Ringclimber

Chapter 2 - The Aftermath

"Rael Perez-Chartenay died in the Rings of Saturn on 25 May, after a fairly long start to the first Lazlo/Goldstein-MacReady expedition. The body was not recovered. The team may have suffered from isolation confusion as early as Encke, but it is believed that a suit failure prior to or following a collision caused the death. The expedition retreated to the surface of the Rings after the death and a long day of unsuccessful searches."

Obituaries, Void Worker Monthly, Vol 12, No 7

She arrives at the studio, late for her first day of work in a year. The afternoon sun pours through broad skylights, filling the pottery with a cool glow. The apprentices had been sitting and talking; renewing acquaintance; waiting. They look up at the sound of her step.

She smiles awkwardly. "Hi guys, what's new?"

They laugh and rush forward to clasp her hand.

It is twilight in the pottery when she receives a call from Erin. The lights are localized, and there are sounds of a wheel rumbling in the back room. She leans over her desk to the screen.

"...No, I want to do it myself." Her voice softens, then. "Yes, I really have to." Her blue eyes flick around the darkening studio. "Yes, I'll tell them that for you. Thanks, Erin. Later."

Phil Larson, lead apprentice, unobtrusively returns his dark eyes to his work, sculpting a fragile shape from clay.

For fifteen minutes, she is unmoving behind her desk, staring into the gathering twilight until the overheads switch on. Then she stirs, leaving without a word. No one comments on her departure. Phil shuts the lights and locks the door; Quince states, voice hard in the glossy hall: "Too bad." Phil says nothing, just pockets the keys, touches Quince on the shoulder, and walks away.

Sharon drives out Marchanti Boulevard; then a straight course down the softly lit American Highway Annex 2 South, exiting at Provence Center. She crosses the city and makes her way out onto the older roads to the east.

She keeps her eyes on the road, her thoughts on the rich music that fills the car. She has fought herself for so long that she is now exhausted. Her mind is empty of explanations, and she feels only a hissing quiet. She will withstand this -- she has promised herself that much -- and then she will hold together, and eventually, she will go back to work. There is only the future, with no past in sight. After this.

But, she thinks, I can't ever climb again.

The house is a converted post-war development; a period piece, immaculately kept, with individual buildings linked by garden walks of shattered basalt that grates underfoot. Sharon feels suddenly cold as she leans up to press the main bell.

"Welcome, my dear." Dr. Perez-Chartenay smiles and clasps Sharon's shoulder. She is a tall, husky woman, her Latin features a broader, smoother version of Rael's. "Let me take your cloak. Go in and say hello to Francis. He's in the study, just down on your left."

Sharon smiles and surrenders the garment. "Thanks, Emily."

"Well, well," Francis exclaims. "Sharon Lazlo. So long: a year since we've seen you. You've had a hard time, I know." His sharp features frown with concern.

"As hard as you?" she asks dubiously. "I doubt it."

Francis looks embarrassed. "We won't discuss that yet. Come, have a drink with us in the living room."

She laughs with relief. "And I thought I was coming to help you feel better."

They talk quietly in the vast, book-lined living room, soft music granting grace to her silence and the clicking of ice in her glass. She watches them and wonders. They take the effort to relax her, but they are desperate to know.

She feels the tears seeping from the corner of her eyes, and she sets the Scotch down awkwardly. "I'm sorry," she replies to their unspoken concern.

Francis shakes his head. "We've all had our times in the past month."

Emily speaks up, stirring almost ponderously on the sofa. "Maybe it's best for us that we have a large family, everyone on their own. We've adjusted to their independence. I wish we could adjust to this."

"I was so afraid you'd blame me," Sharon whispers. "I got him into this. I trained him. I fell in love with him. I brought him on the climb. I wish I hadn't."

Francis shakes his head. "He just kept risking it, hoping he'd get to know himself better... Well, who knows if it was worth it to him..."

Sharon feels herself weeping freely again, and her eyes ache with the strain.

Emily's eyes glint with tears, but her voice is restrained. "It doesn't make it any easier, but he didn't have to be doing it. Nobody blames you, Sharon."

They are silent for a while. Finally, Francis asks, "When will you go back?"

"I'm not going back."

Emily is adamant. "You can't do that dear. Rael wouldn't want that."

Sharon's hands seem to grasp a hidden rope. "It can't be done."

"Rael didn't believe -- " Francis asserts.

"Well, he's not here. Maybe if he was the one who made it back, he'd feel differently," she retorts.

He sighs and leans back. "Maybe."

"Listen... I'd better go." She feels ill, and the tears are brimming once again behind her eyes. One more minute is as much as she can barely stand. She stands, but hesitates. "The accident. You know... none of it was his fault. He was very careful, all the time. It was just the equipment... the environment... everything's hostile."

They nod. Emily embraces Sharon in the entryway. "Don't feel you have to be a stranger. We're friends too, dear..."

She flies out to Block Island, to stay at her small house beside the beach - a place expensive and private. It rains that evening, and the water rattles down at the edge of the porch while she sits quietly, in the golden lit living room, listening to the nearly obscured sound of the waves eroding the shore.

The next morning, she sips coffee on the deck at the back of the house, waiting. The mist drifts in from the sea, and she watches, frowning at the cold and the warmth of the drink. Finally, a tall figure moves to stand at the edge of the beach grasses. He is dark and balding, dressed in conservative robe.

"Hi, Liam," Sharon says.

He smiles, and the epicanthic fold narrows his eyes. "Sharon." His smile slips away somewhere.

"Thanks for coming. You could have just mailed me."

"No. I couldn't."

"I suppose not." She ducks her head and sips the coffee. "C'mon. Have a cup, if you want."

"Sharon, I've looked." He is too proud to be pleading, but he wants her to accept his statement.

"And you haven't found anything."

"No. You know the size of the Rings. It was impossible on the face of it, but I still found the people to look."

"I should have been there."

"I didn't think so."

"I do."

"Then don't. It was impossible, we tried, it's over. With the beacon unavailable, we didn't have a chance. Stop waiting. Go home. Go to the funeral. Accept what closure you can get."

She laughs, but it is not a pretty sound. "A funeral. Sure. A sealed casket in a room millions of kilometers from the body. Sure. What choice is there. Maybe I should go back, Liam, and have a look myself."

"We're not talking about keys you've lost in your apartment. Give it up. You can't find him. You can't get him back."

Her eyes are dangerous as she stares from under lowered brows. "That's what you're telling me. I have to listen. For now."

The breeze starts up again and the leaves of the trees shiver.

A week later, she receives a message from Goldstein-MacReady, wanting her to come down to his office. He probably wants to know when she'll come back to work. She hasn't an answer for him, but he won't accept refusal or postponement. So she requires him to meet her at the pottery after work hours.

It turns out she is at her desk when he arrives, a bit of coincidental stage-setting she likes, since it makes her feel more as if she can refuse.

"Hi, Gordon," she greets him. His massive movements always make her think of a very large, greying tomcat, but this time he seems subdued. Acting? He is a great actor.

"How have you been, Sharon?" He slumps into the chair beside her desk, blocky frame lax, heavy features at rest around the thick lips. He looks over at her suddenly, as if just remembering she was there. But his eyes glitter with their usual alert intelligence.

"Working," she replies. She gestures at the darkened pottery tables. "Join me for a smoke? My day's just about over."

He shrugs. "Mine isn't, but I think I can take one and keep my head on straight."

She had a vision of his schedule, and knew that even this seemingly informal visit had been meticulously planned. Resolutely, she uncaps a large, flat, free-fall pot, from her early period in Hyannis, and passes the narrow cigarette to Gordon.

He turns it away with an upraised hand. "You start," he replies.

She does, passes it, and leans back in the chair. "How's business?"

His polite smile tells her that he recognizes her evasion and accepts it. For now.

"Well, I don't get home early lately, but Erin being back'll change that, no doubt. I imagine I'll have to start cutting the hours. As for everything else, well, the 1220's are starting to take off, and your area is going to have more work than it can handle pretty soon. Though I'd bet you already knew that. How about you? It's been what, a week now, you've been back?"

"Oh, I've been getting the pottery going again. You heard about the award long before I did, I suppose, being here."

"Yes, well, that can't hurt, can it? I suppose that's why you've been staying away so long."

She makes herself rigid. "Why so worried?"

"Shouldn't I be worried when my chief instructor doesn't seem too interested in coming back to work?"

"I suppose."

"So is that it? The grant? You're getting pretty famous, now."

Her eyes come around and lock on him. "For what? Pottery or failure?" Her eyes drop and she blows out a stream of smoke. "I've seen the journals... I'm not putting anything together on it myself, so I suppose I have to expect it, but I don't enjoy coming across it."

"They're not as bad as they might seem to you."

"The critical failure can be laid in the early retreat... elements of isolation confusion seem to have affected them as early as Encke," she mimics. "Hell, I recorded everything they used." She rubs her forehead. "I know you want me to come back."

He nods.

"But I can't -- not right now."

He spreads his hands.

"Because I don't want any work off-planet, now," she continues.

"The climb."

She sighs, and her finger brushes her chin. "It's not that simple, if that's what you think. But I don't want to go out again." Her eyes slide back to the desktop as she hesitates. "If you really want me, you'll have to keep me around the home office."

He pauses, then straightens up, as if struck by a sudden thought. "How about Mars? Would you go as far as Mars?"

"Gordon, you're fucking incorrigible."

"Yeah, I know. But how about Mars?"

She sighs. "Oh, all right. Just keep me off the moons. No asteroids. No space stations. Ground work. You'll guarantee it?"

He stands, relieved. She'd be all right, after all. Erin had exaggerated...

"I guarantee it. I'll even get you an inner cabin for the way out."

She bursts out laughing. "Oh, Gordon. It's not that bad." she responds ruefully. "Did you really think so?"

He smiles. "Of course not."

The space vehicles and their gantries are faint, irregular ribs of mauve, distant in the harsh August haze. Sharon rides across the ramp in the bus. The ancient engine whines behind her. So many weeks of art, Sharon thinks, the memory of clay caressing her hands -- how far this part of her had been left behind. Poor Rael. Poor me. Why... why is this still hurting me so badly? She can't avoid remembering Rael, talking on and on with excitement as they made this same short trip across the field in New York.

She turns her face from the window, and stares at the back of the seat ahead, closing out thought and memory, while her hands, unattended, tap a faint rhythm of impatience on the armrest.

"Early this morning, Harrison Bose, shift foreman consulting for Orbitech on the assembly of a new manned communications installation, was killed when the module on which he was working went briefly out of control, crushing him against the hull of the assembly, destroying an estimated one million dollars worth of construction. Orbitech Safety Services has started an inquiry into the accident. Their report is expected to be available to the public in two weeks.

"Mr. Bose leaves a wife and two sons, both on Mars. Memorial services will be held at Chryse next month."

"Excuse me, Ms. Lazlo, but I couldn't help noticing your name on the register..." the chief pilot remarks, coming past her at dinner in the lounge.

"Yes?" she asks, looking up, professionally detached.

"Well, I wondered... that is, the flight crew asked if you might come up and say hello. If you wouldn't mind, you see, we're all admirers of yours, and, we'd like you to meet everyone, and feel free to come on deck whenever you'd like."

It is the last thing she expects. Her face hangs for a moment between tears and laughter and anger, and falls into dispassion so quickly that only the most observant could have seen the moment.

"I'm sorry, but not right now." she replies evenly, afraid to admit her sudden fear.

The chief pilot instantly senses something in the tone of her voice, and he backs up quickly. "Of course, Ms Lazlo. Please... feel free to come up any time during the voyage... I hope I wasn't intruding." He doesn't know why he said it, but it almost feels as if someone else is there, too..

Content, Layout, and Images Copyright © 1999 by Mark Cashman except where indicated (NASA photos)