by Laura Lam
The medical officer came to give Grace a check-up and Naomi reluctantly handed her over. The wind was warm against her skin. How alien something as simple as weather was after so long in a perfectly calibrated and unchanging temperature.
When Hart and Hixon were on board, they went inside long enough to shed their suits. Naomi changed into the spare clothes the rescue team had brought her. It was strange to wear jeans, a T-shirt and sneakers after so long in her uniform. The doctor came back with a freshly changed Grace and assurance that her health was sound. They’d put her in a onesie patterned with stars and planets and rockets. Naomi smiled at that.
They all smeared on the provided sunscreen, put on shades and hats. Reluctantly picked up filter masks. They hadn’t missed those, and it gave Naomi a pain to put one around Grace’s nose and mouth. Her daughter kept picking at it, her brow scrunched up in displeasure.
“I know,” Naomi told Grace. “They’re itchy. Sorry.”
She went back out on to the deck. She shook the hand of everyone in the rescue team, feeling awkward at how openly they stared at her. At least the filter mask hid some of the red and ugly scars on her face. She knew she was too pale. Between stress and nursing, she’d lost her pregnancy weight fast, and from unexpected areas. The reflection in the mirror looked drawn.
She found a quieter part of the deck as the ship made its way back to shore. The sun was warm on her skin. She clutched Grace close. Soon, she smelled the tang of seaweed, similar yet different to the algae that had kept them alive up above. As the ship pulled into the port of the Cape, Naomi remembered when she’d last been here. The climate change conference, red graffiti stark against the smooth dome of her Cavendish biome. Evan’s profile as he’d scrubbed the glass with too much force.
Five women had left the Earth in secret, but three and a newborn returned to fanfare. Hart and Hixon joined Naomi, resting their elbows on the railing. Crowds clustered on the public beaches, the far-off music reaching their ears. The private dock was thick with NASA and government personnel, but right at the centre, they caught the blonde bristle of Lebedeva, who raised her arm in greeting. Hart and Hixon waved back enthusiastically, and Naomi inclined her head, her eyes already searching behind her before landing on Evan. A thrum went through her, settling deep in her chest.
Evan’s face was freshly shaven, and he looked both just as she remembered and completely changed by what he’d been through. He smiled nervously, hair a little tousled, hands in the pockets of his jeans. His favourite faded NASA T-shirt, soft from hundreds of washes. A man she’d known since he was eleven, watched grow up in six-month intervals until college. As a boy, he’d been the one she competed with for Valerie’s affection, letting her come between them and keeping Naomi from getting to know the truth of him. She didn’t know what would happen between them now.
She was ready to find out.
Naomi kept her feet strong on the deck, her body swaying with the motion of the ship. She cradled Grace against her breastbone. She squared her shoulders, pulling down her filter mask long enough to give her best version of Cole’s megawatt smile he’d always used for the cameras.
Earth was still too hot and too fragile, and soon she’d see the evidence of what people had just been through. How close they’d all come to disappearing. But she was struck by how alive it all felt. Greens, blues and browns. The whispers of white-topped waves. The cries of gulls. The pops of colours on people’s clothes as they held up their palms, their shouts and cries just reaching the deck.
As the waves carried them to shore, Naomi gave a last look up at the sky.
30 Years After
My mother says she won’t read this book.
Naomi Lovelace maintains that she simply needed to get it out of her head so it could stop haunting her. It took her weeks to tell me her story, in fits and starts, always in the middle of the night. Naomi didn’t have to go to work the next day, but she seemed to forget I did.
By night, I listened to the jumbled events of her time on the Atalanta. She’d skip the chronology as things occurred to her. By day, I’d go to work and program my AI machines. Yes, a psychologist would likely say I’d chosen that line of work to remain close, in some way, to the women who founded the long-defunct company of Hawthorne.
In the evenings, my tired brain would try to figure out how to unpick my mother’s story, to make sense of events and discover the best way to arrange it all before her voice started again, hushed in the darkness.
“Iris—” she’d whisper, startling me from slumber. “I’ve remembered something else.”
My father and I switched places, funnily enough. I’d gotten a long-distance transfer to an office not far from Naomi’s quarters, so I could stay for a few more months. He had been asked back out to Los Angeles two years ago when Valerie’s health started failing. He’d stayed there, sorting out her affairs and consulting at a few companies. He sent missives regularly, but it wasn’t the same. He and our mother have remained together despite the rags printing stories about them now and again, salaciously reminding the world that Grace Lovelace Kan’s parents were step-siblings raised by none other than Valerie Black herself. My sister loved to read any article with her in it, running her fingertip over the shape of the letters of her name. They never bothered printing mine.
Naomi woke me up the first night just after she’d found out Valerie Black had died in prison after thirty years in custody.
She had always been this nebulous, frightening figure, our grandmother. We’d grown up hearing about her. Other children teased us, pretended we had the Sev and ran away, giggling.
Valerie Black was the woman who had nearly killed the world. The woman who thought she’d be able to make a better one. Long before that, Valerie had proved she had been willing to stop anyone who got in her way, even those she loved.
We were never allowed to meet her, not even a video message. When Grace asked, over and over, our mother grew more irate.
At fifteen, Grace found some more recent clips—unlike Naomi, now and again Valerie consented to be interviewed. Grace would load them late at night, with me tucked up tight next to her.
I remembered Valerie Black as thin and brittle, with a sharp tongue, eyes piercing as a hawk’s and just as unblinking. Grace watched her grandmother avidly, and I’d realised then that if we ever did meet her, Valerie would be far more interested in Grace than she would be in me. Not surprising—I’m not related by blood—but the thought stung, just the same.
I was five when my parents adopted me. One more Sev orphan out of many. I was born the same day Naomi and Grace touched back down to Earth. Sometimes, I wonder if that’s why they adopted me out of all the others out there.
My parents never made me feel inferior, but I was always diminished next to their and Grace’s fame. Grace became an astronaut. Naomi always tried to shield her elder daughter from the fame that was stamped on her since birth, but Grace was always hungry for it. Her life has been star-touched in more ways than one. She floated above the rest of us. Above me. For a time, I hated her, but she was also impossible to hate.
The fight between my mother and Grace brewed for years before it finally came to a head. Grace wanted to go visit her grandmother in person. Naomi had said no, even though she couldn’t actually stop her since Grace was a fully grown woman by that point. They’d had a fight to end all fights, from what I heard from my father. He, like me, is often stuck playing peacemaker between them. He, like me, often fails.
When Grace decided to visit Valerie anyway, Naomi cut off communication. They haven’t spoken since.
Naomi stopped her story that morning she touched down in Cape Canaveral, but as I’ve been writing this book, I’ve investigated what happened after. She saw so much change in the world that we now take for granted. She testified against Valerie only a few days after landing, calmly reporting events on the Atalanta as if they’d all happened to someone else. She hadn’t bothered hiding Valerie’s scratches with make-up. D
uring the breaks, she snuck off to breastfeed Grace.
My mother had watched the world change around her, knowing that she had been a catalyst for it all. Earth took what steps it could to mitigate the damage done. These days, we take wind and solar and leaving fossil fuels in the ground for granted. It never became the Atalanta 5’s rosy idea of a perfect world, though. Change is slow. Utopias are lies.
Naomi and I had such different childhoods. She’d tagged along with Valerie to countless conferences and holidays on Valerie’s planes; I zipped across the high-speed rails and bridges. Growing up, my mother could go into a grocery store at close to midnight and still have the full selection of fruit and vegetables on display, wrapped in shining plastic, most of it destined to rot in a landfill. It seems so shockingly wasteful with the benefit of hindsight. Then again, so much is.
And so we arrive at the question people who read this book will want to know: what has my mother been doing the last thirty years? Naomi had no shortage of work, overseeing projects of carbon-trapping algae, or assisting with reforestation, or continuing the work she began in her biomes and on the Atalanta. She lived her life out of the spotlight as much as she could. No great scandals.
From afar, we watched the later tragedies. The Atalanta II. The Clymene. How Earth’s future dimmed, brightened, dimmed again. The struggle for Mars.
Month by month, year by year, Cavendish must have seemed even further away for her.
A very few people would say that Valerie’s plan did work, after a fashion. Killing so many had sparked those who were left into action, in a way that all the facts and figures didn’t do beforehand. Part of me wants to think that they’re wrong, that humanity would have pulled it together before Earth broke so badly. Another part of me fears they were right.
I called Grace when I found out that Valerie died. My sister already knew, naturally. Her face was on my screen, my own in miniature in the corner. We look nothing alike. Grace looked like Dad, her skin tanned like his when she’s planetside, pale when she’s not. I’m tall, with flaxen hair that is straight and flat. I’m broader compared to Grace’s bird bones. My skin is always red—my mom calls it ruddy-cheeked. I think she thinks that sounds better, but it makes me feel like a wind-whipped fisherman. When Grace and I introduce ourselves as sisters, there is always the split second of confusion strangers can’t quite hide.
When I told Grace what I was doing, her expression had closed.
“Do you think she’ll actually tell you the truth, Iris?” my sister had asked. “Valerie and Mom are more alike than you think.”
I’d chewed the inside of my cheek at that. And now, after I have the story, my sister is only partially right. Naomi and Valerie were similar, but their differences were starker. I didn’t mention my suspicions to Grace: that my mother had video visits with Valerie once every few months, for years. Long after what happened two years after they returned to Earth.
I could ask her, but I think she would lie. I suppose I can allow her a few secrets. Because I do think, overall, she has told me the truth.
I stiffen with anxiety each time I wonder how the book will be received once it’s out there and I can’t take it back. Do I want my mother to read these words? Do I wish my sister would? Yes and yes, but I’m not going to make them. Knowing they might terrifies me. But I’m not sure I wrote it for them, not exactly. I wrote it to set the record straight.
Naomi has said she doesn’t care what lies people believe about her. But I do. No story is a total truth, but I have tried to stay as close as I can.
I also, selfishly, wrote it for me. To add my voice and step out from the shadows, in some small way.
I’m finally home after a long, long day, and I’m struggling to gather my thoughts. This is where the story of Naomi Lovelace and Valerie Black ends.
My father got in this morning. My mother couldn’t sit still, clattering cups in the kitchen. She was desperate to see him, but also knew that he had called in a favour and was bringing Valerie’s ashes with him, condensed into a little cube about the same size as that snow globe. My father was tired after the trip, but we all wanted it finished. At least the journey is much faster than it used to be.
We went up to orbit. It’s smoother than it was in Naomi’s day, little different than going up in a plane. I watched the lights play across my parents’ faces as we accelerated towards orbital velocity. Their hands were clasped together. I could imagine them, younger, pretending to dislike each other but not doing a terribly good job.
We reached Godwin station. And there was our surprise.
Grace, wearing civilian clothes, shifting her weight to her right foot, something she did when she was uncomfortable. I hadn’t seen her in person for almost three years. Naomi hadn’t seen her daughter except on newscast screens for closer to five.
Our mother stopped, her mouth opening. After watching and listening to her speak for so many hours, I know her better. Naomi wanted to say something but feared uttering the wrong thing. Her mouth snapped shut and she offered a wan smile.
Grace walked towards us. Naomi held the cube in her hands. It was enamelled, lacquered in all black and studded with silver stars. No one looking at it would know what it was. Who it’d been.
Grace held her hand out, and Naomi passed it over. Grace turned the cube in her palms, investigating it from every angle with that same intensity she gave everything. With a sense of finality, she handed it back.
“We doing this?” Grace asked, meeting our eyes. I gave her a nod.
“I’m glad you came,” my father said.
I should have known he’d ask her. They’d been near each other, since Grace had stopped there on the way back from her last mission. While I’d been with my mother, my sister had been with my father. He’d watched his own mother slowly die of cancer but be too stubborn to go. Grace must have visited Valerie, too, at the end. I wonder if she’ll tell me what happened between them.
We made our way to the airlock. Naomi placed the black cube in the centre. The four of us stared through the window at the small remnant of Valerie Black. My sister’s shoulder brushed against mine. Our mother’s left hand hovered over the button to release the airlock exterior door.
A few months ago, I’d have said she was doing this out of revenge. Sending Valerie out into the void alone as a punishment. Instead, thirty years too late, she is honouring Valerie’s wishes.
Leave me out there.
My father’s hand came over my mother’s, and together, they both pressed the button. The interior doors closed. One last pause. An opening of the exterior doors, a whoosh of air, and the airlock was empty. In an instant, she was gone.
We said no words. My mother bowed her head, and my father put his arm around her. The four of us were in the same place for the first time in half a decade. We walked to the observation deck. The few who were there recognised Grace, then Naomi. After a bit of gawping, they left us alone.
“Thanks,” I whispered to Grace, folding myself into one of the seats.
She gave me a half-smile. Our parents sat across from us. Their eyes were dry as they stared at the planet below. I wondered if they still mourned Valerie, despite everything.
I exhaled and looked out the window.
I’ve only been up there a couple times before, but I’ll never grow tired of that view. The blue-green of the oceans, the shifting textures of clouds, the orange of the sun making them look golden. The patchwork of green islands and small continents, all criss-crossed and connected with rail bridges visible even from up here. No hurricanes. No melting ice caps. No wildfires.
We came across when I was fifteen, one of the middle wave of exodus ships. I’ve spent half my life on one planet, and half of my life on another, never sure which one to call home.
Our pasts, our histories all faded as the four of us stood together, and watched the sun set over Cavendish.
Acknowledgements
Note: the below has some spoilers for plot points of Goldilocks.
These will be my longest acknowledgements to date—there are so many people to thank for Goldilocks. Buckle in!
First, thank you to James Oswald for having his book launch (read his books!) at the Edinburgh Bookshop (a most excellent indie), where I chatted with Alex Clarke of Wildfire and semi-jokingly asked him to let me know if he needed any thrillers. Turns out he did! Thank you for telling me to not be afraid to give Goldilocks the quiet moments and sense of scope of the universe.
As ever, a round of applause for my powerhouse of an agent, Juliet Mushens, whose belief in me has not wavered, despite how low my own confidence in my writing has become at certain points over the last six years.
My gratitude especially to my editor Ella Gordon for her constant championship along the way—looking at my plot spreadsheets, my messy partial drafts, my slightly less messy later drafts, and eventually the draft which was as shiny as I could make it. You have been a joy to work with, along with everyone else on the Wildfire and Orbit U.S. team: my U.S. editor, Bradley Englert, my publicists Rosie Margesson and Ellen Wright, and everyone else in marketing, sales, rights, as well as my publishers in translation.
To my usual most ardent cheerleaders: my mom, Sally Baxter, and my husband, Craig Lam. I love you taller than outer space. To extraordinary beta readers or people who let me witter on about plot problems: Erica Bretall, Amy Plum, Lorna McKay, Emily Still, Mike Kalar, Anne Lyle, Hannah Kaner, Kim Curran, and the Ladies of Literary License, Peta Freestone & Amber Lough. Thank you to my colleagues/work family David Bishop and Daniel Shand at Edinburgh Napier for dealing with my frazzled deadline state with good grace, and to my students on the Creative Writing MA, past and present. I learn as much from you as you learn from me.
Thank you to the cafes in Edinburgh where I’d haunt tables for hours, but especially to Artisan Roast Coffee in Bruntsfield and Hideout Café in Leith.