Unforgettable journey to other planets

Part 1 – Chapter 1

David stood in the elevator booth and looked at the changing numbers – “7, 6, 5”. He had just given the keys to the owner of the apartment, and he was very anxious. He wanted to feel like all the doors were now open in front of him, but even the elevator doors wouldn’t let him out. When he received the money for the bed he had sold this morning, he felt only dread. The only thought running through his head was “No, no, don’t do that. What am I going to do now?” Of course, he had a plan. He agreed with his father that he would stay with him for the time and decide what he would do next. The elevator doors opened.

David sold everything he had. What was left was a backpack and the things that fit into it: a cell phone and charger, documents, and credit cards. Of clothes and shoes: his favorite Crocs, two shorts, jeans, three T-shirts and one sweater. Socks? They were holey, so he threw them away. He threw out a lot of other things, too. Some he was tired of, others seemed like reminders of someone else’s life. It’s both easy and scary when all your luggage fits in a bag behind your back and in your jeans pockets. He took the train to Stretford, where his father lived and where he had lived his childhood and youth. But still he felt this unquenchable anxiety.

For all the things he had accumulated over the previous years, he had made a lot of money. The TV and the X-box were not the most expensive items. It was the junk that brought him the most money. For example, the night stand he’d carried around for the past six years in all his rented apartments brought in 80 pounds. A collection of Olympic badges, which were covered in a layer of dust, brought in more than a hundred. The man who bought them said it was a very good investment.

David was on his way to his father’s house and had a premonition that he would have to answer the question he had been asking himself, “What’s next?”

*

“What’s next?” child interrogated the teacher while standing at the blackboard.

The sun shone softly through the windows of Miss Deborah Glandfield’s history class at Westover Magnet School. It was a sunny day at Stamford. All the children shifted their gaze from the speaker to the teacher.

“Yes, go on,” she encouraged him, nodding her head. “What happened next?”

“Then,” the boy opened his eyes wide, “first governor of Plymouth Colony proposed a celebration,” and fell silent again.

“Why?” the teacher wondered, raising her eyebrows.

“Well,” the boy looked at the class. “They wanted to thank the earth and God for surviving.”

The teacher smiled and added:

“And they also wanted to thank the Indians who were open to outsiders and taught them how to survive on the land. Yes?” the teacher winked.

Debby stood by her desk and looked at the boy at the blackboard, completely immersed in his report. He was embarrassed to stand in front of the whole class and the portraits of America’s founding fathers. Debby tried to encourage him. She was proud that he was overcoming himself.

“Well, that, too, of course,” the boy smiled.

*

“Of course. I’ll add this information and show it to you for confirmation,” going through the papers, said Jean-Pierre. “Tomorrow morning we can send everything to Interpol and the others.”

He stood next to his patron’s desk and looked carefully at the notes on the sheets. He was completely focused on not forgetting edits. The man tucked the documents into a folder and headed to the door of the French external security directorate chief’s office. It was raining outside the window on Boulevard Mortier, and it was late evening.

“Thank you, Jean-Pierre,” the patron said with approval, looking at the concentration of his assistant.

*

“Well, thank you!” Yulia grudgingly said to herself as she read the email, sitting in the subway car. “Another business trip! Could just write an instruction, call. Don't they have better things to do: not to launch rockets to the Moon and Mars, they just bullshit me with these telescopes around the world. And it would be nice if they sent me somewhere to rest, but there and back again. Plus, ‘there’ in this case means to the middle of nowhere.”

She began typing “Moscow–Kathmandu distance” into her browser’s search bar.

“I want to live, I want sea and sun and lots of money. I’m sick of it!” she raised her head and looked angrily at the tired people sitting next to her. “And not to go to Nepal to set up an automatic space monitoring system based on infrared and magnetic analysis, with support for dynamic orientation correction,” Yulia thought, mimicking the text of the letter.

She looked at her smartphone screen, it said “4,886 kilometers.”

“M-m-m,” Yulia moaned, “I want something real.”

She opened the email from HR again. Her business trip would last five days, and the tickets were already booked.

“Well, okay,” she shook her head and closed the mail.

Part 1 – Chapter 2

“Hi, it’s me,” the young man shouted from the threshold, closing the door behind him.

“Hi, David,” a woman’s voice said from the kitchen, “Dad’s still at work, come on in.”

David’s father and stepmother live in a small house in Stratford, near Manchester. The father works at the soccer stadium and the stepmother is a part-time bookkeeper.

David left his backpack in the living room and went into the kitchen. A pleasant smell wafted in from there. Joan was making a vegetable stew and roasting two large pieces of meat. Surely both pieces were destined for only one person – David’s father.

“Joan, hello,” David said as he entered the kitchen.

The stepmother turned to the doorway and smiled very warmly. She wiped her hands with the kitchen towel and hugged David tightly. She knows how to hug in a special way. David calls it a ‘proud hug’ – a little longer than a welcoming hug and a little warmer than a friendly one.

“How pretty you are,” she covered her eyes.

Joan stroked David’s shoulder, looked sympathetically at his thin face and over his frail body.

“Dad said you’ve moved out of the apartment. Will you move your things here for now? I cleared out the closet in your room. How are you? You quit your job, too? And that girl?” she paused, but she seemed to have a dozen other things to say.

She spluttered her hands in the air, which meant in her language "asks me for my tactlessness," and went to the stove.

“Stuff in the living room. I have only a backpack,” David smiled.

“Whoa! Fire or psychological breakdown?” stirring the stew, the stepmother asked.

“Psychological fire,” David laughed and sat down at the table.

Joan poured the lemonade and the conversation flowed as if six months before they had not seen each other had never happened. She began to talk about her work, to ask how things were going in London, and many other things. So they talked for about an hour. David sat on a chair and watched Joan walk around the kitchen, adding spices to the dishes and stirring them.

There wasn’t much space in the kitchen, but to David it was an important place from his childhood, and there were many stories associated with every corner of it. He looked at the pantry shelf where the cookies were always kept and remembered how he couldn’t reach them even with a chair. Now it was easy for him.

“Hi, Da-vid,” his father shouted out the window, stretching his son’s name.

He waved at him and made his way into the house. He walked into the kitchen with David’s backpack, holding it in his outstretched hand like something dirty and bad smelling.

“Some bum left all his belongings in our living room,” he laughed and set the backpack on the floor.

Father, or as the rest of the world calls him, Spencer Conel always joked a little harshly, but everyone at home was used to judging a joke without relativity to themselves. So David and Joan smiled.

Spencer hugged his skinny son in compare to him:

“Okay, the hug was warm enough, I’ll cancel the evening salute to your arrival.”

Joan escorted him out to change and began to put food on plates. And yes, both steaks were meant for one person. They sat down to dinner.

“What next, son?” Spencer finally decided to ask, sawing his piece of meat. “Will you stay with us for a while? Maybe I’ll find out at work…”

“Spence,” Joan looked at him meaningfully, “when you come home from work tired, do I ask you what you’re doing?”

“That’s all right, Joan,” David smiled. “Yes, Dad, I’ll stay with you for a couple of weeks, and then I’ll go somewhere to rest. I think I need someplace windier to clear my head.”

Joan was glad David was joking.

“You know, David,” said father thoughtfully, “don’t listen to anybody. In the end, you can’t blame anyone.”

The table was quiet and peaceful. Like six months ago and always before.

Part 1 – Chapter 3

Miss Deborah Glandfield sat in her teacher’s seat, looking out at the empty classroom. She had the feeling that it was empty inside her and that the classroom was full of things: funny memories of children, portraits and quotes of famous Americans. She shifted her eyes to the portrait of Abraham Lincoln and the pieces of paper pinned beneath it. For two weeks now, pupils had been bringing the 16th president’s quotes to class at her request and sticking them on the wadepaper below his portrait.

“The best thing about the future is that it comes one day at a time,” read the most prominent quote.

Miss Glandfield called herself ‘Miss Glandfield’ only when she imagined herself next to the children at school or in her imagined audience with the great men of the past. “Mr. Washington, this is Miss Glandfield. The one who selflessly teaches history to the children at Westover Magnet School,” Debby imagined. And Mr. President looked at her approvingly, letting everyone around her know that she was making a real important deal.

She looked at her watch, rose from her chair, and went to the principal’s office. The boys, who had been watching her from the hallway through the window the whole time she had been looking around her classroom sadly, jumped out of chairs and ran away.

Debby went to the principal’s office and heard only a few words instead of the long tirade she had expected.

“Debby,” he smiled briefly, “have a nice rest. I’ve signed all papers; they’re in the office.”

Debby felt that everything was working out just fine, but she couldn’t be happy. She hadn’t counted on this outcome.

“Thank you, Sam,” she nodded.

But he was already dialing someone’s number on the phone, and just held up his thumb in approval. Debby went out into the reception area and walked over to the receptionist’s desk. The secretary asked her to sign the papers.

“Have a good rest, Debby,” the girl said.

“Thank you,” Debby replied confused and mechanically.

Then she looked intently at the girl’s smiling face and thought, “And why do I always think something bad is going to happen?” She smiled back, her blue eyes sparkled, and she walked out of the principal’s office.

In a couple of minutes Miss Glandfield was already sitting in her office, waiting for the next class, writing the good news about a vacation to her friend in Japan. Debby had known Sango for ten years, since college. They had been best friends during that time. Debby had been in Tokyo twice to visit Sango, but this time was supposed to be special. Sango is getting married. The future Mrs. Hatoyama visited Debby three times after college. In total, only five visits in ten years, but their friendship was strong. They constantly wrote to each other and shared everything on their hearts.

In her letters, Debby always called her friend Carol. They both loved the play on words and meanings. Sango means coral in Japanese. It turned out that Sango had two names, one for Japan and one for the United States. This tradition began in college.

Debby typed the words on the keyboard:

“Carol, hi!

My boss let me fly out for two weeks to see you. I’m very happy about that. Although, you know, it’s like I didn’t expect it to work out. So I could go to you in the middle of the academic year.

I checked the tickets. I’ll change planes in Paris, go to the Louvre, bring you something from there.

P.S. What is the usual gift in Japan when the loved ones get married?

P.S.S. See you on Friday).”

Part 1 – Chapter 4

‘Send’, Jean-Pierre pressed the button. The letter went to the major secret agencies: the Pentagon, the CIA, Mossad, Interpol, and many others.

It was 10:14 p.m. on the clock. Jean-Pierre took a deep breath and then exhaled, expelling fatigue. He looked out of the window at the courtyard of the main directorate of external security. Two men walked along the paving stones in the evening twilight. He rubbed his bristling face with his hands, squeezed his eyelids, under which there were dark circles. The cell phone rang; it was Jean-Pierre’s patron, Bernard Bajolet.

“Listening,” the young man said briefly, with a notebook and a pen ready.

“Jean-Pierre, I received the documents. Very good. I want to ask you…” said the patron in a low voice. “You will have to go to Tokyo instead of me. I have informed the minister that you will make the report on our proposals.”

“It will be done, monsieur. Thank you.”

“Oh, and one more thing,” monsieur Bajolet interrupted him, “forgive me for not giving you a rest. Tomorrow you can take the day off. I have to stay in Paris.”

“Okay,” Jean-Pierre said calmly and hung up.

He took another deep breath, looked at the clock on his wrist – 10:20 p.m. He printed out the report and wrote a letter to the minister’s assistant. Jean-Pierre was tasked with voicing France’s proposals for a new global counterterrorism program at the conference of heads of world security agencies in Tokyo.

Jean-Pierre knew how serious this event was. He remembered how long it had taken him and his boss to prepare this report. At first, he felt scared that he would have to do everything alone, but then an even more disturbing thought occurred to him, “if the patron is staying, something more important is here.”

Jean-Pierre wrote a letter to the clerk’s office to have them change monsieur Bajolet’s ticket to his name, checked the departure time, and went home to get some rest. Tomorrow he would have to read the theses he had prepared for the boss and check everything out. And the day after tomorrow he would fly to Tokyo.

Part 1 – Chapter 5

Yulia sat on a small bag in the hallway of her apartment, going over in her head whether she had taken everything. “Passport, underwear, passport, phone, passport, jeans…”

She closed her eyes and filled her lungs with air, daring to get up. She was angry that she was going to Kathmandu (the name of the city alone was worth it). The only joy was that the change would be in the United Arab Emirates. “There, they say, is a fancy airport.”

Yulia looked at her watch and got to her feet. She checked that the lights were off everywhere and the windows were closed. “Still, I don’t think Nepal is the best place to travel,” she thought before she left.

On autopilot she made it to the airport and checked in.

On the plane, she turned on some music and slept all the way to the Emirates. At the airport, while she waited for her next flight, she walked through the stores and looked at people while eating ice cream.

The next day she arrived in Kathmandu. At the Tribhuvan airport she was met by a man with a sign saying “Yulia Danilina. Roscosmos.” He took her straight to the observatory, aka planetarium, and the science museum. Yulia sincerely thought it was very likely that the observatory would be a hotel, too.

Dr Giyanu Lamichen the director of the observatory turned out to be a very nice man. He sat Yulia down on a chair and sat next to her.

“You know, Yulia,” he smiled, speaking in English, “this new telescope is not just a new telescope. It’s a new opportunity for us. You must understand that we are very grateful to have you here.”

“Thank you,” Yulia was embarrassed by the high-handedness of the doctor, “it’s just the adjustment of the equipment.”

“No-o-o-o,” Giyanu Lamichen interrupted her abruptly, “simple things are the most valuable.”

Yulia hesitated for a moment and felt a great cloud of responsibility suddenly appear from behind the high mountain of her pride.

“Oh shit,” she thought, “now I’m going to worry if I do everything right, Nepalese you Dr House.”

Dr Lamichen looked at her nonchalantly and nodded to something, and then said that all the antennas were set up and the observatory was already waiting.

Yulia put a bag in the corner of the director’s office and took out the necessary documents, a laptop and a flash drive.

“Then let’s go,” said she in a confident tone.

She went up with the doctor to the observatory and saw seven thin and sickly looking men. They smiled as they looked at her and said in Russian ‘welcome’. Dr Lamichen led Yulia to the healthiest-looking one of them and introduced a balding and tired-looking man with a small gray beard and glasses. He looked about sixty, his face swarthy and smiling. He was dressed in slacks and a sweater over a shirt.

“This is Dr Capri,” Lamichen circled his arm around the man’s torso.

“Welcome to Kathmandu, Yulia,” nodded Dr Capri, “you can call me Tulu-Manchi,” he pointed to a table where many wires and miscellaneous equipment were present, inviting her to come over there.

“Hello,” Yulia nodded, “what stage are you at now?” going towards the table, she asked.

“We installed the telescope according to the instructions last week. Now we have finished installing all the antennas and repeaters along the perimeter of the observatory. All the cables are out here.”

Yulia looked at the table that Dr Capri pointed at and realized that it was an ordinary wooden table, similar to the one her grandmother had in her kitchen. Yulia crinkled her face and saw that the wires were lying tied up with some kind of rope. “God, they don’t even have plastic ties here,” she was horrified.

Yulia sat down at her desk and turned on her laptop, getting ready to work. She checked the chair, which squeaked a little, and logged on to the program.

Dr Capri began plugging in all the cables to the control box that stood nearby. He gently untied the rope and carefully read the numbers on the wires, and then inserted them into the appropriate connector on the control box. Everyone else gathered behind the doctor and Yulia’s backs. They looked on with a sense of deep satisfaction and pride at their unsophisticated work. Yulia felt this anticipatory look of wonder at the workers on her back and whispered to Dr Capri.

“Dr Capri, they know it’s going to take a couple of days to set up, don’t they?”

Tulu-Manchi smiled and said quietly conspiratorially:

“Of course they know, but they’re very patient.”

Yulia realized it was a joke and smiled back, too. Dr Capri turned on the control unit, and different lights began blinking on it. All the workers smiled as they saw this and patted each other on the shoulders.

The doctor, in Nepali, told the workers everything was hooked up and they had all done a good job. One of them would stay in case they need help, and the rest could go home. After a few minutes, the observatory emptied and a tired Dr Tulu-Manchi Capri sat down next to Yulia. He asked her to tell him how she flew and why she chose such a difficult profession.

While the device was being diagnosed they had plenty of time to talk.

Part 1 – Chapter 6

Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi greeted David with warmth and care. He looked at the sculptures of huge palms that looked like the frozen movements of dancers. “What all those mudras mean?” He bought a ticket to Bagdogra and was already sitting on the plane a few hours later. There were completely different people around, they surprised David and made him feel the spirit of adventure.

Ahead of him awaited the route, which was written down on a scrap of paper lying in his pants pocket. Just the names of the places, the points of the route: “Delhi-Bagdogra-Kalimpong-Rangangang-Yuksom-Kanchenjunga”. Amazing words that until a few days ago meant absolutely nothing to David. He wrote them down, checking every letter. The names seemed so distant and mysterious. No return route, no how to get to these points, no distance, no time. Just a few markers on the path, words that anyone anywhere in the world would be able to understand.

David spent three weeks at his father and Joan’s house. He watched TV, walked around the street, but all the time he felt something tense up inside him more and more. It was as if a huge skyscraper was being built on his chest, and the weight was increasing every day. One evening David sat down at his computer and began to look at a map of the world. “I wanted freedom, after all, and now I’m trapped here like I’m ten again,” David thought. He was already tired of asking himself what he wanted what the plan was, and where to go next. And very tired of similar questions from his father and friends who wrote him letters and messages.

“David, dear,” Joan sat down next to him while he watched another show, “I see you want to make up your mind, get up the courage. Believe me, decisions are the consequences of actions. You see, first the step, then the destination. Just try it.”

“Go to Ireland?” David smiled, glancing at his stepmother.

“And if you’re at all desperate – to Scotland, darling,” remarked Joan.

They watched the show on, but David knew for a fact that the advice was good. For some reason he was scared and didn’t want to crawl out of the hole, which, by the way, he didn’t like at all. But the advice was right – get started.

David sat down at his computer and checked the balance in his bank account. £4,870 – there they were, the ripe fruits of corporate life and all the severance payments due. He clicked on the world map tab and typed ‘Everest’ into his search string, his heart felt cold. He went to Wikipedia and typed in ‘eight-thousanders’. As he read the article, his eyes jumped over a few lines and froze on the number January 11, 1986. It was the date of his birth. For some reason he was very happy with these numbers. Some pleasant feeling of recognition or anticipation flashed weakly inside him. He remembered all the good things that had happened to him in all the time he had lived on Earth. A feeling of gratitude and lightness filled him. He looked over and read what the date referred to. It was the first winter climb to the third peak in the world called Kanchenjunga. David closed his eyes and smiled with a ‘hmmm’ sound. It wasn’t a decision yet, but he felt that this very minute he was taking that very step. A step toward something.

At dinner, David decided to ask:

“Dad, did you know that two Poles conquered Kanchenjunga in winter on my birthday?”

“About the Poles, no, but about the date, yes. That’s right,” Spencer said thoughtfully.

He had been a climber since his youth and was now working as an industrial alpinist. He often used to take David to Kinder Scout National Nature Reserve to hike the hills and be with nature. For him, the mountains were something of an outlet, though for the past ten years he’d only seen the ropes at work and the mountains on the television horizon only. Even before that, he had only hiked mountains in England.

“Read it somewhere?” Spencer asked his son.

“Yes, it’s surprising.”

“What is?”

“Such a mountain was conquered in winter only a few years ago,” David was sincerely surprised.

“Hmm,” Spencer smiled, sensing that his son was interested in the history of mountaineering. “Yes. I thought you knew about that. I definitely told you. The irony is,” Spencer rubbed his smooth chin, “that the first time Kanchenjunga was climbed by two Englishmen was in the fifties. George Band and Joe Brown, that was their names. And old Joe was from here, from Manchester.”

David smiled. Spencer couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the guy, and thought he was surprised by the coincidence around this very Mount Kanchenjunga, which stands right between Nepal and India. In fact, David felt his doubts disappeared and he was ready to go straight to this mountain to see it for himself. After dinner, he plotted an itinerary and bought a ticket to Delhi.