2080
The air inside the bus was warm and stuffy, with a slight undertone of chemical cleaner and vomit. Gina wished they hadn't banned cars in the city, not that she would've been old enough to drive one anyway. But it was nice to fantasize about not being forced to ride the bus anymore.
"Do you know what you're gonna be on Halloween?" she asked Helen, to distract herself from her nausea.
They were slowly rolling towards the outskirts of town, where Sally Virdon had bought a small house - or rented it, Gina wasn't quite sure. She once had heard Mrs. Virdon mutter about ANSA denying her Mr. Virdon's pension as long as the Daedalus mission was still underway, because as long as they were searching for him, he wasn't presumed dead. So maybe she didn't have enough money to buy a house.
On the other hand, Mrs. Virdon was a scientist. They did have a good income, didn't they?
"An astronaut!" Helen declared, jolting Gina out of her ruminations.
She sighed. That answer had been so predictable. Ever since Helen had been old enough to reject the cute dragon costume, she had insisted on going trick-or-treating as an astronaut, which upset both her brother and her mother, though probably for different reasons. It was unlikely that Gina would be able to convince Helen to try a different costume for a change, but they still had two weeks to work on that problem.
"Why not go as a scientist?" Gina asked as they climbed out of the bus. "Scientists are totally part of a spaceship crew."
Helen thought about that for a moment. "But I wanna be an astronaut," she said finally. "I want to go find Daddy! With Chris!"
Gina had never known Mr. Virdon in real life, but from the pictures and videos that Chris had shown her, he seemed to have been a very nice man. Still, some days she wanted to scream if she heard his name, or "daddy," one more time.
"Okay, we need to see if your costume still fits, then," she said, resigned. It was no use trying to talk Helen out of it - if the Virdon siblings shared one trait, it was their stubbornness.
She pushed open the front door, her thoughts already on the homework she still had to do - she could as well get a good part of it done here, until Chris came home from his private lesson with Hasslein, and took over - and on what she'd make Helen for dinner. Mrs. Virdon only came home after Gina had left, and Gina never knew if Chris thought of making Helen more than one of his disgusting peanutbutter-and-cheese sandwiches.
"Mommy!" Helen let out a delighted squeal and raced into the kitchen.
Mrs. Virdon bent down to pick her up. "Hello, doodles!"
There was a lot of hugging and kissing, and "Mommy I'm gonna be an astronaut on Halloween!", and Gina was already halfway out of the door, when Mrs. Virdon called after her. "Gina, wait! Just a second, please!"
Gina froze, her hand already on the doorknob. After her first moment of shock, she had decided that meeting Chris' mom at such an unusual time was ominous enough to justify a hasty retreat, but apparently, she hadn't retreated hastily enough.
She turned around to Mrs. Virdon, who had put Helen on the ground again, and tried to smile. "Actually, I have test tomorrow, and I haven't really prepared for it yet..."
"I won't keep you for long, promise." Mrs. Virdon smiled at her, completely nice and harmless, and Gina gulped and closed the door, and reluctantly returned to the kitchen.
"Let me just make a sandwich for Lennie, and switch on her favorite show," Mrs. Virdon said, and began to putter around the kitchen, "it'll only take a minute."
Gina slowly sat down at the kitchen table and watched her make a sandwich with quick, efficient movements. It really didn't take longer than a minute before the score of Bridge of Stars blared from the living room, but the minute was long enough to make Gina break out into a cold sweat all over as she contemplated what could've prompted Mrs. Virdon to go home from work so early that she'd catch her when she brought Helen home.
There was only one explanation: Helen had told her mother the big secret, just as Chris had predicted. Gina wanted to kick herself for taking her to the institute. Chris would kill her, if Mrs. Virdon didn't kill her first...
"Sorry for letting you wait." Mrs. Virdon plopped into the seat across from her, slightly out of breath. "So... I wanted to talk about Helen with you."
So she had been right. Gina braced herself.
"I just got back her test scores," Mrs. Virdon said, "and they're... very..." She shook her head and raked her hand through her hair. It was graying at the roots; Gina wondered why she didn't color it.
"They're extremely high," Mrs. Virdon said. She didn't sound excited.
"Uh... but... that's good, isn't it?" Gina said after a pause. Her heart was still pounding against her breastbone, and there was a high note ringing in her ears. But this wasn't about Hasslein and Chris' secret. She was safe, only her body hadn't gotten the memo yet.
Gina forced her mind back to the subject. "Helen is super smart," she said. "She can already read and write, and she can add and subtract, and I think she's figured out how to multiply all on her own..."
"Well, I'm happy that she's intelligent, of course," Mrs. Virdon said, "but if you're too far outside the norm, you're... you can easily become an outcast. I wanted her to have a normal life, a happy life..." She trailed off, staring into space for a moment, and Gina wondered how happy the Virdons' lives really were. At least with Chris, it was as if he was bleeding out from an invisible wound.
"I had hoped she'd be free to choose her area of interest," Mrs. Virdon finally said with a sad smile, "but from what you tell me, Chris has already set her on a course to the stars." She gestured at the pictures of space ships that were plastered all over the kitchen walls - starships, ringed planets, and a man with huge wings, wearing an ANSA suit.
"I want to study biology," Gina said, and for a few precious minutes, they discussed the different fields, and universities. Mrs. Virdon had studied at Berkeley, but encouraged her to apply to the other colleges, too.
"You shouldn't limit your options from the outset," she said, then sighed. "Listen to me doling out good advice, while my own children are confining themselves with their tunnel vision. Or rather, Chris' tunnel vision."
"Helen worships Chris," Gina murmured.
"Helen wants nothing more than to win her brother's love," Mrs. Virdon said, and Gina's heart ached at the pain in her voice. "But Chris is too hurt to have any love to give, except to his father."
Gina swallowed. It was worse to hear it than to think it. When she just thought about it, she could quickly think of something else, before she came to the inevitable conclusion that Chris also didn't have any love left to give to her.
"I had hoped his obsession would've cooled off a bit by now," Mrs. Virdon murmured. "It's been five years now... more than five years. God! Time flies... but not in here, it seems. In here, we all revolve around Alan like planets around a sun. Or a big, black hole. It's as if Chris can't let go - as if something was still feeding this obsession."
She rose to make coffee, and Gina sat very still, like a rabbit in a furrow, trying to be inconspicuous while the buzzard circled in the sky.
"We need to move on," Mrs. Virdon said, when she came back to the table. "We can't go on living in this limbo, waiting for my husband's return."
Gina silently agreed with her, but didn't know what to say. This conversation was strange - why did Mrs. Virdon want to talk with her about Mr. Virdon?
"Alan may never come back," Mrs. Virdon was saying, and Gina felt increasingly nervous at the meaningful tone in her voice. "He might be dead since the day his ship was lost. I didn't want to believe it for a long time, either, so I don't blame Chris. I let myself get snared by that scientist's promise that he could bring them back, too, and it held me in its grip for over two years."
'That scientist' was Professor Hasslein. Gina's heart picked up its frantic pace again, sensing danger.
Mrs. Virdon folded her hands on the tabletop and leaned towards her, her voice taking on an urgent tone. "But this is no way to live, and I'm sure Alan wouldn't want us to live like that, either. He'd want us to enjoy our lives, to grow up, and learn new things, and have friends... and girlfriends" - she smiled, and reached across the table to take Gina's hand before she could react - "and go out into the world to grace it with our own gifts. He'd want us to honor our own purpose in life, not put it on hold for his sake... or to make his life our purpose."
Her grip tightened around Gina's hand a bit. "Something is keeping Chris a captive of that scientist's vision. That... fantasy. Do you know what that could be?"
She knows it. She knows the secret. Gina stared at her, unable to make a sound. She mutely shook her head.
"Are you sure you don't know?" Suddenly, Mrs. Virdon's eyes were piercing; Gina was pinned under her gaze more securely than if she had grabbed both her hands.
"Helen told me a story about a wizard who can find her daddy, and her description matched that of the scientist behind the Daedalus project - Hasslein."
Gina's blood was thrumming in her ears. She knows it. She knows it. She knows it.
"How does Lennie know Hasslein?" And now the steel was in Mrs. Virdon's voice, too. "Don't you dare lying to me, Regina Lombardi!"
And the heat was back, rushing all over Gina's body, breaking the sweat from her pores, and tears from her eyes. She shook her head, wildly, desperately. "I can't! I can't! I made an oath! I can't..."
Mrs. Virdon eyes were still boring into her, but her look was maybe a bit more thoughtful than before. "Chris made you swear an oath not to tell me about Hasslein?"
Gina didn't dare to nod; that would've broken the oath, too. But whatever Mrs. Virdon saw in her face made her sigh and release her hand. "He put you into an impossible situation," she said. "He had no right to swear you in on a lie."
"He'll never forgive me if I betray him," Gina whispered.
"I won't tell Chris that you told me," Mrs. Virdon said, and the steel was back in her voice. "But if you love him, you'll help me to pry him from Hasslein's hands. I already lost my husband to the bastard - I'm not going to give him my son, too."
Gina drew a shaky breath. 'If she loved Chris'... what a question.
She just wished he'd love her back the same.
"Two years ago, I met him on the way to the bus stop..."
