“Is it all right?” he asked her, and she nodded her approval between big bites of hash.
When the water was ready, Augie made himself a mug of coffee, sweetened with a generous helping of condensed milk, and decided it was the most delicious drink he’d ever had—better than whiskey, even. They continued to sit at the table after eating, their dishes stacked in front of them and the oil stove humming beside them, not saying anything, just enjoying the tones of silence. The kerosene lamps illuminated the hut and the stove kept it surprisingly warm, even as the temperatures outside plunged. Augustine set the dishes down in the basin and left them for the morning, then unwrapped another one of the cots for Iris. They weren’t accustomed to sleeping so far apart; in the observatory, they had curled up in the nest together, for warmth. Iris watched Augie fold the plastic and shake out the sheet, then fit it to the mattress. They took out their subzero sleeping bags and laid them on top of the beds.
In the night Augie woke to hear the howls of a pack of Arctic wolves. They sounded close—in the mountains behind the camp, he guessed, perhaps sniffing around their abandoned snowmobile and marking it as theirs. They can have it, Augie thought, and drifted back to sleep.
IN THE MORNING, he lay on the cot for a few extra minutes, enjoying the warmth of the oil stove still chugging away. When he got to his feet, he shuddered to hear the cartilage in his joints cracking, his bones clicking against each other like dominoes falling down the length of his body. He was sore from the tumble he’d taken off the snowmobile the day before, but he’d live. He found a scouring pad and soap, warmed up some water, and washed the skillet and tin camping plates from last night’s dinner. When he was done he wandered outside and looked back at their hut to see the smoke curling up through its slim silver chimney and disappearing into a pale blue sky. The sun had already climbed well past the tips of the surrounding mountains. He heard Iris before he saw her, the hollow beat of improvised percussion accompanied by the keening hum that could only be hers. He followed the sound and found her sitting on top of an upturned dinghy by the edge of the lake, tapping out a rhythm on the hull with a piece of wood, her skinny legs crossed beneath her, the green pompom of her hat jiggling in time with the beat. Augie waved to her and she waved back before returning to her composition. Something about her was different, and it took Augie a moment to realize—she looked happy. He left her to her music and turned back to the camp.
There were the three huts, two large white ones, one smaller green, set in a row, a cluster of oil, kerosene, and gas drums gathered behind them. Augustine inspected them in turn. The other white hut was more barren than theirs, but mostly the same. It had two more cots—a backup dormitory, he thought, perhaps for the summer season when the population of the little camp swelled. In the green hut he found the food stores and more cooking supplies. This seemed to be the cook tent, presumably used as such in the warmer, busier summer months. During the winter the operation probably shrank down to the one tent they’d taken up residence in. The cook tent was packed with canned and dehydrated food, a huge array of it—more fruit cocktail and instant coffee and creamed spinach and mystery meat than they could consume in years. The variety was staggering, the quantities ample, the quality questionable, but it was vastly better than what they’d had before. They would not go hungry here, nor would they freeze to death—that much was clear.
Back outside the cook tent, the air was incredibly still. The sun had warmed the basin surrounding the lake and the temperatures were almost balmy—about 35 degrees Fahrenheit, he guessed. He loosened his scarf and stood still, letting the light soak into his old, battered skin. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt this good. On the small island toward the center of the lake, he saw the Arctic hares bouncing up and down on its banks, watching him. He wondered whether they summered there or bounded across the ice to the mainland before it was too late and the ice turned to water, trying their luck in the mountains that ringed the lake. Or perhaps—he smiled to think of it—they were swimmers.
There was one more building that he hadn’t looked in yet. It was the control shed next to the radio antenna array, and he was saving it for last. A solid structure of wood and metal, it was set apart from the cluster of tents, nearer to the array than to the living quarters. Augustine walked to the radio shed and put his hand on the knob, then paused without knowing why. Surely this can wait, he thought, and let his hand fall back to his side. The radio was the reason he’d come here—a chance to contact what was left of the outside world—but suddenly it seemed secondary. They could build a home here, and wasn’t that what he’d really wanted? He turned to look at the camp and saw Iris lying on her back on the overturned dinghy, staring up at the sky, her crude wooden drumstick clutched across her chest like a funeral bouquet. He left the building and returned to her.
“Walk with me?” he called to Iris.
She lifted her head and swung her legs off the dinghy. She shrugged—a yes. Augie took her hand and pulled her to her feet.
“Come on,” he said, “let’s explore.”
THE ICE WAS still solid despite the creaking sounds it made. They skated back and forth, falling occasionally, attempting to race and spin and jump on its thick, slippery surface. Iris wanted to walk out to the island, but halfway there Augustine began to stumble. It was as if his legs weren’t obeying him. The second time he fell to his knees they turned around and headed back for the camp. The Arctic hares watched the two humans go with perked ears and quivering noses. He stopped to rest two hundred yards from shore and Iris waited by his side, attentive and mute, laying her palm against his forehead as though she were playing doctor.
Back at the camp, Augustine lay down on his cot and Iris made coffee. It was watery and black—she hadn’t used enough of the instant powder or any of the condensed milk—but he drank it gratefully and closed his eyes. When he opened them again the light outside was fading and Iris was sitting at the card table reading one of the romance novels. Her lips moved as she scanned the page. Two lovers in gauzy silks clutched each other on the cover.
“How is it?” he croaked, and his voice came out rusty, as if he hadn’t used it in days. She shrugged and made a teetering motion with her hand: so-so. She finished the page and turned the book facedown on the table, then got to her feet and began to root around the kitchen area. He gradually realized she was replicating the meal he’d made them last night. He felt a kernel of pride that she had paid attention, that he had taught her something useful without even intending to. Perhaps this is how fathers feel, he thought. The smell of the corned beef made him hungry, and when the food was ready he dragged himself to the table, where they ate in front of the kerosene lamps. After he finished washing the dishes, he turned around to find Iris asleep on his cot, curled around the paperback novel like a crescent moon. He fastened the door, just a little latch to make sure it didn’t blow open in the night, and warmed his dishwater-damp hands in front of the oil stove. Then he blew out the kerosene lamps and lay down beside her, the two of them nestled in the narrow cot. Iris shifted slightly and the book fell off the cot, but she didn’t wake. As he drifted off he focused on her breath and finally identified the source of the nagging fear that had been plaguing him all this time: love.
AUGUSTINE DRIFTED THROUGH high school and most of college under a cloak of social invisibility. He was quiet and smart and watchful. It wasn’t until he was a senior in college that he realized the two girls sitting on either side of him in his thermodynamics class were smitten with him—that he could have either of them, perhaps both, if he wanted. But did he want them? What would he do with them? He’d already had sex once, in high school, and he had found it pleasant enough, but too messy and awkward to be worth pursuing it again. And yet—this kind of romantic charge was new to him. It was beyond the puzzle pieces of human bodies; it was an emotional mystery. An experiment he’d never had the variables to conduct before. Not one to back down from an intriguing research project, Augustine did
n’t hesitate to sleep with both girls in quick succession. It came out that they were in a sorority together, and they immediately became vicious, to him and to each another, when they realized they were dating the same boy. The semester ended with tears and nasty letters and one of the girls dropping out, but to him the experiment had been a success. He’d learned something, and he’d realized there was so much more to learn.
During the years that followed, he continued to experiment with these emotions. He developed new and more effective techniques for attraction. He would woo his test subjects diligently, sparing no expense, no compliment, and when they had finally fallen in love with him, he would reject them. It was gradual at first—he stopped calling, stopped sleeping over in their beds, stopped whispering flattery into their lovely ears. The subjects would begin to suspect they were losing him, just after they’d decided they wanted him, and they would double their efforts to keep him. The sex would become more adventurous, and he would enjoy these gestures as they came, then shame them later for offering themselves so freely. The invitations to dinner or the cinema or the museum would become one-sided. Eventually he would stop seeing them altogether, would scorn them without ever saying so, without ever saying goodbye or even offering the conventional “It’s not you, it’s me” line. He would simply disappear from their lives. If they had the gall to go looking for him, he would make them feel insane—as if he had been halfhearted all along, or as if he’d never wanted them at all. He never felt guilty about any of it, just curious.
These women Augustine experimented on called him the usual names: asshole, jerk, son of a bitch, dirtbag. Then there were the more clinical terms: pathological liar, sociopath, psycho, sadist. He was intrigued by these names, and there were moments when he wondered if they were correct. Asshole, certainly, but sociopath? In his twenties and early thirties, before his post in New Mexico, it seemed possible. He was observing emotions in these women that he’d never felt before, witnessing pain he’d inflicted with barely a flash of sympathy. He tried to remember: Had he loved his mother, or had he only manipulated her for his own comfort? Had he, even then, been experimenting on her to see what worked and what didn’t? Had he always been this way? The fact that he wasn’t particularly troubled by that possibility seemed to make it even more probable.
It wasn’t personal—it was never personal. He wanted to understand love’s boundaries, to see what sort of flora grew on the other side, what sort of fauna lived there. And infatuation, lust—were they different? Did they manifest with different symptoms? He wanted to understand these things clinically, to experiment with love’s limits, its flaws. He didn’t want to feel it, just to study it. It was recreational. Another field of study to explore. His real work was far loftier, but his questions regarding love were not easily answered. He never felt satisfied. And Augustine was accustomed to satisfactory answers, so he persevered.
His behavior wasn’t without consequence. Eventually he would overstep the mark. The women—the test subjects—would become too hazardous, too plentiful. He would run into them in cafés, see them at work or walking in his neighborhood. And they all knew each other, because what better way to leapfrog from one woman to the next than by exploiting the fringes of a lover’s social circle? Augustine didn’t care enough to apologize—it was easier simply to leave, to find a new observatory, a new fellowship or adjunct teaching position, and begin again. It was only a side project to him, an off-the-books experiment that was dwarfed by his real work, among the stars. He enjoyed the variety of bodies, different breasts and bellies and legs to explore when he needed a break from his research, but that was all. Occasionally he felt pity, but never compassion—he couldn’t understand the reactions he was confronted with. They seemed overblown, ridiculous.
His father was dead by the time he got his PhD, his mother in the locked wing of a mental hospital. He had no other family, no other examples of love to draw from, only blurry memories of dysfunction and an unhappy childhood. He had never been interested in television or novels. He wanted to learn from life, from observation. And he did: he learned that love was concealed by a swirling vortex of unpleasant emotions, the invisible, unreachable center of a black hole. It was irrational and unpredictable. He wanted no part of it, and his experiments only confirmed, again and again, how distasteful it all was. As time wore on he grew more fond of liquor and less fond of women. It was easier. A better, simpler escape.
In his thirties, he accepted a position at the Jansky Very Large Array in Socorro, New Mexico, home to some of the best radio astronomy opportunities in the world. Augustine was well known by then, among his colleagues, but also farther afield. He was young and photogenic, which made him popular with the media, and his work was revolutionizing his field. But he knew his contributions wouldn’t be remembered until he truly made his mark. He was at the edge, almost there, but he still needed the theory that would put his name alongside those of the pioneers of science. His reputation as a womanizing asshole preceded him wherever he went, but so did his reputation for groundbreaking, meticulous research. All the facilities wanted to host him, and he had his pick of the tenure-track posts. But Augustine hated teaching. He wanted—no, needed—to discover.
The Jansky Array was a rare departure from Augie’s optical research, but the funding practically landed in his lap, with no tedious paperwork or bureaucratic schmoozing required. Perhaps a few years of radio astronomy would be just the thing to take his research to a new level. He booked the ticket and packed his suitcase, just one, the enormous piece of distressed leather baggage that he’d been toting across oceans and continents since his undergraduate days. In Socorro they gave him a warm welcome and he settled in quickly, glad of the change of scenery and impressed with the scope of the VLA. He stayed for almost four years—longer than he’d anticipated, longer than he’d stayed anywhere since college—and it was there that he met Jean.
TWELVE
“NICE MORNING FOR a walk,” Devi said, grinning at Sully through her helmet. Aether’s reflection moved across her mirrored visor. Although she could barely see Devi’s face beneath the reflected image, Sully could make out her teeth as she smiled, wide and white beneath the glare. The stillness of the space around them was complete, like the quiet of morning before the birds begin to chirp, before the sun wakes the earth—only out here there was no daybreak, no high noon, no gloaming hour. Just this eternal moment of hush. No before, no after, just an endless sliver of time between night and day.
She felt peaceful. She felt capable. Propelling herself and the comm. dish through empty space, feeling the soft vibration of her propulsion unit, hearing the occasional transmission from Devi or Harper. The aft of the ship was looming closer—almost there. The minutiae of the installation would take hours, but she had time. She had tools. She had a plan, a partner, a team; she had a damn jetpack. It would be fine. She saw Devi touch down on the installation site in front of her and brought the payload in for a gentle landing. Devi was ready with the tethers, clipping them into place as soon as Sully got close enough, so that the new dish could float a few yards away from the ship while they reconfigured the wiring and then connected its mast to the hull. The dish swayed against its restraints, a long arm with a big round paw, waving at them. Devi and Sully tethered themselves to the site too. Loose wires floated out from the connection point like Medusa’s snaky curls. Devi arranged them meticulously and intuitively, splitting and splicing them to match the mechanics of the new comm. dish. Sully supplied the tools as Devi asked for them, clipping the spares to her utility belt.
Hours passed as they worked, mostly in silence. Occasionally, Devi would reach out and request a tool from Sully’s belt, but there was no chatter between them. Devi was immersed, as she should be, and Sully was alert, as she should be. Everything was progressing as planned. And yet—something was not quite right. Sully took a gulp of water from the straw inside her suit and rolled her neck from side to side within the cramped confines of her helmet.
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“Aether, time check, please,” she said.
“Six hours since EVA commenced,” Harper responded. “You’re doing great, guys.”
“Almost ready to connect,” Devi said. “Sully, could you bring the mast down to, say, four inches above the connection site?”
“Copy,” Sully said, and began to reel in the dish with the tethers. When she could reach it she grabbed the mast and let go of the tethers, tugging it down toward the hull of the ship and letting it hover just above the area Devi was working on.
“Perfect,” Devi said. “Now keep it right there while I hook it in.”
It was another hour before the electrical connection was established. By then Sully was beginning to feel antsy. Together the two women lowered the dish, Devi packing the wiring back into the aperture, Sully directing the movement of the mast, until finally the new system was in place and ready to be secured, bolted onto the hull of the ship. Nearly finished now. Sully took another sip of water and laid her oversized glove on Devi’s shoulder.
“Good work,” she said. Devi didn’t respond. She stayed motionless beneath Sully’s hand, and the cloud of apprehension that had been following Sully since they began the walk solidified, condensed into real fear. “Hey, are you okay?” Sully kept her voice steady, but inside her head she was repeating no, no, no over and over, like thumbing the beads of a rosary.
There was a blast of static over the ship’s frequency and a muffle of expletives, poorly disguised by a hand over the microphone.
“Devi? What’s the matter?” Sully maneuvered herself closer, still holding on to the mast of the dish, so that she could peer behind the mirror of Devi’s visor. There was that static again.
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