Something Made of Vacuum

Helene’s Moon suit arrived at the Easterday compound about the same time Tom came back. It was bedtime for them by then; Tom said nothing to anyone and they respected his silence. He picked the suit up disconsolately and carried it over to the sleeping area. The air pressure inside stiffened the arms and legs, pointing them straight away from the trunk. When he tried to put the suit in a sitting position on the ground, the weight of the backpack pulled it down. Her suit lay facing upward, arms and legs splayed out foolishly, the helmet empty.

He plugged himself into a post and sat next to her suit to sleep.

* * *

On the second day, Tom called, but Helene refused to answer. She kept her curtain-wall up, drank wine, read books and watched movies. Every couple of hours she emerged to use the head, nodded to the Madisons, then hid herself again.

Apparently, by dating Tom Easterday, Helene seemed to have started a relationship with half of the population of Sinus Amoris village. The phone rang a little later from a caller Helene did not recognize, and she cautiously answered it. A blonde woman appeared. “Hi, Helene?” she said. “I’m Lindsay Amundsen, you don’t know me, but my family is a customer of Tom’s shop. He just has the best, freshest spices and I know he buys a lot of them from you.”

“Yes, he does,” Helene said, bewildered. The conversation was made even a little stranger by the slight but noticeable speed-of-light delay added to each exchange, as the shuttleplane neared the halfway point between Earth and Moon.

“Well, I just wanted to say that I hope you’ll get back together with him. He’s awfully sad about losing you and I wanted you to know how much you mean to him.”

“You’re one of Tom’s customers and you’re calling me about my love life?” Helene said, a little slurred. “Are you people fresh out of your ethnic village minds or what? Who does that?”

“We look out for each other around here,” Lindsay said. “I know you’re from Earth, and I know what Earth people are like. But I don’t think Tom understood that.”

“What are Earth people like?” Helene said.

“You’re all uneasy because you have to breathe each other’s air and smell each other’s sweat and farts, so you get all withdrawn and don’t communicate and don’t open yourselves up for love or any kind of relationships.”

“You got us,” Helene said. “That’s exactly who we are. Not only that, we’re rude to strangers who call to tell us bullshit.” She terminated the call.

Gloria Beacon called. Helene answered and said, “Hello, Gloria. Don’t say one damn word about Tom.” She sipped at her wine, holding the pouch up where Gloria could see it.

Gloria blinked, then said, “Okay. Okay. Um, how’s your trip going?”

“I’m floating around like a party balloon inside my little curtained cubicle. I only go out to use the head and then I have to look real angry so nobody tries to talk to me. How are you?”

“I’m fine. How’s the wine?”

“Just wonderful. Moon wine has terrific terroir, which is that special flavor it gets from the soil. Or in this case, the flavor of grapes that are grown on wires under electric lights and have their roots piddled on by robots.” Helene took another pull at the pouch.

“Settle down, Helene. Can I tell you about your Moon suit?” Gloria asked.

“What about it? I sent it back. Didn’t Tom or somebody get it?”

“Oh, he got it, all right. It’s lying on the ground with the arms and legs sticking out, right next to his sleeping space. He says he’s going to keep it because he thinks you’ll come back. Girl, do you have any idea how odd it is for a Moon Man to own something that isn’t useful? I know on Earth, people have houses that are all cluttered up with stuff, but right now Tom is the only guy in Sinus Amoris who owns a big useless object like that.”

“I thought you were going to sell it back to that woman in air town or something. I mean, I know it can be broken up into parts that all get re-used, right?”

“Only after your ex-boyfriend decides to let it go. Which he is not showing any signs of doing.”

“Crap. Gloria, will you tell him I’m not coming back? Tom is crazy but you know I have to go home, right?”

“Hell, no. Since the suit’s still activated, I can see your readings up until the time you took it off. You might still wind up coming back, the way you feel. I’m with Tom on this one.”

“I’m an Earth woman,” Helene said. “I need to go smell other Earth people’s sweat and farts.” She terminated the call.

Lunch was a hamburger wrapped in paper to keep the pieces together, along with re-heated french fries. In the afternoon, Tom’s parents called. “Oh, God,” Helene said ungraciously. “Hello, uh, Mr. and Mrs. Easterday. Who’s next after you, the Ghost of Christmas Past?”

“Harper and Louisa, dear,” his mother said. “I don’t understand the other thing.”

“Don’t worry about it, I’m just drunk,” Helene said helplessly. “You’re calling to tell me I should go back to Tom?”

“Of course we are,” Louisa said.

“You’re the kind of ethnics who have arranged marriages, aren’t you? The parents set their kids up to be married and you’ve decided I’m supposed to marry Tom. It doesn’t work that way in my village!”

“Of course we have arranged marriages,” Harper said. “Did you know our divorce rate is among the lowest of any nation on any planet? But not arranged by the parents. Our marriages are arranged by the data. When you love somebody, it shows up in your skin conductance, in your blood chemistry, the pupils of your eyes when you look at your beloved – lots of things. We know you love Tom, and he loves you. Nobody else here is anything like as good of a match.”

“Then it’s too bad I’m a couple of hundred thousand kilometers away,” Helene said. “Goodbye.”

* * *

Tom and Gregor stood next to one of the Easterday food carts. “It’s not just weightlessness,” Gregor said, “although that’s bad enough. Have you ever been in weightlessness?”

“Just a couple of school trips,” Tom said. It was Monday and Tom had drawn kitchen duty, which was always something of an event for the Easterday family since he was an especially good cook. Gregor was able to match up his schedule enough to come visit at supper time. All around them, the Easterday family sat and stood, chatting with each other. Tom and Gregor spoke privately.

“Then if you go to Earth, make sure they get you some good nausea drugs,” Gregor said. “A quick school trip and three days floating around are two different things. Anyway, what I’m getting at is that right about now, Helene’s shuttle will be entering atmosphere. It’s a skip-glide approach – they go into the atmosphere to slow down, which means some acceleration, then they come up out of the atmosphere where they’re weightless again to cool off, then back down. They go all the way around about twice before they slow down enough to stay in the air and land. Weight and float, weight and float, weight and float – if Helene hasn’t tossed her cookies before, she’s doing it now.”

“Thank you for sharing that before dinner,” Tom said sourly. He was mincing fresh ginger for chicken teriyaki meatballs, part of a dinner called The Savor of a Bitter-Sweet Memory.

“Two points,” Gregor persisted. “One, if you ever talk to Helene about coming back here, she’s going to remember this trip and think ‘Hell, no, I’m not going through that again.’ Two, if you go to her then you have to ride the vomit-comet down to the ground. All I’m saying is the same thing Helene said to you – every choice is the booby prize.”

“And thanks even more for sharing that.” Tom raised his voice, causing the network to distribute his voice generally to the people nearby. “Supper will be ready in a few minutes,” he said. “My old friend Gregor has just given me some excellent advice, which is ‘Boy, are you screwed.’ Anybody else have any words of wisdom for me? Come one, come all.”

“Tom, it’s not going to make a blind bit of difference what we say when you’re dithering like you are right now,” his mother said reasonably. “You’re sweating and you’re not working that hard. Look, you can’t do anything about Helene or anything else until after you finish cooking. So give yourself a break for that long, at least.”

The other people cooking that day were Tom’s cousin Maris and his father. Maris said “The veggie balls are done. I’m keeping them warm but I can’t hold them too much longer before they start getting hard.”

“These don’t take long,” Tom muttered. He mashed the ginger and other ingredients into ground chicken, formed the goop into balls and popped them into boiling water. As they came ready, he passed the cooked meatballs in a transfer container to his father, who efficiently doused them with teriyaki sauce, then loaded them into sixpacks along with the veggie balls and rolls from Maris, and dessert he had made himself.

“Suppertime!” his father said, and everyone lined up to get food. When everyone had been served, Tom sat down with Gregor and his immediate family.

“Tom, even if I didn’t have any other information, I can tell you’re upset because these meatballs aren’t as good as you usually make them,” his mother said.

Because he was judging food, Tom instantly switched gears and became thoughtful and objective. He ate one of the meatballs and said, “You’re right. I am worked up, these weren’t boiled for the right length of time. It’s been three days now and I’m not handling this any better than I did at first.”

“I’ve been trying to avoid mentioning that empty zombie suit laying on its back over there,” his father said, “but it’s starting to be a little creepy. Shouldn’t we get that back into air-town and get some money for it? You could give the money to Gregor and Yeni, it came from their wedding party and it would be a nice wedding gift for them.”

“We don’t need that,” Gregor said quickly. “We’re doing okay. I don’t think Tom is ready to let go of that suit yet, anyway. I mean, it’s kind of pathetic but we can pretend for a while that maybe she’s coming back.”

“It doesn’t cost that much to make the trip,” Tom said stoutly. “If we got married, I could go to Earth to visit or she could come here to visit. Once in a while, anyway. This could still work out.”

“Tom, did you loan that girl some neurons she forgot to give back?” Gregor said. “You are being stark, staring stark and staring.”

“I finally got the proceeds from that rockfall I invested in,” Tom said out of nowhere. “I made some pretty good money on that.”

“So there you are,” his mother said. “You’re young, good-looking, you can cook when you have your mind on it and you’re semi-rich. If you get out of the family compound, you can easily meet a nice girl you’re not related to.”

“I’ve got enough for a ticket to Earth,” Tom said.

“Well, let’s explore that,” Gregor said. “If you get a one-way ticket to Earth, you go there and maybe Helene takes you back and maybe she doesn’t. If not, you have to buy a ticket back and you’ve wasted a bunch of money, not to mention being emotionally crippled for the rest of your life, plus you’ve spent a lot of time throwing up. If she says yes, you have to live on Earth, away from your family and friends and work, isolated and lonely because you will never know anything about another human being except what you see and hear through the air. Pretty soon you’re depressed.”

“Or,” Gregor continued, “maybe you convince Helene to come back here. You spend even more money for tickets for both of you. Helene has to live here, convinced that she has made a bad bargain -- she lives her whole life in a can, in exchange for getting a husband. Pretty soon she decides the husband she got may be okay but he’s not worth that much, and she’s depressed.”

“Anybody got any useful advice?” Tom asked.

“You have to do what your heart tells you to do,” his mother said.

“That sounds like a song cue,” Tom said. He looked around. “But apparently the orchestra is out to lunch or something.”

“You’ve got three choices,” Gregor said. “You can go, or you can stay. You can’t do the third choice here because we don’t have any walls, but you could also go into air town and bang your head against a wall there until you pass out, or come to your senses, whichever comes first.”

“At last, some useful advice,” Tom said, standing. “Mom, Dad, Gregor, I need you to do me some favors. Tell the kids who work for me to fill any orders we have, then shut the business down until I get back. I love you all, I’m out of here.”

He walked away, toward the passenger terminal, being careful to stay inside the street lines.

* * *

Helene lurched unsteadily out of the shuttleplane, dropping two warm, full sick bags into the container the company had thoughtfully provided at the door. She took one step at a time down the rolling stair, clutching the handrails, then got into the little cart (driven by a human driver, she was somewhat bemused to see) and was taken to the terminal building at Quito Field. She looked up into the blue sky and thought she should smile, but didn’t.

She slept through the flight from Quito to Mexico City. In an airport restaurant, she ordered enchiladas, which she cut into bite-sized pieces and ate carefully, alternating with bites of beans, rice and avocado. She slept again from Mexico City to Chicago, took a cab back to her apartment, and fell into her bed with her clothes on.

* * *

Tom sent his empty suit back from air town, rather than pay rental on a storage locker. His parents laid it on its back, on the ground next to Helene’s suit. Because both suits were stiff with internal air pressure, both faced upward, not looking at each other. Tom’s mother regarded them for a moment, then nudged Tom’s suit so the out-flung left hand touched the right hand of Helene’s suit.