The screen went blank.
Jesse had been gripping the controllers so tightly that he could feel the blood throbbing in his fingertips. The words SIMULATION COMPLETE dazzled against the static.
Jesse had finished the game at 6 a.m., just as the alarm in his bunk would be going off. He’d played since dinner ended the night before, at 8 p.m. In game time, he had travelled for half a century.
As he sat back in the mock commander’s chair, Jesse realized that this was the moment he had been waiting for. He had spent almost a year struggling to catch up with the other members of the Beta. He had been cowed and intimidated by their learning and by Harry’s formidable skill as a pilot. But, according to this single metric, he had far surpassed them all. He knew everything there was to know about flying. Everything the computer could teach him. Peeling his hands off the controller, he shouted in delight. He had beaten Harry, at last, in the only game that really mattered.
WHEN JESSE AWOKE, HIS heart still full of his victory, he was not surprised to see Juno standing above him. In his half-dreaming haze, he was like a gladiator. A hero. Odysseus returning to claim Penelope. He could have kissed her she was so beautiful, crowned in fluorescent light. But she was clearly upset. ‘Oh,’ she said, wiping one eye, tears dripping off her thick lashes, ‘you’re here.’ She sounded a little disappointed.
‘I’m always here,’ Jesse said, sitting up from the semi-recumbent commander’s chair. His muscles were stiff, eyes itchy with sleep-grit, and he pulled his sweaty goggles off and snapped them like a rubber band against the floor.
‘You are,’ she said. Juno sat opposite him and exhaled. She looked as if she’d only just woken up. Dressed in blue paisley pyjamas, her hair still tucked under a satin scarf.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jesse felt miserably inclined to ask, although what he wanted to do was to show her his high score.
‘Solomon says he’s calling a meeting in the next twenty minutes, and I think… I think he’s going to tell us that Igor is sick.’
‘What?’ Jesse asked.
Juno nodded, and rubbed her red eyes. ‘I think he has cancer.’ Even the word gave Jesse goosebumps.
‘How do you know?’ he asked.
‘I saw it on an x-ray. A mass in his lungs.’
‘We have an x-ray machine here?’
‘No.’ Juno rolled her eyes. ‘It was taken on Earth.’
‘So, you mean that Igor had cancer on Earth and he didn’t tell us.’
‘Yes.’
Jesse swore under his breath. ‘How long have you known?’
‘A little while,’ Juno admitted, lowering her gaze. ‘Since Christmas, actually. But I’m not the only one. I mean, I saw it in his file, so the seniors, Fae at least and probably Commander Sheppard too, must have known since before the launch.’
‘What?’
‘Yes.’ Juno leant forward. ‘They lied to us, Jesse.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Jesse was already beginning to feel his sleepless night. ‘How could they let a dying man come to space?’
‘That’s what I want to know,’ Juno said. ‘Especially when you consider that some candidates were excluded from the programme because they were flat-footed.’
‘They’re planning to tell us now?’
‘I think they were planning to tell us after we reached Saturn. Once they know we can’t decide to come back.’
‘So why is Solomon telling us today?’
‘Because of Astrid.’ Juno gritted her teeth with the anger she reserved for her sister. ‘Astrid and her stupid dreams. She said she’s been having dreams that Igor is dying. She told Fae, who accused her of accessing restricted medical files. Fae was furious, that’s what all the shouting over breakfast was about.’
Jesse hadn’t heard it.
‘Astrid looked at private files? That doesn’t sound like her.’
‘I don’t know… I never know how Astrid knows the things she knows.’ Juno’s eyes drifted away for a moment at a memory. ‘You know people in our old church used to say that she had the gift of prophecy.’
Jesse frowned. ‘Like Moses and Ezekiel?’
‘Kind of,’ Juno said. ‘But we grew up in a charismatic church.’ She caught his blank look. ‘You know. Groups of people speaking in tongues and laying hands on each other.’
Jesse imagined it something like the humid churches his parents had visited in India, young girls speaking in tongues, hot airless rooms, hectic crowds trembling and singing. ‘Do you believe in that stuff?’ Jesse asked. ‘Prophecies, miracles, that kind of thing?’
Juno shrugged. ‘I believe that my sister is an attention-seeker. She’d swoon during worship and everyone would treat her like a movie star. I thought it might be different, going to a school where there wasn’t much of a place for that – you know, Dalton was not religious at all – but, in some ways, she’s worse now. You know that she really believes in the New Creationists. I used to think the best thing was not to encourage her.’ She turned to Jesse. ‘Does that make me sound mean?’
Jesse shook his head.
‘Do you believe in that stuff?’ she asked. ‘I mean, I know you don’t believe in God, but prophecies and miracles and stuff.’ Jesse gazed at the leaping static on the simulator screen. He thought about the prophecy spoken over his life almost a decade ago, the man who told him he wouldn’t reach twenty. The prophecy that had led him here, into the belly of a ship soaring through space. Thought about his own sister, who had defied all expectations and survived malaria. The head-scratching doctors who had never been able to explain it. The way her heart had really stopped for a minute and then begun again. And even the mystery of space itself, the vast ocean of things interstellar bodies could never explore or explain. But instead of saying any of that, he said, ‘No.’
Juno held out her hand to him and pulled him out of the commander’s seat. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘We don’t want to be late for the meeting.’
30.01.13
IT WAS WORSE THAN any of them had imagined. Fae told them that Igor was sick. An aggressive form of cancer that had begun in his lungs but had spread into his bones, his spinal cord. Fae didn’t say that he was dying, but it was in everything that she said. Astrid and Poppy began to cry. Commander Sheppard looked away. Eliot twisted in his seat, cracking his knuckles and fidgeting. Harry was bone-white. The seniors were in their own kind of pain, because this announcement somehow made the dismal diagnosis more true. They had all known Igor for years. Commander Sheppard shared his dry sense of humour and called him, jokingly, comrade. And now not only was Igor facing death, but the crew had to watch him die. Even sitting across from the old cosmonaut, Jesse could hear the wet rasp of mucus in his lungs, the shuddery way that every breath came, a quiet struggle. The thought of losing a teacher and mentor, the most vital link to the past and the life they were leaving behind, made Jesse feel strangely orphaned.
‘I don’t understand why any of us weren’t told this before,’ Juno said, gritting her teeth.
‘We’re telling you now,’ Commander Sheppard replied with a curt nod. He was the only one standing, at the far end of the table.