Flying in the Face of God

Flying in the Face of God

Nina Allan (Read the full story in The Best Year’s Science Fiction Anthology 2011, edited by Gardner Dozois)

Civilian flights to the States had become almost prohibitively expensive, but Clement Anderson had supported Anita’s visa application, which had enabled her to claim back some of the cost in the form of a research grant.

A junior officer had met her in the airport and escorted her to a motel a short bus ride from the base. Then there were the inevitable protocols, two days of debriefing and form-filling. She had asked if she could film these processes but her request had been politely denied.

The flight crew of the Aurora 6 were now being kept in more or less permanent isolation. Each member was allowed one last visit prior to launch day, a final thirty minutes with a friend or family member from outside. Anita had been able to speak to Rachel several times on the telephone but she had always assumed the visit would go to Serge. The invitation came out of the blue.

Two women in discussion. Anita touched Rachel’s hand, thinking how from the other side of the two-way mirror they must look like two actors in some prison drama (Nina Allan). Illustration: © Megan Jorgensen

Finally she was taken to a room that was bare of everything except a table and two chairs and in the corner a low sofa covered in a brown leatherette. There was a pane of smoked glass set into one wall that she guessed was a two-way-mirror. At the end of some ten minutes’ waiting the door opened and Rachel appeared. She was dressed in grey overalls, silk or some synthetic substitute. What remained of her hair was mostly hidden under a close-fitting cap that remained Anita of the caps worn by surgeons in the operation theatre. The few strands of hair that were showing looked dry and brittle, almost like tufts of grass.

Her lips were the colour of beetroot. They looked stuck to her face more than part of it, fissured and clotted as scabs.

She closed the door behind her and stepped into the room. Her wrists, poking out from the loose sleeves of the overall, were skeletal, her fingernails thickened and black. Her eyes were hard and glazed, barely human. It was only in the delicate line of her jaw, the fine, high arch of her brow, that any traces of her beauty now remained.

Anita got up from the table and went towards her. She felt a dull ache beneath her breastbone, as if she were trying to hold her breath underwater.