Something Made of Vacuum

The Easterday family was large and all of them worked the first shift. A half dozen of them were on kitchen duty for breakfast and had been up for an hour when a family-wide bell woke the rest. It was still Night, of course, and would be for another thirteen days, but one by one they stretched, unplugged themselves from cables and hoses and stood in one smooth motion.

Helene was awakened by the same bell. She tried to stand but forgot to unplug herself, and was yanked to one side. She settled to the ground with the eerie slowness of lunar gravity and cursed. Tom was standing next to her and chuckled. “Good morning, Helene,” he said. “You slept well.” He helped her back into sitting position.

“Hello, Tom. I was up a couple of times during the night,” she said. “Help me up, will you?”

“You weren’t awake all that long,” Tom said. “Once after about three hours and once at five hours, but only for a couple of minutes. Actually, why don’t you stay seated for a few minutes? It looks like you need a bath.”

“And how are my bowel movements?” Helene asked between clenched teeth. “Acceptable to you?”

“That all looks good,” Tom answered pleasantly. “So here, you sit up, keep your arms at your sides and ask the suit to give you a bath while you’re still plugged into the family water. If you get the bath anywhere else it costs more.”

Helene did so without comment. Warm water sluiced over her entire body except the hair on her head, delivered to her skin by what was apparently a network with hundreds of little pores. The water rinsed under the folds of her breasts, washed between her toes and sprayed her face. She heard a pump removing the water from whatever collection points it had gone to, and then warm air blew out of the same set of pores to dry her. “Okay,” she said, somewhat ungraciously, “that’s pretty nice. How come you don’t need a bath?”

“I had one yesterday before I met up with you,” Tom said. “We usually get a bath every three days – it gets a little expensive to take one more often than that.”

“How did you know I needed one? I mean, wait, I know that. How did the suit know I needed a bath?”

Tom hesitated while text flowed up the inside of his helmet. “I never thought about it,” he finally said, “but apparently the suit decides you need to wash by looking at readings from a skin galvanometer. That’s interesting.”

Helene was a little unsteady when she finally got to her feet. She happened to kick her suitcase. The suitcase instantly shattered into fragments and the contents settled to the ground. Her clothes survived but several other articles shattered as well.

“I should have thought of that!” Tom said. “Helene, this is my fault. That suitcase was made of nylon or something, right? That’s what happens to nylon when it gets supercooled. I’m guessing your clothing is cotton? I think that will be okay.”

Helene picked up a blouse and said, “The cloth is still good but the buttons have cracked off. My shoes are ruined, too. All the underwear with elastic is little crackly pieces now.”

“You’ll have to go through air town to get home. We’ll get you some new clothes then.”

“No, no, you’ve done enough for me. I travel a lot on my job so I never take anything I can’t afford to lose. Let’s get breakfast.” She scraped her possessions together into a smaller pile and regarded it for a moment, but could not think of anything tidier to do.

The Easterdays owned four food carts. The adults stood and gossiped, facing each other, while the kids ran around between them. Breakfast that day was fruit-filled pierogies, with chubby bite-sized sausages and coffee. Tom introduced her to the aunts and uncles who were cooking that day. Aunt Carletta stood at the first cart, her arms inserted into the ports and her hands bare. She and Tom talked about yesterday’s wedding as Helene watched her expertly flatten little circles of dough, add a spoonful of blueberry filling and fold and pinch the dough around it without a single wasted motion. She popped the pierogies into a pot of boiling water.

Next to her, Uncle Julio took the boiled pierogies (from a previous batch Carlene had passed to him) and fried them in butter on the cooktop until they were brown, added a dollop of sour cream and arranged four of them in a sixpack with a sausage and a ball of toasted bread, which he pushed out through the pass-through valve. Tom took it and helped Helene snap it into the fitting on her helmet, along with a flask of coffee.

“Tom, Carletta, Julio,” Helene said after a few minutes, “this is fabulous. Thank you! Do you eat like this all the time?”

“You’re welcome! We do eat good,” Carletta said. “Lots of different kinds of food, of course.”

“When Carletta is cooking for breakfast, it’s always pierogi,” Julio said. “I tried making the pierogi one time and got strawberry goop all over everything. I don’t have the magic fingers, you know?”

“I’m starting to see why you import all that fancy food from Earth.”

“Well, most of it’s for ship passengers, of course,” Julio said. “We raise chickens, pigs and goats here – there’re some big farms over in Maury crater we buy from – but cows never did adapt to living on the Moon. We have carniculture, but you can’t get a decent steak that way, so we buy a lot of beef from Earth.”

“I know, the expensive stuff,” Helene said. “High end. I’ve seen the orders.”

“Sure. It doesn’t make sense to pay all that freight and save a few sequins on cheap meat.”

“We grow some herbs up here,” Tom said, “but it makes better sense to get dried spices from you. Same thing with vegetables – we raise a lot here, but we get specialty items from you.”

“Well,” Helene said, “I’m off today to try to talk a bunch of importers into buying more food from my co-ops.”

“Didn’t you get fired from that job?” Carletta asked.

“Oh, my God! Does everybody on the Moon know I got fired?”

“Just the Moon Men,” Carletta said peaceably. “In air town, they don’t care about each other.”

“Well,” Tom said judiciously, “I think it’s just that in air town, they don’t have any easy way to find out about each other.”

“I’m hoping if I bring in some orders, they’ll take me back,” Helene said miserably.

“Go for the ships’ chandlers,” Carletta said. “Passengers love to hear they’re getting real Earth food. It’s a prestige thing, even though the food we grow here is just as good. Guys like Tom who sell to Moon Men, they don’t care where it comes from.”

“I’ll buy more from you,” Tom said. “There’s always a market for fancy spices.”

“Tom, don’t give me pity, okay? I’m a professional. I can sell.”

Julio and Carletta exchanged glances. “Oh, Helene, Tommie’s in love with you,” Carlene said. “Anybody can see that. Let him buy some spices from you if he wants to.”

“How can you just bust out and say things like that? That’s rude!” Helene said.

“True, though,” Julio said. “You look at his heart rate and skin conductivity and stuff when he’s looking at you, it’s pretty obvious. Not to mention that we’ve known Tommie since he was born. He always did have an eye for the ladies.”

“Tom, don’t buy from me unless it makes sense for your business, you hear? I’m going back to Earth in a couple of weeks.”

“I just switched us so we’re talking privately,” Tom answered. “I won’t buy anything I can’t make a profit on, I promise. And yes, I know this relationship isn’t going anywhere.”

“Relationship? There is no relationship! Aren’t you going to say something about how they’re wrong and you’re not really in love with me?”

“Why would I say that?” Tom asked. “You can see my metrics just like anybody can. But look, this is my problem and I understand that. I’ll deal with it.”

Helene stared at him. “I don’t understand you people at all. Look, do you think I’m in love with you?”

“You haven’t been wearing a Moon suit long enough to establish a baseline, so I can’t tell,” Tom said. “I guess you are still kind of a woman of mystery, at that. Are you in love with me?”

“No. Tom, you’re a nice guy and if you ever decide to emigrate to Earth, look me up. Until then, back off. I’m going out to do business, pure business.”

“Not much chance of me going to Earth,” Tom said ruefully. “I guess you’re safe.”

“All right, I’m out of here.”

“Finish eating and take the sixpack off before you go,” Tom said. “You’ll look pretty silly walking around with it sticking out of your helmet.”

“How about the coffee? Can I keep that?”

“Yeah. That’s why the drink cylinder lies flat against your chest, lots of people like to keep drinks with them.”

After a little conversation with her suit and a few more bites, Helene re-established contact with the people around her, detached the sixpack and handed it back to Julio, then started walking toward the monorail terminal.

Behind her, the voices of Julio, Carletta and Tom vanished. They were having a private conversation with each other. Helene deduced they were gossiping about her.