Everything on Primitus takes more time than it should. Partly this is because Primitus is organized for possible centrifuge failure—every tool, every piece of equipment has a tether or a strap or a seal—and partly because they have limited tools. Also, things have gotten pretty messy. Primitus is a two-tiered pie, or more precisely, a Bundt cake: the tiers are connected by a central tube, which has its own shielding and doubles as a solar storm shelter. On the upper Hab, seven unequal slices radiate from the tube: Galley/Recreation, Science/Lab, Exercise, Lavatory, and three private compartments for the crew. At present, it looks like someone has dropped the Bundt cake on the floor; everything is in the wrong room, moved because someone had to get behind it, or under it, or dismantle it to find out why its sensors were blaring.
There is a kind of accelerated internal rhythm Helen becomes aware of—chiefly centered in her ribcage and throat—when she is on the borders of serious sleep deprivation. She should rest soon, for at least an hour or two, but right now, her hands are steady. What she needs most right now is a tool to twist these wires together. Sergei has her small flat nose pliers. They need more small-size flat nose pliers. She must improvise, and she enjoys that. A cuticle clipper would be absolutely perfect for the job, she thinks.
Just when Helen thinks “cuticle clipper,” her mind slips sideways. She can almost physically feel a tilting, as if she were standing chest-high in the waters of a lake and leaning sideways and dipping one ear in the water. She can’t stop it. Helen’s mind slips and she sees her sister Hillary’s teenage collection of nail maintenance and decoration apparatus, which Hillary stored in a silly version of a proper tackle box. The box was pink plastic, covered by Hillary in stickers and with her name spelled out in rhinestones. Varnish in all shades was arranged by color wheel scheme inside, along with implements and little rods that Hillary used to adorn her nails with stripes, with flowers, with holiday seasonal–appropriate insignia. The box, as Helen recalls, was called a Kaboodle.
Helen tries to bring her mind back to sourcing a tool, but her mind is not done. Her mind seeks out teenage Hillary, hunched over her Kaboodle, in Saint Andrew’s Long Term Care Facility, where their father had lain in a permanent vegetative state, and where they had visited him for two hours every Sunday. The children were allowed to do activities during their visits. They did not have to sit and stare at him.
Helen’s mind comes back, thankfully before it roved from Hillary over to the way her father looked in that hospital bed.
This is not good, this slipping. But it’s over and Helen can now visualize the scissor clamp in the surgical supply case, which should do the job. She knows where the medical supply case is, she can access it, she can do this thing.
As she is completing this task, Yoshi appears in the doorway.
“I’m done,” Helen says.
“Very good. And now, the toilet. It is being very peevish.” Yoshi hands Helen a pair of gloves with a half smile.
According to the data, in about six weeks even the things people in a confined situation admire about one another will become a possible source of irritation. “Irrational antagonism” is the name for this, even though anyone who has ever heard of the phenomenon finds it entirely understandable and only wonders at it taking six weeks to manifest. But it’s day twenty-one and Helen still likes that Yoshi uses words like peevish.
They had all acknowledged this morning that they were falling into spells of “overfocus,” and Mission Control has reminded them to allow for more frequent short breaks, to utilize the five-minute exercise routines, to monitor their mental and physical acuity with the Reaction Self-Tests. Helen reminds herself that she needs to run sentences longer than “yes” through her head before she says them out loud. Also, when she has an “emotion” she should take a moment to “flip it.” I really don’t want to have to deal with poop right now needs to become I’m glad that all I have to deal with right now is a little poop.
The Lav wedge of Primitus is a one-person space, but this is a two-person job. And right now it is better to work when they can in teams, to avoid errors. Yoshi reads the procedure for removing the face panel of the Chute, and Helen removes it.
“Can’t get a visual,” she says. Yoshi leans over her shoulder and adjusts the beam of his flashlight. All fecal matter on Primitus is processed through forward osmosis. The astronaut engaged in elimination uses a vacuum funnel connected to a bag, and the bag of astronaut waste is sent via the Chute to the lining of the craft’s corrugated hull. Water from the waste matter is extracted through the bag’s polyethylene membrane, the water is purified and recycled, and the rest acts as additional radiation shielding. The phrase “flying in a poop can” had been used to describe this method of recycling astronaut elimination on a spacecraft, but it is effective. Water and fecal matter are better barriers against cosmic radiation than metal, containing more shielding atomic nuclei per unit volume.
Yoshi shines the flashlight into the maw of the Chute and Helen slides her gloved hands inside. Their heads are very close together as they work, Yoshi’s leg is pressed up against Helen’s back, but it is the common goal and the accordance between them about the importance of things relative to other things that forms the intimacy. When a member of a crew says that the crew is “like family,” it’s not an entirely accurate simile. It is not easy to get the people in your life to act as perfect team members. Helen had experienced many happy times with her husband and daughter, but they had never really been part of her crew. Yoshi’s flashlight goes off.
“One moment,” Yoshi says, in the voice he uses when he is extolling effort in not being peevish. Another flashlight is required. Helen sits back on her heels.
Tomorrow is the anniversary of her husband’s death. Helen needs to record a message for Meeps and downlink it to Mission Control to be forwarded. She needs to not be annoyed that she needs to do this. A video message will be better than talking anyway. They are too far “out” now for a comfortable live chat, there is a seven-second “delay” even when they have connections. Meeps needs to have the message in the morning, waiting for when she wakes up. She must not think that Helen has forgotten.
Eric’s ashes—most of them—were interred at the Cemetery of Loyasse, in Lyon, where Eric had been born.