‘Like what?’ Noah asked, pressing his thumb against the scanner to hail the lift.
‘I don’t know. Traffic jams and hailstones.’ They stepped inside. ‘I’ll probably never have to pay taxes, or stand in line at the post office.’
‘You’ll probably never see all that stuff that supermarkets throw out in those big skips at the end of the day and the people who rummage through them for something to eat,’ Noah added. ‘That makes me sad as hell.’ The floor numbers began at zero and descended into negatives, Noah pressed -7 and the door closed.
‘Greenhouse gases,’ Juno said. Her stomach dropped as they headed to the basement. ‘Civil war. Famine.’
‘All those things might happen on Terra-Two, you know,’ Noah said. ‘Eventually. I mean, war kind of happens everywhere.’
‘No, it won’t,’ Juno said. ‘We’re leaving behind a world where slavery happened. Two world wars. Genocide. A world where people have used atomic bombs. Terra-Two will be different. Better. We will make it better.’
The lift pinged and they stepped out. The Garden of Flight was a dark orchard, densely packed with trees of all different kinds. Lots of silver birches, with bark that peeled like tissue paper. ‘Sheppard had a birch tree,’ she said.
‘All of the Mars Expeditions did. I don’t know why. Look here.’ He led her to a row of them, like pale sentinels, the names of astronauts carved into a marble stone at the foot of each tree. Juno found the names of the veteran astronauts following them on the mission. Igor Bovarin had the most trees; some delicate saplings, others sturdy and flush with leaves, thick roots swelling from the black soil.
Noah led her to the centre of the garden, skipping over an artificial spring, into a luxurious clearing, lit blue with holographic galaxies projected on the ceiling. The air was heavy with pollen, and Juno trod carefully, so as to avoid crushing the flowers. ‘This place is different from the way I imagined,’ she told him, looking around at a patch of bluebells, their stems heavy with flowers. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen a plant, or anything other than titanium and steel and plastic, for over a week.’ Juno laughed. The air smelt deliciously of apple blossom, and juniper, mint and wild sorrel. ‘It’s still spring here,’ Juno said, reaching to break a bunch of cherry blossoms off a branch.
‘It’s something to do with the climate controls I think. They use these LEDs – like the ones they use on space stations, to keep them growing down here. But, for some reason, the seasons start and finish about a month later.’ Flower petals dropped like confetti and gusted across the ground. It looked like the type of wood that she and Astrid used to search for faeries in. Like the wood near Noah’s childhood house where he had first asked Juno to be his girlfriend, his cheeks burning, his eyes defiantly hopeful. Or where she’d met him after a dentist appointment, the first person he smiled for after they fitted him with braces – still ashamed of the cages they’d locked his twisted teeth into.
Dalton was a hostile place for friendships. Few romances lasted longer than a summer, but because Juno and Noah had endured, their union had taken on a kind of mystique. The young, star-bound lovers. But, after Noah had chosen to leave the programme, some of the excitement died. Juno sometimes wondered what kept them together now. The tepid comfort of habit, she supposed.
‘So—’ Noah stopped walking and let her hand drop. ‘I got you a gift.’ He dipped his hand into his pocket and opened his palm. ‘It’s a moon rock,’ he said, ‘in a necklace, so you can’t lose it.’
Juno’s heart fluttered. ‘But that’s yours,’ she said. She had lost count of how many times she’d seen him turning the little stone over in his hands, or slipping it into his pocket before exams. It was small and grey, shot through with silvery flecks. An actual piece of the moon that Noah’s father had left behind when he walked out of his son’s life.
Juno was unable to meet Noah’s gaze.
‘Yes, but I wanted to give it to you. I mean, I know you’re probably going to see so many other things on your way. Nothing so pedestrian as the moon, but—’
‘Thank you,’ Juno said, and kissed him quickly on the cheek. He smelt of sweetened milk and non-bio washing powder. Motes of dust flitted between them, and she memorized his face. His watery eyes, hair like spun sugar.
‘Shall I put it on?’ he asked.
She turned around and lowered her gaze as he tightened the clasp. The silver chain was cool on her skin and Noah let his fingers linger on the nape of her neck. Juno became aware of the airless intimacy of the garden, of the hair prickling up along her spine.
When she glanced up, though, she noticed something in the corner of the clearing. Nine holes, dug like graves in a row, and the potted saplings, ready to be transplanted into the ground. ‘Those are ours,’ she said, rushing towards them. Her name was engraved on a marble stone. JUNO JUMA. She knelt down and touched it with trembling hands.
‘Do you ever think about what we would be doing if you weren’t in the Beta?’ Noah asked, his shadow stretching before her.
‘Not really.’
‘Like, what do you think we would be doing tonight?’
‘Noah…’
‘We might be going to the same university. You’d be studying physiology or medicine and I would be a physicist. Maybe we’d go to Blackwell’s and buy all the books on our reading list second-hand, then sit upstairs in Costa blowing bubbles out of straws and making them all burst because we’re laughing so hard. When we kissed goodbye in the night we would still have tomorrow…’
Her stomach squirmed with the usual guilt. He couldn’t know that she had already left him. She wanted to say, Space, Noah, I’m going to space. How could I choose you? How could she choose those insipid dreams of his over the splendour of the sky?
As he spoke, she imagined – as she often did – that she was already up there. His hold on her decreasing, like gravity. Soon this residual remorse would be nothing at all.
‘Juno?’ When she turned to him his eyes were wide with anticipation.
‘What?’
‘Were you even listening?’
‘Sorry. I’m sorry. Please say it again.’
‘I said – I said…’ He took a breath, his cheeks flushing, ‘Will you have sex with me?’
She leapt to her feet. ‘What? Now?’
‘We’ve been going out for three years—’
‘Yeah, and I thought—’
‘I know we both agreed to wait but since you’re leaving tomorrow, I thought…’
‘What?’ she said, a little more aggressively than she intended. She was prickling all over with panic.
‘Well, don’t you think that changes things? It’s not really “waiting” anymore, is it? We’re never going to see each other again.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘Tomorrow you’re going away on that shuttle, and if we see each other, ever, like if I make the Gamma and launch in two years’ time, I still won’t see you for almost three decades—’
‘Two… and a half…’
He was blinking fiercely, fighting back tears. ‘We love each other.’
‘Yes but…’ She could feel her pulse in her clenched fists.
He squeezed his eyes shut. ‘Please…?’
This was it. This was the reason Noah was here, the thing he’d been steeling himself to ask. What difference did it make, it occurred to her, if she said yes or no? She’d regret it either way. And when she glanced at him, then, in the shade of the old trees, her heart swelled with pity. Juno imagined the day after the launch. Imagined what it would be like to be the one who was left behind on the planet she’d renounced. On a clear night, Noah would be able to see the Damocles flicker like another star amongst the constellations. But as it disappeared, he would feel as if it was really him getting smaller and smaller, spinning out in a lonely orbit, sentenced to navigate streets that used to be theirs.