Kate Day - In the Quick

I didn’t understand it. The change in her, day by day. When she was back to her normal, lucid self, she didn’t seem to remember what she’d been like the day before. I started to believe what James had said. Maybe she was confused; maybe she didn’t really know what she wanted. Then one afternoon I went to see her and she wasn’t there.

I went looking for James and couldn’t find him either. Not in his bunk or in the workshop. Both rovers were parked in the darkness of the cargo bay. Outside the portholes the wind had picked up and the swirling pink silt created a thick haze.

I walked through the station with a strong sense of unease as the wind beat at the walls. I checked the galley, looked through all the equipment rooms and storage modules. Nothing. I went back to Theresa’s room, which was still empty. The wind quieted. Then out of the porthole I saw them, both of them. Their helmets were off. James’s eyes were closed against the silt, and Theresa’s long hair whipped around her face. They were breathing the air.

I made a decision. Every day I went to Theresa’s room and helped her out of bed. We practiced standing and walking short distances. Getting in and out of a suit, breathing with a helmet. Each time we did a little more. She got stronger; her voice was clearer and she had more color in her cheeks. She was more alert, able to stay awake for longer stretches. But she grew quieter too. She stopped talking about Earth, stopped asking me about it. Even when I brought it up, asked her what she planned to do when she got there and who she would see, she gave short answers.

Two days before the next scheduled supply capsule, I sent a transcript to NSP, informing them Theresa’s health had improved enough for her to make the trip home, and I signed it in James’s name. Then, when we were alone in her room, I told her to hold her breath when James took her out into the silt. As long as she could.

He thinks it helps me, she said.

Does it?

She was sitting on the edge of her bed, her bare feet swinging slightly over the side. It helps with the pain. But it’s not making me better. She pressed her hands to her eyes. And it messes with my mind.

The silt tapped against the porthole outside and I felt the smallness of the bright room, its sealed-in feeling. Do you want to leave this place or not?

The breathing machine at the top of the bed paused, clicked, and then began whirring again. Finally she said, I do.

The night before a supply capsule was scheduled to return to Earth I went silently to her room. She was already awake and standing, holding on to the bed to steady herself. Her eyes were clear and focused.

I’m all right, she said in a whisper. I’ll be all right.

Outside her room I listened but all was still. We started moving. Through the door and down the corridors, softly, haltingly. Through one airlock, then another, through warm air and then cool. I remembered where all the step-ups and step-downs were, and all the unexpected turns.

We passed James’s room in slow motion, our bodies stiff with stillness. The minutes seemed to expand. Theresa stumbled. I caught her noiselessly before she fell, and we paused, our arms around each other, our faces blue tinted in the runner lights. A faint rumble of breath came from James’s room, and as we moved away I shivered at the thought of his face in the morning, his cheeks pink with sleep, dark stubble on his chin.

We finally reached the airlock leading to the cargo bay and I helped Theresa into a suit, a painfully slow process. I pulled her fingers from the suit’s armholes as she pushed them through, and I thought of Simon, who had done the same for me with my wet suit before my first dive at Peter Reed. Theresa was breathing hard by the time we were done, but her helmet was on now, and oxygen was flowing. She smiled weakly through her visor.

Once Theresa was folded into the driver’s seat of a rover and covered with a foil blanket I punched the destination into the navigation.

She held on to the steering wheel. Her face had receded inside her helmet but her voice was clear. Thank you June.

My finger hovered over the button to open the cargo door and my heart quickened at the thought of James hearing it. I pressed it and the rover pulled forward with a low whine into the chalky night.

I went to my room but didn’t sleep. I stayed in my clothes and counted down the minutes until the capsule’s scheduled departure just after dawn, watched the dull pink glow of morning creep across my floor. Then James’s footsteps sounded outside. He was moving up and down the corridors, in and out of airlocks calling, Theresa!

His anxious voice drew closer and strangled the sound of her name.

And then, at my door: June! Theresa’s gone!

I didn’t answer. He banged on the door. Wake up. Wake up God damn it.

He moved away, toward the north corridor and the cargo bay. My breath was fast. He would find the empty spot. Little piles of silt where the rover used to be.

Soon he was back, his voice a growl outside the door.

My body vibrated; my teeth chattered. I unlocked the door and he pushed his way inside.

Where is she?

She’s already gone. I stepped back and braced myself, and his body seemed to change shape, to bend, to distort. But he didn’t yell. His voice was low and tight. What did you do?

I’d seen him angry, many times, and had laughed at it. Laughed at his hot temper, his easy irritation with equipment, weather, me. But I couldn’t laugh at this.

I backed farther away. He stepped closer.

I did what she wanted, I said. I did what was right.

He kept coming. I turned and tripped. He caught me, pulled me to him; he tucked his head and wrapped his arms tightly around my chest.

You’ve killed her, he said in my ear. He squeezed me and my breath strained against his chest. Do you know that? He squeezed harder.

I couldn’t get enough air. I tried to pull away but his arms were a tightening vise. Stop it, I choked. I can’t breathe. I can’t—

He let go, and I collapsed onto my bed, coughing.

That’s what she’ll say. His hair was wild; he moved like his body was broken. That’s what she’ll say in the end.

I stayed in my bunk; I sat on my mattress and took big breaths. My lungs inflated and deflated, and I pictured Theresa in the capsule, strapped into a jump seat. Her thin face was tired but happy. Then I heard a horrible noise. It sounded like pieces of metal hitting the walls, the floor. James was breaking something. What?

I ran out of my bunk, my hands pushing against the walls, my feet clumsy. I moved in and out of light and dark, hot and cold. He wouldn’t. He wouldn’t— But he had. He stood in the workshop in the midst of a pile of glittering debris. Metal panels, wiring, connectors, bolts, screws. Our cell. It was a pile of pieces again, only this time even they were broken—cables torn, soldered connections split, circuit boards cracked.

He stood with his legs wide and panted with the effort of smashing it all. It was ugly. He was ugly. I thought I knew him—that I understood him—but I didn’t. I thought we were the same, but we weren’t.

I walked away from him; in my bunk I put some clothes in a bag and went to the cargo bay. My hands shook as I pulled on my suit, but I got it on, went through the airlock, and climbed into the remaining rover. The bay door opened into the pink glow of early dawn.

I drove straight ahead until I couldn’t see the lights of the Gateway behind me. My body vibrated but I kept my hands on the steering wheel and my eyes straight ahead. The visibility was poor. The sun was rising but it was barely a smudge of yellow on the horizon. Mountains of silt stretched out before me, uneven, undulating.