In the Quick

by Kate Hope Day

  That’s a crazy story—

  It was supposed to be us, he said. Everyone said it would be. Amelia, Theresa, Simon, and me. But when I saw that I knew their team would be chosen. They didn’t work like individual people under that water but like one body with many limbs. Afterward, on the drill deck, when they were dripping and hugging each other, they seemed huge. Superhuman. Bigger than anything space might throw at them.

  He stood up and started pacing the room, his limp making his stride uneven.

  I’ve tried every angle, every possibility, he said. But every change I’ve made to the cell has been incremental, and Inquiry needs something more than incremental. It needs something revolutionary, and I know only one person who could make that kind of leap.

  My uncle.

  That’s right.

  I felt the big, empty, sprawling station around me. Its twisting blue-lit corridors, dark airlocks, empty bunks, and dusty control room. There was no one in this place but the two of us. Well he’s not here, I said. But we are.

  39

  We stood across the table from each other in the workshop, where the smell of machine oil and air canisters mixed with the hot plastic smell of a 3D printer. A long metal table had a mess of parts on top of it, and the walls were lined with shelves full of tools, equipment, and materials. James made a space in the middle of the table, put a half-built cell in its center, and told me what he’d done. He spoke slowly, methodically, in a kind of monotone.

  He had developed a modified venting system, he said, and a new kind of sealant that protected the cells from temperature fluctuations. He’d reduced the size of the cell by nearly half.

  You’ve done a lot, I said.

  But there’s still the core problem, he said. These cells have to function as part of a moving object. They have to withstand acceleration, deceleration. And vibration. Always vibration.

  I picked up the cell. It was much lighter than my uncle’s, but at the same time, I felt the weight of all the hours James had worked on it. When I was younger that would have seemed like some kind of paradise—a problem that needed to be solved, access to a wide range of materials and tools, and almost complete solitude in which to solve it. But I didn’t feel that way anymore. Now it just seemed incredibly lonely.

  Can we take it apart? I asked.

  Yes. Sure. He began to dismantle the cell and lay all the pieces on the table, each plate and board and screw. I watched his scarred hands. They were careful, but there was a finality in the way he set the parts down on the table with a tap or a snap or a tunk. Like he didn’t want to pick them up again. As he did this he explained the modifications he’d made. What he’d tried. What had worked and what hadn’t.

  I asked questions and he gave short answers. I picked things up and put them back down and proposed a different configuration for the cell’s O2 connectors. He said it wouldn’t work. I described how I thought it could succeed, and he explained why it wouldn’t. His voice had an edge of irritation, and when I pressed the idea, he pushed the pieces of the cell aside, grabbed a big sheet of paper and a marker, and drew the problem as he saw it.

  I took the marker and sketched what was in my mind, or tried to. He leaned over the paper, his head close to mine and I smelled smoke on his skin. He asked me a question. I thought hard and answered. He took the marker back and drew again.

  Like this?

  Yes. But make it more— I made a shape with my hand, and he crossed out the drawing and began again.

  He drew and I talked. Then I drew and he talked. We argued, then agreed, then argued again. We went through four or five sheets of paper and the air seemed to tighten around us. Our hands were moving quick, our minds quicker. We had a hold of something, the start of an idea. It pulled taut between us like a thin, invisible cord.

  We drew and talked and worked until our voices became hoarse. Until the room turned stuffy with the heat from our bodies and the 3D printers, until metal shavings and bits of stripped wire casings and discarded bolts and screws grew thick on the table.

  We didn’t leave the workshop that night. The next day we slept for a few hours, got up, drank coffee, ate cereal, and were back at it again. We let the maintenance crew worry about the solar field and the power and oxygen supplies. Other tasks we delayed or abandoned. Days and nights began to run together. I knew only the hot room, his hands, my hands, the cell in parts, the cell put back together, the cell in parts again. I recalled other things only in outline. Amelia. Simon. The Sundew. Carla and Lion and Nico. My aunt. These memories were devoid of color and texture; they seemed to have no claim on me. Not in comparison with the cell—its shiny casing, its delicate boards and intricate wiring, its impossible connectors. And not in comparison with James.

  He was still quiet about a lot of things. He wouldn’t tell me what it was like at the Gateway before I came and wouldn’t talk at all about Theresa. Or my uncle. But we spent so many hours together he became familiar. I knew what his face looked like when he woke up, the dark stubble on his cheek. I knew the rough sound of his voice late at night. He kept things to himself—thoughts about the cell, qualifications, corrections—but I learned how to draw him out. Or ignore him if I could guess what he was worrying about and didn’t think it was important. His anxiety would eventually burst forth in some angry way, but I didn’t mind. Even when he was grumpy or irritated or angry I felt more at ease with him than any other person, including my uncle.

  * * *

  —

  On the eighth day (I think it was the eighth day) we worked through the night, until the sky through the porthole turned the color of a carnation. The workshop smelled like sweat and adhesive and the table was littered with dozens of drawings and a messy jumble of parts from the old and new cells.

  We were long past talking in full sentences but used shorthand, interrupting, talking over each other, our words mixed up, not wholly his or mine, but some amalgamation of the two.

  Try this, not that.

  What about the other—

  Yes, the other.

  No.

  Yes, yes!

  Why didn’t I think of that?

  You did.

  I didn’t.

  It wasn’t me.

  You said it.

  No, that was you.

  It doesn’t matter; just hand that cable to me. Let’s finish this tonight—

  I reached for the cable and he did too and our fingers touched. We were always grabbing at the same tool as we worked across the table, but this time we both held on. We didn’t look at each other and we didn’t let go. Silt batted against the porthole and a soft ticking came from one of the 3D printers. He let go.

  We sat down; he went back to soldering the expanded circuit board and I returned to reconfiguring the O2 connectors. The task wasn’t complicated but I did it poorly and had to start again. I was exhausted. My stomach was empty and raw from too much coffee and too little food. I put my head on the table and rested it in the crook of my arm. From this angle, in the rosy early morning light, the detritus on the table looked like the craggy landscape outside, and I thought of my uncle’s drawings of the Pink Planet and how I used to imagine myself in them, climbing the planet’s ridges in a bright white suit.

  James stared at the board in front of him and rubbed his eyes. I can’t see straight, he said. He pulled the stool closer to the table and its loud skidding hurt my ears. He laid his head down too. His face was close and his breath warm. He shifted his elbow close to mine and tapped it lightly and I felt a tight shiver run down my back.

  We’re not done, I said. Not even close.

  No. Not done. We’ll keep going.

  But we’ll sleep first.

  Yes. Sleep.

  We got up and walked down the corridor together until we reached the central module. To the left was his bunk, to the right mine. I didn’t wa
nt to go to my bunk but I moved that way. His eyes were like two pinpricks on my back but he didn’t say anything, didn’t follow me, and when I got to the end of the corridor and turned, he was gone.

  My room was freezing. We’d been functioning on low power for several days because of windstorms disrupting the solar grid, but I hadn’t felt the cold until now. There were rings of frost in the portholes; an icicle hung from the faucet in the sink. My teeth chattered and I grabbed an extra blanket, turned off the light, and lay down. My body was heavy in the bed and my feet ached with relief. But when I shut my eyes I saw James, his tousled hair and dark eyes. His scarred hands. I rubbed my feet together. I turned to my right, to my left. It was impossible. I sat up.

  The vents overhead whirred softly; the wind whistled faintly outside. I pulled on an extra pair of socks and left my bunk. In the corridor my heartbeat was loud and thick in my throat and my breath made clouds in the air. Time seemed to spread out and each step took longer than the one before, but I didn’t turn back.

  The runner lights outside James’s bunk glowed blue at my feet, and the button for the airlock was flat and cold under my fingers. The lock opened with a suck and a hiss. His back was a gray hump in the bed; it rose up, down. His face was one shadowy cheek, one closed eye. His breath was a roar. He was sleeping—I couldn’t believe he was sleeping. Anger squeezed my body, and the squeezing felt good and bad.

  His eye opened. He sat up and his chest was dark with woolly hair. What’s the matter?

  I felt cold, and hot. My body was trembling but I moved toward the bed. I sat down. My back was to him, my hands flat against my thighs. The room still smelled of smoke and also something else, the slightly feral smell of his skin and hair.

  Nothing happened.

  Then, the pressure of his warm hand flat against my back. The feeling of his strong fingers inching their way up the notches of my spine, until they reached the base of my neck and he pulled me down.

  I held my body stiff and straight and I shut my eyes.

  We can just lie next to each other, he said.

  I don’t want that, I said. I took a breath. I want something else.

  Another minute passed and I felt his warm breath on my cheek. He pressed his mouth along my jaw and his beard scratched my skin. He lifted my shirt and my stomach shook and I pushed his hands away. He kissed my ears—softly—and my nose. The crook of my arm. My breath slowed; my limbs relaxed, a little. He went back to my stomach, kissed it. He tugged my tights down, moved his mouth over the sweep of my hip. He held my thigh tight in his hands.

  He took hold of my ankle with his teeth and shook it, like it was a bone. I liked it. I didn’t like it. My laugh came out like a cry.

  When he let go of my ankle, his mouth traveled upward again. But slower, softer, until it was only breath on my thighs. My chest expanded. I shivered but wasn’t cold. His breath grew hot again. His tongue parted my legs. I held my hand over my mouth and felt I would laugh or weep or sneeze! My heels pedaled against the sheets. He put his hand flat on my stomach and his tongue was warm and rough and moved slowly, rhythmically, like it was following a silent beat. Then it changed, and oh! My head was so hot, as if my scalp had caught fire—

  I fell against the bed, shivering and sweating, and pressed my hand between my legs until the pulsing slowed.

  I lay still next to him for a long time. His breath slowed and his arm rested heavy on my chest. He seemed to be dozing. But I didn’t feel sleepy at all; my arms and legs were restless, my face too hot. Behind my eyes the fuel cell worked with a buzzing hum. Worked and worked. I pushed his arm off me and opened my eyes.

  Are you sleeping? I asked in the darkness.

  I see that damn cell when I close my eyes, he said.

  I hear its vents in my ears, I said.

  He turned and I felt the heat of his limbs next to mine.

  His face hovered; his curls brushed my face. You need another sound, he said, and blew in my ear.

  I laughed and shivered.

  He wrapped his arms around me tightly, pressed his whole body against mine.

  40

  When I woke he was moving around the room. He was naked, but in the gloom his body was full of shadows. There were distinct shapes: the muscles in his abdomen, shoulders, thighs. But also the softness of his cheeks and the hair on his chest. He seemed natural in this state. He didn’t grab a robe or a towel, and I had a strange picture of him like this, unclothed, just skin and hair and bone, not in a room but outside the station on the rocky pink surface. Nothing between him and the salty air. I thought the idea was funny.

  Why are you smiling? he asked.

  A picture in my head, I said.

  Of what?

  You.

  I’m glad I amuse you.

  He came closer, leaned over me. His breath was slightly sour. I didn’t care.

  He kissed me, gently, tugging at my lips with his.

  I want to see that picture, he said.

  He kissed me again, harder this time.

  I don’t know if I want to see what’s inside your head, I said, and put my hands in his hair, which smelled like the wool blanket on his bed and also faintly like…what? A soldering iron. I wrapped my fingers around his head, felt his skull underneath. What’s in it?

  A bad temper.

  That’s all?

  He rubbed his beard against my cheek, rough and scratchy, little hairs dragging against my skin. That’s all.

  I hope there’s a picture of a modified cell in there, I said. One that can withstand more than a year of vibration.

  He squinted, looked up at the ceiling, and then frowned. No.

  He got up, pulled on a pair of shorts. I lay back against the pillow, watched him walk around the room. An image drifted into my mind—black lines waving in an expanse of white, like the painting that used to hang in my bedroom at my aunt’s house. Then I saw the fuel cell, just one, outside its stack. No fixed hardware or sealant. Its interior parts floating freely in the air.

  I sat up. What we’ve been working on, I said. It’s a good start. But—

  I know. It’s not enough.

  What if we go back to the beginning? I asked. To what a fuel cell is. What it does.

  He shrugged and pulled a shirt over his head. It transforms one kind of energy into another. Chemical energy to electrical energy.

  So that an explorer can use that electricity to power its engines and systems.

  Are we just going to say things we already know to each other?

  Yes, I said. I pulled on my tights and T-shirt and started looking for my socks.

  Okay. He opened a drawer under the sink and pulled out a toothbrush. The generation of energy creates vibration. Vibration will always be a problem when an object is in a fixed space—

  He held his toothbrush in the air.

  I looked at him.

  Who says it has to be in a fixed space? we said together.

  We didn’t finish dressing. We went to the workshop, picked up all the parts on the table, and dumped them onto the shelves behind us. He grabbed paper and a marker.

  It needs to be— I made a movement with my hands. So it’s free to move—

  —the way it wants to move, he said.

  He drew and I talked and gestured. Then he talked and I drew. We hauled the pieces of the cell back onto the table and took it apart again.

  We didn’t stop to explain ourselves. We just said what was in our minds—a shape, a movement. A feeling. A sound. We stood close and reached over each other for tools and parts. It was different than before. It didn’t feel like we were two bodies, two minds anymore. We had a hold of something, a growing, pulsing idea. It had a charge like electricity. It was like a great sparking cloud above us, a tiny electrical storm.

  41

  For days nearly eve
ry minute was filled with our work on the cell. Thinking and rethinking it. Endlessly taking it apart and putting it back together. Each morning when I woke I heard my uncle’s voice in my head—What does it do?—and I would transform the cell in my mind, through all its revisions and permutations, to where we were now. Then I would thrust my mind forward three, four, five, or more steps ahead. I ran through them fast and then slow, trying to gauge their difficulty, how long they would take—and when we’d get to the very last one.

  Our jumble of ideas sharpened and made a definite shape—a shape that solved the fatal flaw of the original cell. The new prototype did more than accommodate vibration. It incorporated it into nearly every part of its design. But there was still a gap between the half-built cell and our perfect idea—we couldn’t agree whether the cell should be housed in closed or open stacks. It was the old dilemma, the same question James and Theresa had argued about on the pages of the fuel cell schematics. James wanted to use closed stacks, as my uncle had, to retain power. But I wasn’t convinced; an open and modular system meant the cells would be easier to fix if something went wrong.

  Then one morning I woke up and heard my uncle’s voice again—What does it do?—and saw that the perfect idea I’d been carrying around in my mind wasn’t the end at all. Even the decision to use closed or open stacks wasn’t the end. Of course it wasn’t.

  I turned over; James wasn’t in the bed.

  I went looking for him and he was in the workshop, bent over a 3D printer. We haven’t thought far enough ahead, I said.

  He didn’t look up.

  We have to stop working in isolation. We need to talk to Amelia and Simon, and we need to unseal Endurance.