by Laura Lam
“It feels awful, deciding their fate for them,” she said, voice low.
Valerie’s face was smoothed by the cool light from the pods, making her look younger, more like the woman Naomi remembered from her childhood. “I know.”
They sat there, in silence. Naomi didn’t cry. She thought she would have. But the longer she stayed with her hand on the cold glass, the more she hardened. The choice had been made, there was no going back. No point railing against it. Even after switching off the pods, getting the life support back into its symbiotic balance with the other systems on the ship would be difficult. They’d all be working twelve-, sixteen-hour stretches. Naomi welcomed the work and the distraction.
“I’ve told the others I’ll be the one to do it,” Valerie said. “As captain, the responsibility falls to me.” Her hand floated towards Naomi, as if she’d touch her, but at Naomi’s stiffness, she drew back. “I’ll take care of them. Of him, Naomi. As best I can.”
Naomi tilted her head towards the black ceiling of the storage bay. The next time she came down here, the humming of the pods would be quiet. The light would change to the pale white of artificial sunlight if it was the “daylight” hours on board, or the amber lights of “night.”
Naomi had planned to be strong and bottle up the swirl of her emotions. But Valerie had once told her not to be afraid of her rage. So why be afraid of frustration? Of grief?
Valerie’s arms reached wide and Naomi floated into them. They were tethered to each other, suspended, twirling slowly with the momentum of Naomi pushing up to reach her. Naomi had rarely hugged Valerie, growing up. A few memories of stiff, unyielding embraces, especially in public. Down here, there was no one to see. Valerie’s touch was light as she stroked the space between Naomi’s shoulder blades.
“Thank you,” Naomi whispered into Valerie’s shoulder.
Valerie squeezed her tighter, then let her go.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
6 Years Before Launch
Singapore
Naomi shifted from foot to foot on the boat as it neared the sea burial site.
She hadn’t known Evan’s father well—only met him a handful of times. She remembered him as tall, brusque, handsome. His cultured Chinese-Singapore accent had blurred from years spent in America. He’d always smelled of sharp cologne, just that little bit too overpowering.
For all she and Evan were still not speaking, Naomi wanted to support him, and so she’d flown to Singapore for the first time with Valerie in her jet, grateful to leave California behind for a time. Back home, the horizon was constantly hazy from the summer wildfires. Flames licked through the kindling of golden grass, the cypress and oak trees blackened.
The air was cleaner here. She could stay outside without a filter mask for up to two hours. Naomi wore black sunglasses, the lower half of her face exposed. By the end of that summer, wearing masks outdoors would become a legal requirement in California, rather than strongly recommended. A bare face in the Golden State was the equivalent of smoking two packs of cigarettes a day without even the nicotine buzz.
The problem was, it was also unbearably hot. She wore a cooling gel around her neck like the rest of the people on board, but her dress was sweltering. Her tights were borrowed from Valerie—too tall, tight at the hips but bunching at the ankles and knees. Her feet hurt from the heels she rarely wore. The water vapour fans blew chilled air that barely seemed to make a difference.
The burial party was small, despite Evan’s father’s influence. Daniel Kan had inherited his father’s oil empire and recognised the competitiveness of wind, solar, and geothermal energy. He kept producing oil—gallons and gallons of it—but invested most of his profits in renewable energy and battery research and development, preparing for the shift. Singapore was motivated to create zero-carbon cooling options to remain habitable, but only a few governments were able to push through legislation to replace fossil fuels quickly enough. So he kept pumping out more oil. Evan stood near the chanting priest, holding the biodegradable urn of ashes. His face was tight. Around him, people held joss sticks, ghost money, and small bags of flowers. Most of them were in designer jeans and white tops, meaning Naomi felt overdressed and yet un-chic at the same time.
Naomi knew little of Taoist ceremonies, so she hung back, an observer not wanting to overstep but wanting to pay her respects. Valerie did the same. She said nothing. Naomi wondered if Valerie mourned her ex-husband. Growing up, Naomi had heard the raging fights on the phone, turned up the music on her earbuds to drown it out.
The priest finished his chanting, and Evan stepped forward to place the urn in the water. It was painted to look like a shell. It’d float for twenty minutes or so before the water broke down the paper and the ashes would ebb away in the currents. Whenever Evan visited the ocean, even if it was over in Cape Canaveral, he’d be able to pay his respects to his father.
The mourners threw the ghost money and the flowers into the water. Yellow and white chrysanthemums and purple irises bobbed along the surface of the water.
Evan didn’t speak to her until they were back on land. The wake was in the roof garden of Evan’s father’s apartment, a lavish penthouse in a skyscraper overlooking the city. It was still warm and humid as afternoon lengthened to evening. The garden smelled of night jasmine.
Evan greeted each of the guests, taking their white envelopes with thanks and giving them his own in return.
Naomi offered him her gift, but he gave her the same bland thank you as everyone else. She opened the envelope he’d given her. A Singapore dollar and a sugar sweet. Naomi followed Valerie’s lead, continuing to hang back. It was only after the feast, with dessert eaten first to bring sweetness to the sad occasion, that Evan came up to her.
Every time Naomi saw a snap of that red graffiti still circling around the drain of the internet, she remembered him scrubbing away at it, the muscles of his forearms rippling against tanned skin, his tendons taut with suppressed rage. The way Naomi had been unwilling to pick open their past.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” she said, reflexively.
He snorted. “Everyone says that.”
“Yeah. Always sounds hollow. But what else is there to say?”
“True enough.” He stared out at the people gathering in remembrance of his father. Evan had seemed close to him. Daniel could be exacting, but he had also been warm in a way Valerie never was with either of them, but especially Evan.
“Do you remember much about your parents’ funerals?” he asked.
Naomi’s throat tightened. “Not much.” She had been nine for one and ten for the other. She remembered two pristine coffins, on two different days, and both times thinking it seemed a waste for something so shiny and new to go down in the dark for no one else to see. Her father’s had been closed casket. Her mother’s had been open, but she wished it’d been shut.
Naomi only started speaking again a few months after the second funeral. Valerie had always said Catherine was travelling for work. It’d taken Naomi years before she’d realised her mother had gone to a mental health institution after the fire, unable to cope with the loss of her husband and home. The pressure of a company, of a daughter, had been too much on top of the grief.
Naomi had been the one to find her mother’s body when she was on weekend release from the centre. Sometime in the night, her mother had gone out into Valerie’s garden. Stumbled over the edge of one of the steep steps of the landscaped levels. Broke her neck, right at the C3 vertebrae. It had been quick, they said, painless. That image was burned into Naomi’s retina for years. In some ways, it was worse than the memories of the fire.
“I’ve been lucky, I guess,” Evan said. “Here I am, almost thirty, and I haven’t really lost anyone before.”
“Burying your parents is especially hard,” she said. “And grief is strange, so don’t be surprised by that. You’ll feel sad, then all right again, then guilty for feeling all right. Then the weirdest thought or memory will be the one tha
t gets to you. Sometimes even years later.” Naomi was still sad every time she smelled pancakes because her dad used to make the best ones.
Evan made a noise in his throat, taking everyone in. “Does the number of people who turn up show how much of an impact you left behind, do you think?”
Naomi shrugged a shoulder. “Think it depends more on if they’re actually mourning rather than appearing to.”
Evan winced, and Naomi realised she’d just implied everyone here was only pretending to care about his dad’s death.
“That came out wrong.” Naomi took another sip of wine. “I just mean people are selfish. I’m sure there are some people whose funerals are more about the living wanting to appear to mourn. Or hoping to impress someone else who might attend.” Naomi nodded towards Valerie, who was surrounded by a small gaggle of “mourners.”
“I take your point. How long before Valerie pitches Cavendish to the people here?” He scoffed. “What am I saying? She probably already has. I mean, the Man of Mars is here. Poster boy for the new world, surely.”
Naomi craned her neck to see better. She had clocked him on the other side of the boat. “How did Cole Palmer know your father?”
Evan’s mouth turned down. “Business. Sponsorship. Who knows.”
Naomi reached out for his hand. He started, looked down at their clasped fingers, then at the other people in the room. Pulled his hand away. Her palm smarted, as if burned.
They’d both spent years with outsiders viewing them as siblings, even though they hadn’t been raised together and weren’t related by blood in any way. Over the past year, she’d thought about that kiss, time and again, and wondered why she had been so worried about what people might have thought. Evidently Evan hadn’t come to the same conclusion.
Another mourner came up to Evan and she used it as an excuse to slip away from him. She moved towards Valerie and those caught in her orbit. Naomi saw Valerie’s lips form the words Cavendish and she stopped, as if hitting the transparent wall of her biome. Evan had been right. Even here, at her ex-husband’s funeral, Valerie wouldn’t stop the hustle.
Naomi took another glass of wine. Across the rooftop garden, Evan’s expression was shuttered. Naomi left the rooftop, heading back into Evan’s father’s apartment. She skulked through the rooms, an interloper, until she found a quiet, back sitting room. It was as smooth and minimalist as the rest of the penthouse, the walls lined with large, framed prints of the universe captured by the James Webb telescope. Daniel Kan had been taken by space as well, it seemed. Or his interior decorator had.
She’d finished her wine when the door opened. Naomi didn’t startle.
She expected Evan, but Cole Palmer paused, his hand still on the doorknob.
“Sorry,” he said. “Thought it’d be empty.”
“It’s all right,” she said. “You can sit, if you want. Escaping everyone wanting to meet the First Man of Mars?”
“Got it in one,” he said, with that megawatt smile she’d seen on countless news feeds, documentaries, and photos. It was always strange, to see someone in the flesh you’d only seen through the lens of a camera on a pixellated screen. But that was a real smile instead of the one put on for strangers knowing it’d be captured for the masses.
He’d just turned thirty-four, two years after his journey to Mars, and his clean-cut image was marred only by the beginnings of a reddish five o’clock shadow. He had a few faint lines at the corner of his eyes, no hint of the grey that would soon start to grace his temples, forcing out the reddish brown.
He perched on the opposite sofa, hands holding his near-empty wine glass. They both stared at the prints. She didn’t ask him those same questions everyone asked him about Mars. They spoke instead about the pictures, about science and space and the universe. Then they lapsed into silence, standing just that bit too close as they took in the art. Naomi sensed his attraction, and she ended up not regretting the dress and the way it hugged her. Naomi leaned close to him, paused, raised her eyebrows. He gave a hopeful “yes?” and she drew him in for a kiss. His fingers tangled in her hair.
Eight months later, they were married.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
84 Days After Launch
42 Days to Mars
165 Days to Cavendish
The Atalanta sped ever closer to Mars.
Naomi couldn’t get the image of the five wrapped bodies in the airlock out of her mind. They’d used rubber sheeting meant for lining her soil planters. Horribly, she’d spent a split second wondering if they should keep the corpses for fertiliser, or, even worse, as emergency calories. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t.
They had looked like tarred mummies. Small. Diminished. She hadn’t been able to tell which one was Cole. One of those bodies she had once known as well as her own. That body had lain next to her at night. She’d memorised every scar, every birthmark. She’d learned to read every expression that face had made, searching for the clues to show what he meant versus what he said. She’d been able to pick out the timbre of his voice, his laugh, from the other side of a crowded room. She remembered every line of those hands that had held her close or slammed doors after their fights. A funeral had started their story, and now another ended it.
Cole would have liked the thought of being buried in space, though he’d probably rather have been buried on Mars.
The five women had gathered, shoulder to shoulder, staring through the porthole of the airlock. Everyone had said a few words. Naomi couldn’t remember what she said at the time. It had been inelegant but heartfelt, she knew that much.
Valerie pressed the button. The bodies were there, and then a blink, a release of pressure, and they were gone. Cole floated out there, somewhere, left behind with his crew mates. Man overboard. Naomi’s eyes still stayed dry.
They had a wake in the rec room. Hixon played ukulele—it was small enough she could justify bringing it among her personal items—and Lebedeva sang, her voice surprisingly good. Naomi wished she’d considered making vodka moonshine with some of the potatoes. She wanted that sharp bite, the burn against her tongue.
Twelve days later, the life support had stabilised. No more flickering lights, no more falling asleep wondering if they’d never wake up. Food supplies were steady. Now that the cryopods were dark, fuel efficiency had improved. They had slipped back into their routine, the rhythm of monotony. Yet the five women tiptoed through the ship, as though afraid to disturb ghosts on board, even if none of them were superstitious.
It was easier to distract herself with her algae and crops. Lebedeva was teaching the others to make Russian food with what they had—borscht with beets, carrots, and onions. Perogies with the potatoes and their dwindling supplies of powdered cheese and milk. Everything was sprinkled with copious amounts of dill, which tasted like liquorice to Naomi.
Beneath the shapeless coveralls, Naomi’s body changed, day by day. Her centre of gravity had shifted. Her stomach had always been flat, her body spare and muscular, and the new softness was strange. She’d press her fingers against the flesh that gave at her hips, her thighs, tracing the curve of her belly. She’d thought she’d hate it, from years of swallowing the message that women shouldn’t be too big or too much. She didn’t mind taking up a little extra space.
Each morning, she wondered if it would be the day she’d miscarry. If what was hidden inside her would uproot. It still clung on, and the window to make her decision was closing. Neither direction was clear-cut. She’d be arrested whenever the Atalanta II arrived. They might still utilise her skills, but that gave no promise of clemency. No promise that she’d be able to stay with her child and watch them grow up.
She imagined the child going from a nebulous thing, this bulbous foetus, to a person. To watch them grow, to see an echo of the child’s father in the tilt of their eyes or the curve of a lip. Or to see her own features embedded in another’s DNA.
It’d be a hard life for a child on Cavendish. And lonely. Children weren’t schedul
ed until the third wave, once infrastructure was established.
But her child could still grow up on Cavendish. A world without Earthen rules, at least for a little while.
Her fingers curled spirals across the skin of her stomach, and she knew she’d made her decision.
“Grow,” she whispered.
Naomi spent more time in the rec room, watching old films or toying with the various landscapes. It was still like eating artificial gummies when what she craved was fresh fruit. She’d open the console and send Evan messages every few days, even though she technically no longer needed his help with her work. She was hungry for information back home, even if it wasn’t good news. Cochran’s party had already swept the mid-term elections, and his re-election was almost guaranteed. His base was still so strong he might even, horribly, have a shot at a third term.
Stories about the Atalanta 5 were still vicious. Digs at Valerie’s age, at Lebedeva’s past, snide homophobic remarks about Hart and Hixon. Naomi was still painted as a nepotism pick. Naomi was the last person to pretend access to Valerie’s money and connections hadn’t put her in a position to be here. She’d still worked damn hard to make sure the opportunity didn’t go to waste.
Naomi knew there was still anger back home, deep and pulsing, about what they’d done. The Atalanta 5 had taken action against men who had told them they knew best.
Not everything Evan sent was negative. He knew she’d want to see the development of a new type of algae that could absorb more carbon dioxide, which could give Earth a few more years of habitability. San Francisco had successfully lobbied for higher taxes for the wealthiest, pledging the money towards environmentally friendly and sustainable housing to help combat rising homelessness. Yet it all felt too late.
Naomi sent him a message that evening when she knew Evan was more likely to be online.
Atalanta: It’s N. No specific queries from the crew. Requesting a general status update.