An attendant who had been hovering in the background appeared with a rolling tray covered with an assortment of fruit drinks and mineral waters. She picked one and they made very small talk while she was being served. Then the tray disappeared and she knew she had to go for it.
“So, Julia, you’re looking well. I can tell it’s not your health that’s bothering you. But something is.” It was a question without being one.
“I wanted to talk to you about the crew selection.”
“Something wrong?” He smiled, but his eyes were watchful. “I think I made a very fine selection.”
“No, not wrong. Well, for me, yes. Raoul and Katherine are top-notch, and Marc is a fine pilot and geologist to boot. I guess I’m the problem.”
“Don’t tell me now you don’t want to go.”
“Oh, no, I do, all of my life I have, only…well, there’s something you didn’t know when you chose.”
“Oh?” A little edge to the voice.
“Not that you could’ve known,” she said hastily. “We were very careful, perhaps too careful.” She smiled ruefully. “But NASA always discouraged socializing among the astronauts. Part of the Mr. Clean persona they favor. And it tends to weigh against you when mission crews are chosen.”
“I see. But it happened anyway.”
“Well, of course.” A half shrug. “So you see, the problem is that Raoul and Katherine aren’t the only couple.”
“And Marc isn’t your paramour?”
The old-fashioned term startled her. “No, or else there’d be no problem. And he’s a fine choice…”
“But you’d prefer someone else?”
“Well, I can’t ask you to yank him for that reason, so I came here to say that I’ve decided to pull out.”
In rapid order Axelrod looked surprised, vexed, puzzled, contemplative, intrigued, then vexed again. How had so transparent a man risen so high in business? Unless there lay his talent—to let his true self out to play, letting others see just who he was, and so solidifying their trust in him. If so, it struck her as an original method. Not calculated, but all the more effective for that.
Axelrod leaned back in his leather recliner and clasped both hands behind his neck, feet up on an ottoman, face now unreadable.
“Now you tell me.”
“I couldn’t go on without—”
“Rather than when it could actually have influenced my decision.”
“I didn’t know who you would pick. Or how I would feel, for that matter.”
“But you do want to go.”
“Oh, yes, but not alone. Not for two and a half years.”
“And I’m supposed to send you to Mars? What if you get there and just don’t feel like doing your job?”
“I wouldn’t do that, I’ve trained—”
He laughed. “You’ll have to do better than that when you face the press.”
“Oh.”
“Either tell ’em everything, or nothing. Me, I go the everything route.”
“I noticed.”
“More honest, seems to me.”
“I’m trying to be honest. I just don’t think I could stand being separated from Viktor that long, and leaving him behind.”
“So it’s Viktor you love. The Russian.”
“Yes.” Should she let “love” pass? She hadn’t truly owned up to that yet, even to Viktor.
“I understand.” He gazed out the enormous broad window that was the entire wall of his office. “NASA liked him, top rated as a pilot, no problem there. How is he on TV?”
The question surprised her. She thought Viktor was very attractive, but not in the typical blond American mode of Marc. She smiled, allowed herself to say, “Well, I think he looks great, but I’m pretty biased…”
“Got presence?”
“Uh, I think so—”
“Do you think you can handle the right angle on this?”
She felt like a slow student summoned before the principal, not following remotely what was happening. She bought a moment by taking a sip of her drink. Axelrod gave her no help whatever, just leaned back in his chair and looked at the ceiling.
So far nothing in this conversation had gone the way she had anticipated. His silence was unnerving. Suddenly it occurred to her that when she left the mission, inevitably word would get out about why, and that would force her to reveal all of it to her parents. Her ex-astronaut mother would be all right, but her father did not like Viktor, the one time they met. So complication would not leave her life anytime soon…
