Tag: Cindy Margrave

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Narrative

In Suspension

After her discussion with Autumn Belfontaine, Cindy had gone through the day in a sort of haze. At least none of her work involved dangerous equipment or vital systems, but she knew all too well this world was a place where you needed to keep your wits about you.

However, she couldn’t stop thinking about her sister’s friend and everything that had gone down last night. Even with only the slender channel of text messaging, she felt as if she’d gone through the whole horrific episode herself.

Autumn had reminded her that there were people she could talk to if it was really bothering her — probably because Autumn knew that she and Kitty had lost their parents when they were younger. However, knowing that what she was experiencing was probably an echo of those first frightening days when a neighbor had taken them in until Aunt Betty could fly out and collect them, Cindy didn’t really feel like she should take up a counselor’s problem. She knew what was going on, so she should be able to manage on her own.

Except she kept wondering what had happened to Amy’s parents. The last she knew, they were being loaded into ambulances as Amy watched, and then Amy had to go over to her friend’s place to stay until things could get sorted out.

Cindy fingered her phone in her pocket. Should she text Kitty and ask whether Amy had sent any further messages?

On the other hand, Kitty would be in the middle of her teaching responsibility right now, working as a junior TA with the beginning reading class. Text messages weren’t as intrusive as actual phone calls, but it wouldn’t be good for Kitty to have her phone chime while she was in the middle of helping a first-grader work through a basic reading text.

No, better wait for a more opportune time. Even if she had to wait until suppertime, it wasn’t like she could make a huge amount of difference in the meantime, not when she was up here and Amy was down on Earth.

Behind her, someone called her name. She turned to look squarely into a broad chest covered by a t-shirt that proclaimed: You can’t scare me. I’m a troubleshooter.

Cindy craned her neck to look up at Justin Forsythe’s grinning face. He was a clone of Ed White, and although he hadn’t quite gotten his full growth yet, he was already tall and well-built.

And has a girlfriend, so there’s no use making cow-eyes at him. He’d broken a lot of hearts around Shepardsport when he’d hooked up with the Dornhoff girl.

“Hi, Juss.” And she turned to face his companion. “Hi, Spence. What are you two up to?”

“Wondering what’s eating at you.” Spencer Dawes was a DJ, but Cindy didn’t know him all that well because his air shift was late in the evening, long after the front office closed for the night. “It’s like you’re in another world.”

“I guess you’re right.” Cindy hated having to admit it, but she knew Spence had her in one. “I’m up here, but half my mind’s down on Earth.” She explained about Amy’s situation. “I know worrying isn’t going to do her or her folks any good, but I can’t get my mind off her.”

Juss gave her a sympathetic smile. “Ken Redmond would say that means you don’t have enough work to do, but I think you just don’t have enough work to do right now. How about helping us study for our digital logic exam.”

Cindy cast a quick look around, considering how to get out of this one. “Um, I really don’t think I’d be much help to you. I mean, I don’t know much of anything about digital logic.”

“Actually, that makes it all the better. You can quiz us on stuff without accidentally cueing us to the right answer. And sometimes the best way to make sure you understand something is to explain it to someone who doesn’t know anything about it.”

Cindy could tell she was out of excuses. With her gym time shifted to the evening to make room for Constitution class, she no longer had any obligations until suppertime. “OK, I guess we’ll see how that works.”

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Narrative

A Sudden Awakening

A familiar melody pulled Cindy Margrave out of her slumbers. However, it took her a moment to realize that she was hearing the ringtone on her phone.

Dashing the sleep from her eyes with one hand, she retrieved her phone and squinted at the lock screen. In a horrific flash of understanding she comprehended two things at once: the time and the identity of the caller.

Oh my god, I completely forgot to set my alarm last night. Cindy’s mind raced even as she fumbled to accept the call, to gabble out some kind of a greeting all mixed with an utterly useless apology.

Aunt Betty would be so disappointed in her. Already Cindy could hear her aunt saying I raised you better than this and what would your parents think if they knew?

Except Autumn Belfontaine wasn’t annoyed at her. Far from it, she was actually rather sympathetic. “Just get down here as quickly as you can, and be ready to give me a full report when you do.”

From some people, a full report would mean giving an account of herself, and it better be properly contrite and free of anything that could be considered “blame-shifting” or she’d catch it double. But when the Shepardsport Pirate Radio news director wanted a full report, that meant she considered the matter newsworthy, or at least a lead on a newsworthy story.

Which meant she’d better use the time it’d take to get from the residential sector to the station offices to organize her thoughts and prepare to deliver an organized account of last night’s nightmarish SMS exchange and everything that had come of it. At least with Autumn she could talk about Kitty’s and Brenda’s roles without worrying about dragging them into her own trouble.

But first she’d better see if she could still get an order in to have her breakfast sent to the station. There was no way she could get to the dining commons, and she didn’t exactly like the idea of having to go all the way until lunch without eating.

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Narrative

Absence

Autumn Belfontaine had spent over an hour up at Medlab, talking with Dr. Thuc about how best to present the increasingly disturbing information coming in from Earth. It was absolutely critical to make the danger clear, especially with the growing evidence that someone in the Administration was trying to soft-pedal it by keeping people from correlating information from different cities. At the same time, it was also important to present it in a way that would not lead to panic.

When she arrived at the station, she noticed the empty receptionist’s desk, but thought that Cindy Margrave had probably just stepped out to take care of something. Maybe run a document somewhere, or just an ordinary restroom break.

That lasted only until Lou Corlin intercepted her. “Cindy still hasn’t shown up, and she’s never late.”

“Have you tried to text her?”

“She’s not answering, and I’m not sure if I should call. Especially where she and sister are sharing an apartment with their aunt and uncle and their kids.”

Autumn could appreciate the problem. When she first came over here on Captain Waite’s invitation, she’d had an apartment all to herself. But when the Expulsions began in earnest and Shepardsport’s population ballooned, she’d suddenly been asked to double up with another single woman — and it was pretty clear that the request was a politely stated command. There’d been more than a few awkward moments over calls and even text chimes interrupting someone’s sleep, or even concentration.

On the other hand, she didn’t think anyone in that household was on night shift. “I’ll call. As a director, I’ll have a little more authority than a DJ.”

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Narrative

The Icy Touch of Fear

Cindy knew all too well how far away Brenda Redmond’s apartment was. Last year her boyfriend had lived in that same module, so she got to know just how long it took to get between them, especially at an hour like this, when the airlocks weren’t likely to be busy.

Except it never felt this long when she was walking back from studying with Ray and his friends. Cindy checked her phone yet again, realized that all of three minutes had gone by — yet it felt like forever.

All the time, Kitty was getting more and more updates from Amy down in Houston. From the tenor of those texts, things were getting worse rapidly. Cindy wondered if she should text Brenda again and ask how far she had gotten.

And then the doorbell chimed. Cindy hit the doorbell app on her phone, saw Brenda waving at the camera.

At least here it was all of three steps from chair to door. Brenda was breathing pretty hard, which suggested she’d taken some of the corridors at a run, pausing to rest only while she cycled through the module airlocks.

Cindy summarized everything that had happened since their last text. Brenda’s expression grew steadily more and more concerned.

“This doesn’t sound good. Have either of them been able to hold down any liquids?”

Kitty typed the question into her phone. After a moment, she looked up. “Amy says they just keep throwing everything back up.”

“Not good at all. I think she’d better call 911. Do you know if she has any other family in the area, or a friend’s place where she could stay?”

More typing, and then Kitty looked up. “Her best friend lives on the other side of the subdivision.”

“Thank heaven for best friends.” Brenda took a deep breath. “Kitty, I need you to have Amy text her friend and and let her know her parents may need to come over and pick up Amy and any siblings. Then I need Amy to call 911 and tell the dispatch operator that both her parents are sick and showing signs of severe dehydration. It’s important she does it in that order, because once she calls 911, the dispatch operator will need her to stay on the line, so she won’t want to have to switch between phone and messaging apps.”

“OK, I’ll tell her that.”

Brenda turned back to Cindy, keeping her voice low. “How are you feeling?”

Cindy took stock of her own emotional state. “OK, I guess.”

“You guess? If you’re not sure, I can stay here as long as you two need me.”

“Thanks.”

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Narrative

The Ties that Bind

Brenda Redmond was just putting the kids to bed when her phone chimed incoming text. She pulled it out to check, saw the message was from Cindy Margrave. We’ve got a problem.

What’s wrong? was Brenda’s first thought, followed by Why’s she texting me? Other than working at the station, they really didn’t have that much in common. Certainly not enough to be turning to her for help like this.

But Cindy was also a level-headed young woman, not the sort to panic and send random texts off to people with only tenuous ties. If she had a problem, she’d probably already considered and discarded all the closer possibilities of people she could turn to. Her uncle was a pilot-astronaut, and if he wasn’t out on a mission, he was probably busy with things down at the spaceport, while her aunt was head of Safety and Security. With the current situation, Betty Margrave would be far too busy to deal with anything but a serious emergency at home.

And Carl Dalton was a Shep, which meant that Cindy had lineage-right to call upon the wife of another clone of Alan Shepard for help. Although Brenda had grown up knowing her father was a clone of Gus Grissom, it was only after their family came up here to Shepardsport and she was living regularly with the creche-raised clones that she’d really come to appreciate the importance of lineage ties as their method of creating family.

And if she wanted to maintain their respect, she’d damned well better honor the tie between her and Cindy, however indirect. She texted back: What’s happened?

Immediately the three dots icon appeared under her message, indicating that Cindy was typing. Which meant that either she was struggling to organize her thoughts, or she had a lot to say.

My sister Kitty just got a text from one of her friends from Houston. Amy says her parents are both badly sick. Reading between the lines, it looks like Amy’s really scared and doesn’t know what to do. I’m not sure whether it’s serious enough that I should tell her to call 911, or just try to nurse them herself.

Ouch, that was a tough one. Kitty was twelve, and while kids that age up here on the Moon regularly worked at responsible positions, back on Earth a twelve-year-old was barely considered old enough to stay by herself for an hour or so after school. If Amy called 911 and the paramedics decided her parents needed to be transported, there’d better be a friend or family member nearby who could take in her and any siblings or they’d have to go into the care of the Texas Child Protective Services system. And Brenda had heard more than a few stories about the problems with CPS foster homes, especially the emergency ones.

Better ask some clarifying questions before suggesting any course of action. Did she say anything about what kind of symptoms they were having?

This time there was a long pause before the three-dots icon came up. Probably Cindy was asking her sister, who might well be needing to text her friend for the information. If Amy was having to deal with her parents’ illnesses, and maybe even a younger sibling or two in distress about the situation, she might not even be where she could answer her text.

But it was also time that allowed the worry hamster to get going. Brenda looked over at the nook which functioned as her children’s bedroom. Everything looked so difference now that she had the responsibility for those two young lives.

Now I understand why Mom always worried so much about us kids.

And then the text arrived, a lengthy description of gastrointestinal symptoms similar to the nasty Volcanic Two-Step that had been going around a few years ago. Except that it didn’t also make people delirious and combative, or include respiratory symptoms.

This sounded a lot more complicated than she’d expected. Brenda tried to remember which module the Dalton-Margrave family lived in. Dunwich Sector was a lot larger than it had been when her family first came up here.

I think we’d better talk face-to-face. Are you and Kitty where you can come over here?

It took a few moments before Cindy answered. I don’t think we’d better be away this late. If Aunt Betty comes back and we’re not here, she’s not going to be happy having to run us down.

Brenda looked over at the clock, realized just how close to midnight it was getting. Spencer Dawes would be winding down the Disco Ball and signing off for the night soon.

The kids would probably stay asleep, but it would be better to have someone keeping an eye on them while she was gone. She stepped out of her apartment, noticed one of the younger Grissoms in the lounge, studying.

“Ron-Jon, could you keep an eye on my kids? One of my co-workers at the station has had a family emergency come up, and I need to go down and sort things out.”

Ron-Jon looked up from his tablet. “Sure thing, Miz Brenda. You need me to go into your apartment?”

“That shouldn’t be necessary. Just stay where you can hear if they call for me. You’ve got my number, don’t you?”

At his affirmative, she thanked him and headed for the module airlock. Let’s hope it wouldn’t take too long.

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Narrative

The Least of These

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.

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Whispers and Rumors

Cindy Margrave knew she shouldn’t listen in on other people’s conversations. However, Sprue and Quinn weren’t exactly making it easy to avoid doing so. They might be keeping their voices low, but they had managed to be just loud enough to be right there at the threshold of her awareness, neither so soft she couldn’t hear, nor so loud that she could hear clearly enough to put their conversation in the background. No, it was right at that volume where it drew attention no matter how hard you tried to ignore it.

Something about trouble back on Earth, and not just President Flannigan beating the drum of moral panic. She was far too familiar with that, ever since she and her sister Kitty had gotten swept up in the Expulsions just because Aunt Betty took them in.

No, this sounded like some kind of slow-motion disaster. People sick and dying in widely separated places, the authorities struggling to trace the connections between them.

Had it been only a few days ago when Autumn Belfontaine had hurried into the DJ booth to announce the breaking news about a cruise ship that had been stricken with illness and rescued by the US Navy? If there was a lot more things like it happening, why wasn’t she reporting on them?

It would’ve been so much easier if Cindy could just ask someone. But that would require admitting that she’d been guilty of listening in on a conversation to which she was not a party, even if she hadn’t meant to.

What was the saying? Keep your eyes and ears open and your mouth shut.

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Narrative

Hello Goodbye

The worst part about having a commuter marriage isn’t the times you spend apart. It’s when you finally get to see each other, and then you had to say good-bye again.

Brenda Redmond drew herself a cup of coffee from the coffeemaker in the music library, which doubled as a meeting room and staff lounge. At least these days you could get actual coffee up here, thanks to the expansion of the greenhouse farms to produce a wider variety of agricultural products.

Drew had flown in last night, right after supper, and by the time he’d gotten through with all the paperwork, it was almost time for bed. They’d hardly had time to talk before they both started nodding off to sleep, and the next thing Brenda knew, the alarm was going off to get her down here in time for her air shift.

By the time she’d be off the air, Drew would already be back down to the spaceport facilities, overseeing the loading of his lander with cargo to take back to Grissom City. Nothing to do but give him a quick good-bye kiss and hurry off.

And he got this flight only because someone else needed the time off. Then it’s back to his regular run, up to Luna Station and back down again.

Brenda tried to tell herself she should be grateful that at least he wasn’t getting assigned to the Scott, or worse, one of the Aldrin cycler spacecraft going back and forth between the Earth-Moon system and Mars. This way he could pick up flights over here now and then, even if he couldn’t get a regular assignment. Apparently the big bosses preferred having him on the more difficult orbital missions ever since his performance during the malware attack on flights inbound to Slayton Field.

Brenda was still mulling it over when a voice called her name. She looked up to see Cindy standing in the entrance.

“Hi, Cindy. What is it?”

Cindy joined Brenda on the sofa. “Any idea what’s with Sprue?” Her lowered voice suggested this was not a discussion for general consumption.

“What about him?” Although Brenda had a fair idea, especially after her father had taken her aside for a talking-to, she didn’t want to open that conversation only to discover Cindy was asking about something completely innocuous.

“He’d been dropping hints and asking questions for the past several days, and then bang, just like that, he stopped.” Cindy looked Brenda up and down. “I was just wondering if you had any idea what was going on.”

“I have a few ideas, but I’m not sure how much we want to be heard talking about them.” Brenda cast a significant look at the clock. “Right now it’s almost time for my air shift, so I need to be ready to be on.”

“Gotcha.” Cindy retreated back to her desk, leaving Brenda free to get to the DJ booth.

Yes, she’d picked up the hint that it might be possible to discuss matters later. Assuming of course something didn’t happen to knock everything sideways, like Autumn Belfontaine coming in here with breaking news that blew everyone’s speculations right out of orbit.

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Narrative

Teasing Out Answers

There was a trick to chatting up girls without crossing the line to actually hitting on them. It had taken Sprue some time to learn it, mostly because in his younger days he’d rarely had any need of the skill. If he was interested in a girl, he was going to want to hit on her, not just chat her up.

But right now the last thing he wanted was to have anyone thinking he was trying to hit on Cindy Margrave. Technically she was Betty Margrave and Carl Dalton’s niece, not their daughter, and had inherited none of the Shepard geneset. But Betty had taken in Cindy and her sister Kitty after their parents died in a freak accident, rather like Alan and Louise Shepard had taken in a niece, Alice. Because the girls had come up here as a part of Carl Dalton’s household, everyone was treating Cindy and Kitty as if they were members of the Shepard lineage, just like their cousins.

The first thing he had to have solid was his pretext for being at the station offices so early. It would’ve been so much easier if he could’ve switched air shifts with Brenda Redmond or Lou Corlin. However, neither of them had pressing business any time in the near future that would necessitate such a trade, and neither did he.

So here he was, getting copies of some logs, supposedly for his statistics class. “I don’t know why they’ve got Dr. Doorne teaching it, especially considering that she’s a radio astronomer and electrical engineer. You’d think they’d have her teaching actual astronomy, or maybe signal processing.”

Cindy set her tablet back down. “A lot of astronomy these days involves statistical analysis. Especially radio astronomy, since it’s almost entirely sorting through massive amounts of data and picking out the significant signals from a metric butt-ton of random noise. Or at least that’s what I learned in the astronomy overview class I took a few training cycles back. And down in IT we do a lot of work with astronomical data.”

Sprue considered how to steer the conversation towards a broader discussion of data, and then medical data in particular. Or at least interesting bits of data coming in from Earth, stuff that didn’t seem to fit with the pattern.

“Good morning, Mr. Del Curtin.” The deep, gruff voice could only belong to Ken Redmond, Chief of Engineering.

Sprue turned to face the older man. “Um, good morning.”

Ken stayed just far enough back that he didn’t obviously have to look up at Sprue’s greater height. “I believe you have some other place to be this early in the morning.”

Sprue recognized the warning in those words. Although Ken Redmond was not their direct supervisor, the station was considered to be part of Engineering for administrative purposes, and thus he had disciplinary authority over all its personnel. And Sprue had not forgotten what had happened when he ran afoul of Redmond in the past.

“As it happens, I really need to get this data sorted through in time for class tomorrow.” He turned back to Cindy. “I guess I’ll have to talk to you later.”

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Narrative

Like a Distant Storm on the Horizon

As soon as Lou Corlin stepped out of the DJ booth, he was glad he’d just finished lining up a long set. Their news director had just emerged from her office, phone stuck to ear and a worried look on her face.

“I’ll be right up there.” Autumn Belfontaine paused, a thought furrow forming between her eyebrows. “No, I’m not going to tell anyone until I get up there and have a chance to talk to you. We need facts, not rumors and speculation.”

Finished with her conversation, she looked over at Lou and the receptionist, who had been bent over a tablet, apparently studying for a class. “We’ve got a developing situation, and Reggie wants to talk to me right now. You two hold down the fort while I’m gone.”

Although Lou wondered what would require a visit to the settlement’s commandant, he kept his professional face on. “Yes, ma’am.”

Not quite in unison with the receptionist, since she’d gotten surprised, but good enough. And then it was just the two of them.

Lou looked at Cindy, then at the flimsy partitions that walled off the station offices. Unlike the studio proper, the office area was most decidedly not soundproof. Which meant that he’d better watch what he said. “Looks like things are going to get interesting.”

Cindy twirled a stylus between her fingers. “It sounded like something bad’s happening. Like when they had the cyber-attack on the landers over at Slayton Field kind of nasty.”

Lou remembered that day. He’d just been finishing up his air shift when Autumn had come into the DJ booth and practically pushed him right off the mic. Even her trained professional-journalist voice had betrayed a hint of breathlessness as she reported the crash of the first lander.

And even then we thought it was just an accident.

“I think we’d better be very careful right now.” Lou cast a sharp look at the phone at Cindy’s elbow. Not her personal phone, which was lying beside her tablet, but the official station line. “Until we get definite word otherwise, our face to the outside universe is business as usual. In the meantime, I’d better grab my coffee break before this set runs out and the boss yells at me about having dead air.”

“Got it.” Cindy returned to her studying. Technically she wasn’t supposed to be studying during her work hours, but with the station manager off to Grissom City for some kind of training class, things had slacked up.