The Fated Sky
Page 26
We all stared at the board. I half raised my hand and then put it down again. Because, truly, the idea in my head wasn’t a real option. Half a dozen things could go wrong with it.
“York.”
“It’s not—” Someone else might get an idea from it. That was the point of this exercise. “Incineration.”
Parker’s lips pursed for a second before he nodded and wrote that on the board too. “Any others?”
Leonard raised his hand. I don’t know why we’d started doing that, like we were children in a school. “Instead of ground burial on Mars, how about a reentry burial at Mars?”
Parker nodded, wrote that, and also: Reentry burial at Earth. “Anyone else?”
The fans hummed in concert with the refrigerator and the quiet pings of the ship as the ring segment rotated through space. I took a sip of my cocoa, which was too sweet, and coated the insides of my mouth like glue. Setting the mug down, I reached for the brandy.
Still staring at the board, Parker asked, “Any guesses on which he would have wanted?”
“You should ask Ra—” Kam stopped herself and stared down at her mug.
“I don’t want to bother him more than I have to. Bad enough that he feels responsible for this without putting that burden on him.”
“No—it’s just that they were … close.” Kam looked down, lower lip tucked between her teeth.
I suppose it’s a sign of how much the world had changed since the Meteor that I had already known this: The way they spent all their off-duty time together. All the times I’d seen them touching. Rafael saying that he knew who the condom belonged to …
Glancing around the table, I saw that same awareness sitting in the others, but the world hadn’t changed enough that any of us would say it aloud. Even with Kam’s assurance that Mission Control had known this kind of thing was “not uncommon,” they were both military men.
Parker sighed and rubbed the back of his neck. “All right. Let’s work the problem on each scenario. Shamoun … may I ask you to present the options to Avelino for his opinion? It might be better coming from—”
“Yes.” She nodded, fingers tight around her mug. “Times like this, I wish I drank.”
* * *
With the exception of DeBeer, the entire crew of the Pinta came over to the Niña for Terrazas’s service. It wasn’t safe to leave both ships entirely uncrewed, and I was grateful to Benkoski for making the staffing choice he did. We sat in two uncomfortable rows in the garden area, listening to Wilburt and Graeham play a haunting duet on flute and violin.
Florence and I had dragged in the benches from the kitchen and the chairs from the MedMod. I’d picked a spot in the back row between Benkoski and Florence. Directly in front of me, Rafael sat between Kam and Leonard. His posture was so rigidly correct that it hurt to look at.
In front of him, across the radish bed, we’d made a sort of byre. Not that we were going to burn anything. Anyone. But we’d used small packing boxes and a locker door to create a raised surface above the gently waving green leaves.
Kam had wrapped Terrazas in a winding sheet. His body lay, almost like a mummy, upon the plank. On the corner that lay over his face, Florence had stitched a simple Roman cross using blue thread that she had unraveled from his uniform. I’d taken some old punch cards and reports and cut them up, curling the edges and twisting them into a spray of flowers that rested in an ecru bundle on his chest.
I think, being so far from home, we were clinging to every ritual or comfort we could. Even though Terrazas was Catholic, I had recited the Mourner’s Kaddish for him. Others were marking his passing as we had not been able to do for Ruby. Or had been directed not to, I suppose. Either way, I think we all needed this, and I was genuinely grateful to Parker for ignoring Mission Control.
Graeham and Wilburt brought their song to a close and left us with the quiet susurration of the leaves and our own uneven breath. Parker stood from the front row and walked to stand next to Terrazas’s body. “There is no good way to mourn the passing of a person. But we can remember him, and remember him well. Estevan Terrazas and I met for the first time during the war. We were on a base in Normandy, refueling. I flirted with a young woman, who turned out to be his sister. Despite the fact that I outranked him, and that they were in France as refugees, he … suggested that this was not a good choice.” Parker gave a sideways smile and briefly met my eyes. “I will always remember that he has a solid right hook. And that he was fearless, loyal, and a complete payaso with his friends. I was proud to have him as a copilot and even prouder that he granted me his friendship.”
In front of me, Rafael’s back was rigid. His shoulders had stopped moving, and I think he was holding his breath. I reached forward and rested a hand on his upper back. For a moment, Rafael leaned into my touch, and then the shell surrounding him cracked. Folding forward, he clapped both hands over his mouth, and even that didn’t quite muffle the sound.
Kam turned in her seat, but before she got there, Benkoski already had Rafael wrapped in his long arms. She pulled them both into her embrace, and they sandwiched Rafael. Leonard slipped forward and joined that huddle, which propelled me forward as well. All ten of us wound up wrapping ourselves around him in awkward postures hunched over benches, chairs, and each other. It was as if we were trying to make an ablative grief shield of our bodies.
Times like this, you don’t count in minutes or breath or anything except the waves of pain that ebbed and flowed through us. Rafael was not the only one weeping.
I was empirical evidence of that.
* * *
A pallbearer has a different role in zero-g. Rafael and Leonard guided Terrazas’s shrouded body down through the spindle and into the airlock. Except for that breach in the garden module, Rafael’s hull of control had remained stable. Internal flaws are not obvious, though, and his apparent calm fooled no one.
I think that’s why Parker sent all of us to the observation dome before they opened the outer airlock. He probably would have sent Rafael, too, if it hadn’t been obvious that he would refuse to obey that order.
We clustered next to the windows on the port side—not that port and starboard have much relevance in space, but old nomenclature dies hard. Heidi drifted over to me and floated with her arms wrapped around herself.
At a funeral on Earth, there would have been small talk as we caught up and reminisced about the deceased. My urge to bake pies and casseroles had been clawing at the underside of my skin for the past two days, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember how to start a normal conversation.
Though perhaps “for the life of me” is not the most appropriate phrase under the circumstances.
The observation dome stuck out just far enough that we could look back along the length of the ship. We were sun-side, so the ship gleamed against the ink of space. You never really get used to how deep that black is. The word “deep”? That is appropriate, because it feels like something you could fall forever into.
Which is, I guess, what we were about to do with Terrazas.
The loudspeaker crackled on and Rafael’s voice joined us. “Ladies and gentlemen.” His voice roughened and he cleared his throat before starting again. “Ladies and gentlemen, in this thrilling installment, our intrepid adventurer Estevan Terrazas embarks upon an exploration of deep space.”
Aft of us, a spray of paper flowers blew out from the side of the ship, followed by Terrazas’s wrapped body. The winding cloth bound his body into a torpedo that followed the laws of inertia and floated alongside us. Slowly, our speeds diverged, and he drifted back, almost as if he were conducting an inspection of our hull. O, brave, intrepid adventurer.
I had to turn away from the window and close my eyes. Lord … we’d gone to the moon together. My first time in space had been with this man. So many years ago, and I still remembered that as if it were in present tense.
“Wait—” Terrazas puts a hand on my arm and then gestures to the windows. “Look.”
Look. I opened my eyes again, to bear witness. Facing sunward, there were no visible stars in the sky, but my paper flowers caught the sunlight and seemed impossibly bright against the black of space. Terrazas spun as if he were taking in the glory of everything around us.
“Oh no…” Florence floated to the window and pressed her hand against it. “No. No … Shit.”
She saw the impact coming before it happened. Which gave the rest of us time to see Terrazas’s body hit the antenna that pointed toward Earth.
TWENTY-SEVEN
CHILE TAKES OVER RAILS AS STRIKES AND RIOTS SPREAD
SANTIAGO, Chile, May 20, 1963—A growing wave of demonstrations by thousands of citizens over food shortages prompted the government to place the railroads under army rule today. The government also reinforced guards at strategic points and increased the number of police patrolling the city streets with water-spray cannons.
Mission Control moved us all over to the Pinta because of the damage to the Niña. After seven months of living with only six other people, the past ten days had felt strange and claustrophobic.
I pressed against the wall of the Monday morning staff meeting as the crews of both ships crowded into the kitchen on the Pinta. Parker and Benkoski stood at what felt like the back of the strangely disorienting room.
The two ships were identical, or had been built that way, but seven months of habitation by two very different crews had changed them. Some of the differences were blatant, such as the Alpine border that Heidi had painted along the wall where wainscoting would go. That was easier than the small changes. For instance, the coffee cups were on the third shelf in the right-hand cabinet, not the first shelf on the left. In the silverware drawer, the spoons lay between the knives and forks, rather than to the right—which is where they should be. Why wouldn’t you put them in the drawer in the same order they go on a table?
Perhaps oddest was that they had put the whiteboard on the opposite side of the room from where we had it. Not that it made a difference, but I kept feeling like I was facing the wrong direction. Parker kept turning the wrong way when he reached for a marker.
“All right. It’s mission critical to get the Niña’s cooling system back online, along with our antenna. I know the Pinta team wants us out of their hair as fast as possible, but we’re going to do this nice and slow and right. We’ll take advantage of having both teams on one ship and combine forces. Now, Mission Control has put together a plan that they think will work. We’re going to start with the cooling system.” Turning to the board, Parker wrote two names. “York. You and I will be on the bridge of the Niña. I want you doubling as my copilot for this, so start your prep now.”
The entire room went hot as all my blood rushed to my face. It was like being in high school, younger than everyone else by four years, and getting picked for the kickball team. And not as a grudging last choice, but first.
On the other hand—who was I kidding? All the blood drained down, leaving me cold. Parker followed the rules. I was Mission Control’s choice, and he was accepting me because he obeyed orders.
“Schönhaus and Flannery, you’re on the EVA. Avelino and Grey will help you prep. DeBeer, you and Stewman are—Yes, Sabados?”
Dawn’s sharp cheekbones seemed poised to punch through her skin with disapproval. “Mission Control said that Wilburt and DeBeer should do the EVA.”
“Thank you. I am aware of that.”
While Parker turned back to the board, Benkoski folded his arms over his chest and met Dawn’s eyes. He gave a little headshake, which stopped her in the process of opening her mouth.
At the side of the room, leaning against the kitchen counter, DeBeer had his jaw set and his chin lowered as he looked out from under his brows. Leonard’s mouth had rounded into an “O” of astonishment, and his color had deepened with a blush.
“DeBeer, you’re going to be in the BusyBee, so if there are any eventualities, you can pull our people in faster and get them immediate medical attention. Your first task is working with Shamoun to make any modifications you need to turn it into a floating sickbay.”
That pairing worried me. On our trips over to do regular checkups of the crew, his racism had never been as blatant as it had been while he was sick, but little things always slipped through. None of them would have made it into a report to Mission Control, except as a line like “suboptimal communication between copilot and medical specialist.”
“Avelino, you, Schönhaus, and Flannery are in charge of going over Mission Control’s EVA plans with a fine-toothed comb. We’ve been out here for seven months and they don’t know what our actual conditions are. Look for any hole. Any flaw. Any potential failure point. You have any doubts at all, I trust you over them. Clear?”
“Not sure anyone should trust my judgment.” Rafael gave a little shrug, staring at the floor.
“Are you questioning an order?”
Rafael jerked his gaze up. “No, sir.”
“Then sit up straight and pay attention.” Parker jabbed his marker toward Rafael. “You have a job to do, and I damn well expect you to do it.”
That was hardly fair. The man was still in shock and grieving. I mean, I know it wasn’t his fault, but he was allowed to feel all the pain and self-doubt that came with—Oh. Parker was giving him a purpose. Goddamn it. I was happier being angry at him, but had to admit it was a good strategy.
Parker tapped his pen against his palm and glared at all of us. “We are millions of kilometers from home. We haven’t all been in the same room since we left Earth orbit seven months ago, so let me remind you of a few things. One. I am mission commander. Two. Benkoski is second-in-command. Something happens to me, you obey him. And you obey him over what Mission Control says, because for all the brain power they’ve got banked down there, they can’t see what we can. They can’t know the nuances of our situation, which means they make mistakes. I made a mistake on the last EVA, because I knew that Leonard was better qualified, and I didn’t push. So. You see a failure point, I expect you to bring it up. I expect you to work the problem. But I also know that none of you are failure points. The twelve of us? In this room? We are our entire world. So do your goddamned jobs and let me do mine.”
It was such a strange feeling to want to applaud Parker.
May 22, 1963
Dear Nathaniel,
I feel like a bad wife because I’ve been updated about your health, but it’s still taken me several days to write to you. I’m sorry it’s been so long, although I’m sure you understand why. The hours have been long and I haven’t wanted to ask Florence or Dawn to spend extra time at the teletype. Florence chivvied me into it, FOR WHICH I AM GRATEFUL.
I guess you already know that Wilburt and Leonard managed a partial repair on the ammonia system. All of us are looking forward to having it at full capacity again, partially so we can bring all the systems back online, but mostly so we can go home. The Pinta crew has been gracious, but having us all crammed into one ship means we’re constantly tripping over each other. You would think it would reduce the workload, since we could split it among more people, but we just seem to be creating more work for each other.
I imagine that’s what it’ll be like for you when Thomas arrives. Please tell me that he’s still coming out to intern with you. Mostly because that will mean you are well and hopefully he’ll make sure you eat on a regular basis.
I see the face you just made. Yes, even from millions of kilometers away. Remember that I can nag from any distance.
Other aspects of marriage require proximity, so I look forward to when we are in the same gravitational field again.
All my love,
Elma
* * *
There is something strangely satisfying abou
t making a piecrust. You take three ingredients and they turn into magic. While I would have preferred to do a true butter crust, the butter-flavored oleo that they’d sent with us was shelf stable and not bad. On the other hand, I’d been eating in space for so long that my bar for “not bad” had lowered significantly.
Fortunately, so had everyone else’s, so my chocolate chess pie still worked as a bribe. With any luck, it would put everyone in a better mood. We’d been on the Pinta for two weeks now and the cramped quarters made everyone tense.
I gripped the bowl against my hip to steady it as I cut the oleo into the flour with a fork. I’d already made the filling, which sat on the counter in a chocolatish soup. Through trial and error, I’d learned that when using powdered milk, I got a better consistency if I let it sit before baking—one of the many adaptations to space that the IAC didn’t anticipate.
Much like what it would really be like to put both crews on a single ship. Behind me, some of the crew of the Pinta were using the kitchen as a recreation space. I guess they’d picked this room over the observation dome, which worked out well for sharing. Last I’d seen, Florence and Kam were up in the dome.
Dawn and Heidi had added a makeshift table, made from a crate lid and a box, and had a jigsaw puzzle going, which showed a partial view of a Venetian canal. DeBeer sipped a cup of coffee while poring over an old newspaper from home.
Funny, the things we do for comfort. After a while, the parts of the paper that you never normally read become sources of comfort. I’d found myself engrossed in the baseball pages, just because they contained words like “Chicago” and “San Francisco.”
With the flour and butter cut into fine breadcrumbs, I set the bowl back on the counter. Next up were four tablespoons of water. At home, I only needed three, but the humidity was so low on the ships that it took a little more to get a good consistency.
Rafael slid down the ladder into the kitchen. He had barely hit the floor when he pushed off again and used the rebound to land near DeBeer. He slapped a hand-lettered sign against the taller man’s chest. “This was you?”