Lost Time (7 page)

Chapter 11

Diego: Shuffle the Cards

A
t the crack of dawn, Lucy comes waltzing into my room singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin’” and wearing some sort of purple Easter hat.

My stomach feels like someone drove over it with a truck, and my head is wishing it were that lucky.

She opens the blinds, scoops up the empty liquor bottle, and starts getting out my exercise equipment. “Doc says you’re well enough to increase the weights
and
the reps, and that means we need to get started directly.”

I turn away, unable to face her goddamn cheerfulness.

“Let’s go!” she says. “Day’s a-wastin’.”

“I’m not doing anything.”

“Lordy, Mr. C, don’t you go spoiling my perfect day. I got myself a fancy hat, some fine new sheets, and there’ll be apples for dinner tonight!” She smacks me on the backside, and my temper explodes.

“Goddamn it. Can’t you people leave me in peace for one fucking day?”

She stands there in shocked silence, her eyes big, and then she tucks a loose strand of hair into her hat, her hand visibly shaking.

“Shit, Lucy. I’m sorry. It’s not you, it’s just…” I stare blankly out the window. “I just want to be left alone.”

“Nonsense. We’ll fix up that headache of yours, and you’ll be good as new.” She bustles over to the sink, then offers me three aspirin and a glass of water.

Her hands are still shaking, and I feel like a heel as I swallow her gift. “Thank you.”

“Now then,” she says, “let’s get you up and dressed so’s we can start exercising all those muscles Mindy keeps twittering about. Lord knows, Becky’s got her hands full with that one.”

She sets a new razor, shaving crème, and aftershave down on my nightstand and offers me the wheelchair. “After we finish with your strength training, I thought you might like to take a real shower.” When I don’t respond, she puts her hands on her hips and gives me a disapproving look. “Or I could just wash you up real good with that new scrub brush Becky brought back.”

Lani pokes her head in the door, looking like she had a rough night. “If he gives you any trouble, Lucy, wheel him over to Operations. They mentioned that they could use an extra set of eyes looking up serial numbers for all the nuts and bolts they hauled back.”

I bite back an inappropriate response and push myself up into a sitting position, too weak to fight the both of them.

“Now then,” Lucy says, straightening out her apron. “After you finish with your exercises, I could use your help putting away supplies.” She raises her eyebrows. “Unless’n you intend to carry on like a screen door on a submarine.”

“Enough,” I say, my tone a bit harsh. “I know what you’re trying to do, and I appreciate the thought, but I’ve had enough. I’d be grateful if you’d just leave me alone.”

“Well, bless your heart,” Lucy says as she lugs me into the wheelchair. “Everybody in here carrying some heartache, Mr. C, but that don’t mean you can just quit livin’. There’s still plenty of good to do here and no
w—
plenty of people deserving of your time and affection. And wallowing in the mud ain’t gonna help no one, least of all those that care about you.”

I glance up at her, feeling like a self-centered jerk.

“I’ll pick you up for dinner after I finish teaching,” Lani says. “And I signed you up to help the D-1s with homework this evening. Hope that’s okay?” She disappears before I can respond, but pokes her head back in a second later. “Love the hat, Lucy. It goes perfectly with that fine embroidery on your apron.”

And that’s how the next phase of my life begins.

∞

Shannon waves at me and bounds across the park, her backpack and blond ponytail bouncing. She plops down in the grass in front of my wheelchair and shrugs off her schoolbooks. “Hey, Mr. C. ’Sup?”

Ever since I found out that Isabel was dead, I haven’t had a minute to myself. After Lucy administers my grueling morning workout, I showe
r—
which is a luxury around here, and one that I appreciat
e—
and then I help her out around the clinic: folding laundry, washing dishes, and doing other simple tasks. I eat lunch in the cafeteria with the D-2s, and afterwards Becky wheels me out to the park during recess, ostensibly to “get some fresh air.”

I spend the afternoons looking through old internet reports on Doomsday and reading what passes for the news now. Lani picks me up for dinner at six, after which I spend the evenings helping the D-1s with math and science homework or teaching folks how to program a compute
r—
Shannon being my best student.

The nights are still long and painful, but I feel like all my wounds are healing.

I set down my book and wave. “Hi, Shannon. How was history class?”

“Same old, same old,” she says, slightly out of breath. “I don’t know why they make us learn about old white guys. It’s not like it matters now. Who cares about a bunch of dead presidents and their failed wars?”

“You got me there,” I say. “Any news on your petition to get a dog?”

“No, but Mom says she’ll vote in favor. She thinks having a dog in the Bub would be good for us. And Madders says they have a pregnant lassie in the Golden Gate bubble. He promised he’d fly up there to pick up a puppy if the Bub votes yes!”

“You mean a collie.”

She wrinkles up her forehead. “Collie?”

“Lassie is a dog’s name. Not a dog breed.”

“Yeah, sure, Mr. C. Lassie, collie, whatever. She’s the only one of her kind, so there’s not much sense in calling her a breed, now is there?”

I chuckle. “You’re absolutely right.”

“They bred her with a Herman Shepherd from the Ashland Bub, and they’re calling the puppies
sheplies
.”

I don’t bother to correct her. “That sounds doggone good.”

She laughs. “I’ll have to tell Mindy that one.” She hops up and moves my wheelchair six inches to the left. “You’re s’posed to stay in the Octagon, Mr. C, otherwise you won’t get any benefit from the sunlight, and you need calcitrio
l—
you know, vitamin
D—
for your bones to heal properly.” She looks up at one of a dozen transparent areas of quartz on the dome and then down at the circle of light on the grass. When she’s satisfied that I’m exactly in the middle, she plops back down in front of me.

“Do you know what happened to your father?” It’s something I’ve been meaning to ask Lani but haven’t gotten up the nerve to ask. “Did he not make it inside a bubble?”

“Oh, Mom never talks about him, but I think he died around the same time as her accident. In any case, I don’t think she minds being single. She has me and Lucy and the Millers, and with her work at the hospital and the classes she teaches, she doesn’t have much time for anyone else.” She steals a glance at me. “Except maybe you. And you know she’s never been carded...”

“Right.”

Her face lights up. “Hey, did you hear that someone in Japan is looking for surviving cats so she can store their DNA and maybe even breed some kittens? Mom says the gene pool isn’t large enough to sustain a population, even if there weren’t resource issues, but I think she’s wrong. Someday we’ll figure out how to go back Outside, and then we’ll open the vault in the Rockie
s—
and the one in Norway to
o—
and reconstruct a whole world full of lions and tigers and bears.”

“Oh my!” I add. “What’s in the vaults?”

“They’re gene banks, silly. Some buff scientists put them together when things started to go pudding. Mom says they have multiple copies of every kind of mammal, and enough human genotypes to repopulate the whole earth.”

Isabel’s project.
Mierda
, maybe she did manage to save mankind.

Shannon gives me a worried look. “You okay, Mr. C?”

“Yes, Shannon, I’m fine. Just thinking about all those creatures that landed in the pudding.” I take a deep breath and let it out, missing Iz. “Maybe someday you can conjure up a jaguarundi for me?”

“Sure thing.” Her face falls a bit. “If I knew what it was…”

“It’s a small cat from Costa Rica. You could probably find a picture of it on the net. It’s very clever, resourceful, and cut
e—
just like you.”

She blushes. “As soon as I find a photo of a jaguarundi, I’ll draw you a pictur
e—
to remind you of home.”

My heart skips a beat. “That would be awesome.”

She bites her lip. “I know I should have told you sooner, but I let Jake and Tomm
y—
and Jeremy to
o—
sign my card. Mom says I have to wait until I’m twenty-five to decide on which one first, and by that time you’ll be like fift
y—
so I hope you don’t mind that I didn’t wait for you.”

“Of course not,” I say with a smile. “They all seem like nice guys, and I’m sure they’re looking forward to practicing with you.”

She looks relieved.

“But,” I say. “I hope we can still be friends?”

“Of course, silly!” She tosses a handful of grass at me. “And you do know that Mom has the hots for you, right?”

Her assertion makes me uncomfortable, and I shift in my wheelchair.

“It’s true, Mr. C. You and Mom make a great couple, and she doesn’t mind at all that you can’t walk or don’t remember anything.”

“Good to know,” I say to fill the silence. “So, did you decide on your final project? Last I heard, your mother had vetoed your idea to breed rats for pets.”

“You mean I haven’t told you yet?” Her face lights up. “I’m working on fixing the old KRMs, you know, the Kirk-Hudson rebreather masks!”

“That sounds exciting.”

“Yeah, when I first told Mom, she was all ‘What a great idea, Shannon!’ and ‘Won’t that be fun to investigate?’” She shrugs. “But she doesn’t think I’ll actually come up with anything useful.”

“Perhaps she was just trying to protect you?”

“From what? Gluing my fingers together?”

I laugh. “You do have a point.”

“We have tons of KRMs in storag
e—
more than enough for everyone in the Bub.” She sits up straighter. “And I plan to fix them all.”

“Wow. If the masks are all broken, how did you rescue me?”

“Using a biosuit, of course.” She sits up straighter. “But we only have a few of those, and you have to have special training to use one.”

“What if something went wrong in the bubble and everyone had to evacuate?”

“Well, we’d smush people into emergency habitat
s—
but those don’t have much food or water, and you can only use them once.”

“Yikes. Sounds like you need to fix the rebreathers ASAP.”

“Or possibly sooner. Madder
s—
he’s the man who
actually
invented the KRM
s—
told me he once stayed Outside for
three whole months
while sealing the Lou. That’s the biodome in St. Louis.”

“
Mierda.
Why didn’t anyone try to fix them?”

“Everyone just assumed the filters were too old. I remember people who wore masks Outside started dropping like bugs, and as you can imagine, the news spread pretty quick. There were even some places that didn’t have biosuits, and they couldn’t go Outside anymore.”

“Oh, my.”

“And besides, masks are really hard to test.” She pantomimes breathing through her hands and then choking to death.

“Got it.”

“Madders forgot about them until I got the idea to do some testing, and he said there were tons of masks at Dulce Base, so maybe I could fix all of those too, and we could send them to the guys stuck inside.”

“Good idea.”

“Anyway, Madders was going to talk to the Kirks about it, but I don’t want their help. Mom says that Kirk woman didn’t do anything with the original mask. She just slapped her name on it so she could look important.”

“Sounds like our friend Mr. Kirk found himself the perfect woman.”

“He did? She doesn’t sound very nice to me.”

I shake my head. “I was just kidding, Shannon.” Sort of.

She gives me a strange look. “Have you met Mr. Kirk?”

“Nope, never had the pleasure.”

“Well, I may get to meet him soon. I’ve applied for an internship at C-Bay. That’s the biodome on the East Coast where they have the biggest university
and
the best hospital.”

“How would you get all the way to the East Coast?”

“Duh. In an airplane. Once I’m old enough, I’m going to fly to C-Bay and figure out a way for us to live Outsid
e—
people
and
animals. Maybe if you and Mom get married, you could come live there too.”

I laugh uncomfortably. “I already promised to marry someone else, Shannon.”

She crosses her arms and looks up at me, her jaw set. “But if you didn’t get married, then it doesn’t count!” She glances up at my face and then flushes. “Oops. That didn’t come out right. Mom says your girlfriend is, um, well you know...” She studies the grass around her feet.

“Yeah, I know.”

She takes off her sweater and stuffs it in her backpack. “I’m always putting my toes in my mouth. I try to say the right thing, but the words don’t come out right.”