Meg Howrey - The Wanderers

They have been training together for five weeks and although today has been designated as a rest day, Helen and Sergei had accepted Yoshi’s suggestion that he drive them out to this local attraction. “It will be nice,” Sergei said, “to be in a fresh outside place.” Helen had brought binoculars. She’s said she is an amateur bird-watcher, though it is difficult to imagine Helen as an amateur anything.

It is warm for March, almost cherry blossom season, which they will largely miss, as they are moving to the training facility in Utah in two weeks.

There seem to be no birds at all in the park. Most likely, insecticide coating on the trees has killed off potential food sources.

The astronauts are good sightseers. They walk across an art deco–style bridge, view a facsimile of the railway carriage of the Imperial Family, and admire a replica of the entrance hall of the Imperial Hotel. Outside a reconstructed Romanesque church, Yoshi explains that he first visited the Meiji-mura Park when he was ten and newly arrived in Japan after an early childhood spent in London.

“I remember seeing this,” he said, “and feeling that it was not at all an exotic object, but something more familiar to me than a Shinto or Buddhist shrine. My eye was more accustomed to the Romanesque and Gothic. But you will see that bamboo blinds were employed in the interior of the church, to counteract the heat and humidity of its original site in Kyoto. It made an impression on me, to see the cultures blended so harmoniously.”

All their talk has been like this so far, and that is good, but also, come on. They have come here in order to speak their thoughts freely, away from Prime, Sergei is certain of it. Only, someone has to start or else they will spend the whole day just saying agreeable things.

Now the astronauts will have lunch in a pavilion. He will say his news, and then they will talk of other matters, and he will relax.

Without question, Sergei, Yoshi, and Helen have developed a rapport. Not developed. The rapport was immediate. It probably was there before they met, as an algorithm. Prime was the crew below the stage, revolving the players: them.

IT WAS A CREW that any person who knew what they were doing would assemble. A short list for a mission to Mars that included a woman would absolutely have Helen Kane on it. Sergei had met her only a few times, but she’d spent considerable time in Russia early in her career, and hers was a name you heard often, always in terms of great admiration and respect, even from jerks. They had many friends in common. Yoshi he’d never met—though Helen had worked with him on a NASA–Prime project—but Yoshi’s professional reputation was impeccable and people always said something about how they liked him, always in the same way, too, using almost the same words and emphasis, which spoke well of the guy’s consistency. Everyone had expected Prime to select an all-American crew. That it was international said something important about Prime, and also of the robustness of the data that had put Sergei, Helen, and Yoshi together. Prime was a multinational corporation holding partnerships of some kind with every significant government space agency, but the crew didn’t feel like politics. As a team, they already have flow . Flow is a word Prime likes, uses as noun and verb, subject and object. Even leadership of their crew has flow. Sergei is to command the Earth-to-Mars transit, Helen the Mars expedition, Yoshi the trip back to Earth. Very unorthodox, but Sergei liked this distribution of authority. He wouldn’t have the first boots on Mars under this flow—that honor would be Helen’s—but he was only fifty percent convinced the thing was going to happen anyway.

Fifty percent was enough.

They have the pavilion to themselves. The grounds are nearly empty. A couple dressed in old time–style wedding clothes pose for a photographer on the art deco bridge. Helen looks at the people through her binoculars, since there aren’t any birds.

He will get it done now.

“So,” Sergei says. “I have something I wish to tell you. It is that I am getting a divorce.”

Yoshi takes a handkerchief from his jacket pocket and dabs his mouth. Helen puts her binoculars on the table. Sergei imagines their thoughts. Their thoughts will be of the mission. They will be asking themselves how precise are the personal variables that have brought them together. There are no margins for error in space. For a mistake that measured 1/50th the width of a human hair, a two-billion-dollar telescope was almost lost. In space, they are all Hubble. No one must think of his emotional state as fragile. Not Prime, not his crew.

“You are,” Sergei looks in turn at Helen and Yoshi, “the first people I am telling. I will inform Prime of this situation tomorrow, but first I wish to tell you. It will not affect my work. In fact, marriage has not been what it should be for long time, but Nataliya is a good mother, and a good friend. I do not wish my boys to be growing up with a mother who is not happy. Talia, she wishes to have a new marriage. He is a good guy, I know him. I trust him. My boys know him. He is family: the cousin of my cousin’s wife’s brother. He is Russian, but was born in the States, and they will live there. I think it will be better for them, when I am away, to have steady home, to have a man who will watch over them and make their mother happy. I do this for them. This is not easy thing, but…” He stops and shrugs, as he had planned to at this point. “It is what happens,” he says. “It is—” He has genuinely forgotten the phrase. “Chhh,” he says, remembering. “Yes. It will be a positive change.”

The park is too quiet. His words sound a little loud, though he always speaks more quietly when he is in Japan.

“Sergei, you have our full support.” Helen turns to Yoshi, who nods once, very firmly. “And I am glad that the circumstances are so, well, like you said, really positive. I can imagine that starting the Eidolon training with things not so clear would have been hard, so this probably takes a lot off your mind. To have it settled, and to be moving forward.” She is letting him know what line she will take if asked, Sergei thinks. She will reinforce his view. She will not be the woman who presses for emotion. She does not make a physical gesture, but Sergei can feel the ghost of one, on his back. She is patting his back, like his mother used to do.

“Yes, thank you for telling us,” says Yoshi. He repeats his emphatic nod. “You have our support, and may I say that I admire very much your determination to do what is best for your children. They are very fortunate to have a father who loves them so much.”

Yoshi is a good guy.

Sergei can hear a bird, but he can’t see it.

“The man she wants to marry owns a shoe company,” he says. “For a woman, the husband who can give lots of shoes is maybe better than the husband who is a cosmonaut, but for my boys I will still be the more cool dad. So.”

Helen smiles, which is good because in his relief he has made a woman-joke and while Helen’s reputation is of being a person who does not have problems with man-woman things, it’s better not to call attention to this. And he wasn’t thinking of someone like Helen when he said woman ; he was thinking of someone like his wife.

“It will be a little easier for you,” she says, “with your sons in the States. I mean, before we start Eidolon. Less of a time difference for communications. And they won’t have to travel as far if they can come to Utah.”

“Yes.” Sergei would have been happiest if Alexander and Talia took his children to someplace like Norway, or even Canada, but the advantage to America is that all the evils of the country are known, and his boys will be living in a town in New Jersey that is number three of most safe America towns.