by Laura Lam
She scrolled through some of the medical training documentation Hart had given her, only taking in half of it, as she waited for his message to come through.
Earth: Sorry for the delay. Work’s been mad. Doing research to try and determine why there was a higher than usual resistance to the flu vaccine last year to see if that helps our approach for this year. Long hours.
She could feel his exhaustion, even from there. She wasn’t sure what to say beyond empty commiserations. She hadn’t been able to bear bringing up what had happened to the backup crew, and she wasn’t sure if Valerie had told him in her communications. A quick opening of the logs showed she hadn’t.
Earth: Construction on the Atalanta II is continuing.
Naomi inhaled slowly, then exhaled.
Atalanta: We’ll still have Cavendish, for a little while. And women will still be the first to step on that planet. That’s something they can’t take from us.
The symbolism of that would be undeniable. It could fracture the new status quo.
They’d seen what Cochran was doing with the old world.
What would he try to do with a new one?
Unsure what else to say, Naomi changed the subject, asking Evan how he was. He gave a terse “fine,” but she teased it out of him. He was isolated, though to a lesser extent, of course. Unable to tell anyone what he was up to, the secret eating him up. She knew how he felt, but her pity was limited. At least he could go grab fast food—what she wouldn’t give for a hamburger—if he wanted, or go for a hike to clear his head.
The long hours were gruelling, and only the beginning before his second, secret shift started. In a little over a month, he’d be done. The Atalanta would be through the warp ring, ideally speeding towards Cavendish, unable to reach him for weeks, months. Would he be relieved?
Naomi didn’t even know if Evan wanted to board one of the earlier ships or wait for the last one out. Early, she’d guess. Think of the hiking trails on Cavendish, just waiting to be explored. He’d be able to take deep lungfuls of air.
Naomi’s hands floated over the keys. For a moment so intense it hurt, like looking into a bright light, she wanted to set the secret down before him. She typed it out: I’m pregnant. Stared at the words. Pressed backspace, deleting one letter at a time, until the cursor blinked on a blank screen.
The crew deserved to hear it from her, directly, not by accident if they scrolled through the chat logs. That was what she told herself, in any case, before she said her goodbyes to Evan, knowing he’d be yearning for sleep.
She stood, stretching, leaving the VR console and heading back to her lab. After she had finished the last of her work for the day, she leaned her right temple against the glass of one of the thin tubes. She closed her eyes but still felt the almost warm glow of purple against her skin. She breathed in and out, long and slow. For the first time in days, she felt almost at peace.
Time to take the others out of the dark.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
92 Days After Launch
34 Days to Mars
157 Days to Cavendish
The rest of the crew rarely entered Valerie’s quarters. Her room was large enough for a desk and a couple of screens, but she still stole the observation room when she could. Couldn’t beat the view.
Naomi knocked, waited.
“Come in,” Valerie called.
One screen showed blue lines criss-crossing black—a skeleton of the base buildings seen from above. On another, Valerie had zoomed in on one of the heating systems, touch-screen calculations scrawled in the margins.
“Yes?” Her tone was polite, but the frown line that appeared between her eyes betrayed her annoyance at the interruption. “I still need a name for our base. It hasn’t come to me yet. Maybe we have to see it first.”
Like when people didn’t name their child until they held the squalling, wrapped bundle. Naomi stifled her laugh. She hadn’t even begun to consider names.
“Two years isn’t a long time,” she said instead.
“Mmm,” Valerie said, as if it didn’t bother her.
“Aren’t you worried?” Naomi asked.
“I have a plan to get them off our backs. Don’t worry. I know how to play it.” She gave a slow smile.
Valerie had always put up a brash, unbothered front for the media. She was good at making it seem like everything she said was honest and off the cuff. Naomi had lost count of the times she’d watched Valerie get people to agree to something that they thought was their idea in the first place. Naomi had to hope it’d still work ten and a half light years away. She wanted to ask what Valerie meant, but knew better. Her mentor was in one of those moods where she’d only say, “Wait and see.”
Valerie cocked her head, bird-like. “You’re not here for that. You’ve got something else chewing at you.”
Naomi stepped into the room, closing the door behind her. She tapped one of the thumbnails of the Cavendish probes on a screen and expanded it. A photo of the proposed site for the base, in grainy definition. The gymnosperms were the same ones she’d grown in the larger biome. Far older, their roots sunk deep. It was on the shores of a freshwater lake, the sand a pale pink from quartz. They’d chosen an area near the equator that would be temperate. On Cavendish, seasons changed every forty-five days. On the base, they’d be imperceptible temperature changes, but nearer the poles, seasons could swerve from 30 degrees Celcius to minus twenty degrees in a month or two.
Naomi squinted at the screen. This was where she might give birth. A toddler could run across that beach, kicking up the sand. Making castles and stomping them down only to build them up again.
“I’ve kept something from you,” Naomi said. “I needed to be sure.”
Valerie leaned back in her chair. The body language brought Naomi back to her teen years, needing Valerie’s permission for a school trip or asking for new supplies for her makeshift lab in the shed in the garden.
“Out with it, Naomi.” Her gaze had sharpened to a point.
She may as well be direct.
“I’m pregnant. Almost four months.”
Valerie’s face was inscrutable—only the tiniest flicker of an eyebrow and a glance at Naomi’s midriff gave her away.
Naomi pulled the fabric of her coveralls tight, showing the small bump. Valerie leaned forward and placed her hand on it, just for a second, before her hands dropped to her lap.
“When?” she asked.
Here came the questions she really didn’t want to answer. There was a particular embarrassment of skirting around the subject of sex with the person who basically raised you. “The night before quarantine.”
An exhalation. “Do the others know? Hart?”
“Just her. She guessed before my first medical. I asked her to keep it to herself while I decided. If I’d keep it.”
“And I take it you are. Is the child healthy?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s the father?” Valerie asked, point blank.
Naomi swallowed. “Someone I really shouldn’t have slept with. Someone who isn’t mine.”
Valerie steepled her hands over her mouth, elbows pressed together. Naomi could almost feel the power of her mentor’s thoughts as she worked through it all. “God,” she said, blanching beneath skin that had already lost its Earthen colour. “I pulled the plug on the child’s father, didn’t I?”
Cole would have gone into cryo just after Naomi left for quarantine. Naomi chose her words carefully, rolling them in her mouth. “Cole was already gone.”
“Fuck.”
Naomi looked down at Valerie. She rarely stood over her mentor like this. At five-foot-ten, Valerie had always towered over Naomi’s five-foot-four frame, but beyond that, she always seemed larger than life, a magnetic force that attracted any energy in the room and knew how to manipulate it.
“Are you angry?” Naomi asked. “I can often never tell with you.”
Valerie stood, and there was the put-together woman Naomi knew. “I’m
rearranging everything in my head. We’ll have our work cut out for us, if you’re to give birth after we land.” She gave a laugh. “I’ll have to design you a nursery, for a start.”
Naomi blinked quickly. The tears snuck up on her, but she kept them back. A tiny part of her had worried Valerie would tell her there was no way she could keep it. That doing so would jeopardise the mission. She wasn’t sure if she’d be strong enough not to bow to the pressure, if Valerie exerted it. Valerie knew, more than anyone, that Naomi wouldn’t have made this choice lightly.
“The child might end up calling you Nana, you know,” Naomi said, striving for lightness. Yet the words gave her a pang. Her child would never meet their grandparents. Wouldn’t even be able to visit the graves. Naomi only had a handful of photos of them, deep in her files.
“Like hell she will,” Valerie said, pulling a face.
“I don’t know the assigned gender yet.” She’d avoided finding out the physical sex—she didn’t mind either way. She would have cared, if they were still back on Earth. Where having a girl meant she would be born into a world where her chances of doing what she wanted with her life were smaller and shrinking each day.
Valerie snorted. “I’ll say ‘she’ until you know for sure, then. I will maybe—maybe—concede to Nan.” She squeezed past Naomi and strode out of her room. Their meeting had concluded, but she was all business. “Come on, then. Time for you to tell the others.”
Later, Naomi went to her room, leaving the others to discuss it among themselves.
It’d gone smoother than she’d hoped. Hart had long suspected Naomi would keep the child. Hixon and Lebedeva seemed surprised. Hixon was delighted; Lebedeva markedly cooler at the news.
“You’ll need more food,” she’d said. “Did you calculate this?”
“Two extra nutriblocks a day. Well within parameters.” It wouldn’t have been, if they had defrosted the backup crew and one had been viable. She shoved away any guilt.
Hixon had held up her hands. “Eat as many of those bricks as you like.”
Lebedeva had shrugged, gone back to her meal, and that had pretty much been the end of it. Naomi had no desire to be a fly on the wall. Hart would anticipate how the news would change the balance of the interpersonal relationships and be there if anyone needed to talk to her. Naomi had no idea if Hart and Hixon had ever wanted children.
Despite living on top of each other in a ship hurtling through space, they had avoided a lot of personal questions. They were wary of sparking fights or unintentionally opening old wounds when they needed to try and rely on each other. At the same time, if they let things fester, they were bound to bubble up at some point.
Naomi lay back on the bed, pressing her feet together like the pages of a book, letting her knees fall open. It helped ease the pressure on her lower back, but she was never comfortable. She’d have some relief if she went down to the main body of the ship, if only she could bring herself to.
She’d needed supplies from the Crypt for days but kept putting it off. The cryopods were still there, a stark reminder. She had to stay strong and focus. Cole was gone. She’d said her goodbyes.
Yet it still felt unfinished. Or unfair. Cole Palmer had been the Man of Mars, the Martian, the Red Man. Cole’s story was meant to end on a grand finale—making it to over one hundred, dying on a bed somewhere on Cavendish, his reddish hair pure white, surrounded by generations of his family. He was meant to leave the universe as a patriarch who had left his mark. He had always wanted a family. A giant brood of children so his progeny would carry on. Once, Naomi had thought she wanted that. Eventually.
“Five years ago, neither of us could have imagined where we’d be,” she said aloud, face pointed up towards the ceiling, eyes closed. It felt good to speak to him. Like they were both still back in their old apartment, after dinner, when they held those thick-bottomed blue-green tumblers she’d bought from a thrift store one day on a whim. She would have gin and he had whisky. The news would be on, but muted, flashing lights against the living room. Their conversation had meandered, or they’d lapsed into silence, waiting for the day to end.
“You were a good father to your son. I’m sure of it,” she said, opening her eyes. She reached her arms out, as if she floated in a pool rather than her small bed.
“If I’d stayed. If you’d stayed. You would have been a good father to our child.”
She let her gaze fall to her belly. She was still so tired, all the time—she let herself drift into that liminal space between sleep and awake.
Even in her tiny, empty room, she couldn’t bring herself to say the next words aloud. So she stated them in her head, each word clear and loud as a bell.
But this child was never yours.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
6 Years Before Launch
Houston, Texas
Naomi knew as soon as her phone rang that she’d made it into NASA.
She’d flown back out to Houston and aced both her interviews. She gave them a presentation on the Cavendish biome, watching the panel’s eyes grow increasingly round. Most of the details of what she’d grown in her larger biome hadn’t leaked to the press, and Naomi hadn’t yet written many papers on it.
One of them had asked why Naomi wanted to come to NASA and leave behind a corporate sector that gave her such opportunities. Naomi said she knew that for NASA to travel to Cavendish, they’d need to partner with companies like Hawthorne, and they’d need three main things:
1. Better fuel efficiency through ion drives for relatively short distances.
2. To crack the Alcubierre equation now that they’d discovered negative energy for longer distances.
3. The ability to grow food and keep the crew fed, both on the way and once they arrived.
Naomi couldn’t help as much with the first two, but the last had become her area of expertise. NASA needed her more than Hawthorne did at present.
It had been risky, to be that brass-necked and state that they needed her. She’d channelled her inner Valerie Black. She wasn’t sure she could get away with it, or if the all-male panel would decide she was too arrogant. But it’d paid off.
Naomi packed up the rest of her things and officially moved in with Cole, who was already based out in Houston. They’d dated long distance for eight months, then gotten married. Even after marriage, they’d scandalised Cole’s parents by staying long distance until she got the job with NASA.
The week before training started, as she tidied away the last of her things, she realised her period was almost two weeks late.
She hadn’t thought much of it. Her cycle had rarely been regular. At the first sign of extra stress, it’d disappear for months at a time, then return when life calmed down. But for the last few months, she’d been regular within a week or so, even if her cycle was longer than the standard twenty-eight days.
The day before training, she slunk into a convenience store on the other end of town, a cap over her hair and her most opaque filter mask over the lower half of her face and bought a pregnancy test. Just in case.
She jiggled her knees as she waited for the results.
She did the mental math. She was maybe two weeks late. She and Cole were finally living together and the novelty still hadn’t worn off. When he came home from work, she’d reach for him almost as soon as he was through the door. He oversaw astronaut candidates in the Neutral Buoyancy Lab, training them for spacewalks in the vast underwater pool. He always smelled of chlorine, his hair brittle beneath her fingertips.
They’d been careful. Cole had agreed to go on the male contraceptive pill, as hormones had never agreed with Naomi even if they regulated her cycle. They deeply affected her mood. They had still used condoms.
Cole must have forgotten to take it one morning with his orange juice and coffee. That and a broken condom was all it took.
It could be the stress of starting training had thrown her off again. This wasn’t the first time she’d taken a pregnancy test, just in case. Pre
vious ones had always come back negative. This one shouldn’t have been any different. Naomi called herself a fool a dozen times as she stared at the little stick with its accusing blue lines.
Her training started tomorrow. She’d have to postpone her place (if they even let her), and decline the goddamn governmental birth bonus because otherwise she’d have to pledge giving up work for five years. She and Cole would have to scramble funds for childcare. Naomi would have to hope that by the time she could return to the workforce six months to a year after birth, some other expert in astro-hydroponics didn’t sneak into the spot they may or may not hold for her. Especially if said new expert was male and wouldn’t be leaving a babe at home. She wouldn’t stand a chance.
Naomi threw the stick against the shower tiles. It hit with a smack and clattered into the tub. She paced through her new apartment, in a nice part of Houston, half an hour’s drive to Clear Lake and the Johnson Space Center.
Think. Think. What are my options?
She’d bought the test with cash, kept her face away from the cameras as much as possible.
It didn’t make sense to bring a new child into the world when Earth only had thirty, forty years left. Naomi had gone to her high school friend Lynn’s baby shower the previous year. She couldn’t help but ask Lynn why she’d gotten IVF. Lynn had shrugged a shoulder, her stomach already distended—she was having twins. She’d have to pay the additional child tax on one of them, which wasn’t cheap. The IVF would have been a pretty penny, too.
“Earth has been thirty years from dying for twenty years,” Lynn had said. “It’s going to stay thirty years off forever, just to scare us into recycling.”
Lynn had been surrounded by other expectant or recent mothers, children playing in the shade out back. Naomi had felt out of place as the one attendee not even dating anyone at the time, much less married or thinking about kids. It was as if Naomi had blinked and everyone her age was having children. Like there was some sort of unspoken pact Naomi had broken.