The Terranauts

by T. Coraghessan Boyle

  Why I was jealous, why I was even having this conversation, was beyond me. She was going to do what she was going to do and I was going to do what I was going to do. I was picturing G.C.—her and G.C.—going at it, and then a thought came to me, a nightmare of a thought that made the image vanish in a puff of smoke as if in some X-rated cartoon. “This line is secure, isn’t it? I mean, nobody’s listening in, right?”

  “It’s secure when I want it to be,” she said. “And that’s how I want it now. Obviously. But you never answered my question—”

  “What question?”

  “When’s Gretchen going to let Lola—or is it Luna? Luna, right? When’s she going to let Luna back out into the rain forest? It’d be a great photo op, you know what I’m saying?”

  “Why don’t you ask Gretchen?”

  “Believe me, I intend to, but as long as I’ve got you on the line, I thought I’d get your take on it. Especially if Lola’s going to attack her again or even, god forbid, if she should kill her . . .”

  I took a moment, gazing out into the middle distance where a dark mass of bees struggled against one of the glass panels, disoriented by the hard edge they’d come up against. “I don’t know,” I said finally. “It’s a jungle out there.”

  Linda Ryu

  I have a confession to make, something even Dawn doesn’t know about. On top of everything else, what with sorting out my feelings about the mission and trying to be productive and keep up the pretense, I wind up becoming a snoop—a spy—no different than Ramsay. It’s not something I’m proud of really, but it was more a question of evolution than anything else (and I won’t say survival of the fittest because Mission Control makes a joke out of any notion of fair competition). I’m still furious over the way I was passed over—screw them if they think they can look down their noses at me and then turn around and throw me back into the competition for Mission Three with the also-rans and the new candidates, every one of which—or whom—I would have rejected on sight. So what I do is I became a cog in Mission Control, as essential to them as the air they breathe in the command center. It’s funny really. All at once I’m on the inside of the outside, if that doesn’t sound too pathetic, trying to impress G.C., Judy and Dennis with my rigor and focus, which, of course, means doing their bidding whether I like it or not.

  When I’m not bent over a hoe in the test plots or cleaning and maintaining and whatever else they want me to do, I’m right there in Mission Control, monitoring the cameras and the phone line and the computer too, reporting back to Judy and Dennis on even the pettiest things like who’s wearing the same clothes three days in a row or staring into space during team meetings, looking for what Judy calls anomalies. We’re building psychological profiles on each of the crewmembers as a component of the sociological and behavioral experiment going forward here, just as Richard, with his blood-pressure cuff, urine samples and monthly strip-down physicals, is documenting the physiological side of things. NASA’s interested. So are a handful of universities and government agencies doing research in Antarctica and Greenland and looking to us for real-time lessons in group dynamics. And if I happen to extend my role to include snooping into what Mission Control’s doing—what Judy’s doing—then as far as I’m concerned it’s only tit for tat.

  Judy and Vodge. That’s the big secret I turn up, not that I didn’t have my suspicions all along, but it’s a shock, believe me. It’s not so much him—nothing he does would surprise me because he’s as slimy and two-faced as anybody I’ve ever met in my life—but Judy. Yes, she can be gratingly obnoxious one minute and pour on the charm the next—and Dawn and I mistrusted her from the start, her motives and her methods both—but even so I never thought she’d take that kind of risk for someone like Ramsay. If G.C. finds out, she’ll be gone in a heartbeat and he’ll find a replacement in the beat after that because there’s no shortage of women out there just dying to be a Terranaut—or even to be mentioned in the same breath with one. If he finds out. That’s a big if, but the thought of it, of what G.C. might do and the repercussions that would surely rock E2 right on down to its stainless-steel cradle, makes me grin inside. I’ve been powerless to this point, powerless and cast off, a footnote in the Terranaut narrative, but here’s something I can build on, maybe even use to my advantage.

  This is how it comes about. One afternoon, late, no more than a month or so after closure, I happen to be passing by in the hallway and see Judy sitting there in her office in the command center, the phone cradled under her chin and her face running through so many changes you’d think she was a contestant on a game show. It’s that late-afternoon interval between the end of the day shift and the arrival of the night shift, nobody really settled yet and the offices quiet while people pass each other on the stairs or in the elevator, some going up, some going down. The phone—this is the line into E2, the only line, since for this round of closure Mission Control is strictly limiting the crew’s access to the outside world—has four connections in the command center so G.C., Dennis, Judy and one other person, who might or might not be G.F., can do conference calls with Vodge or Diane when they don’t want to videoconference, or even when they do because the hookup only has one microphone and more often than not the audio’s fuzzy.

  I’m on my way to the restroom before heading home for the day—back to Residence 2, that is—but now, seeing Judy there, seeing her face, I pull up short. What makes me slip into the command center and beyond that into G.C.’s office, I can’t say. An intuition, I guess. Luckily, G.C. isn’t there—he’s off in Boulder for the week, doing something at the Naropa Institute—and if I’m concerned about somebody coming in (like Little Jesus, for instance) and catching me where I’m not supposed to be I don’t let it stop me. I can always make something up. I needed such-and-such a report from the filing cabinet and since Judy was on the phone and I didn’t want to bother her, here I was—there I was—in G.C.’s office, where G.C.’s phones, outside and inside lines both, squat on his desk in molded plastic relief. I shoot a glance out the door (Judy’s back, the empty office), then pull it softly shut and pick up the receiver.

  Nothing. It’s dead. I try the other phone, thinking I’ve got the wrong one, and I’m rewarded by a dial tone. Which is odd. Beyond odd—it’s suspicious. A moment’s investigation reveals that G.C.’s inside line, the one that communicates directly with E2, has been disconnected—unplugged, that is. By Judy, no doubt. It’s a revelation, a thrill—something’s up—and before I can think I plug the phone back in, lift the receiver ever so carefully, take a deep breath and put it to my ear.

  What I hear, though I’ve come in in the middle of the conversation, leaves no doubt in my mind. Her voice is low and throaty, not at all like the voice she uses with us, which is all angles and sharp edges. “Would you like that, huh?” she breathes. “Tell me. Would you?”

  He says he would. And then he says, “Even the inmates at the penitentiary get conjugal visits,” and she says, “And you don’t. Pity, huh?”

  Next thing—bingo!—he asks her if she’s seeing anybody and she throws it right back at him. “Are you?” That’s when I know I have them, though beyond that they really don’t say anything incriminating and it isn’t as if I’m taking notes—though I wish I’d had a tape recorder. The rest is business, Lola, Luna, Gretchen, PR and more PR. I wait till they say goodbye (“See you”; “Yeah, see you too—on PicTel”) and hang up before easing the receiver back into its cradle, unplugging the phone again and tiptoeing out of the office. Out in the hallway I run into Malcolm Burts, the night spy, and if I pass him by with barely a nod of the head it’s because I’m not any part of his world, not anymore. I’m beyond that now. Down the stairs I go, exultant, holding my secret close, as if it’s a gift-wrapped package meant for me and me alone. News! I have news!

  The campus is quiet, the tourists back in their motel rooms by now or maybe doing a little vicarious eating and drinking for the Terranauts at El Caballero or Alfano’s, the day crew gone and
the night crew already on the job, so I have the place pretty much to myself. It’s my favorite time of day, everything in shadows except for the peaks of the Santa Catalinas, the thermostat turned down and the desert creatures venturing out into the stillness. That’s one of the perks of being here—E2 is out in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by wild nature and views to kill for. Before G.F. bought up the 3,500 acres that make up the property, there’d been no development of any kind, which means the flora and fauna have remained undisturbed. There are javelinas here—I see them all the time, brown scurrying little pigs that aren’t really pigs at all but an entirely unrelated species. There are deer too, rabbits, roadrunners, bobcats—even, rumor has it, the odd coatimundi or ocelot drifting north out of Mexico.

  As I make my way across the plaza out front of Mission Control and start down the gravel road to Residence 2, I spot a Harris’s hawk, its wings aflame with the late sun, drawing a tight circle over a cluster of saguaro, as if searching for something. I stop a moment and stand perfectly still, watching it, until suddenly it makes a knifing dive into the scrub and comes up with a kangaroo rat clenched in its talons, right place, right time. I can’t help seeing it as a sign. And right then, a new mantra—a little song, actually—begins looping through my brain. Judy and Vodge, I sing to myself, Vodge and Judy, Judy and Vodge, Vodge and Judy, and it sustains me all the way home.

  But then I’m in my apartment, immersed in the familiar, the dirty pans on the stove, books, magazines, the clothes I’ve been meaning to wash and haven’t got around to, and my mood evaporates. What I need is to get out, I realize that right away. It’s Saturday, Saturday night, and I haven’t been off campus more than two or three times since closure, and only then to run errands. I picture the bar at Alfano’s (not El Caballero, because there’s no way I’m going to go there again, ever), and see myself leaning back on a barstool drinking chianti and dipping a crust of Italian bread into a little cruet of olive oil. But who to go with, now that Dawn’s unavailable? The members of the old crew, the losers, aren’t even worth considering because I’m not a loser and when we look at one another it’s with downcast eyes, with shame, and I’ve been shamed enough as it is. Really, no joke, I’ve begun to wonder how I’ll ever get through a two-year closure with any of them when our time comes—if it comes. And the newbies, as Malcolm likes to call the eight new candidates Mission Control brought in to fill out the extended crew and keep us all on our toes, aren’t much better. At least from what I’ve seen of them so far, all burning eyes and nose-to-the-grindstone and all of them absolutely one hundred percent certain they’ll ace us out and be among the final eight for Mission Three. They’re younger too, mostly in their twenties (like Rita Nordquist, Sally’s replacement) and they don’t show a whole lot of diversity except for one of the men, Francisco Viera, who’s from Uruguay, though he speaks English without an accent and has his Ph.D. in oceanography by way of Scripps.

  I go to the cupboard where I keep a bottle of the snake wine my grandfather brought back from Seoul on his last trip and which I told everybody is for emergencies only because I don’t want them getting the wrong impression, all the while mentally thumbing through the faces of the new crewmembers until I hit on Gavin Helgeland, who’s funny and sympathetic and really goes out of his way to be nice to me (but then they all do, sucking up to us veterans in the baldest way, as if that’s going to do them any good). I shake up the bottle to get the scales of the pickled mamushi viper inside floating around like those little white flakes in a snowglobe, then pour myself a drink and throw it back neat, still high on the secret I’ve brought home with me, the Dragon Lady herself. Still, standing there at the counter blinking my eyes against the sting of the drink, I begin to reconsider. We’re teammates, yes, and I’m one of the only ones with a car—Dawn’s car, now mine to keep and use and chew up into little pieces if I want—but nonetheless it would be awkward to just stroll over to his apartment in Residence 1, knock on the door and say, “Hey.”

  No matter. A second drink does the trick (and what is Bem Ju for anyway, if not strength and resolution?). I change into a dress and strappy sandals, do my face, tame my hair as best I can by pinning it up and spraying detangler right on down to the roots, then go back out the door and up the road to Residence 1 to see if Gavin’s in the mood for a drink—and who knows, maybe more? Be bold, that’s what I tell myself. And if I’m asserting my prerogative as veteran crew, wielding what little power I have over somebody who has even less, so much the better.

  Still, I’m tentative about the whole thing, nervous, actually, nervous as a high-schooler, as I knock at Gavin’s door, especially when nothing happens and I have to knock a second time. I stand there listening for movement, then I hear a thump and the shuffle of feet, and there’s Gavin, in a set of headphones, bobbing his head to a beat only he can hear. His apartment is just like mine, only messier, and he isn’t alone. Two of the other crew—Ellen Shapiro, a newbie, and (this throws me) Tricia Berner—are sitting at the kitchen table, sharing a marijuana blunt and a bag of potato chips. “Hi,” I say, or more likely, chirp, because I tend to chirp when I get nervous. “Hi, Gavin. Hi, Ellen, Trish—but hey, it’s Saturday night!”

  I’m still standing there at the open door and all three of them are just gazing up at me with a look of surprise, as if this is the last thing they expected (and am I really all that threatening or stand-offish or whatever? Is it really so out of bounds that I might show up for some R&R with my crewmates? Somebody help me out here, that’s what I’m thinking).

  “Saturday,” I repeat, but with maybe just a tad less enthusiasm this time. What had I expected? Gavin (six-two, one hundred eighty pounds, the exact same eyes and ragged haircut of that singer in The Cure) sitting home alone doing crossword puzzles or playing solitaire?

  But it’s okay, everything just as cool and stress-free as it can be, the spell broken in the next instant and all three of them glad to see me and as eager to take me up on my offer of a drive into town (maybe nine or ten miles one way and no joke after dark when the cars come at the lone bicyclist like mythical beasts, like dragons) and I begin to wonder, despite the exhilaration of the news that crackles deep inside me, if I’m just being paranoid. They like me, they do, smiles all around. Everybody’s happy. And everybody’s in motion now, Gavin slipping out from under his headphones, the two women getting up from the table with big stoned smiles plastered to their faces, and here’s the blunt, freely held out for my inspection—and use, that too. Don’t be surprised if I tell you I took a hit or two—we weren’t nuns and we weren’t saints, but Terranauts-in-waiting who were no less tuned-in than anybody else, or maybe even more so. It was marijuana, that was all, another fruit of the earth. Rumor had it—and Winston Barr confirmed it after the closure ceremony when we were all standing around with drinks in our hands and the band kept on playing—that the Mission One crew had not only clandestinely grown marijuana inside but ayahuasca too. That was all right. And so is this, sharing a blunt with my crewmates while the snake wine slithers through my veins. It’s all good. Just as long as Mission Control doesn’t find out.

  My eyesight, I have to admit, isn’t the greatest, and once I get behind the wheel things seem to blur even worse than usual, and the pot isn’t helping. Still we somehow manage to make it into town undetected by the guardians of the law and roll on up to a parking spot conveniently located right in front of Alfano’s, just as if it’s been reserved for us. All this is prelude to what doesn’t happen—no accident, no arrest (which would have spelled certain doom in Mission Control’s eyes)—but what does happen isn’t exactly in the realm of anything that anybody, Dawn especially, would have called good. Or even neutral.

  Have I mentioned Johnny? Or that I don’t have much use for him? Well, he’s there that night, propped up at the bar on one elbow, a drink in front of him (Johnnie Walker Black, and isn’t that just too coolly ironic for words?) when by all rights he should have been down in Tucson playing in some bar with his
bar band. The dining room’s full, but we haven’t come to dine—we couldn’t afford it, in any case—but to drink, get loose, listen to whatever the jukebox is giving up and confine ourselves, strictly, to the bar. Which is crowded, with tourists and locals both, locals like Johnny.

  At first he doesn’t seem to see us. Gavin finds us a table just behind the door, which we soon discover is the worst table in the house, since every time someone comes in, the door swings wide and cracks the edge of it, wood on wood. We get a round of drinks—beer for me, though I’m sensitive about my weight and so’s Mission Control—because I’m feeling the effects of what I had back at the apartment and the marijuana too and don’t want to get totally out of control. I wonder what my hair looks like. We had the windows down coming into town, a sweet mesquite-smelling breeze and seventy-eight degrees of temperature wafting in to fan our mood. Tricia Berner’s going on about the play—The Skin of Our Teeth, which G.C. decreed was to be performed both inside and out, the Mission Two crew responsible for an array of roles (in a play I personally find corny, endless and outdated), and we of the extended crew for dividing those roles up in sixteen ways for a performance to be given consecutively with theirs, ours at Mission Control and theirs in the command center on the second tier of E2. She’s talking up the role of Sabina, the best role really except maybe Antrobus himself, and you can see she’s priming herself for it, when I cut in to say, “Yeah, but why this play when there’s like a million other choices out there?,” trying not to sound too negative but only interested in the question rhetorically, in the way of a theater lover who’s totally on board with it.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” Tricia (waist-length hair, brunette, with a pretty-enough face if you like freckles, moles and pre-cancerous lesions) waves her drink at me. Gavin and Ellen Shapiro lean into the table with knowing smirks. This is a topic that’s been batted around before. “G.C. is Mr. Antrobus. He did invent the wheel. And fire. And everything else.”