I’d lived at the Candidate dormitory before, the year between Peter Reed and being posted to the Sundew—when I’d walked through the halls knowing I was one of the few in the Candidate program who could expect a job in space, rather than in a control room or lab or training facility on Earth. Back then I’d felt larger than life and prepared for anything. Now everything looked the same but felt different. The colors of the furniture and walls seemed brighter; I felt small inside rooms that appeared taller, or wider.
In the cafeteria I toasted a waffle and put peanut butter on it. I had a vague sense of the noise in the room behind me, but the pressure in my ears made it impossible to distinguish individual sounds, and when I moved my knife across the waffle it made no sound.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned. Lion was standing in front of me. He looked tall and healthy; his hair was a brown halo around his head.
His mouth was moving but I shook my head, tapped at my ear.
I can’t hear you, I said, and he leaned closer.
I was able to make out one word. Amelia.
I shook my head and opened my mouth wide, and the pressure released slightly.
Sit with me, he said, and pointed to an empty table.
We sat down and I cut up my waffle into small pieces, the knife and fork cold and strange in my swollen fingers. What were you trying to say before? I asked, probably too loudly, because the people one table over turned and looked at me.
He leaned across the table. Amelia’s being fitted for her prosthetic this week.
I put a piece of waffle into my mouth and chewed it on the left side—the descent to Earth had loosened some fillings in my molars and my right jaw was tender.
You should go see her, Lion said. I was there with Carla.
My throat was dry and I tried to swallow the piece of waffle.
She’s been asking for you, he said. She wants to know why you haven’t come.
Do you know what happened?
I heard.
She doesn’t want to see me. Not really.
Listen. I just told you she does.
Every sound was muted as the shuttle bus lurched through campus. Outside it was early fall and the sunshine made yellow spots on the floor. I watched the spots shift left and then right as we passed flat green fields and squat gray buildings. But when the bus paused in front of the veterans’ hospital I didn’t get up. My body felt anchored to the blue carpeted seat. I hadn’t been there since my uncle was sick and I didn’t want to go back.
The bus moved on and I rode it through its whole hour-long loop. When it reached the hospital stop for the second time I got out. I’d barely been outside since I’d arrived back on Earth, had been existing inside the chilly and still air of the Candidate dormitory for days. A tree stood a few yards away, a maple. Its large yellow leaves trembled in the breeze. The air was warm and humid and lifted my hair from my face.
On the rehabilitation floor a nurse pointed me in the right direction, along a dimly lit corridor that smelled like bleach. I walked slowly, my ears full of woolly pain. The door the nurse had pointed to had a window, and through it I saw a room full of equipment and machines. Amelia was sitting at a table. A metal prosthetic was fitted to her wrist and a woman was adjusting something on its thumb.
I opened the door. Amelia’s limbs were long and still. Her hair lay flat against her ears instead of floating away from her face. She turned toward me; her cheeks were pink. She said something I could barely hear. I think it was, Took you long enough.
I didn’t think you’d want to see me. My voice seemed wrapped in cotton.
She smiled at the woman and asked her if she could have a minute, and the woman stood and said, Just the thumb, okay?
Got it, Amelia said, and waited until she left the room.
I sat down across from her. Up close I saw that the prosthetic had a cupped and glossy palm and slender articulated fingers. I didn’t want to look at it. Out the window a large yellow leaf fell from a tree.
Amelia pulled both hands into her lap and began speaking. Her voice was fuzzy. She was talking about Inquiry. I didn’t want to listen to you, she said, but I should have.
I pressed my swollen foot hard into the floor. Amelia—
She held up her good hand. I just want to talk about what we need to do.
Even if they’re alive, we can’t get to them, I said. That’s what you told me.
James says they’re close to a solution with the fuel cell.
How close?
NSP is sending you to the Pink Planet to find out.
I don’t want to go anywhere. The pressure in my ears was worse and I shook my head and opened my mouth, pulled at my ears. I want to stay here.
What’s the matter with you?
My ears are stopped up.
Her face was exasperated. She said something. I think it was, Have you tried— But I didn’t catch the rest. She stood up from the table, hugged her prosthetic to her chest, and hung her head upside down. She pulled at her earlobes.
I got up slowly, bent over, hung my head the way she had. The pressure in my ears stayed the same. I pulled at my earlobes and the two points of pain seemed to bore into my skull, until—
There was the faintest pop and my earache evaporated. I tentatively released my ears. I slowly raised my head and the air was full of sound. A high whistle from a vent, sharp clicking from a nearby breathing-therapy machine, the crunching rumble of a truck on the road outside.
Thank you, I said, and my voice was loud and brittle.
You’re welcome.
She sat back down, still hugging her hands to her chest.
I looked at her prosthetic. Really looked at it. In the background the breathing-therapy machine clicked and clicked and clicked. Does it hurt? I asked softly.
She didn’t answer. In her lap she worked the thumb of her prosthetic back and forth with a popping motion. Sometimes, she said finally. It’s weird. Sometimes it feels like it’s still there.
I’m sorry Amelia, I said.
I know you are.
A man wearing shorts and a Candidate Group sweatshirt came into the room. He sat down in front of a machine and began doing leg exercises. I watched him push the heavy pedal with his feet.
There’s no official rescue plan, Amelia said. Not yet. But that’s what we’re working toward.
I’ll mess it up, I said.
No you won’t.
I’m not ready.
She scrutinized me. You look puffy. Have you been taking the pills they gave you?
They don’t work.
It’ll get better. In a week or two you’ll be ready to go back up.
I started to protest again but she interrupted me. What else are you going to do?
32
When I was a little girl I had night terrors, or that’s what my uncle and aunt called them. I’d wake in the night standing in the front yard. The icy air prickling my bare arms, and my uncle’s warm hands on my shoulders. It was the only way he could wake me up—to take me out in the cold. I remember the feeling of the sharp gravel against my soft bare feet and the flat black of the night sky above my head.
In the morning my aunt would tell me about the screams that woke them and what I looked like when they went into my room. Red faced and sweaty, my hair a dark nest on top of my head. But I had no memory of those things. I remembered only the cold air against my skin and my uncle’s soft and precise voice in my ear. He said my name, June, June, June, until I came to.
Then he took me back upstairs and sat with me. I remember how quiet it was, my aunt and cousin asleep in their own rooms, the curtains in my bedroom drawn. I lay in my bed, and he sat in a chair next to it. Sometimes he read to me or we drew together. But mostly he just talked, about what he was working on, his students, or the astronauts who trained in the buildings next to his lab.