Mom left three days later.
Not the program . . . she left the planet to head up to do her review of the mechanical issues on the transit vehicles. Colpeys apparently took her threats and demands seriously. He did, however, finesse the schedule for other things so that the launch date would be pushed back only two days instead of four.
Mom could pretty much take each of those transit vehicles apart, down to the last nut and screw, and then put them back together again. Perfectly. She was the absolute queen of type-A detail-oriented control freaks. If she were going to check your homework, you’d better not have fudged the math or forgotten to dot an i. Been there, done that, have the psychological scars. Believe me, you didn’t ever want her to give you a long, unsmiling stare and then tell you that she was “disappointed in you.” Much better to be devoured by piranhas, and it would hurt less.
In orbit the assembly crews had everything bolted together up at the Lucky Eight, including the fuel stages. Don’t get me wrong, those guys were top engineers, and they’d all logged a lot of hours working on the ISS, on satellites, setting up the mining rigs, repairing the Hubble and other telescopes . . . but Mom didn’t trust anyone else. Not completely. She took her handpicked technical crew up there to make sure every rivet, weld, seam, and connection was triple-checked and perfect by her standards. Like I said, God help anyone who made even the smallest mistake.
The day before Mom left, Nirti Sikarwar arrived. Not counting Sophie, Nirti was the fourth teen on our mission and the last person to join the colony training team here in Amsterdam. She’d been mourning her grandmother, who’d been very sick for a long time. The funeral was two days ago, but when she found me in the gym she gave me a huge smile and a hug. We sat and talked for hours.
She told me about her grandmother, who’d been a pediatric surgeon for forty-two years and then a teacher at a medical college in India. Then we talked about my mom and what she was going into orbit to do.
It was a good, long talk. About people, and about heroes. About sacrifice and commitment. I told her about the Hart Foundation and she told me about the Sikarwar College Fund she’d started to give girls from poor families a chance to go to college.
“Isn’t it weird that we’re making the world a better place by leaving it?” she said. It was intended as a joke, but neither of us laughed. It’s not that the conversation depressed me or anything.
I gave her another hug and drifted off to find my folks.
I had only one more chance to be alone with Mom before her flight to the launch center. It was in the hall leading to the back door where her car was waiting.
“You’ll be careful up there, right?” I asked, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say.
I caught the tiniest flicker of an expression that looked like annoyance. Maybe I was reading it wrong.
“Of course I’ll be careful, Tristan,” she said. “I’ve done this before, you know.”
That was true enough—Mom had logged more hours in space than anyone but the two pilots. Which didn’t matter a bit to me.
“I know, but—”
She cut me off. “Tristan, you’re sixteen, not six. Please try and act it.”
Ouch.
“No,” I insisted, “I’m not being a needy little kid.”
“Then what?”
“Um . . .”
She straightened. “Ah. You’ve been surfing the Internet again, reading those conspiracy stories about the Neo-Luddites.”
“It’s not all theories. They were saying on the news that the Neo-Luddite extremists have been making threats again.”
“Specific threats or the usual vague stuff?” asked Mom.
“Um . . . vague. But scary.”
“Don’t dwell on it,” she said. “After what happened to Izzy’s house and everywhere else they’ve really stepped up the security, and a lot of law enforcement agencies around the world are working on this. Your job is the mission. We all need you to become the best possible mechanical engineer. Which means it’s on you to get better than me and to reach that level at a younger age than I did. We’ve had this conversation too many times. Pay attention to your studies. I left you some, um, problems to solve back in our apartment. Concentrate on that and your mission training and leave the politics to the people who enjoy that kind of crap.”
Then Mom smiled—half-cold, half-loving—hugged me for two seconds, kissed my cheek, turned, and left. As she went through the door she said, over her shoulder, “I’ll see you soon.”
And she was gone, just like that.
I tried really hard not to let her words hit me like I was six. Though, maybe sixteen wasn’t as old as she thought it was. While I stood there I hated her, loved her, needed her, and never wanted to see her again. All in equal amounts.
Two things occurred to me, though. The first was that she changed the subject rather than actually make a statement about the Neo-Luddites. And the other thing was that she didn’t meet my eyes when she did that.