James Gardner - Space Inc (collection)

One for our side.

I check our status: Three ORs still going, two at quarantined platforms, one something that has nothing to do with the emergency—an incarcerated hernia. Julian looks like he has been squeezed through a fist-sized hole in the outer wall, very slowly. He gives me a precis: Final casualties, seven dead, including the patient with the arterial gas embolism, twelve injured, mostly decompression. The IBDD confirms the original estimates of radiation-resistance, so Luther’s numbers stand. Further analysis of the shuttle’s disintegration suggest that it really was a malfunction, enough by the sound of things to lead to heads rolling but not, we trust, to wars starting. The same analysis gives us some hope that the trajectory of the cargo carried it away from the platforms, toward Earth atmosphere—although there’s an understandable reluctance to disclose that reassuring tidbit Earthside, even though reentry would have charred it.

Julian and I review the rota. Y’ has already worked nearly two full shifts; I have worked one, and none of the people who would ordinarily cover have overdosed on sleep. So we decide I’ll continue through this next shift, Y’ will pick up the two after that, and then we’ll be righted; I’ll just owe Y’. We’d switch, only Y’ has a partner among the environmental engineers; their shifts are coordinated.

Julian orders me to find something to eat. I order him to do likewise. Besides, we’ve both been notified we’re due our first dose of antifungal prophylaxis. We make an appointment for the doctor’s lounge in ten.

I’m almost out of the chair before the page comes in, so I throw it up on the flat-screen. Stephe, hair unraveling in long plaits, like a handsome Polynesian medusa. No preamble: “The World Court just announced their decision. The freehabbers get to keep their kids.”

This is surely the last outcome I could have predicted, given the recent demonstration of the extraordinary dangers of our suspended lives.

Stephe is saying, “There’s a strong recommendation that the kids be taken down on the normal three-month rotation, and they’re requiring medical monitoring—but the research that we’re doing on bone and muscle protection and the development of rotating platforms decided the judges. And we knew that three of them were pro-space, but it was a five-four decision.”

“Some of that bone-protection research doesn’t stand up to critical review.” That’s not what I would have said; it is only the most accessible objection.

“But there are quality trials in there as well, two random controlled trials in the last year. We’re finally getting the numbers to up here to get grade 1 evidence. We’ve been accepting being tied to Earth all those years, with that three-month down rotation, and families staying downside—” She blinks at me, eyes suddenly a lighter green, and starry. “Wow!” she says. “That’s going to change things.”

“Stephe,” I say slowly, “your partner’s a physician. Did he pass the genotype tests?”

“Yeah,” she breathes. “We knew that before we married. But we decided that one of us should stay down with the kids. The kids should pass, too. I wonder if the freehabs need a couple of doctors. I expect it’ll be a while before the commercial stations come to terms with kids in space.”

“You need sleep,” I tell her, quellingly.

She laughs, hair flying. “I need to call Hikaru, before somebody wants me. Don’t say anything about this to anyone, will you?”

“Cross my heart,” I say, more than a little bemused. And she leaves me to think of the twelve hours we have just lived through, the hours we are going to live through, waiting for any contamination to declare itself.

If there’s news coming in, there must be bandwidth to spare. I settle back into the chair, fit the virtual array over my head again and request a channel to Earth.

It’s the middle of the night, but Luis is not asleep. Nor is he alone: I can hear movement around him, in the common area of the clinic’s living caravan.

Luis looks good, and that’s not only because I’ve been celibate too long. He has one of those faces that time only improves, since age reveals character. Though he was almost as light-skinned as Stephe when we met, Africa has darkened him, set squint-lines around his eyes, made him thoughtful in motion, careful of his energies. Like many of us, he’s a mongrel, born in a country that no longer exists, but unlike many of us, he has found his heart’s home. He was always the one I was closest to, my friend, my preferred lover; our intimacy at times made the others jealous. I’m not surprised at his greeting, “Helen, thank God. I’ve been trying to get through from this end. We heard the news—what’s been getting through the UA government filters. Are you all right?”

Terence, unseen behind him, says, “Ask her if it was sabotage, like the EEN said.”

A woman—Charmaine, probably—shushes him. Luis looks pained. This is certainly being monitored from my end, and probably from his, and Luis has always been cautious. Terence, on the other hand, thinks his radical credentials are imperiled if he’s not on some official shit list—and if the African governments are filtering the news, then quoting the Earth Ekumenical Network is a fine way to get there.

“How should I know what anyone on Earth is saying?” I parry. “I’ve had my head in the hood for the past nine hours. I’m all right, Luis. We weren’t one of the platforms with decompression emergencies. Needless to say, I’ve been busy assisting the ones that did.” That I judge safe to say. I will leave off mention of the contamination, lest that is not to be public knowledge where they are. “How is it with you?”

“We wanted to thank you for that last cash transfer.”

I flutter my hands. They look puffy and dry, with red pressure marks from hours in the gloves. His will be long, thin, weathered—I corral my vagrant thoughts. “You know I believe in the work, Luis, and it’s no hardship for me.”

After the pan-American War, support to the African restoration was cut, including support to our mobile clinic. With the cynicism of young, bruised idealists, we decided that those of us who could would find the highest salaried jobs until we had banked enough for five years’ self-sufficiency. I was the only one who qualified for space.

For my first three-month downtime, I joined Luis and Charmaine on the edge of the Sahara. After nine months in the confined, regulated, precarious environment of the space habs, I was utterly disoriented, starting at any shift of light, any change in the wind. I fainted when I stood up; I developed sunstroke; I had constant diarrhea, infectious and nonfectious. Luis was alarmed; Charmaine, contemptuous.

By the end of my third year, the others had reunited in the field, working in the Ganges delta. I was better at managing my readaptation, but Terence and I argued constantly. I saw how to expand our practice beyond the mobile clinic, using one or more telesurgery stations, but that would have required negotiation with local and regional governments, obtaining access to bandwidth and infrastructure—trusting and buying in; to Terrence, a deal with the devil.

One more year, I told us all. One more year, to give us more of a cash reserve, and then we’ll work it all out. Three months into that year there was an opening for a surgeon on IMS-1; I was invited to apply. And we all confronted how much I wanted that post, how much more satisfying I found the mastery of skills and technology required of this work, than the enervating struggle with Earth’s chronic afflictions.

Charmaine demanded a divorce; Terence called me a traitor; Michel withdrew. Luis alone gave me his blessing, and for him, alone, I would have stayed.