Элизабет Мун - Moon Flights

Our float came apart in a spin vortex at Rimrock, and we were charged with Insufficient Construction. (Luckily our insurance company’s lawyers found we had a case against the designated construct company for fraud, and none of the young ladies on the float were hurt.) Still, the accident might deter some parade entries at our end. Simmons Sewer reported that they couldn’t fill all the porta-potty order because they had just gotten a contract from Outreach Frames (the big shipbuilding firm). Conway, Murray’s friend in Jinnits, broke up with his wife and threatened to leave the band; the band leader called Murray and said that if Conway left him in the lurch he wasn’t about to do any favors for Conway’s buddies. And so on.

It wasn’t until three days before the opening that I wore the light blue zipsuit again, and heard something crackle in the breast pocket. I fished it out and found the message tape I’d never read. Now I read it.

In-laws are an old joke, right? That’s because so many of them are just like the stories. My wife Peg is sweet, loving, bright, independent, and not half-bad-looking, either. But her brothers—! There’s James Perowne, who’s a drunk, and Gerald LaMott, who’s probably the reason why James is a drunk, and then there’s Ernest. Ernest Dinwiddie, if you can believe it, which I couldn’t when I first met him, and I laughed, and he never forgave me. He suits his name, is the best I can say for him, and it isn’t much.

The way Peg and I get along, you’d think I’d like her brothers and they’d like me, but that’s not how it is. James will fling a half-pickled arm around my shoulders and breathe beery sighs at me about his lovely little sister while I hold my breath and try not to slug him. Gerald sits hunched behind something (table, computer, desk… a pillow if all else fails), staring at me with little bright eyes out from under his dark brows and expecting me to make an ass of myself. Peg says she never could play a piece on the piano (and she’s good) when Gerald was staring at her. He has that way of looking at you, expecting you to fail, almost longing for you to fail, and then you do. And then there’s Ernest.

Ernest is in middle management at Central Belt Mining & Exploration. He’s told us about it, and about how important middle management is, and how important Central Belt Mining & Exploration is. Well, I know that. Anyone in finance in the Belt knows how important CBM&E is. He explained to Peg exactly why she shouldn’t marry me, and to me exactly why I wasn’t worthy of her, and from time to time he shows up to explain what we’ve done wrong between the last visit and this one. He asks detailed questions about every aspect of our lives, and gives the impression that he’d like to hire investigators to verify our answers.

Also he can’t take a hint. Most people, if you tell them that you’re going to be busy the weekend they want to visit, will shrug and say too bad and go on. Not Ernest. He showed up in the middle of our honeymoon, to see how things were going. He brought his whole family to help celebrate my fortieth birthday (when Peg and I had planned to spend a weekend alone, having farmed Gordie out with her best friend Lisa). For the past three years or so, we’d managed to avoid him by being “gone” when he came to LaPorte-Centro-501. This time we were stuck.

He was coming, the message strip said, on August 24, the day that Wheel Days opened, because he was sure we’d be there for Wheel Days. He was on his way in-system for a management seminar, with his wife Joyce and their three kids. They wanted to see us and would be there sometime during Dayshift. Even in hard copy from a radio relay, Ernest’s usual accusing tone was coming through. And by this time they were four days out from Central Station One (the Company’s own headquarters colony, as he made sure we knew), and there was no way I could stop them. That’s what I got for not reading that message the month before.

I called Peg, and she reacted about how I expected. She’s often said she married someone as unlike her brothers as possible. I held the earphone a foot away until she calmed down a little.

“We can hide out in the Wheel Days confusion,” she suggested finally.

“They know where we live; they’ll just camp outside the door.”

“We could stay with Lisa…”

“Lisa’s already having company, remember?” So were we, for that matter, and Peg and I both said, “What about the Harrisons?” at the same moment.

“I can’t tell them not to come,” Peg wailed. “I want to see them. We have fun together. Not only that… we won’t have room. ”

“I’ll find Ernest’s bunch a room somewhere else,” I said, but I was worried. We really haven’t built our tourism industry up where we’d like to see it, Wheel Days filled the hotels—overfilled them—and by this time I doubted I could find anything but the most expensive suites still available.

“They are not coming here,” Peg said, with a hint of Brother Ernest’s heavyhanded determination. Then she hung up. Murray came to tell me that Conway had rejoined the Jinnits, but had gotten drunk in the ship on its way from Gone West and given his ex-wife two black eyes. She wasn’t filing charges, but the ship’s captain was, and wouldn’t release him without a guarantee from an employer: the ship’s captain was a Neo-Feminist, and wouldn’t tolerate spouse (or ex-spouse) abuse. The band didn’t count, because apparently the captain considered them a contributing influence, and had already fined them. And of course without Conway, the Jinnits wouldn’t sound like the Jinnits, and our main stage attraction would be no attraction at all. Murray wouldn’t meet my eyes, even though it wasn’t his fault, and we both knew it. But everyone also knew that he was why we had the Jinnits at all.

By the time I’d straightened that out, it was six hours later and the last hotel room was long gone, at any price. I leaned a little on Bennie Grimes, manager of the Startowers, but he knew and I knew that the favors he owed me weren’t worth kicking a corporate executive out of his room and alienating the entire company. And no one I knew— no one —had room at home. Everyone with spare rooms invited guests or rented them out; the last of the home-rentals had cleared the computer weeks ago.

That left the Campground, and I knew exactly what Ernest was going to say about that. You can’t run a festival by turning people away, so when rooms were full we signed transients into the Campground… a vast, barren storage bay aired up for a week (it takes that long to get it above freezing), and divided into “campsites” with bright plastic streamers. For about the cost of a cheap room in town, we rent bubbletents, furnished with cheap inflatable seats and sleepsacks. Big tents, too—bigger than the rooms you’d get in most hotels, plenty of room to sleep the whole family. It’s kind of a long walk from the Campground in toward the core, so we have some extra entertainment out there. A few clown/juggler acts, a little carnival with rides for the kids, that sort of thing. And we have one day of the games right next to the Campground: the penny toss, the ring-dunk, the disk golf tournament.

Some people even prefer the Campground, and reserve a favorite spot (“Aisle 17, lot D, next to the big bathroom with the sunken tubs”) year after year. You can be sure you’ll be next to friends. The traffic isn’t as bad. It’s less expensive than anything but the cheapest Portside hotels. One group of old-timers from Wish & Chips holds reunions there; they say it’s like going back to the old days before the shells were built up, and they sit around singing sentimental pioneer ballads.