The Fated Sky

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  I gave Clemons a firm “I’ll think about it” and walked out of the conference room, down the hall, to the stairs, across to the engineering wing, and straight into Nathaniel’s office. He looked up from a set of plans on the drafting table with a smile.

  The smile dropped to the desk with his pencil. “What’s wrong?”

  37, 41, 43 … I shut the door carefully … 47, 53, 59 … As carefully, I inhaled and folded my hands neatly together as my mother had taught me. “Clemons asked me to go to Mars.”

  “What?”

  “He said that there were funding issues?” My body seemed to be five feet in front of me, down a long tunnel. “Nicole had mentioned something about it too, on the moon.”

  “Yeah…” Nathaniel pulled out a worn Eames chair, beckoning to me to sit at his desk. “President Denley is—he hasn’t made any public statements, but according to Clemons, he’s apparently considering gutting the space program, despite our agreements with the UN.”

  I sank onto the leather seat, which creaked with my weight. “That would be … Clemons told me that he wanted me as ‘the face of the IAC’ to get out in front of public opinion.” I stared at my hands, which were tight with anxiety. “He even said he was wrong for blocking women in the space program, and that I was right about needing us to prove that space was safe.”

  Nathaniel whistled. “I didn’t realize things were getting that bad.”

  “My exact reaction.”

  He leaned down and opened his desk drawer. Inside was an eagle I’d started making out of punch cards the last time I was home. He bent down to pull it out, so I couldn’t see his face when he asked, “Do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.” Past Nathaniel, a fan sat on the edge of his desk, oscillating back and forth to try to cool the room. “I mean … Mars. But it’s three years.”

  “Minimum.” He set the eagle, my tiny brass sewing scissors, and a pot of paste in a neat row next to me. “If it were only three months, would you want to go?”

  “Yes. Obviously.”

  His gaze lifted up to me. “And if I weren’t in the equation? But it was still three years?”

  I inhaled slowly and let it out again. “Yes. Probably. I don’t know. I’d miss Tommy’s graduation. And Aunt Esther’s hundredth birthday.” I needed something to do with my hands before I wrung them into pieces. Which is why, no doubt, Nathaniel had pulled my eagle out of his drawer. I reached into the trash for a discarded punch card. It shook a little as I pulled it out. “It’s just … Clemons wants me to be out in front.”

  “So a lot of press conferences.” He winced, knowing my … idiosyncrasies.

  “Yeah. And I would also be playing catch-up to the rest of the team. They’ve been training for fourteen months already.” It was mad to even consider it, but that same yearning that got me into the space program in the first place jumped up and down and tugged on my heart like a five-year-old pointing at the circus. I could go and see and explore and fly under a different sky and … “Would you go?”

  “Yes. If I could do this…” He waved a hand toward his desk. Papers stacked in the untidy angles of his midproject mind. A model for one of the second Mars Expedition ships stood in a corner. “… from space. But I’m not ready to go yet.”

  “It’s not a permanent move.”

  “And I want to wait until it is…” He sat forward again, blue eyes sharp with concentration. “That’s the difference between us. A round trip would be three years of me not being able to do what I love. And three years of you doing exactly what you love.”

  “And three years away from you.”

  “But if I weren’t in the equation … you’d go.”

  “You’re not a variable to be eliminated.” I lined the punch card up with the rest of the eagle, and the little holes winked with light as it slid into place. If only words fell so easily. There had to be a path through this conversation that wasn’t circular. “It was hard enough on the moon, with only three months apart. And there, we could talk occasionally and send letters.”

  He waved a hand as if that wasn’t a concern. “The program has a teletype set up for spouses and a dedicated radio channel. Granted, there would be an increasing delay, but we’d be able to talk. Look … you were thinking about retiring. Tell me why again.”

  I sighed, but this is why I’d come to him. I mean, besides the fact that he was my husband and this was a decision that would affect him directly. Nathaniel helps me understand myself better, sometimes just by the questions he asks. “A bunch of reasons. The ferrying I do … it’s basically driving a bus. Granted, a bus in outer space, but it’s still—it’s … I want to matter. Which is incredibly vain and self-centered, and I know that I should be grateful just to have a job, and…”

  Nathaniel cleared his throat, looking at me with his brows raised.

  I stopped and closed my eyes. Goddamn it. I was never going to get over the feeling that I needed to apologize for wanting to excel. 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 … “I want to make a difference.” Lightning did not strike me down. I opened my eyes and concentrated on the eagle’s talons, but moved to the hard bit buried in the heart of the conversation. “But then … If we want to start a family…”

  He picked at a loose thread on the knee of his trousers. “It can wait until you come back.”

  “Can it?” I sighed, snipping the excess card away to flutter down to the desk. We kept putting children off, and there were solid reasons, but if I went … “The radiation. The time in space and what it will do to my bones, even with the amelioration efforts. I might not be able to have children when I come back.”

  “If you can’t—if that’s not a solvable problem, then the human race is a dead end anyway.” Nathaniel rubbed the back of his neck, staring at the floor. “Sorry. That’s a little blunt. But … okay. Let’s say you retired from the space program. What would you do?”

  I opened my mouth, and it was as if the inhalation of breath brought with it a view of that future. I would work in the computer department again until I got pregnant. Then they would fire me. I would cook, and clean, and raise our child until they hit a certain indeterminate age, and I would start to volunteer for charitable organizations, as my mother had done. I would matter, but in a very small, very narrow sphere. Mathematics. Flying. Space—those would all be closed doors. “Well, damn.”

  Nathaniel snorted. He leaned forward and put a hand on my arm. “Would you be happy?”

  I wanted both. Why couldn’t I have both? But he was right. I didn’t want to give up space flight. Sure, I was a glorified bus driver, but it was a job filled with beauty that I couldn’t get on Earth. Mars was still up in the air, but … “No.” I reached for another punch card so that I did not have to see his face as I admitted my selfishness. “I want children, but the life I want wouldn’t be fair to them. If it’s not Mars, it will be something else that catches my attention and my time.”

  He inhaled, as if he were going to say something, and then held his breath. I did not push on whatever it was he had decided not to say, instead concentrating on my paper crafting. I say that, but as the bird continued to take shape under my fingers, it was clear that I was answering his silence, because I layered punch cards to create an egg held between the eagle’s talons.

  His chair creaked as he finally leaned back. “Okay. So children are out of the equation. That simplifies things. Do you want to go?”

  “I don’t know.” Three years. Three years away from this man, who understood me so well that he did not question or try to convince me that I was wrong. Unlike in space, here my tears could fall, but the eagle in my hands was still blurry.

  Nathaniel pulled it out of my grip, gently, and then folded me into his arms. In hindsight, I suppose the eagle I’d made answered all his questions.

  It was in flight, but had its head turned to the side as though it were looking back over its shoulder. It had an egg clutched in its talons. The symbolism was a little blunt, but clear.

 
; * * *

  Even after talking with Nathaniel, I was still unsettled and had no idea what answer to give Clemons. Since my husband still had work to do, I pretended to be fine, which he allowed, but clearly didn’t believe. I headed out into the hall to go back to the astronaut wing and stopped.

  I didn’t have an assignment because Clemons had cleared my schedule so I could get caught up on Mars. He’d assumed that I would say “yes.” I mean, I could take the charitable view that he was trying to give me room to make a decision, but why argue with past experience?

  Cradling the new punch card eagle in one hand, I headed to the astronaut wing to grab my purse. If I couldn’t do any work, I may as well head out. Maybe I’d stop by a bookstore, go home, and sink my toes into our new rug.

  As I headed into the office, Jacira and Parker were heading out with Betty, who had transitioned from being an astronaut over to public relations. As the astronaut corps had expanded, jobs wound up becoming more specialized, and Clemons had recognized that having Betty working in public relations made more sense than having her be a pilot. She seemed happier there, and did interviews on Earth and in space. I gave a cursory nod to Parker, but he smiled at me. I never trusted that smile. “York. We’re heading out to the gate to do some autographs. Want to come?”

  He knew I hated the autograph circuit. Betty brightened, rising a little onto her toes. Over their shoulders, Jacira made pleading hostage eyes and clasped her hands in supplication. It was hard to turn her down when she looked like a desperate puppy.

  “Sure. Just give me a minute to get my bag.” I brushed past them to my tiny office and grabbed my purse off my desk. Carefully, I tucked the eagle inside to carry home.

  When I got back to them, Parker had his hands on his hips and his chin jutted out. “No lo hiciste.”

  “Mach quatro. Honesto.” Jacira held her hands up. “Você pode verificar os logs do computador da minha trajetória, mas isso vai mudar a maneira como viajamos.”

  He frowned, a line appearing between his brows as he mouthed a word. Then he nodded decisively and said, “De que maneira?”

  I raised an eyebrow. “You speak Portuguese now?”

  “Trying.” He shrugged and spun us around toward the front of the building. “Figure it’ll be useful with the Brazilian contingent on the Mars mission. But seriously. Mach four?”

  “Yep.” Jacira nodded.

  “Is this the Tiberius-47?” I settled my bag in the corner of my elbow, more than a little jealous that Jacira had test-flown the thing.

  “It’s a beauty.” She paused as Parker pulled the front door open for us. “We’re trying parabolic arcs as a way to skim across the planet with a lower fuel cost.”

  Parker followed us outside, letting the heavy glass-and-steel door swing shut behind us. “What kind of runway can you set down on at that speed?”

  “I needed the full length at—oh, hell.” Jacira sighed and shook her head. “The little girl from the Williams farm is here again.”

  It took me a moment before I realized what she meant by “the Williams farm.” We’d dropped a rocket on the farm and killed most of the people there. Jacira was staring at a little girl with brown pigtails, dressed in ragged overalls standing amid a group of similar kids.

  I’d seen her before, but in that way you see the same people every day without noticing them. Even then, with Jacira pointing to her, she didn’t stand out from the crowd. Looking at her, there was nothing to indicate that she’d lived through a tragedy. Poor kid.

  Betty turned to face us, smiling brightly as if nothing were wrong. “We’ll have to handle her carefully. One of the reporters out there may have brought her as a plant, and—”

  I stepped away from our little group and over to the fence. I couldn’t stand to hear about how this child, whose family we’d killed, might be a tool. She was a kid. “Handle her carefully,” my aunt Fanny. Slipping through the gate, I waded through a crowd of reporters and their entourage, all of them calling to me. “Dr. York! What did the protestors want?” “Elma! Were you scared?” “How bad are the space germs?”

  I had a lot of practice at failing to hear questions by this point, and I kept going, leaving it to them to get out of my way. I walked right up to the Williams girl. She tilted her head back to look up at me.

  Her voice piped up in that high treble of the very young. “You still going to Mars?”

  I nodded, even though I hadn’t ever been on that mission. “Maybe you can go someday too. What’s your name?”

  “Dorothy.” She played with the end of a braid, while, around us, cameramen snapped photos. Someone was filming us, but they could go hang, for all I cared. Dorothy cocked her head to the side, as if she were considering. “You going to have kids on Mars?”

  Out of the mouths of children. My chest seized, as if her words had evacuated an airlock. She could not have known about my conversation with Nathaniel. I say that as if it had been a single conversation. It had been a long discussion over the course of two years, and even if it seemed settled, it did not rest easy on me. But I put on the regulation smile, the one you learn to give while wearing seventy-three kilograms of space suit in Earth gravity while a photographer takes just one more shot.

  I’ve learned to smile through pain, thank you. “Yes, honey. Every child born on Mars will be there because of me.”

  “What about the ones born here?”

  What about the orphans like her, and all the people our government thought were unimportant? And, worse, if the space program was stripped down, what about all the kids like her who would grow up on a dying Earth? I knelt in front of Dorothy, my decision made for me, and pulled the eagle out of my bag. “Those most of all.”

  * * *

  After talking to Dorothy and the other kids, I walked back inside, straight to Clemons’s office. Mrs. Kare, his secretary, looked up from her typewriter, smiling. “Well, Dr. York. What a pleasure to have you back on Earth.”

  “Thanks.” I nodded toward the inner office. “He in?”

  “Yes, and it doesn’t look like he’s on the phone. Let me just check…” She pressed the intercom button. “Sir? Dr. York is here to see you.”

  “Which one?”

  “The astronaut.”

  I could hear his grunt through the door as much as through the intercom. “Send her in.”

  Even after all these years, I still sometimes found my palms going clammy when I had to talk to Clemons. It wasn’t reasonable, but the brain does funny things. In any event, I wiped my palms on my trousers before pushing open the door to the tobacco smoke-filled atmosphere of the inner office.

  Clemons had a cigar in one hand. He leaned back in his chair, watching me as I entered. His paunch had expanded outward over the years, but his face had lost none of its sternness. “Have a seat.”

  “I won’t take up much of your time…” I settled in the chair opposite him, annoyed that I was already apologizing for intruding. “I’ll do it. I’ll go to Mars.”

  He stubbed the cigar out and clapped his hands together with a delighted grin. “My dear girl, you have no idea how important this is.”

  I’d just met the kids that our success or failure would directly affect. I’m pretty sure that I had a better idea of what was at stake than Clemons, in his insulated office. “Anything I can do to help keep us moving forward.”

  “Excellent.” He reached into the file drawer of his desk and drew out a folder. “I had Mrs. Kare make up a packet for you, hoping you’d say yes. This has the base timeline, and our plan to get you up to speed with the rest of the team.”

  We went through the packet as he gave me a brief overview. Looking at the parameters and seeing how much I’d have to learn to catch up, I started to get excited. I hadn’t been pushed in so long that my blood sang with anticipation.

  Only after I left his office, packet tucked under my arm—only after I left the building and got on the streetcar for downtown—only after I had opened the packet and started to
read again—did I realize that I’d never told Nathaniel my final decision.

  Living in space on my own had made me forget how to be part of a couple.

  FIVE

  CLERGYMEN SEEK PEACE IN CHICAGO

  City Calm as Ministers Move Through Negro District

  Special to The National Times

  CHICAGO, IL, Aug. 28, 1961—Chicago’s riot-torn West Side neighborhood was quiet today, but National Guardsmen remained on call at five armories in the city. Reinforced police squads patrolled the area to prevent a recurrence of the violence that injured 60 persons Friday night. Taverns remain closed till further notice.

  Civil rights leaders explained that most of the work in the region is for the space industry, but the average education level here stops at the eighth grade, because of the high number of refugees from the East Coast whose schooling was abruptly terminated by the Meteor. With many of these men unsuited for high-tech work, the unemployment rate is at 18 percent in the district. They said that community organizations lacked leadership, and militant fringe groups, such as Earth First, had sought to fill the vacuum with some success.

  On the moon, I eat in the cafeteria with the rest of the colony, but at home, I cook. Sometimes, I stress cook. Sometimes, I stress cook an entire kosher dinner. After talking to Clemons, I also made pie. By the time Nathaniel got home, the apartment was muggy and smelled of chocolate, rosemary, beef, and red wine. I sat in front of the fan, leaning forward so that the air could go down my cleavage, and regretted my decision to cook dinner while also wondering if I should make another dish.

  My regret faded when Nathaniel stopped in the doorway, head tilted up. He inhaled and smiled. “Is that your beef bourguignon?”

  “And baked potatoes. And a salad.” I stood up, flipping the fan back to oscillate. “And biscuits.”

  He set his briefcase down by the door, and put his hat on the rack. “Have I mentioned how much I’ve missed you?”