Berit Ellingsen - Not Dark Yet

At the end of the lecture the audience was applauding and yelling; he wasn’t certain what about, but he didn’t want to be the only person in the room not clapping and smiling, so he cheered too.

THE MEETING ENDED WITH AN ANNOUNCEMENT about the next lecture, at the same hour and weekday some weeks into the future. He wasn’t certain if he wished to travel several hours for another glimpse of Kaye, but at least now he knew the assistant professor was seemingly in good health. When the audience stood and started trickling toward the door, he pulled on his moist jacket and backpack and moved quickly to exit before the main cluster of people. He reached the hallway without anyone calling after him, hurried down the stairs and out into the night.

With the spectacle of the forested foothills and steep gorges hidden inside the night, the journey back to the mountains was long and tedious. Now the glass surfaces only reflected what went on inside the compartment, like the exclusively internal images of the sleeping mind.

Finding himself alone in the compartment he called Michael, who answered almost immediately.

“How are things in the mountains?” Michael said.

“They’re good,” he smiled. “Quiet, but rainy. How are things at home?”

“Fine, fine,” Michael said. “Windy. Had a big storm earlier this week, with thunder and lightning. Lots of trees fell down, power lines and roads blocked, roofs ruined. The wind and the tide took half the beach in the bay, they had to cover the sand with branches from old pines to prevent more from washing away. It was a proper fall storm, only not much colder than in the summer. Did you see it on the news?”

“I missed that,” he said, feeling a pang of guilt. “How are your parents? No one injured, I hope.”

“No, no worries, everyone’s all right, just more difficult to move around in the city than usual. But the streets are being cleaned up quickly. Wait, is that a train I’m hearing in the background? Are you on your way home?”

At the joy in Michael’s voice, his heart jumped and the regret for not having caught a train that continued further down the coast and back to the city seared him. “Sorry,” he said and smiled into the phone. “I’m returning to the cabin. Just seen a doctor on the coast.”

“A doctor?” Michael said. “Are you sick?”

“No, I’m fine. I was just getting a pilot license for the astronaut test.”

“Astronaut test?” Michael laughed. “Are you going to the moon?”

“You know, for the astronaut training program. It’s been in the news lots of times.”

“Oh, that,” Michael said. “Did you apply for it? How did it go?”

“I passed the first round,” he said, and realized that Michael was the first person he had told this to. “They want to do a second series of tests. That’s what the pilot license is for.”

“Congratulations!” Michael said. “That’s fantastic! Do you know how many rounds of tests there will be?”

“No,” he said. “But the next time I think they’ll wish to meet us in person. And there will probably be more medical tests, if my impression from the articles about the selection process is correct.”

“Don’t you dare come home for testing without stopping by,” Michael said.

He smiled. “I promise.”

“You are coming home for Christmas, aren’t you?” Michael said.

“Yes, of course,” he said, although it was the first time he had thought of Christmas since he arrived in the mountains. “We’ll celebrate together, as always. How’s Beanie, by the way? Is the building still standing? Not a smoking hole where the apartment used to be, or the pool leaking out the window?”

“No,” Michael laughed. “Everything’s still there, don’t worry. Beanie loves the cats and they adore her. And she keeps the apartment surprisingly tidy, considering she lives there.”

He laughed.

“I suspect she thinks you might suddenly come home for a surprise visit and doesn’t want to be caught.”

He laughed again. “Sometimes fear is the best taskmaster,” he said.

Michael chuckled, then paused. “We miss you,” Michael said. “Your brother says your father sounds ready to disown you if you don’t come home soon.”

“I don’t understand the fuss,” he said. “Father left his country when he was much younger than I am now. I’m still on the same continent as you, just a few hours away by train.”

“Yes…” Michael said. “He’s just concerned. I am too, I mean, all of us are. My parents, and Beanie too.”

“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m not going crazy, I haven’t sold all my belongings. The neighbors just started a farming project sponsored by the ministry for agriculture. They might have a crop this spring already. I want to see how it develops.”

“They’re farming in the mountains?” Michael said.

“Yes, it’s that warm now,” he said. “Look, all of this is just temporary. Don’t worry.”

“I know,” Michael said. “I know.”

He needed a moment to compose himself before making the next call. That’s what he disliked the most about phone conversations. They tended to derail, and without the direct interaction of facial expressions and body language, it was difficult to get back on track once that happened. He sighed, then tapped the number of his younger brother.

In the beam from his headlamp the path from the train platform to the cabin shone like exposed bone and the scent from the heather and bilberry was fragrant and strong. The wind was low and humid and there were no moon and no stars in the sky. He wondered what it felt like to shoot through that darkness for months, without being able to go outside, or take a breath of fresh air, or be with friends and family, of not seeing the places he loved or doing the things he usually did. But then the images of another place blossomed up in his mind. A mountain, the remnants of an enormous volcano, so huge its summit curved beyond the horizon, forever out of sight, halfway to the stars. A canyon so large it could hold three of the deepest gorges on Earth inside itself and still have room for more. Endless plains traced with the marks of long-forgotten rivers and deltas, superimposed by craters and calderas. An anaerobic, freezing wind blowing red. Going there, seeing those sights, landscapes that no human being had ever witnessed before, would be more than worth the danger, boredom, and loneliness of the journey.

In the shrub around him insects hummed and from overhead came the clicks and ticks of hunting bats. He remembered Kaye telling him that a bat, when petted, would purr loudly, like a cat.

THE TRUCKS AND TRACTORS AND CARS AND PEOPLE arrived while the sky was still orange and the dawn clouds heavy along the horizon. He sat up on the mattress, pulled out of sleep by the noise and light. The convection from the tripartite window chilled him and he was sweaty and cold at the same time, as if he’d spent the night outdoors. He yawned and rubbed his face. He smelled of sleep and unkempt hair. If Michael had been there, he would have made drowsy waking-up noises, muttered to him in a morning-hoarse voice.

The neighbors heaved large sacks from the trucks to the ground, gathered around the bags, and began filling the seed drills attached to three tractors. With the seeds loaded, the tractors started moving. One of them drove southwest, another chugged north, and the last continued west for a short distance before they changed gears and spat thick smoke from the chimneys. The vehicles entered the newly fertilized soil, sank a little into it, before they continued slowly along the plowed furrows.

From the cabin he couldn’t spot any trails of pale grains on the ground; the seed drills probably placed and covered the seeds as they advanced. The nearest tractor continued down the field. A flock of seagulls, far from the coast, bobbed up and down in the air, and sparrows, blackbirds, starlings, even a few ravens and lapwings, alit when the tractor had passed, trying to catch the seeds that had not been covered and the worms and bugs that had been churned up from the soil.