“Let’s play table tennis,” said Giorgi.
“I can’t even stand,” said Leonid.
“That’ll make it easier to defeat you.”
“You say that as if you’ve had difficulty defeating me in the past.”
“But you at least offer more of a challenge than the rest of them.”
But the real challenge had come from Leonid’s twin, who would play with Giorgi on breaks from their training. Because of this, Mishin and Bushuyev had unveiled a new table tennis table in the windowless common room of the dorm where the earthbound twins resided, half in hiding, half in waiting. By that point, it was only Leonid who still lived there. Nadya would visit almost every day, but she had taken up her sister’s old dorm room. Mars lived in his brother’s. Valentina and Yuri had moved out into real homes long ago. They had left this life behind, escaped in a way Nadya and Mars seemed unable. Leonid envied Valentina and Yuri that.
So since childhood, Leonid had spent his days waiting for Mishin and Bushuyev to come take him to training. There was no set schedule that Leonid could decipher, his training days always a surprise. His brother would go into hiding, and Leonid would learn the things his brother already knew, though never quite as well. Much of Leonid’s energy was spent simply remembering the names of the people his brother interacted with every day. Yes, he learned the controls of Vostok, but he knew he would never remember them well enough to pilot the thing himself.
In the meantime, he practiced table tennis for at least an hour a day, sometimes with Mishin and Bushuyev, sometimes against the wall, until he played well enough to pass for his brother in a casual match. Leonid admitted to himself that table tennis was one of his few actual pleasures. With the racket in his hand, concentrating on the ball, he was able to escape his own mind, projecting himself into the action so that the only part of him that existed was motion and response. As much as he might enjoy it, Leonid also knew that he was no match for Giorgi, who the Chief Designer claimed might have played in international competitions had he not joined the military.
“How about tomorrow?” asked Leonid. “I now have no official duties for the foreseeable future. Maybe I can finally practice enough to win.”
“Tomorrow, then!” Giorgi picked up the nearest bottle and held it upside down. “I think we’re out of vodka.”
“The bottles may be empty, but I’m still full of the stuff.”
Giorgi set the bottle on its side and rolled it across the room. Kasha leapt from Nadya’s lap and trotted after it, catching up just before it impacted the far wall. She tried to bite the fat part of the bottle, but even with her mouth wide open her teeth clicked futilely against the glass. She bit the neck next, positioning her head to get a grip on it with her molars. Each time she tried to lift the bottle, it slipped free after it rose only centimeters off the ground. After a few attempts she stepped back, tilting her head from side to side, looking from one end of the bottle to the other. She went back to the neck, crouched in front of it, and latched her front teeth around the lip of the bottle’s mouth. Without attempting to lift the bottle, she scuttled slowly backward, dragging it in Giorgi’s direction.
“Such a clever girl,” said Giorgi.
Kasha’s progress was slow, almost painfully so. Leonid wanted to get up and help her, but he was still unsure of his ability to stand. And Kasha seemed so determined. He felt like she would be upset if anyone offered any help at all.
“Why do you think she does it?” said Nadya.
“What do you mean?” asked Giorgi.
“Chase after a bottle. Or a stick. What compels her?”
“Instinct, I suppose.”
The bottle scooted, tinking against the floor.
“My father gave up church like everyone after the Revolution,” said Nadya. “There was no church to go to anyway. I’ve heard that there were still priests in smaller towns and villages, but it was like they disappeared overnight in the city. My father, with no church to attend, who explained to us why religion was false, a silly superstition, he kept an icon in his dresser. He would mumble to himself. That’s what he would call it when we caught him, ‘mumbling.’ But I heard him once before he noticed me, and what he mumbled was a prayer. I barely knew what prayer was, and it seemed strange and magical what he said. I knew the words, they were common enough, maybe not the word god, that one I had not heard used very much, if at all. ‘Papa,’ I said. He turned and saw me, and he blushed and I felt myself blush, too, like we’d both just discovered each other’s most embarrassing secret. He told me he’d just been mumbling again, and I told him it was okay if he mumbled. Not long after that, Tsiolkovski came.”
“Let’s not dwell in the past,” said Leonid.
It was dangerous to say too much around Giorgi, who did not know the whole truth about the twins. He was not even supposed to know that they had been recruited as children, but Mars drunkenly spilled that secret one night in front of Giorgi and a number of engineers, most of whom had disappeared from Star City shortly thereafter.
“There’s no shame in celebrating our histories,” said Giorgi. “Our past is the only sure cause of our present.”
“All I meant to say,” said Nadya, “is that sometimes I mumble myself. I don’t know about god, but it’s an instinct, of sorts.”
“You two have been to the heavens themselves, so I’ll trust your opinion on the matter of gods.”
Leonid said, “One need not have been to space to know for sure there’s no such thing as a creator. In fact, it’s easier to see that from right here on the ground.”
Kasha finished her bottle-laden trek across the room. She stopped, panted several times, and nosed the bottle to Giorgi’s feet.
Bohdan, Ukraine—1950
In school, before the teacher went away, the Leonids had been taught that there was no such thing as god. Science had all the answers, and it was hard to argue. If the magic that had allowed the fleets of warplanes to fly overhead could be explained by science, then the Leonids were sure that anything could. When such a plane carried their father away but failed to carry him back, it was not the failure of a miracle, or the triumph of an enemy’s miracle—guns that could launch bullets from the ground halfway up to heaven—over their own. It was simply the science of a plane that it could not fly with one wing shot off. No false comfort in that, no false hope.
Sunday morning came, barely different from any other morning of the week. The boys woke and moved from their shared bed to the table, just a few steps away. Grandmother had laid out two pieces of dry, black bread, moistened just enough by a thin spread of watered-down butter to be edible. The boys ate the bread and drank a cup of water each. They were still hungry after breakfast, but they had gotten used to being hungry. Sometimes they would ask for another cup of water. Drink enough and it gave the illusion of being full.
The twins changed from their bedclothes to old pairs of pants, sturdy but threadbare at the knees, and donned their oldest, dingiest shirts. The fabric had always been a light shade of brown, but now it was threatening black. They put on their shoes by the door and were almost outside when Grandmother called them back.
“How about a prayer before you go?” she asked.
“You know we’re not supposed to pray,” said the older Leonid.
“Who says? Do you see a red soldier here with a gun and a book of rules making sure we follow each one?”