They have more time on their hands. Per exercises for three hours a day. Squats, press-ups, pull-ups. He skis sometimes while they are trying to eat a meal only a couple of metres away.
Suki learns German. Arvind, who worked in Stuttgart for seven years, carries on conversations with her as if they are both residents of a German town of his own invention called Stiller am Simssee. “Tut mir Leid, ich bin zu spät da mein Fahrrad einen Platten hatte.”
“Komm in mein Haus. Mein Vater wird es reparieren können.”
Mikal watches old thrillers, North by Northwest, The French Connection, Serpico. He sits in quiet corners practising mindfulness. He says, “Are you OK, Clare? I worry about you.”
Floods in Bangladesh kill over 10,000 people, though the real number will never be known. Fukushima is finally enclosed in a vast box of concrete, half above ground, half below. Over Arvind’s shoulder Clare reads a headline saying “Fate of Halcyon Still a Mystery.” She thinks of Frank Wild and his men hiding under their boats on Elephant Island eating seal and penguin while Shackleton travelled in search of help.
An alarm goes off. The internal pressure is dropping unexpectedly. They gather in North 1, seal off all the other units and reopen them in turn until they track down the leak to South 2. Per suits up with Mikal and the two of them go inside. It takes three days and five visits to locate and mend a broken valve inside a wall panel.
Arvind says, “It is not a real emergency.”
She fears that he is losing his balance again. “Arvind…”
“It is a piece of theatre,” he says, “designed to keep us on our toes.”
This possibility has never occurred to her before. She would like to tell Arvind that he is being ridiculous but how can she prove it?
A commission sits in The Hague to discuss the fate of the Halcyon and hears expert testimony from a long string of physicists, engineers and systems analysts.
She asks Mikal for sex. She would dearly love to get drunk. She wants to take a hammer and smash things. These feelings are tangled in a knot which she can neither understand nor undo. She makes noises when Mikal is inside her. He puts a hand over her mouth so that no one hears and she bites him hard, drawing blood. She has orgasms for the first time, and in the minutes afterwards, when she floats untethered in the dark, she sees brief visions of her past life. Pear-tree blossom in the Painscastle garden, Tokyo from the air, the neat line of hair which ran down from Peter’s belly button.
One of the transmitters fails. There is no spare capacity for personal audio and visual. Until it is mended they can communicate with their families by text only.
Mikal watches Marathon Man, The Night of the Hunter, The Long Weekend.
“Es sind Sommerferien und ich bin sehr gelangweilt,” says Arvind.
“Morgen werde ich dich zum segeln auf dem See mitnehmen,” says Suki.
He says, “The messages from my sister, they are not real.”
“Arvind,” says Clare, “what are you talking about?”
“They are being written by the same group of people who write our video scripts. They are amusing. Humour has never been my sister’s strong suit. The news, too. I find it increasingly unconvincing. For example, we ourselves do not feature.”
She urges Arvind not to say these things to Per. He touches her arm as if it is she who is having problems. “Do not worry, Clare. All is well and all manner of things shall be well.”
Per does the Paris Marathon on the running machine in North 1 at precisely the same time as it is being run 300 million kilometres away. He completes the course in three hours forty-two minutes.
She is ill. She cannot identify specific symptoms but she knows that something has changed inside her body. She runs all the tests she can think of but finds nothing. She does one final check to be certain. She is pregnant. She did not think that this was possible on her drug regime. She does not tell Mikal. She falsifies her weekly obs to Geneva. She cannot have a child here but the thought of killing it is unthinkable.
Per asks to talk to her in private. He sits on the end of her bed. He appears calm but many minutes pass before he is able to speak. He says, “I don’t know why I am doing this.”
“Doing what?”
“This.” He leans over and touches the wall of her unit in a way that is surprisingly tender. “Honour, pride, duty, a love of one’s country, one’s family, the desire to be remembered well. I no longer know what any of these things mean.”
She says, “The emails from our families, Per. Are they fake?”
He does not answer for a long time.
“And the news?”
“The commission has been dissolved,” he says. “They have no idea why the Halcyon was lost. There will be no third flight. It’s too risky.” He puts his hands over his nose as if he is breathing through a mask. “We are coping with the situation remarkably well according to the newspapers. We understand that money is not unlimited, that technology is not perfect, that our safety was never guaranteed. We are going nobly to our deaths.”
She says, “Perhaps you should show me the Kent Protocol.”
“Oh, I don’t think that will be necessary.”
They find him next morning in South 2, on all fours, his head pressed to the floor as if he is not dead, just listening to something underground.
“Moxin.” Mikal hands Suki the empty blister pack.
Arvind appears behind them. “Now that I was not predicting.”
Clare leads everyone to South 1 where Per has written his log-in code on the control desk with a permanent marker.
The CAPCOM’s video is four weeks old. “These things are out of my hands, Per. We’ll keep pressing but this may need a change of government. I’m not meant to voice an opinion but they have fucked you over. And you won’t find many people in the building who think differently.”
The ban on EVAs seems pointless now and no one wants the body inside so Mikal and Arvind suit up. They decide not to take it to the burial site. They do not feel about Per as they felt about Jon. Suki protests but she is unable to wield the power she inherited on Per’s death. They lay him beside the hopper, into which they put the hair and nail clippings, where he cannot be seen from any of the windows.
Suki sends a report. She says that Per is dead. They know about the commission. They know they have been abandoned. CAPCOM’s reply comes back in light time plus four hours.
CAPCOM releases them from all protocols and says that they will try to provide whatever assistance is needed. There is a pause. “I’m afraid we can’t tell your families.”
“Fuck,” says Mikal.
Clare stops the video.
“Our families will have guessed already,” says Arvind.
“I don’t understand,” says Suki.
“Are you reassured by your frankly unconvincing emails from home?” asks Arvind. “I doubt that our families are reassured by the frankly unconvincing emails they will be getting from us.”
Clare says, “I’m pregnant.”