The Calculating Stars

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  What do you say to that? “Was anyone … there?”

  “Whole place is in flames. Gah.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and pushed away from the table to stand. “I need to get back.”

  “Of course.” Though what either of us could do, I didn’t know. “It’s not your fault.”

  “I’m the lead engineer.” Nathaniel turned away from me and stood with his hands on his hips, head bent. The seconds passed between us in ragged breaths.

  I shouldn’t have asked him to come. “I’m sorry.”

  All the tension drained out of his shoulders and he slumped. “No. Elma, no.” When he turned his face was drawn and haunted. “Don’t take this on yourself. You’re right. It was a routine launch, and my being there wouldn’t have changed anything.”

  I wish he believed that.

  * * *

  Flying back from Chicago, four hours after the rocket went down, we could still see the column of smoke rising from the farm. Flames licked the bottom of the column with hungry orange tongues. It had been a rocket, not a meteorite. That gave no real comfort, not when death had still dropped from the sky.

  In the seat beside me, Nathaniel moaned. His fists were clenched into tight balls on each knee, and his shoulders hunched inward. “Can you fly over it?”

  “I don’t think that’s a good idea.” My husband had been near silent since the phone call. Packing our bags had fallen mostly to me, because when we got back to the hotel, he had been distracted by the radio, which had live coverage from the disaster. There had been children on the farm.

  “Near it, then?”

  “Nathaniel—”

  “Yes or no?”

  “Yes.” We were flying with visual flight rules, so I didn’t have to check with a tower to alter our flight plan. I steered us toward the farm. Most of the fire had been concentrated on the fields, but it had spread to the house and barn. And the outbuildings. The drone of our engine and the hiss of the wind over the wings matched the lapping of flames.

  I kept looking at the sky, my hands tense on the yoke. There was a part of me that saw that fire and thought that a meteorite had just hit. Even after I realized that I was looking for ejecta that wasn’t going to be there, I still kept scanning the sky. It was better than watching the ground.

  “It shouldn’t have gone south.” Nathaniel had leaned forward to press his face against the window, trying to look down. “Something must have been wrong with the gyroscopes.”

  “They’ll have telemetry back at Mission Control.”

  “I know that,” he snapped.

  “Okay. Okay…”

  He stared out the window, fists still knotted. Smoke roiled in front of us, and I banked the plane away from the farm.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Avoiding updrafts.” I leveled out and pointed our course toward the IAC, which was alarmingly close. It had a runway for the astronauts to use with their T-33s. “Call the tower for me? Get permission to land at the IAC instead of out at New Century AirCenter.”

  The window held his attention for another few seconds, and then he nodded and reached for the mic.

  * * *

  When we landed, Nathaniel went straight to Mission Control. I had to taxi the plane to the hangar and tuck it in next to the T-33s. Sleek and gorgeous, they were designated for the astronauts to use so they could go to different training locations.

  My little Cessna looked like a child’s toy next to them. I could have pushed it into the hangar by myself. I’m ashamed that even amid this tragedy, I had a moment of coveting those planes. When I climbed out of the Cessna, the stench of burning kerosene and wood and flesh filled the air. I swallowed a gag.

  Before I could cross the tarmac, another T-33 taxied up to the hangar. I stopped where I was to give the pilot clearance. They were great in the air, but their visibility on the ground was pretty limited.

  The engine shut down and the cockpit popped open. Stetson Parker climbed out from the front, with Derek Benkoski in the trainer seat. That had to have irked Benkoski. Parker hopped down so fast that I wondered if he’d had time to run through the complete shutdown checklist. More likely he made Benkoski do it.

  Parker saw me and changed course. “How bad is it?”

  I shook my head. Behind him, Benkoski was climbing out of the cockpit, focused on us like a long-range scanner, seeking any glimmer of information. I had none. “We just got here. You fly over?”

  He nodded, face grim, and turned back to the building. “I wonder how long they’ll ground us.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about? People are probably dead, and you’re worried about the next flight?”

  Stopping, he drew himself up straight and cracked his neck. Then he turned. “Yes. That is what I’m worried about. I ride these things and I ask the men on my team to ride them, so yes. I’m wondering how long it will take them to figure it out, because this was an unmanned flight. But that rocket could have been carrying me, or Benkoski, or Lebourgeois, whose daughter you so charmed, Lady Astronaut.”

  As much as I wanted to make a withering comeback, he was right. “I’m—I’m sorry. I didn’t think.”

  “No. You didn’t. You never do. You just go after what you want, and to hell with anyone who stands in your way.” He turned and stalked off toward Mission Control.

  Benkoski gave a long, low whistle. “What was that?”

  “He hates me.”

  “I know. I meant, why?” The astronaut was lanky and stood with his head half-cocked to the side, like he was trying to get a sighting on my brain. “There aren’t that many people he hates.”

  “I—we knew each other during the war.” I shook my head. It wouldn’t do any good to go into it. I walked back to my Cessna to push it into the hangar. “Doesn’t matter. And he’s a damn good pilot, which is all that counts now, huh?”

  Benkoski shrugged and followed me to the plane. He took up a spot on the other side. “I’ve seen better.”

  “Like you?” I leaned my full body weight against the strut of the plane.

  He grinned, even with the scent of smoke filling the air, and helped me push. “You know it.”

  After we got the plane situated, Benkoski fell into step beside me as we walked to Mission Control. Fishing in his pocket, he brought out one of the little black notebooks that most of the astronauts carried. “Say … my niece saw you on Mr. Wizard. Any chance I could get an autograph for her?”

  “Sure.” My stomach churned as I took his pen and signed my name on a blank page. On the horizon, the world burned.

  * * *

  Nathaniel stayed the night at Mission Control. There were crew quarters, and he decided to bunk down there. He sent me home. I expect he slept about as much as I did, which was not at all.

  When I got into work, I walked down the hall to his office, carrying a change of clothes for him. Everyone I passed had the look of soldiers fresh out of the trenches in the war. Their faces were tight and somehow more gaunt than they’d been three days before.

  I knocked on Nathaniel’s door, even though it was open, so that I wouldn’t startle him as I went in. His blond hair stuck up like a haystack, and dark circles ringed his eyes as he looked up. “Thanks.”

  “Have you eaten?” I laid his clean shirt across the back of a chair.

  On his desk were stacks of telemetry readings. He had a pencil in one hand, going down the list of numbers. “Not hungry.”

  “The cafeteria will be open.”

  “I’m not.” The muscle at the corner of his jaw ticked as he worked. “Hungry.”

  “All right. I’m sorry.” I backed toward the door. I had just wanted to help. But I was in the way.

  Nathaniel sighed and dropped his head so his chin nearly rested on his chest. “Wait.” Wiping a hand across his eyes, he stood with part of his face shielded. “Elma, I’m not mad at you. I’m sorry. I’m being curt and rude and I’m … Will you shut the door?”

  I nodded, pushing the door c
losed. When it latched, Nathaniel let out an enormous sigh and sank into his chair. “I’m a mess.”

  “Why don’t you take a break?”

  “Because … everyone wants to know what happened. And I don’t know.” He tossed his pencil on the desk. “I don’t know. The range safety officer should have ordered the self-destruct when it went off course, and he didn’t. But I don’t know why it blew up in the first place, and I should.”

  I came around his desk and stood behind him. Putting my hands on his shoulders, I leaned down to kiss the top of his head. He smelled of sweat and cigarettes. “You will.”

  No. No, that wasn’t cigarette smoke. It was the stink of the burning farm. Nathaniel shook his head, and the muscles under my hands jerked with the movement. “There’s probably going to be a government inquiry.”

  I dug my thumbs into his tight muscles and he grunted. Working in little circles, I leaned all my weight on him. “Parker was wondering how long they’d be grounded.”

  “It’ll take months to go through everything.” He rubbed his forehead. “We’ll have to push the moon launch back too.”

  The moon launch wasn’t scheduled to use the same type of rocket, so it shouldn’t be affected by the flaw in this one. On the other hand, this one wasn’t supposed to have a flaw. Plus, the orbital platform would be set back with the loss of the payload.

  Nathaniel cleared his throat, and the muscles in the back of his neck tightened again. “Say … Elma?”

  “Right here.”

  He swallowed. “I don’t think I can … I think I’ll need to stay here for the next couple of months.”

  “I figured.” Any chance I had of getting him to take a vacation was pretty much out the window now. I grimaced. I’d chastised Parker for wondering about being grounded, and here I was worrying about vacations. I was a jerk.

  “That means I won’t be able to go to your nephew’s bar mitzvah.”

  My hands stopped moving of their own accord. “Oh.” I bent my head and resumed the massage as I tried to sort out my thoughts. I didn’t want to leave Nathaniel alone, not with the amount of pressure he was under. But Hershel needed me there, and it was Tommy’s bar mitzvah, for crying out loud. “Do you … do you mind if I go by myself?”

  “Thank God.” He spun in his chair to face me. “I was all prepared to convince you that you needed to go.”

  I brushed the hair back from his face. “See, you needn’t have worried. I’ll abandon you at a moment’s notice.”

  He grinned, but the movement was pained. “Falser words were never spoken.” He slid his arms around me and pulled me close. “Thank you.”

  “For?”

  “I can’t yell when I go out on the floor. I want to. I want to scream and gnash my teeth. So thank you for giving me a place where I can be awful, and find my way back again.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  JUPITER ROCKET EXPLOSION IS LINKED TO HUMAN ERROR

  KANSAS CITY, KS, Dec. 12, 1956—(United Press International)—Failure to transcribe a program correctly—apparently a human error—was blamed for Tuesday’s explosion of a second stage for the Jupiter moon rocket in a preliminary report. The rocket flew off course and crashed onto a farm, killing eleven. Government inquiries are scheduled to determine if the disaster was preventable.

  I was not happy about leaving Nathaniel behind, but, as he predicted, the government scheduled inquiries about the crash. Besides the IAC’s own work looking into the explosion, they also needed to prepare documents that laymen could understand.

  The smart thing to do would have been to take a commercial plane to California, but I wanted to clear my head, and flying seemed an excellent way to do that. However, Nathaniel insisted and maybe, occasionally, I can be not an idiot. Whatever. The end result was that I wound up on my first commercial flight.

  I was not impressed. The only good thing about it was that they served cocktails, which I couldn’t have enjoyed if I were the pilot. The view was terrible. The pilot bounced twice when landing, and he didn’t even have any cross-winds as an excuse.

  But just being able to stand up and leave the plane without running through a checklist? That was nice. Walking off the plane and seeing my brother waiting? Glorious.

  My brother stood with Doris, Tommy, and Rachel at his side. It looked as if California continued to treat him well. He had a tan and wore a light Hawaiian shirt printed with arcing hibiscus. The kids had sprouted like weeds, and Tommy was nearly as tall as his father. It had been three years since I’d seen them. Rachel hung back a little, but she was grinning, with dimples in her round cheeks.

  “Aunt Elma!” Tommy wasn’t shy, though—never had been. He was the first to fling himself across the space between us, rocking me back with the force of his hug. “You came! There’s a great place to throw gliders from our new house. And I made a really cool one, and it’s not from a kit, either.”

  Hershel rocked forward on his crutches. “Easy, tiger. Let’s get Aunt Elma home before you plan her whole itinerary.”

  Releasing my nephew, I beckoned to Rachel. “Do I get a hug?”

  She nodded and submitted to an embrace. I had to crouch, but not nearly as much as I had last time I saw her. Doris rested a hand on her daughter’s shoulder. “Tell her about your club, Rachel.”

  Her face turned up toward me, with wide eyes. “We started a Lady Astronaut club. It’s really neat.”

  “That’s great, sweetie.” My stomach twisted as the reason that she was suddenly shy became clear. I wasn’t just her aunt anymore. I was Someone. The Lady Astronaut had come to call. “Maybe I can visit it, huh?”

  Rachel nodded, and her eyes got bigger and brighter, then she turned back to her mother, her hands pressed together like she’d won a prize. What did I expect? I hadn’t seen her in three years and now I was …

  If I were an actual astronaut, I wouldn’t mind it so much. I think. It’s just that people called me “Lady Astronaut” because I wasn’t allowed to be one. That was the thing that rubbed. The reason I was known at all was because I was agitating for a role I couldn’t have. Having folks call me that? Having my niece do it? It was like being jealous of a character on TV, except that character was me. Can you be jealous of yourself?

  I straightened, and finally the path to hug my brother was clear. He’d shaken off the cuff of one of his crutches and transferred it to his other hand so he could hug me without the metal pole knocking into my back. I wrapped my arms around him. Despite the hibiscus printed all over it, his Hawaiian shirt smelled like lavender. “Oh … I’ve missed you.”

  “You’ve lost weight.” He pulled back, eyes pinched behind his glasses. “We’ll talk.”

  It was a damn good thing that Nathaniel wasn’t with me, or I’d have given him such a look right then. “Well, that won’t last long with Doris’s cooking.” I let go of my brother to greet my sister-in-law.

  “I don’t know.” She gave one of her trilling laughs, which ran up and down a scale. “I’m planning on putting you to work. Hershel didn’t tell you that?”

  “That’s why I’m here. I wouldn’t know how to take a vacation if one fell on me.” Although that is what our vacations had a disturbing tendency to do.

  * * *

  I remember when Hershel had his bar mitzvah. He’s seven years older than I am, but it’s one of those early memories that stuck. Or parts of it did. I remember that I had to stretch up to see him over the top of the pew, and that he stumbled over the words when he was reading the maftir portions. Afterward, being six and full of belief in my own infallibility, I announced that I wouldn’t make that sort of mistake when it was time for my bar mitzvah.

  He didn’t laugh at me like a lot of boys would. I remember him, balanced on his crutches, looking with pain at our father. That distress, on what was a happy day, is the part of my memory that is still so strong and so much my brother. He sat down and patted the sofa beside him, then explained that girls don’t get to have a bar mitzvah. It’s different no
w, but that’s the way the world worked in 1934.

  I cried. And he held me. That’s my big brother for you. In a nutshell.

  It was also the first time that I understood what being a girl meant.

  As we sat in the pews for Tommy’s bar mitzvah, I wanted to pull Rachel onto my lap and tell her that she could do anything she wanted, but it would be a lie.

  That sorrow for Rachel didn’t stop me from being proud of my nephew as I watched him. My nephew had spent the week practicing his Hebrew over and over. Apparently, he’d heard the story from Hershel about how he hadn’t practiced his maftir enough. Tommy wouldn’t make that mistake. He said it while he was running up the stairs. He said it carrying out the trash. He said it while he was throwing gliders on a hill overlooking the ocean with me.

  When they called him up to the bimah, he looked like such a dapper young man, in a suit, with his bow tie snugged up against his collar and a neatly pressed prayer shawl draped over his shoulders. Hershel slid out of the aisle and followed Tommy to the front with the rattle and click of crutches and dress shoes.

  Beside me, Doris gave a little sobbing breath and pressed her handkerchief to her eyes. I was glad mine was already in my hand.

  Hershel’s voice cracked as he said, “Blessed is He who has now freed me from the responsibility of this one.”

  Thank God for handkerchiefs. Mine was going to be soaked by the end of the service.

  Then Tommy pulled back his shoulders and recited, “Lo marbechem mikol ha’amim chashak Hashem ba’chem, va’yichbar ba’chem ki atem hahm’at mikol ha’amim…” No wobble. No fear. Just a clear, youthful voice, reaching toward Heaven and God’s ears.

  … It is not because you are the most numerous of peoples that the LORD set His heart on you and chose you—indeed, you are the smallest of peoples …

  I was going to need another handkerchief.

  * * *

  Hershel and I sat at a table off to the side of the banquet room they’d rented. Doris was across the room, talking to one of her many cousins. In the middle of the dance floor, Tommy gyrated with a gaggle of his friends, resplendent in a white evening jacket.