Роберт Бюттнер - Orphan's Journey

“Mom’ll love that.” Munchkin hadn’t practiced Islam since the Slug War. What kind of God lets big snails slaughter sixty million people? But childhood habits die hard.

I pointed at Jude’s helmet decal. It showed a clinically detailed Het couple doing rudies, with paddles on. “Does she love the hat?”

He tugged off his helmet, and grinned. “She says it’s disgusting.”

At Jude’s age, his father and I actually would have loved the hat, but I wasn’t about to tell my godson that.

Under his helmet, Jude sprouted his father’s strawberry- blond hair, too. But Jude’s hair had overgrown into a last-century afro, with peach-fuzz muttonchops. And he had dyed it green, like his face.

Before I joined the Army, when I was Jude’s age, I shaved my head and lasered skulls onto my fingernails. But that was beside the point. “You look like broccoli.”

“I look bump. Check the ’zines.”

I sighed. “Why do sixteen-year-olds mimic every sixteen-year-old within a thousand miles — and call it individuality?”

Jude swung his hand at the middle-aged vacationers crowding the exit lobby. “Jason, look around. I’m the only pugging sixteen-year-old within twenty-three thousand miles.”

I slid my paddles back to the rental attendant, while Jude lockered his. “Fair enough. That sucks. You want back dirtside? Do what Howard says.”

“Hibble? Give me one reason I should listen to a bag-face nicotine addict. He’s never even heard of Raging Phlegm.”

It seemed to me that last was a great reason. But I said, “Colonel Hibble served with your father.”

Jude snorted. “Bag-face? He’s a Spook. My father was a pilot.”

“If Howard hadn’t fought Slugs on the ground until he broke his rifle stock over one, your father couldn’t have saved the world.”

Jude snorted harder. “Tug me, Jason.”

“I was there.”

We waited in the emptied lobby for the next Cap, in silence. The Moon gleamed through the Panoramic, silver against spangled black.

I hadn’t lied. In fact, I had so told the truth that I had to blink back tears. Howard was no more hero than I was. But when it comes down to it, GIs don’t fight to save the world. They fight for each other.

As Jude stared out at space, he twisted his finger ring. Munchkin had it made from Metzger’s Distinguished Flying Cross, Posthumous. Jude cleared his throat. “Mom says he loved flying. Not this Airpool stuff. Real flying.”

I nodded. “Since he could walk. It wouldn’t kill you to try it.”

Jude blinked at the Moon.

Then he grinned, and punched my arm. “If it does, Mom will so whack you.”

NINE

TWO DAYS LATER, in the Spook Ring’s amphitheater, twenty feet below Howard, Munchkin, and me, Jude lay in a Firewitch control chamber mock-up, complete with toadstool, hardwired cables, and bubbles filled with staring, chattering technicians.

Howard leaned, elbows on the railing that ringed the test bay, sucking a lollipop in lieu of a cigarette. “It took life three billion years to leave Earth. Less than a century later, here we stand on the threshold of the first step toward leaving the Solar System.”

Munchkin frowned. “It’s still too long. Jude’s already missed soccer season. SATs are next month.”

Howard said, “Tomorrow we go live. He lies down in the real couch. The Firewitch powers up. We take readings. Then we shut down. You and Jude will be on the afternoon Clipper.”

“And then?”

“We’ll analyze the data. We’ll replace the rigid tube that you’ve been coming and going through with an umbilical that can be disconnected from New Moon, so the Firewitch can move. All that will take two years. Then, and only then, if we still need him, Jude will come back up here. At that time, we think we might actually get the Firewitch to move a couple of feet. Baby steps.”

Munchkin was spooled too tight. I poked her. “Come on! It’s just rocket science.”

Howard said, “Actually, rockets have nothing to do with it. Reaction propulsion is too slow to fly us to the stars.”

I waved my hand. “You already told me. We need anti-matter drive.”

“No. Anti-matter drive’s just another reaction propulsion system. Slap anti-matter against matter. Squirt the explosion out the ship’s back end.”

“You said Cavorite was anti-matter.”

“No. I said Cavorite wasn’t even matter. Not as we conceive of matter as occupying the four dimensions of space and time that define this universe.”

“Oh.” I leaned back against the rail and crossed my arms and ankles. Ord’s PT had rejuvenated me enough to risk a round of Hibble baiting. “Then what is Cavorite?”

“A piece that broke off of what’s beyond the end of the universe. Obviously.”

“Why obviously?”

“Because it consumes whatever it contacts in this universe. Especially gravity.”

“Howard, there can’t be something beyond the end of the universe.”

“No. There can’t be nothing.”

Munchkin rolled her eyes.

Below us, the hourly break chime echoed. Techs stood and stretched.

Enlisted Zoomies lifted away the control yoke that sandwiched Jude against the mock-up. He sat up, shook his head at me, then wiped sweat off his forehead.

Howard said, “Jason, he’s a changed kid.”

Jude and I had finally cruised the Airpool a couple of times. It scared the crap out of me, but it was good PT, and it helped with my fear of heights. I helped him with homework, at least the non-math stuff, and we went to a holo together. Unbidden, Jude cut his hair pilot-short and washed out the green dye. He spoke when spoken to with minimal profanity, and hadn’t heard, “Jude, language please!” from his mother in days.

More important, he regularly showed up for his “job,” which consisted of being taped with electrodes, then poked and prodded by Spooks.

I said, “He’s the same kid. He wants to go home. There are girls his age down there. You remember girls, Howard?”

“Still, I credit your influence.”

“I want to go home, too.”

The break chime sounded again, and Howard’s minions strapped Jude back in. Today’s cycle had four hours to run.

Munchkin stepped away from the rail, arms folded. “So, tomorrow we leave. What are you doing tonight?”

I smiled, then I scuffed the deck. “I thought I’d visit the Memorial. I dunno. Is it too hard to take?”

She stared down, too. “I wouldn’t know.”

“You’ve been here five months.”

“Then I guess it’s hard.”

“It’s time. For both of us. We’ll go together. We’ve done harder things.”

Munchkin looked up, her eyes glistening, and nodded.

Few Earthlings ever actually see the Ganymede Memorial.

But then, few Earthlings ever saw the ten thousand men and women who actually fought on and above Ganymede, either. We trained and embarked in secret. We were gone six years. The battle ended before most of Earth knew it began. Only seven hundred of us lived to come home aboard the relief ship.

There were parades, but no loved ones welcomed or mourned us. The volunteers of the Ganymede Expeditionary Force were chosen from among orphans who had already lost their families to the Slugs.

The Memorial abuts the hotel. Tours end at noon. But veterans can visit in silence, 24/7.

It’s just a hollow marble cylinder, not much bigger than a dim-lit horse barn. That’s enough wall to carve 9,700 names. The clear window at the cylinder’s end looks down on the Firewitch, and on space.

Our breathing echoed in the chamber.

Munchkin’s lip quivered, then she stepped to the wall and touched the first name. “Abazan. Airman Second Class. I didn’t know many Zoomies.”

We both knew two. I touched the letters. “Hart, Priscilla O., Cpt.; UNSF; Medal of Honor; Distinguished Flying Cross; both Posthumous.” Pooh Hart had been Munchkin’s Maid of Honor when Munchkin married Metzger. Munchkin never got to return the favor for Pooh and me.