Part 20 (2/2)

It took them ten s.h.i.+fts to get all the Boesmans placed to Freeman's and Naomi's satisfaction, and then another three to get far enough down and to one side to be protected from the shock of the blast, which luckily for them was directly upward against something that would give, and therefore would have less recoil.

Finally they were set, and they sat in the sleeping car in a circle of six, around the pile of components that sat under the master detonator. For a long time they just sat there cross-legged, breathing slowly and staring at it. Staring at each other, in the dark, in perfect redblack clarity. Then Naomi put both arms out, placed her hands carefully on the detonator's b.u.t.ton. Mute Elijah put his hands on hers-then Freeman, Hester, Solly, finally Oliver-just in the order that Jakob had taken them. Oliver hesitated, feeling the flesh and bone under his hands, the warmth of his companions. He felt they should say something but he didn't know what it was.

”Seven,” Hester croaked suddenly.

”Six,” Freeman said.

Elijah blew air through his teeth, hard.

”Four,” said Naomi.

”Three!” Solly cried.

”Two,” Oliver said.

And they all waited a beat, swallowing hard, waiting for the moon and the man in the moon to speak to them. Then they pressed down on the b.u.t.ton. They smashed at it with their fists, hit it so violently they scarcely felt the shock of the explosion.

They had put on vacuum suits and were breathing pure oxygen as they came up the last tunnel, clearing it of rubble. A great number of other shafts were revealed as they moved into the huge conical cavity left by the Boesmans; tunnels snaked away from the cavity in all directions, so that they had sudden long vistas of blasted tubes extending off into the depths of the moon they had come out of. And at the top of the cavity, struggling over its broken edge, over the rounded wall of a new crater....

It was black. It was not like rock. Spread across it was a spill of white points, some bright, some so faint that they disappeared into the black if you looked straight at them. There were thousands of these white points, scattered over a black dome that was not a dome.... And there in the middle, almost directly overhead: a blue and white ball. Big, bright, blue, distant, rounded; half of it bright as a foreman's flash, the other half just a shadow.... It was clearly round, a big ball in the... sky. In the sky.

Wordlessly they stood on the great pile of rubble ringing the edge of their hole. Half buried in the broken anorthosite were shards of clear plastic, steel struts, patches of green gra.s.s, fragments of metal, an arm, broken branches, a bit of orange ceramic. Heads back to stare at the ball in the sky, at the astonis.h.i.+ng fact of the void, they scarcely noticed these things.

A long time pa.s.sed, and none of them moved except to look around. Past the jumble of dark trash that had mostly been thrown off in a single direction, the surface of the moon was an immense expanse of white hills, as strange and glorious as the stars above. The size of it all! Oliver had never dreamed that everything could be so big.

”The blue must be promethium,” Solly said, pointing up at the Earth. ”They've covered the whole Earth with the blue we mined.”

Their mouths hung open as they stared at it. ”How far away is it?” Freeman asked. No one answered.

”There they all are,” Solly said. He laughed harshly. ”I wish I could blow up the Earth too!”

He walked in circles on the rubble of the crater's rim. The rocket rails, Oliver thought suddenly, must have been in the direction Freeman had sent the debris. Bad luck. The final upward sweep of them poked up out of the dark dirt and gla.s.s. Solly pointed at them. His voice was loud in Oliver's ears, it strained the intercom: ”Too bad we can't fly to the Earth, and blow it up too! I wish we could!”

And mute Elijah took a few steps, leaped off the mound into the sky, took a swipe with one hand at the blue ball. They laughed at him. ”Almost got it, didn't you!” Freeman and Solly tried themselves, and then they all did: taking quick runs, leaping, flying slowly up through s.p.a.ce, for five or six or seven seconds, making a grab at the sky overhead, floating back down as if in a dream, to land in a tumble, and try it again.... It felt wonderful to hang up there at the top of the leap, free in the vacuum, free of gravity and everything else, for just that instant.

After a while they sat down on the new crater's rim, covered with white dust and black dirt. Oliver sat on the very edge of the crater, legs over the edge, so that he could see back down into their sublunar world, at the same time that he looked up into the sky. Three eyes were not enough to judge such immensities. His heart pounded, he felt too intoxicated to move anymore. Tired, drunk. The intercom rasped with the sounds of their breathing, which slowly calmed, fell into a rhythm together. Hester buzzed one phrase of ”Bucket” and they laughed softly. They lay back on the rubble, all but Oliver, and stared up into the dizzy reaches of the universe, the velvet black of infinity. Oliver sat with elbows on knees, watched the white hills glowing under the black sky. They were lit by earthlight-earthlight and starlight. The white mountains on the horizon were as sharp-edged as the shards of dome gla.s.s sticking out of the rock. And all the time the Earth looked down at him. It was all too fantastic to believe. He drank it in like oxygen, felt it filling him up, expanding in his chest.

”What do you think they'll do with us when they get here?” Solly asked.

”Kill us,” Hester croaked.

”Or put us back to work,” Naomi added.

Oliver laughed. Whatever happened, it was impossible in that moment to care. For above them a milky spill of stars lay thrown across the infinite black sky, lighting a million better worlds; while just over their heads the Earth glowed like a fine blue lamp; and under their feet rolled the white hills of the happy moon, holed like a great cheese.

Zurich

When we were getting ready to leave Zurich I decided to try to leave our apartment as clean as it had been when we moved into it two years before. An employee of the Federal Inst.i.tute of Technology, owners of the building, would be coming by to inspect the place, and these inspections were legendary among the foreign residents living in the building: they were tough. I wanted to be the first Auslander Auslander to make an impression on the inspector. to make an impression on the inspector.

Certainly this wasn't going to be easy; the apartment's walls were white, the tables were white, the bookcases and wardrobes and bed-tables and dressers and bedframes were white. The sheets and towels and dishes were white. In short practically every surface in the place was white, except for the floors, which were a fine blond hardwood. But I was getting good at cleaning the apartment, and having lived in Switzerland for two years, I had a general idea what to expect from the inspection. I knew the standard that would be applied. My soul rose to the challenge, and defiantly I swore that I was going to leave the place immaculate. immaculate.

Soon I realized how difficult this was going to be. Every scuff from a muddy shoe, every drip of coffee, every sweaty palm, every exhalation of breath had left its mark. Lisa and I had lived here in our marvelous domestic chaos, and the damage proved it. We had put up pictures and there were holes in the walls. We had never dusted under the beds. The previous tenant had gotten away with things, having moved out in a hurry. It was going to be difficult.

Immediately it was obvious to me that the oven was going to be the crux of the problem. You see, once we went over to some American friends to have a home-like barbeque, and the grill was out on the balcony up on the fifth floor in the town of Dubendorf, looking out at all the other apartment blocks, the fine smell of barbequed chicken and hamburger spiralling out into the humid summer sky-when there was the howl of sirens below, and a whole fleet of fire engines docked and scores of firemen leaped out-all to combat our barbeque. One of the neighbors had called the police to report a fire on our balcony. We explained to the firemen and they nodded, staring coldly at the clouds of thick smoke filling the sky, and suddenly it seemed to us all that a barbeque was a very messy thing indeed.

So I never bought a grill for the balcony of our apartment. Instead I broiled our teriyaki s.h.i.+sh-kebob in the oven, and it tasted all right. We use a fine teriyaki sauce, my mother got the recipe out of a magazine years ago; but it calls for brown sugar, and this was the source of the problem. When heated, the liquefied brown sugar caramelizes, as Lisa and her chemist colleagues are wont to say; and so on every interior surface of the oven there were little brown dots that refused to come off. They laughed at Easy Off, they laughed at Johnson & Johnson's Force. I began to understand that caramelization is a process somewhat like ceramic bonding. I needed a laser, and only had steel wool. So I began to rub.

It was a race between the flesh of my fingertips and the brown ceramic dots; which would the steel wool remove first? Flesh, of course; but it grows back, while the dots didn't. Only the miracle of regeneration allowed me to win this t.i.tanic battle. Over the course of the next two days (and imagine spending fifteen hours staring into a two-foot cube!) I muscled off every single dot, hour by hour becoming more and more enraged at the stubbornness of my foe.

Eventually the victory was mine; the oven was clean, a sparkling box of gray-black metal. It would pa.s.s the inspection. I stalked through the apartment in an ecstasy of rage, promising similar treatment for every other surface in the place.

I attacked the rest of the kitchen. Food had suffused into every nook and cranny, it was true; but none of it had caramelized. Stains disappeared with a single wipe, I was Mr. Clean, my soul was pure and my hands all-powerful. I put Beethoven on the stereo, those parts of his work that represent the mad blind energy of the universe: the Grosse Fugue, Grosse Fugue, the second movement of the Ninth, the finale of the Seventh, and of the the second movement of the Ninth, the finale of the Seventh, and of the Hammerklavier. Hammerklavier. I was another manifestation of this mad blind energy, cleaning in a dance, propelled also by the complex and frenetic music of Charlie Parker, of Yes, ”Salt Peanuts” and ”Perpetual Change.” And soon enough the kitchen gleamed like a factory display model. It would pa.s.s the inspection. I was another manifestation of this mad blind energy, cleaning in a dance, propelled also by the complex and frenetic music of Charlie Parker, of Yes, ”Salt Peanuts” and ”Perpetual Change.” And soon enough the kitchen gleamed like a factory display model. It would pa.s.s the inspection.

The other rooms offered feeble resistance. Dust, what was it to me now? ”I am the mad blind energy of the universe, I vacuum under the beds!” Cleaning lint from the vacuum I sliced the very tip of my right forefinger off, and for a while it was hard not to get blood on the walls. But that was the most resistance these rooms could offer. Soon they shone with a burnished glow.

Now, inspired, I decided to get really really thorough. It was time for details. I had been going to leave the floors alone, as they appeared clean enough to pa.s.s; but now with everything else so clean I noticed that there were little dark marks around the doorways, little dips in the grain of the wood where dirt had managed to insinuate itself. I bought some wood polish and went to work on the floors, and when I was done it was like walking on ice. thorough. It was time for details. I had been going to leave the floors alone, as they appeared clean enough to pa.s.s; but now with everything else so clean I noticed that there were little dark marks around the doorways, little dips in the grain of the wood where dirt had managed to insinuate itself. I bought some wood polish and went to work on the floors, and when I was done it was like walking on ice.

I dusted off the tops of the bookcases, up near the ceiling. I put s.p.a.ckle in the nail holes in the walls. When I was done the walls were all smooth, but it seemed to me that I could see a little discoloration where the s.p.a.ckle had gone. A few moments' pacing and inspiration struck: I got some typewriter Wite-Out from our boxes, and used it as touch-up paint. It really worked well. Nicks in doorways, a place where the wall was sc.r.a.ped by a chair back; typewriter Wite-Out, perfect.

In the evenings during this week of cleaning frenzy, I sat with friends, drinking and feeling my hands throb. One night I overheard by chance an Israeli friend tell a story about a Swiss friend of hers who had unscrewed the frames on her double-paned windows, to clean the inside surfaces. I shot up in my chair, mouth hanging open; I had noticed dust on the inner sides of our double-paned windows that very afternoon, and figured it was something I wouldn't be able to do anything about. It never would have occurred to me to unscrew the frames! But the Swiss know about these things. The next day I got out a screwdriver, and unscrewed and polished until my wrists were liked cooked spaghetti. And the windows sparkled from all four surfaces. They would pa.s.s the inspection.

On the morning of Inspection Day I walked through the big rooms of the apartment, with their tan leather chairs and couches, and the white walls and bookcases, and the sun streamed in and I stood there transfixed as if in the dream of a cognac advertis.e.m.e.nt, in air like mineral water.

Glancing at the long mirror in the foyer something caught my eye; I frowned; I walked up to it, feeling uneasy as I often do around mirrors, and looked at it closely. Sure enough, some dust. I had forgotten to clean the mirror. As I went to work on it I marvelled: you can see the difference between a dusty mirror and a clean one, even when-staring at the paper towel in my hand-there is only enough dust to make a thin short line, like a faint pencil mark. So little dust, distributed over such a large surface-and yet we still can see it. The eye is that powerful. If we can see that, I thought, why not ourselves? Why not everything?

So I strode around the cognac advertis.e.m.e.nt in a state of rapture; until I remembered the sheets, down in the was.h.i.+ng machine. All would have been well, if not for the sheets. All through the week I had been was.h.i.+ng those sheets, downstairs in the bas.e.m.e.nt. Red plastic laundry basket filled with linen: we had seven bottom sheets, seven pillow cases, seven big duvet cases. The duvets were fine, as white as cotton. But the bottom sheets, the pillow cases.... Well. They were yellowed. Stained. Alarming evidence of our bodies, our physical existence: oils, fluids, minuscule sc.r.a.ps of us rubbed into the cloth like b.u.t.ter, ineradicably.

Certainly, I thought, the Swiss must have methods for dealing with evidence as serious as this. So I had gone out and bought bleaches. Recalling the bleach ads from back home, I trustfully a.s.sumed that the stained linen would emerge from one trip through the wash gleaming like lightning. But it wasn't so. Wash after wash did nothing to change their color. I went out and bought a different kind of bleach, then another. Two powders, one liquid. I upped the doses on each of them. Nothing worked.

And now it was the morning of Inspection Day, and I had recalled the sheets in the bas.e.m.e.nt, and my rapture was shattered. I hurried down stairs, walked down the long concrete underground hallway to the laundry room. I saw that the building would stand for a thousand years. It would resist ten megatons. The was.h.i.+ng machine was trilingual and as big as a truck. I brought it online, gave it its pre-run check-off for the final attempt, set my array of bleaches on top of the machine. It was the fourteenth time I had run things through this week, and I had the procedure streamlined; but this time I stopped to think. I looked at the three different kinds of bleach on top of the dryer, and I had an idea. I took the largest cap and turned it open end up, then poured in liquid bleach until the cup was half full. Then I poured in some of both of the powders.

Synergy, right? Singing a little tune in praise of the mysterious force of synergy, I took the pencil from the sign-in book and stirred the mix in the cap vigorously. It began to bubble a little, then to foam.

Only at that point did I remember my wife, the chemist, yelling at me for mixing two cleansers together in an attempt to get a bathtub clean. ”If you had mixed ammonia and Ajax it would have made chloramine gas and killed you!” she had said. ”Never ”Never mix stuff like that together!” mix stuff like that together!”

So I left the cap of bleaches on the dryer and ran out of the room. From the concrete hall I stared back in, sniffing carefully. Glancing down I noticed the pencil, still clenched in my hand; and the bottom half of it, the part that had stirred the bleaches, was as white as a stick of chalk. ”Ho!” I exclaimed, and retreated farther up the hall. Synergy can be a powerful thing.

After some thought, and a closer inspection of the pencil, which now had a pure white eraser, I returned to the washroom. The air seemed okay. I was committed at this point, I had to meet the Swiss challenge. So I tipped the capful of bleaches carefully into the plastic opening on top of the washer, and I stuffed our yellowy bottom sheets and pillow cases inside, and I closed up the washer and punched the b.u.t.tons for the hottest water available, ninety degrees centigrade. Walking back upstairs I noticed that the very tip of my left forefinger had a white patch on it. Back in the apartment I found it wouldn't wash off. ”Bleached my fles.h.!.+” I exclaimed. ”That stuff is finally working the way it's supposed to.”

An hour later I returned to the washroom apprehensively, hoping that the sheets had not been eaten to shreds or the like. On the contrary; when I opened the washer door there was a glare as if several camera flashes had gone off right in my face, just like in the ads; and there were the sheets, as white as new snow.

I hooted for glee, and stuffed them in the dryer. And by the time the Inspector rang the bell below, they were dried and ironed and folded and neatly stacked in the linen drawers of the bedroom wardrobe, looking like great hunks of Ivory soap.

I hummed cheerfully as I let the Inspector in. He was a young man, perhaps younger than myself. His English was excellent. He was apologetic, defensive; it was a boring task for both of us, he said, but necessary. No problem, I replied, and showed him around the place. He nodded, frowning slightly. ”I must count the various items in the kitchen,” he said, brandis.h.i.+ng an inventory.

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