21

He slept badly, with disturbed dreams.

There was a knock at the door, repeating gently.

He didn’t know where the hell he was, or what time it was.

He looked for his watch, and couldn’t find it, but it was useless anyhow as he hadn’t reset it since Houston. He pulled a towel around his waist and padded to the door.

Standing there was a doctor — it was obvious that was what he was, a little guy in a white coat with a black bag — and Geena, his ex-wife. Geena was wearing some kind of blue coverall and carried a little bag of groceries.

“You didn’t used to have to knock,” he said hoarsely.

“Different days, Henry. Can we come in?”

“Oh, shit,” said Henry, remembering. “You’re wearing a flight suit, aren’t you? It’s the day.”

Geena grinned, perhaps with a little malice. “The Russians say we are to share a great honour, this day,” she said.

Geena and the doctor bustled into the room. Henry backed off, and retreated to the bathroom. A last refuge of privacy.

He had spent his last night on Earth in Leninsk, the city that had grown up on the back of Baikonur Cosmodrome. They had arrived late. This was what they called the cosmonauts” hotel, the Kosmonavt, a low, modern building screened by what looked like elm trees — karagach, a young Russian told him. His room was a tiny suite, a doll’s-house Hilton of a thing, with a living room, a bedroom and a bathroom.

The room was like something out of the 1950s: carpets, net curtains, a fridge. Nothing inside the fridge but Diet Coke, labelled in Cyrillic. The bath had taps and a shower-head. But there was no plug — not in the hand-basin either — and the ceramic was cracked and stained.

Now, when he lifted the toilet lid, the ancient ceramic was so dark he couldn’t see the little puddle of water at the bottom. He had to admit it took a little willpower to lower his butt once more to this cracked Russian po.

When he flushed there was a sluggish trickle, of dirty brown water.

He tried the shower. It ran cold. There was a small sign in Cyrillic which apparently told him for which quarter-hour of the day he could expect hot water.

Farewell from Earth, he thought.

He towelled himself down. When he emerged, the doctor was waiting for him.

“Ya pravyeryoo davlyeniye.”

“Huh?”

The doctor, miming what he wanted, pulled out a blood pressure cuff and wrapped it around Henry’s arm. Then came a stethoscope, lung capacity measures, an eyepiece for peering into his mouth and ears, other simple tests. The stethoscope disc was cold on Henry’s chest.

Geena stalked around the room. She looked down on Henry’s discarded socks and underpants, as if from a great height.

The doctor backed off. “Vi nye balni. Odivaitis, pazhalsta.”

Henry looked at Geena.

“You are healthy,” said Geena. She shrugged. “I speak astronaut pidgin. He says you may get dressed. There are clothes in the cupboard.”

Henry went through to his bedroom. Hanging up in the wardrobe there was a blue NASA flight suit — it had a little US flag stitched to it, but not his name — and there were longjohns, socks and T-shirts in the dressers. He washed again — the water was still cold — and when he emerged the doctor was waiting for him, here in the bedroom, his last sanctum. With mimes, the doctor insisted he had to be rubbed down with an alcohol swab.

Henry submitted. The alcohol was cold on his flesh.

When the doctor had gone Henry got dressed quickly. All the clothes fit. There were light training shoes, and he slipped those onto his feet.

He picked his own clothes up from the floor. He considered putting them into the trash. Then, carrying the clothes, he walked back out to the lounge.

“I look like a tour guide at Disneyland,” he said to Geena.

“You look fine.”

Henry held his clothes out to the doctor. “Will you look after these for me?”

The doctor nodded; his round, Moon-like face split into a smile. “Da.”

“It’s just shit, but it’s all I have left.”

“I think he understands,” Geena said. “He has been around cosmonauts a long time.”

“I’m not a cosmonaut.”

“By the end of today you will be. Now.” She lifted her grocery bag, and inside there was heavy Russian bread, and little packets of salt and water. She laid out the stuff on the crude coffee table that was the centrepiece of Henry’s living room. She poured the salt into a depression in the top of the loaf. Then she broke off a piece of the bread, dipped it in the salt, and bit into it.

Henry took some bread and bit off a piece. It was heavy and strongly flavoured. “An old Russian custom?”

“That’s right. They do this tradition stuff better than we do.” Geena slapped her thigh. “Into the saddle!”

She really has gone native, he thought.

“Hi ho Silver.”

Geena put down the bread. “Look, Henry. I know how you must be feeling. I know you’ve had no real time to prepare. But I’m trained for this. Some of it, anyhow. I’m with you all the way; you won’t come to harm.”

To his chagrin, Henry found he was reassured. “Thanks.”

The doctor said, “Schastleevava pootee! Nye nada peet alkagolya.”

“Have a good journey,” Geena translated. “But drink no alcohol.”

“There goes my plan for the day.”

“Here.” Geena handed him a pencil.

“What’s this?”

“Sign your name on the door.”

Henry did so, adding his signature to a patina of graffiti here. “Another cosmonaut ritual?”

“Dating back to Gagarin himself.” Geena smiled.

Henry picked up his polarizing microscope.

He was taken for breakfast, in an opulent dining hall. The food was meat drowned in butter and sour cream. Henry was hungry, but when he bit into the meal he could almost feel his arteries furring up. This was no place to be a vegetarian, it seemed.

There were others here, mostly men, some in uniform: cosmonauts, doctors, managers, engineers. They ate breakfast too, but largely in silence. He could sense them staring at him, but when he looked directly towards them they looked away.

Heavy cutlery clinked on thick china plates.

He leaned to Geena. “What’s with these guys? Are they jealous?”

“Some are. The other cosmonauts here. Some have waited years for a flight into space, and now they have to watch two Americans fly their ship—”

“I know, I know. Here I am, taking their berth. Just like JSC. What about the rest?”

“Only the most senior managers are here. It’s an honour for them.”

“Why? What’s the fascination? The fact that we’re going into space?”

Geena turned to him, pale blue eyes as empty as church windows. “No. The fact that we’ll probably die.”

When he was done he was led, with Geena, from the building, into the fresh air. It was mid-morning now. The sky was high and blue, the air hot with a billowing breeze. This was Kazakhstan. He was far to the north here — further north than Chicago, for instance — but he was still in the heart of the world continent, and it was a land of hot, parched summers and glacial winters.

They walked down a little path that wound between rows of elms, to a car park that might have been located outside any mall in any city in America. There were buses, police cars, what looked like press vehicles with TV cameras stuck to their roofs.

Cape Canaveral, it was not.

There was an air of casual cheerfulness, of slow progress to their ultimate destination. People came up to Geena, and offered comments, backslaps and jokes. It was very different from the way he’d followed Geena through launches at Canaveral: informal, as if this was some huge family vacation.

But nobody spoke to Henry. It was as if, he thought, he had left the planet already.

They clambered aboard a bus. An Orthodox priest stood by the door and blessed them, mumbling incomprehensibly. Henry bowed back, more for the benefit of the old priest than himself. He stowed his polarizing microscope under his seat.