Fiction River: Moonscapes Read Online Free PDF Page B

twenty-six, he knew, trim and professional in a dove gray business suit, her dark hair pulled straight back from her high forehead. She wore a subtle perfume that smelled faintly of fresh-baked cookies and reminded Nick of hot chocolate stirred with a stick of cinnamon and topped off with a dash of nutmeg sprinkled on top of the miniature marshmallows.
    The recruiter had been one of his kids in the days before his retirement from his previous line of work, and she’d always been good. Emily, her name was, although today she’d introduced herself as Ms. Wells.
    She didn’t remember him, of course. Nick didn’t feel slighted. That was the way of the world, and he’d gotten used to it.
    “How do you even know about the program?” she asked. “We’re very discrete.”
    Nick expected the question. “A friend of a friend,” he said, which wasn’t a lie. Ms. Wells worked for Mr. Thrusher, who Nick knew as Alex, and Mr. Thrusher worked for a conglomerate owned by Mrs. Parker, the widow of Lincoln Parker, whom Nick had known as Linc.
    Linc had dreamed of living on the moon when he was a little boy, and he had been a good little boy indeed. Nick had done what he could, giving Linc the kind of yearly gifts that encouraged him to look beyond the boundaries his well-meaning parents and teachers tried to place on his imagination.
    Just because his kids eventually outgrew him didn’t mean Nick lost track. He knew that Linc had grown into a man who took it upon himself to do the kind of things governments no longer seemed capable of doing. Today Nick sat in a conference room on the twenty-ninth floor of the tallest office building in Seattle, a building that owed its existence to the force of Lincoln Parker’s dreams.
    Mrs. Parker, whose name was Felicity, hadn’t been a good little girl, but she’d grown into an honorable woman. Her husband had never given up his desire to go to the moon. Mrs. Parker intended to honor him by taking his ashes to the moon as a permanent part of the first colony established there—a moon base sponsored by no government or agency, affiliated with no religion or set of dogmatic beliefs, but spearheaded instead by Lincoln Parker’s vast wealth.
    Officially, the project didn’t exist.
    “You know, the program is the first of its kind,” the recruiter said. “We expect conditions will be harsh. Perhaps you’d be better suited for...”
    She let the thought trail off, as if she were embarrassed she’d made assumptions based on his white hair and beard and the round firmness of his belly.
    Nick’s smile grew wider. He was familiar with harsh conditions. He’d survived cold so deep it froze his breath and blizzards so fierce he needed help to navigate his way through the howling snow.
    “I’d be right at home,” he said.
    She wasn’t convinced, but she hadn’t said no. Nick wondered if she didn’t have the authority to say no—especially not to those people who’d discovered the program through a friend of a friend—and instead relied on gentle persuasion. Nick had been rejected by Wal-Mart. He wasn’t so easily dissuaded.
    “This program is all about innovation,” he said. “Be different. Innovative. Take a chance on the old guy.”
    Three weeks later, after a battery of physical tests and psychological evaluations that would have put the pinch-faced manager of the used bookstore to shame, that’s exactly what Lincoln Parker’s widow did.
     
    ***
     
    Nick sat in a comfortable chair in a private jet headed toward Florida. He imagined it would be the last comfortable chair he’d sit in for quite some time.
    A little patch of sunlight managed to make its way through the window next to Nick. The jet had lifted off from Seattle before dawn, and Nick had enjoyed watching the sun rise above the horizon as they headed east. Most of the flights in his life had been at night, and the warmth of the sun on his shoulder loosened his old bones. Although he’d still be able to see the sun