One day, when Sergey came in from scouting for soil, Katherine didn’t dally in helping him out of his suit. “There’s a dispatch,” she said as soon as they were inside and unmasked, and the two of them made straight for the facsimile machine, for the long sheaf of paper that had curled up on the countertop.
“You’ve read these already?” he asked, picking it up.
She shook her head. “I was waiting for you.”
“Aww,” he said, his hand over his heart. “I am touched.”
“Just read, will you? Aloud this time.”
They were copies of newspaper articles from Russia, big newspapers, Sergey told her, the biggest in Moscow and two in Leningrad. He held up one of them, a front-page headline:
Пионеры!
“That means ‘Pioneers!’ ” He skimmed a little farther. “It seems we have become the national darlings of Russia. They tune in every evening after work to see what we are doing. Ha! We are television stars.”
She couldn’t fathom it. They did nothing interesting up here, and surely there were times when they were asleep, or just eating dinner, while people watched them on their little screens. “Even if they edit the film and broadcast only our best,” she said, “I can’t for the life of me imagine anyone caring about this.”
He wasn’t listening. He was gazing at his own face, his head shot in his space uniform. There might have been tears in his eyes.
“Oh, brother,” said Katherine. She looked up through the glass, at the black sky with its millions upon billions of stars. A shooting star blazed by, which didn’t even strike her as remarkable anymore. “Let’s see what else they sent.”
Sergey scrolled farther down the sheaf of paper. “Just one more thing,” he said. “An American newspaper.”
He let her take it from him. It was an article from one of the bigger newspapers in the United States, not the best, but a good one, photos of Sergey and her, side by side, unflattering ones in this case: herself with her hair blown back, eyes closed, a grainy image cut from a group photo; Sergey stone-faced, dead eyes staring straight at the camera.
“Is that a mug shot?” she asked him.
He didn’t look at her. “What’s this word?”
He was pointing at “Jezebel.” “Jezebel in Space” was the article’s title. It was the subtitle that caught her breath in her throat: “Defector’s Mother Claims Daughter Was Mentally Unfit for Life on Earth.” In the article, there was a quote from her mother:
According to Mrs. Livingston, Miss Livingston’s pattern of delinquency and rebellious behavior began long before her current act of treason. “First it was coming home late, drinking too much, and running with a fast crowd. Then the airplane flying. Then there’s the principal of her high school. Man with a wife and six kids, and she had to lead him down a road of temptation. The family wants him and his wife to know for good we did not condone her behavior.”
When asked if she’ll welcome her daughter back with open arms if she in fact returns to Earth, Mrs. Livingston had this to say: “As far as I’m concerned she’s good as dead. She should be behind bars.” Indeed, a locked cell could be what awaits Miss K. Livingston should she survive her time in space, and make her way back to this country.
“Is this what passes for maternal affection in U.S. of A.?” Sergey muttered over Katherine’s shoulder. “What kind of parent wants her own daughter in a cage?”
Hot tears were streaming down Katherine’s cheeks. The principal of her high school—that part stung. How many times had she explained to her parents what really happened?
She wiped her nose on the palm of her hand and turned away from Sergey. “I suppose this is funny to you?”
“No, it’s downright terrifying. The ice princess, with heart melting? Please, don’t go soft, we’ll never survive if you do.”
“Stop it!” she shouted, wheeling around. “Stop pretending that I have anything important to do here!” She crumpled the paper, all of it, into one large ball. As she did it, Sergey winced. “Why did they choose me for this?” she cried. She threw the balled-up paper at him, hitting him right in the middle of his broad chest. “Why me, why choose a pilot? I didn’t fly the spacecraft here. I could have been anybody.”
Sergey nodded slowly, his mocking smile gone. His hands were slightly flexed at his sides, as though he might have to grab and restrain her. She pulled herself up to her full height. “Yes,” he said slowly, “you could have been anybody. Any pretty girl, any American. It’s just about the story.”
“The story. I’m a storybook character.” She clenched her fists and began hitting him, her hands bouncing off his chest like rubber balls on a brick wall. She was sobbing, tearing at him, all because he was the only man here and he could stand in for so many. She’d begun shoving him when he caught her hands.
“Stop,” he said quietly. “Just stop. Wait.”
Panting, she watched him walk over to the camera, which stuck out of one of the walls on its little white arm. He moved behind the machine, a finger to his lips. Then he reached under it and flicked a switch, at the same time holding the green light with the opposite thumb. The light went out.
“You can turn it off?” Her fingernails began to curl into her palms again. “You could’ve turned it off this whole time?”
“You forget I spent three weeks here without you at first. They did not explain to me how to do this. I figured it out for myself.”
“How do I know it’s really off?”
“Here’s how.” He took a deep breath, his brown eyes sad, the corners of his mouth turned downward. “I will tell you a secret. You may be here as a tool for the state, a mannequin of sorts. Who cleans. But I am here as a punishment.”
A horrible thought came to Katherine then: What if Sergey were a murderer? A rapist? What if she had been sharing a tiny glass home, with no exits, with a violent criminal this entire time?
“What did you do?” she asked, backing up a bit.
Only the dark side of his face was visible to her now. He looked down as he spoke. “I was a deserter. After Stalingrad, I slipped away from my squadron and hid in a stable until a blind old lady brought me into her house. I was only seventeen. I had no shoes, no food. I was skin and bone. I did not want to kill any more Germans.”
“The war ended eight years ago. What have you been doing since?”
“I took care of the old woman’s farm for a while. She was good to me, better than my own parents.”
“What was her name?” Katherine felt bold asking, but the question burst from her lips as though it had a mind of its own.
“Her name was Lizabeta,” Sergey replied, his face riddled with grief, and she hoped he didn’t notice that her posture relaxed a bit as something unclenched within her. “I was with her when she died. She had no family.” He sniffed loudly. “After that, I attempted to stay on. But the people in her village found out who I was and called the police. It was either come here or go to a penal colony in Siberia.”
“Seems like an easy choice. Why you, among all the deserters? Why did you get this opportunity?”
“I had a little fame, before the war, as an amateur sportsman. I did the luge—you know what that is?” He mimicked lying on his back, wiggling his body from side to side, and she nodded. She could imagine him hurtling along the ice, his big hands gripping the sled.
A slight smile lifted the right corner of his mouth. “Plus, I am handsome.”
“That’s what you think,” she said, but she couldn’t help it: she was smiling, too.
Slowly, Sergey took a seat at the little table where they had their meals. She lowered herself down into the opposite chair, legs shaking. “All right,” she said, “I believe you. The camera—er, visio-telespeaker—is turned off. If this is a long con, it’s a good one.”
His face was serious. “Do you understand that they are paying us the same, Katherine? They do not place value on what I’m doing any higher than on you. In a sense, I am only here for the story, too.”
She pulled her jaw back, surprised. Could it be true? “How do you know we’re making the same salary?”
“Because I am making twelve thousand rubles per month, and so are you.”
She was nearly speechless. “I am.”
Another grin curved the side of his lips. She tried not to follow suit. “Does it make you feel any better, about the housework? The fact that we are on equal terms? It is the beauty of the Soviet Union, eh?” He gestured around with his long, muscular arms. “And up here, there is a nice view, yes?”
She brought her seat closer to his, gave him another small shove on the chest. “Convince me you’re telling the truth about all of this.” She pushed him a little farther. “How do I know I can trust you?”
He seemed nervous with her pushing him. “You can.”
“I can trust you, a deserter? Why should I believe that?”
“Because I deserted for a good reason.” He caught her palms in his hands. “I am not a killer.”
“I know that,” she replied, staring into his eyes. They studied each other for a moment. His eyes, hooded and serious, were like two matches struck aflame. “Neither am I,” she added, her voice husky now with…She hesitated to think of it as desire, but it was something, something.
“I know that,” said Sergey, his words coming out in nearly a whisper.
The table was small, and so he had only to reach those long arms around and scoop her into his lap, and now they were in the same chair. She had never been this close to him before, close enough to see the pores on his face, to watch his fiery brown eyes dart back and forth across hers. He smelled wonderful, of warm skin and sweet breath, like the dried cherries they’d just eaten, and his hair felt silky between her fingers. At first he flinched, reminding her how long it had been since either of them had touched someone, but then he exhaled slowly and let his warm hands travel the length of her back.
She realized how long she’d been staring at the blank, empty landscape, how it had made her feel dead and bleached inside. Perhaps she’d felt that way on Earth, too.
They began kissing, his soft lips moving against hers, his hands caressing her back. His fingers crept around to the front of her tunic, to unhook the three metallic buttons holding her bodice together: one, two, three. He bent down and kissed the skin between her breasts.
No one had ever mentioned prophylactics up here in their habitat, when they were showing her the hairbrushes and soap flakes and toothpaste, but she pushed that from her mind as a moan escaped her lips. She wrapped her arms around his warm neck.
She knew she shouldn’t be doing this, but she had to, she had to, she had to.