Stealing Posies
THE MEDIA LEARNED LITTLE about the Czech who had labored alongside of me, riveting fins and hammering launch lugs. The youngest of her siblings lived too many terrible suns and cruel moons away to broadcast her death. The rest of her beloveds, likewise, seemed entirely disinterested in her: having fallen from the scaffolding surrounding a rocket’s nose, uninterred body, or subsequently doubled share in the proceeds from that space-going vessel’s future payload.
What’s more, the people in charge did not halt construction when that young miss died, having deemed it problematic for the mission’s venture capitalists to catch word of her accident. So, the rest of us shipwrights kept on fastening bits together during the days leading up to her funeral.
Even though she never be
