La Double Inconstance (2030–31) — Episode 5
11: Thursday morning: Sylvia Antoine
Sylvia Antoine (neé Jouvet) is a good Catholic. She is observant; she attends Mass regularly at Saint-Martin de Lognes; she respects the Holy Days of Obligation. But more is meant than this. Sylvia has internalised her religion - she has a spiritual dimension, feels at one with nature. Like the Catholic hierarchy under its present Pope - and unlike her younger brother René - she is suspicious of technology, feels its rupture with life, its artificiality, its negativity.
What does she see in André? Not the expert helicopter pilot, not the astronaut-to-be, not the combat-hardened technocrat. She sees instead strength-in-character, stability, calmness; authenticity and honesty.
Sylvia is nervous with officialdom; she doesn’t understand its process-worship, the circumlocutions and evasive euphemisms, the way they don’t meet your eyes, their sterile agendas. So the invitation to Paris, to the headquarters of the European Space Agency, was not welcome. But of course she had no choice. She turned her attention to the prosaic matter of baby-sitters, which the ESA helpfully both provided and funded.
Anna de Kasparis knew a lot about André Antoine’s wife. Relatives of key personnel were key mission components, comprehensively profiled and covertly monitored even in the privacy of their own homes. The best location for this interview would have been somewhere warm and homely but the office she had been allocated was briskly functional and institutional.
She was already, she thought, starting this meeting at a disadvantage.
It was ten minutes to eleven and the more Anna looked around the worse it seemed. The office floor was marble slabs, cold and carpet-free. The walls were high, plain plastered and white. On the street side the floor-to-ceiling glass panes were protected by white plastic blinds. The few items of furniture were vaguely Scandinavian: thin pinewood and shiny stainless steel tubing.
Sighing, Anna settled herself on the Bonaldo bench positioned next to a metal and glass coffee table. Her gaze tracked across the empty seat opposite toward the waiting door.
Soon now.
Sylvia was escorted through echoing, sterile corridors to an elevator, then through more corridors until she was led into a large airy room and delivered to the small blonde woman who introduced herself as Anna.
Sylvia was extremely tense. Her husband had been uninformative on the phone, had said he didn’t really know about this unexpected meeting but she had sensed there was something he was holding back. But her nervousness began to subside almost immediately. This blonde woman smiling at her was unexpectedly informal: apologising for the absurd formalities, joking about how hard it was to get around the bureaucracy here. If it had been her call, she said, they’d be meeting at a café across the street.
Sylvia had been expecting an intimidating power-woman like those executives in the magazines. Severe black outfits, hair bobbed back, heavy-rimmed spectacles. But the woman in front of her was more like a suburban housewife in her floral cotton dress and cardigan. She didn’t look official at all.
Anna said she was the team’s health advisor.
“No, don’t worry, there aren’t any issues! They employ me to keep people like your husband physically and mentally in top condition. And obviously you’re a big part of that. So with the mission coming up, there are a few things we need to get sorted out. How about we get out of here and go down to the cafétéria where we can relax a bit?”
As they trooped off to the lift and then to the rather pleasant ground-floor café (not institutional at all), Sylvia was feeling more and more relaxed.
12: A meeting of minds of a sort
Ensconced in a comfy alcove, nestled in tufted armchairs around a battered antique table, they sup coffee and munch at croissants in satisfying privacy. Sylvia talks about her family and the problems of an absentee husband.
“It’s a little difficult. I only see him at weekends and I know how hard he’s been working during the week. But so many problems pile up while he’s away. Things that need fixing - some things only he can do. Then there’s stuff we need to talk about. I feel bad about dumping it all on him when he just wants a rest.”
Anna smiles sympathetically - we’ve all been there.
“And soon he’ll be away for more than a year,” Anna says with genuine sympathy, “We’ll do what we can to help but I know it won’t be easy.”
She has been carefully monitoring the body language of her subject, waiting for those small expressions which open the way to the real issue of the day.
“You know he’ll be crewing with a woman colleague, Tania Milet,” Anna says, “That must be worrying you just a bit?”
There is a tell-tale flicker in Sylvia's eyes.
“André tells me that they have no chemistry, that the relationship is purely professional,” she replies shortly.
“He’s right. They work well together which was why they were matched. But then - he has you to come back to, every weekend.”
Anna smiles, still the sympathetic expression on her face.
“But you must have thought that a year with Tania and your husband together in isolation. That might be a different matter?”
Sylvia looks away, plainly uncomfortable, and says nothing.
Anna lowers her voice: ‘big sister’ mode - she’s five years older than Sylvia.
“We can’t have our crew distracted by emotional or sexual issues. It’s not fair to them personally and from our rather hard-hearted point of view it lowers team efficiency. So naturally we have a solution to mission-homesickness - but it’s one which is rather embarrassing. Can you imagine what I’m talking about?”
Sylvia can’t.
“We’re going to provide all our flight crew with a synthetic intimate companion. All of them - women and men. This is our secret, Sylvia. People would not understand if it got out and we might be forced to stop. And that would be a terrible outcome, don’t you see?”
Sylvia doesn’t see, because she doesn’t want to think about it and doesn’t like the way this conversation is going at all. She turns her head to gaze across the room towards the other cave-like alcoves, mentally withdrawing.
Anna now takes a sterner line.
“Sylvia, we can’t wish this away. Our men are not priests; we can’t hold them to celibacy. We need to give them the comfort of their loved ones as near as we can in their long days of loneliness and danger. We need your help, Sylvia.”
Anna sits back and sips her coffee. Time has to be allowed to do its work.
In Sylvia’s head there is civil war between Anna’s logic and her own visceral disgust.
Time will tell.
“What do you want?”
This is not victory: far from it. Anna can see the gritted teeth through which her question has been posed.
“Nothing at all, Sylvia, nothing practical that is. We just want your approval, no, your acquiescence that we provide a version of you for the comfort of your husband... while he can’t be at home with you. That’s all.”
“That’s disgusting. You don’t know me at all. How could you even dare suggest it?”
“You know, Sylvia, men are impressionable animals. It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t look exactly like you, that it can’t behave just like you do. Think of it as a photo of you or a sculpture. His imagination will make it real. It will be something to hold on to when he’s not able to talk to you or see you on a call.”
“No.”
“Sylvia, you need to be aware of the constraints I’m working under. If you really do say no, the programme will provide him with some anonymous companion. Unfortunately, those are the health and safety regulations: for health and monitoring reasons. You know what I think? André is a very loyal husband: he’d probably classify it as you no matter what we said or did.”
At that Sylvia gives a thin, tremulous smile. That is how she thinks of her husband: loyal.
“If you’re going to anyway,” she says in a tiny, defeated voice.
Anna knows how tentatively this approval was given. Now is not the time to dawdle.
“Do you know how well your husband is doing?” she asks brightly, “He’s shaping up to be top of the group. This means that he’ll play a really central role in the mission.”
Sylvia smiles, pleased despite herself.
“Now, I wasn’t meant to tell you that. Performance ratings are kept from the candidates so make sure you don’t tell him, OK?”
Sylvia nods.
They talk for another fifteen minutes about this and that. Anna lets a few more indiscretions fall from her lips. Sylvia is sent on her way in a somewhat relieved frame of mind. It was not as stressful as she had feared. And she has already blanked the main reason why she was brought here today.
Forgotten or repressed it.
Anna, now alone, picks up her phone and calls her PA. She will be back at the ESA astronaut training centre by late afternoon.
“Ask André Antoine to meet me at 7.30 pm please - in my office.”
The full story text can be found in my SF novel: here:
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — as a PDF, and
- "Donatien's Children" (2022) — on Amazon for easier reading.
