Shine Shine Shine (26 page)

From the Allegheny, Sunny and Maxon turned upstream where the rivers converged, and after paddling hard to get under the railway trestle of the Belmar bridge, they found themselves in the calmer, clearer, shallower waters of the Crowder. Sunny peeled off her tank top and her shorts, and dove into the water, neatly avoiding the underwater rocks, and surfacing again, laughing, like a seal.

Maxon paddled on, slowly, and then rammed the canoe up onto the upstream side of a river rock that jutted out of the water near the bank. Under the water, everything was coated in fine silt, clinging to the rocks and plants. It was thick, like jelly, and you could swish it off with your hand or stamp your foot on it and it would flutter and spray through the water, turning the water muddy for a few seconds, until the current flushed it on and the river was clear again.

Maxon stepped out of the canoe onto the rock with a long flat foot, and then yanked the canoe farther up on the rock, to make sure it was stuck fast. When he turned to look at Sunny she was out in midstream, floating, sticking her toes out of the water to examine them and flapping with her arms to keep from drifting away. In the years they had spent apart, she had definitely changed. But he still recognized her. He recognized her movements, yes, and her physical shape. He recognized the tone of her voice and he noted persistent mannerisms and favorite vocabulary, although that had changed a little.

But what he realized, looking at her there splashing in the water, making a star with her body and then contracting down to do a somersault, was that he really recognized her, down inside. He knew that, if the planet was spun like a top, and stopped suddenly, and he was asked to point her out, that he could do it. There might be crowds and crowds of people all in gray, with gray hair, and gray eyes, and in order to be identified they would have to be logically processed according to age, and intelligence, and financial merit. He would not know any of them. But he knew Sunny, he knew her without looking, without asking. She would be there like a lightbulb in a basket of wool. She would be there like a red balloon in an asteroid belt. She was the only one, ultimately, in the whole world who mattered. She was the only one he would have known anywhere. How he wanted to insure that she would only be his. He had a ring in his pocket. It looked exactly like an engagement ring should look. But he had no script. He was on his own.

*   *   *

L
ATER, THEY STRETCHED OUT
on a wide, warm stone. Sunny ate a granola bar, but Maxon couldn’t eat. He gulped the water, wiped his mouth, and lay back in the sun. She had been talking, talking, talking like she always did, the sound of it as pleasant to him as the breeze ruffling the pine trees. The sky was blue above his head, an impossible Pennsylvania blue of mid-July. It was as perfect and safe a moment as he could recall in his life. If only she would never stop talking, then he would never have to begin.

She lay back, finally, with a deep sigh, and it was quiet. He had no idea what she had been saying, but she seemed relieved.

He went up on one elbow, turned his body to face her. Now was the time for him to create an utterance, something to say.

“Sunny,” he said. His voice caught and he coughed. She went up on one elbow, too, now facing him. Her brow furrowed.

He looked at her, the big dark alien eyes, the delicate nose and rosebud mouth. He traced the fine line of her jaw, saw the soft wrinkle where it met her ear, the skin of her neck so pale and invisible, her jutting collarbone, her beautiful tiny breasts. He felt a feeling in his heart that was powerful love.

“Yes?” she said.

“Sunny, are you all finished with having sex with other men?”

She smiled. She laughed.

“Well, I don’t know,” she said. “Are you all finished having sex with other women?”

He stared at her. He didn’t know what to say back. He hadn’t had sex with any other women.

Her eyebrows went up; that meant she was surprised. “Maxon?” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“Oh, baby, are you telling me you haven’t had sex with anyone but me?”

“I have not,” he said. He was unsure whether she was pleased or disappointed.

“The very last time you had some sex was with me at the 4-H fair?”

“Yes.”

“All those years ago?”

“Yes.”

“And no one else? Oh, Maxon.”

No one else. He saw her eyes get wet, and her lips pursed together. She put one finger on the back of his neck, and traced it down past his shoulder, over his rib cage, down the side of his hip, and the outside of his leg as far as she could reach. He said nothing, did not move, but inside he was shuddering with relief, being touched by her again. She reached over and put her lips on his face, on his eyebrows, on the side of his chin. His breath came faster. But he had to stop it. She was so warm, so near to him, that he might go into a dream. He might fall off a precipice and wake up to find himself still unmarried, still on the same rung of the ladder, no closer to the top.

“Wait,” he said. “Wait.”

He sat up, and reached into the pocket of his shorts where they were folded in a neat stack of his clothes next to him on the rock. She watched him, saying nothing. She had what people call a twinkle in her eye. He pulled out a shining metal cylinder and said, “Sunny, will you marry me?”

She pushed herself up on one hand, her legs elegantly drawn up against each other. “What’s this, Maxon?”

“Oh, this? It’s a titanium capsule. You use it to store unstable compounds. It’s waterproof, I thought the ring might get wet so…”

“So is that a titanium capsule in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?” she laughed. Her smile was wide, her face beautiful. Her body was lithe like a long coil, it swung toward him in a wave. She put her hand on his chest and drew it down, down his front, where her fingers feathered over the front of his boxers.

“Sunny,” he said again, “will you marry me?” He unscrewed the container and drew out the ring, carefully, carefully; it must not fall into the water.

She slipped her hand into his shorts and with the other hand in his hair, she pulled his mouth to hers, and put a burning kiss on him. She was now next to him, her body pressed to him, he could feel her pulse elevated, her breathing frequency intensified. Her fingers went around his testicles and softly rubbed there, underneath. This was a new thing. She must have learned it at college.

He broke away from her kiss, and said, his breaths coming in gasps, “Sunny. I need you to look me in the eye. And answer me. I need an answer.”

Look me in the eye. Answer me. I need an answer.
All times this had been said to him. Now he was saying it.

“Yes, you ass,” she said, throwing her arm around his neck and wrapping the other around his waist. “Yes, I will marry you. I am all done having sex with other people. Yes, yes, yes.”

They would get married. They would move into their beautiful A-frame. And even if Maxon’s work called them away to the big city, they would keep their house, on their hill, forever. He knew it.

He put the ring on, and then she fell on him like a starving dog, and blew his mind.

22

When Maxon’s hand touched the cargo module, he did not feel relief. He felt:
Here is the cargo module. Now how do I get into it?
When he discovered that he could not get into the cargo module via either of the hatches, he did not feel fear. He felt:
What is another way that I can get into it?
He kept moving his hands, moving like a spider across the face of it, from handle to handle, edge to edge, seeking a new idea. His white suit wrinkled at his joints, making bent tubes for his body parts to be in. His helmet dome reflected the surface of the module, reproducing it in golden tones. Both of the hatches were locked. He had failed to consider this outcome.

The cargo module itself was about the size of a box on a semi truck. It had been shot into lunar orbit unmanned, using an unprecedented amount of fuel, and had found its orbit without incident. Now here it was up in space, in the blackness hung with stars, where there was no wind to whistle through its latches, no air to breathe, no song to sing.

Maxon let go of the handle, and he did not fall off or spin away, but just hung there, drifting. He had turned off the communication radio in his helmet that kept him in contact with Gompers and Phillips. The noises they were making didn’t even sound like words. It wouldn’t be the first time he suspected someone of talking nonsense, just strings of language in random order, to befuddle him. They knew he was not a good listener. They had been told to follow specific syntactic patterns when speaking to him. He had turned his jetpack off. There was no electricity in him at all.

The silence of space was upon him. Now the difference between life and death, for him, was the motion of a fingertip. He was without tether, without support. If he reached out his index finger and pushed, his Newtonian mass would repel backward, every action having an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, with the action being flicking the side of a box with his index finger, and the reaction being his own death and the failure of the nascent lunar colony, Maxon really had to put a lot of faith in Newton when it came to the equal and opposite part. But that’s how he won the Nobel Prize: picking a rule and sticking with it, right down to the last logical consequence.

He wondered, what would Sunny do, with him lost and floating off into space, orbiting the moon like a speck in a sack, his death unmarked in time, an unspecified number of days hence, when he stopped having electrical impulses in his brain, and continued to rot, but just at a faster pace. She had not specifically said, “I want you to orbit the moon until you die,” and he could not read between lines. He could only create his own conclusion based on evidence, and based on the rules that had been established. Without him, she could marry someone more appropriate, more functional. “My first husband went into space and died,” she might say. “Then I got a better husband, one more suited to the life I want for myself and my children.” Maybe it would be better, for Sunny, if he did not come back. Maybe it would be better, for the Earth, if colonizing the moon was not possible.

He was sure that Sunny would be okay. She had told him on multiple occasions that the thing that was ruining her life was him. What worried Maxon, about this scenario, was all the beautiful robots. And he feared that if he pushed himself backward, and fell into orbit, then in forty-five minutes to an hour he would come up with the solution that could have saved them all. Then he would be forced, for as long as he could still breathe in and out, to deal with the frustration of not being able to put that correct solution into action. And that was a feeling with which he did not want to become acquainted. You can’t kill yourself just by willing yourself dead. Eventually you pass out and start breathing again. He waited for the solution to come to him. But if he waited too long, the space walk would be over, his oxygen would be out, and he would not have returned to the rocket.

“Dad,” said a voice. It was the voice of Bubber.

Maxon turned his head inside his shiny globe, then grabbed a ledge on the side of the module and turned his suited body around. He saw another space suit, smaller, but just the same as his. Just the same shape of golden globe head. Just the same jointed arms and white gloves, but in tiny, perfect form.

“Bubber?” he called. His jaw almost cracked when he moved his mouth to speak, he had been clenching it so tight. His voice sounded loud in his own helmet; he did not hear it echoed over the radio link, because the radio link was turned off.

“Hi, Dad,” said the child-sized space suit.

“How did you get out here?” asked Maxon. “Am I dreaming?”

“No,” said Bubber. “You are awake.”

The hiss of oxygen coming into his helmet, his own breath coming out of his mouth, and Bubber’s voice, clear as letters on a page, coming from … where?

“Am I dead?” asked Maxon.

“No,” said Bubber. “You are alive.”

“Are you dead?” Maxon asked.

“Dad, enough,” said Bubber.

The child-sized space suit approached him, and he could see a reflection of his own body in the helmet. It reached out its hand to him. He grabbed the hand, felt the stiffness in the other suit’s fingers through his own gloves.

“I am used to you being at home,” said Bubber. “You should be home.”

“Sorry, buddy,” said Maxon. “I’m having a little trouble.”

“I can help you,” said Bubber.

What was astonishing to Maxon, taking in this information, and reading this data, was that Bubber sounded so normal. So completely utterly like a normal human being. Not like he was simulating human talking. Not like he was scripting. Just normal, like an average child. An average child in spectral form in a space suit orbiting the moon on a doomed mission to colonize it. With real inflections and tones. Maxon knew how to tell the difference between people like him, who were faking it, and real live humans, who were not.

Working with NASA, he had run into quite a few people he could really relate to. People with brain chemistry so similar to his own. Some of them banded together, some of them clung to the nearest normal person they could find, some of them just stayed alone. None were happy. None had Sunny. Maxon thought for the first time about who Bubber would marry. He hadn’t thought about it, because the earthly Bubber, drugged and amiable, would not have inspired this question. The earthly Bubber would never marry anyone. He would need to be cared for, permanently, by his parents. When they died, he would go into a home.

“I’m sorry, buddy,” said Maxon.

“Sorry for what?” said Bubber.

“I feel sorrow for what you are.”

“What am I?”

“Well, there’s something wrong with you.”

“What?”

“The same thing that’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with you is wrong with me.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you, Dad. You’re great.”