“Oh my God,” he said. “Oh my God, I Shoulda figured it out long ago. You a virgin.”
“Freddy, shh.” Lance tilted his head toward the Japanese tech.
“He don’ understand what we sayin’, Lance. I can’t believe this. I mean, I can believe it because I know you, but I can’t believe it.”
“Believe it.”
“Well, well, well,” said Freddy. “This puts a differen’ light on the subject.”
“I wanted to, Freddy. I was really really tempted. She had her hands on me. She wanted to put her mouth on me.”
“Not bad,” Freddy said in a stage whisper. “Then what?”
“I left.”
Freddy winced in embarrassment for his friend. “You get her pissed, no?”
“I guess so. I haven’t had the courage to look for her.”
“What you gonna do when you find her? Apologize?”
“Maybe,” said Lance. “Maybe explain to her what I think about these things.”
“And what do you think?”
Lance stuttered.
“You know, you full of shit, Lance. You talk about how you not like your folks. How you are space age and they are Stone Age. But here you are on a space station with a nice young lady hot for your bod, and you ain’t taking advantage.”
“Premarital sex is wrong no matter what the age,” said Lance.
“Tha’s a crock of shit,” said Freddy, “You ever read Thomas More? He said people should see each other naked before they got married. An’ he’s a saint!”
“He was a Catholic, Freddy.”
“Don’ hold that against him.”
“It’s still no argument to say that everyone does it. I have myself to think about. Becky, too.”
“Yeah,” said Freddy. “And while you up here livin’ like a monk, how do you know what she doin’ down there?”
Lance’s normally dark eyes flashed. His short hair bristled. His jaw clenched, making him resemble an avenging angel rather than a cute cherub.
“You take that back right now, Freddy!” Lance released the toolbox and specs and pounded the fist of one hand into the palm of the other.
“Hello, gentlemen.”
Aaron Weiss tumbled awkwardly through the entry hatch. The sound of his Minicam clanking against the floor echoed throughout the module. The Japanese tech hurried forward to intercept him. Weiss righted himself and inspected the camera for damage. The Japanese chattered shrilly and waved him away with the back of his hand.
“What? What?” said Weiss in response to the angry gestures. “I don’t understand you.”
“’Scuse me.” Freddy left his screwdriver and penlight with Lance and dove toward the reporter and the tech. The tech was growling now, like a swordsman in a samurai movie, and obviously gesturing for Weiss to leave. The reporter, feigning ignorance, was explaining that he just wanted a few pictures of the equipment.
“Do you understand what this man wants?” Weiss asked Freddy. “He’s not speaking English.”
“He wants you gone, man. How’s that for English?”
“Not very eloquent,” Weiss said, noticing the thick muscles beneath Freddy’s royal-blue flight suit. “But clear enough.”
Freddy nodded to the tech as if to say everything was under control. Then he escorted Weiss to the entry hatch.
“Hey, I know you,” said Weiss. “You’re Freddy Aviles. I was supposed to cover your launch. But then a bunch of whales died.”
“Out of here,” said Freddy, slapping the rim of the hatch for emphasis. “Now.”
With a sigh of resignation, Weiss cased himself through the hatch. Freddy watched him moving unsteadily down the connecting tunnel. Weiss stopped at The Bakery and looked at the hatch as if considering whether to enter.
“Not there either!” shouted Freddy.
“Sorry,” said Weiss, a guilty grin on his face. “Thought it was my hab module. This is a very confusing place.”
Freddy eyeballed Weiss until the reporter entered Hab 1. Then he returned to Lance and the relay box. Lance was still fuming.
“Sorry about what I said about Becky,” said Freddy. “She prob’ly isn’t doing anything like that.”
“Definitely isn’t,” said Lance.
“But even so, you could still go back Earthside an’ find her with another guy. Then what you gonna do, kick yourself in the ass for all the opportunities you let slide?”
Some of the hostility left Lance’s face. He bit his lip as he considered Freddy’s new tack. Stripped of the sexual issue, it made sense. Why did Becky sound so distant over the telephone? What type of person would he find when he returned?
“Take it from me, man. Don’ let opportunities slide by. Look at me. I can’ even kick myself in the ass anymore.”
30 AUGUST 1998
TRIKON STATION
O’Donnell squirms inside his sleep restraint. The dream again. The same old dream. He is in his car. He is always in his car, and his name isn’t O’Donnell yet. It is Jack O’Neill. The car is parked in the middle of a teeming barrio. Police and drug agents are swarming everywhere, riot guns in their hands, red and blue flashers strobe-lighting the decaying buildings and littered streets. People are running, shouting, scattering like roaches scuttling away from the light.
Two policemen, one black, the other Hispanic, both with mirrored sunglasses and thin mustaches like used-car salesmen, lean on opposite windows of his car.
“You can go,” says the Hispanic, though his elbows and the elbows of his partner, each the size of a large ham hock, remain planted.
He needs two hands to turn the ignition key. As soon as the engine kicks over, the two policemen laugh.
“He isn’t wearing his seat belt,” says the Hispanic.
“He hasn’t signaled to enter traffic,” says the black.
The car disappears; the street fades, then re-forms as a police station. His chin clings to a desk while his feet float free. The desk sergeant’s pen scratches, filling in answers to unasked questions. Two plastic bags swollen with white powder land beside his ears with a whump.
His chin slides off the desk. He spirals down in a long dizzying fall that ends in a chair. Across a table sits a man with a badge clipped to one lapel of his tight-fitting jacket and a name tag clipped to the other. The name tag says R. McQ. Welch. He has a pug nose and a bulldog’s chin.
“When I was a kid,” says Welch, “they had a saying, ‘You fall in horseshit, you come up with a diamond.’ I never believed it until just now.”
No trace of a smile eases Welch’s grim expression.
For the first time since he had arrived at Trikon Station, Hugh O’Donnell did not find The Bakery empty when he arrived shortly after artificial dawn had brightened the modules of the station. Microwave ovens buzzed, centrifuges whirled, techs floated from workstation to workstation like workers in a beehive. The entire American/Canadian contingent was present. Even Stu Roberts was awake, though he looked like he needed another couple hours of sleep.
O’Donnell grinned to himself as he floated past them all. Must be Bianco, he thought as he unfastened the padlock to his lab. From the first day of kindergarten through the last day before retirement, people constantly tried to fool the teacher, the boss, the authority figure. No one said a word to him, not even Roberts. It was if he did not exist, which suited him fine.
Once inside his own cubbyhole lab with the door pulled shut, O’Donnell pushed himself to the ceiling to inspect the dozen plants growing in the thin, saucer-shaped cases designed for micro-gee hydroponics.
“Goddammit.” He sighed bitterly. As he had suspected when he closed up the lab the previous night, all of the plants showed definite signs of regeneration. He was back to square one.