Meg Howrey - The Wanderers

He appreciates the vote of confidence that his divorce will make no difference to his candidacy for the mission. He does not think it will, but until he is strapped into a seat on top of a rocket that has launched for Mars, he cannot be sure he is going to Mars.

“So, I will inform Prime tomorrow. I have not lied,” he says. “I thought it would come up in psychological examination. But for me, so far, that has all been tests with hypothetical situation.”

“Yes,” Yoshi says. “For me as well. I assume there is more to come.”

“Seventeen months of it,” Helen says, with a small smile.

It is good, it is over, they are going to be able to talk of other things.

“Okay,” Sergei says. “Crew meeting.” He makes a joke show of looking around at all the empty tables and underneath their own, taps one end of a chopstick as if testing for a microphone. “Yes. Okay. We are alone. So. Do you think we’re going to Mars?”

The astronauts laugh.

“Oh, well, of course we are,” Helen says.

This is a good tone to take. “Hey, why not? Maybe we won’t, but let’s say we will.” Helen can say this because she has the least to lose of any of them. She is retired from NASA’s astronaut corps, and she’s American, so it is natural for her to be optimistic. Sergei is forty-five and Yoshi is thirty-seven. The space station was nearing the end of its already extended life, and for guys like them it was all about getting tagged for a lunar mission now that the moon is back in play. A single failure in any number of MarsNOW scenarios could mean that all Eidolon will signify is that the three of them are capable of spending seventeen months together in a tin can playing virtual reality games.

Or they could be the first crew to go to Mars, so there is that little thing. And both he and Yoshi are men from countries whose space agencies are facing the same difficulties and have ties to Prime that they wish to tighten. If the MarsNOW mission gets scrubbed, they will still be the astronauts Prime most knows and trusts, the ones most familiar with Prime systems, the inside-track guys. So, the decision was not so difficult, but he would still like to hear what the others have to say.

“Yoshi, Mars?”

“One has gotten so used to speaking with caution on the subject.” Yoshi folds his arms and leans back in his chair. “People ask about a crewed mission to Mars and one says, ‘Yes, yes, it is very exciting to contemplate,’ ‘There are many difficulties,’ ‘We are not quite ready,’ ‘For such a mission we need to consider,’ and so on. You sympathize with the difficulty of getting funding for less glamorous projects. And now, of course, the conversation is about the moon.”

“There is a lot of paranoia in the United States,” Helen says, “about the Chinese lunar missions. I can’t tell if it’s real paranoia or media hysteria.”

“Like fear of clowns,” Yoshi suggests.

“Exactly.” Helen raises an eyebrow. “The official NASA statement is that it’s good for all humankind if China lands on the moon. But we know almost nothing about what is happening, or what their intentions are.”

“They will land ,” Sergei says. “US landed with technology that was not so good as my toaster. But let us not be kidding ourselves—China is not going to shoot golf balls and pick up rocks. They will mine. And they will not be mining for all humankind; they will be mining for China. We are about to be in a big mess, no?”

“The politics are upsetting,” Yoshi agrees. “This isn’t what we do.”

“No,” Sergei says. “This is why Prime Space is future. Future with explorers, with scientists, not countries.”

It will never be this simple, of course, but if they are to do this thing, they must not be countries, the three of them. He will not be the “Russian guy.” For holidays, and a joke, yes, but this is his first act as a commander: let us be our own crew, let us be free.

“Yes,” Yoshi says. “One must not be naive about the motivations of Prime Space—they are a commercial enterprise. But it would be unwise, I think, to be cynical about this. I have always been impressed with the program: the efficiency and the vision.”

“Everyone I know from JPL who went over to Prime says the same thing,” Helen adds. “It’s the direction we should have been moving in all along.”

“So,” Sergei says. “We’re in the right place.”

It is cooler in the shade of the pavilion. The astronauts eat misokatsu from zero-waste bowls. The couple in wedding clothes on the art deco bridge have been replaced by another couple, and a photographer. Sergei picks up Helen’s binoculars. The woman wears a dress with fringe and a feathered band around her head, the man a three-piece suit. The woman is not smiling, but the man is, until the photographer raises his camera and the facial expressions of the bride and groom are reversed. Sergei places the binoculars back on the table, catches Helen’s eye. She is maybe looking at him with sympathy. Perhaps he sighed.

“So, Helen,” Sergei says. “Was it always your dream to go to Mars?”

“I remember my science teacher in grade school saying that everything we could see in the sky was so far away that it might as well be infinitely far,” she says. “With the exception of the moon.”

“Ah, did you dream of the moon?” Yoshi asks.

“No, the moon is too close,” says Helen. She is not joking.

“Yes,” says Sergei. He has a good feeling now. There is nothing to worry about, apart from the regular things. He is not a man for hoping, but at the very least, he will be tested past the point of exhaustion, and that’s not nothing. “I agree. The moon is much too close.”

“You are a fag,” Dmitri says to his brother.

Ilya takes this calmly. “I am not,” he says. “But if I were, so what? Pfff. It is nothing.”

Dmitri does not think it is nothing , and Ilya’s complacent sense of himself and the correctness of his opinions are a little irritating.

“Also you should not say ‘fag’ here,” Ilya continues. “It is more cool to be okay with whatever people want to do.”

“Don’t let Papa hear you say that.”

“I am quoting Papa,” Ilya says, widening his eyes. “I repeat his words exactly . There is gay and not gay or both or maybe nothing. Yeah, and some boys are not boys and some girls are not girls and also there is mixture. Possibly we should not even learn English pronouns, to be safe.”

“Ilya, when did Papa tell you this?”

“On the walk.”

This interests Dmitri. Before their father was about to leave for training, or go on a mission, he liked to take them each on a long walk and have a conversation about meaningful things. Dmitri was always curious about what his father said to Ilya, but since Ilya never seemed curious about Dmitri’s time with their father, pride prevented him from inquiring.

“Papa was saying things are different here,” Ilya continues. “It is not a thing to say: fag . I should not say, and if someone says I am a gay, I should not fight.”

“Does he know that you got in fights because of this at home?”

“No. Did you tell him?”

“Of course not.” When their father was home, he was so happy to be with them that they all put their troubles away for a bit and pretended that everything was perfect. Some of that was good, like being on vacation. Some of it was like being in a play, which Dmitri had been made to do once in school, and had not enjoyed.

On Dmitri’s walk with his father, they had discussed the divorce. Unfortunately, his father had spoken to him like he was a child. The divorce, he said, was not a division of their family, but an enlargement. Family was the most important thing, his father had said, and therefore it was a good idea to make your family as large as possible, to include as many people as you could in your family. Imagine if the whole world were your family. Then there would be no war.