Jesse frowned in confusion.
‘Well, maybe you’re doing that here.’ She nodded at the simulator screen.
‘Piloting by numbers?’ Jesse smiled.
Juno shrugged. ‘I mean, maybe think of the commander as your dance partner. Be more intuitive. Don’t fixate on your manoeuvres, or on pressing the right combination of buttons at the same time. Let the computer lead, and keep your eyes on the goal.’
‘Maybe.’ Jesse rubbed his wrists, which were clearly sore from clutching the controller, and started the simulation again. This time, he let the commander lead and executed complementary manoeuvres. At first she thought Jesse was responding too slowly, but soon he relaxed and began to move more fluidly in response to the duck and shudder of the shuttle. Juno watched his ship flying on the screen, the shuttle gliding smoothly as a kite, dodging asteroids and slicing through interstellar space. By the time he was halfway through the level Jesse had sustained very little damage. She had been right. It was like a dance, and she could see that some part of his body had begun to finally understand the underlying logic of the game. The clock on the corner counted down the seconds. Five… four… three…
Jesse had almost made it to the goal – Tau Centauri. Two… sweat began to bead at the back of his neck and his arms trembled… one… Juno watched as Jesse let out a roar of triumph, and collapsed back in his seat.
‘Level completed,’ said the computer.
His score materialized on the screen. 185,342.
‘Is that good?’ Juno asked.
‘It’s better than Harry’s,’ he said. And she saw that he was smiling. ‘I’m going to play his game. And I’m going to win.’
Juno looked down at his hands and saw the swelling at his knuckles, the skin scraped clean off them. He must be in pain, she thought, and she took the controller from him and placed it on the floor. Jesse relaxed.
Juno wiped the blood carefully away. Applied disinfectant. His fingers were trembling a little, and she turned his hands around in hers, traced the lines of his palms, noticed the pale-green spiral patterns at his fingertips from the fertilizer. ‘You literally have green fingers—’ she laughed. ‘Like Cai.’ And as she did, she thought about the morning she’d seen him alone in the greenhouse, and through his faded T-shirt she had seen the muscles he’d built over hours of labour. But she’d been moved by his tenderness, the gentle way he handled seedlings, the way he sang as he worked. The time he had tried to kiss her she’d run away, and Juno was sorry for it now because she craved his touch. Some nights she imagined what might have happened if she’d stayed, if she’d kissed him back.
‘Are you in pain?’ she asked.
‘It hurts when I breathe,’ Jesse said.
‘Can I see?’ Juno asked, worried he might have broken a rib. Jesse nodded, and pulled his T-shirt over his head. Juno took in the sight of him, the purple bruises like spilled wine down one side of his ribcage, a constellation of burst capillaries under his skin. She touched him gently, running her fingers along his collarbone, where she brushed the frayed cord of his necklaces, the ones he had collected on his travels – an eight-spoked wheel, a punctured scallop shell, a bronze ‘Ohm’. She touched the hard wall of his sternum. She could tell he was in pain, because with every breath the muscles in his stomach rippled, and he gritted his teeth. When she laid her hand on his chest, she noticed that his heart was beating wildly.
Her eyes met his, and they shared a look of quiet understanding.
‘I love you,’ he said as if he’d only just realised.
A fierce rush of joy. Her skin prickled with goosebumps, and she smiled.
‘Please, can I kiss you?’ he asked.
And they kissed.
Chapter 36
JESSE
02.01.13
THE NIGHT AFTER NEW Year’s, Jesse was startled from sleep by the crash of breaking glass. The room was dark, save the glow of his reading lamp, and when he twisted around in bed he saw a thin shadow. Eliot in his pyjamas, glass glittering at his feet and blood dripping off his fingers.
For a minute, Jesse was sure it was a vision his sleep-addled brain had conjured up. But as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, the image grew clearer. ‘Hey.’ His voice was a rasp, and he coughed. ‘Eliot?’
Eliot looked up at Jesse in surprise, staring around the room as if he had never seen it before. ‘What happened?’ he asked, panic rising in his voice.
‘That’s what I want to know,’ Jesse said.
‘My hands feel like they’re on fire.’
Eliot moved to stand, but Jesse said, ‘No, no’, climbing down from his bunk as he did so. ‘Don’t move. There’s glass everywhere. You’re bleeding.’
‘Am I…?’
Jesse tiptoed across the room and then switched the light on. Dark shadows stretched under Eliot’s eyes. He was reflected a hundred times in the shards that littered the floor and bleeding so heavily it looked like tar. Dark rivulets coursing down his fingers. A hand-print like blackcurrant jam smeared across his gingham duvet cover. Jesse’s stomach churned.
‘That’s a lot of blood,’ he said. ‘Maybe you need stitches.’
When Eliot looked up his eyes were full of horror. ‘Jesse,’ he whispered, his voice thick and low, ‘I don’t know what happened.’
‘You broke a mirror.’ Jesse nodded to the twisted frame on the edge of the bed.
‘But I don’t remember doing it.’ Eliot began to shake.
‘It’s okay, Liston. You know, you were probably sleepwalking.’
‘Did you see me?’
‘No, I was sleeping too.’
They both looked around the room. Harry’s bed was empty. Jesse supposed he might be in the control room still. It wasn’t so late; the figures on the clock read 23.40.
‘Come on, I’ll help you get to Fae.’
But Eliot flinched at Jesse’s touch. ‘Can I tell you something?’
‘Sure.’
‘You won’t tell anyone?’ Jesse shook his head. Eliot bit his lip, his eyes wandering the room, then re-examining the door as if he was afraid that someone was about to burst in. Finally, he leant forward and said so quietly that Jesse had to strain to hear him, ‘I think something’s happening to me. I’m seeing things. And forgetting things, whole hours of time and—’
‘Seeing things?’ Jesse said. Eliot nodded slowly. ‘Like what things?’ But Eliot just shook his head. ‘You know,’ Jesse continued finally, ‘astronauts travelling to Mars kept seeing white flashes of light, and no one knew why, for ages. Until, finally, scientists discovered that it was actually cosmic rays going through their optic nerves. Cosmic Ray Visual Phenomenon.’
Eliot didn’t look comforted.
‘Come on.’ Jesse was careful not to step on any splinters of glass, and helped Eliot to his feet. The boy was unsteady, and shivering. They headed out of the room and into the infirmary.
When Fae asked them what happened Eliot told her that he had tripped and fallen against the mirror.
JESSE WOKE UP LATE the next morning and breakfast was almost over, the sound of chairs grinding against the floor as everyone left the kitchen to commence chores echoing up the corridor. There had been troubling news from NASA that night: the MMACS – the Mechanical, Maintenance, Arm and Crew Systems flight controller – had detected a problem on Orlando. Igor explained to them that they were worried there had been a hydrazine leak somewhere on the ship. Jesse saw the disappointment in everyone’s eyes when they heard that their rendezvous with the Orlando might be delayed by a few days.