It was unusually quiet in the office, with the customary Brussels drizzle tapering down outside, and this general air of tranquillity was broken only when the pulse in her ear sounded, the one whose activation almost inevitably made her emit a small wince of pain. At least she didn’t have to make a hasty exit from a conversation with a colleague – calls were expected to be answered immediately – and frankly an abrupt dash out of an interlocution wouldn’t have fitted with the persona, unruffled and impartial, she had generally cultivated. She just rose, walked quietly to the bathroom, and took the call in peace.
She decided to do it vocally; she could have gone to the Blackspace but chose instead looking at her face in the mirror, the device reading her speech intentions through her eyes. She looked at her stern black bob and grey eyes. She had of course chosen the look but it was a different task to try and actually pull it off.
‘Cera,’ came the voice just behind her temple, ‘I’ve caught you at the right moment I see.’
She recognized it at once.
‘Roger!’ He’d handled her missions before. ‘Are you in charge of me now?’
‘To the extent that I’m in charge of anything in this world, yes. I’ve nothing fixed to communicate – this call is a formality, but one I thought I’d do personally for old times sake. Just to say that your request for reinstallation has been received and is being processed.’
‘Do you have any idea when?’
‘I’m not sure if you know what time it is here, but we’re coming up to the docking season. It means we’re getting much more requests to come back than usual, and appropriately fewer requests to leave.’
‘So that’s “No time soon”.’
‘You’ll know within weeks. Until then, keep doing what you’re doing.’
‘What exactly am I doing?’
‘What is it with you, Cera? You’re normally happy to do three or four years. On Hydra, you were practically begging us to be allowed to stay.’
‘It’s true that it’s been more difficult to settle here than in other places.’
‘Just enjoy all that free oxygen,’ came Roger’s voice from another charmless office light years away.
It was true that she had enjoyed easier postings than this.
There had of course been much more dangerous ones, a porthole unexpectedly depressurizing over Proxima b, a shard of broken glass thrust into her leg in a tradeport bar. One time pirates boarded their vessel but were too stoned to do much. Yet none of those missions and moments had had the disconcerting impact of falling in love.
Frankly, this city was miserable; it was also grey, there were building works everywhere alongside no sense of what was being built, and the natives were locked in an interminable dispute about languages her speech processing units recorded as to all intents and purposes identical. Taking advantage of local population density, she went out every night to bars and cocktail events and spoke to the most boring people she had ever met on any world. They went on and on about trade and, almost as dully, their group sex experiences. And then back to trade.
At the parties she presented her back story; a former intern at the Commission, now on a permanent contract at Europatat, the European Potato Trade Association. The specifics of her mission were almost sober enough that you could say them without suspicion; she was to obtain information about New Genomic Techniques and send it back to so that Kerebus could obtain competitive advantages in tuber production.
That’s correct; Cera was on an official espionage mission to steal seed potatoes.
‘Not just potatoes,’ Roger said from behind her temple one night. ‘Genetically modified potatoes. Ones which might give us a competitive advantage over rival bases.’
‘I like potatoes,’ she said, lying on her bed. She was smoking a cigarette, a habit she’d slid into, like so many in Brussels, out of boredom. Had she smoked with Udo? Her emotions seem to distort time. ‘But to dedicate so much of my life to them... I envisaged things little differently at my age.’
‘How did you envisage things at your age?’ Roger asked.
‘I’m lying,’ Cera said. ‘I’ve never envisaged my life at all. I just muddled through.’
‘At least you get to see the universe a bit,’ he said. ‘We’re having power generator issues here.’
‘But you can see “Upsilon’s pyroscape broiling eternally below”?’
‘I can confirm that I can see that.’
‘Then you’re home,’ Cera said.
That wasn’t the reason things had gone wrong though, potatoes, I mean. It was about Udo, and it was a matter of the heart.
It had been in one of the long European Commission social meetings, these ordeals of small talk and incanted American buzzwords, this time enlivened only by a lunch break for duck on dry crispbread. The food was good in this city. There’d been hours of talk in an English only a mother could love and then, in the absence of questions relating to the content of the speech, of which the only valid one could have been ‘What was the content of the speech’, there’d been the announcement of a fifteen-minute break for afternoon coffee.
Moving out into the Europatat lobby, she’d seen him, standing alone at a high table, a tall man middle-aged in a black suit with intensely blue eyes, stood alone with an espresso cup looking tiny in his hands.
‘I’m wondering,’ he said as she approached the table, not even physically committed to a conversation yet, ‘why the coffee here is so extraordinarily bad. Do they make it from the potatoes?’
‘I don’t have any proof that they don’t,’ she said.
‘Oh, you’re intern?’
‘Do you mean am I an intern?’
‘I mean internal. From the house.’
‘I work here, yes. In the public relations side of things.’
‘Well, maybe you can obtain the secret formula. Coffee made from cigarettes is surely the next frontier.’
‘From cigarettes?’
‘I mean from potatoes. I’m tired. Well, I’m bored. Do you smoke?’
‘I can,’ she said.
‘I still smoke cigarettes,’ he said. ‘I remain very Gen X in my habits.’
About 50 then, though all the people looked younger than back on Kerebus. There the 30-year olds looked like 60-year olds here, with the difference that Kereban 30-year olds didn’t make 60. And the man in front of her, with his full hair and clear skin, looked late thirties at most.
‘Are you inviting me for a smoke?’
‘Well, I can share my precious life shorteners with you if you want,’ he said. ‘It might mean there’s less meeting for us both to get through. We might die.’
Cera and Udo went and stood outside on the pavement. The air was grey – it was the weather of a depressive, which, even after sunny intervals, slid back into its default slate hue.
‘Bernard from the Commission is talking a lot. One of those men who prefer to impress other men than women. I’ll never understand that.’
‘You like women?’
‘I do like women.’
‘Easy to please then. Our office is an endless parade of 25-year olds.’
‘Oh, not those ones. I like proper women. Experienced women with shredded dreams. Like – you can tell with you that you’ve already lived outside of Brussels.’
Well, he wasn’t wrong. If ten hardscrabble years dealing with contraband trade, unreliable arms suppliers and satellite base establishment didn’t count as ‘Outside Brussels’, what did?
‘Yeah, I mean, Brussels is just one stop on the road for me.’
‘Where are you from?’
‘Canada. And you?’
‘Frankfurt, in Germany. My name is Udo, by the way.’
‘Cerise.’
His English was very good, in that way Germans cultivate it to the point of determined elegance, choose it as their tool to communicate with the world; their own language they hoarded for themselves. It was the way that Udo as non-native speaker savoured a word like accustom, spoke the word, as it were, as if to a lover not a relative.
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Yes. I’ve been here seventeen years.’
‘So you like it.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far.’
‘Why seventeen years then?’
‘It grows on you.’
‘You mean the women, I presume.’
‘I’m married, actually.’
He wore no ring.
‘But my wife is in Frankfurt.’
‘What does she do?’
‘My wife is not very well,’ said Udo quietly. ‘She has not been well for a very long time.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. Do you have children?’
‘My wife is not very well,’ Udo repeated. ‘What about you?’
‘I’m alone. I travel a lot with work.’
This was the reason placings only lasted two or years or so; it minimized the chance of close relationships being developed with locals. Of course, that did happen, and if relationships were detected early a portal would be swiftly opened; if resistance was made an agent was dispatched to a full memory wipe. Some could not bear this, could not bear to lose the memory of the love they had found for another. In those cases, when lovers often disappeared underground, more drastic means were said to be taken.
Meanwhile relationships with fellow Kerebans were permitted but tended to be brief and transactional.
‘Listen,’ said Udo as they were about to go back inside, ‘You want to go out for a drink sometime?’
‘What – you and me?’
‘Yes. I mean, when people go out for a drink, there’s normally two of them there. Otherwise it’s more of a solo affair. So?’
‘So what?’
‘Would you like to.’
‘Well, forgive my surprise. It’s just I don’t normally really get asked out on dates.’
‘You don’t get asked out on dates! Are you not into men?’
She thought.
‘To be honest, I can’t remember.’
There had been others, but usually they had stolen moments, an under the sheets rummage on a docking ship. Gender was not a decisive factor in the equation. As for duration, beyond a certain range long-distance relationships seemed to cease to be conceivable; they just drifted into obliviousness.
‘Well, you’re invited out for a drink. How’s Thursday?’
‘What?’
‘You don’t drink.’
‘No, I mean – we just go out – and drink?’
‘Yes, and we talk a bit.’
‘About what?’
Udo smiled. ‘I mean we can choose. That’s the beauty of it.’
She stood there. ‘OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll come.’
‘On Thursday?’
‘Is that when we do it?’
‘Let me give you some days to get used to the concept,’ Udo said. ‘Here, give me your GSM.’
Weirdly, for a woman who filled her days with aliases and alter egos, she felt flummoxed at playing the part of ‘woman on a date’. What did such a woman look like?
She patched through to her old dorm mate, Diana.
‘Diana.’
‘Cera! Upsilon below, what a surprise. Aren’t you on earth?’
‘I am yes. Tho nowhere important. How’s the base?’
‘Oh it’s so busy. I’d go so far as to say that it’s the busiest time of the year. You know, everyone’s ready to party.’
‘I can imagine. Very different here – I have a 90 minute lunch break.’
‘Cera -’
‘Yes?’
‘Is there, you know, a reason for you calling me?’
‘Uh, right. Reason. Listen, this is a bit weird but… I’m going to send you images of two different blouses – you know, loose shirts, they wear them here, sort of like how we wear smocks – and you have to tell me which one would look better on me.’
‘But I don’t know what your current face looks like.’
‘I’ll send you a picture of that too,’ said Cera. ‘I took it in the bathroom at work.’
She went, in the end on Diana’s advice, for a long red chemise over black jeans. It looked alright to her, but what did they know about what was in fashion here? Last time she and Diana had been in identical grey scrubs, drinking a couple of beers as the docking craft pulled out of Andromeda. They hadn’t had much use for haute-couture on that day and had instead just watched the afterburners burn, glass bottles in their greased hands.
Udo was there before she arrived. He was dressed in a green sports jacket, with a red carnation tucked into his lapel. He looked like a sportsman; there was some complex communication going on his sartorial choices, but Cerise couldn’t be bothered to figure it out. It was something to do with leaning into the style of a place he did not hail from. He did look nice, tho.
He stood as she entered the bar.
‘Cerise,’ he said, gesturing to a glass in front of him. ‘You said in your text that you wanted beer, so I took the liberty of ordering you one that I like.’
‘What is it?’
‘Well, try it. I think it’s very good, but then I like this place. I like these old brown bars.’
Having seated herself, she said, ‘It feels like you’re very rooted in the whole Brussels thing.’
‘Yes, I think so. Though it’s perhaps more to a lack of other options. You know, to live abroad is always to get stuck somehow.’
‘Not if you keep leaving.’
‘Is that what you’ve been doing?’
‘I have moved around a lot,’ she said. ‘You’re right – that’s very good.’
‘I’m glad. It’s from Brasserie Cantillon, a local place. Now, why Brussels?’
‘I was sent here by an agency,’ she said.
It was closer than she normally got to telling the truth – that Central sent them where it wanted them – but then this whole thing was also closer than she normally allowed herself to get to people. Sex was allowed, encouraged even, as a way to extricate secrets and put locals in a position to be bribed. Feelings, however, were to be discouraged, and certainly not indulged though, as Roger had reminded her in her training, emotions were not an exact science.
And yet, there was some evident and almost instant connection with Udo, formed on the basis of their mutual and unmistakeable loneliness. Oh, it was buried beneath accent and charm and his ease, but it was unmistakeable – the lack of affection for his native Germany, the various relationships he’d had fizzle out here in Brussels, and of course his coy utterances about his wife, never more than four or five words in length, with each new phrase – ‘Squandered’, the latest word to appear today – appearing like the careful expansion of the world he presented. She was struck by the sudden appearance of an atypical internal voice, which as Udo talked itself spoke and said, I am connecting with this man. And on of all the missions, the desperate camaraderie in desert storms, the long voyages to derelict mining stations, it had happened of all places here, the capital of Belgium, in 2023.
Udo would say that one thing was as important as another for him. A rainstorm or the life of a fly. The other day, he said, he had found a stuffed Baby Shark lying on the street, just near to the European Commission at the Berlaymont. He had considered picking it up – ‘even giving it to you, Cerise’ – before realizing that perhaps a child had lost it and would need the option of retrieving it from the same location later. She wanted to tell him that there were so many strange things across the universe, more than he could even dream of, and that he was right, they were all of equal importance, and no action could ever form the centre, that everywhere felt like it was missing out. She wanted to tell him that just because she didn’t speak of the same things as he did didn’t mean she didn’t feel them too.
It was abundantly clear that her colleagues were people who’d always had their own bedrooms; Cera for her part had grown up in a dorm.
‘Cerise, it’s Poffer’s birthday,’ said Francesca. This was a requirement, to go and sing happy birthday to Poffer in the lobbying area and make laborious chit-chat.
Francesca sliced thin slices of cake for everyone, while Poffer ate his cake and occasionally said how good the cake was in Italian-accented English. In response, the others named other things which they liked to eat.
Carla was sitting next to her.
‘Do you have plans for the weekend, Cerise?’
‘Oh, I’m going to go and see Peter.’
She had invented a boyfriend in Aachen, over the border. Apparently things were going well.
‘That’s so cute. You do get back a lot. Is he planning to come here?’
‘I mean, at some point.’
Before which they would unfortunately have to split up.
‘Well, you should get him to come here for a Sunday. We’re having a party for Anke’s new puppy on the 17th, if you can make it.’
‘I’ll have a look but to be honest – Peter really doesn’t like dogs.’
‘Well, make him stay at home. Or we’ll put him out in the kitchen and the dog outside. We’d like to get to know you better, Cerise.’
‘Thanks. And you really don’t.’
In truth she saw Udo that weekend, and the weekend after, and every week for two months, and all the time the feelings continued to grow. I mean, there had been a spark, but now there was a fire, and now the fire began to spread. The fire began to burn all the time. It was the oddest thing; she spoke to someone else and thought only of him.
It puzzled her for various reasons. She had been told all her life of the chasm between Kerebans and earthlings, that the latter were unaware of the former’s existence being a key one for starters. That there were quite literally light years between them. And yet, what she had with Udo seemed undeniably real.
She was shocked when she first thought about that particular phrase, that word, so unknown. Not a word that came up often on space carriers and distant ports; people preferred to think in terms of attachments, with the same life expectancy as not particularly hardy pets. As the Kereban proverb ran, you can’t put a budgie in an airlock.
Walking to work she often imagined Upsilon, pictured its burning sphere rolling behind the grey institutional buildings.
One night Udo was cooking sausage. They were both big fans of sausage; for her, it brought back fond memories of childhood meals, and he was German.
As Udo cooked, shaking a pan across which a plain of cabbage stretched, she noted a song playing.
‘What’s this music?’
‘It’s good, right?’
She listened to it some more. There were lyrics, and they were in French.
‘It’s The Stranglers. Old punks, like me. I mean they’re even older. I was grunge.’
The music was plodding along; it didn’t accelerate, it stayed in a similar place for six minutes, but there was something compelling about it. ‘It’s good, right?’
They all laughed about earthling music on their space stations, how tinny and shrill it sounded. How it failed to use the possibilities of space. But this, she had to admit, as she listened to the song plod through the air in Udo’s kitchenette, well, she had to admit this had something about it.
‘This song,’ said Udo, seeing the chance for a disquisition of sorts, ‘is about a man called Issei Sagawa. He was a cannibal, and became so obsessed with his girlfriend – she was Dutch, the girlfriend – that he ate her. This cannibal didn’t even go to jail and sustained a writing career.’
‘I liked the song considerably more before I knew that,’ she said. ‘That’s absolutely horrible.’
‘I have no intention of eating you,’ said Udo and smiled. ‘I mean, not in a nasty way.’
‘What if I ask?’
‘Ask what?’
He smiled again. He seemed on the verge of saying something else. Something about the situation between them. To say what it really felt like inside. For her part, she had the urge to tell him things beyond his comprehension. She was sure that he’d deal with them better than most people round here.
It was only on her own, later, when it became clear to her how deep she’d got into it all. She had gone, gravely, for a walk; perhaps this whole imbroglio was forcing her to do more, to see more of Brussels, a city she was acutely aware would not be hosting her retirement.
She was looking across the park thinking about trees and that trees were a positive. Engineering was good, aeronautics was good but trees, they definitely brought something different with them. And as that particular reverie expired a voice in her head said, clear as crystal, You’re in love with Udo.
How can I be in love with Udo?
You think about him all the time, and he lights you up when he’s with you.
That wouldn’t be a good idea. I am from a place he couldn’t possibly grasp.
You’re a human; he’s a human. While there are humans involved there will always be the possibility of connection.
She thought about it a moment.
Should I tell him?
Tell him that you’ve fallen for him? I’d be very surprised if you were able to keep it to yourself.
But he can’t know me. He can only see parts of the picture.
Can’t he? What have you told him that’s not in some sense true? You’ve told him that you come from a long way away, that you work in scientific research and that you’ve got a bad record with men. That your parents are dead, and that you don’t get home very often.
Am I going mad?
No, you’re having a very common human experience.
She thought some more.
But he’s married. That’s a big thing for earthlings.
You wouldn’t be his first lover.
What about his poor wife?
She’s an invalid. But tell him, see what he thinks.
Tell him what?
Tell him what’s in your heart.
That I come from a space station above a planet in a distant constellation, and that I’ve been sent to obtain agricultural secrets for my people? Maybe I should even invite him to come back to Kerebus.
He’d love it.
Yes, he would. Once he got used to the lifestyle, he genuinely would.
So?
So I’d be wiped in an instant. Probably all my memories. Then I’d never be assigned again, or they’d put me out an airlock.
I’m not saying it wouldn’t have consequences.
Then why do I think about it all the time?
Because you want it, I guess.
But what on earth is the point of wanting something which you can’t have?
Confused, she put in a reinstallation request. In preparation, she intensified her work and, via all-nighters, and even outright theft of documents, soon had more than enough information to satisfy Central’s performance rubrics. Roger was baffled at her sudden speed.
On the day she was sending the final data it was Francesca’s birthday; Cera watched the upload bar approach 100%. After it turned green, she wandered back into the lobby. All the colleagues were there eating cake; Cera reached into her handbag and, taking out a small Kereban bangle, gave it to Francesca for her birthday. Francesca smiled - ‘Cerise, that’s so cute!’ - and pushed it right the way up her arm. It sparkled a little with minerals whose provenance would have kept Francesca in office gossip for years.
She resigned from her position and split up with the fictional Peter, who took it well. Her repatriation had come through.
In the Blackspace she talked it through with Roger. He sat on a rock, looking across at her, the dark water undulating beneath their feet.
‘You sure you don’t want to make use of your leave? You’ve accrued twelve whole days.’
‘No, I’m fine. Nine months of Brussels is enough for one lifetime, to be honest.’
‘Is this really the Cera I know? Normally we’re begging you to return, even from some of the galaxy’s much less salubrious spots.’
‘I admit Belgium has defeated me,’ she said, once again with no word of a lie.
‘I’m surprised,’ said Udo. ‘I thought you were warming to the place.’
‘I’m afraid my agency called me back.’
They were sat in a restaurant, drinking good wine. They’d got into the habit of doing that – of enjoying life together.
‘I think,’ he said very slowly, ‘that I will miss you.’
‘At least we met in the first place.’
‘Yes – that we met can be recorded in history.’
‘In the great record of things.’
‘Steady on. We’re not exactly Anthony and Cleopatra.’
Udo looked infinitely sad and quiet as he chewed a piece of steak.
‘And your wife – will she be OK?’
‘She’s actually been doing a little better,’ said Udo. ‘She might even come for a week.’
She said suddenly, ‘Why don’t you leave her?’
Udo looked up. ‘And what would she do then? She has no-one else.’
She looked at him and thought, And nor do I. And then she thought, He’s right though. All the worlds, all the galaxies, all the interstellar bases and satellite towns and here – in the capital of the country of Belgium, in the place where humanity came from, sat a non-useless man.
He wasn’t about to cry. She liked that about him. He communicated in this that his not speaking was not the absence of emotion, but a sense of the limitations of language to encompass what he felt. Even his beloved English. And what should she say to him – that the feelings that they had never spoken about, but which they both so evidently felt, were reciprocated in full?
Say nothing then, but just reach out her fingers to stroke his hair, and run them through his hair, with the effect that Udo’s head came slightly forward and followed the curve of her hand, his head moving forward like water running down a wall.
Everything was packed up, not that there was much to be packed; they never took all that much with them on these missions. Even the few trinkets they did accumulate – in this particular case a snow globe of the Atomium – had to be given clearance in advance. She had kept a few of her lanyards. In the end it was really just one suitcase, some clothes comfortable to slouch about in on any world, and a bag filled with all kinds of chocolate.
She wouldn’t be taking her work computer, which they hadn’t come to pick up yet; she hoped they did before she left. From its speakers, a song was playing, one which had grown to be important to her.
Un autre endroit, une autre vie
Eh oui, c'est une autre histoire
She was surprised to find herself behaving in new ways of late. In this case, when the song would reach its end – it was quite a long song, six minutes and four seconds in fact – she found she would just get up and click it back to the beginning and listen to it again straightaway. There was something odd about that, given all the other songs out there and the limits on human lifespans.
When Central came to pick her up – and she hoped it was soon, as she needed aeons of distance to escape the pain which was churning inside her now – she would go to the archives and see if she could dig out a recording of it, The Stranglers, ‘La Folie’. She would add it into the database under their real names, Cera Petter and Udo Schmal. She was sure that her man would get a kick out of the song being played on the other side of the universe. If only he knew. She could imagine listening to it when she had arrived back home, the static tune drifting over her quarters as the stars shone and Upsilon circled past the porthole once again.