The Terranauts Read online

  Linda Ryu

  I’ve got a calendar on my wall and I’m counting off the days. It’s nothing elaborate, no glossy Sierra Club thing with full-color close-ups of mountain goats or whatever, but a freebie I picked up at the local Jiffy Lube when I took the car in to get the oil changed, thinking of Dawn, who’ll be wanting it back no matter what she says. She’s a mother now and she’s going to need transportation, not to mention a baby seat and a new set of tires to carry her from the Residences to the supermarket, the pediatrician’s office, the toy store and back. If that bothers me, if I have any attachment to the car or my apartment or the second-string life I’m leading (and really, why would I?), it all becomes moot—vanishes, poof!—on February sixth, the most amazing day of my life. February sixth, as many people will know, is the day Mission Control released the roster of the Mission Three crew, with my name right there in the middle, all but leaping off the page.

  When the news comes, I’m sitting at my desk in the command center, typing up a document on the new IBM computer, all but crucified with boredom and living only for the ten-forty-five break. I look up and there’s Dennis. He’s got a grin on his face, a grin for me, which really puzzles me, considering what went down between us, which I’ve never forgotten and I don’t think he has either, and he hands me a little folded-up slip of paper with the roster on it, moving on without a word to the next person—Malcolm—before I can even begin to process what’s happening. At first I can’t believe it. Everything feels like it’s spinning—the floor, the ceiling, the desks, people’s heads—and I want to laugh and cry at the same time but all I can do is just sit there in the middle of the command center while people hoot and cheer and rush up to congratulate me, but then suddenly it’s like the chair’s an ejection seat and I’m on my feet and dancing around the room hooting along with them and shouting, I made it, I finally made it!

  I can’t say I wasn’t nervous, especially since Mission Control never said boo about when—or even if—we’d be going through the final interviews, which, in retrospect must have meant their minds were already made up. The thing was, none of us knew that and it just cranked up the tension another notch as the days dropped dead and we all slashed them off on our calendars. As much as I’d prepared, putting in extra time in the test plots and animal pens and sucking up to Judy around the clock, I still thought there was a chance she’d screw me over because Tricia Berner and Rita Nordquist (with her white-blond hair), were sucking up just as hard, and to put your faith in Judy Forester was like trusting a rattlesnake not to bite you the second time you swing open the door to toss a rat in its cage. Talking it over these past months with Dawn, Gretchen and Gavin—obsessing over it, really—I came to see that my best shot was as MDA because Francisco Viera (Ph.D., oceanography) was the obvious choice to replace Stevie, and Julie Ott, though she was younger, had her master’s in rain forest ecology and that trumped me no matter what Gretchen might have done on my behalf. So I focused on MDA and it paid off.

  It gets better. Gavin’s in, as Technosphere Supervisor, and that sets all my bells ringing. I’m thinking moonlight swims, pinochle in his room or mine, slipping in beside him at the big granite table three meals a day. I’m thinking of real time together, crewmate time, celebrity time—because that’s what we are, instant celebrities. Toss the turd-brown suits and get fitted for the crimson ones, because here we come! Of course, it’s no surprise that Francisco’s in, as I say, and let him hook up with Rita or Julie, I don’t care. Matt—again, no surprise—is team physician. Malcolm—you could have taken this to Vegas—is Communications Officer, and Rita’s Supervisor of Field Crops, which is something of a shock and means we’ll be working together. Closely. And I don’t know how I feel about that, but it’s really a non-issue at this point. It’ll work out. It’ll work out fine.

  To round out the crew, another shocker, is Tricia Berner, who I really can’t stand because she’s petty and a nitwit and snaked her way into Gavin’s inner circle before she blew that, but who knew she had a degree in chemistry? Or I guess I knew—everybody knows everybody’s pluses and minuses because that’s how you play the game—but to bring her in as Director of Analytic Systems? What are they thinking? I hope we’re not all going to wind up asphyxiating in our sleep. Do I sound hypercritical? I am. But the point is, I’m in, and that’s all that matters.

  And who’s not? Most of the newbies, and let them pay their dues, that’s my attitude, but they’re holding Jeff Weston back—and maybe that’s because he’s become too valuable to them on the cameras (spying, I mean). Ditto Ellen Shapiro. And I am nothing but glad she’s been left out—make that ecstatic—though I’m not about to lord it over her or anybody else. I remember only too well the way it felt first time around and the humiliation Ramsay and the rest put me through that night at El Caballero. I am just not that sort of person. So, no, I am not going to gloat or hang around outside the also-rans’ dinner or anything like that. I am going to be a model Terranaut. I am going to show them what it means to devote yourself to something—Dawn, Judy, G.C., Ramsay, all of them. And I’m going to call my mother. And I’m going to be the one with her picture on the cover of Newsweek or wherever.

  And you know what else? I’m going to lose weight. Damn, I’d take bets on it.

  So right away, before I can do the math and even begin to recalibrate all the hopes and expectations and crushing disasters I’ve ever entertained or been through or try to get hold of the euphoria that’s surging through me like a whole bottle of Bem Ju, there’s the fitting for our jumpsuits and then the annunciatory dinner at Alfano’s. It’s just like with Mission Two, tradition now, the official press conference to come the next day and everything from here on out pretty much set in stone. The fitting’s nothing, a blip on my radar, because they already had my size, of course, Judy’s decision preceding me (and why couldn’t she have dropped even the slightest hint?), and then I’m walking back across campus on a path as familiar as a cowpath must be to a cow, and I don’t register a single moment of it, whether it’s hot or cold, sunny, windy, nothing.

  Back in my apartment, I’m in a daze, moving randomly from one thing to another as if my brain isn’t sending the right signals to my limbs, and then I’m frantically trying to tame my hair and put on my makeup and cursing myself for not having gone into Tucson like a week ago for a new dress, and I can see it, see that dress just as clearly as if it’s hanging in the closet, sapphire blue, not satiny but with maybe a subtle sheen and a high collar that would manage to be chic and businesslike at the same time because this is all about sending a message to the world—to my parents and grandparents and their circle of friends, to Sacramento and Sonoma State and everybody I went to high school with—and everything in my tired apartment that made it look like purgatory yesterday looks like the funky clothes-strewn gateway to heaven now.

  The knock at my door isn’t Gavin’s, but Julie’s, and that’s all right because we take about half a second to look into each other’s eyes and then we’re dancing around the room, screaming all over again. Then Gavin shows—he’s wearing a tie, which I’ve never seen him in before—and Rita, and we’re all piling into the car and rolling on into town feeling unconquerable, more special than special, and if anybody in that car has ever been higher on life, I want to know about it. The air conditioner, the radio, all four of us talking at once. Buzz, buzz, buzz. Everything—the lizards scuttling across the road, the clouds like whipped cream on top of a root beer float, the friendly thoughtful double yellow line bisecting the blacktop—is like it’s been manufactured just now, just for us. And here’s Alfano’s, even Alfano’s, looking as if I’ve never seen it before, a kind of shining palace burning against the falling light of this day none of us ever wants to end.

  Okay. We’re inside now and G.C., Judas and Little Jesus are presiding, holding forth to the three lucky representatives of the print media who’ve been invited in advance of tomorrow’s official press conference . . . and wait, who’s that in the f
ar corner, his face partially obscured by the totemic profile of some movie actor whose name escapes me but whose great shining donkey’s jaw is seared into my consciousness? G.F. G.F. himself. I feel transported, as if I’ve stumbled out of my bedroom in the morning to see one of the princes of the earth bent over the sink, washing my dishes for me—or two princes, because this actor is definitely an A-lister, and his name is right on my lips, something with a P, two P’s . . .

  “You see who’s here?” It’s Rita, leaning in with a drink in her hand, her face shining as if she’s just had a facial peel, and maybe she has. Her hair’s like the hair you see on ghosts in Norse mythology. And her nose—it’s one of those fashion-model noses, pinched so high you can see right up her nostrils, which, because it’s the featured nose on all the models in the magazines and even the Victoria’s Secret catalogue, is right there front and center, advertising society’s (and Mission Control’s) preferences in female rhinology. Whereas my own nose—forget mine. It’s just there, stubby and splayed, but it’s a Terranaut nose now, just as much as hers.

  “No,” I say. “Who?”

  “Over there, with G.F.?”

  “Oh yeah, yeah—it’s that actor, right?”

  She gives me an incredulous look. “That actor? That’s Umberto Battaglia. Umberto Battaglia! I can hardly believe it.”

  “Me either,” I say, and I don’t mean to be dismissive because I’m thrilled and can’t wait to call my mother and tell her I was in the same room with him, all that and G.F. too, but we’re going to be expected to give a little speech when G.C. announces us and I’m trying to keep my feet on the ground and not screw up in any way. Which is why the vodka soda in my hand is the only one I’m going to have, strictly, at least till we can wave bye-bye and get on with the real party.

  But here’s Gavin and Julie and now G.C.’s tapping a spoon on the rim of his glass and the room falls silent. He begins by congratulating us all and then, for the sake of the press, praises the efforts of the Mission Two crew and how brilliantly they’ve handled the adversity thrown their way by uncooperative weather and the power fiasco that would have brought down a less-committed group and how proud he is of them. And of us, the Mission Three crew, whose devotion to the ecological principles and questing spirit of E2 is every bit the equal of their colleagues inside. It’s a good speech, a great speech, the best he’s ever given, because for once I am included instead of forever being shunted into the background, and when he finishes—or just pauses, the last chesty phrase hanging there over the rattle from the kitchen and the low-voltage hum of the general public in the dining room behind us—I’m the first to burst into applause.

  “And now,” he says, “it’s time to introduce our Mission Three crew, whose names will go down not only in the history of closed-systems research but in the history of our country and the world as well. Tricia Berner, step forward—”

  We’ve already been told that this will go alphabetically, meaning that I’ll be introduced seventh, just after Julie Ott and before Francisco Viera, which is just fine with me. I’m happy to be here—ecstatic, really—and I wouldn’t have wanted to go first anyway. There hasn’t been a whole lot of time to prepare, of course, but I have managed to jot down a few key phrases (keep it short) to express my gratitude and devotion and work in a little Ecosphere boilerplate too. So I’m standing there, the glass in my hand drained right down to the ice cubes, which I’m nervously crunching between my teeth while Tricia, the actress, goes on about fulfilling her life’s greatest ambition and singling each of us out as her best friend in the world and then, incredibly, breaking into song, and not just any song, but a full hundred and eighty excruciating seconds of “The Impossible Dream,” which, somewhere in the back of my mind I realize is from Man of La Mancha and all about kissing G.C.’s ass.

  Have I mentioned Judy? She’s standing there at G.C.’s side with that movie poster smile, dressed in red, of course, with matching red pumps. I should be grateful to her, I suppose, but even now, in my moment of glory, she’s gone out of her way to kick the stool out from under me. Not two minutes after I stepped through the door she took me aside and let her face run through its gamut of disgust over the dress I’ve got on, the same bronze knee-length I wore two years ago to the final interview and the losers’ dinner because nobody gave me a heads-up, and what was I supposed to do, rent a helicopter and set it down in front of Contempo Casuals in the Tucson mall? Dawn said the dress made me look blocky, which is just a code word for fat, but I don’t care. And Judy can go ahead and make me feel bad—she can still do that—but I’m in now, and she really can’t touch me, not once G.C. calls my name and the photographers snap their pictures and I give my little speech of enduring gratitude and team spirit.

  If you’re expecting me to say that I wind up fumbling the speech or that the vodka goes to my head or I trip or vomit or get all stalker-mode over Umberto Battaglia, I’m sorry to disappoint you. Everything goes great. My speech is short, to the point and heartfelt—so heartfelt I’m within a hair of collapsing in tears at the end of it, when I name each of my teammates in succession and raise my empty glass to cry out, “Let’s go make history!” And if you look at the pictures from that day, both the official ones and the grainy newspaper shots, that’s me right in the center, my bronze dress catching the light and my hands raised in triumph, locked in the tight grip of Gavin on my right and Malcolm on my left.

  For some reason that’s fathomable to exactly nobody, Mission Control decides to conflate the pre-press-conference announcement with the crew-only party Mission Two had held the following night, so once G.C. and Judy bail, it’s off to El Caballero to let our hair down and do a little serious celebration without having to worry about what Mission Control might or might not think. The funny thing is, it’s as if I have no memory of what went down here two years ago, all that erased in the outward-spiraling thrill of what’s happened to me in the course of the last few intoxicating hours. And speaking of intoxication, I’m not holding back now, no way, and before I can even put in an order for the least fattening item on the menu (the tostada, oil and vinegar dressing, don’t even look at the shell), I’ve lost count of my vodka sodas. Which doesn’t matter, since the whole point of this is to get shit-faced and bond, bond, bond, all the prying eyes and snooping noses put to rest for this one night out of all the two-plus years to come. It’s a party, a chance to let your hair down (though Malcolm and Matt barely have any to speak of, which, it occurs to me, is something of an evolutionary advantage when you’re thinking of shampoo and H2O usage in a closed system). So good. So I’m drunk, or almost drunk, and I make a beeline for Gavin the second time he comes out of the men’s after draining off some of the beer he’s been chain-drinking out of the longneck bottle since we walked in the door.

  “Hi,” I say, giving him a huge grin that somebody might describe as sloppy, but what does that even mean? Unsteady? Wavering? Too much lip, gum, teeth? Fuck it. “Hi,” I repeat. “You, like, as ecstatic as me?”

  Maybe his grin’s a little sloppy too. But it’s a beautiful grin on a beautiful face. He’s like a boy who’s not a boy anymore, tall and not muscular but—what, lithe—and you just want to hug him, which is what I do. And he hugs back. Drunkenly. When we unclench, and I am not seeing the looks on Julie’s face or Rita’s and especially not Tricia’s, he tells me he just got off the phone with his parents in New York. “They were like ‘we were praying for you,’” he says, “which is pretty funny because they’re both atheists.”

  “Right,” I say, “right—what’s the use of praying in a Darwinian universe?”

  He’s nodding. “Do you even know anybody who’s religious in the slightest bit?—I’m talking biologists here, ecologists. And it’s not as if we’re bringing a priest, rabbi and mullah in with us, is it?”

  “Uh-uh. No way. And even if we did, we’d have to find some way to wash their beards without polluting the water supply—”

  Gavin gives a sharp laugh, his eyes
drawn down to bright comical slits. I love him. I think I love him. Really love him. “But priests don’t have beards, do they?”

  “No, but rabbis do. And mullahs. And”—for a moment I feel a wave of dizziness rise in me like high tide in my cerebral cortex and a nagging little thought that I’m going to pass out pops into my head—but it dissolves and he gives me a puzzled look, like what were you saying? To cover myself, not that I really need to, not anymore, I flick my eyes at the end of the table where Matt and Malcolm are waving beer bottles at Rita and say, “And at least two of our crew aren’t going to run out of shampoo, I mean, like they’re in no danger . . .”

  Gavin doesn’t seem to get it.

  “Their hair, I mean.” Still nothing. But it doesn’t matter because we’ll have all the time in the world to just chat away like this anytime we want—plus, I am feeling a real urge to find the ladies’ and maybe use the telephone in the hall to call my parents, whose flat stunned faces suddenly rise in my mind like sunken logs bobbing up out of the depths on a current of swamp gas, What, you couldn’t even think to call and we had to learn about it on the news?

  “Okay,” I say, “great, everything’s great, but you’ll have to excuse me—the ladies’—I mean, for a minute. But you’ll wait for me, won’t you?”

  The question, I can see now, is pretty much idiotic. We’re crewmates, this is our party, we live in the same Residences and I’m the one with the car. He’s a little drunk, I’m a little drunk (more than a little, because I wind up in the third stall down puking up the tostada and the chips and too-spicy salsa I couldn’t resist till my throat feels like it’s been dredged with a steam shovel) and all he says is, “You going to be all right to drive?”

  If you think this is building up to a confession of how I wrecked Dawn’s car or wound up with a DUI or worse, you’re wrong, because that’s not me, that’s not Linda Ryu. I might have overdone it in the spirit of the evening, but I am never incapable of handling myself. Though, finally, once the party winds down and we’re all standing around in the dark parking lot, Gavin does insist on taking the wheel and here come Malcolm, Tricia and Rita squeezing into the backseat and we wind up singing along with the radio to a Beatles medley with a lot of love in it, both universal and individual, and then we’re back at the Residences and collapsing into our separate beds (or at least I collapse into my separate bed), trying to get some rest (beauty sleep) for tomorrow’s press conference.