Traveling in space has many wonderful aspects and one terrible one — which is the further away you get from the earth, the more visible the distance between you and your earthly life becomes. And it becomes that much sadder and harder for you to accept the magnitude of the time needed to return. This feeling grows and keeps growing, except if you decide not to return at all.
But the most important thing is to scatter K-shev’s ashes completely, with no leftovers, in the airless, non-orbital cosmos.
The rocket is beautiful, beautiful and proud. Where is Comrade Todorov, my morals and law teacher, if only he could see me now. Look, Comrade Todorov — and you thought I was joking. Do you see me? — that’s me in one of the reclining seats in the cockpit surrounded by all these machines. Metal, uniformly spaced rivets. I don’t know which one holds more significance for my life — Chernobyl or Baikonur? Perhaps both things had to happen to me, in precisely the right order. Because I now possess a body of cells that have been irradiated deep down. A body that sits calmly and decisively in the transport cabin. The cosmos calls to me. The very same cosmos promised by those reprinted Russian popular science books from my childhood. School bulletin boards and pictures from Pioneers and Rockets magazine, strangely mixing into the general brownish-blue mass. The rocket now is beautiful and majestic.
The rocket, Energia, a thousand-ton giant. The terror of seeing the enormous mechanism, which was created to start up only once. I see a square of its light hull through the cockpit’s side window. The reusable space shuttle Buran—pride of the erstwhile Soviet space and aeronautical industry — attached to the launch rocket with three hydraulic and three mechanical suction cups. Tucked beneath them are the pyrotechnical systems, stuck on with a gray gum, the glue that guards against an undesirable premature explosion. Later, in orbit, this final stage will also become unnecessary. And then the soft explosions will pry them apart: the Energia from the Buran on its side, and the Buran from the Energia, until recently hitched together. They will reach that cherished altitude and afterward never meet again. Except perhaps in the ions of the glittering atmosphere, on its grating upper edges. There, where the corona of earthly air comes up against the cosmic nothingness. There, when the shuttle returns through the sizzling layers, breaking them like chains. In the flames washing over its hull, the Buran will again caress the slender rocket. The Energy, broken up, shattered into basic pieces, will once again embrace the shuttle.
In this vortex of ions, under the rasping of the file with which the universe crafts the galvanic globe of the stratosphere and sands away the calluses from the cosmos’ feet as if with a galactic pumice stone — amid the physique of the cosmic bodies, nothing will remain of K-shev’s body (nor even his ashes, I hope).
“And that’s why, Comrade Todorov, astronautics hides more symbolism than can be seen on the surface of its realistic principles. That’s why flying is so beautiful.”
I hope that he understands me, finally.
The desire for freedom, that is at the root of everything. As long as there’s a law, it doesn’t matter what law, freedom does not yet truly exist. Lawlessness is the only absolutely free territory, there rules are created at every individual moment and only last that long.
In that sense I believe, Comrade Todorov, that the first of all natural laws best summarizes this tension: the law of gravity versus the freedom to overcome it.
Leaving, becoming distant from yourself, that’s at the basis of weightlessness. When you break away from your earthly stance, when you leave your orbit as well, the planets shrink in the portholes. Your individual body becomes the center of all attraction. You spin in the vacuum-womb like a stellar baby, who is the beginning and end of everything, just as it is its very self.
But I am nevertheless the product of the pedagogical and educational system in which I was raised. For that reason, even at the moment when I can already imagine that I myself have turned out to be the great and supernatural Prime Mover, the omnipresent factor behind the Big Bang, the Great Attractor from physics textbooks — even then, I still keep thinking about him, worrying about K-shev. What more could he possibly want with us? Hasn’t all his power over me been toppled, along with the repeal of the principle of the Party’s supremacy?
Yes, that’s how it seems at first glance. But after all the old norms have been obliterated and you have been left and are left on your own — with the mechanism of pure causes and effects — then the only working principle remaining comes to the forefront. And that is the Law of the Right of the Firstcomer.
Today I judge him for things that he probably wouldn’t do if he could see them as I do — from the position of time. My accusations would be part of his conscience, if only everything could be given a new order. If I could be him, or vice-versa — he could be me. It looks very simple, a question of chronology in time. The bodies with which and over which we battle — his, mine, hers — are, in fact, the battlefield.
One critical, criminal question hangs over everything, however: Why am I rehashing all of this? Why, through her purifying body, the body of K-shev’s daughter, am I approaching the very same place where her father also is — the narrow transitional space of death? Could it be that the most horrifying part has already begun, the part I have always feared exactly as much as growing up? Has the process of transforming into K-shev begun?
Going Back
So for that reason I go back to earth, to his bedside, amid the signals of reality. Outside a truck relieves the dumpsters of trash with a steady hum.
In the end, I have to reach out — I take the envelope sitting on the nightstand. There’s a name written on it. Even in the cramped letters of the sickly script I recognize that his hand has written it:
“A letter to my son.”
His Son
“I wanted you to love me for what I am. For that reason I never pretended. Was that terrible? Now I’m dying, dying of a disease that I almost brought on you, too. Forgive me.”
Blah-blah, and so on. He’s sleeping now and will probably never wake up again. So he must’ve fallen asleep for good, since he finally decided to write. He’s fallen into those forms of the words “eternity” and “sleep” that are used in obituaries. Is there any point in reading any further? Why, for something new that I don’t already know?
“Of course, first of all, that unnatural Article One had to be repealed. But a change in the law still doesn’t mean a judgment. Once my leading and fatherly role has been rejected, you both can invite someone else into the vacant position. Anyone else. My end is near — I assume the two of you won’t wait much longer. There’s money in the briefcase. More than a million, I hope it’ll be enough. I don’t have any more, that’s all of it. Don’t be afraid, go ahead and take it, stow it away somewhere. I don’t need painkillers anymore, the drugs are useless at this point.
I’m now looking at my hands. Believe me, I can’t feel anything anymore. If someone comes close to me, even very close, I can’t feel it. I touch the sheets, I can still move my fingers, but it’s as if I’m not touching anything.
I’m on the bed, half-turned on my side — that’s how they leave me during the day. For a long while now I’ve spent all my time lying down and hungry, because I can’t swallow any food. They don’t feed me, they just give me nutrients through the IV. But I’m still hungry, I’m hungry. They inject some chemical so I don’t feel the hunger, so I won’t want to eat — but I’m hungry, my stomach is empty. They say it’s already gotten thinner, burned up or something with the intestines. I don’t know what it is, but I feel hunger. My teeth are falling out, the holes are numb and empty, but I still want to chew. I’m hungry, come and feed me, or nurse me — with bare gums, toothless, I can suckle from your breasts. Can’t you see how much I need you, my girl?”