Zach Powers - First Cosmic Velocity

“Does any of this seem familiar, girl?” he said. “Your mother lived here, in these woods and in this cottage. This valley’s in your blood.”

He rose and headed straight for the cottage’s front door. It looked new, but he realized that the door was one thing he had taken for granted. It would always be there to seal them off from the outside, and as long as that was the case, why worry with looking at it?

Nadya rose and followed him, and Mykola eyed her, how one might inspect an old friend’s new wife. Let Mykola think what he wanted. Leonid had learned from Ignatius that the best lies were the ones you let other people assume for themselves.

Leonid knocked on the door. An old woman answered. At first, Leonid thought it was Grandmother, but this woman looked nothing like her except in age and wrinkles. Grandmother was dead. Mykola had said Leonid would know who lived in the cottage, but this woman, even after staring at her, he did not recognize at all. She was far too old to have been one of the other children, too old even to be most of the adults Leonid had known. She did not speak, and Leonid realized she inspected him in the same way he inspected her. She smiled.

“Konstantin,” she shouted back into the cottage in Russian, “you have visitors.”

A voice, airy but with an echo of former power, responded from inside. “I have no business with any of those inbred villagers.”

“They’re not from the village.”

“No one outside the village knows I’m here.”

She smiled apologetically at Nadya. “I suspect they didn’t come here intending to find you.”

“Why must you always speak in riddles, woman?”

“Come in,” said the woman. “I’m Varvara.”

“Thank you,” said Leonid. “I’m—”

She interrupted him. “Oh, I know. At least I have a fifty percent chance of guessing correctly.”

Mykola was right. It was Grandmother’s old table still sitting in the same spot in the center of the room. A strange place for the table, sort of in the way of everything, but Leonid had never questioned its placement as a boy. At the table sat an old man. The word old did not do him justice. He seemed merely a skeleton clothed in skin a size too large. He wore glasses, though his eyes were clouded completely over. What was left of his hair was dry and wiry. He held the hollowed-out horn of some large animal to his ear.

“Who is it?” asked the man.

“Old friends,” said Varvara, speaking loudly, aiming her face directly at the open end of the horn.

“When have we had friends?” said the old man.

“I have many friends.”

“Only because you stoop to socialize with the villagers. They won’t even have a place as sewage workers in the new Utopia.”

Varvara shrugged at Leonid and Nadya, and gave another apologetic smile, this time to Mykola, who still stood in the doorway.

“I saw that,” said the old man.

So he was not as blind as Leonid assumed.

“I didn’t try to hide it,” said Varvara.

“Well, come here already,” said the old man. “I can’t make out faces far away.”

Leonid walked to the table and sat in the chair opposite him. Nadya took the third chair. There had once been a fourth, but Leonid did not see it anywhere in the cottage.

“Tsiolkovski,” she said.

Leonid gripped the lip of the table with both hands. His fingernails cut into the wood. Nadya set her hand on Leonid’s.

“So you know my name. Who doesn’t? Knowing my name means nothing.”

The corners of the man’s eyes drooped even farther and the dour frown had been set in wrinkles as if in stone, but Nadya was right. This man was Tsiolkovski.

“How are you alive?” The question escaped Leonid’s mouth before he could think better of it.

Tsiolkovski laughed in an unkind way. “I have good blood. Good blood is what’s important. And you, who are you?”

“I’m Leonid.” The name he had used most of his life tasted bitter in his mouth.

“I don’t know a Leonid.”

“In fact you know two, and you gave each of us our name.”

Tsiolkovski leaned forward. His eyes were so white all over that Leonid doubted again that the man could see at all.

“So it’s you,” said Tsiolkovski. “And who’s that with you, Nadya? All I can see is a halo of yellow. I assume that’s your hair, Nadya.”

“It is,” said Nadya.

“And in the doorway, all I see is a silhouette. Mars? Valentina? Yuri?”

“I’m Mykola from the village.”

“Get out,” said Tsiolkovski.

“He’s a friend,” said Leonid.

“Get out!” screamed Tsiolkovski. “I won’t have his kind of filth in my very own house.”

“It was my home before you came here.” It might still have been his home if Tsiolkovski had not come in the first place. Leonid’s brother might still be alive. Or they might both have starved. What was worse, the possibility of death or its certainty? Regardless, this man was culpable. If the Chief Designer had been Leonid’s brother’s executioner, then Tsiolkovski was the judge who handed down the sentence. Leonid resisted the urge to drag the man from Grandmother’s chair and toss him out the door.

“It’s all right, Leonid,” said Mykola. “We don’t visit him for a reason. I’ll wait outside.”

He stepped backward out of the doorway. Kasha yipped.

“And an animal! I’d hoped he would train you all better than this. Bringing that man and an animal to my house. Of all the absurdities. He probably has you eating with your bare hands. That…” Tsiolkovski spoke a name Leonid had never heard before.

“Who are you talking about?” asked Leonid.

“Surely he’s still Chief Designer. He was a good man. He could never go into space, of course, what with his balding. He was balding even then.”

Leonid felt embarrassed that he had never stopped to consider that the Chief Designer might have a name.

“Cosmonauts can’t be bald?” asked Leonid. Tsiolkovski’s hair clung to his liver-spotted scalp only in wisps.

“There can be no genetic inferiority in space. When we colonize Mars, only the fittest can go. You and Nadya, you’d be fine breeding stock. As much as the process of breeding is repulsive, it’s necessary for now. Until we can find another way. Imagine the children you two would have! Leonid, you were my first choice. I don’t know why the Chief Designer saved you until last. You’re not balding, are you?”

“Not that I know of.” Leonid’s anger ebbed. This man was but a cracked shell of the old Tsiolkovski. He was like a child. A bitter one lacking innocence, but a child nonetheless.

“Good, good. Then you should have been first. I trust the Chief Designer, but he was always bad at prioritizing. What was last was always first and what was first always last. That’s another reason he can never go to space. He lacks faith. How can one conquer heaven without believing in it? Not the tripe from the church, but there’s definitely something up there. It’s the only thing that makes sense. There’s no heaven at the moment, of course. It’s our duty to create it. We must create the angels that will live there. And those angels must be perfect. But I’m afraid you can’t take your dog. No animals in heaven. They’re lesser, and only the superior are allowed. Imagine how great it will be surrounded by only the superior. Villages like this one won’t even exist. We’ll leave villages like this behind forever.”

Tsiolkovski clacked the hollow horn down on the table.

“Where’s my lunch,” he demanded.

“You just ate it,” said Varvara.

“What?”

She leaned toward his ear. “You already ate.”

Tsiolkovski patted his belly, such as it was. Age had sucked his innards into themselves. His chest continued straight to his stomach without the interruption of even a bump. How old was the man? Leonid could not remember, but surely at least a hundred. After a certain point, all ages looked the same.