“It isn’t the same Kasha as from your home.”
“I don’t care!” Leonid shouted and slammed his fist against the door behind him. The hush that followed reminded the Chief Designer of the moment after a launch when the rumble of the rocket finally faded to nothing.
The Chief Designer stood but did not round the desk. He held his face in his palm and rubbed his thumb up and down the scar on his head. Sometimes he thought the scar was growing in length, stretching with age. His wife had told him he was silly for thinking such a thing. He would have liked to see his wife.
“What can I do, Leonid?” he asked.
“Choose another dog.” Leonid stepped forward. “But not Kasha, please. Don’t take her away from me. She’s all that’s left.”
“Khrushchev chose her.”
“And Tsiolkovski chose us,” said Nadya, “but you went along with him. There are only so many times you can pass responsibility to someone else.”
The Chief Designer lowered his hand from his face and looked at her. Guilt had always flowed through his veins like blood, but never once had the guilt been placed on him from the outside. Especially not from Nadya.
“You owe us at least one thing, yes?” said Nadya. “Make it this. Find a way to save Kasha.”
The Chief Designer crouched beside his desk and leafed through the papers he had knocked to the floor. A dozen pages on the failure of the ablative heat shield in the latest tests. Several more on painting larger red stars on the sides of rockets. He was glad to see that this particular item had been copied to the General Designer as well. Could he be the answer? Could the Chief Designer bear to work with that ass of a man?
He found what he was looking for and stood.
“There might be a way,” said the Chief Designer. “And if that doesn’t work, there might be another.”
He handed a photograph to Leonid.
“What’s this?” asked Leonid.
“It’s Khrushchev’s dog.”
The picture showed a tiny animal, eyes taking up a significant portion of its face, long hair frizzing from its ears. The hand that held it in the photograph looked like it belonged to a giant in comparison to the dog’s waspy torso and wiry legs.
“This is a dog?” said Nadya. “It looks like a well-groomed squirrel.”
“That’s its name: Byelka.”
“What a horrible accident of breeding.”
The Chief Designer looked at the piece of paper that had accompanied the photograph.
“It’s a Russkiy Toy,” he said.
“How will this dog help us?” asked Nadya. “Will we launch it instead?”
“We have to launch both,” said the Chief Designer. “On my end, I’ll try to find a way to bring it back along with Kasha. But I’m not sure I can. You know I’ve been trying to bring back all of you… all of your siblings with every launch. In case I can’t prepare the capsule to return the dogs, though, I need your help.”
“What can we possibly do?” asked Leonid.
“Find me the twins of these dogs. I’ll have Mishin and Bushuyev assist you. They helped capture the original batch of strays, and know the best streets to search in Moscow.”
“This doesn’t seem like a simple task,” said Nadya.
“I don’t recall having ever faced a task that was simple.”
“There’s a whole room of veterinarians here right now. Let them help us.”
“It has to be only those who know… only the twins and then Mishin and Bushuyev.”
“What about Mars?” asked Leonid.
“Mars is… busy. And this is only a contingency. I hope that we never need to use it. I hope that Kasha will become the first living thing we return from space.”
“I hope she never leaves the ground,” said Leonid. He glared into a corner of the room.
Nadya reached back and opened the door. She gripped Leonid by the shoulder and led him out.
“Thank you, Chief Designer,” she said.
He nodded. “Please send Mishin and Bushuyev in on your way out.”
He heard the outer door open and shut. God, he was tired. He opened his eyes to discover Mishin and Bushuyev in front of him. The Chief Designer shuffled through the papers on his desk until he found the report on the heat shield.
“I don’t have time to read this,” he said. “Tell me what it says.”
“Nothing new,” said one of them.
“What will it take to get a report on the heat shield that does tell me something new?”
“A miracle,” said the other.
“That’s all you can offer? A prayer? To what god?”
The Chief Designer felt heat rise to his face. He flung the report toward the wall beside his desk. The papers fluttered apart and drifted down. He had wanted the report to smack against the wall. He wanted the satisfaction of the impact. He let out an inarticulate scream, like the roar of a bear.
“I’ll beat all of you with a stick. I’ll beat you until nobody will be able to recognize your face for how bad I’ve beaten it.” The Chief Designer was standing, leaning across his desk toward Mishin and Bushuyev, thrusting his fist into the air to punctuate every word.
“I’m fifty years old,” said Mishin or Bushuyev—one was fifty and the other only thirty-seven, but the Chief Designer always forgot which was which. “This is not the time to be threatening me with a stick.”
The Chief Designer focused his eyes—his vision had tunneled with rage—and took two deep breaths. He hurried around his desk as quickly as his aching knees could move him and pulled Mishin and Bushuyev into an embrace.
“Forgive me, forgive me,” he said. “No offense intended. I was overreacting.”
He had so few friends, so few people to rely on. Why did he lose his temper with them? The General Designer had been here not long ago. There was a man worth threatening. The Chief Designer released Mishin and Bushuyev from the hug. One of them stooped to gather the papers from the floor, as if the Chief Designer’s outburst had never occurred.
“Giorgi will start the centrifuge in an hour,” said the other.
An hour to tackle all the reports that had been stacked again upon the Chief Designer’s desk. Another countdown. He had told the General Designer that gravity was the only competition. But perhaps time was the most formidable foe of all.
THE LAST NIP of chilly morning air had been chased off. Leonid passed through the line of trees beside the dormitory to the narrow quadrangle beyond, a long strip of celadon grass, sere, crunching beneath his old training boots. He doubted that the grass would come back after each harsh winter, but it always sprouted green again. Walkways had been paved across the quadrangle at regular intervals, though there was nothing on the other side, just trees thickening into forest. Like everything else at Star City, the paths were part of some future plan. Leonid surmised that half of being a visionary was the willingness to pave paths to nowhere.
The Chief Designer was like that, leaping ahead without checking to see where he might land, never looking back, as if he could not bear the image of what was behind him. Leonid had heard some of the Chief Designer’s history. Siberia, the gulag. He could see as clearly as anyone the scar on the Chief Designer’s head. He had witnessed more than most how the Chief Designer gritted his teeth, the real ones on top against the artificial ones on the bottom. The fake teeth, worn half away, had to be replaced once a year. Was it enough that the Chief Designer felt guilt, that it ground him down, that it had him awake and working hours before every dawn?
Tsiolkovski had told them over and over again that all their sacrifices were for the good of the Motherland. The loss of their homes, the long hours of training, the endless studying, the separation from their twins, and eventually the twins’ deaths. Before he left, Tsiolkovski would orate speeches like sermons. Or tell stories like a grandfather. Whatever he said, it seemed impossible not to believe, whatever he ordered, impossible not to follow. That was how Leonid had always forgiven the Chief Designer, swept up like the rest of them in Tsiolkovski’s fervor. With Tsiolkovski gone, though, Leonid’s belief waned, and he saw in Tsiolkovski nothing more than the old gods dethroned by the Soviets, a comforting belief with no basis in reality. There was no Motherland, just the people who lived on top of it. Every sacrifice had been for a lie. All these lies to ensure the survival of another, grander lie. Leonid was tired of pretending.