1.17
24 November
St. Joseph of Cupertino Monastery
South Polar Mineral Territories
Lunar Surface
Raimy and his prisoner spent the next morning in the greenhouse, watching Bridget tend to her herbs and vegetables. He supposed technically they were Michael’s herbs and vegetables, but Michael was off on some other business. Probably administrative, Raimy noted jealously; he was the “prior” of this place, and ultimately responsible for its smooth functioning. Perhaps, instead of treating St. Joe’s like it was Disneyland, he should be asking Michael to mentor him on what it was like to administer a space colony. But when Michael did check in at the greenhouse—once to make sure Bridget was properly monitoring the urea levels in the dripwater, and later to poke his finger into the dirt trough in several places—he seemed distracted in a busy way, and uninterested in talking to Raimy. He was, however, very intent on feeling the texture and moisture level of the “starter soil,” which (according to Bridget) was actually a combination of regolith, human waste, chopped-up cloth, and a weirdly spongy Earth mineral called “vermiculite.” And some actual Earthly potting soil, yes, although that made up less than a quarter of its total volume.
This was the east greenhouse “working garden,” from which most of the monastery’s food sprang.
“It’s vitally dull in here,” Bridget declared at one point. “We don’t want anything interesting happening, and so it never does.”
Anming looked incensed by that comment, but otherwise kept it to himself. Even handcuffed, he seemed more at ease in this module than anywhere else Raimy had seen him. From his chair in the corner, he studied the plants and the mechanisms around them, nodding occasionally. Still studying a craft he would never again put into practice.
“It is dull,” Raimy agreed. It seemed important to get a sense of what went on in here, and he was doing that. But yeesh, this was definitely not the job for him.
The routine was only broken when H.H. stopped by to pick up some turnips and hot peppers for that night’s dinner stew.
“Are you gentlemen and ladies behaving?” he asked, leering a bit at the way Raimy was standing so close to Bridget. Not like he knew anything—more like he was full of shit and wanted to share it with the world.
“No business of yours,” Bridget said, though, in a tone virtually guaranteed to make him think it was.
“Well, te dejo a ti,” he said, tossing the harvest into a bag. “I’ll leave you to it.”
And that was their morning: dull and more dull. The real action was of course next door, in the west greenhouse “experimental garden,” where Earth matter was forbidden, and food was grown from seed, using only Lunar water and Lunar regolith and electricity generated from Lunar sunlight.
“Is that what Katla’s doing this morning?”
“I don’t know,” Bridget said. “Katla’s been scarce. I think the thing with Anming has her glooming pretty hard. The two of them were . . . you know, close.”
Another glare from Anming. Ignoring it, Raimy said, “I didn’t realize that. I thought she was just avoiding me.”
Katla took her meals with everyone else, but sat as far from Raimy as she could. Although, perhaps she was just trying to stay away from Anming.
“She’s avoiding everyone,” Bridget said. “It figures she’d be sad. I guess we’re all sad, but . . .”
“I understand.”
If he thought about it, Katla didn’t say much at meals, and answered in monosyllables when asked a question. To Raimy’s eye she seemed more troubled than sad, as if plagued by unpleasant dreams, but he supposed it all amounted to the same thing in the end. And yet, he did still kind of think she had a problem with him, specifically.
“Not much food comes out of the experimental garden,” Anming said.
“That’s true,” Bridget said. “Not a tenth of what we get over here. But it’s a fine thing to figure out what the Moon farms of the future can really grow, when they haven’t got potting soil to fall back on.”
“Will those same plants grow on Mars?” Raimy asked.
“Don’t know,” she said. “It’s partly about what’ll grow in nutrient-poor soil, which is, you know, useful knowledge on any planet. Fixing nitrogen is a chore even on Earth; when there’s not enough turkey poop to go around, organic farmers have to grow legumes or buckwheat, which are nitrogen-fixing crops.”
“Alfalfa,” Anming said.
“Or that, yes. But even when you solve the nitrogen problem, Mars and Luna both have too much iron, and not enough sodium or potassium. That’s a similarity, and really not so different from the deserts of Utah. But we don’t grow crops there, even with irrigation. Luna’s also got excess calcium, and Mars has toxic levels of chlorine and nickel. That’s different, and bad. We can do some of this development work on Earth, and we have been. But as Michael could tell you, you never really know until you’re there. The first group on Mars is going to make a lot of mistakes.”
“Learning experiences,” Anming said.
To which Bridget said, rather cruelly, “Not for you.”
Raimy spent an afternoon flitting between the life-support, lab, and observatory modules, not doing any real work or even asking good questions, but simply watching the work that the monks were doing. There was a lot of it; the work of teaching and the (profitable) side hustle of made-to-order astronomical observation seemed, collectively, to take up perhaps twenty man-hours each day, spread out across five or six individuals. Prayers and such took up another two hours of each monk’s time, as did communal meals, with another hour or so reserved for hygiene and such. But the upkeep on the monastery itself was serious business, and was something for which they all pitched in. Sweeping the floors, wiping down the walls and ceiling, dusting the fixtures, checking and rechecking the quality of each module’s air and services . . .
One thing that continually struck Raimy was how new this place was; not one module here had been inhabited for more than a year. By contrast, the U.S.S. Jimmy Carter had been over thirty years old when Raimy was stationed aboard, and that age showed on nearly every surface. Some spots had been worn smooth by contact, ten thousand times over, with hands or sleeves or shoes or pant legs. Others had been painted so many times the rivets barely showed, and still others were scratched and scraped and dented in ways that might never be repaired in the lifetime of the boat. Glass instrument covers were cracked, and display screens of obsolete types had streaks of dead pixels on them that you just stopped noticing after a while. Old Jimmy had been worked hard, that was for sure.
But here, everything shone. It looked new, it smelled new, and the monks seemed determined to keep it that way. Which, given the abrasive nature of the ubiquitous moondust, was no easy task.
The brothers also spent a lot of time checking up on each other’s moods and mental health. They were mostly a pretty taciturn group of people—Michael and Hilario and Purcell notwithstanding—but when they did speak, there was a surprising amount of intrusive gossip, which seemed to consume a lot of their mental energy. Raimy suspected, for example, that most of them knew what he and Bridget were doing at night. And why not? This was their home, and Raimy was an invited guest. Bridget, too.
Each monk was also responsible for the upkeep of his own spacesuit, which some seemed to take more seriously than others. But when Michael and Giancarlo went outside to receive a shipment of gas bottles space-dropped from Clementine Cislunar Fuel Depot, they each spent a good half hour going over the seals and gauges on each other’s suits, making very, very sure everything was working correctly.
“Hey, can I come out with you?” Raimy asked.
He was standing in the chapel, looking through the hatchway into the airlock module’s gowning area, watching the two of them perform their checks and begin to suit up.
“The airlock only takes three at a time,” Giancarlo said.
“Also,” Michael said delicately, “I understand you want to get the most out of your Lunar adventure, but the men are starting to complain about the imposition.”
“I thought they liked teaching,” Raimy said.
“Oh, indeed, most of them very much do. But none of us ever signed up to be jailers. I’m sorry to ask, by which I mean, I’m sorry you’re forcing my hand and making me ask, but would you please take proper charge of your prisoner? It’s really not appropriate to stand him in the corner like that”—he waved in Anming’s direction—“while you goof around. I understand the position you’re in. I do. You’re excited, in a new place, burning with curiosity. We all understand this, and can indulge you up to a point.”
“But we’ve reached that point?”
“Perhaps,” Michael said, smiling warmly. Then shut the airlock hatch in Raimy’s face.
Never one to miss a hint, Raimy ducked his head into the kitchen to apologize to Hilario and Kurtis, whom he had inconvenienced perhaps more than anyone else in the monastery.
“There are a lot of sharp objects in here,” Hilario agreed. “If you’re asking, I actually would rather you not bring a murderer in here.”
“Yep,” said Brother Kurtis, who was wiping his hands on a white towel. “But it’s mostly Eliaz who’s been complaining. You should maybe go apologize to him.”
“I see. Where can I find him?”
“Usually the library.”
Suitably chastened, Raimy cut through the empty classroom and into the library, where he found Eliaz Groppel, along with the defector Andrei.
“Finally he shows his face,” Andrei said. “Are you here to make us watch this murderer while you play spaceman?”
“Murder suspect,” Raimy corrected. “And no.”
“Good,” Andrei said, holding up two fingers, pinching the empty air. “I am this close to asking one third your salary.”
“It has been a lot for the brothers,” Eliaz agreed, with a sort of dour skittishness, as if afraid of fully speaking his mind.
“I am sorry, Eliaz,” Raimy said sincerely. “I didn’t mean to inconvenience anyone. I’ve never had custody of a suspect for more than a few hours at a time, and I’m afraid there are no procedures for it.”
“Call me Groppel, please. My brothers call me by my first name as a kind of teasing. Where I come from, we don’t use them so much.” Where he came from was certainly European, Raimy thought, but he couldn’t pin it down any more specifically than that. Dutch? Belgian?
“You can stay in here if you like,” Groppel continued, “but I’m quite busy, so you’ll have to be quiet and keep a close eye on him.” He gestured at Anming, with poorly concealed contempt. “I come in here for the quiet. This is a monastery.”
Eliaz Groppel was an automotive electrician by former trade, Raimy had heard, but he also seemed in some ways to be the monastery’s second-in-command, at least in a paperwork sense. He spoke flawless English, and seemed to spend a lot of time talking about “the accounts” and “the records” and “the stores”—usually in harried tones. He struck Raimy as the least monkish of the monks, who never seemed to look quite at ease or at home. Raimy wondered, suddenly, whether Groppel was actually going to cut it here, long-term, or whether he’d eventually give up and request a transfer back to Earth.
Looking annoyed, Groppel said to Raimy, “Don’t judge me.”
“Excuse me?” Raimy said.
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Anming said, “He’s been complaining about you when you sleep.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Raimy said, taking his lumps. “I’m in his home, and apparently not a very polite guest. Maybe we should take you to the chapel.”
“He says you talk too much,” Anming continued. “He says you stare too much, and look around too much. You categorize people. I think it makes him nervous.”
“Everything make him nervous,” Andrei said, not unkindly. “He needs brother like me, who never get worried about anything. Yes?” He clapped Groppel on the shoulder. “But he is correct, you are suspicious man. Always looking around you. What are you looking for?”
Escape routes, Raimy almost said. Enemies. Hiding places. Makeshift weapons that could be used against me, or that I could use to defend myself. A diver’s eyes were alert to dangers in the environment, and a cop’s were attuned to the people around him. But that was maybe a little too much honesty, so instead he said, “I’m sorry if I’ve upset anyone. I’ll take my prisoner and go.”
To which Groppel said, “Apology accepted,” and turned his back.
Huh. Okay. Raimy was getting a lot of that today.