Chapter Text
“Nicole, Meike, stand still!” Ms. Bauer snapped from her position at the front of the stage. “Why can’t you be like Eva? Look at how still she’s standing. That’s how you’ll have to stand if you’re at all serious about being in this choir.”
Eva twisted her fingers together between the pleats of her skirt. She pulled, and pulled, until the knuckles on both her hands hurt. It made the prickling on the back of her neck go away.
“Now, we’ll proceed with the prepared song section.” Ms. Bauer rapped her baton on the music stand. “You’ll be called back alphabetically by last name. In the meantime, we’ll work on group warmups out here.”
Oh, no. Alphabetic order was the worst; it took so long to get to her. Her knuckles hurt.
It was fine. She was fine. She lifted her chin and stood straight like Grandma always said. She was a big girl now, and music was pulling her, like how Peter pulled her on the wagon when she was really little. She wanted to sing, so she was going to sing her best and get into the choir. That was what Father always said. You showed your best work, and then if it was good enough, you got what you wanted.
“Deep breaths, children. In through the mouth–let it fill your lungs, expand your chest from the bottom up. Straighten your back, Stefan, you can’t breathe correctly if you’re slouching.”
She breathed. Everything else went away. She beamed at Ms. Bauer. This was going to be so fun.
Her previous conversations with other speculative extraterrestrial biologists had painted a picture of a brilliant, impatient young man with an ego a mile wide. Her team had failed to dig up anything from his long-abandoned Facebook and deserted Twitter. His professional history suggested that teaching middle school had begun as a survival mechanism and transmuted into a job that he was excellent at, if the parents’ comments on Facebook and the school portal about how great Dr. Grace’s classes could be trusted. But nothing, obviously, could prepare you for meeting another person like doing it.
“He’s not…exactly what I expected.” Steve commented to Carl behind her, in a low enough tone that he probably thought she couldn’t hear him.
“I dunno, I think it makes sense,” Carl murmured back. “He’s got that mad scientist energy. Like Robin Williams in Flubber.”
That was an extremely apt comparison. Point to Carl.
Everyone else had already lost focus and left the room, but maintaining focus was her job. It was, in fact, her only current job. She’d spent the five months since the ArcLight launch developing potential next step scenarios, but nothing could or would be decided until Doctor Grace’s analysis had produced a result. There was no point.
It was aggravating. She’d been going nonstop for one year, two months and five days, and now suddenly she had slammed into a wall.
And the only person beyond that wall was a blond man whose yellow raincoat had already fallen off the hook he’d hung it on. She’d gone looking for someone who disrupted a UNESCO conference, and found—by the state of his classroom—an expert on paper maché.
That was the appeal, she reminded herself, taking a breath. Someone with a different path. Adaptable, unorthodox. She was just experiencing the worst part of being the organizer, not the expert.
She forced the breath out. Sitting here stewing wasn’t doing her any favors. The tablet readouts from the equipment in the lab hadn’t changed, and for the most part they actually meant very little to her now that it had been confirmed that the sample wasn’t radioactive. There was no point in watching thirty-six angles of camera coverage when she was sitting right here and had eyes. If there was an issue with Doctor Grace’s air or the containment of the room, there were techs standing by outside. Another thing she couldn’t help with.
“Carl, Steve,” She said without turning around, but heard their suits rustling as they snapped to attention, “Please feel free to go outside and take a break with the others. I’ll remain here.”
“Ma’am–” Steve started.
“I’ll remain here. If Doctor Grace wants to cause me physical harm, I should have about five minutes of airlock cycling to retreive my taser.” Could she just have some alone time? She heard them shuffle around, and then they left. Thank God.
It was interesting, actually. Watching a scientist work. She’d been directing scientists and engineers for years now, but usually they did their work in high-security zones that she didn’t even have time to visit. He was very focused. It was difficult to square the man working in the hazmat suit with the rumpled one who just a few hours ago had told her a crochet ball was lava.
There was a pleasant economy of movement about the science, like the ballet dancers she used to watch on TV. The way he moved from machine to machine, rifling through the supplies, rearranging drawers, probably for optimiziation. In short, an expert.
She thought for a moment, then pulled her tablet closer and opened up the copy of Voyage au centre de la Terre she’d downloaded yesterday. If she didn’t read she’d think, and there was no point in exhausting herself when she had seventy-one hours of this ahead of her.
“Alright, Eva, the meeting shouldn’t be too long this time.” Her mother hustled her into the dusty library of the Electrician’s Union House. “The agenda is mostly party updates and deciding what we’re going to do for May First, so just stay here and amuse yourself like always, okay?”
“Renate!” Someone called from behind them, and they both turned around. Eva didn’t know the woman’s name, but everyone knew her mother, since she was one of the head engineers at the power plant. She looked like women her grandmother called ‘unkempt’; her babushka was falling off, and one of her stockings was sliding down. She was also—Eva pressed her lips together so she didn’t wrinkle her nose and get yelled at—dragging a kid with her. A boy.
“Renate, is this Eva?” The woman skidded to a stop in front of them. She bent down to talk to her. Yuck. “Hi, Eva. It’s so nice to meet you! I’m Ms. Lowenhaar, and this is Kristian. Kristian, say hello to Eva.”
They stared at each other.
“Renate, could Eva watch him during the meeting? I know it’s inconvenient, but my sister-in-law—well, you know.”
“Of course Eva can watch him.” Her mother’s voice was warm, and firm. “She’s very responsible, and good with children. Right, Eva?”
She nodded. She wasn’t so sure she was good with children; they were small and sticky, so she mostly just told them to stop being sticky and then towered over them until they complied. She was responsible…though, wasn’t she still technically a child? Anyway, whatever she thought didn’t matter when Mom took a tone like that.
“Thank you so much.” Ms. Lowenhaar pushed Kristian towards her. “I appreciate it, really. Let’s go in to the meeting?”
“Of course, Irina. Anytime. We have to look out for each other, right?” They both walked off, her mother’s heels and Ms. Lowernhaar’s boots echoing off the floor.
She looked at Kristian. He looked back at her.
“How old are you?” He asked, finally, raising his chin defiantly.
“I’m ten.” She crossed her arms. It was basically true; her birthday was in five days. He wrinkled his face up.
“You’re ten? Why are you so tall? I thought you were a teenager.”
“I’m tall because I stand straight.” She rolled her eyes. “You would be taller too, if you didn’t slouch.” He wrinkled his face harder but straightened his back. “How old are you?”
“I’m…eight.” He slouched again. Fine. Good, even. If they were the same age he’d probably argue with her more.
“Well, then you better listen to me or I’ll tell your mom all about how horrible you were.” She rolled her eyes and turned on her heel, striding into the library. “I don’t care what you do, just don’t mess up any of the books or they won’t let us use this room again, and then we’ll have to either sit in the meeting or do nothing in the hall.”
“Aren’t we just going to do nothing in here?” He followed her anyway, looking around. “It’s kind of gross.”
“Yeah, it is gross. But at least there’s books. Would you rather have dead bugs and dust and no books?”
“I don’t really like reading.” His voice got fainter as she rounded a shelf.
“Well, I love reading.” She peeked at him through the books. “So if you leave me alone to read, I’ll tell your mom you were amazing, and you can just do whatever you want.”
“I don’t think I can do whatever I want.” He shifted. “I think I can read or sit and do nothing.”
“Don’t you have a ball with you or something? One of those little ones?”
“No.” He scuffed his feet on the floor. “I always lose them.”
She sighed. Fine, she would take pity on him; it probably wasn’t his fault he didn’t have good taste. “Stay here.” She told him, and then walked further back into the shelves. Party books, history books…there, the children’s section. She tapped her foot, perusing for a second, then grabbed one that seemed fine for boys like him and headed back. She stopped along the way to heft one of the nice books from the world literature section, and then walked back towards the front.
“Here. You can read this.”
He took it, skeptically. “About the Silly Mouse? This is a baby book.”
“Fine, then you can find one you want to read by yourself.” She strode over to the reading bench pushed up against the wall and sat down, crossing her legs and opening her own book on her lap. She was about to get to her favorite part!
And then she heard footsteps. He sat down next to her.
“What are you reading?” He leaned over. She snapped the book shut and held it away from him.
“I’m reading a big book. It’s really long, and has lots of big words in it, and it’s all about imaginary history,, so if you don’t like reading you won’t like it.”
“The cover’s really pretty, though. And that picture you were looking at was so cool!”
Ugh. Yeah, it was cool, and that was why it was hers. “There are a bunch of other books like it on the world literature shelves. You can go get one of them.”
“Come on, just let me share yours!” He grabbed at it and she stood up, stepping away from him and the bench.
“I’m already over halfway through! I’m not re-starting the story for you. Go get another one, and if I finish this one while we’re here, then you can have it.”
“There’s no way you’re going to finish that!”
“How do you know? I’m a fast reader.”
“That’s not fair!” He whined, jumping up to reach for the book again. “I want to read that one now!”
“You can read another one while I read this one, and if you don’t I’m going to tell your mother you were a horrible goblin!” She snapped, holding the book over her head so he couldn’t reach it. He stopped jumping for it and squeezed his face up again—then decided that her threat was genuine, and pouted off into the shelves.
She put the book down to fix her blouse and her hair, then perched back on the bench and traced over the illustration of the dinosaurs fighting each other. Such a cool story, and they went to so many places—Hamburg, Copenhagen, Iceland, and then all of the amazing caverns underground. The world was so old and big, wasn’t it? There were so many places to go. Jules Verne wasn’t even German, he was French. France was close, compared to a lot of places. It would probably be easier to go to Moscow, though.
She drifted into the book, like a stick thrown into a stream.
“Eva…”
“Eva..!”
“Eva! Are you ignoring me?”
She jumped—Mom was in the doorway. “Sorry, Mom! I didn’t hear you. Let me put the book back.” She got up lightly and re-shelved it, then trotted over to her mother, who was wearing that funny smile she always had after one of these meetings.
“It’s a library, dear. You’ve been re-reading that book for ages, do you want to just borrow it?”
She shrugged. “No, I like reading it here. I read other books at home.”
“Alright, whatever you say.”
Ms. Lowenhaar appeared behind mother. “And how was Kristian? Thank you so much again for watching him.”
He was still on the chair he had settled on in the room, but she felt his eyes on her back. “Kristian was fine.” She said, shrugging. “We just read the entire time.”
“Oh, that’s wonderful!” She gushed. “He hates reading normally. You’re a sweetheart, Eva. Renate, I really can’t thank you enough.” She pushed past them to gush some more over her son acutually reading something. Eva looked at her mother, who flashed another stiff smile and then turned to leave. She fell into step beside her as they pushed out with the rest of the Union members into the chilly spring day.
“Thank you for not making a fuss, Eva. I know you enjoy that library because you get some alone time.”
She didn’t respond; just reached for her hand, and gave it a little squeeze.
“Well,” Her head snapped up at his voice. “I’m pretty sure it’s a cell.”