Mark Haddon - The Pier Falls - And Other Stories

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.”

There is a long silence.

“How did that happen?” says Suki.

Mikal says, “I’m so sorry.”

They watch Double Indemnity, The Wages of Sin, Paan Singh Tomar .

Mikal draws a timeline. “Let’s assume there are no accidents. Let’s assume consumption and depreciation continue at the present rate. This is the approximate date beyond which we will not survive. And this is the last date for a second crew to set out if it is to have a chance of reaching us in time.”

Suki has a rotten tooth. Clare extracts it under local anaesthetic.

CAPCOM sends them real news again. Wildfires burn out of control in California. The Cardinals win the World Series. Everest is closed to foreign climbers.

She assumed that the desire for sex would vanish with her pregnancy but the opposite seems to be true. She is becoming a stranger to herself. When Mikal says he is not in the mood she slaps him.

Arvind says, “Do you want to keep learning German?”

Suki says, “When we get home I am going to move to Stiller am Simssee. I am going to buy a little apartment. I am going to eat stollen and walk in the mountains and read the detective novels of Friedrich Dürrenmatt.”

Arvind says, “Stiller am Simssee does not exist.”

“Oh,” says Suki. “I misunderstood.”

Mikal says, “You cannot have a child. We cannot have a child. This is insane.”

Clare’s nausea recedes. She plays Skyrim on her own and backgammon with anyone who’s willing. There is a sandstorm. It is the fiercest they have experienced. It howls outside, the hard carcinogenic grains rasping against the walls. Contact with Geneva is degraded and intermittent. Then it fails completely. They cannot find a fault. It may be outside, but they cannot go outside until the dust dies down.

Mikal says, “The Mignonette sank en route to Sydney in 1883. The four crew members managed to escape in a lifeboat with two tins of turnips. They were seven hundred miles from land. They ate a turtle and drank their own urine but couldn’t catch any rainwater. After three weeks the cabin boy Richard Parker passed into a coma. Tom Dudley and Edwin Stephens stabbed him in the neck with a penknife and ate him and drank his blood.”

“Why are you telling us this?” asks Arvind.

She is woken from sleep by Jon hammering on the walls asking to be let in. He is cold and lonely. She does not tell anyone about this.

During her weekly scan Clare spots what she thinks is the beginning of a tumour in Suki’s left breast.

Mikal says, “I love you.”

She says, “I think you are just frightened.”

“I’m frightened and I love you.”

“I need you not to be frightened.” Her belly is visibly swollen now.

After six weeks the sandstorm dies with freakish speed over a single morning. The silence for which they have been longing is unsettling, the sound of nothing and no one and nowhere. They cannot re-establish contact with Geneva. Mikal and Arvind do an EVA but can find nothing wrong with the transmitters. EVAs are energy-hungry. Each one shortens their remaining lives by eight days. They vote against a second. Unless a ship falls from the sky there will be no more contact. Mikal says, “Los Angeles may burn and we will never know.”

Suki suggests that they reduce their daily calorie intake, down to a thousand for Arvind and Mikal, down to eight hundred for Clare and Suki herself.

Mikal says, “Clare is pregnant.”

“So we should give up food for someone who will never be born?” says Suki.

Mikal says, “We should kill a child so that you can live a month longer?”

Arvind stands and leaves the room. Clare thinks, he is playing the long game, he is preserving his energy, he will last the longest.

They can smell ammonia on one another’s breath.

An alarm goes off. There is a structural problem of some kind in North 2. The stresses of the storm perhaps. They do not have the strength to suit up and run ultrasound checks so they simply seal it off.

No one is exercising anymore. Suki falls again and breaks her ankle. Clare offers her as much pain relief as she wants.

She can feel the baby moving. She scans herself. It is a boy. She dares not give it a name.

They watch Ocean’s Eleven, The Princess Bride, The Bridges of Madison County . Clare stays in another room, reading or playing games. She cannot bear to see pictures of earth.

Arvind says, “I miss the sensation of wet grass under my feet.”

Clare says, “For Christ’s sake, Arvind.”

Suki takes Moxin. They reopen North 2, put her inside and reseal it.

There was a group of five skinny brown boys who spent every afternoon on the wooden diving platform. She and Peter ate chickpeas with cow’s feet and vegetables in the café at the top of the beach.

“ Eu gostaria Orangina, por favor? ”

She was stung by a jellyfish on the second day and had to keep her foot in a bucket of ice for the rest of the evening. Peter told her about Atlit Yam, the oldest stone circle in the world, built circa 7000 BC, underwater near Haifa. He told her about the Hurlers on Bodmin Moor, the Merry Maidens, the Nine Ladies, the Twelve Apostles. They lay on the bed naked in the afternoon. Beams of dusty sunlight, the sound of splashing outside and tinny Brazilian pop from Jordão’s cheap speakers. Then she got the phone call from the hospital saying that her mother had suffered a stroke.