Forever Shores (13 page)

‘What happened here?' she says.

He is mute with sickness and confusion.

That last effort, displacing six dead men plus himself to a time several minutes in the past, has taken all the strength he had; it has almost killed him. Yet, he remains glutted with Aurelian's blood. No longer a source of strength, it is evil, lifeless stuff within him. It weighs sickeningly upon his bowels.

‘You cannot imagine what I have had to do here, and I am too weak to explain it or just what it has done to me,' he says. He sits back on his haunches and throws the blood-drained severed head so that it lands at her feet. ‘My strength is gone. I am no protection to you. I may not live beyond the next minutes. Perhaps in some of these corpses there is a little poor blood to sustain me back to Palmyra.'

‘I still have all my blood.' Zenobia suppresses a shudder of disgust. ‘Take some of it.'

Yes. He has room in his belly for a last small draught of Zenobia. ‘Lady, there will need to be a new Imperator of Rome. Your fortunes will turn, now.'

She walks to him. ‘You cannot talk. Be quiet.'

‘Zenobia, you are, as they say,
just
a woman, and you cannot be Imperator. I propose your son, Vaballathus Athenodorus.'

‘Indeed, he has always been a dutiful boy. Be quiet now.'

She crouches to him, extends her arm towards his hungry mouth, her hand bent backward at the wrist, veins upward.

The future shudders; it cracks open like an egg; it breaks, shatters. And is reborn.

The Gate of Heaven
Rosaleen Love

The Buddhist monk is wired to the EEG. As he enters trance, the machine traces evidence for Nirvana.

See these DNA strips. Here is the location of the gene for God.

Here is proof of the power of prayer. These people in the cancer ward do not know that others are praying for them. See how they improve.

Fourth comes the discovery of the gate of heaven.

Of course there will always be those who say that what happened on space-craft Mir is fraud, or mass hypnosis. What, though, if it were true?

I have kept my peace about Mir, until this day. Once, upon Mir, the veil of reality was lifted, and we beheld with a celestial clarity, and we were all transformed.

Then Mir was destroyed. It went plummeting into the great Southern Ocean, or so they said.

What if I were to say that Mir is still aloft, the real Mir? It was the material Mir that burned and crashed into the sea, but in the reality beyond the material world, which is uncreated, which pervades everything, and which we have always thought, until that moment, to be beyond the reach of human knowledge and understanding, the real space station Mir still flies aloft, the cosmonauts at their posts.

I tried to tell what I saw, and was called crazy. They felt sorry for me, and gave me drugs that caused my vision to fade. The everyday world crowded in and my normal life was returned to me.

My friends are still aloft, and I am here.

I have lost entrance to the gate of Paradise.

‘I have a theory of everything.' We were on board Mir, doing one of the endless sleep experiments. Tsiolkovsky attached himself to the wall-panel by strips of velcro. He wore a blue cap fitted with sensors, stuck to his head with greasy gel. He closed his eyes to allow me to fix the REM sensors to his eyelids. He had a large bulb thermometer in his rectum to measure core body temperature. I placed a catheter in his vein, and took the first blood sample for the night. ‘This cannot be the real world,' said Tsiolkovsky. ‘Volkov, what do you say to this idea? I believe we are trapped in a nightmare.'

I splashed his blood onto paper and fed it into the Reflectron. Measurements from the machine went straight to Base on earth.

I agreed with Tsiolkovsky's theory of the nightmare, but I argued with him to urge him on, to help him find a better reason for being born. ‘When I prick your arm, you bleed,' I said. ‘This is not the blood of nightmares. It smears on the strip. You can see it. Here.' But he could not see. The sensors pressed on his eyelids.

‘They are studying sleep on Mir, but they create the conditions under which it is impossible to sleep.' He had to wake up every hour, if indeed he ever got to sleep, to provide more blood for the machine.

I was the one to wake him, if the alarm did not.

‘What do you think the real world is like?' I asked, as I taped the catheter to his arm. I did not adjust the thermometer in his rectum.

I, too, thought the measurements were crazy, but unlike Tsiolkovsky I believed there was a world where this had some meaning.

‘Tell me, why do I exist in this world?'

‘You are placed here for a purpose,' I replied, knowing it would not calm him, but it was what I believed.

‘What is the point of our lives? How can I attain something other than this world, with its machinery that breaks down, its computers that give stupid readings, this water that drips endlessly over everything …' His voice trailed away. He was, despite all, asleep.

I wiped up the water. It came from leaks and spills and human sweat and pooled in puddles over everything, blobs in free fall. Dampness was all, on Mir.

Each hour I woke Tsiolkovsky, to draw blood for the Reflectron, the measuring machine that scientists other than ours said was useless, never tested in space, in the heat, and obsolete everywhere but Mir. He said, the American Linebarger, when he was with us, that the measurements it gave were wrong. They had to be, because if they were right, we would be dead. The results they sent back to Base were incompatible with life.

We were so tired, so much of the time, we did not know what we were doing. We were dead enough. I believed the measurements were accurate.

Tsiolkovsky asked, ‘What is the point of our lives?'

And his question was answered, but not, as it turned out, by me.

I asked Base if we could stop the experiments. ‘The men are exhausted. We have six nights of data. Is it enough?'

‘We'll see about it,' Base said, secure on earth. ‘We'll get back to you later.' When the experiments were over. I needed a swift reply. I was not confident of one.

We were so tired we started to hear things. Each of us heard something different.

It happened when Mir reached the apogee of its orbit. The closer we were to heaven, in which we did not believe, the more we heard the celestial music.

I heard it as a rushing in the ears, as if I pressed a sea-shell close, like the distant seas. Manakov heard a deep mournful sound, and I knew when he was listening, because tears sprang to his eyes. Tsiolkovsky found it more restful than distressing. Globa heard a kind of celestial Elvis, his version of Paradise.

We thought the music was within us, and that it was one of the effects of micro-gravity. In weightlessness, calcium leaches out of the bones and is excreted in urine. We pissed our bones away. Likewise calcium was leaching from the bones in our ears, so we heard sounds that were not there. That was Manakov's theory.

Tsiolkovsky said we were so high up we could hear the murmur of waves from beyond earth's shores. He said we heard the music of space. We were in a gap between heaven and earth, between the music of the head, and the music of the spheres, as far apart, and as close, as the gap between the singer and the song, the raw stone and the sculptor's vision.

Living as we did between heaven (in which we did not believe) and earth (in which we once believed, but then had doubts) we were seduced by the music of spheres.

I should have reported to Base anything that smacked of religious fervour. But I did not. Here, in space, we sensed most clearly the disjunction between what lay beyond and that which pulled us back, the broken machinery, crashed computers, leaking coolants, and the myriad tasks of the day. Things could be otherwise, if only … if only.

First came the music, then the visions.

The space walks were, at first, routine. Two of us went outside once a week to change the radiation dosimeters, check the particle sensors and the thermal safety blankets round Soyuz, our escape module.

Tsiolkovsky was with Globa the first time it happened. They went out through the Kvant 2 hatch to the Kristall hull.

Space walks began at sunrise. Tsiolkovsky went first, just as the first rays of the sun hit Mir. That's why he saw it, he said, while Globa reported nothing.

Tsiolkovsky said: ‘I crawled through the hatch, and swung out to the ladder. All I could see was the brightness of the sun, and its rays falling towards me. The rays of the sun were falling and I felt I was rising towards them.'

Globa said: ‘I could not exit the hatch. Tsiolkovsky stayed half in the door, half outside, his helmet turned towards the rising sun. I asked him if there was a problem.'

Tsiolkovsky said: ‘I felt as if I were standing at the base of a high mountain, at the edge of an abyss. I was not afraid. Both mountain and abyss glowed with light. I wanted to let go of Mir, to rise into the light.'

Globa's said: ‘Tsiolkovsky tugged at the handrail, to which he was tethered. I thought it was the rail. Once, it came loose from metal fatigue. Now we always check them first thing.'

Tsiolkovsky said: ‘The entire universe was filled with infinite light.'

Globa said: ‘Tsiolkovsky did not move for thirty minutes. I was stuck in the capsule. I could go neither backwards nor forwards. He did not respond to my repeated calls for help. I tell you, I began to feel frantic. I pushed him, I pulled him, but he only swayed a little, pivoting on his tether. It took all my training to think through what I would have to do, if he would not move.'

Tsiolkovsky said: ‘It lasted a moment, this sense of infinite light. I turned and saw the earth huge beneath me, and the spell was broken. The light contracted to a point, and that point swelled to become the earth, and I knew the earth under Mir is not a sphere of cooling magma, as we have been told, but a sphere of contracted light.'

Globa said: ‘After half an hour, Tsiolkovsky resumed the space walk as if nothing had happened. When I questioned him he said he'd been momentarily blinded by the light as he went through the hatch.'

Later, as I helped him from his space-suit, Tsiolkovsky seemed his usual self. His first words were: ‘Volkov, how can I ever really comprehend myself and the universe?'

When Globa told him what had happened, he grew thoughtful.

Later, debriefing, Tsiolkovsky said: ‘I felt I was in Paradise.'

We did not tell Base that Tsiolkovsky spent half an hour in Paradise. We said the walk had gone as planned, and the new monitors were in place.

I was next, when I walked out with Globa, who saw only the hull before his eyes, his gloved hands manipulating the equipment. Globa went first. I moved to follow.

The outer hull is crowded with experiments and with solar panels. We transit with great care, avoiding anything sharp that might puncture our suits.

Before me, the sun's rays. Beneath me, Mir sparkled in sunlight. When I reached the site, I tethered myself to the nearest handrail. My hands were heavy with gloves. Arms, legs and trunk swung round as one. I was an Egyptian mummy raised from the dead, sleep-walking though the pyramid in search of the entrance to the other world.

We worked steadily until nightfall. On Mir, the movement from day to night is sudden. Blackness is absolute. We cannot work when this happens, and stay tethered to await the rising sun. It is a task for which we are trained.

This time, I could not relax into the situation, which, in itself, is not dangerous, simply something that happens. I swung restlessly on my tether. I had the strong urge to stand upright. But I did not know how to do it. In space, there is no up, no down, no sense to the notion of standing.

Then I had the sudden sense that space itself moved into me, and through me, and gently set me right. My hand-hold shifted to a foot-hold. I was moved, but I had not moved. I was by myself, yet I was with the stars.

I felt the space of Mir above and below me. The space of Mir was within me and without me.

I took refuge in the shadows of Mir's wings.

Then I saw the small light of Globa's torch.

Globa. I was not alone. Space retreated from me. Soon it was sunrise. We got back to work. Together, we ascended the mountain that is Kristall, and checked the monitors.

Afterwards I asked Globa what he had seen. Nothing.

I said nothing. If I told Tsiolkovsky, it would only bring on more questions like ‘Who am I, and what do I exist for?' I was beginning to wonder, myself, but I was not sure confiding in Tsiolkovsky would get me anywhere. He should report me to Base, as I should already have reported him.

Then came the fire. It happened so silently, so swiftly.

It was Globa's turn for the sleep experiments. We wired him up, and left him alone in Spetkr to get what sleep he could.

We took a meal together. Black-currant jelly from foil packets, and vodka from Globa's stash.

At the time of the fire, I was stamping postcards. Endlessly. We stamped them in proof they were on Mir, to sell on our return. Manakov was tucking up cables. I scarcely noticed any more, the cables in free fall, the pools of water, the flickering lights from computer malfunctions. I felt this was the only life I ever knew, that all other notions of life on earth were phantasms induced by vodka and lack of sleep.

Tsiolkovsky flew past the bench. He refused to stamp postcards. When I asked him to help, he replied: ‘How is it possible for me to understand the cause of all that happens to me?' It was only stamping postcards, but he would make yet another cosmic question of it.

Manakov said: ‘The oxygen is getting low.' It was my task to replenish the supply.

I secured the cards and made my way through the hatchway into the Kvant module.

I switched to the back-up system. Everything on Mir was fast becoming back-up, and back-ups of the back-ups, as the front-line equipment collapsed.

I found the cylinder, and took out the gutted candle, the spent lithium perchlorate. I put a fresh candle in the tube. I turned the red dial and smelt the sweet flow of oxygen. Then, as I placed the cylinder back in its cradle, I saw sparks of light in the air-flow.

Fire!

I was on board a space craft hurtling around the earth. I was located precisely in time and space. But at the moment I knew this, I also knew I inhabited another place where time and space were irrelevant.

I felt a great sluggishness come over me. My actions should have been swift. I should have yelled ‘Fire!' My companions should rush to help me. We are trained to respond quickly, without question.

But just as I knew I must call out, I felt myself fall out of this space, this time, into another place. I saw sparks from the cylinder turn, in free-fall, into a burning sphere. I saw the soul of the universe in this fire, this small burning sun inside Mir. I saw the king of stars and the fountain of life.

I watched the flame grow to embrace the entire universe. I said in a voice that I knew did not carry: ‘We have a fire.'

These things happened, as if in another place, to another person.

Inside the Kvant module a light flashed upon me, and through me, shining as a mirror, all colours together, flashing and disappearing, reappearing, fusing and blending to a light that is not a light, to a fire that is not a fire. I saw the fire before me, the flames flowing into a sphere as oxygen escaped. I sensed the invisible fire all round, within Mir and beyond, spreading to infinity, an invisible fire, a fire that does not burn, a fire that brings with it perfection and tranquillity. When we knew nothing of it, it stayed hidden. Once I sensed it, it showed itself to me, when I sought to find it, I did not know what it was that I was looking for.