Orbital

“Some alien civilisation might look on and ask: what are they doing here? Why do they go nowhere but round and round? The earth is the answer to every question. The earth is the face of an exulted lover; they watch it sleep and wake and become lost in its habits. The earth is a mother waiting for her children to return, full of stories and rapture and longing.”

The novel introduces the orbital station as an absurdity to an outsider. With all of space available to explore, humanity seems determined to probe only its own home planet. In response, Harvey turns to a number of metaphors, comparing the Earth to a lover and a mother, to whom one’s devotion is naturally drawn because the Earth extends nurturing care and affection in return.

“To his tally kept on a piece of paper in his crew quarters, Roman will add the eighty-eighth line. Not to wish the time away but to try to tether it to something countable. Otherwise—otherwise the centre drifts. Space shreds time to pieces. They were told this in training: keep a tally each day when you wake, tell yourself this is the morning of a new day. Be clear with yourself on this matter. This is the morning of a new day.”

One of the key features of orbital life is the distortion of time. A day isn’t measured according to hours but orbits. The psychological impact of this feature is implied in this passage featuring Roman, who tries to orient himself in time by tallying the number of days he’s spent on the station. This suggests the role that time and continuity play in maintaining one’s mental health.

“So what is the real subject of this painting—the king and queen (who are being painted and whose white reflected faces, though small, are in the centre background), their daughter (who is the star in the middle, so bright and blonde in the gloom), her ladies- (and dwarves and chaperones and dog) in-waiting, […] or is it us, the viewers, who occupy the same position as the king and queen[?] […] Or, is the subject art itself (which is a set of illusions and tricks and artifices within life), or life itself (which is a set of illusions and tricks and artifices within a consciousness that is trying to understand life through perceptions and dreams and art)?

Or—the teacher said—is it just a painting about nothing? Just a room with some people in it and a mirror?”

The riddle of Las Meninas becomes a recurring question for Shaun, who is thrust into the “labyrinth of mirrors that is human life” (158), as his wife refers to it in her postcard. The mystery of the painting’s subject mirrors the mystery of humanity’s self-obsession, as hinted at in the earlier passage from Chapter 1. Depending on how one interprets humanity’s significance in the universe, this explains why two of the possible answers to the riddle are “life itself” and “nothing.