The Fated Sky

by Mary Robinette Kowal

  I walked across the gently curving floor, past Terrazas at the weights and Rafael on the stationary bike. Some of the regular Lunetta crew were also there, wearing their UN-issued workout clothes. A reporter slouched in the corner, taking pictures of DeBeer while he did push-ups.

  Florence had a towel draped over her shoulder and wiped her face as she ran. Even with the artificial gravity of the spinning section of Lunetta, sweat did not drip quite as quickly as it did on Earth.

  She gave a little nod to acknowledge that she’d seen me, but kept running.

  “Can I borrow you for a bit?” I glanced at the others, but no one seemed to care that we were talking. “There’s a comm question I could use help with for the next sim.”

  Florence wiped her face. “Got another twenty minutes on the treadmill.”

  I nodded and shot a glance briefly at DeBeer to make sure he was still showing off for the reporter. “Okay. I’ll be in the lab going over something with Leonard. When you get a chance.”

  She followed my gaze and raised her eyebrows. Pursing her lips, Florence nodded. “I’ll come by.”

  * * *

  Dr. Leonard Flannery looked every bit the mad scientist when I walked into the lab. He had on a white lab coat, safety goggles, and ear protection. Over the safety goggles, he had another pair of magnifying lenses, which made his eyes nearly vanish behind their curve. Whatever he was working on shrieked and threw sparks into the air. This, by the way, is one of the reasons we stopped using pure oxygen in space, well … that and the dangers of oxygen toxicity from long-term exposure.

  Leonard looked up when I came into the lab and slapped the off switch on his contraption, smiling. “York! What can I do for you?”

  I waited until he had slipped the earmuffs back to rest around his neck like an odd tie. “There’s some stuff I want to talk to you about, but I want to wait until Florence gets here.”

  “About…?”

  “The FBI.”

  His face went gray. He slipped the goggles up on top of his head and wiped his hands off on a rag on the lab table. “I’ll shut things down.”

  Holding up my binder, I shrugged. “I brought something to work on until she gets here. She said it would be another twenty minutes or so.”

  “Well, I’m not going to get anything useful done in twenty minutes.” He threw the rag back on the table. “This just isn’t going to go away, is it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Leonard pulled the earmuffs from around his neck and clipped them onto their spot on the rack of tools. Both sets of goggles followed before he turned his attention back to the contraption on the table.

  “What are you working on?” I sat down on one of the lab stools next to the counter.

  “Testing a new core sampler.” He backed it out of the rock he’d been drilling into. “I’m not a fan. It has too much play and doesn’t really cut a clean hole. But I guess some corporation wants us to use it and they’re backing some aspect of the mission. You know how it goes. ‘Our drill bits are used on Mars!’”

  I snorted. “Yeah. I’ve got people wanting me to take their lipstick on the expedition.”

  “You’re kidding.” He stopped with the drill in one hand, then shook his head. “Don’t bother. I know the answer.”

  Behind me, Florence asked, “The answer to what?”

  I turned to her. “Have you been asked to take cosmetics to Mars?”

  Florence had changed out of her tracksuit, but her hair was still pulled back into a tight bun. She rolled her eyes. “Hair straightener. As if I’m going to use lye in space. That stuff burns enough when you have gravity to keep it in place.”

  “Wait—you use lye to straighten your hair?”

  Florence waved her hand, as if to wipe my question out of the air. “I stopped my run early. So tell me why I did?”

  “Right.” I set my binder on the counter and took a breath. Before becoming an astronaut, I probably would have beaten around the bush and taken my time, being careful to hedge my statements. Now? I wouldn’t insult my teammates by wasting their time with anything but the information they needed to work the problem. “The South African reporter … He mentioned having a source. The FBI agents did, too. So … I wondered if it might be DeBeer.”

  “Of course it is.” Florence sat down on one of the stools and set a squeeze pouch of water on the counter. “Is that all you wanted to talk about?”

  “Well … What are we going to do about it?”

  Leonard and Florence exchanged looks. He shook his head. “Exactly what I’ve been doing. Keeping my head down and trying not to cause trouble.”

  “But—but he’s making things up, like … like the reporter said that you had gone on an EVA before the rocket left.”

  “And I did.”

  My jaw dropped.

  Leonard rubbed his forehead. “Look, I talked to the FBI about it, and they confirmed with Malouf, who was on the EVA with me, as well as with Mission Control, that we were nowhere near the rocket.”

  “Good.” I tried again to make them understand what was happening. “But DeBeer is trying to get you kicked off the mission.”

  “We know.” Florence sighed. “It’s why we’re careful not to spend too much time together—or with Kamilah and Terrazas, for that matter. Don’t want him to think the ‘darkies’ are colluding.”

  “So let’s talk to Mission Control and—”

  “No!” Leonard straightened. “For the love of God Almighty, do not talk to Mission Control. I had a devil of a time convincing Clemons to keep me on after that mess with the FBI, and I am not going to rock the boat now.”

  I turned to Florence for support and she shook her head at me. “I know you mean well, but he’s right. You know I’m outspoken as all get-out when I’m not happy, but there’s no way I would go to Mission Control with this.”

  I slumped on my stool. There had to be something we could do. What they were saying sounded a lot like Helen’s reasons for agreeing to bow out of the mission because the IAC wanted to send me instead. For that matter, it wasn’t that far off from why Mama had always told me to be quiet and polite. As a young Jewish woman, I couldn’t afford to give people any reason to notice me. I gnawed my lower lip. “What if … What if we spin it so it isn’t about you? Is there a way I could use my whole Lady Astronaut thing to point out that DeBeer is a problem? I mean … I can rock the boat. They won’t do anything to me.”

  Leonard tilted his head to the side and squinted, like he was Superman trying to see through lead. Then he shook his head, straightening. “Nope. It’ll still blow back on me. You want to help, and I appreciate that, but I’m going to have to ask you to let it lie. Once we’re under way, DeBeer will be on the other ship, and it won’t matter.”

  Florence smiled bleakly. “This’ll be the only time that Apartheid works in our favor.” At my puzzled glance, she shrugged. “You didn’t know? We’re on the separate-but-equal ship.”

  * * *

  One of the unexpected benefits of living in the Meteor Age was that telephone service had drastically improved with the advent of satellites. Telephone companies no longer had to string wires across the entirety of the United States or drag long transatlantic cables below the ocean. Instead, radio dishes bounced the signals up into space, where a satellite caught them and bounced them back down to a dish on another part of the planet.

  The technology had been developed to allow us to communicate with Earth on the way to the moon, then refined for communication with Lunetta, and further refined for the Mars Expedition. All of which meant that once a week, despite being on an orbital platform, I got to talk to my husband.

  I tethered myself at one of the cubbies in Lunetta’s comm module. The chamber hung off one of the weightless limbs of the station like a barnacle made of antennae. Pulling the headphones from their clip on the side of the cubby, I tried not to listen in on the other conversations happening in the little room. The other four “public” phones were in use
by two crew members from Lunetta, one reporter, and a miner en route to the moon.

  With the earphones settled on my head, the other conversations dulled behind a faint buzz of static. I toggled the line to let the operator know I was there and waited until her voice broke the static. British, this time. “What number, please?”

  “Kansas West 6-5309.” It was Nathaniel’s desk phone, since it was still early afternoon in Kansas.

  “One moment.” The line clicked and buzzed as she made the connection, and a moment later it rang.

  The phone didn’t even get through the first ring. “Nathaniel York speaking.”

  “Hello, handsome.”

  “Hi.” How can he put so much sweetness into a single syllable? How is it that I can melt and turn into jelly just at the sound of his voice? The difference between when he answers the phone professionally and when he answers me is like the difference between a practical slide rule and a kitten. Which is probably the strangest analogy I’ll ever make, but it’s true.

  I pulled the microphone closer and leaned my head against the wall of the cubby, pretending that it was his shoulder. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Yeah … me too.” The desk fan whirred behind his voice. “How’s it going up there?”

  This was where I wanted to tell him about DeBeer, and my conversation with Leonard and Florence, but I was in a room with other people, and he was on the company line. “Okay.”

  My husband heard the hesitation, I think. “Just okay?”

  “Long days. Plus, there’s a gaggle of reporters up here.” There. I could talk about that. “You know how much I enjoy having reporters around.”

  He chuckled a little. “I know. But I’ve got to admit, I like the fact that I’m getting to see the occasional photo of you.”

  “At least none of them are asking me to pose with a punch card.”

  “The one of you ‘flying’ down a corridor was pretty sweet.” The phone rustled as he shifted. “How are you holding up?”

  “Ready to be finished with training, honestly. If it weren’t for the orbital trajectories, I think DeBeer would take his team out now and try to beat us to Mars.” I cleared my throat. “He’s an … interesting man.”

  “Oh?” Listening to my husband, I could almost see the lift of his brows and the way he tapped a pencil on the desk when he thought. “Say, Elma … I hate to ask you about work on our personal call, but did you need to run a teletype test in the next day or so?”

  Bless him. I’d been trying to figure out a way to do that on my own, and couldn’t come up with anything. But being married to the lead engineer meant that he could, very occasionally, flex the schedule for me. And yet … if I told him what was going on with DeBeer, he would do something about it. I might as well just broadcast it to Mission Control and ignore Florence and Leonard. Exhaling, I bit the inside of my cheek before answering. “I think I’m okay.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yeah.” I wasn’t, and he knew that, but he couldn’t fix anything that was troubling me. “Promise, I’ll let you know if I need to run a test.”

  “You do that.” Oh God, there was so much reluctance in his voice, and I wanted to reassure him that everything was all right. And for me, it was. My teammates, not so much.

  I tried to put a smile in my voice and change the subject. “How about you? Win any more olives at poker?”

  “Alas, no. And I’m afraid that I had to relinquish a jar of pickled onions to Reynard last time. He and Helen say hello, by the way.”

  “Give my regards back. Everyone misses Helen up here.” I had caught up a lot over the past year, but that didn’t make up for how long she had been training with them. Or the injustice of the way she had been treated. The line hissed between us. Sometimes the weight of longing to be with him effectively silenced me. It wasn’t the longing itself, but that everything I wanted to say got tangled up in one phrase. “I miss you.”

  “Me too.” He sighed. “Oh—I’m getting an intern next summer.”

  “Really? I thought you hated interns. What prompted that?”

  “He’s smart and dedicated. And his aunt is my wife.”

  I lifted my head fast enough that the movement started me spinning in the cubby. Putting a hand out to stop myself, I laughed. “You stinker. You didn’t open with that? When? How did that happen?”

  He laughed, and warmth filled the space between us like the sun coming out. “Tommy wrote a very nice, extremely formal letter—addressed me as Dr. York, even.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t addressed to me?”

  “Ha! Point. The envelope said Dr. Nathaniel York, so I figured that narrowed it down. Anyway—he’s putting together his university applications, and wants some practical experience on his application form. Astronomy, he says. So he’s looking at Berkeley, Wyoming, and Hawaii.”

  “I’ll visit him in Hawaii.”

  Nathaniel chuckled. “That’s what I said! Anyway, he’s going to come stay with me and sleep on the sofa.”

  I gave a little whistle, trying to imagine that. Tommy was sweet, but still a teenage boy, and our apartment was snug with just two of us. Of course, I wouldn’t be there … “So it’ll be a bachelor pad.”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’m picturing you fellows leaving your socks everywhere. TV dinners. Poker nights.”

  “I had dancing girls and cigars in mind.”

  “Don’t you corrupt my nephew, Nathaniel Ezra York.” I wound the cord of the headset around my hand. The rough cloth was a cold substitute for my husband. “They’ve got enough on their hands with Rachel.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. Any news there?”

  “The last letter I had from Hershel said they were sending her to a boarding school.” I didn’t want to share the full contents of the letter with everyone floating in the other cubicles, although it wouldn’t draw the same sort of attention that conversations about the Mars Expedition team might. “Apparently, she stole a ring from Aunt Esther and sold it at a pawn shop.”

  In my ear, Nathaniel whistled with astonishment.

  “They got it back, thank God, and grounded her again, but she snuck out to be with that boy. I don’t know what’s going on with her … Hershel says that Doris is just beside herself, feeling like she’s failed as a parent.”

  “She only has to look at Tommy to know that’s not true.” Nathaniel’s breath in the headphones as he sighed reminded me how far away he was. “Sometimes people make inexplicable decisions, but Rachel is her own person, and those decisions are hers. Maybe boarding school will give her the space to start making better choices.”

  He would have made such a good father. I closed my eyes to keep the sudden surge of tears behind my lids. Crying in zero gravity was such a hassle—the tears couldn’t fall, so they just built up in a salty hemisphere around your eyes that all but blinded you. “Well. Take good care of Tommy when he gets there.”

  “I will.” He chuckled. “Although I’ve been instructed to call him Thomas when he’s out here for the internship. He’s worried that ‘Tommy’ seems too childish for a college-bound young man.”

  I lifted my arm to press the cuff of my shirt against my eyes, soaking away the tears that were collecting there. Three years. In three years, where would they all be?

  TWELVE

  WIDE RACIAL PLOT HINTED AT IN CYGNUS 14 CRASH

  JOHANNESBURG, South Africa, Sept. 19, 1962—The belief is growing among moderate leaders in the United States that a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People group of at least 20 persons plotted the crash of the Cygnus 14 rocket. According to sources within the International Aerospace Coalition, some of the conspirators are astronauts themselves. Speaking under the condition of anonymity, an IAC employee said that the Negro astronauts have been under close scrutiny by agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation since the crash. “What bothers me most,” he said, “is the unwillingness of so many people at the IAC to face the fact that this
was premeditated. It wasn’t an accident.”

  I slid down the ladder from the sleeping quarters in the weightless center of Lunetta and into the ring that circled the station. The transition from zero-g to gravity wasn’t as rough as returning to Earth. You got heavier as you slid down the ladder, in sort of the same way as when you let all the water out of the tub while you’re still in it. Or maybe I’m the only one who does that.

  Anyway, I usually take a moment at the bottom of the ladder to get my bearings before I walk away from it. But on my way to the Monday morning staff meeting, I could hear shouting even before I hit the bottom of the ladder. My feet slapped against the rubber floor, and I spun toward the conference room. The turn was too fast, and I had to throw out a hand to steady myself on the ladder as the Coriolis effect caught me. One of the many reasons we used the mantra “slow is fast” in space.

  “—no proof that it was me!” DeBeer’s voice belted out of the conference room and down the long curving halls.

  Parker responded, loud enough that his voice carried, but not so loud that I could understand him.

  What on earth? I sprinted toward the conference room. Behind me, I heard someone else land at the bottom of the ladder.

  “It’s a newspaper article. Am I to be blamed for everything coming out of South Africa?”

  “Van, cool it.” Benkoski’s easy voice met me at the door. “That’s not what he’s saying.”

  Some of the astronauts were already in the room, along with cups of coffee and imported donuts. Parker stood at the head of the table with his hands resting on either side of the briefing reports.

  His face was red, and a vein bulged on the side of his neck, but his voice was tightly controlled. “What I am saying is that this”—he slid a page forward—“and other news articles like it can cause the mission to be canceled or pushed back, which is the same thing, given the current economic climate.”

  “I had nothing to do with it.” DeBeer had his arms crossed over his chest, and was trying to look down his nose at Parker.

  “Then you have no reason to object when I say that, from here on, any contact with reporters will be in the company of an IAC representative.” Parker scanned the room, his gaze resting briefly on me. “That applies to everyone. Including me.”