Do You Dream of Terra-Two?

Jesse started well, making it easily through the first and second levels, then, with less ease, to the fifth. By the time he reached level six his ship had sustained too much damage to hold up against the high temperatures, and when he tried to land in the thick Venusian atmosphere, sulphuric acid clouds flayed the already battered hull. He never made it down to the troposphere, and every member of his crew died.

After a while, the sound of feet and the low rumble of voices on the floors above faded. He checked the numbers on his watch and guessed that most of the crew would be asleep. He headed back to the boys’ cabin but found that Harry was still awake, lamplit at the desk, watching something on his laptop. It was a boat race. Jesse was unsurprised to see the interlocking Olympic rings in the corner of the screen. Jesse guessed it was the coxless fours, as there were four men in lime-yellow boats, oars cutting the water in unison as they lanced down the wide lake.

The voice of the commentator was barely audible over the crackly cheering of the crowd coming through the laptop speaker… ‘Can the British team retain this rhythm and concentration? Their training up in the Alps, is it going to pay off for them? They’ve had so much disruption this year, when they were beaten in Munich by the Australians… and here come the Australians now…’

Harry’s eyes were unblinking and filled with light. He had been watching the television recordings every night since the games began, on longer and longer delays.

‘They’re upping it now…’

He was actually holding his breath.

Jesse already knew that the UK had won. His father had sent him the results a week ago, but Harry had wanted to watch all the games and tally them up himself.

Jesse had always enjoyed watching the Olympics at home, everything from fencing to synchronized swimming. But he’d never understood rowing the way that Harry did. He’d been told that when you got it right it felt like flying. It never did for Jesse, who had been drafted into the rowing class at Dalton for all of one term. Every Wednesday afternoon he’d have to take the train down to the boathouse with the laughing boys who never spoke to him. It wasn’t for him, hoisting the jauntily named boats out onto the brown water. The miserable weather. The cold. When he’d complained about the sub-zero temperatures, the others had whispered that of course ‘black men don’t row’ – a sentiment that had made him all the more determined to stick it out for the term. He stayed behind in the tank just to practise again and again on the stagnant water, in the rotting boat that was nailed to the floor. It wasn’t until he’d burned calluses into the palms of his hand – and scraped the sculls over his knuckles so often that he’d ripped the delicate skin clean off – that he got the rhythm right. And, even then, he never flew. One day it was so cold that he lost sensation in his fingers for hours, and he realized that he hated every boy in his boat. He’d been in too much pain to help haul it back out of the water and the coach had rolled his eyes. It had rained, foul-smelling Thames water had flooded over the gunwales and Jesse discovered a hole in his boot. He never came back after that. He switched to running, the only one in his class, around and around their school’s grassy track. Somehow that had still been less lonely.

‘…towards the finishing line. It looks as though they’re gonna do it! It is gold for Great Britain!’ Harry let out a breath he’d been holding in… Silver, Australia, and bronze United States of America….

It was a sunlit day on the screen and a blond rower in the Team GB boat was blowing kisses at the crowd.

‘This is a truly magnificent moment…’

Jesse wondered if Harry was imagining how it felt. He had always wondered why Harry had chosen space over some sunlit river in early summer, slicing through the water on a boat while his round-bellied relatives raised glasses of Dom Pérignon. Perhaps Harry wanted something different from his older brothers, twins who had won silver for rowing in the Beijing Olympics and were competing again that year in London. Perhaps Harry had lurked in their shadow his entire life, in silent wait for the day the entire world would cheer for him as he ascended the sky on a jet of flames.

Chapter 28 JUNO

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