Iterations

  Up ahead, Mir was growing to fill Rackham’s view. The vertical shaft of the crucifix consisted of the Soyuz that had brought Yuri to the space station sixteen months ago, the multiport docking adapter, the core habitat, and the Kvant-1 science module, with a green Progress cargo transport docked to its aft end.

  The two arms of the cross stuck out of the docking adapter. To the left was the Kvant-2 biological research center, which contained the EVA airlock through which Rackham would enter. To the right was the Kristall space-production lab. Kristall had a docking port that a properly equipped American shuttle could hook up to—but Discovery wasn’t properly equipped; the Mir adapter collar was housed aboard Atlantis, which wasn’t scheduled to fly again for three months.

  Rackham’s heart continued to race. He wanted to swing around, return to the shuttle. Perhaps he could claim nausea. That was reason enough to abort an EVA; vomiting into a space helmet in zero-g was a sure way to choke to death.

  But he couldn’t go back. He’d fought to get up here, clawed, competed, cheated, left his parents behind in that nursing home. He’d never married, never had kids, never found time for anything but this. He couldn’t turn around—not now, not here.

  Rackham had to fly around to the Kvant-2’s backside to reach the EVA hatch. Doing so gave him a clear view of Discovery. He saw it from the rear, its three large and two small engine cones looking back at him like a spider’s cluster of eyes.

  He cycled through the space station’s airlock. The main lights were dark inside the biology module, but some violet-white fluorescents were on over a bed of plants. Shoots were growing in strange circular patterns in the microgravity. Rackham disengaged the Manned Maneuvering Unit and left it floating near the airlock, like a small refrigerator with arms. Just as the Russians had promised, a large pressure bag was clipped to the wall next to Yuri’s own empty spacesuit. Rackham wouldn’t be able to get the body, now undoubtedly stiff with rigor mortis, into the suit, but it would fit easily into the pressure bag, used for emergency equipment transfers.

  Mir’s interior was like everything in the Russian space program—rough, metallic, ramshackle, looking more like a Victorian steamworks than space-age technology. Heart thundering in his ears, he pushed his way down Kvant-2’s long axis toward the central docking adapter to which all the other parts of the station were attached.

  Countless small objects floated around the cabin. He reached out with his gloved hand and swept a few up in his palm. They were six or seven millimeters across and wrinkled like dried peas. But their color was a dark rusty brown.

  Droplets of dried blood. Jesus Christ. Rackham let go of them, but they continued to float in midair in front of him. He used the back of his glove to flick them away, and continued on deeper into the station.

  “Discovery, this is Houston.”

  “Rackham here, Houston. Go ahead.”

  “We—ah—have an errand for you to run.”

  Rackham chuckled. “Your wish is our command, Houston.”

  “We’ve had a request from the Russians. They, ah, ask that you swing by Mir for a pickup.”

  Rackham turned to his right and looked at McGovern, the pilot. McGovern was already consulting a computer display. He gave Rackham a thumbs-up signal.

  “Can do,” said Rackham into his mike. “What sort of pick up?”

  “It’s a body.”

  “Say again, Houston.”

  “A body. A dead body.”

  “My God. Was there an accident?”

  “No accident, Discovery. Yuri Vereshchagin has killed himself.”

  “Killed…”

  “That’s right. The Russians can’t afford to send another manned mission up to get him.” A pause. “Yuri was one of us. Let’s bring him back where he belongs.”

  Rackham squeezed through the docking adapter and made a right turn, heading down into Mir’s core habitat. It was dark except for a few glowing LEDs, a shaft of earthlight coming in through one window, and one of sunlight coming in through the other. Rackham found the light switch and turned it on. The interior lit up, revealing beige cylindrical walls. Looking down the module’s thirteen-meter length, he could see the main control console, with two strap-in chairs in front of it, storage lockers, the exercise bicycle, the dining table, the closet-like sleeping compartments, and, at the far end, the round door leading into Kvant-1, where Yuri’s body was supposedly floating.

  He pushed off the wall and headed down the chamber. It widened out near the eating table. He noticed that the ceiling there had writing on it. Rackham looked at the cameras, one fore, one aft, both covered over with spacesuit gloves, and realized that even if they were uncovered, that part of the ceiling was perpetually out of their view. Each person who had visited the station had apparently written his or her name there in bold Magic Marker strokes: Romanenko, Leveykin, Viktorenko, Krikalev, dozens more. Foreign astronauts names’ appeared, too, in Chinese characters, and Arabic, and English.

  But Yuri Vereshchagin’s name was nowhere to be seen. Perhaps the custom was to sign off just before leaving the station. Rackham easily found the Magic Marker, held in place on the bulkhead with Velcro. His Cyrillic wasn’t very good—he had to carefully copy certain letters from the samples already on the walls—but he soon had Vereshchagin’s name printed neatly across the ceiling.

  Rackham thought about writing his own name, too. He touched the marker to the curving metal, but stopped, pulling the pen back, leaving only a black dot where it had made contact. Vereshchagin’s name should be here—a reminder that he had existed. Rackham remembered all the old photographs that came to light after the fall of the Soviet Union: the original versions, before those who had fallen out of favor had been airbrushed out. Surely no cosmonaut would ever remove Vereshchagin’s name, but there was no need to remind those who might come later that an American had stopped by to bring his body home.

  The dried spheres of blood were more numerous in here. They bounced off Rackham’s faceplate with little pinging sounds as he continued down the core module through the circular hatch into Kvant-1.

  Yuri’s body was indeed there, floating in a semi-fetal position. His skin was as white as candle wax, bled dry. He’d obviously rotated slowly as his opened wrist had emptied out—there was a ring of dark brown blood stains all around the circumference of the science module. Many pieces of equipment also had blood splatters on them where drops had impacted before they’d desiccated. Rackham could taste his lunch at the back of his throat. He desperately fought it down.

  And yet he couldn’t take his eyes off Yuri. A corpse, a body without a soul in it. It was mesmerizing, terrifying, revolting. The very face of death.

  He’d met Yuri once, in passing, years ago at an IAU conference in Montreal. Rackham had never known anyone before who had committed suicide. How could Yuri have killed himself? Sure, his country was in ruins. But billions of—of rubles—had been spent building this station and getting him up here. Didn’t he understand how special that made him? How, quite literally, he was above it all?

  As he drifted closer, Rackham saw that Yuri’s eyes were open. The pupils were dilated to their maximum extent, and a pale gray film had spread over the orbs. Rackham thought that the decent thing to do would be to reach over and close the eyes. His gloves had textured rubber fingertips, to allow as much feedback as possible without compromising his suit’s thermal insulation, but even if he could work up the nerve, he didn’t trust them for something as delicate as moving eyelids.

  His breathing was growing calmer. He was facing death—facing it directly. He regretted now not having seen his mother one last time, and—

  There was something here. Something else, inside Kvant-1 with him. He grabbed hold of a projection from the bulkhead and wheeled around. He couldn’t see it. Couldn’t hear any sound conducted through the helmet of his suit. But he felt its presence, knew it was there.

  There was no way to get out; Kvant-1’s rear docking port was blocked by the Progre
ss ferry, and the exit to the core module was blocked by the invisible presence.

  Get a grip on yourself, Rackham thought. There’s nothing here. But there was. He could feel it. “What do you want?” he said, a quaver in his tones.

  “Say again, Paul.” McGovern’s voice, over the headset.

  Rackham reached down, switched his suit radio from VOX to OFF. “What do you want?” he said again.

  There was no answer. He waved his arms, batting around hundreds of dried drops of blood. They flew all over the cabin—except for an area, up ahead, the size of a man. In that area, they deflected before reaching the walls. Something was there—something unseen. Paul’s stomach contracted. He felt panic about to overtake him, when—

  A hand on his shoulder, barely detectable through the bulky suit.

  His heart jumped, and he swung around. He’d been floating backwards, moving away from the unseen presence, and had bumped into the corpse. He stopped dead—revolted by the prospect of touching the body again, terrified of moving in the other direction toward whatever was up ahead.

  But he had to get out—somebody else could come back for Yuri. He’d find some way to explain it all later, but for now he had to escape. He grabbed hold of a handle on the wall and pushed off the bulkhead, trying to fly past the presence up ahead. He made it through into the core module. But something cold as space reached out and stopped him directly in front of the small window that looked down on the planet.

  Look below, said a voice in Rackham’s head. What do you see?

  He looked outside, saw the planet of his birth. “Africa.”

  Millions of children starving to death.

  Rackham moved his head left and right. “Not my fault.”

  The view changed, faster than any orbital mechanics would allow. Look below, said the voice again. What do you see?

  “China.”

  A billion people living without freedom.

  “Nothing I can do.”

  Again, the world spun. Look below.

  “The west coast of America. There’s San Francisco.”

  The plague is everywhere, but nowhere is it worse than there.

  “Someday they’ll find a cure.”

  What else do you see?

  “Los Angeles.”

  The inner city. Slums. Poverty. They haven’t abandoned hope, those who live there…Hope has abandoned them.

  “They can get out. They just need help.”

  Whose help? Where will the money come from?

  “I don’t know.”

  Don’t you? Look below.

  “No.”

  Look. Tour eyes have been closed too long. Open them. What do you see?

  “Russia. Ah, now—Russia! Free! We defeated the Evil Empire. We defeated the Communist menace.”

  The people are starving.

  “But they’re free.”

  They have nothing to eat. Twice now they’ve taken food destined for this station.

  “I read about that. Terrible, unthinkable. Like committing murder.”

  To take food from the mouths of the hungry. It is like committing murder; isn’t it?

  “Yes. No. No, wait—that’s not what I meant.”

  Isn’t it? The people need food.

  “No. The space program provides jobs. And don’t forget the spinoffs—advanced plastics and pharmaceuticals and…and…”

  Microwave ovens.

  “Yes, and—”

  And dehydrated ice cream.

  “No, important stuff. Medical equipment. And all kinds of new electronic devices.”

  That’s why you go into space, then? To make life better on Earth?

  “Yes. Yes. Exactly.”

  Look below.

  “No. No, dammit, I won’t.”

  Yuri looked below.

  “Yuri was a cosmonaut—a Russian. Maybe—maybe Russia shouldn’t be spending all this money on space. But I’m an American. My country is rich.”

  Los Angeles, said the voice that wasn’t a voice. San Francisco. And don’t forget New York. Slums, plague, a populace at war with itself.

  Rackham felt his gloved fists clenching. He ground his teeth. “Damn you!”

  Or you.

  He closed his eyes, tried to think. Any price, he’d said—and now it was time to pay. For the good of everyone, he said—but the road was always paved with good intentions.

  Starvation. Enslavement. Poverty. War.

  He couldn’t go back to Discovery—he had no choice in the matter. It wouldn’t let him leave. But he’d be damned if he’d end up like Yuri, bait for yet another spacefarer.

  He slipped into the control station just below the entrance portal that led from the docking adapter. He looked at the cameras fore and aft, the bulky white gloves covering them like beckoning hands. An ending, yes—and with the coffin closed. He scanned the controls, consulted the onboard computer, made his preparations. He couldn’t see the entity, couldn’t see its grin—but he knew they both were there.

  “—in the hell, Paul?” McGovern’s voice, as Rackham turned his suit radio back on. “Why are you firing the ACS jets?”

  “It—it must be a malfunction,” Rackham said, his finger still firmly on the red activation switch.

  “Then get out of there. Get out before the delta-V gets too high. We can still pick you up if you get out now.”

  “I can’t get out,” said Rackham. “The—the way to the EVA airlock is blocked.”

  “Then get into the Soyuz and cast off. God’s sake, man, you’re accelerating down toward the atmosphere.”

  “I—I don’t know how to fly a Soyuz.”

  “We’ll get Kaliningrad to talk you through the separation sequence.”

  “No—no, that won’t work.”

  “Sure it will. We can bring the Soyuz descent capsule into our cargo bay, if need be—but hurry, man, hurry!”

  “Goodbye, Charlie.”

  “What do you mean, ‘Goodbye’? Jesus Christ, Paul—”

  Rackham’s brow was slick with sweat. “Goodbye.”

  The temperature continued to rise. Rackham reached down and undogged his helmet, the abrupt increase in air pressure hurting his ears. He lifted the great fishbowl off his head, letting it fly across the cabin. He then took off the Snoopy-eared headset array. It undulated up and away, a fabric bat in the shaft of earthlight, ending up pinned by acceleration to the ceiling.

  Paint started peeling off the walls, and the plastic piping had a soft, unfocused look to it. The air was so hot it hurt to breathe. Yuri’s body was heating up, too. The smell from that direction was overpowering.

  Rackham was close to one of the circular windows. Earth had swollen hugely beneath him. He couldn’t make out the geography for all the clouds—was that China or Africa, America or Russia below? It was all a blur. And all the same.

  An orange glow began licking at the port as paint on the station’s hull burned up in the mesosphere. The water in the reticulum of tubes running over his body soon began to boil.

  Flames were everywhere now. Atmospheric turbulence was tearing the station apart. The winglike solar panels flapped away, crisping into nothingness. Rackham felt his own flesh blistering.

  The roar from outside the station was like a billion screams. Screams of the starving. Screams of the poor. Screams of the shackled. Through the port, he saw the Kristall module sheer clean off the docking adapter and go tumbling away.

  Look below, the voice had said. Look below.

  And he had.

  Into space, at any price.

  Into space—above it all.

  The station disintegrated around him, metal shimmering and tearing away. Soon nothing was left except the flames. And they never stopped.

  Ours to Discover

  Author’s Introduction

  John Robert Colombo edited the first-ever anthology of Canadian science fiction, Other Canadas; it came out in 1979, my last year in high school.

  In 1981, the special SF collection of the Tor
onto Public Library system was known as the Spaced-Out Library (it was later renamed The Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy—the precise wording of which was my coinage). Back then the Friends of SOL held its first-ever public event: readings by local writers Terence M. Green, Andrew Weiner, and Robert Priest, all introduced by John Colombo. I met all four gentlemen for the first time that day, and Terry, Andrew, and John went on to become close friends (my novel Frameshift is dedicated to Terry and his wife; this collection is dedicated to Andrew; and Tesseracts 6, an anthology of Canadian SF I co-edited with my wife, is dedicated to John).

  John remembered me in 1982, when he sold LeisureWays, a glossy magazine for members of the Canadian Automobile Association, on the idea of running three short-short stories set in Ontario’s future. He tapped Terry and Andrew for two of the stories—excellent choices, as they had both already published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction—and he took a chance by asking me for the third. The result is “Ours to Discover” (the slogan on Ontario license plates is “Yours to Discover”). It may leave non-Canadians scratching their heads, but I confess I still get misty-eyed whenever I read this one aloud.

  Ours to Discover

  Old man Withers was crazy. Everybody said so, everybody but that boy Eric. “Mr. Withers is an archeologist,” Eric would say—whatever an archeologist might be. Remember that funny blue-and-white sweater Withers found? He claimed he could look at the markings on it and hear the words “Toronto Maple Leafs” in his head. Toronto was the name of our steel-domed city, of course, so I believed that much, but I’d never heard of a maple leaf before. The same maple leaf symbol was in the center of all those old flags people kept finding in the ruins. Some thought a maple leaf must have been a horrendous beast like a moose or a beaver or a trudeau. Others thought it was a kind of crystal. But crystals make people think of rocks and uranium and bombs and, well, those are hardly topics for polite conversation.

  Eric wanted to know for sure. He came around to the museum and said, “Please, Mr. Curator, help me find out what a maple leaf is.”