The Echo

‘Of course you do, Brother.’

‘You didn’t. You said you were going to bed, but then you were back again. You didn’t even leave.’

‘I did,’ he says. ‘I slept in the room here. Four hours, that’s all I need.’

‘Every night?’

‘Nowadays, sure. Sometimes it’s less. Sometimes more.’

‘Okay,’ I say. I think about talking to him more, but then it strikes me that he is already gone: that the slight hiss on the connection when he is listening to me is no longer there, and that in this bed I am all alone. So I talk to myself. We used to talk in bed, as children: every night before we went to sleep we would lie there, in the darkness, and we would go through what had happened. I don’t know when or why it began, but it was a habit. An addiction. It was something we always did. Our mother used to say that we jabbered ourselves to sleep. It wasn’t until we were sixteen and we moved into a new house in the city, away from the farm that we grew up on, that we were given separate rooms. I felt the space there, so I carried on talking into the darkness. It was only then that I realized it had always been that way. It wasn’t a conversation. We told each other what had happened, but we were actually talking to ourselves. Without him it was the same. I told myself what had happened, and I told myself what was going to happen on the next day. Look back, then peer forward. As an adult, speaking to myself, I pictured myself as a scientist, in a white coat, standing at the front delivering a lecture or a sermon. Increasingly, I could feel the pull of becoming somebody great. I wonder if he still does it now, with his baker lying next to him: if he mumbles to himself as I do, barely comprehensible but understandable by my own ears.

Here and now, I talk to myself. I tell myself what happened in the day that has just been, and before that, back to the last time I remember sleep as it is here: in a bed, and of my own volition.

4 (#ud7e19d1d-40b4-5ffa-87c0-fa4253665716)

I sleep, and there are dreams, but I do not remember them. I suppose that’s better, sometimes: to not have that looseness concerning their reality. When I wake up, I forget where I am for a second, because I could be anywhere but here. I push the lid of the bed and it opens upwards, and I see that they are all crowded around Tobi’s bed: I can see the back of her head, and I can see Inna peering into her eye, shining a light in there. I am selfish. I worry about my own being first, checking myself before asking about her. The white spots in my vision are gone, but my gut still creaks, and my body hurts. I do not know how long I slept for, because there is only a constant darkness outside to judge it from, and there are no clocks visible from here. I unclip myself and push up, turning to look at them. Wallace is here looking at Tobi with Inna, and he nods at me in that way that comfortable men do: dipping his head, no smile on his face. This is my good morning.

‘How is she?’ I ask.

‘I’m fine,’ Tobi says. ‘Freaked out, maybe.’ She nods at Inna, who lifts a screen to Tobi’s face. It mirrors Tobi’s eye back at her. I can see it from here as well: the sclera completely red, the cornea and pupil a muddy brown, floating in the midst of the bloody mess. I can see Tobi struggle to hold it together, her eyelid twitching, but she manages. ‘How did it happen?’ she asks. Her voice sounds dulled and slow, and somehow using a slightly lower register than usual. Perhaps she is still sedated, or the effects are wearing off: I can imagine Inna wanting to ease her into this, in case the shock causes a relapse of whatever her fit before was.

‘It’s nothing to be scared of. Sometimes, bleeds can happen in the eye. They’re as full of veins as the rest of you, and they’re tiny. It was most likely the pressure up here.’ She says that as if there’s a direction. So curious: we call space Up, and yet we’re just as likely to be below where we started at any given time. Up makes it easier to understand, I suppose. ‘It’ll pass. I’ve checked that it’s nothing insidious, and it’s not. It’s just a bloody vein. Like a cut, but it shouldn’t even hurt. Does it hurt?’

‘No,’ Tobi says.

‘And it won’t affect your vision. It’s just a bleed. You’ll be fine, honestly.’

‘Just a bleed,’ Tobi repeats. She pulls on her cheek, pulling it down so that she can see as much of her eye as possible. She looks from left to right, and she blinks, as if that might suddenly fix it. ‘I thought I was dying,’ she says. According to her file she’s survived two plane crashes. Maybe that was different. She rolls the eye around, looking to see if the red ends anywhere. ‘Is it a bad one?’

‘It’s nothing,’ Inna says. ‘I’m more worried about the fitting. You’ve had that before?’

‘When I was younger,’ Tobi says.

‘It wasn’t on your records,’ Inna says.

‘It nearly stopped me getting into the air force. But I was tested. I was cleared.’

‘Must be the pressure up here,’ Inna says. ‘Don’t worry about it. We can keep it under control.’ She smiles at Tobi: this isn’t her fault. ‘I’ll be back,’ she says, and she leaves Tobi magnetically clipped to the bed. Inna pulls herself over to me, smiling, but I can tell that she doesn’t mean the curves at the edge of her mouth.

‘You slept well?’ she asks.

‘Fine,’ I say.

‘Sunspots gone?’

‘Gone,’ I tell her. I blink a few times, to check, but my vision’s clear. Tobi has taken my cross. ‘She’s okay?’

‘Did you know that she was ill when she was a child?’

‘No, Tomas did the medical checks. Wait,’ I say. I call him, but Simpson answers. He asks what’s wrong, and I tell him nothing. I tell him I’ll call back later, as if he is just down the road, as if this is all meaningless. ‘Is she okay? Can she perform her duties?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ Inna says. ‘But I didn’t have it logged. I am meant to know if there’s something could go wrong.’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

‘Don’t you know any of the medical conditions on this ship?’ she asks.

‘Tomas did it all,’ I say again. ‘I focused on the technical side. I am more like that, I think.’ She is quiet. She looks into my eyes, examining me, checking that I’m okay. ‘My gut is still churning,’ I say.

‘You’re probably hungry,’ she says. ‘You should eat something. We’ve eaten without you. We thought we should leave you to sleep. We asked Tomas, and he agreed.’ I was cut out of the loop, I think. I was, for a second, useless to them.

‘Did you sleep as well?’ I ask. I don’t want to be the only one who is struggling. I want them all to be crumbling, and I will be the glue.

‘For a few hours,’ she says, but I think that she’s lying. I detach myself and she reaches out her hand. She pulls me to the side, to the bar, as if I need her help. I cling on, and try to stretch out – back pushed forward, feet pointed, arms reaching for the side. I wonder if I look as ungraceful as I feel. ‘You’ll get used to this,’ she says, meaning everything, not just the lack of gravity.

‘I’m no good at it,’ I say.

‘You’re getting there,’ she lies again. I wonder if it’s something she does a lot: professional falsity. Or, maybe, it’s something she does with me, to make me feel better. A happy leader is a successful leader.

‘I am useless. I have never been one of those people with balance.’ This hurts more than I thought it would, because I am tensing all my muscles. I let go of the side-rail and drift out, and I crane my whole body around, trying to turn. If I can turn I can control this better, I think. I see Tobi, still there on her bed. Her eye is as if she’s been shot. Wallace is with her, consoling her. He is making her laugh, or he is laughing and she is watching him, but she is moving on. Rallying herself. I get distracted, and suddenly I’m not near the rail. Inna’s hand grabs me and pulls me back.

‘Easy to get adrift. No walks until you’re steady with this, okay?’

‘Like you could stop me,’ I say.

‘Try me.’ I feel more stirring; my gut, my groin. My entire body, reaching out for something more than I currently have. I look away, towards the cockpit, where Hikaru is either still on duty or back on duty, and Lennox is keeping him company. They are not talking, though: instead they are running the tests. It’s constant, testing. This is the difference between our mission and whatever it was they were doing on the Ishiguro.

‘I should see if they’re all right,’ I tell Inna.

‘Want a push over there?’ She is playful with it, but I am too uneasy, still. I have no desire to make a fool of myself any more than I already have.

‘No,’ I say. ‘I’ll crawl.’ She pulls her hands back and swats them together, as if washing them clean of me, and she pushes off, back towards Tobi. She puts her hand on Tobi’s back to console her, and Tobi looks at her with her one bloody eye, and she pulls a face: resilient and powerful. I cling on for what feels like minutes, and then wonder if I can’t move on.

This is a mission. It has always been clear to us, to Tomas and myself, that it is, and that it should be treated with the utmost seriousness. It may not be glorious, not yet, but there has never been an actual mission to space. Before this, everything was simply to see if we could do it. It was a desire, a proving of ourselves as a collective people. Breaking Earth’s atmosphere? We can reach it. The moon? We can land on it. It was showing off, puffing out our chests, planting flags. This time, there is a reason to be here. The Ishiguro was the most selfish, vainglorious expedition. Dr Singer’s research was only an afterthought, a bonus thing that he could do while they were up there. It didn’t matter, because what mattered was how shiny the crew were, how beautiful, how unstable.

We have a task, and it’s hugely important. I look at the results of the anomaly while we are up here, and I think that we do not know what this is: that it is so far beyond our comprehension that this discovery, this mission, it could change everything. It could be the thing that realizes our position in the universe. People search their entire lives for an answer, and maybe this is it: maybe this anomaly might give us a clue as to our beginnings. It will not be showy, and it will not be glorious, but it might be an answer.

A scientist wants nothing more.

We spend the day running tests. One of the things that we can do, as we get closer to the anomaly, is to discover its span: to see how wide it is, what expanse of space it actually covers. We have measured it from Earth, of course, plotting the space that it doesn’t fill, but from here we can be exact. Accuracy is easier up close. Wallace and Lennox and myself establish the equipment and run the software. The ship will do everything once the programs start running. We have scanners on here, deep-range systems that will be able to search further than anyone has ever searched. It’s a grab bag, a huge potluck of whether you get anything useful or not. When the software is running, Wallace shows myself and Lennox how it works, even though I already know. I helped design it. There is a room dedicated to my work: the lab, I called it in the early days of development. A room off the corridor, opposite the changing rooms and the airlock, and small, but enough space for the screens that I will need. Above all it is somewhere quiet for me to work. When the software is running, both Wallace and Lennox go to get some sleep. I stay here alone and attach myself to the bench in front of the console. I bring up the screens: 3D visualizations of the results from the pings being sent out, a map of the area of space we’re charting being drawn and constructed in real-time, and I’m able to zoom and pan and focus and highlight it as much as I like. I see the outline of the anomaly starting to be drawn: a patch of nothingness amongst the stars in the distance, surrounded by space. I spin the scene with my fingers, look at it from every angle, and I call Tomas.

‘This is incredible,’ I say to him.

‘I know,’ he says. He has an exact replica of my screens on Earth, showing him real-time – or as close to real-time as the lag will allow – what I am looking at.

‘Did you know about Tobi?’ I ask.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘It wasn’t important, I didn’t think. It was a long time ago. We certainly didn’t expect it again.’