The One Tree of Luna Page 6

  “You should leave,” the boy told her. His voice was full of tension and anger. Annogi realized that he kept his back to her and that he was holding something with one hand behind his back. His nerves left him shaking and Annogi caught a glimpse of a handle dangling behind him.

  An axe? Annogi wondered. But where could anyone get an axe on the station? And just as soon as she asked the question, Annogi had an answer — at any of the fire posts in the station. There was one just outside the elevator that came up from earthside.

  Those fire posts were all alarmed. Annogi knew because her ‘father’ was the head of security. But Annogi also knew how to deactivate those alarms. Clearly the teen must have done the same, or the fire alarm would be blaring all over the station.

  Aside from fire or catastrophe, there was only one use for an axe — destruction.

  A rush of terror set Annogi’s heart racing. I cannot fear, she told herself. She took a deep breath and let it out slowly, letting her fear go with it as Tanuro had taught her.

  She saw that she could escape through the airlock, that the teen had actually left room for her to do so.

  No. I choose differently.

  “Hi,” she said looking up at the teen who towered above her, “I’m Annogi, who are you?”

  As she spoke, she walked toward the boy, not so close as to spook him but close enough that it would be hard for him to strike her with the axe.

  As she looked up at him and saw him glance nervously down at her, then out the porthole, Annogi knew that wasn’t his intention.

  Tanuro Nakashima stared at his computer screen in anger and amazement. How had she done it?

  When he’d checked the computer logs in the morning, Tanuro had noticed the record of abnormal activity. His suspicions aroused, he spent the rest of the morning tracking the activity down — and discovered that Annogi had hacked the station’s security system. She had broken into the system’s time-locked database and had read several files — files that Tanuro could not access himself — and had then meticulously covered her tracks.

  In fact, as Tanuro discovered, Annogi’s intrusion would have been completely undetected except that someone else accessed the same part of the database at nearly the same time — someone who was permitted under the time-lock protocols.

  This person had used the protocols as a springboard for a hack into the security system’s innards. As Tanuro followed the hacker’s assault he became more and more worried. The hacker had accessed engineering data on the station. The hacker was looking for physical weaknesses in the station. He was looking for the one place where he could destroy the station — and the space elevator.

  “Security Alert Level Two,” Tanuro had called calmly on the security network. He was calm because he was trained that way, he was calm because he willed it, he was calm because panic would accomplish nothing.

  Level Two meant that an assault on the station was possible. Throughout the station, airtight doors were sealed, inspections increased, non-essential personnel assigned to the next free elevator — either up or down.

  Tanuro returned to his pursuit of the second hacker. In fifteen minutes he had located the source of the assault. In twenty minutes he had a name — Chris Halleck.

  Chris Halleck was an intelligent teenager, just turned eighteen. Eighteen, the number caught Tanuro’s attention. Chris’ eighteenth birthday was yesterday. The boy was now a man, was able to vote, to stand on his own and — what else?

  Tanuro frowned in thought. Why would someone use his eighteenth birthday to hack into a liftport station’s security system? Why not hack at a younger age, when the penalties for such intrusions were so much lower? What Halleck had done was a felony, he could lose all the privileges he’d just earned.

  Eighteen, Tanuro mused. Legal age.

  Of course!

  Tanuro’s fingers flew over the keyboard as request after request streamed into the security system. Each answer brought another query until finally Tanuro understood.

  And when he did, calmly, for there was no room for panic, Tanuro hit the emergency button.

  Chris Halleck was a test-tube baby. His mother’s ovaries were infertile, so his father’s sperm was combined with that of a donor’s egg to produce a healthy baby boy. Healthy in body but not in mind. Tanuro’s quick scan of the boy’s records portrayed a loving childhood which was shattered by his birth-parents’ divorce when he was fourteen. At fourteen — no coincidence — he tried to commit suicide. His school records displayed the decline in grades Tanuro associated with an increasingly bitter and depressed youth. At age eighteen, Chris was allowed to know the identity of the egg donor.

  The egg donor was the famous hero and astronaut, Amanda Brown.

  Tanuro tapped into the UN population database and waited while it determined the location of Christopher Halleck, aged eighteen.

  “It’s alright, there’s nothing to worry about,” Annogi’s voice piped up over the security channel. Tanuro frowned, wondering why his adopted daughter would so wantonly flaunt station protocols — he had taught her better.

  Tanuro’s eyes widened in sudden apprehension — he had taught her better.

  “Security Alert Level One,” Tanuro announced softly, raising the safety guard on a button that he never expected to use and pressing down upon the button.

  “The station is under attack,” he added. Tanuro swallowed hard and took a deep steadying breath. Annogi was his daughter; he knew her, he heard the message in her words and knew that she had told him that there was nothing to worry about. He would trust her.

  “An agent is in place and will affect apprehension.”

  An agent. His daughter.

  Tanuro took another deep steadying breath, forcing his heart to calm down, telling himself that his panic would do nothing for his daughter — for Amanda Brown’s daughter — yet all the while memories of Amanda’s death, toddler Annogi’s screams and Tanuro’s breaking heart pounded inside his skull.

  Chris Halleck jumped when the flashing alert light strobed and the alert sounded.

  “It’s alright, there’s nothing to worry about,” Annogi said both to him and to her open station microphone.

  “What is it?” he demanded, his voice harsh, breath jagged.

  “Security test,” Annogi replied calmly. She glanced over at the hatch and saw that it was closing. She looked back at the teen, hiding her relief in another question, “Do you have the time?”

  When the blond boy looked at her incredulously, Annogi continued, “They do random tests but I’ve been trying to find a pattern.”

  “A pattern?” the boy repeated dully.

  “Sure,” Annogi replied with a shrug. “I’d like to avoid getting caught out when there’s a test going on.” She gave the boy a conspiratorial look and leaned closer, whispering innocently, “Sometimes I like to sneak away from my father. With these security tests, he notices when I’m missing.

  “I don’t like to get in trouble, do you?” she finished, looking right up into his eyes.

  Reluctantly Chris shook his head.

  Annogi smiled at him. Her smile was genuine, she was well within his reach, well within the arc of any axe swing. The teen would now have to step back if he wanted to strike at her, a motion which would give Annogi plenty of advance warning. In fact, anything the teen might want to do with the axe would require him first to move away from her.

  “Is this your first time on the station?” Annogi asked, glancing toward the flashing lights.

  Chris nodded.

  “I figured,” Annogi said. “They run the tests so often that even regular tourists notice pretty quick.”

  “They do?”

  “Sure,” Annogi said, gesturing to the ports on the outer edge of the Observation Room. “Space is right there and you never know when there might be another accident —”

  “This is where Amanda Brown died, isn’t it?” Chris asked suddenly, staring around at the pictures lining the walls.

  The q
uestion startled Annogi. She nodded reflexively. Chris’ jaw tightened at her response and he moved the axe from behind his back.

  “What are you doing with that?” Annogi asked, feigning surprise. Her eyes narrowed. “Did you steal that?”

  “Yes,” Chris told her.

  “You set off the alarm?” Annogi asked, eyes wide. She knew better, knew he must have disabled the alarm. That told her that he had spent a lot of time planning. But she asked the question because she needed him to continue to underestimate her. She could tell that he saw her as harmless, a little girl.

  And she was. Both harmless and a little girl. Trapped in Observation Room Four with a deranged teenager.

  “Turn your weaknesses into strengths,” Tanuro had told her long ago. Annogi had never understood that — until now.

  “No,” Chris said, “I didn’t. I got past the alarm system.”

  “What are you going to do with the axe?”

  “You should leave,” he told her, gesturing toward the door with the axe. “If you close the door, it’ll act as an airlock.”

  “An airlock?” Annogi repeated. She looked at the axe, asking in the role of a little girl, “Are you going to use that here?”

  “My mother died here,” Chris told her in a flat tone. He gestured again to the door. “They watched her die from the far side of that airlock.

  “Now I’m going to die here, too,” he finished solemnly.

  “Amanda Brown?” Annogi asked, her act forgotten in her shock.

  “They say her picture is here somewhere,” Chris said, glancing around at the pictures placed below the viewing portals. “She died because —”

  “Because there was a stray bolt which breached the viewport,” Annogi finished for him, her voice as flat as his. Startled, Chris glanced down at her. The memories came back, the images of Tanuro as his face turned to stone replayed in her mind, only now, at ten, Annogi could see that Tanuro’s stone-faced look was because his heart was breaking. He had loved her, Amanda Brown. And he had watched her die. Annogi blinked rapidly to clear the tears of compassion which threatened to flood her. How was Tanuro feeling now, with Amanda Brown’s daughter in the same situation?

  The slip of paper in Annogi’s back pocket was suddenly immensely more important than it had been minutes before.

  “I was going to visit her the week after,” Chris continued, ignoring Annogi. His face took on the image of a happy eight year-old. “I was all ready to see my real mom.”

  “I was three,” Annogi said. “I was in the Observation Room.”

  “You were?” Chris asked, suddenly aware of Annogi once more. “She saved you?”

  “Yes,” Annogi said with a sob she couldn’t control. She caught his eyes with hers, her tears suddenly welling up. “Our mother died to save me.”

  “Our mother?” Chris repeated. His blue eyes were troubled as her words registered.

  Annogi withdrew the slip of paper from her back pocket. She kept her thumb over part of it, on purpose, but extended it to Chris, her other hand reaching for the axe.

  “Our mother,” she said again, her voice firm once more as she grabbed the axe, “would not want this room, of all rooms, harmed. She gave her life for it.”

  Chris didn’t even notice himself relinquishing the axe as he read the printout.

  “And she wouldn’t want you hurting yourself, either,” Annogi added, sending the axe spinning slowly away from them. She turned back to face Chris. “And I don’t want you hurting yourself, either, brother.”

  “Brother?” Chris echoed softly.

  Annogi nodded and moved away from the viewport, gesturing at the picture below.

  “I often come here,” Annogi told him a little shyly. Chris looked down at the picture and crouched down beside Annogi, suddenly smaller than she was. She looked down at him and gently touched his shoulder. “I was mad all these years, angry that she was gone, that I had nothing left to remember her by —”

  “You too?”

  Annogi nodded. “But I’m not angry any more.”

  “No?”

  “No,” Annogi replied firmly. She gestured to the viewport and the stars beyond it. “She left me everything to remember her by. She left us this spaceport, the elevator, and she left what she loved most of all — the stars.”

  Still crouched, Chris looked out the viewport over Annogi’s shoulder. He could see the brilliant blue Earth below and above he could see the faint twinkling of uncountable stars.

  “We can’t take that away from her, Chris,” Annogi said. “Clear?”

  “Clear,” Chris agreed, looking up at his little sister.

  Tanuro opened the airlock. With a glance behind to indicate that the follow-on security officer should retrieve the axe, he kicked off to the two children huddled by the viewport.

  No, not children, Tanuro corrected himself. Either of them.

  The import of the past twenty minutes weighed down upon him. His ten year-old daughter had disarmed a full-grown man with only her words.

  Annogi saw him and turned to follow his glide toward them. She touched Chris gently on the shoulder and pointed at Tanuro.

  “This is the man who raised me after our mother died,” Annogi said as Tanuro reached them. Tanuro nodded in recognition, his heart frozen by her words. Annogi saw his reaction but continued to Chris, “He is the head of station security. He is a just man. You broke a number of station rules by what you did, you’ll have to accept the consequences.”

  Chris nodded in acceptance, his face grim.

  “But I’ll ask him to understand that you are my brother,” Annogi said. “And I’ll come visit you if I can.”

  “If you can?” Chris repeated.

  “My body adapted to zero-gee,” Annogi explained. “I can’t go earthside.”

  “Will you call me?”

  “Of course,” Annogi replied with a grin. “We have a lot of catching up to do.” She turned to the viewport for a moment. “And there are all those stars.”

  Chris nodded, his eyes bright with the light of the stars. To Tanuro he said, “I’m ready.”

  Tanuro nodded brusquely and gestured to two security men who led Chris away.

  When they were alone, Tanuro turned to Annogi. “I am very proud of you.”

  “I hacked into the security system,” Annogi confessed, pulling the slip of paper once more from her pocket. “I wanted to know who my real father was.”

  “So you can live with him?” Tanuro asked, his voice devoid of emotion. Once again the images of Amanda Brown’s death floated in his eyes.

  “Yes,” Annogi said. “Always and forever.”

  “Very well, it shall be as you wish.”

  “This is his name,” Annogi said, handing him the slip of paper. “He is my real father.”

  “He is a lucky man,” Tanuro admitted, taking the paper from her.

  “No, I am,” Annogi said, flinging herself into Tanuro’s arms and hugging him fiercely.

  Tanuro was shocked and dismayed but he instinctively hugged Annogi back, even while trying to read the name on the paper. And when he did, he gave a sob and clutched her all the more tightly, tears flowing for the first time in seven years as the ice that was his heart melted.

  The name on the paper was: Tanuro Nakashima.

  Men!

  In a change of tone, Men! is a humorous piece.

  It’s a twist on the old saying: In order to catch a prince, you have to kiss a thousand toads.

  Men! The only three-letter swear-word. They’re all the same — sweet nothings and then creeping away in the morning.

  At twenty-nine, I’d pretty much given up any hope of finding an adult male. I was just looking for someone who might treat me better than dirt.

  Probably Paris wasn’t such a good place to start but I’d won a free all-expense paid vacation and I’d never been there. I knew enough French to get around but I was very clearly an American. It didn’t matter what clothing or perfume I wore, I had that indef
inable Yank-ness about me.

  After the first full day, I realized that the only men worth looking at were the statues in the Louvre. The Parisian males were as willing to give me a leer as a wave and everything in their bearing seemed out of place in any self-respecting shark.

  I’d tired of the night club scene in my mid-twenties and I wasn’t about to start in a city where I couldn’t understand the language. Instead, I found a nice quiet restaurant and contemplated indulging in some of the best cuisine in the world. I pored over the menu, trying to translate it back to something familiar. A veal cordon bleu would be nice or a decent boeuf bourguignon or perhaps some chicken Marsala in a decent French red wine sauce.

  “The Marsala is not worth it here,” a voice spoke up behind me. I twisted in my chair, ready to show this Parisian some good old New Jersey slang — and stopped.

  I think it was the eyes that did it. They were green. The sort of green a person just melts in to. Green eyes, jet black hair, slicked back to reveal a swarthy complexion, a ready smile and a chin that the Masters of the Louvre would have warred over.

  His accent wasn’t French and it wasn’t American, either. There was a touch of English in it — with the crispness but also a softer sound … Italian, maybe?

  “If you would, permit me,” the man said, bowing from the waist and then moving around to stand at the chair opposite me.

  “I’m – I’m –” flattered but of course I couldn’t tell him. “I’m expecting someone,” I finished lamely.

  He glanced around the restaurant and smiled knowingly. “But, of course! And what sort of a man would leave such a pretty wife —”

  “I’m not married,” I said. I should have shut up, I knew it. But … he was nice. He was not just handsome, he was cut — I could see that much from the muscles on his biceps peering out from his stylish short-sleeve shirt. Was it silk? I took a longer glance at his outfit and tried not to look impressed as I imagined its cost.

  The immaculate white silk shirt was hand-tailored, I could tell from the stitching. Oh, sorry! I forgot to say — I’m a fashion designer. Men’s fashions, as you might have guessed. The vacation was an award for the best portfolio of the year.