“How do we classify Helen’s hair for disposal?” Sergei folds his arms and looks at Yoshi. “This is much more hair than what comes off our heads. It is nonrecoverable cargo, yes, but of what label? Nonbiodegradable waste? It is possible that it was contaminated on Mars and we should mark it for destruction.”
He is making a joke, although trash is an incredibly serious topic on Red Dawn. On the space station they can use a Prime Raptor for trash, which is jettisoned prior to reentry and disintegrates, along with its contents, when it hits Earth’s atmosphere. But they will be returning to Earth with all their waste materials.
“Perhaps we can keep it in the Lab,” Helen says, with a smile. “Maybe some hair product company would like to give us a million dollars to do a study on the effect of UV radiation on labile proteins? I can’t think of another use for it. I don’t think my hair is going to be of much value against solar flare.”
“It could make nice pillow,” Sergei says.
“Or a sweater. I forgot to pack my knitting needles, though.”
“Can you use my chopsticks?” Yoshi joins in the joking just in the nick of time.
They do haircuts in the Lav. Sergei volunteers to play barber and Yoshi remains in the doorway to video the event and in order to give Sergei more room. Also, because he is horrified. Helen faces the wall and straddles the closed lid of the commode. She pulls off the hair band holding her ponytail together and fluffs out her brown and gray curls. They look so soft.
“My father would cut our hair when we were children.” Sergei hands Helen a trash bag to hold. “My sisters and me. We had to make a line and take turns in a chair in the kitchen. I remember he would put a bib around our necks, to catch the hair. Very scratchy yellow plastic, I hated this. But I learned how to cut hair from watching him cut Galina’s and Valechka’s, and I cut my own boys’ hair.”
“You don’t have to make this nice,” Helen points out. “Since we’ll just be shaving the rest off.”
“Maybe you will like just short hair, not bald,” Sergei says. “Bald is extreme. And you might have egg-shaped head. You must consider what Yoshi and I will have to look at.”
Yoshi has no words. Sergei is patting Helen’s head, separating clumps of curls. He asks for and receives a comb. And Helen’s eyes keep closing whenever Sergei tugs the hair back from her scalp. For nearly eight months Yoshi had nothing in his lexicon for Helen’s sensuality, and now he has the way she touched her bare skin on Mars, and this, this giving over to someone else’s, not his, touch.
Problems, these are all problems. They were all behaving differently. They could not pretend that they weren’t, or Prime would be curious about what they were concealing. They must find a way to be transparent and opaque.
Maybe this was what Helen was doing. She never looked at herself, but Prime was looking all the time. She would give them something to look at so she could retreat deeper into whatever had happened to her. (What had happened to her?) She would empower Sergei as her Delilah.
He’d not experienced the dust devil in the way that Helen and Sergei had. Had Prime deliberately kept him out of it? Had Prime manufactured a scenario in which Yoshi would see Helen nearly naked? Why is he the commander now; what specific skill does he have for any of these scenarios? This was Junya with his hand pressed over Yoshi’s eyes all over again. Yoshi can only command himself, to wait, to endure.
He must not forget himself, or let his crew forget themselves. There is too much time, too much space. They must remember their names, their countries, their languages, their sexes, their bodies. They must remember where they are, where they came from, where they are going. He can feel the pull, the allure, of forgetting. It is the pull of space itself and they are explorers and they will always go to the edge of the map. But he cannot yet, he is not ready yet, he has only just begun to open his eyes.
He knows he must think of his wife. Only, somewhere on Mars, he lost the power to imagine her.
MADOKA
The hug had been awkward, both of them guessing wrong about the other’s intentions as to where cheeks and shoulders and hands were headed, and with Mireille getting her ring caught in Madoka’s scarf. Madoka had remembered the girl differently, as someone larger, but Madoka is the taller of the two.
The girl usually signed her Prime Family Member posts with the name Meeps, but Madoka is proud of her good French and prefers the name Mireille.
Madoka does not want to be friends with Mireille, whom she judged in Utah as being a vaguely dangerous person, but decided it would look odd, certainly unsociable, not to suggest a friendly get-together while she was in Los Angeles. Her Prime family liaison knew her schedule, and Madoka imagined the family liaisons having coffee together, discussing their charges, figuring out how best to handle them. Prime would be pleased to think of the two of them having lunch, creating an empathy bridge or however they put it. Yoshi’d been pleased too, when she’d told him. “From what Helen says of her daughter, I think you’ll find her amusing,” is what he said in his last message.