The Pier Falls: And Other Stories

  She is woken by a tremor passing through the rock below the station. She wonders if it is a seismic shift, or simply a hallucination. It is getting progressively harder to tell whether events are happening inside or outside her head.

  In the morning there is no doubt. Through the sand-scratched window, in spite of her failing eyesight she recognises the shape instantly. She looks into the baby’s face and says, “We’re going to be saved.” She is unable to stop herself weeping.

  But no one comes, not on the first day, not on the second, not on the third. She wonders if something terrible has happened, if there is no one alive in the lander. She can think of no way of signalling to them, either physically or electronically. Ten days go by. She and the baby are weak and getting weaker. Previously he cried when she couldn’t feed him enough. Now he is silent. She is looking through a milky fog that will not clear. Her joints hurt.

  It is the last thing she does. She gathers the remaining solid state light sticks. She waits for darkness to fall and tapes them to the window. She can do no more. She lies down with Michael on the mattress and pulls the blanket over the two of them.

  They run the tape again. Is it lens glare? Reflected sunlight? They wait an hour. It is still there, visible through both windows. Vijay thinks he can see a shape but it is fading in the growing daylight. They take a photograph, increase the contrast and blow it up. Mina says, “Dear God in heaven.” The words HELP ME are spelled out in broken light sticks in the triangular window. Light sticks shine for two days max. Someone is alive in there.

  Taylor asks Geneva to override protocol. This will be their first EVA. Bear Jonson and Mina Lawler volunteer. It takes nine hours to prepare. Before the EVA begins Bear and Mina sleep for two hours. Vijay prepares his own suit in case there is an emergency. They have three hours of daylight left.

  The terrain is smooth. It takes them only thirty minutes to reach the old base. To the right they can see the rocky barrow under which Dr. Jon Forrester is buried, to the left the raking sun glinting off the titanium poles of the uncompleted Long Array. They circle the chunky double spider of units. In a recess at the rear lies a body so fiercely abraded by the sandstorm that it is now a skeleton. Taylor, Giulia, Vijay and Mary watch all of this on the headcam feeds.

  Most of the windows in the base are dark and a temperature reading indicates that these units have been sealed off and depressurised. Only one unit seems to be in use. There is a low light in the window to which the now-dead glow-sticks remain attached but the sand which scoured the corpse has scoured the glass, too, and they can see very little through it. There is something which might be a body on the infrared. Afterwards both Bear and Mina will confess to an irrational conviction that whoever—or whatever—is inside is not one of the six original crew, perhaps not even human.

  They return to an adjacent unit. As on all the doors there is a central crank for last-resort use. They try to turn it with the steel rod they have brought for the purpose, first Bear then Mina, but they are wary of slipping and falling or, worse, ripping one of the EVA suits. After twenty fruitless minutes Taylor says, “Just hit the thing with a damn rock.” Bear does this and they hear the dull chime of the whole structure ringing. He bangs it again. The crank gives a little. He bangs it a third time, puts the rock down and they are now able to turn it with their gloved hands alone. Finally the door swings open and they step inside.

  There is a body on the floor, gaunt, leathery, mummified. It is tiny with thick black hair and must therefore be Suki Camino. They close the door behind them and seal it. They power up and the overhead lights come on, so the generators are working. They check the internal pressure. They start to pump the CO2 out and let the air in from the rest of the station. There has been no response whatsoever to their grandstand entrance. If there is anyone still alive on the far side of the second door they must be either unconscious or remaining deliberately silent. Might this be a trap of some kind?

  A soft pop and the door opens.

  Clare Hogg and the baby are lying on a soiled mattress. The baby is not moving, Clare is barely conscious. There was no simulation which included this scenario.

  Over the intercom Taylor says, “Oh, Jesus.”

  Giulia says, “People, do something, OK?”

  Mina ignores Taylor’s instructions and removes her helmet. The air smells of urine and sweat and something dense and sugary she doesn’t recognise. She takes her gloves off and picks the baby up. It is limp but warm. It is covered in its own shit and has sores and rashes all over its body. It is a boy. Bear keeps his helmet and gloves on. He rolls the woman into the recovery position. Her hair is knotty and rat-tailed. She appears unable to see clearly or understand what is being said to her. She cannot talk. She claws the air vaguely in search of her baby. There is an unopened blister pack of two Moxin on the floor, a couple of arm’s lengths away from the mattress. Mina wraps the baby in a clean blanket and holds it close.

  Bear finds some powdered banana. They decant their own water supplies to create a paste. The woman eats it but Mina has to remove the needle from a syringe and squirt the paste into the baby’s mouth. It chokes then swallows then coughs it all up. She repeats the process.

  It is too complex and dangerous to bring Clare and the baby back to the lander. Bear runs checks. The base is functioning normally despite the lack of external communications. Vijay walks twelve hundred metres carrying a bag of medical supplies. Night is falling. For the last ten minutes of the journey he is not visible from the lander. Bear finds two more corpses in one of the adjacent units. Mikal Galkin and Arvind Sangha. Judging by its appearance Mikal must be the baby’s father. Vijay puts the woman and the baby on glucose and saline drips.

  She calls them “Mikal” and “Suki” and “Per.” She says that someone has taken her baby away. They say, “Here is your baby.” They ask her what the baby’s name is. She doesn’t know. Vijay washes the baby and covers it in Epaderm. She says she wants to go and stand in the garden. They explain that there is no garden.

  They say, “You are very lucky to be alive.” They say, “Clare, can you tell us what happened?”

  She says, “We were walking by the sawmill. There were bluebells.”

  She breastfeeds her baby. She refuses to let go of him. They give her beef noodles and rye bread and apple juice. She says, “I want to talk to Mikal.” They say that they will explain everything once she is feeling better. Her baby cries. They say, “This is a good sign.”

  She walks to the lander. It is the hardest exercise she has ever done. The baby is strapped to her torso inside an EVA suit five sizes too large. Jon and Bear walk on either side of her, holding her upright.

  She remembers that Mikal is dead. She remembers that she watched Arvind die lying on the floor in front of her. She remembers that Per and Jon and Suki are dead. She remembers the fire on the Halcyon. She listens to bluegrass. She listens to Kylie. She listens to Mozart. She has her photograph taken with the baby. Taylor says, “You’re famous.”

  After three months they are well enough to travel home. The craft is tiny and fully automated. There is nothing she will have to do. She and the baby will be alone for nineteen months. It does not matter. Other people do not seem real to her.

  The ascent to orbit is terrifying but short. The baby screams. They circle for a week until the heavens are aligned then three short bursts of flame set them off on their great sleigh ride through the dark.

  She must exercise. She puts on her belt, straps herself down and walks on the track. Two hundred metres, five hundred, a kilometre, two. She and the baby sleep in the bulkhead where the shields are thickest to minimise the effect of radiation on the baby’s tiny body. He floats in the air. He laughs. She wonders if his legs will ever develop the strength to walk. There are voices on the radio. She worries about her mind. She ate so little for so long. Has she suffered some kind of irreparable brain damage? He stares at her face, smiles in response to her smile, laughs in response to her laugh. He fo
llows objects as they float past. She does not count time. They have the universe to themselves. The constellations are their toys. She tells him their names. Eridanus, Cepheus, Draco. He sleeps less now, eats solid food, explores constantly. She must watch him all the time to prevent him breaking or stealing things. He says, “Mamma, Mamma…” They eat dried pear and stollen and fish fingers. Nineteen months. It seems too short. She wishes the two of them could stay here forever on this endless silent sea.

  They land twenty-four kilometres northwest of Baikonur. The re-entry capsule is not made for a tiny child. In the last twenty minutes of descent she sits him on her lap and straps the two of them together with loop after loop of electrical tape. He screams and struggles. They will experience 4G when they hit the ground. They’ve been living in microgravity for a year and a half. Already she can feel her body becoming heavy. She uses the last of the tape to fix the baby’s head to her chest so that his neck doesn’t snap. She can do nothing about the effect of the impact on his brain.

  The noise and the vibration are now indescribable. Is something wrong? She finds it hard to believe that this is how it is meant to be. There is a double crunch, audible even above the roaring, and the craft bucks violently as the two red-hot heat shields are jettisoned and appear briefly in the tiny window before ripping away to burn up above them. There is a bang. It is like jumping from a roof and hitting concrete. She thinks they have hit the ground but it is only the parachute opening. In the final second the touchdown rockets go off under the capsule to soften the landing. Again she thinks she has hit the ground. Then they hit the ground. She blacks out.

  When she comes round she has no idea where she is. She can hear a child crying. She doesn’t understand why her arms are so heavy. The child is strapped to her chest. She wants to release him but she needs to cut the tape so as not to rip his hair out. She remembers that there is a knife in one of her trouser pockets. She twists her head to reach it but knows immediately that she has broken her neck. She gently rotates her head back to its original position.

  She must lie perfectly still. The child is screaming. She says, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Someone will come and help us.”

  But someone does not come. Out of the corner of her eye she can see a triangle of colourless sky through sooty glass. They are on land and it is daytime. That is all she knows. She can’t even be sure what country she is in. After all that she has survived, after so many deaths, after the hundreds of millions of kilometres it seems possible that she may die after taking the very last step of the journey.

  The child is weakening, his cries getting quieter and quieter. Perhaps he is the one who will survive. If she could give her own life in order for that to happen she would do it willingly.

  And then they come. First the thundering purr of helicopters, then the rumble of the big amphibious trucks. Doors banging, footsteps and dull voices outside in Russian and English. They call her name. She is meant to have opened the hatch from the inside so they will have to cut the seals. She sees the sparkfall of oxyacetylene torches beyond the glass.

  The door falls away and the smells roll in. Dust and grass and exhaust fumes—and it is this which makes her weep. There are faces above her. She holds up her hand. “Stop. My neck is broken.” A plastic collar moulded for precisely this eventuality is slipped around her neck and locked into place. Someone is cutting the child free. A scoop is slid down the back of her seat and she is lifted gently out of the capsule.

  The light and the noise and the sheer scale of the world are shocking. Cameras flash and radios crackle. There are so many people. The child is being carried alongside her. He is completely limp. Then she sees him scrunching his eyes against the light. He is alive. It is the gravity which is holding him down.

  There are too many things around her changing too quickly. Everything inside her body feels wrong. Her head aches and spins. She vomits. Someone wipes her with a wet cloth. The paramedics carry her up the ramp into the nearest amphibious vehicle. The scoop is locked down and the engine starts up. She reaches out and holds the child’s hand.

  It is strange to be travelling so slowly over this bumpy ground after the silent glide of space. People are talking to her but she doesn’t have the energy to respond. They find an unmetalled road and the bumping softens. Later there is tarmac under the wheels and the low singing of the big rubber tyres. Her head is fixed in one position. She can’t see a window. She can feel the weight of her tongue, her feet, her hands, her intestines. A doctor slides a needle into her arm and attaches a cannula.

  The truck slows and turns into the Cosmodrome.

  She assumes at first that she is dreaming.

  “Clare…?”

  Even when she opens her eyes it takes some time before she trusts what she is seeing. He has a beard now, trim, black. He has put on a little weight but it gives him an authority he didn’t have before.

  “Peter?” He squeezes her hand. “You waited for me.”

  She lies in bed for two days. She eats chicken soup and scrambled egg. The nausea recedes and she is able to sit up. The child sits in a car seat with sheepskin under him to prevent him getting pressure sores. As often as she can she lifts him out and holds him under his arms and puts his feet on the floor and bounces him up and down. He seems unsure what to do with his legs.

  Peter stays in Hotel Tsentralnaya in Baikonur. The shower doesn’t work and the restaurant is closed.

  She lifts little weights. She walks to the other side of the room and back. She eats lamb and bread. She drinks a glass of wine. She sits outside in the sun for ten minutes, for twenty minutes. The sky makes her agoraphobic. She loves wind. She loves rain. She meets journalists. They are allowed to ask only certain questions and cannot stay for longer than fifteen minutes. She has her photograph taken holding the child. He is not walking. He seems to be in pain. But he is alive and they are together and there was a time when she dared not hope for these things.

  Peter comes in every day for an hour. He holds Michael in his arms. He seems unconcerned that this is another man’s child. His generosity overwhelms her. She does not deserve this.

  They fly to Moscow on a military Antonov. There are more interviews at the airport. She says, “There are some things I cannot talk about.” She says, “More than anything I would like to be left alone.” She says, “Death, you are no different to me than my lover with your cloud-coloured skin, and your hair a mass of dark cloud.” They say, “You must understand that Miss Hogg is still very tired. I’m afraid that we must end the interview now.”

  She cuts her hair and dyes it blonde. She buys a summer dress. She has not worn one since she was a girl.

  They fly to Munich. The child is still not walking. It will take time. They hire a silver BMW and drive south on the E52 towards Salzburg, the Bavarian Alps rising in front of them. They turn north after crossing the Inn. Cresting the hill, the lake catches her by surprise, ten kilometres of cold blue light and a flock of sails all tilted at the same angle.

  A sign beside the road says STILLER AM SIMSSEE.

  They drive through the centre of the town. There are cobbles and awnings. There is the Hotel Möwe am See and the Westernacher Gästehaus. A whole skinned pig hangs outside a butcher’s shop. They take Rasthausstraße down to the water’s edge and follow the curve of the shore. Peter pulls up outside a small block of apartments facing the water. White walls, balconies in chocolate-coloured wood and a roof like a black hat four sizes too large.

  She lifts the sleeping child from his car seat and puts him over her shoulder. Peter retrieves a key from his pocket and lets them into a hallway empty except for six wooden pigeonholes of post, a vase of paper tulips and a framed sepia photograph of the lakefront at the beginning of the last century. The stairs echo under their feet. Peter takes the child. Three flights. She has to wait and get her breath back after each one.

  They step into the apartment. He doesn’t turn the lights on. He closes the door behind them. The darkness is almo
st complete. The cool air smells of beeswax and vanilla. “Stand there.” She hears a triple squeak of rusty handles and hinges being turned and the shutters are swung open. It does not matter what is in the room. It is merely a frame for this extraordinary view. She walks out onto the balcony. The flotilla is spread out now, white sails tacking one by one around a yellow buoy. It flows over her, this greenery, this life, this light. Peter stands beside her holding the sleeping child. She runs her fingers over the grain of the wooden rail, every line a summer long gone. She looks beyond the lake to the mountainside forests where it was cut down fifty, a hundred, two hundred years ago.

  There is something wrong with all of this but she cannot put her finger on what it might be.

  Peter says, “Tomorrow afternoon we will go sailing on the lake.”

  BREATHE

  She leaves the institute, takes the Red Line to Davis and walks back home. She stands in the empty house and feels sick in the pit of her stomach. And then it comes to her. There is nothing keeping her here anymore. She can go, just go, leave everything behind. She packs two bags, leaves the keys in the mailbox and takes a taxi to Logan where the next BA departure has a last-minute seat in club class going for a song. An omen maybe, if she believed in such things.

  She nurses an espresso in Starbucks and imagines the sour little woman from Fernandez & Charles standing in the living room wondering what the fuck to do with the exercise ball and the Balinese shadow puppet and the armchairs from Crate and Barrel. On the table to her right two Mormons sit side by side, strapping farm boys in black suits, Elders Thorsted and Bell, the names on their badges as big as signs on office doors. On her left an ebony-skinned man in an intricately embroidered white djellaba is reading a book called The New Financial Order. There are four messages on her phone. She pops the back off, drags the SIM card out with her fingernail and flips both phone and card into the waste bin.