Zach Powers - First Cosmic Velocity

“You smile,” said Ignatius.

“I just had an amusing thought,” said the Chief Designer.

“Will you share?”

He would have liked to, but he did not know how. It had all become so absurd. The only thing he could think of that would be more absurd would be to try to explain the absurdity.

“Chief Designer.” The voice came from behind him.

“Yes, yes,” he said, not turning.

A small yip sounded. At first the Chief Designer thought Galina was back on the vibration platform, but this yip had come from the wrong direction. He turned.

Leonid stood there, Kasha in his arms, Nadya lurking in the doorway behind him. Her hair had grown longer. Leonid’s whiskers threatened to fill out into a beard. And little Kasha. She had not changed at all.

“We’re back,” said Leonid.

The Chief Designer found himself holding his breath, as if to exhale would blow away the apparition before him. He looked at Ignatius.

“You knew they were back?” he asked Ignatius.

“I was notified that they had boarded a train bound for Moscow.”

“So you lied to me.”

“I prefer not to deliver good news.”

The Chief Designer could not bring himself to look at Leonid, even though he yearned to see him, and even more to see Nadya, the woman who thought of him as a father. He still did not believe it, and he feared looking at her, that the expression on her face would reveal the error of Ignatius’s claim.

“What should I do?” the Chief Designer asked Ignatius.

“I would start by sending these other so-called pilots back to where they came from.”

The Chief Designer glanced sidelong at his cosmonauts. Kasha, the little white dog, tail wagging, tongue flapped out the side of her mouth, seemed happy to have returned. The other two showed no emotion, Nadya even less so than usual.

“Mishin, Bushuyev,” called the Chief Designer.

The two men left Kolya, still doubled over in the Khilov swing, and hurried toward the door. They stopped short at the sight of Leonid and Nadya.

“You can send the other pilots home,” said the Chief Designer.

“Thank god,” said Mishin or Bushuyev.

They walked around the Chief Designer and greeted first Leonid and then Nadya. The two men smiled, revealing a real sort of happiness, not just at having capable cosmonauts again, but at the return of old friends. The Chief Designer had resented them for having let Leonid and Nadya go. He felt sure that in their place, he would have been able to stop them. But with this reunion, he saw that Mishin and Bushuyev understood family in a way that he never would. For someone who had sent so many of his children permanently away, he had never learned that one aspect of family was parting. Family is not necessarily the place where one is, but where one returns, given the chance.

The Chief Designer looked Nadya in the eye. “Thank you.”

“We should talk,” said Leonid.

He set Kasha on the floor and left in the direction of the Chief Designer’s office.

EVERYTHING IN THE OFFICE felt too large. Leonid sat in one of the guest chairs, the seat wide enough to have held him and his brother both. The desk seemed built for ogres. The chair on the other side like a throne. In it, the Chief Designer looked smaller. Less like a bear and more like a cub. It was not just the chair. Something in the man’s expression, in how he looked at Leonid, had changed. He remembered the same look on Grandmother’s face just before he and his brother left the valley.

Leonid spoke the Chief Designer’s name. The Chief Designer’s composure flickered for a moment, but he pulled his face into a grin.

“How did you learn that?” asked the Chief Designer.

“I spoke to Leonid. I spoke to my brother.”

This time the Chief Designer’s composure failed him. He looked like he might be ill, or burst into tears, or both.

“How?”

“Tsiolkovski. He’s communicated with all the cosmonauts.”

“From beyond the grave?”

“He’s alive.”

“Alive?”

“More or less.”

“Where is he?”

“I think he would prefer no one to know. Also, he’s mostly insane.”

“Tsiolkovski always had strange ideas.”

“I remembered him as a younger man. Someone in control. I suppose he was old even then, his grip already in the midst of failing him.”

“His generation, even mine, we pretend control even when we have none. It was the only way to survive the bad times. After the Revolution and through the war.”

“Why didn’t you tell me that Leonid was still alive?”

“He’s as good as dead, Leonid. Already his life is an impossibility.”

“That’s different from any life how?”

The Chief Designer smiled again. He had known Leonid for the majority of the man’s life, but only now realized that he did not know him well at all.

“Why did you return?” asked the Chief Designer.

“My brother told me.”

“Told you what?”

“That after Nadya died, the other Nadya, you gave the remaining cosmonauts a choice. They all chose to fly, even when they knew it would mean dying. I don’t free you from blame, but I must blame my brother, as well. He’s a damned fool. If you’re guilty of something, it’s raising him to be one.”

“I have lately been thinking that while I gave them a choice, I never asked if it was what they wanted. I have spent the better part of my own life making choices that are contrary to my wants.”

“Leonid also told me that you apologized to him.”

“I won’t lie to you now. I’ve done no such thing.”

“He said he didn’t think you knew that your apology reached him. He said that you must have come into the radio room one night when he was out of range. As his orbit brought him over Star City, he heard the ghost of your voice, saying ‘I’m sorry’ over and over, the sound growing stronger with each repetition. When the signal was finally strong enough for him to answer, you were gone, and Mars greeted him instead.”

The Chief Designer recalled that sleepless night. It was only a few days after Nadya and Leonid ran away. He had woken from nightmares. Not an uncommon occurrence, but usually they took him back to the long-ago past, to icy nights on the tundra. This one was set in the present. He was surrounded by everyone he knew: Nadya, Leonid, Mars, Yuri, Valentina, his wife, his son, Mishin, Bushuyev, Giorgi, Nedelin, Tsiolkovski, Khrushchev, Ignatius, even the General Designer. They were all there to congratulate the Chief Designer, but as he thanked them they each burst into flame. The fire consumed them slowly. They did not change to look like Giorgi’s body, brittle and blackened. Instead they evaporated, from foot to face, a layer at a time like the heat shield. They kept congratulating him, heaping up the most effusive praise, until their mouths were finally consumed. Nadya was the last one to disappear. The Chief Designer stood in the middle of beige, endless terrain, like Baikonur but lacking even the few features that made up that dull landscape. He felt himself on fire. First his teeth disappeared from his mouth. That was when he woke, a feeling he could not identify clenched in both his gut and his mind. He felt near panicked that there was something he had forgotten to do. Something essential. He cried. He had not cried, not really, since he was a boy. Shrugging on his robe and stepping into a pair of old shoes he used as slippers, he went to the radio room. He had not planned to go there, it just happened. It was as if he were still asleep, still in part of the dream. Until now, he was not entirely sure that he had not been dreaming the whole time.

“What did you say to each other?” asked the Chief Designer.