AUGUSTINE’S RADIO SEARCH had proceeded with the anticipated level of success—none. But he persevered anyway. It was a familiar momentum, the fierce determination that had guided him over the years, the cutthroat struggle to achieve, to possess, to understand; his coldhearted quest for knowledge. But it was different this time: here, at the end of it all, he had given up on triumph and was persisting for reasons beyond ambition, for reasons he didn’t fully understand. In the control room on the third floor he set up shop in front of the south-facing window, looking out over the tundra that stretched down toward warmer climes. While he scanned the frequencies he reclined on a wheeled chair upholstered with supple black leather, appropriated from the director’s office on the first floor. With the heap of outdated radio equipment in front of him and the sepia globe he’d salvaged from one of the outbuildings to his right, he would settle in for the day, prop his feet up on the filing cabinet just beside the table and lazily spin the globe as he scanned the airwaves, letting his finger drag through the oceans, across the continents. Initially, he made notes about which bands he’d searched, but as time wore on and he’d searched them all several times over, he let his method become more whimsical, tuning the frequencies like picking tarot cards from a fortune-teller’s deck.
Most of the time, Iris read at the table across the room. He guessed that she had read the Arctic field guide from cover to cover a few times over before she put it down, and from there she moved on to an astronomy text he’d found shoved into one of the research assistants’ lockers, the cover laminated and marked with a Dewey decimal sticker, forgotten in the chaos of the evac. A rogue library book, far from home—how fitting, he thought, as she buffed the smudged covers with the sleeve of her shirt, then smeared them with new fingerprints as she read. Their silence was companionable as they sat at opposite ends of the control room, engrossed in their solitary projects.
He let his mind wander to the mystery of her proximity: sitting with him in the control room, and more broadly, joining him here at the end of civilization—the edge of humanity, measured in both time and space. He wondered how it had happened, how she had arrived here and how she had stayed, where she came from, whom she belonged to, whether she had any feelings on these subjects; she never once said anything about it, and it was somehow unimaginable that she ever would. She was a puzzle, but she was his puzzle, and her presence kept him working, kept him striving without rational expectation of success. It was possible, he mused, that she was what had kept him alive this long.
AUGUSTINE DIDN’T SLEEP that night after he and Iris returned from the tundra. He tried, but by the time Iris began to make her wordless sleep sounds he knew it was futile. He extracted himself from the sleeping bags as quietly as he could, the synthetic whisper of the fabric hushing him as he slithered out onto the cold floor. At the ham station he plugged his headset into the receiver and switched the equipment on. Outside the window the tundra glowed blue under the yellow-pink blush of the full moon. He settled into his chair to listen to the white noise from the radio waves. Now and then he glanced at the swell beneath the sleeping bags to make sure she was still there, her chest still rising and falling, perhaps accompanied by the slight twitch of an unconscious mind tickling the nerves of an arm or a leg.
The tuner scanned automatically. Augie pulled out one of the Arctic atlases that had been gathering dust in the control room, holding it on his lap while he listened, flipping through the pages. He eventually came to the well-worn map of Lake Hazen in the center of the book, an enormous body of water roughly fifty miles east of the observatory, where the researchers used to fish in their free time. Augie could recall a number of trips being organized, trips he never went on, though he was always invited, and countless stories being told, stories he never listened to. Fishing trips are for terrestrials, he would scoff to himself, and return to the images of some distant galaxy. When he needed time off, he preferred the exotic glamor of other places—tropical beaches, expensive resorts, dense jungles. Yet now—the journey was feasible. The destination was desirable, in fact. Perhaps a journey was just what he and Iris needed: an adventure to welcome the strengthening light. The year-round snow and ice of the mountain would give way to wildflowers and warm breezes down by the lake, closer to sea level. Perhaps the change would do his small companion some good. Perhaps it would do them both good. Supposedly some of the warmest temperatures on the archipelago had been recorded there: as balmy as the low seventies in high summer. Augie let his finger drift along the length of the blue outline in the atlas, tracing the long slope of its western shore. And why shouldn’t they go? He had been listening to white noise and transmitting into the void for long enough. Hope dwindled in the face of probability. He needed a change. If they left soon they could use one of the snowmobiles from the hangar. The snow cover wouldn’t last forever, but there was time.
He lifted the ear of his headset and listened to Iris breathe for a moment before letting the earphone slap back against the side of his head. Augustine felt like an animal awakening after a long wintry sleep. Perhaps they would even find something useful at the lake, something like—and suddenly he remembered. He slid the headset down to hang around his neck so that he could hear his own thoughts without the stuttering static. The shore of Lake Hazen had boasted a small seasonally staffed weather station for decades, since the 1950s, back when radio communication was their only option. He recalled the aerial array he’d seen in more recent photographs of the station—vastly superior to his own antenna here at the observatory. It followed that their transmitting equipment would be more powerful as well. He snapped the atlas shut. Another reason. It was settled. They would go.
He was scribbling plans and supply lists when the sun came up and Iris began to stir. She stood up with a sleeping bag wrapped around her like a long, hooded cloak and shuffled over to where he sat, her new hairdo jutting out in unexpected directions. She touched the pad he was writing on and then let her hand rest on his shoulder, shrugging as if to say What gives? He covered her hand with his and turned his chair to face her.
“Let’s take a trip.”
EIGHT
“WHAT THE HELL have you done?” Ivanov shouted at Tal. Tal was brandishing his radar tablet like a weapon. Their voices boomed around the centrifuge, drawing everyone toward them.
“I haven’t bloody done anything,” Tal shouted back, his face beet red. “I’ve been looking at this screen all morning and there’s been nothing—no debris, no asteroids, nothing within fifty fucking miles.”
“Well, something’s collided with the antenna, no? Perhaps as we’re in the main asteroid belt it was a fucking asteroid, no? Or do you think the dish just fell off?”
“Enough!” Harper shouted. “That’s enough.”
Tal threw the tablet onto his bunk and walked over to the cooking range, turning his back to the group while he collected himself. The veins in Ivanov’s neck still bulged, but he folded his arms across his chest and kept his mouth shut for the time being.