The Lady Astronaut of Mars

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  Should I pause here and explain what the Longevity mission is? It’s possible that you don’t know.

  There’s a habitable planet. An extrasolar one and it’s only few light years away. They’ve got a slingshot that can launch a ship up to near light speed. A small ship. Big enough for one person.

  But that isn’t what makes the Longevity mission possible. That is the tesseract field. We can’t go faster than light, but we can cut corners through the universe. The physicists described it to me like a subway tunnel. The tessaract will bend space and allow a ship to go to the next subway station. The only trick is that you need to get far enough away from a planet before you can bend space and … this is the harder part … you need a tesseract field at the other end. Once that’s up, you just need to get into orbit and the trip from Mars to LS-579 can be as short as three weeks.

  But you have to get someone to the planet to set up the other end of the tesseract.

  And they wanted to hide the plan from the public, in case it failed.

  So different from when the First Mars Expedition had happened. An asteroid had slammed into Washington D.C. and obliterated the capitol. It made the entire world realize how fragile our hold on Earth was. Nations banded together and when the Secretary of Agriculture, who found himself president through the line of succession, said that we needed to get off the planet, people listened. We rose to the stars. The potential loss of an astronaut was just part of the risk. Now? Now it has been long enough that people are starting to forget that the danger is still there. That the need to explore is necessary.

  Sheldon finished talking and just watched me processing it.

  “I need to think about this.”

  “I know.”

  Then I closed my eyes and realized that I had to say no. It didn’t matter how I felt about the trip or the chance to get back into space. The launch date he was talking about meant I’d have to go into training now. “I can’t.” I opened my eyes and stared at the wall where the publicity still of me and Nathaniel hung. “I have to turn it down.”

  “Talk to Nathaniel.”

  I grimaced. He would tell me to take it. “I can’t.”

  * * *

  I left Sheldon feeling more unsettled than I wanted to admit at the time. I stared out the window of the light rail, at the sepia sky. Rose tones were deepening near the horizon with sunset. It was dimmer and ruddier here, but with the dust, sunset could be just as glorious as on Earth.

  It’s a hard thing to look at something you want and to know that the right choice is to turn it down. Understand me: I wanted to go. Another opportunity like this would never come up for me. I was too old for normal missions. I knew it. Sheldon knew it. And Nathaniel would know it, too. I wish he had been in some other industry so I could lie and talk about “later.” He knew the space program too well to be fooled.

  And he wouldn’t believe me if I said I didn’t want to go. He knew how much I missed the stars.

  That’s the thing that I think none of us were prepared for in coming to Mars. The natural night sky on Mars is spectacular, because the atmosphere is so thin. But where humans live, under the dome, all you can see are the lights of the town reflecting against the dark curve. You can almost believe that they’re stars. Almost. If you don’t know what you are missing or don’t remember the way the sky looked at night on Earth before the asteroid hit.

  I wonder if Dorothy remembers the stars. She’s young enough that she might not. Children on Earth still look at clouds of dust and stars are just a myth. God. What a bleak sky.

  When I got home, Genevieve greeted me with her usual friendly chatter. Nathaniel looked like he wanted to push her out of the house so he could quiz me. I know Genevieve said good bye, and that we chatted, but the details have vanished now.

  What I remember next is the rattle and thump of Nathaniel’s walker as he pushed it into the kitchen. It slid forward. Stopped. He took two steps, steadied himself, and slid it forward again. Two steps. Steady. Slide.

  I pushed away from the counter and straightened. “Do you want to be in the kitchen or the living room?”

  “Sit down, Elma.” He clenched the walker till the tendons stood out on the back of his hands, but they still trembled. “Tell me about the mission.”

  “What?” I froze.

  “The mission.” He stared at the ceiling, not at me. “That’s why Sheldon called, right? So, tell me.”

  “I … All right.” I pulled the tall stool out for him and waited until he eased onto it. Then I told him. He stared at the ceiling the whole time I talked. I spent the time watching him and memorizing the line of his cheek, and the shape of the small mole by the corner of his mouth.

  When I finished, he nodded. “You should take it.”

  “What makes you think I want to?”

  He lowered his head then, eyes just as piercing as they had always been. “How long have we been married?”

  “I can’t.”

  Nathaniel snorted. “I called Dr. Williams while you were out, figuring it would be something like this. I asked for a date when we could get hospice.” He held up his hand to stop the words forming on my lips. “She’s not willing to tell me that. She did give me the date when the paralysis is likely to become total. Three months. Give or take a week.”

  We’d known this was coming, since he was diagnosed, but I still had to bite the inside of my lip to keep from sobbing. He didn’t need to see me break down.

  “So … I think you should tell them yes.”

  “Three months is not a lot of time, they can—”

  “They can what? Wait for me to die? Jesus Christ, Elma. We know that’s coming.” He scowled at the floor. “Go. For the love of God, just take the mission.”

  I wanted to. I wanted to get off the planet and back into space and not have to watch him die. Not have to watch him lose control of his body piece by piece.

  And I wanted to stay here and be with him and steal every moment left that he had breath in his body.

  * * *

  One of my favorite restaurants in Landing was Elmore’s. The New Orleans style cafe sat tucked back behind Thompson’s Grocers on a little rise that lifted the dining room just high enough to see out to the edge of town and the dome’s wall. They had a crawfish étouffée that would make you think you were back on Earth. The crawfish were raised in a tank and a little bigger than the ones I’d grown up with, but the spices came all the way from Louisiana on the mail runs twice a year.

  Sheldon Spender knew it was my favorite and was taking ruthless advantage of that. And yet I came anyway. He sat across the table from me, with his back to the picture window that framed the view. His thinning hair was almost invisible against the sky. He didn’t say a word. Just watched me, as the fellow to my right talked.

  Garrett Biggs. I’d seen him at the Bradbury Space Center, but we’d exchanged maybe five words before today. My work was mostly done before his time. They just trotted me out for the occasional holiday. Now, the man would not stop talking. He gestured with his fork as he spoke, punctuating the phrases he thought I needed to hear most. “Need some photos of you so we can exploit—I know it sounds ugly but we’re all friends here, right? We can be honest, right? So, we can exploit your sacrifice to get the public really behind the Longevity mission.”

  I watched the lettuce tremble on the end of his fork. It was pallid compared to my memory of lettuce on Earth. “I thought the public didn’t know about the mission.”

  “They will. That’s the key. Someone will leak it and we need to be ready.” He waved the lettuce at me. “And that’s why you are a brilliant choice for pilot. Octogenarian Grandmother Paves Way for Humanity.”

  “You can’t pave the stars. I’m not a grandmother. And I’m sixty-three not eighty.”

  “It’s a figure of speech. The point is that you’re a PR goldmine.”

  I had known that they asked me to helm this mission because of my age—it would be a lot to ask of someone who had a fu
ll life ahead of them. Maybe I was naive to think that my experience in establishing the Mars colony was considered valuable.

  How can I explain the degree to which I resented being used for publicity? This wasn’t a new thing by a long shot. My entire career has been about exploitation for publicity. I had known it, and exploited it too, once I’d realized the power of having my uniform tailored to show my shape a little more clearly. You think they would have sent me to Mars if it weren’t intended to be a colony? I was there to show all the lady housewives that they could go to space too. Posing in my flight suit, with my lips painted red, I had smiled at more cameras than my colleagues.

  I stared Garrett Biggs and his fork. “For someone in PR, you are awfully blunt.”

  “I’m honest. To you. If you were the public, I’d have you spinning so fast you’d generate your own gravity.”

  Sheldon cleared his throat. “Elma, the fact is that we’re getting some pressure from a group of senators. They want to cut the budget for the project and we need to take steps or it won’t happen.”

  I looked down and separated the tail from one of my crawfish. “Why?”

  “The usual nonsense. People arguing that if we just wait, then ships will become fast enough to render the mission pointless. That includes a couple of serious misunderstandings of physics, but, be that as it may…” Sheldon paused and tilted his head, looking at me. He changed what he was about to say and leaned forward. “Is Nathaniel worse?”

  “He’s not better.”

  He winced at the edge in my voice. “I’m sorry. I know I strong-armed you into it, but I can find someone else.”

  “He thinks I should go.” My chest hurt even considering it. But I couldn’t stop thinking about the mission. “He knows it’s the only way I’ll get back into space.”

  Garrett Biggs frowned like I’d said the sky was green, instead of the pale Martian amber. “You’re in space.”

  “I’m on Mars. It’s still a planet.”

  * * *

  I woke out of half-sleep, aware that I must have heard Nathaniel’s bell, without being able to actually recall it. I pulled myself to my feet, putting a hand against the nightstand until I was steady. My right hip had stiffened again in the night. Arthritis is not something I approve of.

  Turning on the hall light, I made my way down the stairs. The door at the bottom stood open so I could hear Nathaniel if he called. I couldn’t sleep with him anymore, for fear of breaking him.

  I went through into his room. It was full of grey shadows and the dark rectangle of his bed. In one corner, the silver arm of his walker caught the light.

  “I’m sorry.” His voice cracked with sleep.

  “It’s all right. I was awake anyway.”

  “Liar.”

  “Now, is that a nice thing to say?” I put my hand on the light switch. “Watch your eyes.”

  Every night we followed the same ritual and even though I knew the light would be painfully bright, I still winced as it came on. Squinting against the glare, I threw the covers back for him. The weight of them trapped him sometimes. He held his hands up, waiting for me to take them. I braced myself and let Nathaniel pull himself into a sitting position. On Earth, he’d have been bed-ridden long since. Of course, on Earth, his bone density would probably not have deteriorated so fast.

  As gently as I could, I swung his legs to the side of the bed. Even allowing for the gravity, I was appalled anew by how light he was. His legs were like kindling wrapped in tissue. Where his pajamas had ridden up, purple bruises mottled his calf.

  As soon as he was sitting up on the edge of the bed, I gave him the walker. He wrapped his shaking hands around the bars and tried to stand. He rose only a little before dropping back to the bed. I stayed where I was, though I ached to help. He sometimes took more than one try to stand at night, and didn’t want help. Not until it became absolutely necessary. Even then, he wouldn’t want it. I just hoped he’d let me help him when we got to that point.

  On the second try, he got his feet under him and stood, shaking. With a nod, he pushed forward. “Let’s go.”

  I followed him to the bathroom in case he lost his balance in there, which he did sometimes. The first time, I hadn’t been home. We had hired Genevieve not long after that to sit with him when I needed to be out.

  He stopped in the kitchen and bent a little at the waist with a sort of grunt.

  “Are you all right?”

  He shook his head and started again, moving faster. “I’m not—” He leaned forward, clenching his jaw. “I can’t—”

  The bathroom was so close.

  “Oh, God. Elma…” A dark, fetid smell filled the kitchen. Nathaniel groaned. “I couldn’t—”

  I put my hand on his back. “Hush. We’re almost there. We’ll get you cleaned up.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He pushed the walker forward, head hanging. A trail of damp footsteps followed him. The ammonia stink of urine joined the scent of his bowels.

  I helped him lower his pajamas. The weight of them had made them sag on his hips. Dark streaks ran down his legs and dripped onto the bathmat. I eased him onto the toilet.

  My husband bent his head forward, and he wept.

  I remember wetting a washcloth and running it over his legs. I know that I must have tossed his soiled pajamas into the cleaner, and that I wiped up the floor, but those details have mercifully vanished. But what I can’t forget, and I wish to God that I could, is Nathaniel sitting there crying.

  * * *

  I asked Genevieve to bring adult diapers to us the next day. The strange thing was how familiar the package felt. I’d used them on launches when we had to sit in the capsule for hours and there was no option to get out of our space suit. It’s one of the many glamorous details of being an astronaut that the publicity department does not share with the public.

  There is a difference, however, from being required to wear one for work and what Nathaniel faced. He could not put them on by himself without losing his balance. Every time I had to change the diaper, he stared at the wall with his face slack and hopeless.

  Nathaniel and I’d made the decision not to have children. They aren’t conducive to a life in space, you know? I mean there’s the radiation, and the weightlessness, but more it was that I was gone all the time. I couldn’t give up the stars … but I found myself wishing that we hadn’t made that decision. Part of it was wishing that I had some connection to the next generation. More of it was wanting someone to share the burden of decision with me.

  What happens after Nathaniel dies? What do I have left here? More specifically, how much will I regret not going on the Mission?

  And if I’m in space, how much will I regret abandoning my husband to die alone?

  You see why I was starting to wish that we had children?

  In the afternoon, we were sitting in the living room, pretending to work. Nathaniel sat with his pencil poised over the paper and stared out the window as though he were working. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t but I gave him what privacy I could and started on one of my eagles.

  The phone rang and gave us both something of a relief, I think, to have a distraction. The phone sat on a table by Nathaniel’s chair so he could reach it easily if I weren’t in the room. With my eyes averted, his voice sounded as strong as ever as he answered.

  “Hang on, Sheldon. Let me get Elma for—Oh. Oh, I see.”

  I snipped another feather but it was more as a way to avoid making eye contact than because I really wanted to keep working.

  “Of course I’ve got a few minutes. I have nothing but time these days.” He ran his hand through his hair and let it rest at the back of his neck. “I find it hard to believe that you don’t have programmers on staff who can’t handle this.”

  He was quiet then as Sheldon spoke, I could hear only the distorted tinny sound of his voice rising and falling. At a certain point, Nathaniel picked up his pencil again and started making notes. Whatever Sheldon was asking him
to do, that was the moment when Nathaniel decided to say “yes.”

  I set my eagle aside and went into the kitchen. My first reaction—God. It shames me but my first reaction was anger. How dare he? How dare he take a job without consulting with me when I was turning down this thing I so desperately wanted because of him. I had the urge to snatch up the phone and tell Sheldon that I would go.

  I pushed that down carefully and looked at it.

  Nathaniel had been urging me to go. No deliberate action of his was keeping me from accepting. Only my own upbringing and loyalty and … and I loved him. If I did not want to be alone after he passed, how could I leave him to face the end alone?

  The decision would be easier if I knew when he would die.

  I still hate myself for thinking that.

  I heard the conversation end and Nathaniel hung up the phone. I filled a glass with water to give myself an excuse for lingering in the kitchen. I carried it back into the living room and sat down on the couch.

  Nathaniel had his lower lip between his teeth and was scowling at the page on top of his notepad. He jotted a number in the margin with a pencil before he looked up.

  “That was Sheldon.” He glanced back at the page.

  I settled in my chair and fidgeted with the wedding band on my finger. It had gotten loose in the last year. “I’m going to turn them down.”

  “What—But, Elma.” His gaze flattened and he gave me a small frown. “Are you … are you sure it’s not depression? That’s making you want to stay, I mean.”

  I gave an unladylike snort. “Now what do I have to be depressed about?”

  “Please.” He ran his hands through his hair and knit them together at the back of his neck. “I want you to go so you won’t be here when … It’s just going to get worse from here.”

  The devil of it was that he wasn’t wrong. That didn’t mean he was right, either, but I couldn’t flat out tell him he was wrong. I set down my scissors and pushed the magnifier out of the way. “It’s not just depression.”