“You’re going to be a part of history,” his father said.
It was a Sergei phrase: “It’s not nothing.” All the astronauts used it. All the Obbers used it now too. They had their own T-shirts with it printed. Prime Space: It’s Not Nothing.
Luke settles into his bed, thinks of the crew settling into their own beds. He wraps his arms around his body. He spends so much time looking at Sergei and Yoshi and Helen that it’s not always possible to get their images out of his head.
Perhaps Sergei and Yoshi would like to touch Helen. Perhaps she wants to be touched.
SERGEI
It is January 14, Old New Year in the Russian calendar, a day of feasting and carol singing and fortune-telling. The astronauts must celebrate. Perhaps none of them wishes to celebrate; perhaps they all think they would prefer to lie on their person-sized slabs in their wedges and reread messages from home, or marathon-watch a television series, or don sim helmets and stroll along the cliffs of a virtual Cornwall. The brain looks for comfort like a newborn, seeks pleasure like a greedy child, abandons reason like a lovesick teen. Even the kind of brain that recognizes the value of delayed gratification—or has been rigorously trained to accept it—even that brain is capable of justifying slothful regression.
Sergei believes that complete transparency about his role as commander is crucial to his success as commander, so he does not try to trick or cajole his crewmates into having good times. He says, “Prime believes it is important for us to celebrate and have communal recreation activities, especially during times when we might be tempted to withdraw because we are missing Earth and our families.” He does not say, “I believe,” even though he does agree that it is important. It is too easy to become dull without realizing that you have become dull. Depression and listlessness are marked states, but boring is a slow disease.
Over the years, the International Space Station has acquired a supply of holiday decor, but on Primitus, size and weight are commodities too precious to be squandered on the premanufactured items of celebration. The astronauts have done their best. Five pieces of paper had been sacrificed to make snowflakes for Christmas, and these still hang over the dining table along with a chime constructed from shiny tools, and utensils not in use. Sergei had programmed the large screen in the Galley/Recreation wedge to play a scene of snow falling. Their mascot, the green alien, has acquired a tiny red paper Santa/Grandfather Frost hat. The astronauts have made alterations to their own appearances to mark the Old New Year. Helen wears a towel on her head, babushka-style. Yoshi sports a mustache made from black electrical tape. Sergei has made himself a beard out of a wad of flameproof insulation. For dinner, they enjoyed rehydrated pork dumplings.
Sergei places a tray of screws and nuts onto the table. “My sister Galina was the fortune-teller,” Sergei says. “Because she was the youngest and we had a tradition in the family that it was always the youngest girl who did this. We had a game, with beans. The beans were put in a special bag, and you shook it, and then you reached in and grabbed a handful and let them fall into a pot while you made a wish. Then my sister would count the beans and if the number was even, your wish came true, and if odd, too bad.”
What happens when you become dull is you forget that the story you are telling must be interesting to other people, or you forget that you have already told the story. You say, “I may have told you this” and proceed anyway, even if your listeners appear to recognize the anecdote. Or you tell no stories at all. Sergei produces a clean sock and puts the screws and nuts he has collected into the sock.
“Helen is the youngest woman here,” Sergei says. “So she shall count the beans.” He is feeling homesick for people who do not require translations or explanations, even though both Helen and Yoshi are conversant with Russian holidays, have celebrated them with cosmonauts before. Helen and Yoshi probably know more about Russian traditions than a lot of Russians. But for them it will always be knowing about these things, not simply knowing them. Sergei thinks of his youngest sister, Galina. She had been the prettiest and the sweetest of his sisters, and now she was fat, and a lesbian, and lived in Germany. He didn’t mind about the lesbian and the Germany. Russia was not the place to live if you were gay. It was one of the reasons.
Well.
Galina was very bitter against their parents for various things that they’d all had to put up with. She had something that she called her “personal story” and she did nothing but tell this personal story over and over again. Sometimes she called it her “voice” or her “truth.” Sergei had felt very bad for Galina when he heard her personal story the first time, but now it was just annoying.
Thinking of his sister makes Sergei feel depressed, which he was already feeling this week, a little, because of missing his boys. It’s not a problem. Being depressed is not the worst thing. It depends on how you address the feeling. Perhaps Sergei is luckier than his crewmates. Americans always desire happiness, so they fear sadness, unlike Russians, who can draw strength from mourning. The Japanese too, Sergei understands, have an easier relationship with melancholy. Sergei is very glad that Helen is a woman and not a man. Depressed American men on spaceships are embarrassing.
“Do you have your wish ready?” Helen asks Yoshi.