Gwendy’s Final Task

Before she can turn down the volume, Bern has clicked off and Ops Comm returns. Below and now far behind, Eileen Braddock is telling them they’ve passed the point of negative return.

Kathy: “Roger that, negative return.”

No going back now, Gwendy thinks, and her fear is replaced by a feeling of what-the-hell exultation that she never would have expected. Space or bust.

She motions for Jafari to raise his visor and she raises her own. Not protocol, but it’s only for a few seconds, and she has something she wants to say. Needs to say.

“Jaff! We’re going to see the stars!”

The astronomer smiles. “God’s grace, Gwendy. God’s grace.”

9

AFTER PETE RILEY’S VISIT, Gwendy began to read up on Paul Magowan, the Republican junior senator from Maine. The more she read, the more disgusted she became. The younger Gwendy Peterson would have been outright horrified, and even at fifty-eight, with several trips around the political block in her resume, she felt at least some horror.

Magowan was an avowed fiscal conservative, declaring he wouldn’t allow tax-and-spend progressives to mortgage the futures of his constituents’ grandchildren, but he had no problem with clear-cutting Maine’s forests and removing the commercial fishing bans in protected areas. His attitude seemed to be that the grandchildren he was always blathering about could deal with those things when the time came. He promised that with the help of President Trump and other “friends of the American economy,” he was also going to get Maine’s textile mills running again “from Kittery to Fort Kent.”

He waved aside such issues as acid rain and polluted rivers—which had given up such wonders as two-headed salmon in the mid-twentieth century, when the mills had been booming 24/7. If he was asked how the product of those mills could compete with cheap Chinese imports, Magowan told voters, “We’re going to ban all Chinese imports except for Moo-Shu pork and General Tso’s chicken.”

People actually laughed and applauded this codswallop.

While she was watching that particular video on YouTube, Gwendy found herself remembering what Pete Riley had said on his exploratory trip in December of ’18: People are turning away from women’s rights, from science, from the very notion of equality. They’re turning away from truth. Somebody needs to stand up and make them look at all the stuff it’s easier not to believe in.

She decided she was going to be that somebody, but when Pete called her in March of 2019, she told him she still hadn’t decided.

“Well, you better hurry up,” Pete told her. “It gets late early in politics, as you well know. And if you’re going to take a shot at this, I want to be your campaign manager. If you’ll let me, that is.”

“With that smile of yours, how could I say no?” Gwendy asked.

“Then I need to start positioning you.”

“Ask me again in April.”

Pete made a low moaning sound, as if she’d stepped on his foot. “That long?”

“I need to deliberate. And talk to my husband, of course.” Although she was pretty sure she knew what Ryan’s reaction would be.

What she needed to do was to finish her book, City of Night (a title already used by John Rechy, but too good not to use again), and clear the decks. Then she was going to go after Senator Paul Magowan with everything she had. As someone with absolutely no chance of winning, she felt good about that.

When she told Ryan, he reacted pretty much as she had expected. “I’m going to go out and buy a bottle of wine. The good stuff. We need to celebrate. Ladies and gentlemen, Gwendy Peterson is BACK!”

10

OUTSIDE THE PORTHOLE NEAREST to Gwendy, the sky is now dark. More than dark. “Blacker than a raccoon’s asshole,” Ryan might have said. The cabin rotates further, her chair compensates, and all at once her three monitor screens are directly ahead of her instead of over her head. The roaring of the engines stops, and all at once Gwendy is floating against her five-point restraining harness. It reminds her of how it feels when a roller coaster car takes its first dive, only the feeling doesn’t stop.

“Crew, helmets can come off,” Sam says. “Unzip your suits if you want to but keep them on for now.”

Gwendy unlocks her helmet, takes it off … and watches it float, first in front of her and then lazily upward. She looks around and sees three other helmets floating. Gareth Winston snatches his down. “What the hell do I do with it?” He sounds shaky.

Gwendy remembers this, and Winston should; God knows they had enough dress rehearsals.

Reggie Black says, “Under your seat. Your compartment, remember?”

“Right,” Winston says, but doesn’t add a thank you; that doesn’t seem to be in his vocabulary.