Something Made of Vacuum

After getting a good breakfast, ordering clothes, showering and achieving Step Four more than once, Helene and Tom were able to get a car out to Tumblewater Creek Winery in the farm country on the east side of Theophrastus Crater. They rode past half a kilometer of grapevines grown by aeroponics, suspended on wires below bright lamps. The vines were tended by particularly scary-looking robots, boxes riding on rails between the rows with many busy metal arms reaching up to water, fertilize, pollinate and harvest the grapes on both sides. The processing machinery and fermenting tanks were out in the open, in the middle of the vineyard.

The winery of course had no creek, tumbling or otherwise, but did have a decorative pond adjoining the winery building, a pseudo-Italian cottage of timber and stucco. Somewhat to her surprise, they were greeted by a human hostess, a young woman wearing a peasant dress, who led them to a table by the pond. As they sat, a man and woman flew overhead, landed neatly on the ground on the far side of the pond and pulled off their wings and harnesses. The hostess also found a table for them.

Helene still had no way to spend money, so Tom allowed the tabletop to look at the irises of his eyes, and ordered a light lunch of cold dishes and tasting flights of red and white wines. The hostess seemed to be the only human employee; the food and wine were delivered by a robot cart. “I don’t drink wine much,” Helene said. “Back home, I mean. The truth is, I don’t even know what good wine is supposed to taste like. When I have to bring wine to a party or something I just buy what’s expensive.”

“Now that you mention it,” Tom said, “I’m not sure I know what bad wine tastes like. My cousin Avera orders all the wine for the Easterday family, and everybody says she’s a real expert. I know we buy from this winery once in a while, but I’ve never had any wine that wasn’t picked out by Avera. I wonder what they’d say if I asked for their cheap, grade-B, inferior wine? I’m sure they must have some, and I’d be curious to try it.”

“You’re not an expert on wine? I thought you were the all-purpose food guru?”

“Certainly I’m an expert.” Tom lifted one small goblet of red wine with an elaborate gesture, sipped a little with audible slurping noises and said, “Ah, excellent! A bright berry flavor with an undertone of cheeseburger, and nuances of oak, licorice, maple syrup and oleomargarine.”

“Okay,” Helene said, smiling, “you’re a wine guy, too. A man of many talents.”

“Despite the fact that I talk about food all the time,” Tom said, “the truth is I don’t think anybody can actually talk well about food or wine. When you talk about wine, it always sounds like some kind of mutant fruit punch. I can taste that some wines are particularly good with certain foods, but I can’t actually say why. That doesn’t stop me from answering when somebody asks why I chose that wine, of course.”

They ate for a while. Tom said, “I need some more permission. Can I look into your eyes now without you snapping at me?” Helene smiled, looked down a moment, then lifted her face to look back at him.

When he was not looking at Helene, Tom’s eyes went to the pond. It was shallow, lined with plastic and boasted flowering lily pads and a few small goldfish. At one point the hostess happened to walk by, and Tom waved her over. “Excuse me,” he said, “but I’ve never seen open water like that on the Moon. Is that really plain water?”

“Not quite,” she said. “You couldn’t drink it or anything. We have to add chemicals to keep algae from growing in it. We also put in plant food, fish food and detergent. We forgot the detergent one time and all around the edge, the surface tension was rolling the water up into little balls. It looked pretty strange.”

“Thank you,” he said, and the hostess walked away. To Helene he said, “I see ponds and oceans and things in movies all the time, but you know, that’s the first one I’ve ever seen in real life. It’s kind of disturbing. I mean, there’s no cover. I keep thinking the water should dry up or boil or something.”

“Tom, this is some decorator’s imitation of a pond. Real ponds are completely different, believe me.”

“I suppose so.”

Helene was silent for a while, then could not restrain herself from speaking. “Tom,” she said in a tight voice, “look, I don’t want to criticize your whole world, but nothing on the Moon is real. This winery is a stage setting in front of a factory, the pond has a plastic bottom, Theophrastus looks sort of like a real city but it’s unnaturally clean and most of the population is tourists and transients. I know you can’t ever come to Earth but I wish I could show it to you.”

“Why can’t I come to Earth?”

“Because you live in one-sixth gravity and your heart is weakened?”

Tom smiled. “That’s for air-towners. Me, I’ve spent my entire life living and working in a Moon suit that weighs four times my body weight. Every time I move my arms or legs, there’s a little resistance which gives me exercise. My heart is probably stronger than yours. I could go to Earth if I wanted to. In fact, it’s something I always wanted to do before I get old. I’d like to see Paris.”

Helene sat for a moment, toying with her food. She said quietly, “All this time, I’ve been thinking you could never come to Earth, and I could never stay here because if I did I couldn’t go home. Now I have to re-think that.”

“All of a sudden I’m not as unavailable as you thought I was,” Tom said. He reached across the table for her hands, and said, “Helene, we’ve had a wonderful three days and I will always be grateful for what you’ve given me, but nobody’s talking about marriage and you’re not under any pressure from me or anybody else, okay? It’s been splendid but it will end and we both know that. I can accept it and you should, too.”

“I guess I was talking about marriage this morning,” Helene said.

“Well, yes, but then you gave away your very powerful bargaining chip. Chips.”

“Yes, I did.”

“And if I haven’t said so, they were everything you promised.”

She put a finger on his lips. “Thank you, but be serious with me for a moment. Tom, I want to take you to Earth and show you … I don’t know, everything. Everything real and natural, all the places where human beings are supposed to be. But I don’t want you to stay because I don’t want to think I made you give up your whole world, and your family and friends and work. I don’t want you to come for a visit because then you’d have to go away again. I don’t want to live here and I don’t want to come back for a visit because then I’d have to go away. I don’t know what I want but I’m sure I can’t get it. I love you.”

“It’s too early to say that, and you can hurt me by saying that.”

“You’re right. I didn’t say it.”

“And I didn’t hear it. Meanwhile, this wine may not be real but it’s a very credible fake, so why don’t you knock back a couple or six glasses, and then we’ll go see something else here in fabulous Theophrastus Crater. Maybe the zoo.”

“I find, after thinking it over,” Helene said, “that I can live without seeing the Rodents of Eight Planets.”

“The tabletop is tied into the network,” Tom said. “Let me bring up pictures of the animals in the zoo. Some of them are pretty strange and interesting.” Helene moved her plate aside and watched as the menu was replaced with pictures of various small brown animals. She swiped from one to another, then stopped.

“That? That’s a nutria? From Earth?” she asked.

“Um, yes.”

“You are in so much trouble, buster.”

“You didn’t even taste that stew, and it was good. Okay, the zoo is out. Back in town they have live music concerts, plays, magicians, prize fights, all kinds of stuff to make sure travelers changing ships don’t leave with any money in their accounts. I’m sure we can find something.”

“Dear Tom, we don’t have to find anything particular to amuse ourselves.”

“We can’t go back to the hotel room for a while. My heart is strong but it’s not that strong, Miss Physicality. They sell bottles of wine over by the building there. Do we want to buy one to take with us?”

Helene glanced over at the building. “I’m surprised they have glass bottles here. I mean, they’re so heavy.”

“Glass is something we cook out of the dust, during the Day, along with metal, oxygen and helium-3,” Tom said. “It’s so cheap it’s almost free. But you’d have to be crazy to pay the freight to carry glass bottles to or from the Moon. If we get a bottle, we’ll just turn it in at the hotel when we’ve drunk it and they’ll send it back here to be washed and reused.”

“I don’t think this wine is all that exciting anyway,” Helene said. “Let’s just go.”

They called for a car, then rode back through the same vineyard lane toward the urban part of the crater. “Tom, would you rather just go get our suits and go back outside? You’re looking like you’ve had enough air town,” Helene said.

“The main amusement back in the village is gossiping,” Tom said. “Sports, dancing, whatever you can watch inside your helmet, and church services, but mostly gossiping. It won’t kill me to stay in air town a while longer, and I should quit being a priss about it anyway.”

A flock of a dozen teenagers with wing harnesses happened to pass overhead. They were laughing and talking loudly to each other. Helene glanced up and said, “I certainly hope birds like that don’t poop when they fly.”

“Birds just crap while they’re flying?” Tom asked. “I always thought they had nests or something.”

Helene could not suppress a snort. “Tom,” she asked, “how much biology did they teach you?”

He thought a moment. “One required class in high school, plus a class on food handling, which had some stuff on plants and animals.”

“I thought you went to college.”

“There’s only one college on the Moon for Moon Men, and it’s a two-year technical school over in Mare Nectaris,” Tom said. “That’s where I know Gregor from. He was in Systems Tech, I was in Business. But there wasn’t any biology, although they did have some science classes.”

“You’re kind of amazing, you know that? Anyway, yes, on Earth birds just let fly wherever they happen to be. Every once in a while, some lands on you. We learn to cope with it.”

“Yuck. I never saw that in a movie or anything.”

“Tom, could we try to go flying?”

Tom looked at her. “It’s harder than it looks. Unless you’re in pretty good athletic shape, flapping those wings really takes it out of you. Also, teenagers are skinnier than you and me. Tell you what, though. See that thing in the sky over there?” He pointed.

“The delta wing?”

“Right. It’s kind of a flying bicycle. I know where we can rent a couple of those. They’re … um, they’re not cool, you understand. Mostly they’re for old people. They have electric propellers and they don’t go fast, and you can’t do tricks or anything. In fact, the bike has a controller that won’t let you get too close to any buildings or do anything dangerous. But they are easy and you get to fly, which is kind of fun.”

“Let’s do that. We’ve had plenty of exercise for the day anyway.”

The vineyards and farms gave way to casinos and beer halls. The car took them through the city and climbed switchback roads to a place far up on the crater wall, almost at the seam where the crater rock met the dome. When they stepped out in front of “Free As A Bird Flight Gear Rental: Don’t Be a Chicken – You Can Fly!” they were as high above the crater floor as the top stories of the hotels and casinos. The salesman was a young man wearing a conical hat which apparently was fashionable on whatever planet formed his odd accent. His expression carefully did not change when Tom explained what they wanted. He led them past racks of harness wings decorated with flame designs, racing stripes, feather designs or what appeared to be actual feathers. At the side of their open-air office were several ungainly one-person flying bicycles, none of which had flame designs.

They had triangular Rogallo wings, with a three-wheeled cab suspended below that had both a big propeller driven by a bicycle crank, and supplementary wings terminated in smaller, electric propellers. A smooth apron of open ground sloped downward before them, so that the flyer could build up to air speed. Tom climbed into one saddle by himself, while the salesman helped Helene into hers, brushing her body unnecessarily as he strapped her in.

“Just keep the propeller moving and you’ll be fine,” he said. “Tilt this bar to turn left or right, push it forward to go down, pull it to go up. When you’re ready to quit, don’t try to come back here to land – that’s too difficult. Just land wherever you won’t hit anybody, then drop the bike in any place where it’s not blocking traffic. Your rental fee includes pick-up service. If you get in trouble, the bike controller will take over and land you safely. Got it?” Helene nodded. “Okay, then fly like a bird!” The salesman released the brakes and pushed her downslope.

Helene pedaled furiously, the big propeller spun, and she was able to lift off the ground and clear the thickly-padded barrier at the lower end of the launch apron. She lurched into the air, slewed left and right, then was able to climb toward the dome. The city of Theophrastus Crater spread below her.

“How you doin’?” Tom yelled. He was flying as near as his bike controller would allow, more stable than Helene.

“Okay! Whee! This is fun!” she hollered.

“Head for Main Street!” he shouted, pointing to the central street most of the tallest buildings were on.

Presently Helene discovered, by watching a few other flying bikes go by ridden by gray-haired pilots, that it didn’t actually make much difference whether she pedaled hard or not. The electric propellers were doing most of the work. She followed Tom’s lead and they swooped between the casinos and hotels, above the thickly populated sidewalks. She spotted one amusement place featuring trampolines that allowed the jumpers to reach amazing heights, and resolved to try that when she had the opportunity.

Conversation was exhausting, so Tom and Helene rode without shouting to each other. They sailed over streets, circled some of the giant trees in the parks, found themselves once again over the farm country.

There was one annoyance. Manual fliers, either teenagers or adults who were obviously proud of their fitness, buzzed her and Tom repeatedly. They flew too close in front of her, overtook her from behind, did spins and loops in the air ahead while grinning at her condescendingly. When Helene pedaled harder, she went slightly faster. When she slacked off, the bike kept flying. Finally she just resolved to ignore the other fliers.

One woman returned several times, however. She was blonde, skinny, perhaps in her early thirties. She passed in front of Helene and looked sharply at her face, then banked and sailed away. When Tom and Helene neared the far crater wall and began a wide, easy turn back toward the city, she was there again, staring at Helene. Again she came close, looked and was gone with powerful strokes of her wings.

Helene pointed to her as she receded after one approach. Tom looked, then lifted his arms to shrug. Helene noted that it did not particularly seem to bother the bicycle that his hands were off the control bar.

Theophrastus Crater was nine kilometers in diameter. Helene thought of it as a circle about 40 blocks across; in Chicago terms, a neighborhood from downtown on the east to Pulaski Avenue on the west, from Fullerton on the north to Cermak on the south. It was quite large enough to have a small but lively city, two villages (although one of them appeared to be a quaint rustic tourist trap rather than a place where anybody actually lived), farms and parks. Industry was largely an outside activity, taking advantage of the Daytime sunlight and vacuum. Most of the residents, and businesses that did not directly cater to travelers, lived in buildings on the crater wall.

They flew past the crater walls, where people ate cafe tables. Unlike the cafes in the tourist areas, the tables where locals sat had umbrellas and awnings. Helene suddenly understood, after trying to wave to people without response, that the awnings were there so that the residents did not have to look at the cruising tourists.

The blonde woman passed her again, looked at her face, then tilted away.

Finally even the modest effort of pedaling the bike added up, and Helene waved for Tom to land. They happened to be near the tourist village, so they landed on the outskirts, taking a few clumsy bounces, then took off their seat belts and climbed out. Both were walking a little stiffly. They embraced, then pulled the bikes to the side of the road they had landed on, and walked into “town.”

It turned out to be called “Little Earth,” and was full of restaurants and bars. One part was European, vaguely suggesting some medieval town in Germany. Another part attempted to look like old China, with buildings crowded along alleys called hutongs. They finally settled on a theme-park version of the American old west, with wooden buildings faced with hitching posts. There were a few full-size plastic horses added for decoration. The buildings were all false-fronts concealing automated kitchens, while diners sat as usual at “outdoor” tables. Inevitably, the restaurants were steak houses.

“Definitely here,” Tom said. “You understand, I get European little sausages and meatballs all the time, and lots of Chinese food, but getting steak cut up for a sixpack isn’t the same thing as getting a good sizzling steak you can slice yourself with a knife. Also, they have mashed potatoes with gravy, which is birthday dinner food for a Moon Man. Not like Mama’s home cooking, you know?”

“Have we really reached some kind of limit on your enthusiasm for six-bite cuisine?” Helene asked, as they neared a table. She was momentarily nonplussed when Tom pulled back a chair to seat her, having not encountered that custom often. But she allowed herself to be seated, said her thanks, and waited for Tom to seat himself. The weathered wood of the table was an illusion: the surface faded to present the menu.

“I guess we have,” Tom said. “Forgive me for not being consistent?”

“Anytime,” she said. “Tom, I hate to ask you to pay for this. These steaks are pretty expensive.”

“Some of them undoubtedly were shipped by your company from Earth, since the cow union apparently doesn’t allow cows to work on the Moon, or something,” he said. “It’s okay. When we get a chance, we can go to the bank and get set up for you to pay outside of your suit, and then I’ll make you take me out.”

“It’s a date.” They settled on steaks, potatoes, green beans and a red wine, and waited for the serving cart to arrive.

A voice from the sky screamed, “Bitch! You’re the one who tried to take my husband!”

They looked up. The blonde woman Helene had seen was plummeting down toward them in a hawk stoop, heels first, her wings together over her head. She apparently had flown straight down to give herself speed, because she crashed into the table much faster than gravity would have propelled her. The table tipped and knocked Helene painfully to the ground. The table rolled away as the flying woman fell and scrambled to her feet. She stripped off her wings and tossed them to the ground, then advanced on Helene with fury in her face.

“You thought you could fuck my husband and I wouldn’t find out about it, slut? You’re not smart enough for that!” Tom tackled her to the ground. At the same moment, a fast police car pulled up with two yellow-uniformed police. They jumped from the car and grabbed the woman as she lunged for Helene, still screaming. Tom stood back as the two policemen gripped her and pulled her back.

“Did you know she was going to do that?” Tom asked the police. “How did you get here so fast? Who is she?”

“Don’t know yet,” the male officer said. “We just happened to be in the area, and the air traffic system gave us a flash somebody was doing an unsafe landing here. But I think we’d better hold on to her for a while.” He turned to Helene, and asked, “Ma’am, are you okay?”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine. I’m good.” Helene scrambled to her feet. Her skirt was ripped.

“Is this woman someone you know?”

“I’ve never met her. But I guess maybe I do know. I think she’s married to a guy named Jacob Hibarger.”

“I’m his wife!” the woman shouted. “She’s not! Let me go!” The two police put her in handcuffs.

The woman officer went up to Helene and pulled out a device to scan her eyes. “Helene Friedman, Earth?” she asked. Helene nodded. “Okay, if you’re not hurt then we’ll take this one in. You won’t be permitted to leave the city until we’ve cleared this case, all right? Take this card and call us to find out what your situation is.” Helene nodded again.

In a few moments, the police had strapped the blonde down to their car and driven away. Tom picked up the table again as the serving cart pulled up with their food. Other diners at the restaurant, who had been staring at them, turned their faces away again.

Tom helped Helene back into her seat. “Somebody from your past?” he asked.

“Four days ago.”