Helianthus, Page 3

he will do if Zeph puts up a fight.

  What were you guys thinking when you made the decision to put two men up here, give them each twelve hour shifts so they never see each other, but oh wait, we’ve got to make sure they’re compatible to live together for forty-three years? You can’t have both. Either we’re compatible and we make life out here work together, or we live opposite of each other and compatibility isn’t an issue. But we are compatible, which makes living opposite of each other hell.

  No one works harder than Zeph. He follows all the standards in the book. Not one peculiarity has escaped his notice. He’s logged every motion—every thought—and sent it back to you at the approved times. Maybe that’s partly why they chose him. No! We’ve already gone over this. The only reason you chose him was because his name looked good to the angry masses.

  But they could have chosen worse.

  Since we rarely saw each other, he would leave me messages on LAMB. I don’t know, for a long time I used to watch them. And then, they’d get tedious, you know? What was there to tell me, or me him? It’s not like he went off to work and had adventures with a traffic jam or a terrible boss or coworkers. There is nothing out here but us. I know him. Every synapse in his brain, I already know. There was nothing new to tell me.

  His musings on whatever book he was reading bored me. His dreams for life when we returned to earth made me...I don’t care if wants to live on the beach or in the mountains or in the middle of the effing desert. What’s the point of dreaming when right here, right now, life is miserable?!

  If there had ever been a thought in his head to make life bearable for the both of us right here right now instead of plans for twenty, thirty years in the future, maybe I would have listened.

  While we were rounding Mercury, something was changing in me. An awareness. Like I was just waking up. Like I had been asleep this whole time. Not just the twenty years aboard the Helianthus, but all my life before that. I was finally alive. And I was incomplete. A piece of my heart—soul!—was missing. The hours my window faced the planet and not the sun, I thought I was going crazy. And then it was too late. By the time the window would have been spun the right direction, the nose was realigned toward Earth. I hadn’t felt such a strong loss since Grandma Svoboda died. I was disoriented. Half my life I had spent going towards that sun, and now in a matter of hours... There we were, our nose pointed toward home, and I felt lost.

  LAMB counted down till we needed to deploy the sails. I knew when we reached zero, everything in the known universe would cease to have meaning. I had T minus forty-two minutes to turn my death from a meaningless drifting for infinity, blown off course by the winds, into a death smiled upon by a god.

  Of all the literature deemed acceptable aboard the Helianthus, I’ve read Braeburn’s Myths and Legends repeatedly. Story after story of heroes—men who sacrifice for honor and their country. Those who aren’t heroes learn their lesson trying to cheat the gods. Its presence here tells me that the ideas in it are meant to keep me a willing participant in this grand experiment—willing to sacrifice what would have been a full life on earth to save the planet. Subtle propaganda, Stonewall. As if I didn’t know what you were trying to do. But I love it just the same. The stories, I mean.

  There’s one—I’m sure you know it—about Hyacinth, the man loved by Apollo. But the jealous Zephyr blows a discus off-course, straight into Hyacinth’s head, ending his life.

  I know Zephyr’s supposed to be the bad guy in the story, but if a beautiful god were seducing the man you loved, I’d try to stop it too. Maybe not with a discus to the head, but sometimes you shouldn’t have to share. Sometimes you should get what you love all to yourself.

  Apollo, whose love is more powerful than a wind, brings Hyacinth back to life. Well, back to life as a flower. A man’s second life can never be the same as his first. Hyacinth returns as a flower, a flower never before seen by man. A flower admired by all but only truly loved by the Sun for whom it grows and blooms.

  I know. I thought the same thing when I first read Braeburn. It’s close, but I was named after the politician. A lot of kids my age were, though it fell out of fashion as soon as the European markets crashed. And Zeph of course is only short for Zephaniah. The myth has no business being reenacted.

  The only thing that gets me is however many times I read it, I can’t seem to discover any glimpses into Hyacinth’s mind. What was he thinking? Was he really in love? With whom? With both? Did he enjoy his second life?

  They say that love is the most powerful force in the universe, but I disagree. A jealous love is much more dangerous. And if jealousy is the accusation leveled against Zephyr, isn’t it also jealousy which causes Apollo to act, to transform Hyacinth into a form only he could love with intimacy.

  I’m smart enough to know that while neither Hyacinth nor Apollo existed, the old stories were told for a reason. For ages, men understood that the Divine Nature, which spins the sun and also causes the winds to blow, is a fiercely jealous and fiercely loving nature. He does not like to share those whom he loves.

  These ideas were long ago replaced by newer religions and newer gods who were in turn replaced by the culmination of all religion: that man himself is the Divine Nature and bows to no one.

  That’s not good enough for me now. I want to be loved. Not by a man who will hold my hand as we drift into the stars and die after our supply of food and water is depleted. I want to be loved by a god who can transform me.

  As the clock in the workroom counted down, I calculated: how much fuel was left in Texas, how far could we go before LAMB woke Zeph to tell him we had changed course?

  The only thing that kept me from rerouting course immediately was Zeph. The thought of dragging him with me straight to the sun on my selfish—yes I’m man enough to admit it’s selfish—quest for a transcendent form made me more alert than a dozen caffeine packs. And also nauseous.

  That, and the fact that LAMB requires both of our key codes to do anything not already programmed into him. One of the failsafes Neumikos’ team thought up just in case one of us went crazy. When the countdown hit the two-minute mark, Zeph swam into the workroom.

  “Ready to go home?” he said.

  He smelled like dried sweat. I don’t think he washed between isometrics and sleep.

  “Long shift?” he said.

  I shrugged. “Just thinking.”

  “I haven’t seen formulas like that in fifteen years,” he said.

  I quickly erased my screen.

  “Gotta keep the gray cells sharp,” I said.

  “Good for you,” he said. “I’m glad to see you pull out of your funk and do something good for yourself. Next stop, isometrics.” He winked.

  God his winking. It made me weak and infuriated at the same time.

  “Baby steps,” I said.

  “Right,” he said. “Let’s get the sails open first.”

  He took a deep breath and puffed out his chest.

  “It feels like I was born for this moment,” he said. “The destiny of it all. Overwhelming.”

  I rolled my eyes and typed in my key code. He followed my lead. LAMB gave the go ahead.

  I reached to turn the key. We both held our breaths. It was a holy moment, even if I no longer wanted to collect helium. Even if I no longer bought into the lies which put us out here. He stopped me from turning the key with a shriek.

  His punched his arms above his head.

  “Ah! I can’t even believe it! Can you? We’re the only two people in the entire universe who get to witness this moment, who get to be here!”

  He screamed and braced himself against the walls and ceiling of the workroom. I thought at first he was trying to push the Helianthus apart. But I think it was just a mini isometrics routine to blow off his excitement. When he was finished he swam over and turned the key with a snap of his wrist.

  We both leaned into the simulation on the screen. The front of the Helianthus opened up to allow the arms
to extend, and from there, the sails would be stretched out to the ends of the arms. Only, as soon as the payload opened, the screen flashed red. Ice was jamming the arms.

  “Maybe it was meant to be,” I said. “Maybe this is our destiny.”

  “I know what you mean,” he said. “The two of us. We were chosen the best of the best. All that training wasn’t for nothing. When they write those history books, this is the moment they remember. When Zephaniah Cass and Hyland Rivera overcame the gorgons and saved the earth. I’m suiting up.”

  It was the first time either of us had left the Helianthus in twenty-three years. We weren’t equipped for spacewalking. But Zeph had this idea to use his suit from our initial launch—which was only a compression suit, didn’t have a helmet and wasn’t radiation proof—and rig a...(too much static)...hollow tubing and Gemini bar wrappers....(static.)

  It was the most alive I had seen him in years.

  “Are you sure you have that on right?” I said.

  “This is exhilarating,” he said. “Finally a puzzle I can really sink my teeth into.”

  “You do too many of those brainbenders.”

  “Isometrics for the mind. You know how to bring me back in?”

  “Zeph, wait. What if, what if something happens while you’re out there?”

  “Nothing’s gonna happen.”

  “But, what if? I mean. What if...I can’t even say it. And I’m the only one left. I’ll only have one key code.”

  I