Della
At ten to one on Thursday afternoon I was in the Fishbowl with a sleeve of crackers, a headset, and a list of things I would not be able to control for the next sixty minutes, which was all of them.
One. Tess had the questions. Two. Tess wouldn't show me the questions. Three. Between my mouth and Ronnie's ear there was now a second and a bit of empty space, each way.
Kip had explained it twice, once on a press release and once on a sticky note, and then he'd written it on my wrist in pen. The Moon was far enough off now that a voice had to travel. I said a thing. A lag later he heard it. He said a thing back. A lag later I heard that. Add it up, and for a live stream that's a lifetime. On the screen a man could look at a question for the length of a sneeze and then look at it some more.
"So you stall," I'd told Ronnie, at breakfast, in his ear.
"I'm very good at stalling. I did four minutes on a ribbon once because the scissors were in a car."
"Use the grin. The slow one."
"The slow one's all I've got," he'd said. "I'll do it till they put me in a museum."
Royce came to the Fishbowl door at five to. He had his quarter-zip zipped to the top and a printed card in his hand, and he didn't come in.
"Here's the thing," said Royce. "Boyd. If there's a chance, any chance, a name, Castellane, in an answer. Twice."
"No."
"It's not for me. It's for the buyer."
"It's for you, Royce. It's always for you." I put a cracker in my mouth. "Noted."
He left the card on the glass. I put it in the bin.
At one o'clock the stream went live on all four of the front screens, and the counter in the corner went from nothing to a million in a number of seconds that Kip, in the second row, said was "basically unusual."
It was Tess's show, all of it, and she'd built it like a set. The commander in the middle, big, lit, with his hands folded and Mack's smile on, and the Earth, or what you'd call the Earth if you were being kind, behind his shoulder in the window, a blue marble the size of a coin. Tess in a little box in the corner holding the camera arm, reading comments off a tablet and talking to her chat like a woman running for office. The comments went down the right-hand side of the screen too fast to read, a waterfall. Holy smoke. Mack. Big Mack. Do the voice.
"Okay chat," said Tess. "We have ten questions. They're real. I picked them myself. Commander, are you ready?"
In my headset, in my left ear, I said, "Slow."
Late, on the wall, the commander did the grin.
Question one was: do you poop in space?
I had a cracker in my mouth and it went down the wrong way. Ronnie let the grin go on for what felt like the length of the Atlantic, and then, to the whole world, in the voice, warm and slow, he said, "Ma'am, I'll tell you what I tell my wife. A gentleman keeps a few mysteries." And he lifted the wave. Not the whole wave. Two fingers. The comments turned into a field of crying faces.
Question two was: are you single?
I had nothing. I was reaching for a cracker and a line at once, and I got the cracker. What came out of me, into the headset, through the cracker, was "Bette."
On the wall, in the voice, to a girl in Ohio or a man in Perth, the commander said, "Well now. I'm married to the sky, ma'am, and to Bette, in that order." The grin. The wait. "Don't tell Bette."
The stream erupted. In the corner of the screen Tess had to put the camera down and hold the sides of the desk. And Royce, at his own desk with his chin up and his phone in his hand, gave me a thumbs-up through the glass as if he'd had the idea himself.
At twenty past one the questions got technical.
They got technical like a car getting a flat. A man in Ohio asked what happens to the engine if you don't fire at the Moon. A woman in Perth asked if the fuel was sufficient. And somewhere between the two, a schoolteacher in Canada wrote, and Tess read out, in a voice that had gone careful: "Commander, why does the burn need to be hand-flown? Is the autopilot broken?"
I had a whole cracker in my mouth. Not half a cracker. I'd put it in at the last second, to have something to do with my face.
The wall showed Ronnie, perfectly still, blinking. Then the grin. It went on. I swallowed, and coughed, and swallowed again, and said into the headset in the voice I use for hostage situations, "The autopilot did what it was told. The commander's choosing to fly the part that matters. A man ought to fly the part that matters."
Then, from the speakers on the front wall, in Mack's voice, warm and unhurried: "Well, now. The autopilot's a fine fellow. Does ninety-nine parts out of a hundred. But there's a part of every trip a man ought to fly with his own hands." He looked into the lens. "Call it a matter of manners."
At twenty-five to two a man called Marcus asked how far away the Moon was.
"About two hundred and forty thousand miles," said the commander, in the voice.
At his console Sully leaned to his microphone. "Two thirty-eight today, Commander," said the loop, doubled off the walls, gravel and nothing else. "She's moving."
The commander laughed on screen, big and Mack, and said, "Flight's keeping me honest!" and the room laughed too, on the floor, forty of them at once, the Fishbowl glass humming with it. It was the first time since Wednesday that anyone in that building had laughed in the same direction.
Then Kip, three seats from a live microphone he hadn't noticed was live, said to the engineer beside him, quite clearly, "Big Linda's looking healthy."
The loop carried it out. The stream carried it on. I closed my eyes.
On the right of the screen, in the comments, there was a very small pause. Then it started. Big Linda. Who is Big Linda. Big Linda for president. Big Linda, Big Linda, Big Linda.
Tess, in her corner, reading with delight: "Chat says who's Big Linda. Commander? Who's Big Linda?"
Then, late, Ronnie, grinning into the lens, said, "Folks, she's the lady who gets us there."
I put my forehead on the table.
At ten to two Tess said, "Okay, chat, last question. And this one's special."
She turned the tablet so the lens could see it. Not words. A video. A classroom in Ocala, a smartboard, a blur of children in a semicircle, and in front of them, up very close to the camera, a girl about nine with her hair in two braids and a gap in her teeth that turned every s into a whistle. She was holding a piece of paper in both hands. She was a very serious person.
"Hello, Commander," said the girl. "My name is Ruby Mabry and my daddy is Otis Mabry. He said to ask the hardest thing I could think of. My question is a real question."
At the back of the cabin, from by the hatch, a long way off the camera, Otis said "Oh, Lord," in a very small voice.
"If the computer's numbers are wrong," said Ruby, reading from her paper, then looking up at the lens as if she'd caught somebody, "how would you even know?"
I stopped chewing.
I did what I do. I gave him the sentence you give to every question about whether somebody checked. "Mission control checks them twice, sweetheart."
On the wall, the grin. Then nothing, for the lag, and then a little more nothing. I knew that kind of stillness. It was the stillness before a man went off the page. I said, "Ronnie. Don't."
"Mission control checks them twice," said the commander, in the voice, warm, and a very small, very real child looked out of Ocala at him. Then he stopped. He looked at the camera for a long time. Then he said, not off the card, not out of me, "And then you check 'em yourself, sweetheart. With a pencil. 'Cause you're the one sitting on 'em."
Ruby said, in the whole world's ear, "Okay." And then, after a very long think: "Thank you for answering my question. It was a real one."
Behind her a classroom of nine-year-olds clapped. On the wall the counter went round like a slot machine. The comments stopped being words. They were hearts, and a lot of pencils.
"You son of a bitch," I said, quietly, into the headset, with real love.
A lag later, on the wall, the commander heard it, and grinned, a wide, wet, real grin, straight into the camera. The comments said he's crying, he's actually crying, Mack.
Tess, wiping her own nose with a sleeve, said into her tablet: "I picked Ruby's question because her dad asked me nice. Don't tell him I said that." Otis said, from the back, in a different voice, higher, "That's my girl." And in the corner of the screen Tess tugged her sleeve down over her wrist, and held the camera arm with both hands, and said, "Okay, chat. That's all the time we've got."
At two o'clock Royce did his update.
He'd come down to the front of the floor for it, under the screens, because the questions had made it an occasion. The loop mic was a grey sock on a pole above the front rows, and it picked up whoever was nearest, which that afternoon was Royce, plus Sully above him on his step, the announcer in his cardigan, and Kip, who'd been sent forward with a printout and stood holding it like a hymn book.
"This is a historic journey," said Royce, and I held up a finger, "and I want to thank the commander, and every one of you."
Under him, very faint, on the loop, there was a chirp.
I didn't turn my head. It was the sound a smoke alarm makes when the battery's dying in another house. Somebody's phone.
In my left ear, late, Ronnie said, very low, "Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"That's a watch. It chirped. Under Royce, just there. That's a watch doing the hour."
"It's a phone."
"It's a watch."
"Ronnie, there are forty people in this room with forty phones. It's two o'clock. Somebody's phone." I had Royce in front of me saying journey for the third time. "Be quiet. You were wonderful. Go and have a sandwich."
I went back to the list.
He found me at ten past two. The questions were over, the counter was past three million, and the Fishbowl was full of the sound of forty people being pleased with each other. I had my headset round my neck and my shoes off under the table, and Royce put his head round the glass, wide and bright, and for once he came all the way in.
"Great," said Royce. "That was great. Great job. Great. The pencil. The pencil, honestly, I wept." He put one hand flat on the table. "And handle the grandmother."
"What?"
"The grandmother. Whitcomb. The old girl." He had his smile on and his voice very low, the one he used on dogs. "She knows something. Handle it."
I didn't say anything for about as long as it takes to put a shoe on.
I'd told nobody. Not Kip. Not my own phone.
"What grandmother?" I said.
"Della."
"How do you know that?"
"I know everything in my building." He tapped the table with two fingers. He liked that. He'd had it ready. "Oh, and you liked the messages? The bedtime ones? Sleep tight, Commander. Big day tomorrow. That was me. I've been sending him little notes. Morale. You'd be amazed what it does for a man."
"You sent him messages."
"On the screen. Motivational. Handle the grandmother," said Royce, and he went out through the glass and across the floor, and Kip handed him a printout, and he took it without looking, as if it had been waiting for him.
I sat there. I could hear the room.
Then I put my headset on, and I said, "You there?"
The lag. "I'm here. Did I do all right? Did I do the pencil right?"
"You did the pencil right."
"I just said it. It wasn't even a line, it just came out of me. Is that okay? Was that all right?"
"It was perfect. Royce says he's been sending you the bedtime messages."
"Sleep tight, Commander? That was Royce?" He started to laugh. "That's Royce? He's a cheerleader. He should do the updates in that voice."
I laughed, because I was supposed to. Then I said, "Go to sleep, Commander," because that was what we said at the end, and I took the headset off, and I held it in my lap, in both hands, like something that might go off.