When Globa told him what had happened, he grew thoughtful.
Later, debriefing, Tsiolkovsky said: ‘I felt I was in Paradise.’
We did not tell Base that Tsiolkovsky spent half an hour in Paradise. We said the walk had gone as planned, and the new monitors were in place.
I was next, when I walked out with Globa, who saw only the hull before his eyes, his gloved hands manipulating the equipment. Globa went first. I moved to follow.
The outer hull is crowded with experiments and with solar panels. We transit with great care, avoiding anything sharp that might puncture our suits.
Before me, the sun’s rays. Beneath me, Mir sparkled in sunlight. When I reached the site, I tethered myself to the nearest handrail. My hands were heavy with gloves. Arms, legs and trunk swung round as one. I was an Egyptian mummy raised from the dead, sleep-walking though the pyramid in search of the entrance to the other world.
We worked steadily until nightfall. On Mir, the movement from day to night is sudden. Blackness is absolute. We cannot work when this happens, and stay tethered to await the rising sun. It is a task for which we are trained.
This time, I could not relax into the situation, which, in itself, is not dangerous, simply something that happens. I swung restlessly on my tether. I had the strong urge to stand upright. But I did not know how to do it. In space, there is no up, no down, no sense to the notion of standing.
Then I had the sudden sense that space itself moved into me, and through me, and gently set me right. My hand-hold shifted to a foot-hold. I was moved, but I had not moved. I was by myself, yet I was with the stars.
I felt the space of Mir above and below me. The space of Mir was within me and without me.
I took refuge in the shadows of Mir’s wings.
Then I saw the small light of Globa’s torch.
Globa. I was not alone. Space retreated from me. Soon it was sunrise. We got back to work. Together, we ascended the mountain that is Kristall, and checked the monitors.
Afterwards I asked Globa what he had seen. Nothing.
I said nothing. If I told Tsiolkovsky, it would only bring on more questions like ‘Who am I, and what do I exist for?’ I was beginning to wonder, myself, but I was not sure confiding in Tsiolkovsky would get me anywhere. He should report me to Base, as I should already have reported him.
Then came the fire. It happened so silently, so swiftly.
It was Globa’s turn for the sleep experiments. We wired him up, and left him alone in Spetkr to get what sleep he could.
We took a meal together. Black-currant jelly from foil packets, and vodka from Globa’s stash.
At the time of the fire, I was stamping postcards. Endlessly. We stamped them in proof they were on Mir, to sell on our return. Manakov was tucking up cables. I scarcely noticed any more, the cables in free fall, the pools of water, the flickering lights from computer malfunctions. I felt this was the only life I ever knew, that all other notions of life on earth were phantasms induced by vodka and lack of sleep.
Tsiolkovsky flew past the bench. He refused to stamp postcards. When I asked him to help, he replied: ‘How is it possible for me to understand the cause of all that happens to me?’ It was only stamping postcards, but he would make yet another cosmic question of it.
Manakov said: ‘The oxygen is getting low.’ It was my task to replenish the supply.
I secured the cards and made my way through the hatchway into the Kvant module.
I switched to the back-up system. Everything on Mir was fast becoming back-up, and back-ups of the back-ups, as the front-line equipment collapsed.
I found the cylinder, and took out the gutted candle, the spent lithium perchlorate. I put a fresh candle in the tube. I turned the red dial and smelt the sweet flow of oxygen. Then, as I placed the cylinder back in its cradle, I saw sparks of light in the air-flow.
Fire!
I was on board a space craft hurtling around the earth. I was located precisely in time and space. But at the moment I knew this, I also knew I inhabited another place where time and space were irrelevant.
I felt a great sluggishness come over me. My actions should have been swift. I should have yelled ‘Fire!’ My companions should rush to help me. We are trained to respond quickly, without question.
But just as I knew I must call out, I felt myself fall out of this space, this time, into another place. I saw sparks from the cylinder turn, in free-fall, into a burning sphere. I saw the soul of the universe in this fire, this small burning sun inside Mir. I saw the king of stars and the fountain of life.
I watched the flame grow to embrace the entire universe. I said in a voice that I knew did not carry: ‘We have a fire.’
These things happened, as if in another place, to another person.
Inside the Kvant module a light flashed upon me, and through me, shining as a mirror, all colours together, flashing and disappearing, reappearing, fusing and blending to a light that is not a light, to a fire that is not a fire. I saw the fire before me, the flames flowing into a sphere as oxygen escaped. I sensed the invisible fire all round, within Mir and beyond, spreading to infinity, an invisible fire, a fire that does not burn, a fire that brings with it perfection and tranquillity. When we knew nothing of it, it stayed hidden. Once I sensed it, it showed itself to me, when I sought to find it, I did not know what it was that I was looking for.
I think then it was that I called ‘Fire!’ in a voice that carried well beyond my head.
Tsiolkovsky flew through the hatch and seized the fire-extinguisher. Nothing came out of it. We needed the back-up extinguisher, and the back-up to the back-up.
The fire alarm rang, a piercing buzzer. I remembered Globa, asleep in the Spetkr module. I had to get him. The alarm should trigger a shutdown of the ventilation system. Manakov tussled with the container of oxygen masks, wrenching it open and throwing them to us. Tsiolkovsky threw a towel on the flames. It caught fire, and specks of smoke and burning towel flew round the module.
I saw smoke, and at its heart a yellow glow, and Tsiolkovsky fighting with the extinguisher that would not come free from the wall.
I saw motes of dust in the air, and splashes of molten metal.
Manakov wrenched the nozzle round from the hull, and flecks of foam flew in the cabin.
The fire hissed.
The first mask did not work. The oxygen did not trigger. I threw it away and took an extra for Globa. I had to find him and wake him. We might need to evacuate in Soyuz.
Soyuz was on the other side of the fire.
I moved fast out of Kvant and shut the hatch behind me, so that smoke would not seep into the ventilator system.
It was so quiet out there.
I found Globa awake, trailing his wires, and fighting to remove the blue cap so firmly gelled to his head. He scattered the sensors about him. They floated in free fall, measuring the brain waves of the ether. His blood splashed into the air from the discarded catheter, and formed blobs of red rain.
Globa was in a state.
On Base, they did not like interruptions to their sleep experiments.
The masks worked and we breathed sweet air. I wondered, then, about the air. Perhaps we no longer needed it. If we did not need to breathe, then Tsiolkovsky was right when he said we were dead, and had been so for a long time.
The fire shrank. The burning bush contracted to a point. The flame went out. It was over.
We did not need the escape module Soyuz, not yet.
Our fire debriefing was swift and to the point.
Manakov said: ‘It happened. I saw it, with my own eyes. I saw the fire and I sensed the presence within.’
Globa said: ‘I heard a voice I have always known.’
Tsiolkovsky said; ‘The music is in our hearts. The light is in our heads. We fought a fire, and won a prize beyond the telling.’
I said: ‘I shall inform Base that there has been a small problem with the oxygen emergency oxygen supply. Nothing we couldn’t fix.
’
Metal fatigue, they said, afterwards, it was caused by metal fatigue on Mir, the untested effects of space radiation on earth-made metals. As the hull of Mir got more exhausted, as did its occupants, and yet more exhausted, the exhaustion became a creeping contagion that spread, here loosening bolts, there rusting fire extinguishers to the bulkhead, here sending hand-rails careening off into space. Metal fatigue rusted the judgment of long-stay cosmonauts, so that they saw God on space-walks, and heard the songs of angels.
They trashed Mir in the Southern Ocean. Of course, they thought we had all returned by then, and certainly, Tsiolkovsky, and Globa, and Manakov seemed to come back with me, in Soyuz, but it was more that they sent their emissaries in their bodily forms, ghosts that went through the motions of being human.
Tsiolkovsky said: ‘I always told you, Volkov, that I had a dream, and now I know that I have awoken from my dream, which was the dream of life on board Mir. I awoke, and I found myself in an awesome place, and here I want to stay.’
And I alone returned to earth, as me, the real, the one and only me. Since then, I have mourned my loss. I dream, with Tsiolkovsky, that there is a ladder set on this ground upon which I now walk, and its top reaches far beyond the ghostly Mir in the sky to the gate of Paradise itself, and angels go up and down it. They pass close by the ghost Mir, which sings in its celestial orbit, captured by the sphere of perfection. Mir is crystal clear, and shining with its solar panels and its hull free forever from rusting and metallic stresses, flying in the ethereal wind, and clothed in the fiery garments of light.
Mir circles still on high, and I think of Manakov, busy, as always, eternally mopping up puddles of the heavenly quintessence.
The Boy Who Didn’t Yearn
Margo Lanagan
I should have realised straight off. Of all people, I, Tess Maxwell, should have seen him for what he was. I mean, I knew something was different, something big. My eyes kept going back to him. But I was caught up in people leaving the Art Cottage, and he was in the crowd going to the basketball courts, and we got swept away from each other, Keenoy Ribson and me.
I tried to work it out at the bus stop, the way you try and get a whole dream back using the one little shred you remember, but it turned into a flutter among flutters in my mind, and the bus came, and I went home.
I went home and I went to work—same place. I work in ‘the parlour’, Mum calls it, a polite name for such a messy, personal kind of business premises.
My first client was a woman who was after her husband. He was right there with her, of course; the thick, dark string of his tether went from his worn slipper-toe to her right shoulder. He hung over her, griping.
‘He’s saying “Don’t burn the snags, Merrill”,’ I told her.
She laughed. ‘Oh yes, of course. Yes, that’s him. Same old whinging bludger. God, I miss him!’ And she cried. They always cry when you tell them that kind of detail.
And then there was a man. He had a very handsome boyfriend—well, the handsome version alternated with a blotched, dying one who slid down to lie between us on the Turkish rug. ‘He’s very grateful for everything you did for him,’ I said. ‘It made it easier, he says. You did everything right. Robert, his name is.’ And the guy nodded, and he dissolved in tears, too. ‘You’re doing good work,’ I went on. ‘You think it’s pointless without Robert, but every day of your life you make a big difference to a lot of people. He’s not saying that; it’s just … clear, around you. There’s all this value; you’re very solid. What is your work?’
‘I’m a nurse,’ he said, through the complimentary tissues.
‘Oh, there you go, then.’
After him, I was tired, because it is tiring. But two clients means a hundred dollars. Five hundred dollars a week is a good amount—it means we can live, as well as keep Dad at Bernard House. If I were really determined I could do more, but I guess I’m not. We’re managing, aren’t we? We’re managing fine on two a night.
Mum was in the kitchen with a fruit-shake and a cheese muffin for me, and Dad was there, too, on home-care. I sat and ate and thought about bed.
‘Take Dad for a walk?’ said Mum.
I nodded. It was too early for bed; a walk would clear my head ready for homework.
It was cold outside, grey and darkening. I wheeled Dad up to the park, because the paths there have got nice, rounded corners, and I needed to be somewhere quiet, among trees and rotundas and curly metal seats. I started to wake up there, I started to come back to myself. You can’t hurry that; all you can do is wait.
I used to exhaust myself over Dad. It didn’t do any good. I can feel his brain almost as if it’s in my own skull, and half of it’s just drained, of juice, of life. And nothing on the living side’s very strong, either. Everything shimmers at the same level, with no memory bigger or better than the others, and there are no links between the memories, or feelings tied to them; everything’s just random poppings-up, a sort of play of life like a small, settled fire that won’t actually burn anything.
Once, right back at the beginning, Mum asked what I could see. ‘They say the life force can flow back in, bit by bit,’ she said. And she looked up from Dad, wanting hope—from me, probably the only person in her world who couldn’t give her any.
I was so embarrassed for her I couldn’t speak. Life force—where’d she get that idea? And who were ‘they’ supposed to be?
‘But that’d be for mild strokes, I suppose,’ she finished, turning away.
I recovered a bit. ‘He’s there, but he’s all mulched up. He doesn’t hang together.’
‘Is there any point,’ she asked, ‘in it being us, who look after him? Does it make any difference? Does he recognise us?’
‘Not very often. And not much happens when he does.’
Which was why we eventually put him in Bernard House, to get some life back for ourselves, some time not tending that fire. We do still tend it, but only on a few weeknights. Mum wheels Dad home and parks him in the kitchen-family room he designed and built, and feeds him while I work—she says she doesn’t want me feeding him, doesn’t want me to have memories of that. And she talks to him. She’s hoping to get something back, an eye-flicker, a noise that sounds like an answer. Stubbornly she goes on, serenely talking, about the news, about people they both used to know (but now only she knows them), goes on and on breaking her heart over him—or maybe not breaking it so much as wearing it away, grinding it gradually down to nothing.
I won’t do that to myself. I know it upsets Mum that I don’t talk to Dad, but what’s the point if he doesn’t exist enough to hear me? Mum still thinks he does—time and time again I see her making up that alternative life, seeing his eyes brighten, watching him throw off his rug and stand up: I’ll just get that doorknob fixed before dinner, he says, or What are we all sitting around here for, with long faces? But even when his voice is so clear, coming through her, I can’t believe; I know Dad’s kind of damage never mends. He won’t come back.
Next morning I woke up breathing the deep calm of a Dad-free house. Whatsaname Ribson, I thought. Keenoy. The air around him is absolutely clear and silent. Yeah, that was it. No strings attached him to any yearnings or losses. He was clean; he was himself, he was completely self-contained. Like me. Excitement stirred tentatively under my ribs. Could there be someone like that? Or did he have some attachment I just wasn’t seeing yet?
I dressed and took coffee in to Mum, stroked her head to wake her up and gave her one of those big morning hugs—better than coffee, she says—which are like being drunk out of, but like drinking too. And I smiled back at her, which I can do, some mornings.
‘Busy day ahead?’ she said. Beside her the bedclothes were flat and uncluttered, where for a long time after Dad’s stroke there’d been a mound, a Dad-shaped mound that Mum had put there.
‘Busy day every day. Want toast?’
‘There are some muffins left—I’ll have one of those. Please, I mean.’
�
�Your wish is my command.’
‘Thanks, love.’
Going up the hill to school, I saw a tall boy’s curly blond hair ahead. Ah, yes. Him.
He was talking to Slade and those guys. He said something that made them laugh. They were easier to see for a moment—those guys are usually so stuck about with hang-ups it’s quite painful to look at them. But when the veils of fear and bad home life and wanting-a-red-car clustered back around them, Keenoy Ribson was still clear and unobscured. My eyes searched around him automatically, wondering where he hid all his stuff—some people can do that—searching and searching and finding nothing. Nothing at all. It was kind of stunning, like a fine day after a long rainy spell. I watched him closely—his relaxed walk, his personal version of the school uniform, the beaten-up school bag with his old school’s crest on it, with the motto KNOW THYSELF—and I waited for interference, but he stayed as crisp and clean-edged as a photograph.
Several times that day I saw him, always with totally different groups of people. He didn’t seem to care who he was seen with, Slade’s roughnecks or Mandy’s knitting circle or that nerd Purtwee. He always looked perfectly comfortable; the group was always cheerful and busy with conversation.
‘Did you see that new guy?’ I heard Josh Bateman say.
‘What a suck—see him talking to Bannister? Getting in with the school captain?’
But at lunchtime there they were, Keenoy and Josh and all the soccer-heads together, out on the oval, kicking a ball around.
Nobody had a problem with him, unless you call the girls’ instant wild crushes a problem. ‘Such a babe,’ Blossom O’Malley said to me—I happened to be standing near her when Keenoy walked past.
‘You think?’ I said.
‘What, are you crazy?’ She goggled at me.
‘You think he’s good-looking?’
She gazed after him. ‘Well, it’s not so much the looks, though they’re okay. It’s more, he’s so happy.’
I liked Blossom for a second, then, with that note of longing in her voice. Just for that brief time, she had dignity, before all her usual cutesy, kittenish attachments bobbed in around her again.
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