It was silent for a moment and then Eriksson said, “When are you coming back to Houston?”
“That’s up to Mullins.”
“How so?”
“He told me to take some time off so I’m doing what I’m told.”
“All right, all right,” Eriksson said. “I get it.”
“You get what?”
“Well, we miss you here.”
He did not know how to respond to this statement and so he said nothing for a long time, both of them silent now, their breathing reverberating down the phone lines. Then he said, “Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure, buddy.”
“Am I still an astronaut?”
“What kind of question is that?” Erikkson said. There was the sound of laughter in his voice, as if Keith was making a joke of some kind.
“I’m either an astronaut or I’m not.”
“Oh come on, Chip. You’re a superstar around here and you know it.”
Keith said nothing.
“You’re ten times smarter than anyone else in the building.”
“Quinn was smarter,” Keith said. Just that.
There was no sound from the phone now. Outside, the roar of big engines continued beyond the window. Muffled.
“Christ, buddy,” Eriksson said.
“She was.”
“OK.” Eriksson’s voice was quiet. Almost a whisper. Then he said, “I don’t know what to say. I’m sorry about your daughter. We all are. And we could use you back here. That’s for sure.”
“I don’t know if I can come back there right now.”
“You want me to talk to Mullins?”
He paused for a long moment. Then he said, “I don’t know.” He sat down again, the little chair squealing under the weight of his body. All he could think of was the desire to be back in microgravity again, in that low orbit aboard the space station where there was no perceptible weight, where everything in his life — the physical objects — would suspend indefinitely in midair until he retrieved them, where he would sleep attached to the wall of his closetlike living quarters. That was what he wanted, not to be back in Houston but to be up in space. And then he realized something he had never thought of before, that his desire to return to the ISS had less to do with working with the numbers and more to do with the feeling of being there, of seeing Earth unscroll beneath him, the tan mass of Africa and the blue ocean and the white swirl of clouds moving across the sphere of Earth as the day flashed to night and the universe itself was unveiled all around him. He wanted to see that again, to experience that again. Even if there were no numbers with which to make sense of it. More than anything, that was what he wanted.
“Look, I’m sorry but we’re going to need that access code,” Eriksson said.
In the low-frequency hum of the trucks outside he thought he could hear the thin whine of his migraine but he could not be sure. He could hear their engines where they revved and roared. Not delivery trucks. Something else.
“Yeah,” he said. There was a long pause but he could think of nothing that would convince Eriksson to include him in whatever work was ongoing and so he spoke the access code slowly into the phone, a long string of letters and numbers, and Eriksson read it back to him and he confirmed it and then Eriksson said, “Hold on,” and he could hear the sound of typing and then Eriksson said, “OK, that worked.”
“That’s my project,” he said.
“I know that.” Eriksson said nothing for a moment. Then he said, “Hang on a minute,” and there was the shuffling of motion from the other end of the phone. Then his voice again, quieter, closer than before: “Listen, between you and me, there’re some big rumors coming down the pipe. Stuff you’ll want to be in on and stuff that doesn’t have anything to do with being active flight or not.”
“I’ll bet.”
“I’m not kidding, buddy. Get well and get back here.”
“Yeah, OK,” Keith said. “I’ll do that.”
The conversation ended and Keith sat there in the empty house at the kitchen table, looking at the phone where it lay before him on the laminated wood-grain surface. The trucks continued to hum and rumble outside and after a long moment there at the table he rose and rummaged through the stack of bills and unopened mail and papers until he found the résumé that Peter’s wife had given him and then he sat again at the table and read through it carefully. It was a generic résumé that listed every possible facet of Petruso Kovalenko’s education and work experience, from menial jobs to the highly skilled work he had done at the Golosiiv observatory. There were references listed, good ones by the look of it, the scientists and engineers that Peter had mentioned during their conversations in the vacant lot: Federov and Kuzmenko and even Vanekov, the man who apparently ran the entire observatory compound. The last two sheets in the packet were photocopied letters from Kuzmenko and Federov, letters written in English on official letterhead festooned with Ukrainian characters.
He removed his laptop from its bag and opened it and looked through his address book and sent out two e-mails, the first to the head of Dreyfuss Research Center and the second to the head of personnel at Johnson Space Center. Apart from the greeting, the two e-mails were identical in content, each asking if the recipient would be willing to look at a résumé if he sent one over, that he knew a man who was an amateur astronomer who had worked with some of the big names in Ukraine and was looking for employment in the United States, that the man was intelligent and well qualified but had no official degree. He listed Peter’s name and the names of the references he listed at Golosiiv and a few points about the résumé. He knew it was likely that nothing would come of the e-mails but he had at least tried. Perhaps he would never hear anything. Perhaps his own name was such that an unsolicited e-mail from him would curse Petruso Kovalenko’s employment possibilities forever.
“A little early isn’t it?” Keith said.
“Have you seen what has happened?” Peter said.
“To what?”
“Come and see. It is terrible, I think.” Peter’s eyes were glassy with tears.
“Christ, are you OK?”
“Come and see,” he said again.
Keith’s first thought was that Peter was drunk and that they would have some replay of the scene in front of Starbucks. The telescope was nowhere to be seen and the sun low but still present in the sky.
Keith checked that his keys were in his pocket and stepped outside. Peter led him toward the street to the sidewalk and started to point but his eyes were already there. He had not been out of the house since his conversation with Eriksson and had ceased to notice the rumble of what he had assumed to be trucks in the cul-de-sac; those sounds had faded into the background and with them had faded the threat of a migraine. But now he found himself wishing he had listened more closely, for it had not been trucks he had ignored for most of the day; it had been tractors.
The vacant lot at the end of the cul-de-sac had been crisscrossed repeatedly, the thistle and debris cleared so that most of the lot was flat and bare. In the distant corner, a mountain of fresh dirt rose up in a huge brown cone and closer, flanking the leather sofa as if guarding it, two huge yellow machines: one with a thick, heavy scoop in the front, the other a backhoe equipped with a curved bucket lined with square teeth.
“Terrible thing,” Peter said.
“Shit,” Keith said.
“They do not touch sofa.”
“Not yet.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know,” Keith said. “Building.”
“Building what?”
“Another house, I guess.”
He stepped toward the end of the cul-de-sac and Peter followed almost as a child might follow a parent, always keeping one step behind as if Keith could somehow shield him from whatever evil lay before them.