First Cosmic Velocity

by Zach Powers

  “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.

  “So I did,” said Tsiolkovski. “What about tea?”

  “There’s a cup right in front of you,” said Varvara.

  He patted at the table until his hand found it. He snaked one knuckly finger through the handle and held the cup in front of him without drinking from it. A picture of Nadya was printed on the side. With his other hand, Tsiolkovski returned the hollow horn to his ear.

  “Is your brother with you?” asked Tsiolkovski.

  “He’s gone. Dead.” The bitter taste returned to Leonid’s mouth.

  “Nonsense.”

  “He went to space.”

  “I know that, of course.”

  “He died there.” Leonid’s voice cracked.

  “Nonsense. I spoke to him just yesterday.” Tsiolkovski gestured to the far corner of the cottage with the teacup, sloshing tea over his hand and onto the table.

  In the corner, an old radio, components stacked a meter high, dominated the space that had once contained Grandmother’s dresser. The shiny metal surfaces, silver knobs, and glass-covered meters looked entirely out of place. Like Sputnik in a medieval painting. Like Leonid felt now sitting in his own home.

  “I believe you’re mistaken,” said Nadya.

  “Where’s my tea?” asked Tsiolkovski.

  “In your hand,” said Varvara.

  “You’re mistaken,” repeated Nadya.

  “Who’s that?” asked Tsiolkovski.

  “Our guests were just leaving.”

  “Good riddance. You tell those inbred villagers to stay away from me. God knows what germs they carry.”

  “I’ll tell them.”

  Varvara led Nadya and Leonid from the table and outside. Leonid looked back. He had a view of the radio through the crack in the door until it closed completely.

  “I apologize for my husband,” said Varvara.

  Looking at her, Leonid saw that she was much younger than Tsiolkovski, maybe by decades. How could she tolerate sharing space with the man’s ramblings? He remembered the patience of Grandmother, the wisdom that led villagers to seek her out when they needed advice.

  “He must be old now,” said Leonid. He prodded a mound of black dirt with his foot, uncovering the wet muck underneath.

  “One hundred and eight. I think there’s something about this cottage that lends the men who live here long life.”

  “It didn’t work for my brother.”

  “You really don’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  “Your brother’s alive. Even now, he orbits the planet. My husband might be senile, but he’s not wrong about that. I’ve listened to their conversations. Every few days, my husband turns on the radio and speaks to him.” She pointed up at the trees. “There’s an antenna run throughout the woods, and a transmitter farther along. I wasn’t convinced that it was really Leonid he was talking to, not until now. You and your brother have the same voice.”

  Mykola and Kasha were up the hill, playing together as if the years had not passed, as if Mykola were still a child and this Kasha were her mother. But back then, they did not play together like this. Mykola had been too fatigued by hunger. He played now the way he probably wished he could have played as a child, reclaiming some missed part of his youth.

  “That’s impossible.” Sweat slicked Leonid’s palms. His mind raced through all the statistics he knew of Vostok. The exact numbers escaped him, but the amount of air in the tanks was measured in days, not months. Water would have lasted a week, and food less than that, even if his brother rationed it.

  “There must be some mistake,” said Nadya. “They’re all dead. Every one of them.” She placed her hand on Leonid’s shoulder and squeezed so hard it hurt.

  “All but one, it seems,” said Varvara.

  Leonid backed one step at a time from the cottage, pulling free of Nadya’s grip. The land sloped away, threatening to topple him. He had not openly grieved his brother, but now realized that he had processed through grief the same as anyone. Maybe it was that the news came in this place, his and his brother’s home. He had come here perhaps for closure, but instead found the feeble sutures that held the wound shut ripped open to reveal his fresh red interior. He tried to speak, but he was panting.

  “You two, the Leonids,” said Varvara, “it’s not surprising that one of you would survive against the odds. You survived this place, the famine and the purges. Konstantin, he wanted you to go first, but the Chief Designer saved you until the end. I think the Chief Designer knew that with time his capsule would improve, and combined with your perseverance, one of you would have the best chance to make it through the harsh reality of space. He held off on his best chance of success, denying himself heaven until he knew he had equipment worthy of his conqueror. But it never was worthy, was it? Or was it that we were not worthy to go there? At least not to go there and return.”

  It was all too much. Leonid planted his feet and balled his fists. “There’s no such place as heaven. My brother escaped the hell of this valley only to be sent somewhere worse. Now you tell me he’s alive, when that clearly can’t be true. To hell with your husband, and with you, too, for playing along. Though I suppose you’re already there.”

  Leonid spun and walked straight toward the woods that separated the cottage from the village. He wanted to disappear there among the trees. He wanted the fir needles to wrap him like a blanket. He wanted to sink into the earth, deeper and deeper until the liquid rock below boiled him. He was sick of the metaphors of heaven and hell, and wanted to know one of them for real. One piece of reality, that was all he wanted. One thing that was not a trick or a lie. He felt he had deceived even himself by believing that there was something in the valley waiting for him. Instead, he had found only the bastard who had begun all the lies in the first place. Goddamned Tsiolkovski.

  Kasha barked. She had left Mykola on the hill and was scratching at the door of the cottage, leaving bright gashes like shooting stars on the gray surface of the wood.

  “She hears him,” said Varvara.

  “Tsiolkovski?” asked Nadya.

  “It’s about the right time.” She spoke to Leonid’s back. “Konstantin must have turned on the radio. He speaks to your brother even now.”

  She opened the door, and Kasha flashed through the crack and inside. Nadya and Varvara followed. Leonid hesitated.

  Nadya stopped at the doorway and walked back to Leonid. “Are you coming?”

  “I won’t let myself fall for another lie.”

  “What is a lie, Leonid? Mere words. It’s even less than
words, because they’re words with nothing behind them. I’m willing to risk that this is a lie for any small chance that it might be the truth.

  “I think that’s what you never understood. Risk. Not you, not the Chief Designer, not the other twins, not even Ignatius. You all believe I regret that my sister died in my place. I do, of course. I’m not heartless. But I carry a grudge against her, too. I should have been the first person in space. Whatever small chance there was that someone would survive the trip, that chance was mine. Don’t you sometimes feel the same thing for your brother?”

  Her eyes, usually set and cold, softened in the corners. The line of her lips turned up, however slightly.

  “But it’s more than that,” she said. “Following you here, seeing you in this place, it’s helped me realize something about myself. It wasn’t traveling in space that was stolen from me, it was the return. An orbit is a perfect journey. From the moment of the launch, an orbit is designed to bring you home at the end. I’m not sure I’ll ever know where home is unless I close the circle. I’ll just continue on in a straight line forever, drawing farther and farther away from those few people I care about.”

  Leonid dug his toe into the bed of brown needles at the edge of the woods. “I’m here in my home, and I can tell you for sure that there’s nothing special about returning.”

  “Don’t lie to me, Leonid, and don’t lie to yourself. I saw your face as you first saw this cottage.”

  “We’re all liars. We’ve been trained to lie since the day Tsiolkovski claimed us.”

  She held out her hand to Leonid.

  “You may not like my decision, the risks I will take, but I promise you this: I will never tell you anything but the truth.”

  Leonid searched her face. For the first time he saw something of Nadya’s sister there. The physical features, of course, had always been the same, but now some of the other Nadya’s warmth was there, as well. This was the face of the girl who had held and rocked him when he woke in tears those first weeks in Star City. The loss of this face was what he had grieved. If it could return now, years after he thought it gone forever, then it seemed possible that his brother could still return, as well. It seemed possible that if he climbed onto the roof of Grandmother’s cottage, he could see his brother coursing among the stars.

  Leonid took Nadya’s hand.

  “I believe you,” he said.

  It had only been a matter of days since Leonid made his escape, since he claimed domain over his own life, and he was already ceding it back to someone else. But no, he realized that he had always thought of his plan as Nadya’s escape. Though he had chosen the destinations, he had gone as much for her as for himself. Nadya was the one who everyone followed. Every cosmonaut and engineer. Every Soviet citizen. The whole world. The future lay where she led it.

  Nadya pulled Leonid toward the door. He entered Grandmother’s cottage for what he knew would be the final time.

  Bohdan, Ukraine—1950

  Grandmother and Mykola stood in the cottage doorway long after the sound of the train had faded from the valley. Now it seemed the quietest place imaginable, as if the very air had departed, as well. Grandmother turned her attention to the boy beside her, not her grandsons, but all that was left of them.

  “You’re always welcome here,” she said.

  “Will you be all right?” asked Mykola.

  She shifted in place, her worn shoes rasping on the wooden floor.

  “Have I ever told you the story of the man who our village is named after? Bohdan Zinoviy Mykhaylovych Khmelnytsky commanded hundreds of men in service to the Polish crown. At this time, the Cossacks were considered inferior forces, used only by Polish generals for menial tasks or as fodder for first charges in battle. Khmelnytsky’s small force, however, earned a reputation for ferocity and for turning defeat into victory. At the sight of his flag on the battlefield, the Ottoman forces would retreat before a single arrow was launched. It’s no exaggeration to say that the Polish empire lasted as long as it did because of Khmelnytsky. It’s ironic then that he also factored into its collapse.

  “A hero returning from war expects to be treated as such, but before he arrived back at his home in Subotiv, Khmelnytsky could tell by the black columns of smoke that something was amiss. He could not, however, have predicted the tragedy that awaited him. His home and the outlying buildings of his estate moldered from recent fires. Livestock lay slaughtered in his fields. Beside the first cottage he came to, where one of his cousins lived, he mistook for a pile of dirt the heaped bodies of his kin. At the apex of the pile, like the snow that once capped the mountains surrounding our valley, was Khmelnytsky’s eldest son, beaten so badly that Khmelnytsky could only recognize him by the clothes he wore, a shirt that had once belonged to Khmelnytsky himself. Only a few flies had found the bodies. He rooted through the pile, familiar faces made strange by rigor. His other children were not among them. Nor his wife.

  “From across the field ran several figures, and he recognized his daughter at the forefront. She wore only her nightclothes, barefoot. The others with her, his other sons and a few of his younger cousins, were also disheveled, but all seemed healthy. He searched among their faces for his wife, but she was not with them, either.

  “He hugged his children tight to his chest even as he ordered his attendant to reassemble his soldiers. Could the Ottomans have struck at him in his own home? But no, they were too far away. This was not revenge. He couldn’t fathom then what it might be. His daughter—Khmelnytsky would always remember that her eyes were dry, and he would always try to live up to her strength—said that the soldiers who came spoke Polish. She pointed in the direction they had fled.

  “Khmelnytsky didn’t wait for any of his own soldiers to join him. He mounted his horse and tore across the countryside until he found the tracks left by the men who had killed his son, a sizable force judging by the utter muck made of the trail by their progress. The forest thickened, the trail narrowed, but Khmelnytsky urged the horse on even as branches whipped at mount and rider both. Blood dripped from gashes on Khmelnytsky’s cheeks and arms.

  “Entering a clearing, he espied another column of smoke. Around it were several tents and a contingent of men and horses, maybe thirty of each. As he neared, he spotted one figure hunched among the tall, gloating Poles. It was his wife, sitting by the fire, leaning into its warmth as if to throw herself to the flames. Khmelnytsky made no attempt to conceal himself, driving down on the encampment full gallop. It took the Poles too long to notice him and far too long to react. Before the sentry had unsheathed his sword Khmelnytsky’s blade removed the man’s arm. The soldiers, sitting around the fire or dozing against the trunks of trees fell in quick succession. Khmelnytsky’s horse kicked up a cloud of dust that hid him as if in the black mists of hell, scattering the logs of the fire and launching sparking embers on high arcs through the sky. The nearest tent ignited.

  “Khmelnytsky dismounted and placed his horse between his wife, whose hands and feet were bound, and the soldiers streaming from their tents. The blood from the scratches on Khmelnytsky’s face had crusted into red-brown stains in his beard. He seethed, hulking in heaving breaths, his muscles bulged by the rage that consumed him. One of the Poles advanced. Khmelnytsky slashed with his sword, and the Pole tried to parry but the blow was so strong that the sword fell from his hands. Before he could think to stoop and retrieve it, Khmelnytsky delivered the fatal blow. Two more soldiers fell as quickly as the first. The rest turned to flee, the demon before them so terrifying, something born of the leaping flames.

  “But turning their backs was a mistake. They could offer no defense to the barrage of slashes that befell them. They all died as cowards, asses to their fears, faces planted in the black dirt.”

  “I’m not sure I like this story,” said Mykola.

  “You know,” said Grandmother, “I never told the twins the whole story of Khmelnytsk
y’s life. I always stopped here. The real darkness comes after. But I like this ending, with Khmelnytsky returning home. Sad, yes, but also triumphant. He had a home worth defending and found a way to defend it. That’s why I was willing to let the twins leave. This cottage, the village, the valley—none of that will be the home they one day return to in triumph. Even if they do return to the valley, somewhere else will be their true home, other people their true family. One can’t have two homes. One can’t be leaving home and heading toward it both at the same time.”

  “Will you miss them?”

  “Won’t you?”

  Star City, Russia—1964

  It had been half a decade since the training facilities were last this crowded. A man—the Chief Designer thought his name was Kolya, though he would not swear to it—sat in the Khilov swing, blindfolded, as Mishin and Bushuyev spun it around. Kolya’s brow dripped with sweat, the beads practically bursting from his pores. All color had fled his face. The Chief Designer recognized the peculiar pinch of Kolya’s mouth.

  “Step back,” called the Chief Designer across the room.

  Mishin and Bushuyev released the swing, one a little sooner than the other, which sent it wobbling as well as spinning. Kolya heaved once, and then spewed his breakfast all over the floor, just at their feet. They backed away, almost into Giorgi’s mural on the back wall. The huge head of Nadya stared at the Chief Designer with a stern expression, Leonid with a winning smile.

  The Chief Designer clapped his hands together once, and a custodian came in from the hallway. The mop he carried was new, though this was far from the first puddle of vomit. Kolya alone had accounted for two dozen cleanups. The Chief Designer worried that he would blow his entire budget on mops and buckets if things continued the way they were.

  On the vibration platform sat Galina. She had seized the control knob from one of the technicians and operated it herself, upping the oscillations past what a cosmonaut would experience even reentering the atmosphere. Her expression was similar to Kolya’s, but the Chief Designer knew it was not due to illness. He had come across her one evening using the platform to achieve orgasm. She had not seen him, and he had never mentioned it. Who was he to judge? He had committed worse acts. But at least he kept his secret. Here Galina was in a room full of people making only the feeblest attempt to hide her pleasure. The Chief Designer looked away.