First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  “Imagine, a slave speaking such a thing to a man of prestige and power. Had Khmelnytsky spoken at any other time he would have been beaten. Maybe even slain. But Khmelnytsky waited for the right moment to act, as he would again later, and so the admiral listened. The Ottomans took the beach and then the village. Defeat had been turned to victory.

  “That night the Ottomans dined on plundered food around great fires, and even the slaves were given a feast. Khmelnytsky’s shackles were removed, and he was brought to the admiral’s own table, allowed to eat with the officers. They patted him on the back and got drunk and told crude jokes that he could only understand the half of. He laughed with the others, I’m sure. Not because he understood the jokes. He laughed because he had not been in a position to laugh for so long. He had oared and oared and his only feelings were for his lost father, his only thoughts on learning the enemy’s language. Imagine the release of being surrounded by laughter, of having to neither feel nor think. You are boys, so you cannot yet imagine the release of that first sip of drink after so long without.

  “I think that’s when Khmelnytsky remembered freedom. He’d lost so much, had been wounded deeper than the blade had cut him. If he hadn’t asserted himself when the opportunity arose, he might have stayed a slave forever, oaring boats around the Black Sea for his enemy until the day he died. Freedom is the possibility of happiness, and there with fresh meat and flowing wine he remembered it.

  “Back on the boat, he was allowed to remain unshackled. Before battles or landings, the admiral would call him to the prow and ask his opinion. Khmelnytsky’s Turkish was almost perfect by this point, only a slight accent preventing him from passing for a pale Ottoman. He studied the admiral’s maps, and from the prow saw every beach and inlet they passed. Over two years, he memorized the whole coastline of the Black Sea.

  “You would think that the other oarsmen would have been jealous of Khmelnytsky’s favored status, but he never forgot that he was a slave and spent as much time on the oars as anyone. He convinced the admiral to provide more and better rations, and the oarsmen were able to row harder for longer. After a battle in which half the bowmen were killed, Khmelnytsky sold the captain on the merits of unshackling all the oarsmen, so that they might take up the bows of fallen soldiers. This strategy turned a later battle from defeat to victory, and on that night all eighty slaves were invited to join the admiral around a high fire on the beach, where a dozen animals, spoils of the victory, were skewered on swords claimed from fallen enemies and roasted.

  “The admiral and Khmelnytsky became great friends. At the end of each campaign, the admiral brought him home to his estate, where the admiral had twenty wives and was willing to ignore it when one of them seemed to favor Khmelnytsky. The two men would stay up late into the night, discussing the great philosophies of the world, arguing over the outcomes of ancient battles, debating the merits of Western and Eastern art. Every meal was a celebration, visited by Ottoman nobles and merchants and generals. These men came not for the admiral, but for Khmelnytsky, the slave.

  “Sometimes he would fall silent in a conversation at the mention of a place he had once known. The admiral never failed to notice and understand. He would refill Khmelnytsky’s drink and turn the conversation in a new direction.

  “Who knows how many years his life went like this. Certainly not Khmelnytsky himself.

  “Back at sea, as he oared, Khmelnytsky watched the coastline slip past through the round oar holes. Only that small circle was visible, but he started to recognize the features of the land, inlets and half-sunken stones, the wide mouth of a river, the delta beyond. It was the Dnieper. The land he saw was his home.

  “Khmelnytsky dropped his end of the oar and strode to the prow. He took an officer’s saber right from the sheath. The officer died by his own blade before he could even notice its weight missing from his belt. The admiral turned, saw Khmelnytsky, and smiled. Khmelnytsky nodded to the admiral, and then lopped off his head in one swift, sure stroke.

  “Alone on the prow, he turned back. The other Ottoman soldiers were stunned, unable to react. Khmelnytsky nodded once to the other slaves, long since left unshackled, and without further instruction, they overwhelmed the soldiers, whom they outnumbered three to one. Not a single slave died in the mutiny. Few sustained even a scratch.

  “The slaves were Poles and Cossacks and other sorts Khmelnytsky could not recognize. But all followed his command when he bade them row up the mouth of the river, against the strong current, to a small town that welcomed them with long docks. The men of the town, at the sight of an Ottoman boat, took up arms. Khmelnytsky greeted them by holding up the severed head of the admiral, offering no other explanation. The former slaves rushed off the boat, especially the Cossacks, explaining what Khmelnytsky had done, the words tumbling out too fast to follow, each version of the story a little bit different.

  “When they looked around to find him, to thank him, to celebrate his very name, Khmelnytsky was gone. He had already passed through the town, stolen a horse, and set off in the direction of his family and his home. The former slaves would never see him again, but they would speak of him. They would speak of him to any who would listen.”

  “That’s why he’s a hero?” asked the younger Leonid.

  “One of the reasons.”

  The twins had never left the village. The older Leonid wondered what it would be like to come home after such a long time away. Their cottage emerging in slices through the gaps in the thinning forest. What would he remember? What would he forget?

  “Khmelnytsky was a hero, yes,” said Grandmother, “but also a murderer. It’s interesting how one man can be both.”

  Star City, Russia—1964

  The Chief Designer was halfway through the report before he realized he had not paid enough attention at the beginning to know what it was about. He knew all the terminology, of course, and he understood the equations, but why these terms and these numbers were relevant to him he could not begin to guess. It seemed as if half his time was spent reading reports. He wondered what he might accomplish if he were ever given time enough to actually act. Instead, he relied on the work of a hundred others, conducting them as if they were an orchestra and he the maestro. The Chief Designer did not know much about music, but he was impressed that so many people could all end something at the same time.

  He flipped back to the beginning of the report, skimming the first page, hoping the words that would make it all make sense would jump out at him. He did not have time to reread the whole thing again. Six similar reports, each over a hundred pages, crowded the edge of his desk. If half his time was spent reading reports, the other half was spent responding to the authors, many of whom he had never actually met.

  A small commotion came from the waiting room outside his office. He heard Mishin or Bushuyev—they sounded so much alike—talking fast, a hint of irritation in his voice. The commotion drew closer to the Chief Designer’s cracked door.

  “You can’t go in! He’s very busy.”

  The door slung open, and the General Designer loomed in the doorway, Mishin and Bushuyev, looking panicked, behind him.

  “I’m sorry,” said one of them.

  “It’s all right,” said the Chief Designer.

  Of all the people he would have preferred not to see, the General Designer held the pole position, but the Chief Designer had to admit that any distraction from the reports was welcome, even if the person of the distraction was not.

  “Come in, General Designer. I’m sorry for the hassle. I asked not to be disturbed today, so Mishin and Bushuyev were just following my orders.”

  Mishin and Bushuyev offered a small bow of apology from the doorway, and then one of them pulled the door shut.

  The General Designer took a chair facing the Chief Designer’s desk.

  “It’s not Mishin and Bushuyev with whom I’m annoyed,” said the General Design
er.

  “Since you’re here, I’ll assume I’m the source of your annoyance.”

  “I’ve been ordered by Khrushchev to assist you. Khrushchev himself! He showed up at OKB-52 and told me to put my projects on hold. I don’t know how you managed it, and I don’t care. I may not like you, Chief Designer, but I never expected you to cheat.”

  “First, comrade, what is there at which to cheat? This isn’t a game. Maybe you still think it is because you have yet to risk the life of a single person. Maybe when all you do is perform test after test on rocket engines, you forget that the real test only comes when you affix a man to the other end of the rocket. Yes, what we do is a competition, but it’s not against each other. It’s not even against the Americans. We compete only against gravity. Gravity is my opponent, and only someone with an ego the size of the planet would dare to think that they’re of the same interest to me as the stuff that holds the very Earth together.

  “Second, comrade, your problem is with Khrushchev. I didn’t ask him to approach you. If you have a complaint, take it to him.”

  The General Designer let out a bitter laugh. “Everyone knows you’ve cast some sort of spell on him. That man adores you, though it’s never been clear to me why. What sway do you hold?”

  “Not as much sway as you believe. If I had my way every time, OKB-52 would not exist, but here you are, and with a title superior to mine. As is the case with most who declare themselves victims, you’re only a victim in your own mind. You’ve had nothing taken from you, and yet you declare loudly all your losses. There’s a significant difference between losing and not having yet received. And didn’t Tsiolkovski teach us all that the best way to preempt loss is with sacrifice?”

  The General Designer dipped his head and rubbed a spot just above his eyebrow. He had been closer to Tsiolkovski than the rest of the Soviet rocketeers. For most of them, Tsiolkovski was like a minor god, but for the General Designer he had been like a grandfather. To mention Tsiolkovski was gamesmanship, the sort of cheating the General Designer had accused the Chief Designer of at the beginning of the meeting. Had it been anyone else, the Chief Designer might have felt ashamed.

  “Have you seen him?” asked the General Designer.

  “Not in years,” said the Chief Designer. “I hear he’s moved to a mountain. Like some sort of oracle. That’s what we all thought he was, anyway.”

  “It was 1960, the last time I spoke with him. He was already . . . untethered. He’d stopped talking about space, fixated instead on selective breeding or something like that. It was hard to follow. It was hard to watch such a great man slipping. Have you received any letters?”

  “No, but you were closer to him.”

  This denial was a lie. After Nadya’s launch, Tsiolkovski had indeed sent a letter, shakily written in blue ink. The message was half incoherent, but here and there a flash of the old master shone through. For instance, Tsiolkovski had known without being told that Nadya’s ship had burned up on reentry. He had begged for the Chief Designer to apologize to the other Nadya for him. The Chief Designer ignored the request. Apologies from Tsiolkovski were so long overdue as to be meaningless. And though Tsiolkovski had first found the twins, had viewed them as little more than lab rats to test the effects of space travel upon, it had been the Chief Designer himself who decided the twins’ final fates. Tsiolkovski had less to apologize for than he believed.

  The Chief Designer opened a report on his desk, the one he had been flipping through without actually reading.

  “If you’re to assist me,” he said, “then here’s what I need. Continue your projects, and if you have something that will help me, I’ll ask for it specifically.”

  “You’re asking me to continue?”

  “I already have a staff, General Designer. I don’t need a second one.”

  “Don’t come to me later asking me to build you a rocket.”

  “As if I would trust any rocket that you built. Do you know why Khrushchev asked you to help me? It’s because of his dog. He wants me to send his dog into space.”

  “Byelka?”

  “You know it?”

  “An obnoxious animal. I visited the Premier’s dacha once and spent the whole time trying to keep the thing from mounting my leg. He wants to send it into space? Maybe you could leave it there.”

  The General Designer laughed, a short deliberate sound. The Chief Designer followed suit.

  “I don’t like you,” said the General Designer, “but I appreciate that you didn’t send Khrushchev to me. Assuming that’s the truth.”

  “It is. You have an engine test for the Proton next week? Perhaps I’ll visit, though I don’t trust hypergolic fuels.”

  “You’re afraid of them. Ours isn’t an industry for cowards.”

  “Nor one for fools.”

  “And yet it seems to attract them. I suppose I’ll see you soon.”

  “It’s unavoidable.”

  “Gah! How little of our own fates we control. That mine should be bound with yours.”

  The Chief Designer stood, rounded his desk, and opened the dark-stained door. He waited there until the General Designer was out of the office and down the hall. Mishin and Bushuyev watched him from their twin desks, one on either side of the room. The Chief Designer slammed the door shut. The old solid wood thudded in a way that pleased him. A well-made thing performing as it should. It was a feeling, he realized, that he seldom enjoyed anymore.

  * * *

  • • •

  MARS HAD MOVED a cot into the radio room. The cot was surplus from the army, Mars suspected from the end of the war, given to Star City before the dormitories were built, back when the cosmonauts slept in the gymnasium, separated from each other only by thin sheets hung from wires. Yuri’s snores would echo through the room like the launch of a thousand rockets. Mars had thought more than once to smother Yuri in his sleep.

  The cot, coming apart at the joints, creaked whenever Mars climbed onto it, but if Mars lay still, the radio room descended into a kind of silence he had never known before. At least outside of the anechoic chamber. There, though, the silence was artificial. That silence was designed to drive a person mad if it could. The only ones ever to come out of it after an extended stay and still have their wits about them were Nadya, the one who survived, and Giorgi. The first thing Giorgi did after he emerged was play a game of table tennis, as if the tok-tok-tok of the ball did not sound a thousand times louder.

  Mars tried to remember Leonid’s four-week stint in the anechoic chamber. After he got out, Leonid seemed disoriented and talked only in whispers. The sound of a footstep could make him jump. He once said that food tasted different, as if sound affected his sense of smell. The loudest noise in the chamber was always one’s own chewing.

  And now Leonid had been in isolation twice as long as that. The second month came and went, and he still breathed and still spoke, and back on Earth, Mars took turns with the Chief Designer, Mishin, and Bushuyev to talk to him. The Chief Designer had forbidden any of them from telling the other Leonid. He said he did not know how the news would be taken. Leonid’s grief had already come, and there was no use making him reprise it. Mars doubted the logic behind that decision, but what was one more secret to keep?

  Mars almost never left the radio room, sleeping there even when one of the others was on shift. He did not explain why, and no one asked. He was not sure exactly why himself, but he had a suspicion. For every other twin, he had been the last person to speak to them. With Nadya, he had wished her luck before the radio blacked out on reentry. He had waited and waited, for hours after it was obvious she was lost, until the Chief Designer physically lifted him from the console. With Yuri and Valentina, he had pressed his ear to the speaker in order to hear the faintness of their last breaths. And with his own brother he had recalled memories that he had not thought of for years, back to an impossible time when
they were still together.

  Mars did not want to miss the last words of Leonid. He felt it was his duty to hear them. To the public he was a cosmonaut hero, but to himself he was the hearer of last words. That was his only purpose, the only thing he had left worth doing.

  He rose from the cot and turned on the radio. A clock hung on the far wall, but he did not consult it. He had internalized the timing of Leonid’s orbits and could place himself at the console within seconds of the first staticky hello from the capsule. The speaker crackled, like a type of echo that preceded the sound it mirrored, and then came Leonid’s voice, raspy, the dryness of his mouth and throat audible.

  “Hello?” said Leonid. It was always a question.

  “I’m here,” said Mars.

  “Hello, Mars! Did you know that your name is also the name of a planet?”

  “I think that’s why Tsiolkovski chose it.”

  “Sometimes I think I’ve spotted it, the planet, but the window is small. More than likely I’ve only seen another star.”

  “Mars would appear red.”

  “It’s a better name for a person than a planet.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Mars, Mars, Mars.”

  “Yes?”

  “Did you know that you can hear your own heartbeat in space, after a while? There’s no other sound but the clicks of the capsule. The beating emerges like something out of a hole. At first, it’s maddening to have a living thing pounding in your head, but soon enough you realize you’re only hearing yourself. How’s that different from thought? Beat-beat-beat becomes your only cognition, and any thoughts you do have are an intrusion. The beat becomes your mind.”

  “What does this new mind tell you?”