First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  “The only thing it’s able: Keep going.”

  * * *

  • • •

  THE KENNEL SEEMED more full of people than dogs. Nadya and Leonid had visited almost every day for years, and besides the woman who fed and washed and walked the animals, there was never anyone else there. But today, a half-dozen white-coated veterinarians were pulling dogs from the cages and prodding them with instruments and for every veterinarian there were two assistants, who might have been veterinarians themselves but did not have the white coats to prove it. The dogs were unusually silent, as if all the activity had stunned them too much to bark. Sometimes a small yip came as a dog received a needle or had its mouth forced open or ear probed. The sound was a cry of pain but also of sadness, Leonid knew. He remembered the hungry cries of the cats in his village, before they were all gathered up to be eaten.

  “You’re hurting them.” Leonid spoke loudly to the whole room.

  “It’s just a checkup,” said the nearest veterinarian, an old man with a straight back, and Leonid knew without asking that the man had been an officer in the war. The old officers all had a way of looking at young men, as if assessing their readiness for battle. But this one was a veterinarian now, and had likely been one in the war, more fit for judging horses than people. He nodded once at Leonid, then returned his attention to Laika, who still managed to look happy, tail fanning frantically, even while she was twisted this way and that by unfamiliar hands.

  “Where’s Kasha?” asked Nadya.

  Leonid spied her tail, arcing up and over, the tip dipping down at her back. Instead of white fur, her body was a pale blue, and it took Leonid a moment to realize she was wearing a vest. The veterinarians tugged it into place as he watched. The vest did not look comfortable, too tight, squeezing Kasha’s body, the fur directly above the neckline puffing out like a mane. Leonid had never realized how small she actually was, how much of her apparent size was due to the thickness of her fur.

  She tried to run over to Nadya and Leonid at the door, but one of the veterinarians restrained her while another adjusted the vest, tightening it even more. Leonid went to Kasha and knelt.

  “Be careful,” he said.

  “The dog’s fine,” said one of the veterinarians.

  Indeed, Kasha wagged her tail and tried to lick Leonid but could not reach and lapped at the air instead. Nadya stood behind Leonid and rested her fingertips on his shoulder.

  “So it’s true,” said Nadya. “We’re really going to send her into space?”

  Leonid did not understand what she had said, and her expression revealed nothing. He caressed Kasha, starting above her ear and ending at the scruff of her neck. It was the way his brother had always petted Kasha’s mother. She nuzzled against Leonid’s arm.

  The old veteran veterinarian loped across the room. His chin came to an uncomfortable point, as if the sides of his face were pressed in with a vise. His limbs seemed too long and too thin. Leonid thought he looked very much like the horses to which he once had tended.

  “I don’t know the plan,” he said. “We were just called in today to check the dogs and establish a training regimen. The last time I was here was what, five years ago?” He looked at Nadya until she looked back. “Your launch made all our work for naught. Little Laika here was destined to be the first living thing in space.”

  “Perhaps also the first to die,” said Nadya.

  “Excuse me?” said the old veteran.

  Leonid sprung to his feet, inserting himself into the space between the veteran and Nadya.

  “But she will fly now, yes?” asked Leonid.

  “She’s too old. A feeling I can relate to! No, this time we’ll launch that one there.” He pointed at Kasha. “I remember her mother. She was my first choice for launch. Much quieter than even Laika, you know. Very calm. But for some reason the Chief Designer wouldn’t allow it. If it can’t be Laika to launch, then I’m glad it’s Kasha’s daughter.”

  “But we can’t launch Kasha,” said Leonid. His eyes felt hot. A sick taste rose to the top of his throat. He swallowed. He took a quick breath and swallowed again.

  The old veteran laughed. “You go into space yourself and yet worry for a dog! Cosmonauts are a strange breed.”

  Leonid looked down at all the dogs. Little creatures. Sweet and needy. He whispered their names: Kasha, Laika, Strelka, Chernushka, Ugolyok, and all the others. Nadya gripped him around the biceps and led him from the room. He was whispering the last of the names as she shut the door.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” she said. “I think I didn’t want to believe it myself.”

  “Why now?”

  “Would another time have made it better?”

  Leonid took backward steps until he bumped against the wall on the other side of the hall.

  “Did you know that my brother and I saved the original Kasha? The villagers were starving and wanted to eat her. There had been no meat in so long. We hid her in our home and she knew not to bark. That’s why the veterinarians here loved her so much, for her restraint. No matter what they did to her, she never complained. I think she would have been better off had she bitten someone now and again.”

  Leonid pushed himself off the wall and hurried away. Nadya trotted after him.

  “Where are you going?” she asked.

  “Perhaps it’s time to give the Chief Designer a nip to the hand.”

  * * *

  • • •

  AFTER THE GENERAL DESIGNER left, the Chief Designer could not concentrate on the reports stacked all around his desk. The stack nearest the edge he pushed off and watched as the individual pages fluttered free from their folders and to the floor, mixing and matching with papers from other reports. If only the right pieces would land together, he might finally rid himself of reports forever.

  Another commotion arose in the waiting room, Mishin and Bushuyev speaking loud, quick phrases, another voice responding, nearing the door, and then the door opened. The Chief Designer expected a return visit from the General Designer, but instead it was Leonid followed by Nadya. The Chief Designer felt himself relax. He did not think he could handle another conflict today. At least the reports never talked back.

  His relief left him as quickly as it came, though, when he saw the look on Leonid’s face. That mouth, trained for years to greet everyone it came across with a grin, a grin that could hush crying babies and swoon the wives of even the most charming men, instead glowered. Beside him, the expressionless Nadya seemed elated in comparison.

  Mishin and Bushuyev stood on the other side of the doorway. They shrugged at the same time and pulled the door shut.

  “You don’t seem happy to see me, Leonid,” said the Chief Designer.

  “You can’t do this. You must not. Choose another dog, but not Kasha.”

  The Chief Designer had been unsure of how Leonid would react to the news. That was why he had not told him yet. But while news did not escape Star City, it was impossible to keep it from spreading within. The only secret that had ever seemed to keep was that of the twins’ very existence.

  “It isn’t the same Kasha as from your home.”

  “I don’t care!” Leonid shouted and slammed his fist against the door behind him. The hush that followed reminded the Chief Designer of the moment after a launch when the rumble of the rocket finally faded to nothing.

  The Chief Designer stood but did not round the desk. He held his face in his palm and rubbed his thumb up and down the scar on his head. Sometimes he thought the scar was growing in length, stretching with age. His wife had told him he was silly for thinking such a thing. He would have liked to see his wife.

  “What can I do, Leonid?” he asked.

  “Choose another dog.” Leonid stepped forward. “But not Kasha, please. Don’t take her away from me. She’s all that’s left.”

  “Khrushche
v chose her.”

  “And Tsiolkovski chose us,” said Nadya, “but you went along with him. There are only so many times you can pass responsibility to someone else.”

  The Chief Designer lowered his hand from his face and looked at her. Guilt had always flowed through his veins like blood, but never once had the guilt been placed on him from the outside. Especially not from Nadya.

  “You owe us at least one thing, yes?” said Nadya. “Make it this. Find a way to save Kasha.”

  The Chief Designer crouched beside his desk and leafed through the papers he had knocked to the floor. A dozen pages on the failure of the ablative heat shield in the latest tests. Several more on painting larger red stars on the sides of rockets. He was glad to see that this particular item had been copied to the General Designer as well. Could he be the answer? Could the Chief Designer bear to work with that ass of a man?

  He found what he was looking for and stood.

  “There might be a way,” said the Chief Designer. “And if that doesn’t work, there might be another.”

  He handed a photograph to Leonid.

  “What’s this?” asked Leonid.

  “It’s Khrushchev’s dog.”

  The picture showed a tiny animal, eyes taking up a significant portion of its face, long hair frizzing from its ears. The hand that held it in the photograph looked like it belonged to a giant in comparison to the dog’s waspy torso and wiry legs.

  “This is a dog?” said Nadya. “It looks like a well-groomed squirrel.”

  “That’s its name: Byelka.”

  “What a horrible accident of breeding.”

  The Chief Designer looked at the piece of paper that had accompanied the photograph.

  “It’s a Russkiy Toy,” he said.

  “How will this dog help us?” asked Nadya. “Will we launch it instead?”

  “We have to launch both,” said the Chief Designer. “On my end, I’ll try to find a way to bring it back along with Kasha. But I’m not sure I can. You know I’ve been trying to bring back all of you . . . all of your siblings with every launch. In case I can’t prepare the capsule to return the dogs, though, I need your help.”

  “What can we possibly do?” asked Leonid.

  “Find me the twins of these dogs. I’ll have Mishin and Bushuyev assist you. They helped capture the original batch of strays, and know the best streets to search in Moscow.”

  “This doesn’t seem like a simple task,” said Nadya.

  “I don’t recall having ever faced a task that was simple.”

  “There’s a whole room of veterinarians here right now. Let them help us.”

  “It has to be only those who know . . . only the twins and then Mishin and Bushuyev.”

  “What about Mars?” asked Leonid.

  “Mars is . . . busy. And this is only a contingency. I hope that we never need to use it. I hope that Kasha will become the first living thing we return from space.”

  “I hope she never leaves the ground,” said Leonid. He glared into a corner of the room.

  Nadya reached back and opened the door. She gripped Leonid by the shoulder and led him out.

  “Thank you, Chief Designer,” she said.

  He nodded. “Please send Mishin and Bushuyev in on your way out.”

  He heard the outer door open and shut. God, he was tired. He opened his eyes to discover Mishin and Bushuyev in front of him. The Chief Designer shuffled through the papers on his desk until he found the report on the heat shield.

  “I don’t have time to read this,” he said. “Tell me what it says.”

  “Nothing new,” said one of them.

  “What will it take to get a report on the heat shield that does tell me something new?”

  “A miracle,” said the other.

  “That’s all you can offer? A prayer? To what god?”

  The Chief Designer felt heat rise to his face. He flung the report toward the wall beside his desk. The papers fluttered apart and drifted down. He had wanted the report to smack against the wall. He wanted the satisfaction of the impact. He let out an inarticulate scream, like the roar of a bear.

  “I’ll beat all of you with a stick. I’ll beat you until nobody will be able to recognize your face for how bad I’ve beaten it.” The Chief Designer was standing, leaning across his desk toward Mishin and Bushuyev, thrusting his fist into the air to punctuate every word.

  “I’m fifty years old,” said Mishin or Bushuyev—one was fifty and the other only thirty-seven, but the Chief Designer always forgot which was which. “This is not the time to be threatening me with a stick.”

  The Chief Designer focused his eyes—his vision had tunneled with rage—and took two deep breaths. He hurried around his desk as quickly as his aching knees could move him and pulled Mishin and Bushuyev into an embrace.

  “Forgive me, forgive me,” he said. “No offense intended. I was overreacting.”

  He had so few friends, so few people to rely on. Why did he lose his temper with them? The General Designer had been here not long ago. There was a man worth threatening. The Chief Designer released Mishin and Bushuyev from the hug. One of them stooped to gather the papers from the floor, as if the Chief Designer’s outburst had never occurred.

  “Giorgi will start the centrifuge in an hour,” said the other.

  An hour to tackle all the reports that had been stacked again upon the Chief Designer’s desk. Another countdown. He had told the General Designer that gravity was the only competition. But perhaps time was the most formidable foe of all.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE LAST NIP of chilly morning air had been chased off. Leonid passed through the line of trees beside the dormitory to the narrow quadrangle beyond, a long strip of celadon grass, sere, crunching beneath his old training boots. He doubted that the grass would come back after each harsh winter, but it always sprouted green again. Walkways had been paved across the quadrangle at regular intervals, though there was nothing on the other side, just trees thickening into forest. Like everything else at Star City, the paths were part of some future plan. Leonid surmised that half of being a visionary was the willingness to pave paths to nowhere.

  The Chief Designer was like that, leaping ahead without checking to see where he might land, never looking back, as if he could not bear the image of what was behind him. Leonid had heard some of the Chief Designer’s history. Siberia, the gulag. He could see as clearly as anyone the scar on the Chief Designer’s head. He had witnessed more than most how the Chief Designer gritted his teeth, the real ones on top against the artificial ones on the bottom. The fake teeth, worn half away, had to be replaced once a year. Was it enough that the Chief Designer felt guilt, that it ground him down, that it had him awake and working hours before every dawn?

  Tsiolkovski had told them over and over again that all their sacrifices were for the good of the Motherland. The loss of their homes, the long hours of training, the endless studying, the separation from their twins, and eventually the twins’ deaths. Before he left, Tsiolkovski would orate speeches like sermons. Or tell stories like a grandfather. Whatever he said, it seemed impossible not to believe, whatever he ordered, impossible not to follow. That was how Leonid had always forgiven the Chief Designer, swept up like the rest of them in Tsiolkovski’s fervor. With Tsiolkovski gone, though, Leonid’s belief waned, and he saw in Tsiolkovski nothing more than the old gods dethroned by the Soviets, a comforting belief with no basis in reality. There was no Motherland, just the people who lived on top of it. Every sacrifice had been for a lie. All these lies to ensure the survival of another, grander lie. Leonid was tired of pretending.

  Nadya had followed him outside, but now wandered on her own toward the far end of the quadrangle. Whenever she came to one of the paved paths, she paused before it, looking down as if at a creek, and then jumped across. Far
as she could jump, certainly farther than Leonid, she could not quite make it to the other side. Perhaps if she had taken a running start, but she never seemed bothered by coming up short. Leonid could not understand the rules of her game, assuming there were rules at all.

  The dry grass crackled behind him. Ignatius entered his peripheral vision, head craned up at the sky, hands thrust in the pockets of her leather jacket. She stopped at Leonid’s side.

  “It’s too hot for this,” she said.

  “Take it off.”

  “Your proposition lacks subtlety.”

  “You never seemed concerned with propriety.”

  Ignatius lifted her arms without removing her hands from the pockets, spreading the jacket like the wings of a crow, the fur collar a tuft of feathers. She turned one of the wings to her face and inspected the faded red lining.

  “It’s a kind of uniform, yes?” she said. “It suits what I do.”

  “Harassing me?”

  “I was speaking of my job. Harassing you is a hobby.”

  Nadya leapt over the last path, far down the quadrangle. She was shrunk by the distance, just a blur of motion against the trees. She stood there, glancing around, as if she did not know what to do now that the task of leaping paths was complete.

  “She’s like a child sometimes,” said Ignatius.

  “It was never intended that she become an adult.”

  “Children are at once much easier and much more difficult to control.”

  “What, we’re children to you? And to the Chief Designer?”

  “Yes, but to each of us in our own way. The Chief Designer loves you all like flesh and blood. I, on the other hand, am just a nanny. Yes, I may care for you, but I don’t care for you enough to take care of you without getting paid.”

  “A rather bourgeois sentiment coming from an instrument of the Party.”

  “Payment isn’t always in the form of money.”

  “What then?”

  “The Chief Designer works for pride. Mars out of regret. Nadya because she knows nothing else. And you? You work for duty. Duty to your brother, to your grandmother, to Tsiolkovski, maybe even to the Chief Designer.”