First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  * * *

  • • •

  THE LEONIDS WERE the only ones outside in the village. The windows of all the cottages gaped open, but no noise came from inside, no motion could be seen. It was impossible to tell which ones were occupied and which were vacant. Who was alive and who was dead. Because an empty home tended to stay that way.

  They passed beyond the cottages and into the forest, huffing up the straw-lined ground at the base of the mountain. Leonid watched his younger brother’s legs, barely more than twigs. And his face like a skull with skin painted on. Some of the younger children, those who had managed to stay alive, had fat bellies, like they had eaten too much. Leonid did not understand how both eating too much and not eating enough could cause the same condition.

  Farther up the hill, two villagers crouched on either side of a box. The open side was down, and they were reaching under it, propping up one side with a stick. It was a squirrel trap, the same kind the children of the village made at the end of each summer, when the squirrels were busiest foraging food for winter. But these were adults, and Leonid had not seen a squirrel in months.

  The younger Leonid knelt beside the box and lowered his head to peek through the gap.

  “If you use a longer stick,” he said, “and prop the box from the inside, it’s easier for a squirrel to trigger it.”

  “These are the sticks we have,” said the woman, Mrs. Oliynyk. She clipped each word she spoke. Her hair had turned white since the last time Leonid saw her.

  The younger Leonid stood and wandered deeper into the forest. The older Leonid did not follow. Just the thought of taking another step made him feel tired. And anyway, he could see his brother through the bare branches. If they could see each other, then they were still as good as together.

  The younger Leonid did not go far, bending down and fishing a long, thin branch from the dry needles on the forest floor. He returned to Mrs. Oliynyk.

  “Here’s a longer stick,” he said.

  She took it, an expression squeezing her face from all around toward the point of her nose. The older Leonid was not sure if she would use the stick to prop the box or to whip his brother for interfering. Mrs. Kharms slid out from under the trap. She took the stick from Mrs. Oliynyk and ducked back underneath. The woman’s fingers did not look much different from the stick they clutched.

  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Kharms. Her voice sounded trapped.

  “There aren’t any squirrels,” said the older Leonid. “And you need bait. If you have bait, you’re better off just eating it yourself.”

  Mrs. Oliynyk snapped her head to him. “What else are we supposed to do?”

  Mrs. Kharms managed to get the box balanced and slowly withdrew her hand.

  “Our bait is an old bone,” she said. “We’re not catching squirrels. We’re trying to catch the dog.”

  “Kasha?” asked the younger Leonid.

  “I didn’t know it had a name.”

  Kasha had spent less time in the village lately, but when she did appear, she seemed as healthy as before, like she had some secret source of food. A few of the men in the village had tried to catch her, after the supply of cats was exhausted, but she darted away, a white flash that quickly left her would-be captors behind. The Leonids did not tell any of the villagers that they knew where Kasha went, a small cave, barely more than an indentation at the base of the rocky part of the mountain. They did not know where she might be finding food.

  “She,” said the younger Leonid.

  “What?” asked Mrs. Kharms.

  “Kasha is female.”

  “Stop it!” said Mrs. Oliynyk. She pushed herself up and took stumbling steps down the hill. She slipped on a patch of fallen needles and almost toppled back. Kicking at the ground as if in retaliation, she continued on her way.

  “She ate her own cat last week,” said Mrs. Kharms.

  “You’ll never catch Kasha,” said the younger Leonid.

  “I hope not,” she said, patting out a rhythm on the top of the trap as if the box were a drum. “But we have to try. We’re alive and part of being alive is trying to stay that way for as long as possible.” She stopped drumming. “When one of the other villagers dies, I feel a little glad. I’m not glad that they died, but it means that there will be that much more food for me. Hunger shows us our selfishness.”

  “Grandmother always gives us larger portions than she takes herself,” said the younger Leonid, “so can’t it also show the opposite, as well? If someone can give when their body tells them to take, take, take, isn’t that good?”

  The older Leonid had not noticed that Grandmother took less food at meals. Whenever the plates were set, he began eating right away, burying his face in the food like a wild animal. Red heat rose in his face, a hollow feeling at the base of his throat to match the one he always had in his stomach. Shame.

  “Maybe hunger reveals the good and the bad in us,” said Mrs. Kharms. “Maybe it reveals what type of people we are.”

  “Like Oksana,” said the older Leonid.

  Mrs. Kharms smiled and looked sad at the same time. “She was a good one.” She rested her hand on the younger Leonid’s shoulder. “That’s one of the joys of being young, that most of your decisions are yet to come. I hope you boys have the chance to make many good decisions.”

  She drummed each of her fingers on top of the box, four beats. She took ginger steps down the hill and into the village where she disappeared among the cottages.

  The younger Leonid kicked under the mouth of the trap and dislodged the stick, pulling his foot out just before the box thumped to the ground.

  “What are you doing?” asked the older Leonid.

  “What Mrs. Kharms told us to do.”

  “Ruining her trap?”

  “Kasha is a good dog, yes? Then how can it not be good to protect her?”

  “People are starving. They’ll still try to catch her. This trap isn’t the first try, and it won’t be the last.”

  “We’re all already in the trap together. The valley itself is the trap.”

  The younger Leonid walked in a direction away from the village, deeper into the forest. The sun had crested the mountain, and the trees cast latticework shadows, shifting stripes along the bony contours of his body.

  “Where are you going?” asked the older Leonid.

  “To Kasha’s cave.”

  The older Leonid glanced back to make sure no one was watching. He followed.

  * * *

  • • •

  GRANDMOTHER RETURNED to the cottage with a small basket half-full of objects that appeared to be mostly edible. She set the basket on the table and removed the items one by one, arranging them according to a system that Leonid did not understand. Objects that looked like tree nuts but shriveled and gray she put in a pile next to a stack of leaves that still had patches of green on them. Next to that, she clustered blades of the bitter grass that still managed to grow in the valley’s open areas. Some bark that she would boil into what she called, with a bitter grin, stew.

  The older Leonid peeked into the basket, but she pulled it away before he could see anything. He suspected that, like many of the villagers, she had collected bugs, and that they were added to the stew with the tree bark. He decided he would rather not know if that was the case and did not try to look in the basket again. Grandmother placed it on the high shelf over the stove, next to the other empty baskets.

  “Did you find anything?” she asked.

  The older Leonid pulled a few sere and partially rotted blackberries from his pocket. They felt like pebbles and made a tapping noise as he dropped them on the table.

  “And . . .” he said.

  Kasha barked. Grandmother started and looked around the cottage, stopping at the bed where the younger Leonid sat, and beside him, Kasha.

  “Kasha,” she said, lo
oking from the dog to the younger Leonid and back again. “The villagers have been trying to catch her for weeks.”

  The younger Leonid sprung to his feet. “We can’t let them.”

  Grandmother turned to the older Leonid. He nodded. She reached her fingertips into the pile of nuts on the table and spread them around.

  “If the villagers find out,” she said, “they’ll be furious. Perhaps even dangerous.”

  “Then we won’t let them find out,” said the younger Leonid.

  “We can keep her here?” asked the older.

  “They shouldn’t have eaten their cats,” said Grandmother. “And the meat of one dog won’t make any difference in the long run. It’s better to be hungry than full in the belly but empty in the heart.”

  She clapped her hands. Kasha bounded across the room, stopping at Grandmother’s feet. Grandmother scratched Kasha behind the ears.

  “Strange that a dog should teach us humanity,” she said. “Have I ever told you the story of the man who our village is named after?”

  * * *

  • • •

  “WHEN BOHDAN ZINOVIY Mykhaylovych Khmelnytsky escaped the Ottomans, he headed swiftly home. There were no trains then, of course, and he had no money, his only possessions his clothes and the sword he had seized and with which he had severed the head of his friend the admiral. Khmelnytsky found work on a boat heading up the Dnieper River, a route that would eventually lead him close to his family estate in Subotiv. He escaped slavery only to once again become an oarsman. The captain of the boat, though a Cossack, had none of the nobility of the Ottoman admiral. This captain whipped the oarsmen when he felt their progress up the river was too slow. No one could ever accuse Khmelnytsky of rowing slowly, but the captain didn’t need a real reason to whip someone. He was a man who enjoyed the pain of others.

  “The first and only lash Khmelnytsky would receive across his broad back came as he helped maneuver the boat around a tangle of drifting branches in the middle of the river. The currents there flowed in unexpected eddies. The captain barked orders, and every time the crew followed them, they encountered another current or a fresh snag. The oarsmen grew weary. The captain and his hired hands, a group of brute men who stank of the baked sweat that they seldom washed from their skin, men chosen specifically for their viciousness, never offered to assist at the oars. To Khmelnytsky, these men were fat and lazy, and worse, incompetent. Any word they spoke impeded the boat’s progress. Their orders kept Khmelnytsky far away from his home.

  “Bear in mind that he had no idea if his estate at Subotiv still existed, and if it did, if it still belonged to his family. His father was dead. Khmelnytsky himself had been absent for years. He had cousins, but they were still just boys. It would have been no matter at all for a rival to claim the land. Khmelnytsky’s family might be dispersed across all Ukraine. He might have no home to return to.

  “These were his thoughts when the whip fell. He did not flinch. Blood welled up from the wound and soaked through the back of his shirt. He continued rowing. They were in a particularly quick current, and without his strength at the oar, the boat would slip back down the river. The captain ordered the boat hard to port, an order that would have exposed the side of the boat to the strongest current. No, called Khmelnytsky, and directed the prow through the oncoming water. He bade the men to row harder, and they rowed harder for him, harder than they ever had for the captain. The boat sliced through the strongest of the current and into the gentler stream near the inner bank of a bend.

  “Once the boat was well clear of the current, Khmelnytsky barked his second order, to shore the boat. The captain tried to countermand him, but the oarsmen were exhausted and no one who heard it could disobey the booming voice of Khmelnytsky. The captain raised his whip, but Khmelnytsky sprung to his feet and grabbed the captain’s wrist with a hand that had spent years wrapped around the handle of an oar. The captain yelped, a sound like a small animal. Khmelnytsky spoke a single No and released the captain’s wrist and then helped to finish rowing. That was the last of the captain’s whipping.

  “The oarsmen rested on the bank, Khmelnytsky off by himself. He heard, though, even from afar, mention of his name. The story of his escape from the Turks, it seemed, had spread quickly through the town at the end of the river. And to that tale, now the oarsmen added their own. At each port some men left and others joined the crew, and each who left took with them Khmelnytsky’s name.

  “It was in this way that when Khmelnytsky finally arrived at the port near Subotiv, his mother waited for him on the dock. Khmelnytsky’s story had outpaced him up the river. His mother had known for days already that he was coming home.”

  Star City, Russia—1964

  Leonid awoke to sunlight glaring through his window. In his years at Star City he had never slept much past dawn, and during the winter he rose well before the sun. At first he thought he was in another hotel. The preceding month had been an endless string of them, visiting every planetarium in Russia, searching every trash heap in every city for a dog. In a way, he had become used to waking up in unfamiliar surroundings. Now he recognized his own room but at the same time did not. Spots he had always taken for shadows turned out to be water stains on the walls. In one corner, dust piled thick and dark.

  The search for dogs had yielded nothing. It seemed there was no other dog as pure white as Kasha. None as small and strange as that little mutant Byelka. Leonid suspected that Byelka would not survive even a single night on the street. The rats would eat him alive. He could have no stray counterpart. The only place to find another like him was the dacha of a party official. The size of one’s dog seemed inversely proportional to one’s political power.

  A knock came on his door, and it opened before Leonid could answer. The lock had never worked. Giorgi bounded in, yanked the sheet off Leonid, and slapped him on the thigh.

  “Arise, ye Russian people!” Giorgi sang the song from Alexander Nevsky. He was always making the other cosmonauts watch old films.

  “What time is it?” asked Leonid.

  “It’s Sunday. Does time even matter?”

  “What do you want?”

  “It’s actually pleasant outside, and I’ve managed to gather enough people for volleyball. Well, almost enough. We need one more, and that’s you.”

  “What would you have done if I wasn’t wearing underwear when you pulled the sheet away?”

  “Looked in the other direction.” He started singing again. “Arise, ye Russian people, to glorious battle, to a battle to the death.”

  “It’s too early for a battle to the death.”

  Giorgi came around the side of the bed and shoved Leonid to the floor.

  “It’s nearly noon,” he said, “and you’re out of bed already.”

  “Let me put on clothes at least.”

  “If you insist. Outside in five minutes.”

  Giorgi slammed the door on his way out of the room.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE VOLLEYBALL NET spanned a stretch of manicured grass in the long empty quad that ran parallel to the dormitories. Both sides of the quad were lined with trees like a green-walled hallway. Giorgi had jury-rigged posts from a pair of wooden rods that Leonid recognized as belonging to the anechoic chamber, and the net had been woven from old orange restraining harnesses. A crude construction, but it was still nicer than the ratty net they used in the gymnasium.

  Whichever side Giorgi was on inevitably won. Not just for volleyball, but for any of the games he organized. Soccer. Hockey. Basketball when the weather was bad and they had to play something indoors. In any one-on-one sport, he dominated, as well. He once smashed a table tennis ball so hard it left a bruise on the Chief Designer’s arm after the bounce.

  Today, Leonid was on the opposite side of the net from Giorgi, who teamed up with Nadya, Mishin and Bushuyev, and two younger technician
s Leonid knew by sight but not name. Leonid’s own team consisted of himself and the entire cafeteria staff, each of them still in their white uniforms, stained with the grease of breakfast. Leonid had missed breakfast and regretted it now. He felt weak and slow. Jumping seemed as difficult as the first heaving lift of a rocket. Giorgi rained down spikes, and all Leonid could do was watch. When a spike came directly at him, Leonid made half an effort to pass it, the other half of him concerned with simply getting out of the way. The first set went to Giorgi’s team. Then the second. Then the third.

  Giorgi cajoled the group into another game, reorganizing the teams so that everyone switched sides except him and Nadya and Leonid. The temperature rose with the sun. The men removed their shirts, except Mishin, or was it Bushuyev, who had grown a potbelly over the last year. Sweat drenched his shirt, turning the fabric translucent, letting everyone see what was underneath anyway.

  In the second game, Giorgi chose to play setter, so instead of him spiking it was usually Nadya. This did not help Leonid much, who still watched the ball whistle by more often than not, and his new team seemed equally unable to keep the ball off the ground. Another three sets all to Giorgi’s team. Leonid was not sure if his own team’s combined points from the whole match would have been enough to win even a single set. He doubted it.

  After the second match, everyone gathered in the shade of the trees lined up along the side of the quad. The cafeteria staff had brought food on ice and unpacked it, spreading out several blankets and arranging a small feast on top of them. Dark bread, cheeses, pickled fish, vegetables—also pickled. Sometimes it seemed that they would pickle anything. They had a patch in the garden dedicated to dill, and by the end of summer the whole plot was bare, picked clean. Leonid was used to the flavor, but now, glossy with sweat and dry in the mouth, he thought it tasted wrong, like something spoiled.

  Giorgi pulled one of the blankets and everything on top of it a few meters to the side, from the shade into the sun. Dishes and flatware clinked together. He laid back on the sunny corner of the blanket, still shirtless, skin hale and golden.