tired, rounded humps.
Underground was safer, the deeper the better.
“I couldn’t live here,” Vijay said, frowning slightly as she and Jamie walked along the corridor, following the path mapped out on his pocket phone.
“You said that before,” Jamie reminded her.
“Yes, but now I’m certain of it.”
“You lived on Mars,” he said.
“But there we had a dome, we could move around, we could look outside. We could work outside—”
“In spacesuits. Or in an enclosed tractor.”
“But it wasn’t like this… This is like being a mole or a wombat, living in tunnels.” She shuddered with distaste.
Eying a trio of coverall-clad people coming up the corridor toward them, Jamie half-whispered, “Better not let them know how much you don’t like it here.”
Vijay smiled at them as they approached. They noted Jamie’s western-cut shirt and jeans, the colorful scarf Vijay wore knotted at her throat over her poppy red blouse.
“Can we help you?” one of the men asked.
Jamie said, “I think we’re in the right corridor. Level four, corridor A?”
The man nodded, smiling. “Looking for Doug Stavenger’s place? It’s right down the corridor.” He pointed.
Jamie thanked them and they went their separate ways.
Vijay shook her head. “I don’t understand how they can live like this. It’s so completely… artificial.”
“Maybe we ought to ask Dex how he does it.”
“Dex lives in Boston.”
“He spends a lot of time in New York. That’s a completely artificial environment, too.”
“At least you can walk out in the open.”
“If you’re carrying a weapon,” Jamie countered.
At last they came to a plain door, no different from the others spaced along the corridor, except that it was marked STAVENGER.
“This is it,” Jamie said, taking in a breath. Edith’s in there, he thought. I wonder—
The door opened before he could find a buzzer to push. A solidly built young-looking man smiled at them. His face was handsome, his skin darker than Jamie’s, lighter than Vijay’s. Jamie realized that he was taller and wider of shoulder than himself, but his compact physique disguised his true size. He was wearing a soft velour pullover of deep blue and comfortable light gray slacks.
He smiled and put out his hand. “Welcome. I’m Douglas Stavenger.”
His grip was warm, strong without being overpowering.
“Jamie Waterman,” he introduced himself. “This is my wife, Vijay.”
“Come on in,” said Stavenger, with an ushering swoop of his arm.
They stepped into an unpretentious living room tastefully furnished with a pair of sofas facing each other, an oval metal coffee table between them. A pair of cushioned armchairs were placed on either end of the low table. The floor was carpeted, grass green. The pictures on the wall looked like actual paintings, not flat-screen images, mostly landscapes from Earth.
“Make yourselves comfortable,” Stavenger said, gesturing to the nearer sofa. “My wife will be—”
At that moment Edith entered from an open doorway on the far side of the living room. She seemed to light up the place, radiantly blond and smiling bright as a Dallas cheerleader, big wide eyes the color of Texas bluebonnets, wearing a short-skirted sleeveless frock of white patterned with golden yellow flowers.
Jamie felt suddenly tongue-tied.
“Hello, Jamie,” she said, striding straight to him.
“Edith,” he managed.
She bussed him on the cheek, then turned to Vijay. “You must be Varuna Jarita.”
“Vijay, please. It’s easier.”
“Vijay,” Edith acknowledged, taking both Vijay’s hands in her own. Dark and light, Jamie thought. They couldn’t look more different if they came from different worlds.
Then he realized, “My god, Edith, you haven’t changed a bit. You look as if you haven’t aged at all.”
Edith flicked a glance at her husband. “We’re aging, but a lot slower than most folks.”
“Nanomachines,” Vijay guessed.
“Yes.”
“You, too?” Jamie asked.
Edith smiled, almost demurely. “Me, too. Doug wants to keep me just as young as he is.”
“It’s a bit incredible, i’n’t it?” said Vijay.
“It certainly is.”
Stavenger gestured again to the twin sofas. “Sit. Relax. Would you like something to drink? Wine? Rocket juice?”
Jamie laughed. “No rocket juice, thanks. I’ve heard about that.”
“Some wine, then?” Edith suggested. “It’s new and kind of thin.”
“Our first vintage,” Stavenger explained.
Jamie and Vijay sat on one of the sofas, Edith on the facing one, while Stavenger ducked behind the counter that separated the living room from the kitchen.
“How do you like living here?” Vijay asked.
“It’s fine,” said Edith.
“Doesn’t it bother you to be underground all the time?”
“You didn’t grow up in west Texas, honey. This is a whole lot better, believe me. ’Sides, we’ve got the Grand Plaza any time you want to see trees and some flowers.”
Jamie listened to them chatter and realized the two women were communicating on a level far beyond his male power of understanding. They’re sizing each other up, he thought; getting to know each other in some subliminal way.
Stavenger carried in a metal tray bearing a frosted bottle of wine and four stemmed glasses.
“We make these in our glass factory,” he said as he poured for them. “Bricks for construction, too.”
Jamie sipped at the wine. It was thin and slightly tart. They do a lot better in New Mexico, he said to himself.
“So,” Stavenger said, setting his glass down on the coffee table, “Edith tells me you need to talk to me.”
Jamie nodded. “We need your help.”
“ ’We’ being the Mars program?”
“That’s right. You’ve heard about Washington zeroing Mars out of the federal budget.”
“That’s a blow, isn’t it?” Stavenger said softly.
“It’s not just Washington’s cutoff. It’s becoming increasingly hard to get private donors. Several of our biggest contributors have backed away from us.”
Vijay interjected, “They’re all under pressure to help alleviate the problems from the climate shift.”
“Those are serious problems,” Stavenger murmured.
“I know,” said Jamie. “But we mustn’t let them stop the exploration of Mars.”
“Why not?” Stavenger asked, with a smile.
“Why not?” Jamie snapped.
Raising his hands almost defensively, Stavenger said, “I’m playing devil’s advocate for the moment. Why shouldn’t the exploration of Mars be stopped? Aren’t the greenhouse disasters on Earth more important?”
Jamie glanced at Vijay, who nodded encouragement to him. If you want help from this man, he thought, you’ve got to be honest with him. You’ve got to bare your soul to him.