by Steve Haynes
It was clear that Saga was not expecting us. She recognized us in the way that we might recognize a celebrity from a photograph –disorientation, followed by slow comprehension. She looked shocked. Yes, we agreed afterwards that she looked shocked. She said:
What are you doing here?
It was a horrible moment. Taken aback, we rushed to explain. The invitation – the transmission! We had replied. Had she not received our replies? We did not like to say, had she not paid for our flights, arranged for our stay, organized all of this?
Gradually the shock faded from her face. Of course, of course. She smiled. But we were thrown, obviously, by this peculiar greeting.
Struck by a terrible shyness, we felt our tongues grow huge and clumsy. How should we introduce ourselves, how should we greet her? We had agreed before that we would address her as Saga, but now alternate possibilities ran through our heads: mamma, muˇqīn, mom. We were stunned by the lean, stark beauty of her face. Her youthfulness shocked us, although we knew, we had read, that she had had no restorative work or even enhancements, as many of the astronauts did, to make them faster, sharper, better. We wondered if she were real; we wondered if she might live forever.
We wondered why she had born us and what we were doing there, but all the things we had planned to say evaporated.
Saga spoke in Mandarin, although Signy swears there was a moment when we all digressed into Scandi.
She said our names.
Ulla, Per, Signy. Look at you! I’m so happy you could come.
(But that moment of shock?)
She asked us questions. She wanted to know about our little, insignificant lives, and all we wanted to know was her, her inner life, her private thoughts. Alone in her ship in the outback of space, did Saga ask the questions we all asked? Did Saga wonder where she came from, if there was a god? We wanted to know, but did not dare to ask.
We did our best to make ourselves interesting; gave her the answers we thought she wanted to hear. The evening passed too quickly. Over dinner, Saga told us about the mission. She told us Ceres would become the most important mining station in the solar system, a source of water and fuel for travellers back to Earth and out to Jupiter and Saturn. We watched the way she held her chopsticks, scooping up noodles with easy elegance. We mirrored her gestures. We were offered wine, but Saga took only water. Her storm-at-sea eyes surveyed us, smiling. We thought she was pleased, and this gave us a feeling of warm satisfaction.
The next day we watched her descend to Ceres. She had her own ship, and it was built, she had told us, to her exact specifications. She gave us some technical details that we did not understand.
We watched Saga’s ship land, and the others of the mission followed. Saga appeared first on the surface link. We watched her suited figure lope across the surface of the planet. In the low gravity she appeared like a mythical being gliding over her territory. The expedition team were to meet with another team stationed on the surface. They had been drilling for samples for some months, and would perform the extractions today. Big results were expected.
Before the astronauts could reach the drilling station, the transmission cut out. There was confusion in the room: what had happened to the link? An engineer came and tried to fix it. She could not get a picture. We watched, silently, hoping everyone would forget we were there, but of course they did not. After a few minutes we were told that there had been a technical mishap (nothing to worry about, only the connection) and were escorted firmly from the room.
We went to the viewing platform and stood about aimlessly. Ceres hung, mute and ghostly against her velvet backdrop. This was how we came to witness Saga’s exit.
We saw a pinpoint of fire, small but distinct on the surface of the pale planet. A brief flare, there then vanished.
We saw a ship emerging from near the point of flare. It grew steadily larger, catching flecks of sunlight, like the carapace of a golden insect. Although there were no identifying markers, we knew, we sensed that it was Saga. We turned to one another, pointing.
Isn’t that – ?
Was that an explosion?
It must be –
We watched the lone ship orbit the planet several times, gaining velocity. It was then that we realized what was happening. Saga was preparing to leave. Her ship made one final circuit, before it shot away in the direction of the outer solar system.
We stared without comprehension. On Ceres, a cloud bloomed where the fire had been. Saga was gone.
At first there was media attention. People wanted to interview us. Our pictures were broadcast: Saga’s children, said the captions. Witnesses to her final farewell. That was what they called it, the media. Saga’s final farewell. We thought it wrong: it implied she had said goodbye before, and this was not the case, and she had not said goodbye now, not to us. Saga became a rebel. She had thwarted the CSSA, and some even believed she had caused the explosion, which was the result of unstable gases released by the drilling. There was a warrant for her arrest. Interplanetary outrage was so great that the CSSA backtracked and declared themselves Saga’s eternal ally, and wished her safe travels, wherever she was going. Later it was announced that the whole thing had been a set-up: Saga had been dispatched on a secret mission, known only to the Republic of China. Mars made a bold statement: the truth was that Saga had defected. She was working for another planet now. She was an agent, a double-agent, a triple-agent.
The solar system held its breath, anticipating a dramatic return. Months passed. There was no sign of Saga.
Next the experts appeared. Doctors and psychiatrists spoke to Saga’s colleagues and analysed her state of mind. Fellow astronauts agreed: yes, she had been distracted, yes, there had been lapses. She had fallen prey to star sickness, said the doctors. It happened sometimes, to astronauts. She had been consumed by a kind of madness.
We thought of Signy’s penguins in the Antarctic. Had Saga gone the wrong way?
Our opinions were sought, and discarded (we had little to say). The frenzy passed more quickly than we expected. We are less interesting; not so photogenic as our mother. We lack the thing which makes her magnetic, the reckless spark in the storm-sea eyes. We did not know enough to make a story.
We returned to our old lives on Earth and Moon. Once a year we met. We talked about Saga, speculated as to her whereabouts. We did not believe she was dead. We were not sure if she had gone mad.
Every few years there was a new rumour or sighting. Her ship had been spied upon Dione. The wreckage of her ship had been found in the asteroid belt, and a human spacesuit was drifting through the skies. But no, Saga herself had been witnessed in the embassy on Europa. We examined these theories, shared our musings late into the nights.
The years passed.
Now we are sept-and-octogenarians, unavoidably middle-aged. We have partnered, we have separated, some of us have children, some of us have money. We have weathered breakdowns and crises. We have dreamed.
We are wiser, enough to know that what we know is nothing. We can seek but we may not find.
We decided to return to Ceres. The colony is fully established now, an independent civilisation. Its population increases steadily. There is provision for tourists.
This time we take a shuttle down to the planet surface. Still a little wobbly with the after-effects of hibernation, we support one another, steadying elbows, watching our steps. We are amused by the low gravity, find ourselves acting like children. Even Per wishes to see how high he can jump. After a night to acclimatize, we are taken on a tour of the capital, before we suit up and board a surface transport out to the mining station. The constructions loom as we approach. The machinery is colossal. Our guide, a tall young man with thin, bird-like arms, is deferential and eager to please. He knows our mother’s name, of course. He shows us the plaque. The letters are glittering minerals which he tells us are from the mines. He says, proudly, t
hat Ceres is the largest supplier of fuel in the solar system.
The plaque says:
This marks the last known flight of Saga Wärmedal.
We ask him for some time alone. He nods respectfully. We stand around the plaque. We suppose this is what we have come to see. We remember her ship, streaking away like a comet. This is the last place that she was seen. We think that she was never really seen.
There is a place on Earth beneath the Siberian permafrost, where those who died in the gulags of the twentieth century are said to be buried. With every winter, a new layer of ice crystals hardens over the tundra, fusing and compacting upon what lies below, sealing the mass graves forever. It is said that their descendants still search for bones. There are women who go out day after day with ice picks and radars, their boots crunching on the new fallen snow with that particular sound, heard only on Earth.
They are looking for something. They are prepared to spend a lifetime looking.
CAROLE JOHNSTONE
Ad Astra
We have a lot of sex because it’s a way around the things we can’t say. The things we can’t do. The things we don’t want to think. We’ve always been very good at that; even when we hate the very thought of one another, we can still fuck. I used to think that it was because we were that couple: the ones who never forgot how to be horny, the ones who could go to sleep on an argument but never at the expense of a shag. Because we were grown up, emotionally astute. Because we could compartmentalise. Now I realise that none of that was probably ever true. We keep on having sex – as much of it as we possibly can, even when it hurts – because it makes us feel safe, like having a parent stroke our fevered brow through the worst kind of night terror. And because it’s a way to fool each other. Maybe even to survive each other. I hope so. Though I don’t have a lot of that left.
I get headaches in zero gravity. You’d have thought that I’d have discovered that during all the training and medical assessments inside the Astro labs, or when they sent us sub-orbital for the TV studios. I didn’t though, and now those bastards get worse every day I’m trapped here with Rick and nowhere to go. Maybe the pain feels the same way too: we’re both stuck inside a smooth, almost spherical prison and escape is nothing but dark vacuum.
Rick and I have pretty much stopped talking. There’s nothing and too much to talk about; sex is just about our only method of communication and it’s usually angry. I don’t talk to Rick because I don’t believe anything he says anymore and perhaps because I’m afraid that I might; Rick doesn’t talk to me because he doesn’t trust himself either – I can see that in his blue-grey eyes though he tries to hide it. He wants to tell me the truth, I can see that. He wants to and he can’t. Won’t.
Today we have to talk because I awoke to a beeped reminder that it was time for the quarterly biomedical checks. I don’t want to do them – no longer even see a reason to – but the alternative is to do nothing at all; to sit and stare into that dark vacuum, and that way madness would truly lie, I’m certain.
Rick is in the medical module already, not that it takes me long to find him. Aside from a tiny cabin that houses little more than a bed, there are only two living spaces in our octahedral capsule: the medical module and a larger area between, dominated by the table that we’re supposed to eat our meals at every day. We have no need of a cockpit because our pilots are at least 3.57 billion miles away. At least. To use Rick’s increasingly irritating vernacular, we’ve spent the last thousand days of our lives living in a space the size of a fucking RV.
He’s strapped himself into the cycle ergometer, but he isn’t doing much cycling; instead, he’s slumped over its bars, forehead resting on his arms. I wonder if his head hurts too and feel an uncommon twinge of sympathy.
‘Hi.’
He jumps, flinches as he looks up as if expecting someone else. ‘Hey.’
‘Bio check day.’
‘Already?’
I try to smile. ‘Another glorious day in the Corps.’
Rick tries to smile back. ‘That’s a good one.’ He reaches down to release the seat belt across his torso and unstrap his boots from the buckles on the footrests. When he comes towards me, I pretend not to be afraid of him and boot up the computer, busying myself with the equipment.
Every month we both have ECGs and blood pressure checks. I take and then process urinary, blood and respiratory samples; we don’t shit very often – and now even less than before – so I’ve dropped that test entirely. There are complex psychological exams, which is not my domain; we both answer downloaded and detailed questionnaires: always inscrutable, always the same but different. I scoff my way through them, getting angrier and angrier, while Rick chews the inside of his mouth, brow furrowed in concentration.
Every quarter, I carry out more intensive experiments, mostly cardio-respiratory and functional tests with physical, mental and orthostatic loads. That is my domain. It’s the only real reason for my being here, I guess. Back in the Astro labs, I specialised in immersion theory, more particularly hypokinetic disorders associated with zero gravity: the effects of prolonged weightlessness on the support mechanisms of the body, the central nervous system, motor function, hand-eye co-ordination and so on. There are other things too, a whole plethora of experiments whose potential results were far less alarming when considered only in aseptic theory: the effects of a hypoxic environment on the immune and metabolic systems, due to the fire-resistant argon mixed into our life support systems; the radiobiological effects of solar radiation on the main regulatory body systems; DNA analysis for genome-based prophylaxis and telemedical management. Rick and I take a lot of pills. Neither of us knows what’s in them, though I can mostly guess. I don’t discuss the test results with Rick, though he never asks. If he did, I wouldn’t tell him because he wouldn’t want to know.
Rick is chief cook and bottle washer: chief technical officer and chief science officer; I’m chief medical officer and chief communications officer. That’s a lot of chiefs for two people, and the latter has become something of a joke: I record my medical findings and download both that and whatever Rick and I confidentially mutter in our psych exams. I’ve stopped doing jolly video messages home because I don’t think anyone cares. I certainly don’t. I have no idea if they reach Earth anyway. The last proper communication was more than eight weeks ago.
Rick reaches for me several times, at first just my hand or my arm as I go about my tests, but then my thighs, my arse, my breasts. This time I bat him away in irritation because today I don’t want adolescent oblivion – I don’t want to answer his desperation with my own. Rick’s looks of reproach grow until I have to give them a response. I think he’s depressed; in fact I’m sure he is, but he also has manic bursts of almost uncontrollable excitement that I like even less.
I turn back to the computer screen. ‘Later,’ I mutter, even though it’s just about the only exercise he gets these days. It’s like he’s gone into hibernation.
Later, we sit at the table and have dinner together. We haven’t done that in a while, even though that was one of the things we agreed to do every day. We both have chicken burgers masquerading as dehydrated and rectangular bars, with those bloody golden arches emblazoned on their wrappers. Even now I can’t get used to the texture like squeaky polystyrene: those desiccated strawberries that I used to pluck out of my breakfast cereal because eating them set my teeth on edge. I lob it into the air, watching it turn and twist too slowly.
‘You need to eat,’ Rick mutters, head down and chewing disproportionately fast.
‘I’d like to fuck now.’
‘Okay,’ Rick says, pretending he can’t hear the tremor in my voice. He picks up his wrapper and chases after mine before pushing both into the disposal system. We go back to the cabin. In the beginning, we’d do it anywhere and everywhere, but shagging in zero gravity is frustratingly crap and the bed has the best restraints. I’ve barely s
trapped us both in before Rick pulls down my trousers and is inside me. It hurts, not because I’m not ready but because he’s been there too often – and too often like this. We need to stop, I know that. We need to stop because it’s becoming a kind of madness. I arch my back and our restraints rattle around us, pulling us back down. Rick swears into my neck, biting. When he comes with a shout that sounds too much like a scream, I do too. It hurts more than it helps. We need to stop. Because if we don’t the madness will lose its power to distract. To dissuade.
Just before Rick goes to sleep, his face more relaxed than it’s been all day, I lean in close to his ear. ‘Where are we?’
Rick sighs, opens those grey-blue eyes that never look at me. ‘You know where we are.’
‘No, I don’t,’ I whisper, though there’s no one else to hear us. Probably. ‘Do you?’
He doesn’t answer me.
Everything is a monumental effort. Every little thing that we do requires so much planning and uses so much energy, yet appears smooth and lazy and unhurried as if we exist in slow motion. It always makes me think of that swan on a lake analogy: existing in zero gravity really is like that, except that the frenzied paddling under the surface is only inside your head.
It takes me an age to release myself from the bed without waking Rick, and by the time I’m free of it I’m almost crying. There’s a digital display in the corner of a mounted TV screen – the same TV screen upon which we watched video footage of Rick’s daughter’s sixth birthday party three months ago; Rick choking, smiling, laughing, rubbing at my crotch even as she blew out her candles – it blinks 03:45. It doesn’t much matter whether I believe it or not, I suppose. Here, it’s always night. 03:45 is another existence.
I make my way back into the main living area, pulling on the handholds built into the walls until I’m floating close to the only window built into the capsule. I grip at the handles either side, my face pressed hard enough against the aluminium silicate glass to hurt. Rick calls it aluminum, which drives me mad. I blow my breath against it; I whisper. Ad infinitum.