space age. Nowhere else did they hold nightly BDO-viewing parties, as socially and aesthetically charged as any Japanese cherry-blossom-watching picnic. And there were no news people.
‘Expecting someone?’ Nice Eddie, the bar boy she did like, asked her.
‘Hoping someone,’ she said and sucked her pina colada and watched the faintly luminous pillar of cloud from the rocket launch blow away on the wind from the ocean. It was getting up; Tropical Storm Hilary must be dithering between strange attractors out in the Bahamas. Gaby waved her swizzle stick in the air. Come, storm, come. If a butterfly’s wings in Beijing could summon up a hurricane, surely a swizzle stick with a Saturn Five rocket on the end at the Starview Lodge could command Hilary to storm hard against this coast, rock this wooden ark of a hotel on its moorings, rage over all the HORUSes and launchers and SSTO over the water and press them to the ground, and blow Shepard back to me. Blow me hours, blow me days of him, before he gets into his rocket and flies away from me.
He was taking his time coming. But he was still politely late.
Gaby sought out the BDO in the sky. That bright star in the belly of Pisces, resting on the edge of the world. How would it look when it went into orbit? They were talking about a position half-way between the earth and the moon. She looked at that great light in the sky and tried to calculate apparent diameters. A bright blur. Maybe even a recognizable cylinder. It would go through phases, like the moon. It was a moon. Fourteen day orbit.
What will it look like to Shepard, in Unity, or on High Steel, that hair-raising surf-shack of girders, solar panels and environment tanks they had built out there the final stepping stone to the BDO. Too big to be a space ship; a planet on your doorstep. That was probably the only way to look at it and stay sane.
She ordered another pina colada from Constantin, the bar boy she did not like. He was impolitely late now. And he had managed to shaft her question to Ellen Prochnow. Stand up and play Wicked Witch of the Seventh Row in front of the man you begged to come and see you to tell him how sorry you are, how you’ve changed, how you’ve found him in your thoughts every day.
Bamboo wind chimes clocked against each other. Blow wind, come to me. Listen to me, I cannot lose him to cosmic irony.
Up on the telescope deck they were talking passionately about centrifugal gravity.
‘Any messages for me at reception?’ she asked Nice Eddie.
‘Not last time I looked.’
‘Could you look again?’
He looked again. There were still no messages.
‘He’s late,’ Nice Eddie said.
He is three pina coladas late, Gaby thought. Three pina coladas late is looking-like-he-isn’t-going-to-show late. It’s he-doesn’t-want-to-see-you late. It’s this-is-the-end-of-it-Gaby-McAslan-late. The fourth pina colada is the longest one, the one over which you work out what you are going to do with the rest of your life now. It would need to be the longest one Emilio at the bar ever shook. She did not have a plan if he did not come. It is a terrible universe, she thought, that such tiny moment, such atoms of decision, are the fulcrums on which whole lives and futures swing. Strange attractors of the soul; like that storm she had tried to charm with her swizzle stick.
He was not-going-to-show late now. He was never-going-to-show late.
‘He didn’t turn up,’ Nice Eddie said as she picked small change out of her purse to leave as a tip.
‘Doesn’t look like it, Eddie.’
She stood up to leave. And there he was, asking directions at reception. The girl was pointing right at her. The strength went out of her legs. She sat down, suddenly terrified. She realized that she did not know what to say to him.
She found herself scrabbling in her bag for cigarettes that had not been there for five years.
‘Gaby?’
‘Oh. Hi.’ Caught, flustering. ‘Sit down, oh sit down; Eddie, a Wild Turkey with branch water, isn’t that what it is? and I’ll have another pina colada, I did remember right, didn’t I? It is Wild Turkey?’
‘You remember right.’
She found she was doing anything but look at him. She forced her eyes towards him. He is not a man who suits having no hair, she thought. It made him look like an impostor of himself. He had bought a new outfit, one of those Indian-inspired two-pieces that were the fashion. It did not flatter him much either, but he looked comfortable in it.
The hideous idea that a woman had bought it for him froze her heart.
‘I like what you’ve done with your hair,’ Gaby said, trying to restart.
Shepard ran his hand over his scalp.
‘Still a bit grey and scaly. I like what you’ve done with yours.’
Gaby smiled self-consciously and touched the soft curls.
‘Got fed up with the old Joni-Mitchell-sings-Big-Yellow-Taxi look.’
‘Shorter suits you,’ Shepard said. ‘I’m sorry I’m so late, I’m sure you thought I wasn’t coming. They sprang a surprise meeting on us. Seems Hilary out there has decided she’d like a vacation on the coast and they wanted to warn us in case they had to push the launch date forward.’
‘Can they do that?’ Nice Eddie brought the drinks. Shepard paid for them in Space Centre scrip.
‘Personally, I don’t think so. They’ve rescheduled the
Oh, Shepard, they’ve got you talking like them, Gaby thought.
‘You weren’t on the flight roster,’ she said. ‘It was a hell of surprise finding you in the line-up at the press conference.’
‘Hell of a surprise finding myself in that line-up.’ Shepard took a long draw from his drink. The wind was stronger now, lifting the paper coasters, rattling the paper lanterns. It is blowing in from Africa, Gaby thought. ‘Every mission specialist has a back-up. Day before yesterday, Carl Freyer went down with some mystery virus he caught off a hotel air-conditioning system – that’s the risk you run when you exceed the capacity of your quarantine accommodation – and they need someone with specialisms in Chaga nanochemistry and in-field experience. They gave me five days to get my stomach muscles up to high-gee lift-off standard. Four hours a day in the gym, the rest in centrifuge training, practising suit manoeuvres in the water tank, or team building. I can hardly move, I am so stiff and sore.’
‘You’re actually on the expeditionary force.’
‘Not the First Wave. Not the ones who go up to the door, knock, and then wait and see if anyone answers. I’ll be going through with the Second Wave; Teams Yellow and Green, once the beach-head is established.’
‘I can’t imagine what it will be like.’
‘Neither can I. The boy from the plains states, up on the Final Frontier. Riding the High Steel. Scares the fuck out of me, Gaby.’
Scares the fuck out of me too, Gaby thought, listening to the rattle of the wind chimes and the voices from the deck above. All the things I want to say, I need to say, I have practised for four years and nine months, are in here and all that comes out is shallow, bland, polite, pleasant drinks conversation. I’m scared to say them, Shepard. I’m scared to have my words rip you open again.
‘How did you know I was at the Ramada?’ Shepard asked.
‘Journalistic cunning.’ No, she would tell nothing but the truth tonight. ‘I was trying to sneak up to Ellen Prochnow’s suite – I’ve evidence I want to present to her that arms corporations are pay-rolling Final Frontier for seats on the shuttles and first refusal of the expedition findings. I didn’t get to see her, but I did find a certain well-remembered T-shirt.’
Shepard laughed. It had changed with the years. It was a dark, wise laugh now, with old blood in it.
‘And by the way, thanks for sending the helicopter back for me,’ Gaby continued. ‘It saved my ass.’
‘I remember an old riposte to that quite well,’ Shepard said. ‘I couldn’t leave you stuck up on top of the Kenyatta Centre with the Chaga climbing up underneath you.’
‘Never got a chance to thank you. By the time I got to the airport, you were gone. So my ass thanks you now.’
Shepard raised his glass to her.
‘I accept your ass’s thanks. What the hell were you doing up there anyway?’
