by E. Lily Yu
Alone in the common room, I read up on the station. I’ve been planning to discover as I go, to transcribe for my dear readers the truest emotional account of the perils and indignities of honest-to-God space. Now, I simply want to understand what I’m in for. Suction toilets, I’d known about those. Daily exorcize to avoid muscular atrophy? Jeeze. A chance of heart failure upon return? I should have read this contract more carefully. The sleeping tubes on the station are no larger than those in the pod. The common room is smaller, by the looks of it. Food is made by the same company that makes military rations. Water is recycled from the air and sewage. If we were to divide the station up into private quadrants, we’d each get roughly eighty square feet. My three companions are desperate indeed.
But what about me? I’m the one who went to space without so much as memorizing the escape routines. I’ve undergone three months’ lead-up to liftoff, a week-long training course, and I haven’t so much as studied the station layout. How can I look down on the genii? They’re here for the money; I’m not even getting hazard pay.
The next several hours are solitary, everyone keeping to their tubes, but eventually we emerge. It’s furtive at first, just passing each other as we pull a snack from under the floorboards, or slip into the bathroom tube. I keep telling myself that it’s the not knowing that’s the hardest, that if they’d just tell us to wait or jump I’d be fine. The reality is, though, that an acidic burn is running through my gut, and it’s not because of not knowing. I am thirty kilometers above ground, and I don’t even know what I’m doing here. My mind keeps going in circles; the logical thing to do when you haven’t been able to pay the bills for three years is to switch careers—but to what?
“Right?” I ask James. I’ve been speaking aloud, and we’re eating together at the table. Bean curd in salt sauce.
“I know what you mean,” James says as he takes a bite, less fearful than the last, more fatalistic. A quick shudder passes through his body as he swallows, then he continues. “I always think about my high-school history books. They teach you about the British Empire, right, about the ups and downs of the colonies. And they’ll talk about these sweeping social changes like they’re nothing. A piece of technology puts an industry under, a war over shipping lanes closes a number of ports. What did the calligraphers do when the printing press came for them? They had plans, but history decided to make them economic casualties.”
I grunt understanding. “When do you think they knew?”
He laughs. “Past what point do you just have to admit that it’s over?”
“I guess it depends on how committed you are, and what other options you have.”
He looks at me. “Very, and none.” There’s a pause, and it’s not awkward, which is an improvement. Eventually he says, “So you think everyone has a point past which they have to turn away.”
“But again—turn away to what? What are you going to do, run a grocery store? Learn to cobble?”
He chuckles, but I can tell it gets to him a bit. A guy like Dennett, he could have been anything. He chose what seemed to be a safe bet, something he was good at, something he could be proud of. Now look at him.
We each take another bite of our curd.
It says something about every person, I think, the time of their choice to give up hope. Me, I do it in advance. Kingsley didn’t, but he cracked early. James oscillates between emotional states, alternately certain that the man is coming, and certain that we’ve been totally forgotten. Anna’s smooth, angular face is expressionless, but her fingers tapping nervously against her thigh keep me from resenting her. It’s an intricate pattern she’s beating out, and I try to follow it for a while, certain that she wouldn’t be tapping out a random sequence. We all get through these times as we can.
We’re sitting in the common room, nervously assembled following the soft impact that had announced the maybe-coming of our savior. Rather than sit in silence, we’ve started playing crib. We’re on our second game, now.
James does laps of the common room between hands, a whole fifteen steps. Usually I’d ask him to stop, but given the circumstances I decide we all need our outlets. Besides, I need all the time I can get to avoid annoying the science majors with my ten-second counting handicap. “Fifteen-two, fifteen-four, and . . . wait—”
“Oh, come on!” Anna snaps at me. We all get through these times as we can. Bitch.
It’s been two hours, and now there’s no denying it. Nobody is coming to save us.
“So, what the fuck?” I ask them.
That question rings through the pod more profoundly than the arrival of the last pallet. Looked at from above, James is pacing out a very slight inward spiral, a visual representation of his emotional state. Every lap brings him a bit closer to the center of the pod, and his body becomes more tense as it approaches, like his movements are turning a crank on his own muscles. The flesh under his jaw is tight, a constant tension in the throat. His mouth is moving to some silent internal conversation, which I imagine as a calculation on mortgage rates.
Anna is inscrutable, her emotional remove so much more profound than either of her male companions’. She’s very matter of fact: if we have to jump, we have to jump. In absence of evidence, there’s no point in speculating about the cause of our predicament. I had previously been in awe of this woman, monk-like in how she went about setting and achieving goals. That’s how it seems when she goes to the bathroom (‘Mission: Piss’ is a go, go, go!), let alone when she goes to space. Now this mindless adherence to the logical path feels a bit like an escape. She just sits there, content in executing the actions she’s computed to be best. Someone has to come unstick these cars eventually, she reasons, and the more people who jump, the more food for there is for me. These companies have been known to reward loyalty.
The way she watches James in his pacing makes me think of a naturalist watching an endangered leopard die of exposure.
King jumped, but James falls. The distinction is in the little things, the way he climbs down like he’s scrabbling for purchase, like he’s trying to claw his way back up and failing. It’s an entirely different sort of thing. When he’s gone, I think of him in the past tense. Kingsley I imagine down on the surface, amusing the crew of whatever ship was sent to scoop him out of the water, buoyant and useless in his space suit. He’s a real person, with a present and a future. James is just gone.
Anna and I listen to the airlock cycle, alone now in the stratosphere, and she murmurs her little sacrament. “Wait three seconds . . . ” she says, but the rest she mumbles to herself, too low for me to hear.
“Why do you do that?”
She glances at me, then away. “Just a little supersti-superstition,” she says, stammering almost like a hiccup. Then she turns away and pulls her long skinny arms into her chest, and I can see that they’re trembling. She walks to the other side of the room, faces the wall, but she doesn’t make for her own tube. After an appropriate amount of time, I walk over to her.
“Why haven’t you left?” she asks without turning. “There’s no reason for you to stay after all this.”
“Actually, there was no reason for me to stay before all this. But this is a story.”
She turns to me, tears in her eyes. “So, you have your story. Go, now.”
“I have the beginning of the story. It’s not over until I see how all three of you end up.”
Her face screws up. “I stay up here, and they come get me. That’s what happens. Imagine it, and, just . . . go!”
I stare at her. “Why are you so willing to stay up here?” Keeping her eyes cast down, Anna Petrovic shuffles away from me like a little girl who has fully internalized her scolding. “Why do you say that when people jump?” She just shakes her head.
“Just go,” she says in a tiny voice. Then, “I’ll come right after you.” That’s when I get it.
“You’re afraid.” She just stares at me, so I prod her. “That’s it, right?”
After a moment, she says, “Heights.
I don’t . . . ” then swallows, “I don’t want anyone around to see me get in that hatch. I especially don’t want you to see me like that.”
Ouch. You don’t call me Paparazzi. That’s our word.
“Well, too bad,” I tell her. “This is the end, and at least one of the four of us is getting what we came for. I need my ending.” The despair in her eyes is almost enough to sway me. “Besides,” I say, “I thought you were going to stay and wait for them to—”
“Fuck them,” she says, and retreats to her tube.
I briefly consider jumping first out of gentlemanly courtesy, but then I come to my senses. No self-respecting self-hating journalist could pass up the opportunity to describe the end of her story here. There was something about the irrationality of the fear, a product of exemplary simian frontal lobes wrapped around a treacherous reptilian center. I wouldn’t enjoy watching her scrabble around trying to force herself to jump from near orbit, but I’d do it. I’d do it for . . . a credit? A dramatic ending easily twisted to support whatever laughable through-line I’m able to sponge out this amorphous soup of anecdotal evidence?
She robs me of that ending, however, mooting the shit out of my ethical dilemma. It takes her about an hour in her tube to work up the courage, but when she does there’s just no stopping her. Fear becomes an action item, and she buries it with characteristic efficiency. Anna says goodbye with a bit of real warmth, which is nice, then she snaps the helmet on, and down she goes. The hatch cycles. She never even flinched.
A few hours in my sleeping tube don’t seem out of order, so I get them. Somehow, seeing Anna’s bravery has calmed my nerves a bit. I’m scared to jump, but not terrified. I sleep well for three hours, and then a gong wakes me gently.
It’s the impact of another pallet arriving, though not nearly enough time has passed for it to be the next regular shipment. It has to be help.
This is perfect. The three of them jump, and just hours later help arrives. This is good. The mechanic will probably be some Union type, have a mustache and weathered skin, the sad, knowing face of a man with more than two daughters. He’ll make the perfect ending, a generational antonym to provide some context and imply that I’ve communicated something profound through juxtaposition alone.
It makes me sick. I think about the way King jumped, and James, and Anna. Each of them, braver than me. In the end, they broke down, knowingly made a career misstep that proved they had a soul. Now I sit and wait for my quote, please sir, won’t you tell me what you think of today’s struggling young professionals? It’s what I should do, but the scientists should have stayed in the pod. Could I have respected any of them if they had?
The space suit fits like a space suit, leaves my shoulders untouched while chafing all the hair off of my armpits. When I lock the helmet, I realize my breath stinks. Vaguely, I’m happy there’s nobody around to see me jump, or to know that I could have stayed, but didn’t. It feels cleaner with only myself as witness.
I squeeze down the ladder, close the hatch behind me, and say Anna’s little prayer. Then I push the button, and the floor begins to slide away beneath my feet. I’m still on the ladder, though; I don’t want this to be passive. Air sucks past me for an astonishingly short amount of time and then I’m basically in a vacuum, atmosphere so thin it might as well not be there. It’s just me and the ladder, now, and the Earth fills the hatch entirely, a bright white circle like if you had to climb down into heaven.
Looking and seeing nothing below, and really feeling all the distance there, I get suddenly very calm. Somehow I know that the jump will be fine and that I’ll be fine too. I’ve needed some time to think, for a while now.
By the time I touch down I’ll have my ending figured out.
About the Author
Graham Templeton is a young-ish journalist from Vancouver, Canada, who got into writing after 5 years studying biochemistry. His fiction has been published in very nearly two places. Graham is currently travelling the world with all his possessions strapped to his back. He makes his way writing non-fiction about amazing future-tech and sci-fi about everyday mundanities.
Mongoose
Sarah Monette and Elizabeth Bear
Izrael Irizarry stepped through a bright-scarred airlock onto Kadath Station, lurching a little as he adjusted to station gravity. On his shoulder, Mongoose extended her neck, her barbels flaring, flicked her tongue out to taste the air, and colored a question. Another few steps, and he smelled what Mongoose smelled, the sharp stink of toves, ammoniac and bitter.
He touched the tentacle coiled around his throat with the quick double tap that meant soon. Mongoose colored displeasure, and Irizarry stroked the slick velvet wedge of her head in consolation and restraint. Her four compound and twelve simple eyes glittered and her color softened, but did not change, as she leaned into the caress. She was eager to hunt and he didn’t blame her. The boojum Manfred von Richthofen took care of its own vermin. Mongoose had had to make do with a share of Irizarry’s rations, and she hated eating dead things.
If Irizarry could smell toves, it was more than the “minor infestation” the message from the station master had led him to expect. Of course, that message had reached Irizarry third or fourth or fifteenth hand, and he had no idea how long it had taken. Perhaps when the station master had sent for him, it had been minor.
But he knew the ways of bureaucrats, and he wondered.
People did double-takes as he passed, even the heavily-modded Christian cultists with their telescoping limbs and biolin eyes. You found them on every station and steelships too, though mostly they wouldn’t work the boojums. Nobody liked Christians much, but they could work in situations that would kill an unmodded human or a even a gilly, so captains and station masters tolerated them.
There were a lot of gillies in Kadath’s hallways, and they all stopped to blink at Mongoose. One, an indenturee, stopped and made an elaborate hand-flapping bow. Irizarry felt one of Mongoose’s tendrils work itself through two of his earrings. Although she didn’t understand staring exactly—her compound eyes made the idea alien to her—she felt the attention and was made shy by it.
Unlike the boojum-ships they serviced, the stations—Providence, Kadath, Leng, Dunwich, and the others—were man-made. Their radial symmetry was predictable, and to find the station master, Irizarry only had to work his way inward from the Manfred von Richthofen’s dock to the hub. There he found one of the inevitable safety maps (you are here; in case of decompression, proceed in an orderly manner to the life vaults located here, here, or here) and leaned close to squint at the tiny lettering. Mongoose copied him, tilting her head first one way, then another, though flat representations meant nothing to her. He made out STATION MASTER’S OFFICE finally, on a oval bubble, the door of which was actually in sight.
“Here we go, girl,” he said to Mongoose (who, stone-deaf though she was, pressed against him in response to the vibration of his voice). He hated this part of the job, hated dealing with apparatchiks and functionaries, and of course the Station Master’s office was full of them, a receptionist, and then a secretary, and then someone who was maybe the other kind of secretary, and then finally—Mongoose by now halfway down the back of his shirt and entirely hidden by his hair and Irizarry himself half stifled by memories of someone he didn’t want to remember being—he was ushered into an inner room where Station Master Lee, her arms crossed and her round face set in a scowl, was waiting.
“Mr. Irizarry,” she said, unfolding her arms long enough to stick one hand out in a facsimile of a congenial greeting.
He held up a hand in response, relieved to see no sign of recognition in her face. It was Irizarry’s experience that dead lives were best left lie where they fell. “Sorry, Station Master,” he said. “I can’t.”
He thought of asking her about the reek of toves on the air, if she understood just how bad the situation had become. People could convince themselves of a lot of bullshit, given half a chance.
Instead, he dec
ided to talk about his partner. “Mongoose hates it when I touch other people. She gets jealous, like a parrot.”
“The cheshire’s here?” She let her hand drop to her side, the expression on her face a mixture of respect and alarm. “Is it out of phase?”
Well, at least Station Master Lee knew a little more about cheshire-cats than most people. “No,” Irizarry said. “She’s down my shirt.”
Half a standard hour later, wading through the damp bowels of a ventilation pore, Irizarry tapped his rebreather to try to clear some of the tove-stench from his nostrils and mouth. It didn’t help much; he was getting close.
Here, Mongoose wasn’t shy at all. She slithered up on top of his head, barbels and graspers extended to full length, pulsing slowly in predatory greens and reds. Her tendrils slithered through his hair and coiled about his throat, fading in and out of phase. He placed his fingertips on her slick-resilient hide to restrain her. The last thing he needed was for Mongoose to go spectral and charge off down the corridor after the tove colony.
It wasn’t that she wouldn’t come back, because she would—but that was only if she didn’t get herself into more trouble than she could get out of without his help. “Steady,” he said, though of course she couldn’t hear him. A creature adapted to vacuum had no ears. But she could feel his voice vibrate in his throat, and a tendril brushed his lips, feeling the puff of air and the shape of the word. He tapped her tendril twice again—soon—and felt it contract. She flashed hungry orange in his peripheral vision. She was experimenting with jaguar rosettes—they had had long discussions of jaguars and tigers after their nightly reading of Pooh on the Manfred von Richthofen, as Mongoose had wanted to know what jagulars and tiggers were. Irizarry had already taught her about mongooses, and he’d read Alice in Wonderland so she would know what a Cheshire Cat was. Two days later—he still remembered it vividly—she had disappeared quite slowly, starting with the tips of the long coils of her tail and tendrils and ending with the needle-sharp crystalline array of her teeth. And then she’d phased back in, all excited aquamarine and pink, almost bouncing, and he’d praised her and stroked her and reminded himself not to think of her as a cat. Or a mongoose.