by Temi Oh
‘Have you eaten?’ Fae asked.
Jesse tried to remember the last time he’d been in the kitchen, what time of day it was. ‘I had breakfast.’
‘That was twelve hours ago.’
‘I—’
‘You have to eat.’ She touched the back of his hand with her mitten. ‘Keep up your strength. I thought I’d try one last round in the chamber. Another dose of Dexamethasone. See if we see any improvements.’ The word ‘last’ made Jesse’s throat tighten. ‘I’ll keep her company. Go.’
Jesse stood with some difficulty. He was beginning to feel the weakness in his own body, pain in his head, a listing dizziness whenever he stood. Nightmares about drowning.
‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
‘Take your time.’ It sounded more like a plea.
Jesse squinted in the half-light of the corridor. Looked at the time on his watch and realized he’d already missed dinner.
Poppy was sitting at the breakfast counter when he entered, eating from a greasy bag of microwave popcorn. ‘Guess what I found,’ she said when Jesse entered, ‘I forgot I packed these. It was Harry’s idea: most junk food, least space. Oh, were you crying?’
Jesse felt the blood rising in his cheeks. ‘No,’ he said, ‘just sleeping.’
‘How is she doing?’ Poppy asked.
‘Bad . . .’ He strained for a moment to catch his breath. ‘Is there something to eat?’
Poppy looked around the room and shrugged. ‘More mac broth – or else something from a tin. Nothing fresh left, obviously, since the garden died. The food in the water-based cans has frozen.’
Jesse sank down in one of the chairs, realizing that his whole body ached and that at any moment his constricted breathing might turn into sobs.
‘You can have some popcorn for dinner. What do you prefer: sweet or salty or both?’
‘I’m actually not so hungry.’ Loss of appetite – another symptom.
‘Jesse?’ He turned to find Poppy’s eyes wide and concerned. ‘You’re being super brave, you know that?’
‘I’m not the brave one,’ he said, thinking of how terrified he’d felt the previous night when Juno had woken up screaming, convinced that all the air had leaked out of the room.
‘Oh, jeez!’ Poppy swore under her breath. ‘That was a stupid thing to say. I’m so stupid sometimes.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Jesse said.
Poppy slid off the high chair behind the breakfast bar, rummaged through the cupboard and brought out a thin packet of something. ‘I’ve been thinking about that, actually.’
‘What?’
She walked over to the microwave and switched it on. ‘I was thinking about the Beta.’
‘Oh, yeah?’
‘Don’t you ever wonder about all this sometimes? Wonder why they chose us?’
‘Because you guys were the best,’ Jesse said automatically. His teeth were chattering.
‘What does that mean?’
‘You know, they tested us for years. We’re smart, physically fit. We’re of reproductive age—’
‘Yes, yes. I’m not talking about any of that. Sometimes I think it was just some kind of sick test. All those fit-checks, the psych team on the ground. Doesn’t it feel sometimes like instead of us experimenting on Terra, they’re experimenting on us?’
Like the others, Poppy had lost weight, her cheekbones now sharply defined, and there were new hollows under her eyes. Her body was heavy with layers – working boots, a scarf, silver puffa jacket – but even so, as she stood, she kept stamping her feet to keep the blood circulating in her toes. Motes of frost stuck to strands of hair at the end of her ponytail, like sugar crystals.
‘I just think,’ she continued, ‘we’re all so . . . There’s so much wrong with us.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jesse said. ‘It’s not us, it’s this situation. There’s nothing normal about this situation, about watching Orlando go up in flames and then half our own ship too. Watching Solomon die and then . . . and Ara . . . and . . .’ He stopped, bit his lip.
Poppy ran her fingers through her long hair again. She was beginning to lose some of it; stray copper tresses caught between her fingers and pulled away from her scalp. ‘I remembered Christina Abellard.’ For a second the name drew a blank, and then Jesse recalled the tall olive-skinned girl who was on the debating team. ‘And how when they started selections for the Beta we all knew she would make it.’
‘Yeah . . .’ he said, the memory coming back to him. ‘Because she was amazing at everything.’
‘She came top in all the tests. Eliot was the only one who beat her in astrophysics and mech. eng., and barely. Plus she was awesome at sports too.’
‘Yeah, but there were loads of people like that. Dalton was that kind of school.’
‘I know, but—’ Poppy swore, spun around and stabbed the button on the microwave. The air was filled with the tang of burnt food and Jesse noticed the round black patch of scorched paper when she pulled the packet out, sucking on burnt fingers and hissing.
‘You see,’ she said, flinging the steaming bag of popcorn onto the counter, ‘I’m useless.’
‘Don’t say that.’ It was so cold that the steam plumed out of it in a kind of spectacular cloud.
‘How did someone like me make it into the Beta, and not Christina?’
This wasn’t new ground either, wondering how some had made it even through the first round of selections while others weren’t offered an interview. ‘It’s luck, isn’t it. Or I don’t know, the professors had their reasons. Maybe—’
Poppy was shaking her head. ‘Second round of selections, when they published that list of the fifty people who’d made it through ranked in order of how suitable we were. I was forty and Christy was forty-eight.’
‘That didn’t matter in the end anyway, remember, cos Christina dropped out. Her parents revoked consent. Said they didn’t want their daughter going up into space when she’d do better on Earth as a surgeon or something.’
‘Exactly.’ Poppy stabbed a finger at Jesse.
‘Exactly what?’
‘I think they chose us because we’re expendable,’ she said.
Jesse’s stomach sank. That couldn’t be it.
‘No,’ he finally said. ‘That’s not right.’
‘I was going through the records on Fae’s computer, looking at our old test scores. Even in swimming there was not one test where Christina came below number twenty. She was in the top five for most things.’
‘So . . . ?’
‘So, in every way – on every scale they had – there was no way she was forty-eight out of fifty.’ Poppy paused to open the bag of popcorn, steam curling up to her chin. ‘It’s not so bad,’ she said. ‘I can just pick the burnt ones out.’
‘So maybe they have other scales,’ Jesse suggested. ‘Ones we can’t see, and on those ones Christy ranked lower than you.’
‘That’s what I thought, but what would they be?’ Poppy was flicking burnt popcorn from the bowl. ‘And what’s the point of having all those other tests, all those horrid hoops we had to jump through, getting up at dawn, doing those drills on the lawn, those fit-checks and holding our heads underwater until we choked, five-, six-hour exams – what was all that for?
‘Well, I think that if you really were going to build a colony, a new country somewhere else, and it would take twenty-three years to get there, what would be more important than physical fitness or swimming badges?’
She shook her head. ‘I don’t know. What?’
‘You’d want people who really wanted to be there,’ Jesse said slowly. ‘People who would give up their family, their future, a chance to be a surgeon or whatever and to travel across the stars for twenty years. Maybe those tests weren’t about what we thought they were. Maybe they wanted to see how much we could sacrifice. How much we wanted to be in the Beta. Needed it. And the six of us wanted it the most. And maybe, on the last day, Ara didn’t.’
THE SHIP WA
S QUIET by the time Jesse walked back along the frosted corridor. The low rumble of a voice drifted through the half-open door of Igor’s bedroom.
‘Two funerals in one month . . .’ He recognized Igor’s heavy breathing,
‘It’s more than I can bear,’ said Fae. ‘I don’t think she’ll last the night.’
Jesse caught his breath and began to run down the corridor towards Solomon Sheppard’s room. As he did, he struggled to shake away the thought of Juno dying, of wrapping her body in a sheet as they had for their commander and watching as she was jettisoned out into space.
Jesse fought against the clenching in his throat until he reached the bed where Juno lay, and dropped down to his knees and began to beg. He’d felt this way before, with his sister Morrigan, although he’d been a lot younger then. They’d been driving home from a cousin’s wedding in Murang’a – rust-red roads, all the windows open, baking in the heat of the car – when his sister had slumped against him, her head hot with fever, and complained of a headache.
‘Probably dehydrated,’ their mother had said. What she always said when one of them complained of a headache.
The next morning she had not come downstairs for breakfast, and Jesse’s mother had screamed when she found her, tangled in her bedsheets, her limbs thrashing, foaming at the mouth. Jesse remembered the feeling of the condensation on the cool marble under his bare feet, the sound of the fan whacking the hot air and the medicine man’s prophecy coming back to him. That Morrigan would fall sick, but not leave this world. Like a talisman, he turned the old man’s words over in his mind, even after she was rushed to hospital, even after she slipped into a coma, mouth half-open, dead to the world. The doctors had washed their hands of her but when she’d lived they’d said, ‘Miujiza!’
‘Jesse?’
He looked up, brought back to his own body by a voice that sounded like Juno’s. She was standing in the doorway for a moment, but then he realized. ‘Astrid. It’s you.’
The next thing he knew Astrid was standing next to him, her arms squeezed around her. This pain, he knew, they could share.
‘Fae said that she doesn’t think she’ll make it through the night,’ Astrid said.
‘I heard . . .’ Jesse said.
‘So I thought . . . I wouldn’t want to be alone.’ She took off her glove and grabbed Juno’s hand. Juno’s breath was watery, as if her lungs were filling with fluid, coming in long, laboured gasps. And with every gap in between, Jesse wondered if she would take another breath, glanced at his watch, wondered if this was the moment.
‘My grandma told me a phrase for that way she’s breathing.’ Astrid nodded towards Juno. ‘They call it “climbing the mountain of death” in her language. They say that once you start to climb . . .’
‘Do you believe in miracles?’ he said. Astrid wiped an eye with the back of her wrist so that she wouldn’t have to let go of her sister.
‘You know that I do,’ she said. ‘I’ve been praying and praying but . . . maybe our luck’s run out.’
Jesse looked at Juno’s heartbeat on the monitor, blood pressure, oxygen saturation. Astrid’s head was blocking the lamplight so she was a dark shadow, slightly painful to look at.
‘Maybe . . .’ said Jesse. He was thinking of the prayers of thanksgiving that the doctors had offered up to a merciful God. ‘Maybe you can’t just ask. You have to give.’
Astrid looked up at Jesse quizzically. ‘Like, make a deal?’
‘Like, make a sacrifice.’ Jesse didn’t believe in Astrid’s God, but he believed in sacrifice. Remembered the Sunday school class in which he learned about Abraham and the son he took up a mountain to murder.
Astrid looked at her sister. ‘You know, my mum once told me never to make a deal with God. It was the strangest thing she ever told me. She said that it’s dangerous. That you should only make promises that you can keep.’
The thought frightened Jesse just a little. Reminded him that Astrid believed that God was not only the kindly father of her Sunday school songs, the one who held them lovingly in his hands, waiting in eager expectation for the moment that they would turn their faces towards him. To her, He was also the bringer of storms, the sharp hand of justice, an awesome force.
‘What would you give up, Astrid? If you had to. What do you love the most? What would you sacrifice to save your sister?’
THEY AWOKE TO THE SOUND of the oxygen alarm. Jesse’s eyes were too blurred to see the figures on the monitor but he knew what it meant. ‘Astrid?’ She’d been asleep too, but she started awake with a gasp.
‘No . . .’ she cried, her voice light with horror. But Juno’s mouth was hanging open and she was not breathing. Jesse pushed his hands under her neck to check for a pulse but couldn’t find one. Astrid screamed, dropped to her knees, tears pouring from her eyes. Jesse stepped back, his entire body numb, ears ringing, fingers trembling.
Then the ship was filled with the thunder of running feet, others rushing up the ladder. Fae dashed into the room, still in her dressing gown, and took in the scene. Poppy ran to embrace Eliot and a wailing Astrid, Harry and Cai lingered by the threshold.
‘Poppy.’ Fae pointed to Astrid. ‘I can’t work with this noise.’ She opened a box and pulled out her stethoscope, pushed it against Juno’s chest and said, ‘Quiet.’
Jesse watched the concentration in her eyes, the way she frowned, shrinking away from the whine of the oxygen alarm. She was still for a long while, and then looked up at the monitor, pressed a button on the side and held it for a moment. It went blank, and in the silence all Jesse could hear was the sound of the blood throbbing in his eardrums.
‘Juno . . .’ Fae pulled off her stethoscope and switched on the main lights so they all blinked in the brightness.
The monitor in the corner of the room beeped, and then beeped again, then again, in the stiff regular rhythm of a heartbeat.
Juno opened her eyes, as if she’d just surfaced from deep water, dragging uncertain gulps of air and shaking all over.
POPPY
24.02.13
TEMPERATURE: -18°C
O2: 59% SEA LEVEL
WEEKS UNTIL RESCUE: 5
SHE HAD TAKEN TO sleeping on the control deck, wrapped in duvet covers, sitting in the pilot’s seat and watching through the wide window for any sign of the service shuttle. Sometimes she fell asleep and imagined it twinkling in the distance, but then opened her eyes fully and realized it was only her reflection in the glass. She set the radio to tune and tune, the way Eliot had showed her, and finally, one afternoon, a voice broke through the static.
‘Mission Control, Damocles, comm check.’ Poppy leapt to her feet on a floor slicked with ice.
‘I’m here,’ she told them, rubbing her numb cheeks. ‘We’re here.’
‘This is Commander Sheppard?’
‘No . . .’ Poppy said. ‘It’s Poppy Lane. I’m from the Beta.’
‘We received your distress call two weeks ago and my service team is on its way.’
‘Right.’
‘We’ll prepare to rendezvous in five days.’
‘Really? So soon?’ Poppy glanced at the date on the dashboard. She’d calculated that, in the best-case scenario, the rescue shuttle could arrive in six weeks. ‘That’s amazing. Thank you . . .’ Poppy strained to remember the name of the leader of the Russian expedition. ‘Is this Vera Petrov?’
‘No,’ came the voice, ‘It’s Xiao lin.’
‘Xiao Lin He?’ Poppy repeated, hardly understanding what she was hearing.
‘Yes, from the Shēngmìng. We’ve been watching you. We’ve been wishing you luck on your endeavour. We’re on our way to help.’
JUNO
25.02.13
TEMPERATURE: -21°C
O2: 58% SEA LEVEL
DAYS UNTIL RESCUE: 4
JUNO COULDN’T HELP FEELING as if the rest of the crew were avoiding her. She’d seen it on their faces when she opened her eyes, aware only of the beep of the machines as they indicated her
heartbeat. Two days before they’d given her up for dead, and now here she was, staring back at them.
Sometimes she heard their voices outside the door as they trekked to the kitchen and she longed to be well enough to join them, but she was still too weak to get out of bed. It reminded her of the autumn that she’d broken her ankle falling out of a tree, and the interminable days that followed; watching her sister out in the garden collecting buckets of Cox apples, or carving pumpkins by the treehouse, haunting the town dressed as a ghost for Halloween, having fun while Juno was bed-bound and envious. Juno had watched the pumpkins rot on the windowsill, turn green and implode.
‘Astrid!’ Juno opened her eyes to find her sister slipping out of the room.
‘I thought you were sleeping,’ Astrid said.
‘Sorry to disappoint you.’ Juno didn’t try to hide her resentment. ‘I’m getting better,’ she went on. ‘Fae says the Dexamethasone must have worked.’ She held up the arm that was still attached to the IV. ‘So can everyone stop acting so strange around me now?’
‘What do you mean?’ Astrid asked, pulling her scarf tighter around her neck.
‘You know what I mean,’ Juno said.
‘Well . . .’ Astrid’s gaze was still fixed firmly on the floor.
‘Where’s Jesse?’ Juno asked. He had not come to see her since the night she first awoke. Juno wondered if everything would be different between them now that he’d witnessed her crying in the midst of her nightmares, feeble and confused and calling out for death.
‘Maybe he’s a little frightened,’ Astrid said. ‘We all are. I mean . . . you were dead.’
‘You thought I was dead.’
‘And then you opened your eyes.’ Astrid shuddered. ‘And for just a minute it was like it was someone else.’
‘I was alive, you know? The whole time,’ Juno said. ‘It was just a machine glitch.’
‘That’s what Fae says.’
‘But you don’t believe her.’