Christian Kiefer - The Infinite Tides

“Yeah, I’m in a different office.”

“You’re at JSC?”

“Yeah, the paperwork never stops. Just wait until you’re a mission commander. The paperwork will kill you.”

“I’m sure,” he said. The rumble faded to a dull hum that continued somewhere out toward the end of the cul-de-sac near the empty lot.

“So how are you doing?”

“OK.”

“Getting through it?” Eriksson said.

“Yeah, I’m getting through it,” Keith said. He stood from the increasingly rickety kitchen table and set his cereal bowl in the sink. He could still hear the hum of the truck down at the end of the cul-de-sac. A delivery truck perhaps. Dropping off a package for someone. Not for him.

“Barb?”

“Long gone.”

“Damn. Sorry to hear that, buddy.”

“Yeah, well. She’s filling my in-box with angry e-mails. That’s something to look forward to.”

“I’m sure.”

“How’s the family?”

“All good. Little guy is in swimming lessons. Boring to watch but fun anyway.”

“That’s good then.”

“So you’re doing OK?”

“Yeah, fine.”

“Seeing the doctor and all that?”

“Yeah I’m seeing the doctor and all that.”

“Psych doing anything for you?”

“Not really,” he said. “So this is a checkup call?”

“Come on, Chip. We’ve logged a lot of time together. Can’t I call to find out how you’re doing?”

“You can,” he said, “but that’s not what this is.”

“That is what this is.”

“OK.”

“You can really be a pain in the ass,” Eriksson said.

“What do you want me to say?” Keith said.

“I don’t want you to say anything. I’m just asking how you’re doing.”

“I don’t know how I’m doing. I wake up, get a cup of coffee, wander around town. At night I sit around with my Ukrainian neighbor and drink beer. That’s all.”

“All right,” Eriksson said. “Look, buddy, I’m worried about you. That’s all.”

“Yeah, I appreciate that.”

They were both silent then and in the gap Keith thought that, if he could find the words to do so, he would tell Eriksson exactly how he was actually doing because Eriksson was perhaps the only substantial friend he had. They had spent so much time together, training and working and then the mission itself. After Quinn was dead and Barb was gone, it had been Eriksson who had kept him working when he could work and had cleared the schedule when he could not. That had meant everything. Without it he did not know what he would have done. And so he thought that he would tell him that there was no end to the equation in which he now found himself and that he did not know what he should be doing anymore or what velocity he would need to reach to escape whatever orbit he was in.

But then Eriksson said, “Look, let’s switch gears on this,” and Keith said nothing, only listening as Eriksson continued and the moment was gone: “There are some people here with me and we’re trying to figure something out and you’re the only guy I know who might know the answer.”

“OK.”

“You’re gonna laugh,” Eriksson said. “We can’t figure out the code for the MSS arm files.”

“The access code?”

“Yeah. We should have it on file here somewhere but we can’t find it.”

“Oh,” he said. “That’s what you need to know?”

“That’s it.”

“What do you need those for?”

“We don’t really. But IT is doing an audit here and it came up as something that needs to be in the backups.”

“I have it backed up and it’s probably on the mainframe too.”

A pause. “Yeah … well, look, we still have to have access to it.”

“Sure, the backups don’t have password protection so you can run them from there into the main server.”

“I don’t think you’re quite hearing me, Chip.”

“I don’t think you’re asking me the right question.”

“You’re going to make this hard.”

“Am I?” A second low rumble. The windows shaking. “Christ,” he said. “Hang on.” The voice on the other end of the phone speaking but what words were being said lost in the volume outside on the street. “Hang on. Hang on,” he repeated, the rumble fading to a hum that pulsed in heavy waves outside past the house. He could hear Eriksson’s voice continuing somewhere in the din. “Hold on,” Keith said. “There was a truck. What did you say?”

It was silent for a moment and then Eriksson said, “When are you coming back to Houston?”

“That’s up to Mullins.”

“How so?”

“He told me to take some time off so I’m doing what I’m told.”

“All right, all right,” Eriksson said. “I get it.”

“You get what?”

“Well, we miss you here.”

He did not know how to respond to this statement and so he said nothing for a long time, both of them silent now, their breathing reverberating down the phone lines. Then he said, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Sure, buddy.”

“Am I still an astronaut?”

“What kind of question is that?” Erikkson said. There was the sound of laughter in his voice, as if Keith was making a joke of some kind.

“I’m either an astronaut or I’m not.”

“Oh come on, Chip. You’re a superstar around here and you know it.”

Keith said nothing.

“You’re ten times smarter than anyone else in the building.”

“Quinn was smarter,” Keith said. Just that.

There was no sound from the phone now. Outside, the roar of big engines continued beyond the window. Muffled.

“Christ, buddy,” Eriksson said.

“She was.”

“OK.” Eriksson’s voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. Then he said, “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about your daughter. We all are. And we could use you back here. That’s for sure.”

“I don’t know if I can come back there right now.”

“You want me to talk to Mullins?”

He paused for a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know.” He sat down again, the little chair squealing under the weight of his body. All he could think of was the desire to be back in microgravity again, in that low orbit aboard the space station where there was no perceptible weight, where everything in his life — the physical objects — would suspend indefinitely in midair until he retrieved them, where he would sleep attached to the wall of his closetlike living quarters. That was what he wanted, not to be back in Houston but to be up in space. And then he realized something he had never thought of before, that his desire to return to the ISS had less to do with working with the numbers and more to do with the feeling of being there, of seeing Earth unscroll beneath him, the tan mass of Africa and the blue ocean and the white swirl of clouds moving across the sphere of Earth as the day flashed to night and the universe itself was unveiled all around him. He wanted to see that again, to experience that again. Even if there were no numbers with which to make sense of it. More than anything, that was what he wanted.

“Look, I’m sorry but we’re going to need that access code,” Eriksson said.

In the low-frequency hum of the trucks outside he thought he could hear the thin whine of his migraine but he could not be sure. He could hear their engines where they revved and roared. Not delivery trucks. Something else.

“Yeah,” he said. There was a long pause but he could think of nothing that would convince Eriksson to include him in whatever work was ongoing and so he spoke the access code slowly into the phone, a long string of letters and numbers, and Eriksson read it back to him and he confirmed it and then Eriksson said, “Hold on,” and he could hear the sound of typing and then Eriksson said, “OK, that worked.”