Jumping off the Planet

CROSSING THE LINE

Mexico is hot. Hotter than Arizona. Maybe hotter than Hell. And there are these little tiny lizards, small as bugs, everywhere. They flicker across the sidewalk so fast, they look like heat ripples.

The surprising thing was how clean everything was. Everybody in Bunker City says that Mexico is dirty, the streets are dirty, and the people are dirty. But it isn't like that at all. Everywhere we went, everything was hot and bright and clean. Cleaner than Bunker City. Which just proved what I already knew. When people don't know what they're talking about, they make stuff up.

And the Mexicans were friendly too. Dad's Spanish wasn't all that good, but Weird and I knew enough to get by, and where we didn't, there was usually someone else around who spoke enough English to help. So we weren't going to starve to death.

We headed south on the new highway. Dad didn't talk much, not about where we were going. He said it was a Magical Mystery Tour, which meant that you weren't supposed to know where you were going until you got there, so the fun had to be in the going, not the arrival; but I was pretty sure Dad had a destination in mind. Every so often I'd catch him muttering about travel times and schedules, so I knew this trip wasn't as random as he kept saying.

We stayed our first night in Mexico at a Best Inn, which is two lies in as many words, but never mind. We were on the eastern coast of the Gulf of Baja, somewhere in the middle of nowhere, with dirty blue ocean to the west and scruffy brown desert to the east and some purple hills in the distance beyond that.

After dinner, there wasn't much of anything to do except stand around watching Stinky playing on the swings with his monkey or look up at the stars. They were a lot brighter here than they were in El Paso. In fact, in El Paso, we could hardly see them at all, so it was something different to just look up at the sky and see how bright it really was. Weird saw a shooting star, and then I saw one too. Dad pointed out Orion's belt and the Big Dipper and a couple of other constellations as if they meant something. I asked him where Sirius was and Betelgeuse and some of the other places where the bright-liners went, but he didn't know. Dad said that Sirius was the North Star, so all we had to do was look north, but Weird said no, Polaris was the North Star, not Sirius.

Dad ignored it. Instead, he pointed south. "Look, you can almost see the beanstalk from here."

We squinted into the darkness. I couldn't see anything. Not at first.

"Look for a very, very thin line," Dad said. "Find the line. It'll be high. Up out of the shadow cone. About ten o'clock high. Maybe eleven o'clock."

Weird was the first. "I think I see it," he said. "Is that it?"

"Where?"

"There."

"Oh—oh yeah!"

It was like looking at a razor blade edge on. It shimmered in and out of existence. First it was there, then it wasn't. We could only see a little bit of it, but even so, it seemed to stretch impossibly upward against the darkness. The orbital elevator, a braided strand of mono-filament nearly 72,000 kilometers long.

"We should be able to see it better tomorrow night," Dad said. As if that meant something. "It's the stepping-stone to the stars."

His voice sounded so wistful I turned to look at him. I hadn't heard him sound that way about anything for years—the last time was when he guided me through the fourth movement of Copland's Third Symphony, showing me why it was such a masterpiece. It was when I was nine and got to sit in on the rehearsal for one of his concerts. He was very proud that day. He introduced me to everybody. I sat behind him on the podium, and every so often he would stop to explain something to me—and to the musicians as well. But we'd never done it again after that, and I always wondered what I'd done wrong. Not too long after that, the arguments between him and Mom started getting worse, and he'd started staying away more and more, and then Mom moved us to El Paso to be closer to Gramma and Grampa, only they died—

"Would you like to go there someday?" Dad asked.

"Huh?—Where?"

Dad pointed to the sky. "Anywhere. Out there."

"You mean, the star colonies?"

"Sure."

"You'd have to win the lottery. Two lotteries."

"Mm, maybe. Maybe not," Dad said. "Some of the colonies will pay your way if you'll promise to stay for seven years. And if you have a needed skill. And children."

"Indentured servitude," said Weird. "That means you'd be a slave."

"It's not so bad, Douglas. The jobs all fall under the guidelines of the Corporate Treaty of Singapore."

"Yeah, Dad—and who enforces the rules eight point three light-years from Singapore?"

"The Treaty Authority has offices wherever there are indentures. And the locals are very strict about self-enforcement. Most of them were slaves once too, before they worked off their debts."

"I can't believe we're even having this conversation," Weird said, suddenly angry. "Mom would drop her load. Are you seriously considering it?" I could see him thinking about Grampa and all the stories he used to tell about great-great-umpty-great-Grampa and what it was like to actually be a slave.

"It's a way out, that's all I'm saying," Dad said.

"A way out of what?"

"Here. This." Dad gestured vaguely around. "I'm just trying to say something, that there are still plenty of opportunities for a good life. If not here, then out there. You pay the price however you can."

"It's too high," said Weird.

"I just want you to have a good life, son—I want you to know that there might be more possibilities than you've considered."

"Not for me." Weird said, and the way he said it was like a door slamming.

Dad looked at him sharply, as if trying to figure out who he really was. Finally he said, "You grew up too fast. I hardly know you."

Weird didn't answer that. He just shook his head in disgust and turned and walked away from us. I couldn't tell what he was thinking. What was he angry about? Nobody was going anywhere. So why were we arguing again? Probably because that's who we were. The Crankys—not even in the same neighborhood as the Happys.

Dad looked at me glumly. "And what do you think?"

I shrugged.

"You think I'm a pretty lousy dad too, don't you?"

The question caught me by surprise. "Huh, no—I don't think that." But even as I said it, I knew that I was lying.

"Charles, I can see it in your face. You're almost always angry. I can hear it in your voice."

I shrugged again. What else could I do?

You see what I mean about adults and the way they talk to kids? When they finally make up their mind to really talk to you honestly, they want you to be just as honest with them in return, even when you both know that if you tell the truth, it's only going to make things worse. Really worse.

The hell with it.

I said, "I don't think you're a lousy dad. How should I know what kind of a dad you are? You're never there."

My words hurt him. I could see that.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Charles."

"Me too. I wanted a real dad."

I started to follow Weird, but Dad grabbed my arm.

"Hey," he said. "Give me a chance. Please? We don't have a lot of time together, Charles. Can't we make the best of it?"

I shrugged. "Whatever." But I still tried to wiggle out of his grasp.

"What's it going to take to reach you, kiddo?"

"I dunno." And I really didn't. This time, Dad let me go. I knew he was hurt, but I didn't know what he wanted and I didn't know how to give it to him, and even if I did, I wasn't sure I wanted to.