In the Quick

by Kate Hope Day

  There’s one more place to look, I said, and led Amelia to the south corridor, to the door, which was unlocked, and then to the short passageway to Theresa’s room. The power was on here—light shined through the plastic that covered the door.

  This room wasn’t cleaned and stripped like the others. In the cabinet between the two portholes were Theresa’s books. Her hairbrush still stood on the table beside the bed, her slippers on the floor nearby.

  Amelia walked to the cabinet. This is Theresa’s room, she said.

  Yes.

  I saw her, only once. She was so small. I couldn’t believe how small—

  She died, I said, and Amelia nodded.

  I moved closer to the bed. The sheets were rumpled and twisted, as if someone had slept in them only a day or two ago, and there was a head-shaped indentation in the pillow. I leaned in. A few dark hairs lay curled on the pillowcase; I put my hand in the middle of the shallow hollow and imagined I felt the warmth of James’s head there.

  * * *

  —

  Simon and Rachel were at the airlock leading to the cargo bay. The other side of the station’s got power, Simon said. But there’s no one there.

  We headed through the dark corridors to the access hatch and back to the rover. Then I stopped. Silt tapped at my helmet. I know where he is, I said, and my boots sank into pits and hollows as I made my way to the north side of the station. I slid around, held on to the exterior walls, kept going. The wind picked up and it pulled at my suit, buffeted my helmet. Amelia, Simon, and Rachel followed close behind. I rounded the cargo bay and the hangar containing Endurance came into view, bright against the pink sky.

  I got closer and my heart beat thickly in my throat. The hangar’s bay doors were open and Endurance stood inside. Massive and shining, lit from within.

  The ground was softer here; the silt reached my knees and I had to pick my feet up high. All around were the shapes of silt-covered junk. One looked like a boat. Another like a steep staircase, and I remembered the night I ran away from James, the shapes I’d seen in the silt. I’d thought I was alone out there in the ridges of pink in my broken-down rover. But I hadn’t been. Not really. James had been with me all along. Other people were pale shapes compared to him. He was hot, and they were cold. He was sweet and sharp; everyone else was like sand.

  I reached the entrance to the hangar. A mobile habitation unit stood at the explorer’s port side and I moved toward its airlock. My breath was loud inside my helmet as I grabbed the latch, turned it, stepped inside. Amelia and Simon were behind me, but I closed the lock, hit the button to pressurize it. Numbers slowly counted down on a monitor attached to the wall. 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1—

  I took off my helmet and gloves, pushed the interior lock open. I went through the habitation unit and into the explorer. Inside, the dimensions were familiar because they were the same as Inquiry’s, but here the walls were stripped down to almost nothing. Shiny cabinets yawned open and empty; wires hung loose from the ceiling and bits of insulation lay strewn on the floor like gray snow. A burnt plastic smell hung in the air.

  At the very end of the cabin a figure was bent over an open panel. James. I said his name and he turned. A bandage crisscrossed his face and covered one eye.

  June, he said, and his hoarse voice made my stomach turn over.

  I set my helmet and gloves on the floor, moved closer. He was thinner and his patchy beard longer. A mottled red burn marked his right hand.

  What happened? I asked.

  Got electrocuted.

  Can you see?

  Out of one eye.

  It was hard to look at him. His face was as sharp as it had been, but the hollow of his injured eye was deeply bruised and spidery blood vessels crawled down his cheek. I bent down on one knee, bulky in my suit, and reached to hover my hand over the soft bandage on his eye, but he turned his face away.

  I sat back on my heels. I have to tell you something, I said.

  His shoulders bent. I know. She’s dead.

  The ventilation system clicked on and humming air blew against my cheeks. The smell of burnt plastic dissipated. I looked around more thoroughly. A few feet away the control panel appeared to be reconfigured and newly wired, and below it some of the stripped fuselage had been replaced with new panels.

  One of the newly installed panels was open, revealing a single fuel cell stack. Our cell, as it had been before James destroyed it.

  You put it back together, I said.

  I tried.

  The sound of the airlock came from behind me. Amelia, Simon, and Rachel stepped into the cabin and I stood up.

  They took off their helmets and gloves. James, Amelia said. Damn. Here you are.

  He squinted at them. Both of you, he said grimly. Like some kind of reunion.

  Simon shook silt from his suit. Have you told him?

  Inquiry contacted NSP, I said to James. They’re alive.

  His face paled.

  Are you all right? Rachel asked, and she put her hand to her own eye.

  I’m fine, James said with effort.

  Is the cell ready? Simon asked him. Can it be done?

  The vents turned over and hummed louder. I don’t know, James said.

  Simon gestured at the stripped panels and loose wires and his voice rose. If you didn’t think it could be done, what are you doing out here?

  Simon— Amelia said.

  I’ve spent six years trying to figure out what went wrong, James said. What have you been doing?

  It was always you and Theresa and Peter, Simon said. Your ideas. You didn’t want to listen to anyone else—

  I tried to stop that mission, James said. Remember?

  I did too, Simon said.

  You didn’t try hard enough, James said. That’s the point.

  Simon ran a hand over his buzzed head. I thought Anu could handle it.

  Amelia said, I did too—

  You were both right, I interrupted. The fuel cells failed, but Anu kept her crew alive.

  The vents switched off and we were all quiet for a minute.

  The only thing that matters is whether the cell is ready, Amelia said finally. Whether it will keep us alive.

  James’s face was unreadable, so I spoke for both of us. It will be.

  49

  James and I stood across from each other at the table in the mobile habitation unit. Or, I stood and he leaned. His dark curls fell across his face, and the bandage crisscrossing his eye glowed bright white under the lights. A completed cell stack, removed from the Endurance explorer, lay on the table between us, its metal casing flat and shining.

  You decided on a closed system, I said.

  You weren’t here to argue the other way.

  I felt a surge of irritation and let it pass. Okay.

  You disagree.

  I shook my head. I don’t know which way is right, not for sure. So we’ll pick one and go with it.

  He blinked his good eye. Really—

  I don’t want to waste time talking about it. It’s done. Let’s move forward.

  All right. He got some paper from a cabinet and we made a list of everything that needed to be done, divided the tasks evenly between us, and set to work.

  The interior of the mobile habitation unit was loud and its lights glaring in contrast to the quiet and dimly lit workshop at the Gateway. The space was tight, the table small. All the tools and 3D printers and supplies were crammed onto one shelf. We began our individual tasks and didn’t talk. It was strange not to talk. My mind churned with thoughts and ideas and questions but I held back, kept silent. I was aware of the billowing whir from the vents and the clicking hiss from the oxygenator. I was aware of his body near mine, his shoulders tense and his movements awkward. He listed to one side in his seat as he divided a tangle of cab
les; he squinted and blinked his good eye. When he got up he walked at a diagonal and dropped tools and bumped into things in the narrow space. Sometimes he cursed under his breath.

  When he began to count and stack circuit boards, some of them needed new screws, and the hardware was tiny and the screwdriver clumsy in his hands. It was too hard to watch—I got up and started typing specifications into one of the printers. Behind me a screw dropped to the table with a small snap. Then another. Snap. Snap. Snap. There was a low growl and the sound of his chair skidding on the floor.

  He had pushed himself up from the table and the screwdriver was clenched in his fist. He pulled his arm back like he was going to throw it, but then he let his arm fall. He sat down and laid his hands in his lap.

  I’ll help you, I said.

  I leaned over him, took the screwdriver from his hand, and installed the four tiny screws. His hair was longer—curls brushed the collar of his shirt—and his face thinner, but he smelled exactly the same.

  I shouldn’t have done it, he said and his hands made a tight ball in his lap.

  Pieces of his hair were snagged in the bandage that crisscrossed his eye and I felt a strong impulse to reach over and brush them away.

  But you shouldn’t have left, he went on, his voice soft and strangled. Do you know what it was like when you were gone?

  When Theresa was gone you mean.

  He turned in his seat and we were eye to eye. No. You.

  You destroyed the cell because of her.

  He was quiet for a minute. She said it was hubris. That we weren’t meant to be here. Maybe we’re not.

  I thought of Earth and the people I’d left behind there. My aunt sitting in her bedroom surrounded by soft and beautiful things. Lion diving into one of the neutral buoyancy tanks in his wet suit, falling fast, surrounded by shining bubbles. Carla and Nico standing together inside a cold hangar, preparing a rocket for a test launch, their breath making clouds in the air.

  Just because Theresa didn’t belong here doesn’t mean we don’t. I picked up the next board in the pile. You sort, I’ll tighten, I said, and pulled my seat close to his.

  50

  At the Gateway we took off our suits just inside the cargo bay airlock and I recalled the first time I saw James in this corridor, a dark shape behind a bright light. His broad chest and wild hair. Now his suit bagged around his thin frame. His face was gray with exhaustion, his T-shirt stained with sweat. He limped toward his room and I wanted to follow, to help him change his clothes and rebandage his eye. I wanted to help him into bed. But he gave no indication he wanted company; he moved slowly down the dim corridor and disappeared into the darkness.

  In the galley I made coffee and ate a bowl of oatmeal. Then I took my mug and went looking for Amelia in the control room; only Simon was there, typing fast on a computer. I guessed he was writing to Anu so I left him alone. The corridors were familiar again. The runner lights glowed blue at my feet. The temperature fluctuated as I walked through them, from cold to warm to cold. I opened doors to bunks. Amelia and Rachel were in the room opposite to my own. Amelia lay on top of the covers still in her jumpsuit, her good hand hanging off the side of the bed and her prosthetic hugged to her chest. She was already asleep and snoring. Rachel was curled next to her, wrapped in a blanket, her hair spread across the pillow.

  I should have been tired but I wasn’t. In my bunk my old locker was still under the bed. I rummaged through it for a change of clothes, grabbed a shirt and tights and a pair of wool socks. I shook out my old Candidate Group sweatshirt and a spray of papers fell to the floor—my uncle’s fuel cell schematics. I pulled the sweatshirt over my head and spread the schematics out on the bed. They were curled at the edges and smelled of dust and, ever so faintly, of pen ink. Paging through them, as I had done as a child, I watched the evolution of the cell from inception to near completion. I was taken again by the brilliance and daring of its design. The notes in the margins were faded slightly but still legible—five scripts belonging to my uncle, James, Theresa, Amelia, and Simon.

  But when I began reading I saw something I hadn’t recognized before, a kind of arrogance in their exchange. I paged ahead and it seemed to me that the people who wrote these words were playing at something. Their dialogue read like a game, but the scenarios they described were real. And the horror the Inquiry crew would face if any of these things happened to them was real also. Simon was the only one who seemed to fully grasp how multiple and inscrutable the dangers could be—I could tell because he was the only one of the five who sounded scared.

  I got to the part where James and Theresa argued about the benefits of open versus closed stacks. Theresa wanted an open modular casing, James a closed one.

  Lose less power this way, he wrote next to a drawing of the proposed case.

  What if something goes wrong? Much harder to fix, Theresa answered.

  Do you want someone messing with what we’ve built? he asked.

  Simon’s neat print joined the other two. Something always goes wrong.

  This was where my twelve-year-old handwriting joined theirs. I read my responses, my clumsy attempts to describe what was in my mind. Some of it was intelligible; a lot of it wasn’t, and I felt an overwhelming urge to get a pen and correct what I’d written. To answer my uncle’s questions again and to make sense of what had only partly made sense before.

  When I looked up James stood in the doorway. He appeared to have slept, although it couldn’t have been for more than an hour or two. His hair was flat on one side, and a slight indentation lined his left cheek, below the bandage on his eye.

  What are you reading? he asked.

  I gathered the papers into a pile. The original schematics for my uncle’s cell.

  He came closer, his body tilting slightly to the left, and picked up the top page. He squinted at it and smiled. He paged forward and then back and began reading. We thought we knew it all.

  It was a revolutionary design, I said.

  With a fatal flaw.

  It didn’t have to be fatal.

  He didn’t answer; he was engrossed in a particular page. There’s something here I don’t remember, he said. This is your handwriting. Or very like it.

  It is mine.

  This is where we argue about open versus closed stacks, he said. Theresa’s argument is convincing. He rubbed his good eye. But my case for a closed system is strong too. He pointed to the middle of the page. Here’s where I bring her over to my side. He paused for a second, reading.

  But I didn’t convince you, he said. You disagree. You say Theresa and Simon are right, and you explain why.

  Yes.

  When did you write this?

  I was twelve.

  There was a curious expression on his face. He bent his head to the page again. You say, We’re humans, not machines. We have to adapt ourselves to space. Not it to us.

  That part I wrote just now.

  He set the page down. I was wrong, he said. Theresa and Simon were right. You were right—

  No. We’ve decided. We’re sticking with closed stacks.

  It’s just the casing. He began moving to the door. We can change it—

  You were adamantly against this, I said. And you convinced me. We give up power in an open system. We give up control—

  I’m going to start now.

  Stop, I said. A wave of exhaustion moved through my body, and a dull ache began to radiate at the back of my jaw, where my molar used to be. You’re injured. You need rest. So do I.

  I gathered the schematics into a pile and set them on the floor.

  We can make the changes, I said. I stood up and pulled him to the bed. In the morning.

  His shoulders loosened.

  I took the blanket from the bottom of the bed—it smelled of wool and salt. He laid his head down on the pillow, and
I did too, and I drew the blanket around us both.

  51

  Every day in the workshop James and I sat close and worked and talked, and even laughed. He was more forthcoming than he’d ever been about lots of things. My uncle—what he was like as a teacher and a mentor. His training after Peter Reed. Even Theresa and what the Gateway was like when they first came here to work on the cell. One day we were easy with each other like this all afternoon, but as the sun went down and the workshop filled with a rosy glow, he turned quiet and taciturn. He finished what he was doing and got up from the table and moved at a slight tilt to the door.

  I’m going to bed, he said, and waited in the doorway.

  I put away what I was working on. Then I looped my arm through his. You don’t really want to be alone.

  No, he said. I don’t.

  * * *

  —

  Every minute I wasn’t working with James I spent in the station’s gym. My first morning the equipment was covered in dust and I started by wiping everything down, all the machines and weights and mats, and the chlorine smell of the cleaner filled the room. Simon came in, and Rachel too. Eventually Amelia showed up also, and we made a circuit, together, of all the machines.

  We went on like this for a week, then two. Supplies arrived, and people. NSP officials took over and the station filled up with workers. In the control room a team of engineers upgraded all the equipment and ran launch sequences and communications models. In consultation with Simon and Amelia, a group of specialists from Earth worked to finish rehabbing Endurance and to outfit it for its mission.

  Simon and I started working out twice a day, and most of the time Amelia and Rachel joined us. We upped the weight on the machines and added a predawn run in our suits up and down the rocky hills outside. I got stronger; I gained power in my legs and back. I watched my body change in the mirror, as I had at the agricultural outpost. My cheeks grew rounder; my stance was straighter and my shoulders wider.