She was gone. Augie turned off the equipment and struggled back to the tent. He collapsed on his cot fully clothed. It was hours before the stove thawed him enough that he could move again, and when he did manage to remove his boots and his parka, a slippery thought crept into his consciousness and then fell away into his subconscious, in and out, in and out, until he fell asleep.
THE FEVER HAD its claws in him. He dreamed vividly of returning to the radio shed, of methodically turning on the generator, then the transceivers, but then he’d realize he was still on his cot, unable to move, and the dream would begin again in a loop: his mind would wake and go to the shed, and his body would remain. The rare moments of true wakefulness were painful and brief. He was hot and cold, shivering and sweating. For the most part he hovered on the edge of consciousness, dreaming about waking up, dreaming about dreaming about waking up. His brain was trapped in never-ending layers of his subconscious: each layer he pulled back led him to another and another.
Iris was there, in real life, or perhaps it was only in the dreams, he couldn’t tell. She was hovering over the cot with anxious eyes. She laid cool, damp rags on his forehead and steaming, hot rags on his chest. She sang to him; the wolves sang along with their faraway howls. At times he mistook her for Jean, at other times for his own mother.
When he eventually fought his way back to consciousness the tent was dark and cold, the electric lamp had burned out, and the oil stove had run dry. How long had it been? Where was Iris? He found a small reserve of strength, went outside and changed the oil drum, then rekindled the stove before he collapsed once more. He drank half a gallon of water, so cold it made his head ache.
He set the jug down and there was Iris, coming in the door, latching it behind her. Lifting the glass chimney from one of the kerosene lamps, then lighting the wick with a match and lowering the chimney back into place. Adjusting the flame. Carrying it to Augie’s bedside, holding the light over him for a moment and then setting it down on the table. Laying her palm against his forehead, sitting down on the edge of the cot and smiling. Her eyes said Go back to sleep, but her lips said nothing at all.
EIGHTEEN
SULLY RUSHED BACK to Little Earth and started banging on all the sleeping compartments. She pounded on the frame of Devi’s bunk for a few beats before realizing it was empty, then hurried along the curve of Little Earth to the long table. Thebes was already there, eating dried fruit and looking at her quizzically; the others quickly emerged from their bunks. The overhead lights reached their full morning brightness as she relayed the story of the contact—their first contact since Mission Control went dark. Their expressions of sleepy annoyance gradually gave way to excitement. When she reached the end of her story, however, her crewmates looked more confused than enlightened.
“That’s it?” Tal asked. “He doesn’t know anything else?”
Sully shrugged. “I’m going to keep monitoring the frequency and I’m hopeful we can get him back, but yes, he doesn’t know much about what’s happened. He said it’s been radio silence since the other researchers evacuated a year ago.”
“Why did they evacuate?”
“I don’t know—war rumors. But that’s all he knew, rumors.”
“So then, this guy is what, like the last person on earth? Is that what we’re getting at here?” Tal seemed indignant.
“Don’t joke,” Ivanov admonished him.
Tal rolled his eyes. “I wish I were,” he said. “Think about it. If this guy has been trying to make contact for all this time and hasn’t been able to, not a peep till now…I mean, if something catastrophic happened, where would the safest places be—the least fallout? The poles, that’s where. Exactly where he is. It’s possible he’s the only one left.”
They all fell silent for a moment. Harper had been running his hands through his hair, over and over, as though by stimulating his scalp he might arrive at a new idea, a different angle he hadn’t noticed. He dropped his hands into his lap and sighed.
“I don’t see that we’ve really learned anything new. We’re still looking at a lot of question marks. Sully, let’s try to talk to him again—see what we can suss out. Otherwise, I want our docking seals checked. I think we should hook into ISS and go from there. Reentry sequence as planned. Not much point speculating, right? One thing at a time.”
They all nodded and Harper went back to the comm. pod with Sully. The others trickled after them, and the search for the last man on earth began again—hours of static, Sully repeating his call sign over and over, until finally, hours later, they got their answer.
THE SECOND CONVERSATION was even less enlightening than the first. Harper, Sully, and Thebes were crowded into the comm. pod while Ivanov and Tal floated in the corridor. All five of them were only more frustrated by the time they lost the signal, which didn’t last long. They all drifted over to the observation deck afterward, where they could watch Earth moving beyond the glass cupola. Ultimately there wasn’t a lot to discuss—the man on the other end had told them everything he knew, which wasn’t much—but it didn’t stop them from going over and over the meager facts. They would dock with the ISS and then the conundrum of reentry would be addressed. They couldn’t orbit forever, but without a ground team to pick them up in the Kazakhstani desert, things grew complicated and uncertain. Sully went back to the comm. pod while the others continued debating.
She tried to reestablish a connection with the Arctic but couldn’t. It had become clear that the man didn’t have the information they were hoping for—an explanation—but there were other things she wanted to ask him. She wanted details of Earth: sunsets, weather, animals. She wanted to be reminded of how it felt to be beneath the atmosphere, housed within that gentle daylit dome. She wanted to remember how it felt to be held by Earth: dirt and rocks and grass cradling the soles of her feet. The season’s first snow, the smell of the ocean, the silhouettes of pine trees. She missed it all so keenly she felt the absence inside her abdomen, like a black hole sucking her organs into nothingness. So she waited. No more scanning. The frequency was locked in, it was only the many layers of atmosphere, the angle of the antenna, the rotation of the earth, and the vigilance of the radio operator below that occupied her now. She wondered if it was true—if she’d found the last man on earth.
In the days that followed, Aether arrived in Earth’s orbit. Sully had no luck finding the Arctic survivor again. She wasn’t able to keep her vigil as consistently as she would’ve liked to; as they circled the earth they had their work cut out for them, and the practical purposes for speaking with him again were minimal. The other crewmembers were focused on more pressing things. The plans for Aether had always been to dock with the ISS—the entire spacecraft was designed to eventually become an addition to the space station—so in that respect they were still within the parameters of their mission, following a plan set years ago. But without the other crew in the ISS to coordinate with, the procedure was difficult and uncertain.
As they drew closer to the ISS, she finally found him again. He was equally glad for the excuse to talk to her—about anything. He told her about the Arctic—the dark days and the frozen tundra. When he talked about the polar bear tracks he’d found, she recognized something in him: a stubborn loneliness. As though he couldn’t say aloud, even now, at the end of the world, that he was lonely. That he craved connection without understanding how to obtain it; that finding a set of tracks, the merest evidence of another presence, was his idea of company. It went beyond the isolation of his situation, it was a part of him, and she suspected it always had been. Even in crowded rooms, even in busy cities, even in the arms of a lover, he was alone. She recognized it in him because it was in her too.