As the Chief Designer approached the fuel station, the General Designer noticed him, spoke something to the nearest technician, and met the Chief Designer halfway.
“I suppose this is where you lecture me,” said the General Designer. “This is where you remind me that you warned me about the dangers of hypergolic fuels. Do you know how we’re assembling the list of names? The names of the dead? We’re taking roll. Anyone who we don’t find is added to the list. It’s a list of the absent. These people are simply no more. A few, yes, we could identify. There were several tangled in the wire fence to the east. Some who made it beyond that were unburned. The fumes got them. To think that you got away only to breathe poison. That was their fate. How long do you think they felt lucky? Did they see their friends swallowed up and think, Thank god, not me! And what about me? I had to shit, Chief Designer. If I hadn’t drunk that vodka, if I hadn’t inherited a weak stomach from my father, I would have been there, too. I wouldn’t have to answer your questions or any of the questions yet to come. Can you at least give me this day? Let me come to understand my own regrets before you gloat. I killed a hundred people. Two hundred. Right now, I can’t deal with your triumph.”
“At any cost,” said the Chief Designer.
“What?”
“That’s what Tsiolkovski taught us: Succeed at any cost. I understand your current feelings better than you may realize, and about this, I will never gloat. I want to reach Mars first, but if I don’t, then someone else must. Right now, you’re the only other option. You’ll recover from this and you’ll push me and we’ll push each other.”
The General Designer put his hand on his face and pressed his eyes as if he was trying to hold back tears. When he opened his eyes again, they were dry.
He said, “You came here for my heat shield, correct? Not today, not for many days, but I’ll have the information sent to you when I’m able.”
“Accidents are unavoidable in our industry. That’s what I’ll tell Khrushchev.”
The General Designer tried to say something, his mouth moving like he was chewing on the words.
“Don’t thank me,” said the Chief Designer. “I still think you’re an ass.”
“And I you,” said the General Designer, and then he said the Chief Designer’s name, his real name, the name no one except his wife and son and Ignatius was supposed to know.
The Chief Designer took a deep breath and tried not to think about what he was inhaling.
Bohdan, Ukraine—1950
When the creek dried up, the villagers began to ration water from the well. Some hope arrived when a few green shoots rose in the field, but the sprouts quickly turned brown, shriveling back into the earth. A baby died. Not uncommon in the village, but this baby died with no fever, no rash, no symptoms at all. It cried one whole night and then stopped crying. The villagers wrapped the baby in sackcloth and buried it without a coffin. The grave was barely half a meter deep. There was no worry of the little body being dug up by an animal. No one had seen an animal in the forest for months.
The Leonids sat in a circle with the other children, not five meters from where the baby was buried at the base of the old tree in the center of the village. Mykola had brought a ball with him, made of real rubber. It was now cracking and stained with dirt, but when he first got it years ago, the rubber was sleek and shiny. The children rolled the ball to each other. Not a game, really. No one had the energy to get up and kick the ball or throw it. They just shoved it across the short diameter of the circle until another child thought to shove it back.
The next time the ball came to Mykola, he snatched it up and stood. He walked away without saying anything. The other children got up one at a time and headed in the direction of their homes. It was dinnertime, Leonid guessed. Once, at this time every evening, a chorus of parents calling to their children could be heard through the whole valley. Now it remained silent, and everyone went home only out of habit.
The Leonids were the last to stand, along with Oksana, a girl a couple years older who lived at the end of the village nearest Grandmother’s cottage. Oksana had ears a little too big for her face, but nobody mocked her for it. She rarely smiled and was not exactly nice. Leonid remembered, though, how she came to Grandmother’s the day after the soldiers arrived with news of Father’s death. Oksana had brought fresh bread and then stayed to clean the cottage. Leonid rarely talked to her, maybe because after that he always thought of her as an adult, not another one of the children.
They walked together now, assuming the arrangement of a group, though all three were in their own spheres of thought. As they neared Mykola’s cottage, he came back out the front door with his shoes in his hands. He beat them together, knocking clumps of dry dirt to the ground and creating a gray cloud in the air around him. He took both boots in one hand and waved the other in front of his face, coughing. Sitting on the step, he slid the shoes back on.
Oksana stopped, and the older Leonid almost collided with her. The younger Leonid, looking over at Mykola, did not see his brother stop and clipped him with his shoulder.
“Watch it,” said the older Leonid.
“Why’d you stop?” asked the younger.
“What’s that smell?” asked Oksana.
The Leonids looked at her and then looked around, as if the smell was something they could see. But then Leonid smelled it, too, a wet scent, barely more than steam. Even when he smelled it, he could not place it, something familiar but forgotten.
“Meat,” said the younger Leonid. “Someone’s boiling meat.”
“No one’s had meat in months,” said the older Leonid.
“He’s right,” said Oksana. “It’s definitely meat.”
The older Leonid sniffed again, still unconvinced, but then his stomach decided for him, rumbling loud enough that Oksana and his brother turned to look.
“It’s coming from Mykola’s home,” he said.
Mykola was still lacing his left shoe, seemingly unaware of the three children staring at him.
The older Leonid took one step toward him. “Where did your family get meat?”
Mykola stood without tying his shoe. He stayed on the step and pushed the door shut behind him.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
Leonid took another step toward him. Mykola hopped off the front step and crept away from the cottage.
“Don’t deny it. We all smelled meat.”
“No one has any meat.”
“Except you. Why is that?”
The boys now stood face-to-face. Mykola tried to take a step back, but Leonid stepped with him.
“Grandmother boiled tree bark yesterday. That’s what we ate for dinner. Water flavored with wood. And here you are with meat while the rest of us are dying.”
At the word dying Mykola looked up, his eyes stretched wide.
“No one’s going to die,” he said.
“Are you dumb?” asked Leonid.
“Don’t call me dumb.”
Leonid shoved him, and Mykola staggered back.
“I’m not dumb,” said Mykola.
“You’re an idiot.”
“Fuck your mother.”
Leonid lunged forward, wrapping his arms around Mykola at the waist and tackling him to the ground. Leonid pinned Mykola down with a forearm across the throat, and punched into Mykola’s ribs with his free hand. The punches felt weak to Leonid, his strength sapped by hunger, but Mykola cried out at each blow.
“Where did you get meat?” screamed Leonid.
Then he was lifted off the ground and away from Mykola, Oksana and his brother gripping him under each armpit. How thin he must have been to be carried so easily. Mykola pushed himself up into a sitting position.