Shine Shine Shine (37 page)

*   *   *

M
AXON WAS NOT MOVED
by the sight of the moon’s dusty surface. There was no desolation magnificent enough to distract him from unloading the robots and getting on with his work. He was moved, however, by the sight of the lava pipe, a huge chasm in the moon’s surface, on the back side of a newer crater. The pipe went down for miles, an old vent for a hypothesized prehistoric volcano, now just a tube riddled with caves and protected from meteors and the sun. They had landed so well, so perfectly close to the place they were supposed to land, that he had found the lava pipe almost immediately. He felt, in that moment, a surge of triumph.
I’m right,
he thought.
I was right. Here it is.
This is the difference between success and failure. The humans had landed. They would colonize the moon.

While Phillips and the rest walked around making footprints and repairs, Maxon took the cargo container down on a tether. Lowering the massive box full of mother robots in low gravity was a breeze. He could almost manage it on his own. He thought he might say, “You boys stay here and clean the shit out of your pants while I finish the mission,” but then he didn’t say it. Sometimes it’s better to say nothing.

Maxon didn’t think,
Look, this hapless little biological sliver has redeemed itself. Look, it has survived. Look, the plaintive little push toward the cosmos has won us a foothold in the universe, a first footstep out.
He didn’t think,
Suck it, universe. We’re here,
which is what Fred Phillips said he’d thought. He only thought about the latitude and longitude, and how it was exactly as he had imagined it. No more poignant, no less grand. Just exactly how it had looked in the plans; that’s how it was.

Maxon and the robots reached a cave that had been identified and mapped by ultrasound and chosen by geologists as the site for the future colony. Maxon maneuvered the cargo box into the spot where it was supposed to stop, stood beside it, and opened the main door. It was dark in the lava pipe. Dark and cold. He had a light, and a warm space suit. Did he remember being stuck down in a well, and crying to be let out? Did the lava pipe bring back memories of that fear? He did not, and it did not. Wells were not in his memory.

Did he remember being expelled from the womb, thrust from that dark pipe to another, through the years of misunderstandings, approximations, and nervous fixations? Did he feel the pressure of the lava pipe on his body, forcing him onward, downward, toward the completion of the mission? Did the baby in the womb understand the father in the lava pipe, setting up the robots, fixing the cameras, laboring for hours in the darkness? Or did she only know this: Now it’s time for us to come out.

At the time they had agreed upon, Phillips and Conrad pulled Maxon up from the pit on a rope. One of his thumbs was crushed, and he was hungry. Otherwise his arrangements on behalf of mankind in launching the robotic construction of a lunar colony had been a complete success. The robots chugged and whirred on below the surface, mining their materials, creating their children, teaching them to walk, move, mine, create children of their own. For ten years, the world would watch on cameras as the colony took shape. In twelve years Maxon would come back with his son Bubber, freshly graduated from MIT, and open the airlock. Everything just as he had left it to be.

*   *   *

S
UNNY HELD HER BABY
and wiped the blood from her face. They lay together on the rug. The baby was on Sunny’s chest, and Sunny’s back was on the ground. Every breath felt like a miracle, pain free. There was no cry, no knife, no scale, no iodine. Pressed up against her mother’s heart, wrapped in a red silk scarf from the hat rack, the baby lay blinking. Sunny’s relief was so intense that she felt she might be able to go to sleep right there, but she knew that while they were getting cold, the neighborhood was in a hot panic. She could hear the ambulance outside, and lots of voices. She didn’t want Bubber to be alarmed, coming home with the nanny from the pool. She pushed herself, still sitting, to the door, scooting herself carefully along so as not to disturb the little bundle. At the door she reached up, flipped the bolt, and turned the handle. Right there were Rache and Jenny, standing on the step. It was as if they were waiting, ready to come in and have sandwiches or drink margaritas. They were just waiting, each with one foot on the stoop.

“Look,” said Sunny, and she pulled the scarf back to show the baby’s face. “She’s here.”

“Sunny,” said the women. Those friends of hers said, “Sunny, she’s amazing. And she looks just like you.”

Acknowledgments

Thank you to my husband, Dan Netzer, and my friend Andrea Kinnear for understanding and interpreting Maxon for me, and writing the equations, proofs, and code snippets in this book. I came to you with a messy idea and you translated it perfectly into math.

Thank you to my agent, Caryn Karmatz Rudy, and my editor, Hilary Rubin Teeman, for the vision you had for this book. When I think back to that very first draft, I am struck by the way you both made the book immeasurably better.

Thank you to Sara Gruen and Karen Abbott, whose early support, ongoing wisdom, and loving encouragement have been invaluable in birthing this book.

Thank you to my early readers C. J. Spurr, Bekah James, Kate Bazylewicz, Heather Floyd, Kristen DeHaan, Sherene Silverberg, Patricia Richman, and Veronica Porterfield.

Thank you to the December mothers, the Quilt Mavericks, Cramot, and all my Norfolk Homeschooling comrades, for cheering me on, and for your radiant examples of excellent mothering.

Thank you to Susannah Breslin, who refused to let me settle, and kept pulling me back out of the sleep of motherhood, and making me be better.

Thank you to Joshilyn Jackson, who has been my fierce champion, and without whom this story would not have become a book.

LYDIA NETZER was born in Detroit and educated in the Midwest. She lives in Virginia with her two home-schooled children and math-making husband. When she isn’t teaching, reading, or writing her next novel, she plays the guitar in a rock band. Visit her on her Web site at
http://www.lydianetzer.com
or Facebook at
http://www.facebook.com/lydianetzer
.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

SHINE SHINE SHINE
. Copyright © 2012 by The Netzer Group LLC. All rights reserved. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

www.stmartins.com

Cover design by Rodrigo Corral design

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:

  Netzer, Lydia.

     Shine shine shine / Lydia Netzer. — 1st ed.

             p. cm.

     ISBN 978-1-250-00707-0 (hardcover)

     ISBN 978-1-250-01507-5 (e-book)

     1.  Man-woman relationships—Fiction.   2.  Accidents—Fiction.   3.  Family secrets—Fiction.   4.  Marital conflict—Fiction.   I.  Title.

     PS3614.E528S55 2012

     813'.6—dc23

2012007426

eISBN 9781250015075

First Edition: July 2012