Meet Me in the Moon Room (23 page)

Lewis rumbled and filled his pants again.

“I’m afraid to look,” Karl said.

Marilyn reached over the baby and pulled the Velcro tabs.

A multitude of mice exploded from Lewie’s diaper. Karl and Marilyn leaped up off the couch, yelling. The mice scrambled over the baby’s stomach and legs and across the couch and off onto the floor, definitely hitting the ground running, and the birds screamed and leaped into flight, crossing and recrossing in the air, never quite colliding, swooping down on the fleeing mice, not catching any as the mice hot-footed it under the furniture. The cats, no longer cowering, dashed around after the mice and jumped and swatted at the birds.

Marilyn covered the baby with her body. Karl stood over them both, waving away the birds and kicking at the mice the cats had flushed from under the furniture.

“We might as well be on the moon,” Karl said. There was absolutely no one to ask. So many friends, but none of their friends would have a clue about this.

“What?”

Check the baby books. They had an entire shelf of baby books. They had had lots of time for research. They hadn’t gone into this with their eyes closed. Or maybe call the pediatrician. Doctor, is it normal for my baby to be pooping birds and mice?

“We need someone to tell us what to do.” Karl said.

“Shouldn’t we know what to do?” Marilyn asked.

“Yes,” Karl said. “We should know what to do.” But even as he said it he could see that they both realized they would never know what to do. There would never be a single time they would be able to say for sure, yes, this is the right thing to do—this definitely is right for you, Lewis. This is what should happen or this is how it should be. We’re absolutely right to say you can’t go there. We know what we’re talking about when we say you should do this instead of that. Father knows best. Listen to your mother.

There came wet sputtering flatulence from Lewis, gastrointestinal distress, but also words, surely words, muttering, whispering, a gravelly voice from a place no words had ever come before. It was as if the speaker were trying all of the languages on Earth, looking for the one that would work in this situation. Then there was a tremendous clearing of the throat, so to speak.

The birds retreated to the curtain rod again, taking their seats like theater patrons after an intermission. Karl and Marilyn sat down again on either side of Lewis and waited to see what he would produce next.

What Lewis produced next was unearthly and smelly, obviously from elsewhere, and it seemed to surprise the baby as much as his parents. Someone said, “Hello, Father. Hello, Mother.”

Karl looked at Marilyn. “Er . . . hello,” he said.

“But who is speaking?” she whispered.

Karl didn’t know. He shook his head. “Maybe a ghost?”

“You’re suggesting my baby’s butt is haunted?”

“Do you suppose we could think of these as his first words?” Karl asked.

“Will you two shut up and listen for a moment?”

“You shouldn’t tell your elders to shut up,” Karl said.

“I have come back to speak of a time some fifteen years in the future, when you will be faced with what might seem like a trivial decision to you.”

Karl reached over the baby and put his hands on Marilyn’s shoulders. They leaned together, head to head, looking down at Lewis.

After a silence in which Karl suddenly worried that maybe they’d simply gone crazy, and didn’t know whether that was a comfort or not, the voice spoke again. “There will come the time when Lewis wants to attend a camp out in the desert in which the other guests will be both girls and boys.”

“Yes?” Marilyn said.

“You’ll worry about beer and drugs that haven’t even been invented yet.”

“Oh, no,” Marilyn said.

“You’ll worry about sex and diseases that haven’t even been invented yet.”

“And?” Karl asked. He suddenly knew that he should pay particular attention to that look on Lewie’s face. It would be a look he would need to watch out for in the future.

“You must let him go,” the voice said.

White Guys in Space

1.

A
fter an obligatory period of lies and damn lies, the 104th congress repealed the 1960s, and Worldmaster Jones, secret CEO for AmerEarth Corp, and his right-hand hatchet man, Coordinator Grey, popped into existence.

“Boy, it’s about time,” Jones said.

“You got that right, Worldmaster,” said Grey.

Jones rang for his secretary.

“Yes, Worldmaster?”

“Have the boys get my helicar ready, Nancy,” Jones said, “and bring in a couple of cups of coffee.”

2.

Not to mention the bug-eyed lobster men from Alpha Centauri.

3.

“Wow! Would you look at all the knobs!” Joe said when he peeked into the control cabin of the spaceship. Joe, who was doing simultaneous degrees in atomic physics, medieval studies, entomology, philosophy, hotel/motel management, linguistics, and electrical engineering at Yale, knew a thing or two about spaceships.

His buddy Frank, home for the holidays from Harvard where he was majoring in chemistry, mathematics, Victorian detective fiction, farm management, and computer science, rubbed a hand across his blond crewcut and joined Joe at the window of the unfinished craft. “Gosh,” he said, “do you think it’ll really work?”

“You’ve got to have faith in our friend the atom, boys.” Doc pulled his head out of the access hatch and waved a socket wrench at Frank. “Of course it’ll work!”

Doc, who had always been just a little too far out for the universities, had streaks of gray running through his unruly hair, and a perpetually preoccupied look on his craggy face. Joe guessed he was in his forties. He wore a white lab coat and black loafers.

“Hey, what are you guys doing?” someone called from the garage doorway.

“Uh oh,” Doc said. “Trouble.”

Frank elbowed Joe in the ribs. “You can close your mouth now,” he said. “It’s just Nancy.”

“Hi, Doctor Tim!” The young woman stepped into the garage and smiled, and Joe’s heart missed a beat.

4.

Meanwhile the slimy lobster men from Alpha Centauri, who had been going somewhere else entirely before the sixties had been repealed, turned their scaly attention to Earth, and what they saw they liked. By the time Joe and Frank helped Doc get the spaceship upright and onto its tail fins and aimed at the moon, the lobster men only had bug-eyes for Earth women.

5.

“You can’t go,” Frank said.

“I can, too!”

“Tell her she can’t go, Doc,” Frank said.

“You can’t go, Nancy.”

“Hey, why not?” Joe spoke up suddenly, and the two other men looked at him like he’d gone crazy.

“Look, you guys,” Nancy said, “this is the story of the century. You’ve got to let me go along. The first people on the moon! I was born to cover this story.”

“That’s the first men,” Frank said. “The first men on the moon.”

“Is that why you’re taking Spot?”

“Hey! Spot’s a spacedog.”

6.

Actually, this could be to our advantage,” Worldmaster Jones said. “Let’s see if we can’t cut a deal with the seafood.”

“But what could we have that they’d want?” asked Coordinator Grey.

7.

“Ten,” Doc said.

“What?”

“He said ‘ten.’”

“Ten what?”

“Nine,” Doc said.

“I thought you said he said ‘ten?’”

“Eight,” Doc said.

“I give up.” Joe threw up his hands and leaned back in his contoured spacechair and looked up at the sky through the forward viewports. It would be a long time before he saw that sky again. He wondered if he might lose Nancy altogether. Could their relationship hold up under the strain of his just going off into space, right after they’d first met? Well, a man has to do what a man has to do. He would suffer this sweet anguish in stony silence.

“Seven,” Doc said.

“Maybe you’d better start flipping switches,” Frank said. He made a few quick calculations with his slipstick and jotted down the results on a pad on the arm of his spacechair.

“Six,” Doc said.

“Good idea,” Joe said. “Doc seems to be preoccupied. As you know, Frank, he’s done all the calculations for the trip in his head.”

“Five,” Doc said.

“Just checking,” Frank grumbled. He put his slipstick away. “Did you remember to close the supply hatch?”

“Four,” Doc said.

“Me?” Joe finished flipping a bank of switches before turning to look at Frank. “You were supposed to close that hatch. Hey, Doc, I think Frank forgot to close the supply hatch.”

“Three,” Doc said.

“Look,” Frank said, “I clearly remember asking you to close the hatch.”

“Two,” Doc said.

“Darn it, Frank,” Joe said. He unsnapped his harness and swung his legs around off his chair.

“One,” Doc said.

“Oh, sit still,” Frank said. He unsnapped his own harness. “If you’re going to pout, I’ll go shut it.”

“Blast off!” Doc cried.

8.

“Something has risen from the surface of the planet,” Z’p said, and then dropped flat to the floor in a show of respect.

“So, shoot it down,” Hivekeeper B’b said. “Do I have to think of everything?”

“Thinking of everything is your job,” muttered Z’p.

“What did you say?”

“I said we’re too far out to shoot it down, Hivekeeper.”

“How long before we get to the moon?”

“We’re almost there now.”

9.

The blue and white curve of Earth had been visible briefly before Doc aimed the nose of the ship at the moon. Now there was nothing much to see and nothing much to do but eat lunch. Joe, Frank, Doc, and Spot floated around the control cabin eating pork’n’beans from cans and drinking orange pop.

“What was that noise?” Frank asked.

“Noise?” Doc said.

“I didn’t hear anything,” Joe said.

“Arf,” said Spot.

“Well, I heard it,” Frank said. He left his spoon sticking in his can of pork’n’beans and the can floating in the air and swam down to the door to the supply closet. He seized the handle and threw open the door. Nancy tumbled out with a yelp.

10.

Meanwhile, back on Earth, Mrs. Jones put a perfect pot roast on the dining room table. She arranged the carving knife and fork on the platter and adjusted the angles of their handles so they would be just where the Worldmaster expected them to be when he reached for them to carve the roast. She hurried back into the kitchen for the mashed potatoes. The doorbell rang.

“Oh, double darn!” she said. She glanced around quickly to see if anyone had heard her. Worldmaster Jones would not tolerate rough language. He would be in his den smoking his pipe. Would he answer the door on his own? Well, maybe when . . . maybe when . . . well, maybe when heck got a lot colder. Oh my, such thoughts. The doorbell rang again.

“Oh, Worldmaster Jones,” she called, “would you mind getting that, dear?”

Of course, he would get the door, the old bear, but he wouldn’t like it. “Where’s Billy?” he growled as he came out of his den.

“Here I am, Worldmaster,” Billy said coming down the stairs in his baseball outfit. He snatched the cap off his head when he saw the fire smoldering in his father’s eyes.

“And do you suppose you could get the door?” Worldmaster Jones rattled his newspaper at the boy.

“I thought Mom would get it,” Billy said on his way to the front door.

Worldmaster Jones paused in the doorway of his den so he could see who was at the door. His wife did the same from her spot by the dining room table. Billy opened the door.

A young man in a neat black suit and a thin tie greeted Billy. “Hello, is your mother or father home?”

“Well.” Billy glanced back at Worldmaster Jones, who pretended to read his paper.

The young man must have figured it out. He stepped up the volume of his voice. “I’m asking for donations for basic services.” He had a tin can with a thin slit for change cut into the top. “Police, fire, city services, roads and streets, health care and food for the poor, schools from kindergarten to the university. You know, everything but the military. Can I count on you folks?”

“Dinner’s ready,” Mrs. Jones called brightly.

Worldmaster Jones stepped forward. “Thank you, young man, but we gave at the office.” He closed the door.

11.

“If I hadn’t pulled that hatch closed behind me, you’d all be sucking vacuum!” Nancy said. “It’s not like you can just put me out.” When she wasn’t talking, she was chewing her gum a mile a minute, and Joe wondered what it would be like to shut her up with a kiss. “I mean you really wouldn’t do that, would you, Doctor Tim?”

“I don’t know,” Frank said. “What do you think, Doc?”

“Of course we won’t put her out!” Joe pushed off the wall and did a superman dive for her, but she grabbed a handhold and moved out of the way before he arrived. Joe sailed on past her with a goofy smile on his face and crashed head first into the wall.