Ignatius entered behind him and ushered him to a seat beside the podium. At least a dozen microphones blossomed from the podium’s top, many labeled with letters from other alphabets. Nadya lagged in last, looking around as if she had entered the wrong room. She took the seat next to Leonid.
A man Leonid did not know took the podium first, talking about the space program as if he were somehow involved with it, though Leonid did not think the man was one of the Chief Designer’s engineers. Certainly not one important enough to be speaking in such grand terms. The man pontificated about the importance of conquest and about the exceptional dedication of the individuals who made it possible. He spoke of the pride of the nation as if it were his own personal emotion. He seemed to be able to pause and smile just before every camera flash.
“It’s now my honor,” said the man, “to introduce to the world one of the heroes of the Soviet Union, the fifth cosmonaut to leave the surface of the Earth and to safely return.”
The cameras popped again from the back of the room as Leonid took the podium. He had spent most of his life preparing for this moment, but none of the training had included the flashes. He felt dizzy and blind. Leaning forward, he went too far and bumped his chin into one of the microphones. Ignatius squirmed in her seat. The sight of her discomfort somehow comforted him. He laughed and flashed a grin. A grin he had rehearsed in the mirror every night for months—his signature expression, Ignatius called it. His lips felt both strange and familiar. He rubbed his chin where it had bumped the microphone.
“I guess,” said Leonid, “I’m still not back to being familiar with the feel of gravity.”
Members of the Soviet press laughed, and then a moment later so did the international reporters.
“Let me start by saying how honored I am to have been part of this historic achievement of the Soviet Union.”
Leonid followed the script of his introductory remarks, words that he had rehearsed nearly as much as his grin, rehearsed to the point of meaninglessness. He did not even recall the content of what he spoke. It had taken him only a few readings to realize that there was not much content to it, anyway. When he had expressed this concern to Ignatius, she laughed. “You’re not supposed to say anything,” she had said, “just something.”
Now Leonid snuck another glance at Ignatius, leaning her elbows on the low table beside the podium, watching him, and she nodded her approval.
He inflected the right words of the speech. The gloriouses and exceptionals and superiors. He had read the speeches of the previous cosmonauts, and he knew these same words had been spoken at similar podiums many times before.
The first, expected questions came from the Soviet reporters. Leonid related the made-up details of his life, from his name to his parents to his home commune, where his parents had worked the land and exemplified communist ideals before untimely deaths. He could barely remember his real parents, and sometimes even he confused the stories with the truth. His name, even that was false. About the only truth he uttered was the fact that he was Ukrainian. He suspected that if not for his accent, of which he had never been able to completely rid himself, the Chief Designer would have insisted on changing his heritage as well. When Ignatius took over his publicity training, just a few months ago, the first thing she had done was give him speech lessons. He could hide his accent for a time, but it always reemerged the longer he spoke. Eventually, Ignatius had accepted it and said the Soviet people would, too.
The first international reporter asked a question in what sounded like French.
Ignatius translated, “What is it like to be weightless?”
“At first like falling,” said Leonid, “and then you float.”
It was the answer Nadya had given, the other Nadya, the one who rode that first rocket and died. Mars had communicated with her the whole time she was in range of the radio receiver, chatting as if the two of them were at a cocktail party, not separated by thousands of kilometers. The transcripts of those conversations had been used by all the other cosmonauts, the twins who remained behind, to describe space.
“What did the Earth look like?” asked a German.
“One is struck by the size, of course,” answered Leonid, “but also by the smallness. I could see so much more of it, the whole thing in a matter of hours. And all around it is boundless space.”
An American spoke next, “Does the Soviet space program have plans for the next mission?”
“I think that our engineers and cosmonauts will undertake the next mission when it is necessary.”
“Were you lonely?” The question was asked in Russian, but Leonid recognized the accent: Ukrainian. “In orbit, did you feel alone?”
Leonid did not have a rote answer for the question. It had not come up in practice with Ignatius. He did not want to look at her, but he could sense her gaze on him.
“It’s unbearably lonely,” he said, “but one must remember that while Vostok is small, the whole of the Soviet people travels with you.”
Ignatius practically leapt up from her seat and clapped her hands once.
“Thank you all for your time,” she said, leaning into the microphones. “We must transport our cosmonaut to his next appointment.”
The cameras flashed again. Ignatius nudged Leonid out a door on the opposite side of the room from where they had entered. It led to a narrow hall lined with stacks of dusty chairs, the same child-sized chairs used by the reporters. Lightbulbs caged by metal grates protruded from the ceiling, but only every third or fourth shone. The dim illumination textured every surface as if in gray felt.
Ignatius slapped Leonid on the back. “Brilliant, comrade! You’re a born star. And that last answer couldn’t have been more perfect even if I’d scripted it myself.”
“Your lessons haven’t gone unlearned,” said Leonid.
Nadya entered the hallway and sat on one of the small chairs. She swayed in the seat. She did that sometimes. Leonid had asked her about it. Imagining weightlessness, she had explained. The motion made her seem like a child. She faintly hummed a simple melody.
The man who had introduced Leonid came into the hallway next. Ignatius offered a familiar but not overly friendly greeting. They talked just above a whisper, too soft to hear from even a meter away.
“Do you think,” Nadya asked Leonid, “that the Soviet people are still with him, now that the Soviet people think he is you?”
Ignatius glanced back and then pulled the door to the press room completely closed.
“Nadya,” said Leonid, “I don’t think they were with him even before. Never.”
Though he did not know where it led, he followed the hall toward the doorway at its distant end. Nadya rose, hurried to his side, and went with him. Faint sunlight framed the doors through the cracks and a bright gash split them down the middle.
Star City, Russia—1964
The radio room was located behind a steel door twenty centimeters thick. To open the door, Mars twisted the dial, larger than his hand, through the sixteen digits of the combination. He stopped on the final 27, and then cranked the wheel, a device that looked as if it had been borrowed from the bridge of a galleon. The lock thunked and unlatched. Despite its mass, the door glided open as if weightless. Mars pushed it closed behind him with only the tips of his fingers. A final thread of light shot through the gap and then all was dark.