“They decided to give every country a few chunks of moon to deal with, and we got allocated this big one, we had to put some gravity gizmo on it that was supposed to knock it out of the way, don’t ask me how. So we went up there and—”
“I’m sorry, Liss, I don’t want to interrupt, but can you tell me how you got involved?”
“Oh. Well, it was my boyfriend. Yott. He was the one who was called up. We were both at college but he was the clever one, I mean, really clever…”
“He was a superbrain?”
“Yeah. They weren’t all bad. Most of them were fine. Well, a bit crazy. But in a good way. Yott was like a super-engineer, he could make almost anything… it was like, if somebody else worked out a theory, he could make a machine that used it. He was the star at college, I mean he had to have psych tests every couple of weeks, just in case, but he was okay as long as he had a toolbox handy.”
“How did you meet?”
“Oh… well, I caught him, um…”
“I’m sorry? You caught him doing what?”
“I didn’t catch him doing anything. I mean I… caught him.”
“Explain…?”
“He had this gravity rocket thing he was working on and it went wrong and he ended up flying all over campus and I’m the one who was dumb enough to try and catch him before he killed himself. Well, it was more like he flew right into me, I dragged him to a stop, and, heh, well, one thing led to another.”
"Ah. I see."
"Yeah."
“So how did that make you an adventurer?”
“There was a club at college, Yott was in it. I didn’t really want to join but he dragged me along and everyone said, hey, you’ve got powers, you saved someone, of course you’re one of us. We didn’t do anything much, because you had to be over 21 for adventuring unless it was the end of the world. And then of course it was the end of the world, so we got called up.”
“Were you ready? I mean, for dealing with the moon?”
“Are you kidding? Yott was the one they wanted. They wanted him there in case the gravity thing went wrong and it needed repairs or they had to build one from scratch. And he wanted me along because he was terrified he was going to screw it up, so they swung it as a bodyguard thing.
“Ugh. I hate going into space. He loved it, of course. I was all tangled up in seatbelt straps and he was off flying around the cabin while I was throwing up everywhere, nobody was talking to me after the third time…
“So anyway we got to the moon chunk thing and landed on it and we were getting ready to do the gravity whatever-it-was when we found out somebody else got assigned to the same chunk. They messed up the paperwork or something because there was this Scandian team there as well and they wanted to set off a bomb and knock it out of orbit or something. I don’t know, I was in the bathroom being sick.
“No one could agree on who was going to get to deal with it. Ground control said hang on until we can figure it out, so we’re all just sitting there like lemons, well I was, they were all arguing. I wasn’t doing anything other than look out the window, and then there was this chimp outside—”
“I’m sorry…?”
“There was a chimp outside.”
“In a spacesuit?”
“Of course in a spacesuit! How else are they gonna breathe in space?”
“Okay. Intelligent chimps. I think you mentioned those before.”
“Yeah, yeah, some wacko anthrobiologist made a load of chimps intelligent, they set up their own republic, lovely guys, except for the ones that wanted to knock over the chimp government and they’d gone into exile and guess where they’d gone? The goddamn moon. We’d landed on their chunk of it, with their moonbase inside it, and they were pissed. They blew the airlocks and killed everyone in the ship.”
“But not you.”
“No. I saw them in time, but no one was paying any attention to me, of course, so I grabbed Yott and stuffed him in a spacesuit and then the airlocks blew and he had to get me in a spacesuit and, well, we were the only ones who made it.”
“Quick thinking.”
“Bullshit. Quick thinking would have saved everyone. And I had to kill one of the chimps as well… I punched in his faceplate. All the air came out like it was some kind of fire extinguisher, and then I could see him dying in there…”
She closed her eyes for a moment. “So we got the hell out. Yott had his gravity rocket so we got away pretty easy. Wasn’t charged up properly, though, so we couldn’t get off the chunk. We hid in the chimp base, a lot of it was wrecked from when the moon blew up, so that was easy too. And then we didn’t know what to do. We sat in there for hours…”
“What happened next?”
“We found out what the chimps were up to. Yott patched into some cables… they wanted to use the gravity thing we brought along to make the chunk crash into Africa and wipe out all the other chimps. They had this madchimp in charge, he’d spend the whole time yelling at people about how he was going to make everyone pay for everything…”
“But you stopped them. Isn’t that right?”
“We figured we were dead anyway so we might as well do something stupid. Yott figured we could use the Scandian ship to do what they were planning to do in the first place. The chimps weren’t using all that stuff because they preferred the gravity thing on our ship, so they weren’t even guarding the Scando ship. And then it was just… get him there without getting killed. He got the ship back online, dropped the bomb, and we got out of town.”
“And it worked?”
“Are you kidding? Of course not. The stupid chimps found out and set off their thing at the same time we set off the bomb. It didn’t knock the chunk out of the way — it just broke into bits. A couple of them made it down and started a tidal wave in the Atlantic. They got most people on the coast out of the way but a couple thousand died. And all the chimps on the chunk. And everyone who went to try and stop it, apart from me and Yott.”
“Do you blame yourself?”
She thought about that for a moment. “More people would have died if we hadn’t done it. They’d have wiped out most of Africa, not just the chimps, I mean that would have killed everyone.”
Her protestation sounded rehearsed. “Is that what they told you when you got back? I mean, did you have therapy?”
“Yeah, right. There wasn’t time, we had to go to work with all the cleanup crews because we were already drafted. But the chimps helped, I mean the ones on the ground, the chimp republic. They sent a lot of aid to say thanks for, you know, saving their species.”
“Did you get any therapy at all?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Things were crazy. Our chunk wasn’t the only one where it went wrong. We were all running around like mad for a year and a half just cleaning up the mess. Nobody had any time for therapy.”
“I see.”
“So that’s it. That’s how I saved the world. Stupid, isn’t it?”
“Not at all. I think you showed remarkable presence of mind, especially for someone who says she isn’t any good at that kind of thing.”
“Yott did the work. All I did was get him there.”
“Could he have done it by himself?”
“No. Neither could I. That’s the point. I can’t do it by myself. I don’t know where to start, I’m no good at this, I never have been. I’m an office manager, not a hero! I mean look…” she held up her polymer-encased arms. “This is what happens when I try to save someone. Someone else has to come in and save me.”