Cally's War

Granpa’s PDA said they had reached the Moon. The schedule said they’d be here for a few days unloading and reloading freight from the hybrid Human-Indowy factories. Granpa was snoring on the floor of her cabin. He needed to reapply his depilatory foam. Badly. The red stubble looked downright strange after all these years of getting used to him smooth-jawed all the time.

This cabin was getting pretty rank, too, now that she thought about it. It would have been bad enough that they tried to feed her fish somewhere along the trip and the odor had lingered. Her sheets smelled. She wouldn’t have noticed the always-familiar air of Red Man in the mix, except that it was a bit stale. Still, there was something solid and a bit comforting about it.

The light blue of the Galplas in the cabin probably would have been okay if she hadn’t been staring at it for the whole trip. Somebody had come up with a green scrap of carpeting for the floor from somewhere and glued it down. She could see the bits of it that extended out past Granpa. The shade clashed horribly with his hair, but it was probably marginally more comfortable than bare Galplas.

She felt a bit guilty. She’d been having herself a good mope, but Tommy and Granpa had obviously been worried sick. She was going to have to at least, well, talk and things, so that they could go get some sleep and do whatever they needed to do.

After all, she had a whole rejuvenated lifetime to look forward to. Oh, joy. She pulled her mind back from the pit by main force. One day at a time.

She peeked out the door. She wasn’t supposed to be seen by the crew, but she didn’t really care at the moment. Fortunately, none of them were around. She grabbed a laundered jumpsuit, a clean towel, and a few of the jumble of toiletries Tommy had gotten her. She wrinkled her nose at her own stink. She needed a shower. She really needed a shower.

Fortunately, freight crew who didn’t have the night shift weren’t exactly early risers. Well, this crew wasn’t, anyway. Good. No underwear, but it couldn’t be helped. She could buy some stuff down on Selene Base. If she didn’t get some fresh underwear, she was gonna kill somebody. Okay, well, not literally. She sighed. It was going to be a hell of a long road back.

Granpa didn’t wake up until almost nine thirty. She only got him to go off to his own cabin for some real sleep by faithfully promising to say more than two words a day to him when he came back.

“I’ll… be okay eventually, Granpa. Well, mostly. Just, not yet. I can’t be okay yet. Go get some real sleep. I need to catch the shuttle down and buy some stuff.”

“I’ll go with you,” he said.

“Granpa, I need some shop time alone. Call it retail therapy if it makes you feel better. Look, I promise the very first thing I’ll do is buy myself a PDA and call you and give you the number, okay?”

“If this is what you need, but Cally if you do anything stupid or dangerous I swear I’ll hunt you down and haunt you.”

“I’m… not even thinking about something that dumb. I just need time. Uh, Granpa?”

“Yeah?”

“Could I borrow a credit card?”