Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

‘Still not working?’ Juno asked as she walked past, glancing at the flickering static. Fae turned to Juno, her eyes red-rimmed and narrow. She let out a growl of frustration that made everyone jump, her voice a soprano knife-edge over the low buzzing of machines. She stormed from the room, the hatch hissing shut behind her.

‘Wow.’ Juno let out a whistle of surprise.

‘Maybe she can’t get through to Ground?’ said Eliot.

‘Or Moritz,’ Sheppard mumbled.

‘Who?’ Juno asked.

‘Her husband or boyfriend or something,’ Poppy said. ‘He works for the European Space Agency.’

Juno had never even asked about Fae Golinsky’s family.

‘You’re still talking!’ Igor grunted, and Juno left the room.

It was past time for her tutorial with Fae and she was dreading it. Increasingly, she felt, it had been her tedious job to navigate the hostile and ever-changing landscapes of everyone’s moods. When they were alone together during lessons, Fae seemed to simmer constantly with a quiet rage. Whenever she spoke it was through gritted teeth. She left dinner early to be alone or to tune and retune the communication channels on deck, trying to reach home. Poppy wasn’t much better. The previous week she had caught up on her chores but whenever Juno entered the room she would fall silent and narrow her eyes. There was no companionship to be found with the boys, who had fallen out since the airlock incident. Harry and Jesse rarely came within a metre of each other. And Astrid only wanted to discuss New Creationist theories.

As Juno headed towards the infirmary, she noticed Jesse walking towards her. She still couldn’t look at him without her pulse thumping in her ears; without thinking of the afternoon in the greenhouse when he’d tried to kiss her. ‘Hey,’ he said, averting his gaze. The corridor was narrow and he had to stop and stand aside to let her pass. Juno nodded and dived into the infirmary, where Fae sat with her head in her hands. Juno had entered so quickly that it took a second for her to take in the scene; Fae hunched over her desk with the heels of her palms pressed into the hollows of her eyes. Music filled the room, Tchaikovsky pealing from the little speaker in the corner. Some nights, Juno walked past the infirmary and heard The Sleeping Beauty seeping under the door, and she imagined that when the crew were asleep, Fae emerged like a night-blooming flower, tearing off her lab coat to cabriole across the floor. But when Astrid had asked Fae over dinner if she ever kept up with her ballet and if she could teach them a few steps, Fae had said, ‘I never dance now’ with such miserable finality that all Juno’s whimsical imaginings evaporated.

She slammed the door shut behind her and said, ‘Doctor? I mean, Fae…’ Fae’s head flew up, she lunged towards the radio and jabbed the off button so the music cut out.

Wiping her eyes, she turned to Juno and asked, ‘What now?’

‘Um…’ Juno straightened her back and glanced again at her watch. ‘It’s time for our lesson?’ She noticed that none of their books had been set out, and the board had not been wiped clean after yesterday’s lesson on the endocrine system. Juno chewed her lip and looked around awkwardly. ‘Should I come back at a better time?’ And then she added – for courtesy’s sake, ‘Are you okay?’

‘Um…’ Fae’s voice was tight, ‘no.’

‘What is it?’ Juno asked. She was not sure which was better; the gift of comfort or the gift of privacy.

‘Do you care?’ Fae asked.

‘Of course…’ Juno said. ‘Of course I do.’

Fae exhaled heavily and then reached up to pull the pins out of her hair. In one swift movement, her hair spilled down her back like a stream of molten rock. She was thin as a prepubescent girl, with light little bones, but when she let her hair down the skin around her forehead sank, revealing the lines etched there. Under the V-neck of her jumper her grey skin puckered like crepe paper over the rungs of her sternum.

‘Who’s Moritz?’ Juno asked on an impulse. Fae turned to her, eyes narrowed as if she suspected a trick.

‘You don’t know?’ she said with a frown, then, more to herself, ‘Of course you don’t know.’ She rubbed her liver-spotted hands and said, ‘Moritz is my fiancé.’

Juno’s eyes were drawn to the ring on the doctor’s third finger. Art deco, with a pale topaz set in silver filigree. It glinted in the light, the clinical blue of the doctor’s eyes. Had she always worn it? Juno wondered how she had never noticed such an extravagant piece of jewellry.

‘Y-you’re engaged?’ Juno stammered. She could feel the colour rising in her cheeks. Why had she never asked?

‘Yes,’ Fae said. ‘It happened a week before the launch. Ten days, actually.’

‘Oh,’ said Juno, with dawning realization. ‘When Ara died you had to take Maggie’s place.’ Juno, too, had said goodbye to a boy she thought she might spend her life with, but Fae only had the space of an evening to say her goodbyes, to make her arrangements. Juno wondered if the doctor awoke every morning with regret for the life she chose.