The Wanderers

by Meg Howrey

  It was not difficult for the astronauts.

  Helen only expressed anger toward herself, but did not appear to dwell on it. Yoshi allowed himself to express anger at current events, but he always did a meditation after looking at the news uplinks, and that was that. Sergei pretended to be angry for comic effect or as an anger scapegoat for the crew and otherwise waited until he was no longer angry to express anger.

  There were days when Luke was angry with the astronauts for being so perfect, even as he admired them, loved them, really. Right now, Sergei and Helen are cleaning the dishes and Yoshi is vacuuming the floor around the Galley table. Sergei begins to sing “Silent Night.” He has a good singing voice.

  For about three weeks the Obbers were able to observe the same social niceties as the astronauts: courteousness, mindful speaking, respectful consideration of possible cultural differences. Because of their training, and—more powerfully—the constant exemplars of good behavior they observe every day, they have not devolved into outright rudeness or in-fighting, but Luke is aware of crests and troughs of group cohesion. There was this gap: the crew had been chosen in part because of their ability to handle certain kinds of stress, but the members of Mission Control, and even the Obber team, had been chosen for other skills. Yet Mission Control and the Obbers shared certain strains of the same kind of stress.

  “All for one,” Sergei says on the screen. The astronauts stand in a circle and make a stack of their fists. “One for all,” they say, breaking apart. This is nearly the only time they touch each other. They do not hug or kiss cheeks. Sometimes Sergei will put a hand on Yoshi’s shoulder, and sometimes Yoshi does the same to him. No one touches Helen.

  • • •

  “SLEEP WELL,” Helen says. “Thank you for a wonderful Christmas.” The holiday was “hers,” as she is the only native Christmas-er. New Year’s will be Japanese-style, for Yoshi, and Sergei will be hosting a Russian “Old New Year,” on the fourteenth.

  Luke sighs. He’d miscalculated his caffeine intake and he’d drunk too much champagne during his break. He’s not going to be able to go straight to bed.

  Nari says she’s going to catch the shuttle back to the dorms. Luke puts on his running shoes. Prime keeps a clean road between campus and dormitories even in this weather. Luke tries to clear his mind and just run, the way the astronauts could seemingly just do things.

  But he is not an astronaut.

  Helen hadn’t shown to her best advantage in the Christmas video. Sergei was naturally very funny, and Yoshi was endearingly game for anything. Helen had a wonderful sense of humor—sly and dry—but she didn’t do goofy as well as the others. Helen was performing slightly better in the sims than either of her crewmates: fewer mistakes, especially in the eleventh-hour range, where both Sergei and Yoshi tended to rush. And yet, she was no machine. She was creative. She’d made those slippers for Yoshi and another pair for Sergei’s Christmas present, and for Yoshi she’d assembled a sound recording of celestial magnetic fields: Jupiter, the rings of Saturn, the comet 67P. Her harmonica playing was excellent. But Luke is aware that she does not inspire the same affection in people as Sergei and Yoshi do. He’d thought that the female Obbers would be protective of Helen, but if anything they were slightly more critical. Unpacking exactly why Helen didn’t engender sympathy was possibly a window into inherent sexism, but possibly something else.

  It was amazing that Helen was able to have such healthy relationships with men, considering that her father had been in a vegetative state for the entirety of Helen’s adolescence. By all accounts, Helen’s marriage had been happy, although her husband had been considerably older. No surprise there.

  Luke wonders if Helen has ever had to rebuff a male colleague’s romantic overtures. (She is on record for answering “never” to the question of sexual harassment.) In all the conversations Luke has been privy to, he has never heard anyone voice concern over Sergei or Yoshi forming a limerent attachment to Helen, or Helen to either of her crewmates. He wonders whether Helen has checked any signs of this in herself, in word or deed, and he’s missed it because he can’t read her properly yet. Perhaps she has wanted to place a hand on Sergei’s back, to express natural human affection, and has not. (She never has.) Perhaps she would have liked to let her eyes linger on Yoshi’s bare torso while he exercised, to allow herself a moment of sensual appreciation, but did not. (She did not.) Perhaps she thought about it later, when her eyes were closed, and the computers weren’t able to scan for lust.

  Ransom had put out a jar in their office. Every time someone asked them if astronauts ever had sex in space, they were supposed to put in a penny. Luke had wondered if, by the end of the mission, they would have enough to buy the whole Obber team a beer. “By the time the mission is completed,” Ransom said, “we should have enough to buy an island.”

  On a certain level, it was both good and necessary that Helen was not more obviously lovable. Sergei and Yoshi had found the perfect buffer for both Helen’s femaleness and her strength. They had made her a superwoman, not subject to the laws of mortals and, by extension, its vulnerabilities. Helen did not seem to resent this, or feel it a burden. Luke had no way of knowing how deep that went. He—the person who saw all—was shut out. Whatever the astronauts felt about one another, they didn’t say it.

  “Early days, still,” Ransom said.

  Things would get harder. Mars would present technical challenges. And then there was the biggie: the voyage home. If Primitus pushed the limits of acceptable space per person, then Red Dawn—even smaller—would be even more confining; their time inside it would be almost two months longer. And the excitement of the Mars landing would be behind them.

  The astronauts’ success in Primitus was no guarantee for Red Dawn: adaptation was extremely situational.

  They all knew what they were looking for. Crew preoccupation with their environment, noncompliance with schedules or requests communicated from Mission Control, antagonism to external evaluation, prioritization of personal comfort over mission objective. Exacerbation of cultural and language differences, variability in crew cohesion, improper use of leadership roles. These would manifest as lapses of attention, sleep disturbances, psychosomatic illness, emotional lability, irritability, loss of vigor and motivation.

  So far, nothing.

  This was good, of course.

  At least they were throwing out those ridiculous FIRO-B questionnaires and evaluations. Perhaps they could begin to think of what might be the right questions to ask these people. None of the astronauts had availed themselves of the opportunity to use their computer therapists, no surprise, but none of the family had either, which was disappointing. Mireille Kane was the only one who consistently filled out the weekly questionnaire—it was optional—but she went only as far as circling or checking options; she never volunteered feedback.

  Back at the dormitories, Luke makes his way to his room. Some of the Prime engineers had made Christmas displays: elaborately outfitted snow globes suspended from the ceiling and cued to music. They twirled and played when you got close to them. Luke loved the people at Prime for stuff like this. For air hockey battles between Team Trace Toxic Contaminants and Team Nutrient Stability, for naming their pets after mathematicians, for getting upset with the town’s holiday banner on the department store, a concession to multiculturalism that read Peace on earth, which was a fine statement, but the earth had been written with a small e and “If we’re going to capitalize the names of nations, the names of corporations, people’s names, then we have to capitalize Earth!” A special-ops team had been organized and deployed to change the sign at night.

  Luke enters his pod room, a little messy now because of the gifts he’d opened from his family early this morning but not put away. He’d talked to his family on screen today while the crew was exercising. The whole gang had put on the Prime Space T-shirts he sent. They were proud of him. His father, espe
cially. It’s not nothing, to make your father proud.

  “You’re going to be a part of history,” his father said.

  It was a Sergei phrase: “It’s not nothing.” All the astronauts used it. All the Obbers used it now too. They had their own T-shirts with it printed. Prime Space: It’s Not Nothing.

  Luke settles into his bed, thinks of the crew settling into their own beds. He wraps his arms around his body. He spends so much time looking at Sergei and Yoshi and Helen that it’s not always possible to get their images out of his head.

  Perhaps Sergei and Yoshi would like to touch Helen. Perhaps she wants to be touched.

  SERGEI

  It is January 14, Old New Year in the Russian calendar, a day of feasting and carol singing and fortune-telling. The astronauts must celebrate. Perhaps none of them wishes to celebrate; perhaps they all think they would prefer to lie on their person-sized slabs in their wedges and reread messages from home, or marathon-watch a television series, or don sim helmets and stroll along the cliffs of a virtual Cornwall. The brain looks for comfort like a newborn, seeks pleasure like a greedy child, abandons reason like a lovesick teen. Even the kind of brain that recognizes the value of delayed gratification—or has been rigorously trained to accept it—even that brain is capable of justifying slothful regression.

  Sergei believes that complete transparency about his role as commander is crucial to his success as commander, so he does not try to trick or cajole his crewmates into having good times. He says, “Prime believes it is important for us to celebrate and have communal recreation activities, especially during times when we might be tempted to withdraw because we are missing Earth and our families.” He does not say, “I believe,” even though he does agree that it is important. It is too easy to become dull without realizing that you have become dull. Depression and listlessness are marked states, but boring is a slow disease.

  Over the years, the International Space Station has acquired a supply of holiday decor, but on Primitus, size and weight are commodities too precious to be squandered on the premanufactured items of celebration. The astronauts have done their best. Five pieces of paper had been sacrificed to make snowflakes for Christmas, and these still hang over the dining table along with a chime constructed from shiny tools, and utensils not in use. Sergei had programmed the large screen in the Galley/Recreation wedge to play a scene of snow falling. Their mascot, the green alien, has acquired a tiny red paper Santa/Grandfather Frost hat. The astronauts have made alterations to their own appearances to mark the Old New Year. Helen wears a towel on her head, babushka-style. Yoshi sports a mustache made from black electrical tape. Sergei has made himself a beard out of a wad of flameproof insulation. For dinner, they enjoyed rehydrated pork dumplings.

  Sergei places a tray of screws and nuts onto the table. “My sister Galina was the fortune-teller,” Sergei says. “Because she was the youngest and we had a tradition in the family that it was always the youngest girl who did this. We had a game, with beans. The beans were put in a special bag, and you shook it, and then you reached in and grabbed a handful and let them fall into a pot while you made a wish. Then my sister would count the beans and if the number was even, your wish came true, and if odd, too bad.”

  What happens when you become dull is you forget that the story you are telling must be interesting to other people, or you forget that you have already told the story. You say, “I may have told you this” and proceed anyway, even if your listeners appear to recognize the anecdote. Or you tell no stories at all. Sergei produces a clean sock and puts the screws and nuts he has collected into the sock.

  “Helen is the youngest woman here,” Sergei says. “So she shall count the beans.” He is feeling homesick for people who do not require translations or explanations, even though both Helen and Yoshi are conversant with Russian holidays, have celebrated them with cosmonauts before. Helen and Yoshi probably know more about Russian traditions than a lot of Russians. But for them it will always be knowing about these things, not simply knowing them. Sergei thinks of his youngest sister, Galina. She had been the prettiest and the sweetest of his sisters, and now she was fat, and a lesbian, and lived in Germany. He didn’t mind about the lesbian and the Germany. Russia was not the place to live if you were gay. It was one of the reasons.

  Well.

  Galina was very bitter against their parents for various things that they’d all had to put up with. She had something that she called her “personal story” and she did nothing but tell this personal story over and over again. Sometimes she called it her “voice” or her “truth.” Sergei had felt very bad for Galina when he heard her personal story the first time, but now it was just annoying.

  Thinking of his sister makes Sergei feel depressed, which he was already feeling this week, a little, because of missing his boys. It’s not a problem. Being depressed is not the worst thing. It depends on how you address the feeling. Perhaps Sergei is luckier than his crewmates. Americans always desire happiness, so they fear sadness, unlike Russians, who can draw strength from mourning. The Japanese too, Sergei understands, have an easier relationship with melancholy. Sergei is very glad that Helen is a woman and not a man. Depressed American men on spaceships are embarrassing.

  “Do you have your wish ready?” Helen asks Yoshi.

  “When I was little, I wished I would be a cosmonaut, so this is very powerful magic,” Sergei tells them. “That was my wish every year, except for one year, when I wished that Ama Yevchenka would fall in love with me. Of course, it was always a joke, no one took it seriously, but there was always a moment, just when you reached in the bag, that maybe you were serious. A wish is always serious, even if the game is silly.”

  He would never sit around with his family and tell fortunes again. Not with the family he grew up with. His childhood was not only over, but tarnished. “You all wanted me to be the pretty little girl,” Galina had screamed at their mother. “Your sweet, pretty little girl. Always happy little girl.” She had a point. Sergei would be honest and say that he much preferred Galina when she was happy and pretty and sweet and not a bitter, angry, fat person.

  “And did Ama Yevchenka fall in love with you?” Helen asks.

  “Yes, of course. But she cut her hair, and I did not love her with the same force.”

  They all laugh.

  It would kill him, it would absolutely kill him, if all Dmitri has in his soul when he is Galina’s age is a story of how people had hurt him. It would also be very sad if Dmitri became fat. Ilya you could almost see becoming fat quite late in his life, after a dancing career. Not fat, but with a hard, protruding belly that he would be proud of and that women would find attractive. When Ilya was a baby he would often stand with his feet apart and his belly thrust out, smiling, very proud.

  “I am ready,” Yoshi says. “I have my wish.”

  “What is it, Yakov?” Sergei asks. It is his joke to call Yoshi Yakov sometimes. People like to have family nicknames.

  “We are supposed to name our wish out loud?”

  “No.” Sergei shakes his head.

  Yoshi is always very willing. Sergei thinks that, of the three of them, Yoshi has adapted best to their environment, is the most genuinely content and happy. Helen’s performance is very good, but sometimes Sergei has spotted a watchfulness that might also be anxiousness, or near anxiousness.

  They would all be perfectly happy if any of this was real.

  Helen and Yoshi bend forward as Helen counts. Sergei has given them a silly children’s game and because they are two of the most capable people in the current population of people, they will do their best to play it well. Sergei wishes that he had something better to give them.

  “There is another tradition,” he says, “for Old New Year. It is to plunge into cold water. A lake or a river. At midnight. I have done this with my sons, when we would vacation in the Crimea. Dmitri hated it, but he would try to hi
de this and be brave. Ilya loved it. They won’t do it without me. Of course, they can’t where they are now. New Jersey is not the Crimea. They’d get arrested.”

  And the Crimea was not the Crimea anymore. Miss Earth? Pfuff. The things he missed were mostly ghosts.

  His father had made him do the New Year’s plunge. For purification, he said. Jumping into a pond in northwestern Moscow in January is no joke. Sergei had been afraid.

  How do you help your son conquer fear without hurting him? Sergei was not born with courage. He’d had to force himself. He’s needed to hate himself, hate the weak part, conquer it.

  And so, he had taken his own sons to do what he had hated doing himself. The first time, they were so small. When he next sees Dmitri, they will maybe be the same size. But that first run into the sea in January, Dmitri had needed to tilt his head almost all the way back to look up at him. Ilya too, but Ilya didn’t look up so often. Dmitri had gripped his hand, trying to tell Sergei that he did not like what was happening, this thing his father was making him do. Sergei could barely hold on to Ilya, he was angry that his father was holding him back. Sergei had looked down at Dmitri and wondered if all his weaknesses had been siphoned off and gathered in this small person, and he had wanted to beg his son’s forgiveness. And he’d looked down at Ilya and seen the self that he’d fought so hard to acquire, and he’d envied him. He takes no credit for the joy that Ilya feels but must accept all the blame for any suffering of Dmitri’s. “It is not so cold, the water,” he’d said to him. And to Ilya, “Don’t let go of my hand,” because already his hand was loose in Sergei’s grip. But they still did turn to him, and await his signal. Would they turn to him now? No, they were too old, and his signal was not so important. But there had been a time when they had, and he’d told them when to run, and the feast of that epiphany was the sound of his sons’ laughter and their high, fierce shouts, like wolves, and the sight of those skinny legs and knobby arms that returned to him, to be carried out, and the way they held him without noticing they were holding him.