By the time Cindy Margrave got back from the gym after her daily mandatory exercise session, she just wanted to get to bed. However, tomorrow she had a test in her chemistry course, and while she had done some studying, she really needed to review everything one last time.
At least the module lounge was quiet at this hour. Although her aunt and uncle had been able to secure a larger apartment, it was still crowded enough that it wasn’t exactly conducive to study. And she really didn’t want to go all the way up to Miskatonic Sector to use the study carrels in the library.
She settled into the chair in the furthest corner, glad that the two guys were keeping their voices low. From the looks of it, they were playing Space Race, although she couldn’t get a good enough view of the cards to be certain.
She was almost through with the aldehyde series when she felt a tug on the sleeve of her tracksuit. She looked up from her tablet to the wide eyes of her younger sister. Who’s supposed to be in bed already.
“What’s wrong, Kitty?”
“Amy just PMed me. Both her folks are sick, bad.”
Amy? Cindy tried to place the name. Kitty was such a social butterfly, there was just no keeping track of all her friends, even in a community as small as Shepardsport. Not to mention all Kitty’s online friends, with whom she spent about as much time as anyone up here.
Better just ask. Especially with whatever was going on back on Earth, any sickness in a community in as tight of quarters as everyone lived up here would be disastrous.
“She’s still in Houston. We were classmates, remember?”
Cindy didn’t want to admit that she honestly didn’t remember many of her sister’s classmates. It would sound too much like she didn’t care. Kitty had been just old enough to be distressed by the abrupt break from their old life when Uncle Carl and Aunt Betty took them in after Mom and Dad’s accident, and getting sent up here had been a second uprooting just as she was finally beginning to trust that her life would be stable.
“Sort of, but it’s been a long time, and I was pretty busy.” Hoping that would suffice to comfort her sister, she asked a few clarifying questions.
Kitty was a little shaky on details, but probably because Amy hadn’t been very clear on them. Up here, everybody got trained in remaining calm in a crisis and being able to deliver a coherent, organized report on one’s situation. Cindy knew she wouldn’t have been able to perform much better if she’d been called upon to report their parents’ accident to a 911 operator.
However, Cindy wasn’t sure if telling Amy to call 911 would be the best advice. It didn’t sound like they were in immediate danger, and when you were a kid, illnesses that weren’t actually that dangerous could be scary if both your folks came down with them at once.
Cindy wished there were someone she could talk to right now. However, Uncle Carl was out of town on a mission, taking supplies to some of the outlying scientific outposts, and Aunt Betty was spending more time up at the Safety and Security offices in Arkham Sector than she did here.
Who else could she turn to? Maybe some of her co-workers from the station? While Spruance Del Curtin would probably love to get any tidbits of information he could find, there was no way on Earth, the Moon or Mars that she was going to tell him about this.
On the other hand, what about Brenda Redmond? She was just enough older to be taken seriously, but young enough to still remember what it was like to be a kid, even if she was married and had two kids of her own.
Better text her first and see if she was where she could talk.