I hadn’t quite managed to get myself back in the seat when the plane began to dive again. My shoulder and side ached, but I twisted into position, and clapped on the chest restraint.
Over the roller coaster again.
On the second arc, I started out by turning the right way, and had myself braced, pants down, when the claxon sounded.
On the third, I got my bare bottom into the saddle.
On the fourth, I closed the pivot and managed a trickle.
As the fifth arc began, some of what little urine there was began floating inside the cabin.
“Piece of shit,” Triyanov said, meaning the device, not me.
Then he threw up.
During the next three arcs, I made further attempts, none of them entirely or even remotely successful. “The tank is empty,” I finally told Triyanov, and I didn’t mean Voskhod’s.
Green and miserable, he waved me out of the spacecraft. “You’ve done enough.”
I strapped myself into one of the metal chairs and rode out the next few arcs as a passenger. I realized that the other test work — incomprehensible to me — had largely stopped, as the other test-crew members strapped themselves down like Triyanov, heads lolling, useless. In fact, I soon realized I was the only man still standing. “How long does this go on?” I asked.
“We ordered twenty arcs, twenty arcs is what we’ll get, even if we’re all dead.” Well, with the aircraft diving and climbing, it was impossible to imagine walking to the cockpit door to tell the pilots otherwise.
From the look on Triyanov’s face, the remaining eleven arcs were an agonizing eternity. I felt bad that I didn’t feel worse… allowing myself to unstrap and float freely during the thirty seconds of freefall for each arc.
It was like being on that roller coaster again, with Triyanov in place of my father.
Eventually we leveled out, and people began to recover. “Well,” Triyanov asked, once he had regained his proper color, “what shall we say about our space toilet?”
“It didn’t seem well-designed.”
“Good. That’s exactly what we will report.” He smiled wanly. “Be sure your name goes ahead of mine.”
“If you say so.”
“The organization’s first response will be to blame the tester. You will probably have to repeat your space pissing.”
“If that’s what they want.”
“I can see that these flights don’t bother you, Yuri. Maybe I should get you into our cosmonaut team.”
It was a joking comment, but it hit me like a fist. And I thought, I had become a spy without even trying. Why not a cosmonaut, too?
6
Ostankino Tower
I spent the rest of that week in more mundane tasks at the bureau, charting the data from the tests and learning just how little I knew. The idea that I could somehow compete with the senior engineers around me in any bureau business — much less that of becoming a cosmonaut—soon struck me as foolish.
Returning exhausted to my building on Friday evening, I found a message from Uncle Vladimir waiting for me with the key lady. This was necessary because we didn’t have telephones in our student flats.
The key lady’s name was Liliya, and, like most middle-aged or elderly Russian women, she was round and potatolike. She had lovely blue eyes, however, and a ready smile, so some of the guys flirted with her, which caused her to blush and look quite pretty. Perhaps this sort of maneuver softened her up, or maybe she was just a romantic, but you could sneak girls past her at will. If she caught you, she might wag her finger — but always with a smile.
This day, Liliya seemed unusually concerned when she handed me the message, which simply said for me to meet Uncle Vladimir at the restaurant in the Ostankino Tower tomorrow at noon.
Noting Liliya’s frown, I asked her if there was a problem. “The man who brought it was an officer,” she said, referring to an officer of State Security, which in her world only meant bad news. Explaining my relationship with State Security was not, of course, an immediate option. “He said you would be here in five minutes,” she added, which did chill me: I had stopped for bread at one kiosk on my walk from the metro station, then even lingered at another kiosk, which happened to be offering shoes — all of which turned out to be the same size, too big. But no one could have predicted correctly when I would arrive home.
Was Uncle Vladimir having me followed?
I knew the Ostankino Station and environs quite well. It was a fairgrounds devoted to the Exhibit on Scientific and Technical Achievements, dominated by a gigantic sweeping spaceship monument, a tribute to Gagarin. There you also found the new thirty-story television tower and its revolving restaurant.
Gagarin’s anonymous engineers, such as the newly deceased Korolev; my boss, Filin; and his rival, Artemov, lived in a series of handsome flats — almost like the individual condominiums you see in Scandinavian countries — literally in the shadow of the monument. Consequently I had come through the station here twice a day for weeks, but had never been motivated, or rich enough, to enter the tower itself… the top of which, on this wintry Saturday, was shrouded in mist.
When I showed my documents to the guard, I was separated from the line and sent into the elevator. No one grumbled: They would have done the same and never looked back.
When I emerged on the thirtieth floor, there was no Uncle Vladimir, nor any sign of him, and none of his helpful State Security associates. The restaurant itself was largely empty — whether it wasn’t open at this hour, or just not open to the general public, I didn’t know. I had never actually eaten in a restaurant at that time in my life… cafés, yes. But this place was in a different class. It had a name — the Stakhanov — emblazoned on the wall in gold script, and was equipped with many expensive-looking furnishings, silver spoons, white tablecloths.
I glimpsed a waiter and a waitress, and possibly even a cook, but all three were seriously busy not working. To them, I was a thin young hooligan in a cheap overcoat, not a customer.
I stood there looking out the window, hoping for a view of Moscow sliding by slowly beneath me, but saw only clouds. Finally, as we made a complete revolution back to the elevators, Uncle Vladimir appeared, alone, his great bulk almost filling the cage.
“This way,” he said, nodding to one of the empty tables, passing several (I thought) perfectly good tables on the way.
We had barely settled into the overstuffed red chairs when the staff, recognizing a dignitary, descended on us likes flies on a pile of shit. Words I had never heard in my life tumbled out of their mouths — appetizers, entrées — all accompanied by a lot of head-bobbing. Suddenly they were peasants and we were lords. I was torn between disgust at the display and the disturbing feeling that I could easily get used to such service.
They brought us vodka and smoked salmon, to take the chill out of our bones, and cleared off to prepare the lunch, which, to my relief, Uncle Vladimir ordered. I couldn’t help saying, “They certainly live up to the name.” Stakhanov had been a legendarily tireless, much-cited, heavily rewarded — and if not fictitious, then grotesquely exaggerated — hero — coal miner of the 1930s.
Uncle Vladimir allowed himself the briefest of smiles. “A restaurant doesn’t have a State quota, Yuri. It either has good food or it doesn’t. Which this place does. Korolev thought so.” He glanced out the window in the general direction of the bureau’s residences. “He used to bring his girlfriend here. Then kept coming after they were married, always sitting at this same table.”