Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

It is early February when the Halcyon is lost. There is a brief audio message from Anne-Marie Harpen to Geneva saying that they have detected heightened oxygen levels and will be performing a 95 percent electrical shutdown while they find the leak. Contact is never resumed. They wake the black box from Geneva. An hour after Anne-Marie’s message the internal temperature rose rapidly to unsurvivable levels and remained there for seventeen minutes. There is no subsequent electrical activity anywhere on the main vessel. If anyone has managed to survive in a sealed section they will be taking their Moxin to avoid a longer, less comfortable death. There is no change of trajectory, so the ship is still heading in their direction. Nine months later, on 4 or 5 September, if it strikes the atmosphere at the right time of day they will see it burn up overhead like a shooting star.

They watch a video of the non-denominational services of remembrance in Geneva and Florida then perform their own more modest version. Arvind does not quote Tagore. Once more they are given pre-prepared scripts to learn for media circulation.

There is a third crew waiting to travel and another ship, the Sparrowhawk , ready to take them but the launch will only be authorised after a report has identified the reason for the loss of the Halcyon and the fault has been rectified.

The Halcyon was carrying more solar panels, new air filters, a range of medical supplies, a 3D printer and half a ton of ABS blocks. The five of them must now catalogue everything they possess and work out the rates at which they are allowed to consume these things. Per and Suki collate the figures. There will be no more EVAs. Daily food intake is reduced by 10 percent and the ambient temperature is lowered by three degrees. East 2 is sealed off and the dining area in North 2 is narrowed to make space for the gym equipment. She and Suki move into a single room as do Per and Mikal.

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.”