“How is it?” I asked.
“Not bad,” Mom lied. At least she could still speak.
“Can I touch her?” I asked Ed. He shrugged, so I reached out, gripped the fingers of her left hand. They were already ice cold. She didn’t squeeze back.
“Can we get on with it?” Ed asked. He shook a big eyedropper in his hand.
Daddy and I stepped back, but not so far that Mom would think we’d left her in that icy coffin alone. Ed pulled Mom’s eyes open. His fingers were big, calloused, and they looked like rough-hewn logs spreading apart my mom’s paper-thin eyelids. A drop of yellow liquid fell on each green eye. Ed did it quickly—drop, drop—then he sort of pushed her eyes shut. She didn’t open them again.
I guess I looked shocked, because, this time, when Ed glanced up at me, he actually stopped working long enough to give me a comforting smile. “Keeps her from going blind,” he said.
“It’s okay,” Mom said from her shoebox coffin. Even though her eyes were sealed shut, I could hear the tears in her voice.
“Tubes,” Ed said, and Hassan handed him a trio of clear plastic tubes. “Okay, look. ” Ed leaned down close to Mom’s face. “I’m gonna put these down your throat. It’s not gonna feel good. Try to act like you’re swallowin’’em. ”
Mom nodded and opened her mouth. Ed crammed the tubes down her throat. Mom gagged, a violent motion that started at her belly and worked all the way up to her dry, cracked lips.
I glanced at Daddy. His eyes were cold and hard.
It was a long time before she became still and silent. She kept trying to swallow, the muscles in her neck rearranging themselves to accommodate the tubes. Ed threaded the tubes up through a hole at the top of the shoebox coffin, near Mom’s head. Hassan opened a drawer and pulled out a mess of electrical wires. He stuffed a bundle of brightly colored wires down the first tube, then one long black cable with a small box at the end down the second one, and finally a small rectangular black piece of plastic that looked like a solar panel attached to a fiber-optic string down the last. Hassan plugged all the wires into a little white box that Ed fixed over the hole at the top of what I realized was nothing more than an elaborate packing crate.
“Say goodbye. ” I looked up, surprised at the kind voice. Ed had his back to us, typing something into a computer; it was Hassan who spoke. He nodded at me encouragingly.
Daddy had to pull my arm to make me approach Mom. This. . . this was not the last image of her I wanted. Yellow crusting her eyes, tubes holding wires crammed down her throat, a soft sky-blue sheen pumping through her veins. Daddy kissed her, and Mom smiled a bit around the tubes. I patted her on the shoulder. It was cold too. She gurgled something at me, and I leaned in closer. Three sounds, three spluttering grunts, really. I squeezed Mom’s arm. I knew the words she was trying to get past the tubes were, “I love you. ”
“Momma,” I whispered, stroking her paper-soft skin. I’d not called her anything but Mom since I was seven.
“’Kay, that’s it,” Ed said. Daddy’s hand snaked into the crook of my elbow, and he tugged at me gently. I jerked away. He changed tactics and gripped my shoulder, spinning me against his hard, muscled chest in a tight hug, and I didn’t resist this time. Ed and Hassan lifted up what looked like a hospital’s version of a fire hose, and water flecked with sky-blue sparkles filled the shoebox coffin. Mom spluttered when it reached her nose.
“Just breathe it in,” Ed shouted over the sound o
f rushing liquid. “Just relax. ”
A stream of bubbles shot through the blue water, obscuring her face. She shook her head, denying the water the chance to drown her, but a moment later, she gave up. The liquid covered her. Ed turned off the hose and the ripples faded. The water was still. She was still.
Ed and Hassan lowered the shoebox coffin lid over Mom. They pushed the box into the rear wall, and only when they closed it behind a little door on the wall did I notice all the little doors in the wall, like a morgue. They pulled the handle down. A hiss of steam escaped through the door—the flash freezing process was over. One second Mom was there, and the next, everything about her that made her Mom was frozen and stagnant. She was as good as dead for the next three centuries until someone opened that door and woke her up.
“The girl’s next?” Ed asked.
I stepped forward, balling my hands into fists so they wouldn’t shake.
“No,” Daddy said.
Without waiting for Daddy’s response, Ed and Hassan were already preparing another shoebox coffin. They didn’t care whether it was me or him; they were just doing their job.
“What?” I asked Daddy.
“I’m going next. Your mother wouldn’t agree to that—she thought you’d still back down, decide not to come with us. Well, I’m giving you that option. I’m going next. Then, if you’d like to walk away, not be frozen, that’s okay. I’ve told your aunt and uncle. They’re waiting outside; they’ll be there until five. After they freeze me, you can just walk away. Mom and I won’t know, not for centuries, not till we wake up, and if you do decide to live instead of being frozen, we’ll be okay. ”
“But, Daddy, I—”
“No. It’s not fair for us to guilt you into this. It’ll be easier for you to make an honest decision if you do it without facing us. ”
“But I promised you. I promised Mom. ” My voice cracked. My eyes burned painfully, and I squeezed them shut. Two hot trails of tears leaked down my face.
“Doesn’t matter. That’s too big of a promise for us to make you keep. You have to make this choice yourself—if you want to stay here, I understand. I’m giving you a way out. ”
“But they don’t need you! You could stay here with me! You’re not even important to the mission—you’re with the military, for Pete’s sake! How is a battlefield analyst supposed to help on a new planet? You could stay here, you could be—”