Mishin and Bushuyev saw Nadya, and their set frowns loosened.
“Thank god,” said one of them. “Where’s the Chief Designer?”
“I don’t know,” answered Nadya.
Mishin and Bushuyev exchanged a look.
“Come in,” said the other one of them, “but be warned. It’s an ugly sight.”
As soon as Nadya, Ignatius, and Leonid entered the room, Mishin and Bushuyev resumed their posts in the doorway. Beyond them, the technicians had calmed, only a few left struggling to earn a view inside.
Compared to the hallway, the observation room was absolutely hushed. One technician sat at the video monitors. He seemed to be shuttling a recording of the video feed back and forth. The screen was too far away to see what was on it. Sometimes the whole screen filled with white. Several other people stood around the room, arms crossed in waiting. They wore the same white coats as the technicians, but the stethoscopes slung around their necks identified them as doctors.
“What happened?” asked Leonid.
Everyone in the room looked at him and then looked away, in the direction of the two-meter-long tunnel to the anechoic chamber, without answering. A repeating squeak came from inside. Three technicians, maybe doctors, or a combination of both, wheeled a gurney into the unlit tunnel. One of the wheels wobbled and seemed to be the source of the squeak.
The gurney entered the first slant of light angling from the observation room. Ignatius covered her open mouth and stepped back. A tear streaked from Nadya’s left eye. Leonid did not understand. The gurney was marred with black and a dark lump rested upon it. It was the smell that let him understand, fresh-seared meat. It made him hungry for an instant until he realized the source of the smell, the charred thing on the gurney, young Giorgi somehow burnt to near nothing. Nothing human, at least.
Leonid found Giorgi’s face and made himself look. It was less black than the rest of him, reddish and bubbled with exploded skin. Where his eyes had been, just indentions and crisp flesh. The end of his nose completely gone. His golden hair an impossible memory. Giorgi’s lips, ashy with stripes of pink where they had split, moved in slow syllables. Leonid leaned close and walked with the gurney across the room, listening.
Instead of clearing a path, the technicians in the hallway pressed closer, preventing the gurney from exiting. Mishin and Bushuyev tried to shove through the throng, but got lost in it themselves. The doctors called for people to make way, clear passage, move, but no command had any effect. Ignatius stepped to the doorway and drew a Makarov pistol from somewhere within her leather jacket. She pressed the Makarov to the forehead of one of the technicians, an old woman, white hair in a pouf around her head. A crazed look had reigned the woman’s face and the faces of the whole crowd. Now her expression softened and set off a chain reaction of reason. The shoving and shouting stopped, and the crowd spread itself along either side of the hallway until the path was clear.
Leonid remembered watching Nadya’s homecoming parade on television. All of Moscow lining the streets. Some of the engineers claimed that when she entered Red Square, the roar of the crowd could be heard as far away as Star City. This parade, though, the only one Giorgi would ever receive, passed in silence.
Ignatius led the way, pistol held loosely in her dangling hand, followed by Mishin and Bushuyev, the gurney and the attendant doctors. Nadya and Leonid brought up the rear. A few of the technicians in the hallway wept, but most stood stock-still like they were part of one of Giorgi’s murals, painted there on the hallway wall.
“What did Giorgi say?” asked Nadya.
“He just repeated the same thing over and over,” said Leonid. “‘It was my fault. It was my fault.’”
THE SOUND of the road whirred up through the floor of the ambulance. Somehow, instead of the doctors, Leonid and Ignatius had ended up riding with Giorgi. Nadya rode up front with the driver. When the Chief Doctor protested, Ignatius told him that she was more qualified than he for such severe trauma. When he protested again, she threatened to injure him in such a way that he would need her services, as well. Leonid did not know if she actually had medical training, but it certainly seemed so. She opened one of the small metal cupboards on the wall of the ambulance and pulled out a large syringe and a glass vial. She drew the clear liquid into the syringe. It looked like nothing more than water, barely enough to wet a parched mouth. Without a flinch, she pushed the needle into Giorgi’s neck and expelled the contents.
“This will help with the pain,” she said, speaking to Leonid.
Leonid watched his friend, or what was left of him. The drug did seem to help. After several seconds, Giorgi’s burned body relaxed, muscles loosening. His hands, fingers curled in like a bird of prey’s talons, eased into a more natural shape. Leonid thought of a blossoming flower, but something was not quite right. Whole fingers were missing from Giorgi’s hands, burned completely away. Nausea surged from Leonid’s bowels to the top of his throat. He covered his mouth and swallowed hard three times.
“Vomiting on him won’t help the situation,” said Ignatius. “Are you all right?”
“I won’t vomit,” said Leonid.
“Leonid?” Giorgi’s voice was weak, slurred like when he drank all night at one of his parties. “Leonid, is that you?”
“I’m here,” said Leonid.
“I can’t see. The flash blinded me.”
“There’s nothing to see now but the back of the ambulance.”
“Every time one of you returned from space, you all described the stars the same way. The exact same words. Did you know that? ‘They do not sparkle, just a pure point of light.’ I wanted to see the stars, if only so I could come up with a better description. The rest of you never had an eye for art.”
Giorgi coughed. Against the black of his friend’s lips, Leonid could not tell if it was blood or spit that came up. Leonid made himself look, despite the ill feelings it caused. He felt obligated, like the reason he was allowed in the back of the ambulance was to bear witness. The skin all over Giorgi’s body had the same parched look as his face, but here and there a crosshatched pattern patched the flesh. The jumpsuit. In the flames, the fabric had melted into his skin.
“Do you remember when I first arrived at Star City?” asked Giorgi. “You were assigned to show me around. You barely knew anything about the place. The worst tour I ever had.”
“I’m sorry,” said Leonid, though the other Leonid was the one who had given Giorgi the tour.
“Do you remember what you told me at the end?” asked Giorgi.
“Remind me.”
“I remember it exactly. ‘The worst days are yet to come,’ you said, ‘but just tell yourself that it must be worth it. We wouldn’t be here if it was not worth it.’”
“I said that?”
“You believed it, but I’m not so sure you still believe it when I look at you now. Not that I can see.” He laughed, which turned into a cough.
Ignatius leaned over him and pressed a folded-over strip of gauze to Giorgi’s lips. It was soaked through with red when she pulled it away.
“Do you remember the weekend when we snuck away to Moscow?” asked Giorgi. “What was the girl’s name? The short blonde with the pretty pout?”
“I don’t recall.”
“Of course you do. It’s not as if you had many opportunities to bed a woman. Maybe now, but not then.”
“Svetlana?”
“No, no.” Giorgi’s voice had faded to a whisper, barely louder than the hum of the ambulance.
“Perhaps you should rest your voice.”
“Is this even my voice? I sound different. And you, Leonid, you sound the same, but I’m not sure it’s you. It’s like you’re someone different since you returned. Does space change you that much? I always looked forward to going so I could see who I was when I came back. Who else gets the chance to be two people in one life?”