The Infinite Tides (7 page)

“About what?”

“I asked but they wouldn’t tell me,” Fisher said.

“Seriously?” Eriksson said.

“That’s what they told me,” Fisher said. He shrugged. “Private mission commander stuff, I guess.”

It was quiet for a moment. Then Eriksson said, “Well, OK. Let’s go find out what they want.” He moved away from them then, through the round opening into Node 1 and out of sight.

“That’s odd,” Petra said.

And then Keith: “What was that about?”

“You know as much as I do,” Fisher said.

“What did they say?” Petra said.

“They said to have Bill call in when he was back inside. That was all. Jeez, guys, it’s not a conspiracy.”

“Weird, though,” Petra said.

“I guess,” Fisher said.

It was silent again. Then Petra said, “Hungry?”

“Starving,” Keith said.

“Good. You’re just in time for dinner.”

Both Petra and Fisher joined him at the table in the Service Module. They might have continued to discuss the possible reasons for the communication but there was little use in such speculation. Instead, Petra asked him questions about the EVA he had just completed and he tried to describe the sense of awe he had felt but again it sounded so feeble when put into words that he gave up entirely.

By the time Eriksson arrived in the galley, Keith had finished his tortilla-wrapped canned ham and was sipping juice from a foil bag. Fisher had just completed a lengthy argument for the culinary superiority of the canned sturgeon brought in by the Russian Space Agency, a controversy on which Keith had no opinion.

“Ready to eat something?” Keith said as Eriksson entered.

“In a minute,” Eriksson said. “Listen, Keith, we got some news.”

“What kind of news?”

Eriksson glanced at Petra and Fisher and then turned toward him once more. “Let’s talk about it in your quarters,” he said.

“Really?” Keith said. He looked at Eriksson. If there was some expression on the mission commander’s face he did not recognize it.

“Everything OK?” Petra said.

Eriksson looked at her but said nothing.

“What’s going on?” Keith said.

“Come on,” Eriksson said. And then, to the other crew members: “Can you guys clean up?”

“Uh … yeah, sure,” Petra said. Her face in that moment: a mask of concern and confusion.

“Thanks,” Keith said.

They pulled themselves through the modules, Eriksson leading the way and Keith following close behind, and then into the closet-size space that was Keith’s crew quarters and they drifted there as they talked, Keith in the tiny compartment and Eriksson in the curtained doorway.

“So what’s going on?” Keith said.

“Look,” Eriksson said. He paused. Cleared his throat. “I don’t know how to tell you this so I’ll just come out and say it. We got a call from ground. Your daughter has been in an auto accident.”

“What? What happened?”

“We don’t know yet.”

There was a moment of silence between them and then Keith said, “I don’t understand.”

Eriksson looked at him. “She’s gone,” he said.

“Gone?”

“Yes,” Eriksson said. Then: “I’m sorry, buddy.”

“Gone? What do you mean ‘gone’? Gone where?”

“Gone, Keith. She’s gone.”

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

Eriksson looked at him, not responding at first, only staring. Then he said, carefully and slowly: “Your daughter was killed in an accident.”

“What? Are you … you’re joking?”

“Not this time, buddy,” he said. “I wish I was.”

“This isn’t funny, Bill.”

No answer now.

“Quinn?”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t understand what you’re telling me,” Keith said. He was filled in that moment with a blinding and all-encompassing rage that flooded through him all at once and was just as quickly gone. “Jesus Christ. What … what are you saying, Bill? Jesus Christ.”

“I’m so sorry, buddy. Houston is waiting for your call. They probably know more.”

“Oh my god,” he said. His mind was blank. Then again: “Oh my god.”

“It’ll be … ,” Eriksson began but he did not finish the sentence.

Keith looked at him. If there was some emotional response expected he could not find it now. There was an equation forming all around him but what the variables were, where the starting point was, he did not know.

Eriksson continued to stare back at him as if waiting for him to say something. “You want me to call in?” he said after a time.

“What?” Keith said.

Eriksson reached to the intercom and pulled it down from the wall and clicked the button. “Houston, Eriksson here.”

A moment later came the reply: “We read you. Go ahead, Bill.”

“I’m here with Keith,” he said.

“OK, stand by.” There was a pause and then the intercom crackled and the voice of Mission Command returned. “Keith, we have your wife standing by. Can you connect via laptop?”

“Where is she?” he said.

“He wants to know where his wife is,” Eriksson said into the intercom.

“Stand by,” the response came. Eriksson was looking at him. He
could feel Eriksson looking at him. Then Mission Control again: “We don’t know the answer to that.”

“They don’t know where my wife is?”

“Look, they’ll connect her,” Eriksson said. “Where was she before? At her folks’ place? She’s probably there.”

There was a wave of confusion. He nodded but said nothing.

Eriksson pressed the intercom button again. “OK, we’re standing by,” he said.

“We read you. Standing by,” the voice said. There was a moment of silence and then the voice returned: “Keith, we don’t know what to say. We’re all … we’re all wishing you the best down here.”

“The best?” Keith said. He had not reached for the intercom nor depressed the button to be heard and so Eriksson said, “Understood.” And then, “Standing by.”

Eriksson left the intercom floating in the air before them. The two men adrift, neither speaking, not even looking at each other.

“This doesn’t … ,” Keith said. And then, “This doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” Eriksson said. It was quiet between them and then Eriksson said, “Do you want me to get your laptop ready for Barb?”

“Barb,” he said. “No, I can do that.” As if to show that this action was indeed possible he opened the laptop and clicked on the appropriate icon to initiate the link.

“You’ll get through this,” Eriksson said.

“OK,” Keith said, simply. His voice was clear and he felt composed and ready, as if for some component of the mission that he had only just learned of but which nonetheless needed completing.

“Don’t worry,” Eriksson said.

“I’m not worried,” Keith said.

Eriksson looked at him carefully.

“What?” Keith said.

“Let’s talk after.”

“All right.”

“I’ll be just past the hatch if you need me,” Eriksson said.

“Got it.”

Eriksson looked at him again, his expression one of concern. “You all right?”

“Fine,” Keith said.

Eriksson nodded, turned, and pulled himself to the other end of the module. In a moment he was gone from sight.

The laptop before him was open and he stared at it for a long time before his eyes focused on its glowing background image, an image of himself and Barb and Quinn taken a few years before, a snapshot from a trip they had taken to Houston, one of the few actual vacations they had taken together. He was smiling awkwardly but both Barb and Quinn looked beautiful. How old had she been when the photograph was taken? Fifteen? Slightly younger?

He might have continued to stare at the image as he waited but his eyes blurred and when they refocused a point of light drifted in the air before him, a faint luminescence like a distant star. Like a diamond. His first thought was fascination. Then confusion. Then he recognized it at last as a drop of fluid, a liquid of some kind suspended in the recycled oxygen of the compartment. Then he could see another and then another, as if a collection of tiny stars were forming in the air a few scant inches from his face, a new and unknown constellation which he watched with curiosity as if the individual points of light had originated from some other source. Not from him. Not from the tears that floated out and away from him as if drawn toward the image on the screen. Look at those, he was thinking. I’ll have to tell her about this. Another, this large enough to wobble slightly until it settled into its silent shining orb. I’ll have to tell Quinn. Adrift then. Adrift.

The chamber filling slowly with tiny stars. Count them now and they will equal some infinity of zeros.

My daughter. Oh my god. My daughter is dead.

She must have been waiting for him because her high-pitched voice came almost the very moment he swung open the door: “Hey! Hey you, astronaut guy! Hey!” He might have simply swung it closed again but he did not and she continued to shout as she trotted in his direction from across the street.

He was embarrassed that he had opened the door yet again but he had come to hear the sound of a delivery truck in every low-frequency hum that wobbled through the empty rooms. Each time he waited for the doorbell’s ring or the sound of the driver’s knock and when no such sound came he would set down the paint roller and walk to the door in his socks and open it to find nothing—no package, no driver, no truck—instead only the emptiness of the cul-de-sac, the day coming to a close and darkness once again falling over the house like a shroud.

But this time he had opened the door not to silence but rather to the sound of the little girl who had run across the street from the
direction of Jennifer’s house and now stood before him, bouncing slightly on the tips of her toes and smiling with excitement. “You’re the astronaut guy?” she said.

He sighed and glanced around the entryway for the box even though he already knew that there was no box to be found.

“Hello?” she called up to him. “Anyone home?”

“Yes,” he said at last, “I’m the astronaut guy.” He looked at her. She was perhaps nine or ten years old with brown hair pulled back in a tight ponytail. “Do you need something?” he said.

“Yep,” she said and when he did not respond she asked: “Is it fun?”

“Is what fun?”

The little girl rolled her eyes as if exasperated by his apparent lack of intelligence or insight. “Being an astronaut,” she said.

“Oh.” He thought for a moment. His throat felt tight. He tried not to think of Quinn. “Yes, it’s fun,” he said.

“What do you get to do that’s fun?”

“Do your parents know you’re out here?”

“My mom knows,” the girl said quickly, as if it was necessary to get this information out of the way so she could focus on the more important question at hand: “So what’s the answer?”

“Oh, let’s see,” he said. “I get to wear a space suit.”

“That’s the fun part?”

“Sure.”

“Is that the funnest part?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Really? I don’t think so. What’s the funnest part?”

He looked at her. “You’re kind of demanding,” he said.

She smiled and nodded. “Precocious,” she said.

“Who calls you that?”

“Grandpa.”

“Ah,” he said. “What’s the funnest part?” He paused and then said, “When the rocket blasts off.”

“What’s fun about that?”

“I don’t know.”

She looked at him as if confused or irritated; he could not tell which. Then she said, “You’re not really good at this.”

“Good at what?”

“Telling about being an astronaut.”

He stood looking at her, blinking, then glanced at the house across the street, then back to the girl, realizing as he did so that she was the same child who had looked through his sliding glass door when the realtor had first been to the house. “Does your mom let you talk to strangers?” he said.

“You’re not stranger danger. You’re an astronaut. It’s like talking to a policeman or a fireman. Plus my mom’s the one who told me to come over.” She smiled at him: a big, goofy smile that was totally fake and yet somehow endearing.

“What’s your mom’s name?”

“Jennifer.” She pointed behind her, across the street. “We live right there.”

“Yeah, I thought so,” he said. “Why did your mom tell you to come over here?”

“Because of my school report.”

“Aren’t you out for summer?”

“My school goes all summer long.”

He looked at her, then up at the house, then back at her again. “OK,” he said. “I probably shouldn’t ask, but what’s the report?” He glanced past the little girl to Jennifer’s house again. He had seen her only once since their initial meeting three days earlier, had waved to her just as her car disappeared into the garage. Now that garage door remained closed. He wondered if she was watching him from some upstairs window but if so he could not see her.

“It’s on someone in our neighborhood. Someone who does stuff.”

“Stuff like what?”

“You know. Like firefighters and people like that.”

“Right,” he said. “So I’m your report topic?”

“Yep.”

“Don’t you think you should ask me first? Maybe I’m really busy and don’t have time to be in your report.”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “You don’t really do anything.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m not stupid.”

“I didn’t say you were.”

“You don’t have any furniture.”

“So?” He wondered if that was all he could have come up with, wondered why he was being run aground in a conversation with a ten-year-old and then tried to remember what Quinn had been like at this age. Would she have spoken to a neighbor with such authority? He thought it unlikely.

“It’s not good. All you have is a couch. My mom says that’s weird.”

“Your mom’s right. It is weird.”

“So why don’t you have any furniture?”

“Did you figure this out by peeking through the window?”

She looked embarrassed.

“It’s OK, but you probably shouldn’t do that,” he said.

“I know,” she said.

He thought she might cry but she did not, instead standing there and looking up at him from the concrete. Then he said, “To answer your question, my wife took it all when she moved out.”