In the Blackness of Space

by Robert Kuntz

  ****

  08:59 CST.

  The door was open when I arrived at Dr. H’s new office. The place was a small box, no windows, no room for a desk. Two beige upholstered chairs filled the room. Dr. H was sitting in one of them, and he nodded that I should take the other.

  He was a short, energetic man. His face was like a number 4, full of sharp angles. His fingers were long 6s, stretched into gentle curls. When he was listening intently, he’d squint one eye and bob his head forward.

  This new office had pictures on the walls: a white Texas longhorn lounging in a meadow of bluebells, a craggy mountain range of snow-covered peaks, a rough-hewn sailboat on a smooth river that I imagined was the Nile, and a mist-covered pond at sunrise. If he couldn’t have windows, at least he could have something to look at.

  “Doc, how’d you get exiled to a closet?”

  “This is temporary.” He smiled warmly, leaned back in his chair, and clasped his hands behind his head. “I wish you were in charge, Grant. You’d change things that need to be changed.”

  “Not me.”

  “You sell yourself short. You could run this whole place. You know how to focus on the problem and come up with the best solution.”

  Dr. H had never said anything like that before.

  “Billy said you had another date with Marsha.”

  I smiled at the memory. “Our fifth.”

  Dr. H grinned at me and I went on, “She’s smart and interesting. She’s not one of those people who fuss over things.” I thought for a moment. “She has this wavy red hair that sways like a dancer as she walks. She’s a gentle person and kind. I think she likes me. We talk for hours and she’s not upset by my phobias.

  “Doc, last night on our date, she just sang. We were walking by the park, and she just started singing. A happy song, one I didn’t know. I’ve never been with someone who did that, but I liked it. She’s a 33, Doc.”

  “Grant, what do you think will come from these dates?”

  I felt uncomfortable with the question. “I really like her, Doc. When she smiles, her mouth twitches on the right side, like she’s winking at you. But she wouldn’t want me. I’m damaged goods.”

  “She’s gone on five dates with you and she doesn’t want you?”

  “Doc, who would marry someone with my phobias?”

  “Tell me this, Grant. If there was someone who would marry you and love you, what would she be like?”

  Now I was even more uncomfortable. I shifted in my chair. “It would be someone like her. Someone who listens and cares and who’s not a quitter.”

  “Think about it, Grant.”

  A sober look crossed Dr. H’s face. “You know I’d never lie to you. I need to interview you today in a way that won’t be comfortable for you.”

  “OK.”

  “Tell me the first time you were afraid of heights or moving things.”

  I clenched the arms of my chair. I hated talking about this. Dr. H waited, his head tilted to the side.

  Finally, I forced out the words. “It was my fifth birthday. My dad put me up in a tree. He left me there five hours.”

  Suddenly, I couldn’t say anything. My mouth wouldn’t work. My brain couldn’t figure out how to speak. Deep breath, buddy. Five seconds in and five seconds out. Slow and steady. Your feet are on the ground.

  Dr. H sat patiently. I saw a glistening in his eye and felt warmth spread through me.

  Something broke loose inside. “He was drunk and probably high, and he got mad because I’d thrown a stick and scratched his car. He grabbed me, threw me in the back of the car, and screeched down the block to the park. He yanked me from the car and shoved me up a tree. ‘I’m leaving you here, you reckless little brat,’ he screamed. ‘I hope you fall and break your neck. You climb down before I come back and I will break your neck.’”

  I took deep breaths. He’s not here. There’s no tree. It’s not going to happen. Five seconds in, five seconds out.

  “How long did he treat you like this?”

  “Three years, eleven months, and one day.”

  “How often?”

  I squeezed the arms of the chair. There was no often about it. I never knew when he would explode from the haze of drunken highs. I tried to stay out of his sight.

  “Grant, how often?”

  “I don’t remember. I’m not sure if once he left me up there overnight or if two or three times blurred into one.”

  “Not how many times. How often?”

  “Ten to fifteen times a week. When I got too big for the tree, he’d lock me in a closet or shove me in the trunk of the car. He’d scream at me, ‘If I die and don’t come back for you, it’s all your fault.’” I winced from the memory of his voice and felt the blackness looming, squeezing me like I was squeezing the chair. I took deep breaths. Letting go of the chair arms, I slid my fingers onto my pulse. The steady thumping of life soothed me.

  “It always felt like the first time, when I was up in the tree. I was afraid I would fall and break my neck. I was afraid he’d forget me and never come back, that he’d die and never come back.”

  I shivered, focused on my pulse, and took deep steady breaths. “Twenty-nine days before my ninth birthday, I came home from school and found Mom and Dad dead on the living room sofa. They’d OD’d. The state made Aunt Clara and Uncle Ralph take me.”

  “When you’re afraid, what helps you feel better?”

  “My feet on the ground. Being out of doors. Hearing the birds sing and dogs bark. I love the sounds the wind makes, brushing the tall grasses, rustling through the trees, whisking papers along the street.”

  “If we gave you a sedative and you couldn’t feel or see anything and you came to on the FarSpace Galileo, what would happen?”

  In an instant, I was soaked with sweat. Uncontrollable shivers wrenched my arms and legs. Deep breaths. Five seconds in… I shut out everything but the steady pulse. I counted a lot of things, but I didn’t count my pulse, just felt the consistent, comforting throb. Self-soothing, they call it. It helps me manage.

  “No! I couldn’t do it.” The words rushed out, chased by the black panic. “There’s nothing underneath. You’re up there, and there’s no ground, no one to catch you. I’d black and come to and black again.”

  Dr. H stretched and then squinted one eye at me. “The Chinese have a word for anger that means ‘flames roaring from every orifice of the body.’ Have you ever been angry like that?”

  “No. I couldn’t…”

  “Ever known someone angry like that?”

  “My dad.”

  “Grant, did you ever think that if you got angry more you would black less?”

  “Can’t do that. It’s not safe. What if I get angry and he doesn’t come back to take me down?”

  Dr. H was quiet for a moment. I felt my pulse, the reassuring beat of life, steady, confident. I looked at the longhorn in the bluebells, took a long breath, and sighed.

  “Grant, do you ever wish you didn’t have these fears?”

  “I am who I am. When I accepted that, I stopped blacking out so much. And I like what I’m good at. Computer code.”

  “Say more about that.”

  “When a problem grabs hold of me, I’m in the zone. All I can see is the knot that needs to be unsnarled.” I leaned back in the chair. “Numbers are safe, precise, trustworthy. But programs get bogged down. Someone writes ten steps when they need only four. They use seven subroutines when two will suffice. They plot three loops to double check when they could use one, and then they forget to clean up at the end of the code.”

  “What’s it like to fix that?”

  “Have you ever seen a carpenter plane a rough board? Then sand it smooth? I do that with numbers, rasp off the rough spots.” I sighed. “It’s a great feeling to streamline things, when there’s no jostling or bumping and each number’s in the best place to do the best job. It’s as smooth as a rose petal, and for a moment I touch perfection.”

  Dr. H fished
in his coat pocket for a pen.

  I jumped up from the chair, sweat streaming down my face. “Stop it, doc! We’re going up. The room’s moving. Stop it!”

  He looked at me, wide-eyed, and then reached in his pocket again. The room stopped moving.

  I was as dizzy as a propeller. I bent over, heaving in huge draughts of air. I danced back and forth on my feet to keep the circulation going in my legs. I glanced at the picture of the mist over the lake and stretched my fingers. Finally, I collapsed into the chair.

  “That was painful for you,” Dr. H said. “I’m sorry.”

  “This isn’t an office. It’s some kind of elevator.” I clenched my hands into fists and then tried to relax. Five seconds in, five seconds out. “What in the world are you doing?”

  “We had to know.”

  Was he trying to make me angry? I couldn’t go there.

  Doc rose from his chair and handed me a NASA green card. “I need to take us back down.”

  I nodded and squeezed the green card. He reached in his pocket. The room moved soundlessly. I panted. Sweat soaked the back of my shirt. I almost ripped the green card into pieces. Then the room stopped moving. I sat and felt the steady throb beneath my two fingers until I could breathe without gasping for air.

  Everyone gets a card at a shrink visit. Red was the worst—you couldn’t work on anything until they treated and cleared you. I knew three people who’d gone red. Two of them left the program. The third went through months of therapy, med tests, allergen scans, and a two-week survival course. At the end, he went green, and we could see he was better for everything he’d done.

  If you went yellow, you could still work, but you had daily sessions and tests. If you went blue, you had to check in next month instead of in three months. Green meant that you were good to go.

  2

  January 16, 2052 (Launch minus 3 days), 16:42 CST.

  I stood up from my office desk and stretched. My coffee was cold. I’d brought it back after my three o’clock break, gotten involved in smoothing code, and barely touched it.

  I couldn’t stop wondering about Billy Jepler. What was he up to?

  Billy and I had joined FarSpace on the same day, ten years, three months, and twenty-nine days ago, exactly seventy-six days, nine hours, and three minutes after the program was announced. It took me that long to walk the 1060 miles from Charleston, South Carolina, to Houston, Texas.

  We met standing in line for the medical exam. He looked at my nametag, Grant Jonathan Chapman, and said, “Are you Swedenborgian?”

  I was surprised to hear the name. Not many people knew of Emmanuel Swedenborg and the church that developed from his volumes on Biblical interpretation. Of course, with my name, I knew the follower of Swedenborg Billy was talking about. I looked into Jepler’s bright eyes and shook my head. “No. But Johnny Chapman’s a distant relation.”

  “Want an apple?”

  I laughed. “Sure.”

  Billy handed me a Cortland and watched me silently as I sliced the apple, dug out and pocketed the seeds and then ate the slices. Those six seeds were my first Cortlands. They were like glistening brown number 7s, sharp and hard and full of life.

  I didn’t know Billy well enough to understand what his silence meant. I wondered if he’d lost interest. Then he grinned. I’ve never seen a smile like that—not before, not since. It was as if he were grinning with his whole body and soul. Then I got distracted because he unleashed an avalanche of questions. Billy was a good trouble-shooter because he asked and listened. He found out things about you that you hardly knew yourself.

  Billy had started with NASA as a research assistant. After six months, one week, and three days, he was promoted to assistant vice president. Only a few people know why: Billy overheard the head of the Beta Ring Ecological System say he’d give anything for complete-protein dwarf breadfruit seedlings.

  Complete-protein dwarf breadfruit trees had been developed in the African country of Equatorial Congo four years earlier. The original breadfruit, Artocarpus altilis, from the Malay Archipelago in the South Pacific, was high in calories. Its seeds were a good source of vitamins. Extensive cross-breeding produced the full-protein dwarf variety, an excellent food source not only for impoverished communities, but also for self-sustaining environments like the Beta Ring.

  Dr. Moses Tsumbe in Equatorial Congo propagated the tree and was producing ten trees per year, not an insignificant amount when you realize that breadfruit trees live for hundreds of years and produce 270 to 300 fruits each year. Two dozen trees could feed a small village.

  Tsumbe opposed distributing full-protein trees outside his country. He said, “The poverty is here. We developed the trees here. Trees will be planted here to feed our people.”

  When Billy heard the breadfruit was needed for the Beta, he cleaned out his Houston bank account, stuffed wads of cash as padding in the shoulder straps of his backpack, and took a two-week vacation. I was never sure if he went to Equatorial Congo. He told me afterwards the days passed in a gray blur of cash, barters, contracts, and lengthy intercontinental calls. He called it his trade fixation. All his energy, thought, and emotion drove the series of deals that culminated in the big deal he needed for the mission. Nothing else mattered to him except that.

  Only Billy knows the full list of what he traded, cadged, swapped, and smuggled to get dwarf full-protein trees for the Beta Ring. He once said, “The most valuable part of that whole deal was a three-hour personal visit by teen chill-music sensation Jff Stffr Sfft. Few people know the deal also included a Neolithic flint knife, a bronze bell from an Orthodox monastery in the Sinai desert, a graffiti-covered section of the Berlin Wall, an original Jackson Pollock painting, a copy of the periodic table autographed by Albert Einstein, and the return of a rare beaded kachina to a Hopi reservation.” He’d paused a moment. “Only one of those was a forgery.”

  Three weeks after Billy heard the plea for full-protein trees, Dr. Tsumbe stood at the podium at the University of Miami giving the inaugural lecture for the establishment of the fully endowed Moses Tsumbe Chair of Ecological Sciences. Dr. Tsumbe presented UM two dwarf complete-protein breadfruit seedlings and promised twelve more. The University endowed two internships for Equatorial Congo students who would learn advanced propagation techniques. Within five years, the Tsumbe Breadfruit Institute would be sending two propagators and fifty breadfruit seedlings to Equatorial Congo each year. The number of project scientists in the EC would triple in the first five years, and the output of seedlings would increase tenfold.

  Not announced in the media was that Dr. Tsumbe’s two teenaged sons were given rides in F-16 jets at the Pensacola Naval Air Base, spent two days at Florida theme parks riding roller coasters, and went on a two-week canoe expedition in the Boundary Waters. Also unreported in the media was the gift of four dwarf complete-protein breadfruit seedlings to NASA. You could search the Earth and not find those trees.

  That was not the only time Billy was invaluable to the mission. He saw far ahead and planned for snags and troubles others never imagined.

  After that breakfast meeting, I couldn’t stop wondering about him. Something was going on that I didn’t understand. He kept calling me, checking on my progress on the final computer code reviews. Every time he called, I thought about dingy brown number 47s. The numbers would fade, and other numbers would appear, but I couldn’t see them clearly.

  Billy’s voice sounded from the hallway. I thumbed my computer off, stood, and pushed my chair under the desk. I knew he was coming to see me.

  He stopped at my door. His face was tense, his wide smile missing. Behind him stood two medics. I wondered if they were replacing supplies in the first aid station.

  “Grant, I’m in a rush,” Billy said. “We’re cutting this closer than I’d like.”

  Something in his voice troubled me.

  He dropped a thick manila folder on my desk. “Here’s the file for Dr. Weppler’s replacement. I want to check him out with you.”
I saw the bold letter C on the folder and realized Billy’s candidate had the same last initial as I did. Now I was anxious, almost trembling.

  “Grant, Wep’s replacement has to be a genius with computer code. Galileo’s computer system will be in his hands. He also needs plant and animal savvy to do his part with crops, goats, and biome regulation. And he’s got to be committed to the mission.”

  Billy looked at me. Something in the intensity of his gaze jangled a warning in my brain. This wasn’t Billy my friend. This was Billy, the con and swindler. What was going on?

  He lifted his hand. It held a handkerchief. I thought he was going to sneeze.

  “Grant,” the words rushed out, “I’m not letting the mission fail.”

  He pointed at the folder. “I have to send this man. He’s the top choice. Do you understand me? There’s no one else!”

  If this man was the top choice, why was Billy checking with me?

  “Grant, we have to send you.”

  What? Me? My pulse exploded into high speed.

  “No!” I shouted. “I’m not going!”

  Billy’s hand lunged toward me, his handkerchief covering my mouth. An acrid-smelling chemical stung my nose. I tried to twist away. His hand was firm, unmoving. Harsh fumes burned my lungs. Heavy fog poured into my mind, obscuring my thoughts. My strength drained. I couldn’t pull his hand away. I couldn’t hold on to the room. My mind slipped away into nothing.

  3

  FarSpace Ship Galileo, February 14, 2052 (Launch plus 26 days), 19:05 GMT.

  “Hola, Grant. It’s Carmen. They say you’ll recognize my voice and on some level comprehend the words. Muchas gracias, Grant. Muchísimas gracias.

  “It’s so brave of you to come. When Billy Jepler told me you’d asked Dr. H if you could be sedated until you were acclimated, I could hardly believe it. With Dr. Weppler sick, we couldn’t have launched without you.

  “Did you know when you volunteered that it would mean four months of hypno-cendarentizane sedation with no periods of consciousness and that you’d have a feeding tube and all these monitors? Dr. H said the sedation keeps you drifting in a fog, but you can still hear us. You’re here in the Animal Treatment Lab because he asked us to keep you with the kestrels and pups so you can hear birds and dogs.