Page 87 of The End of the World As We Know It
“Only you,” Joslin says. “Damn I feel so…” He says no more. His breathing is low and fast, wet and cloggy. Gemma hears a soft thud and imagines Joslin resting his head on the desk.
“Joslin?” Lizzie asks. “Joslin, what do we do? What do we do?!”
“We go round and round,” Gemma says. “Eight days, or twelve. A hundred orbits, or two. And we watch the world die.”
“No!” Lizzie says. “We take her down, right, Matt? We takeDiscoverydown!”
Gemma drifts back down through the hatch, and this time she does not look away from the air lock.
There is no voice. The scratching has ceased, as if he’s allowing her grief.A graceful man, she thinks, without knowing why, but his grace is horrifying, like the dance of fire in zero gravity.
The Graceful Man’s silence is the worst thing she has ever heard.
Passing over the Atlantic Ocean they picked up a distress call from a cruise ship that was adrift with no crew left alive or able to work. The call was from a seven-year-old child whose mother was telling her how to use the radio. The girl was fine. She said her mommy was feeling poorly and a man had fallen over in the kids’ play area.
Approaching Europe, Matt tuned into several big news agencies and listened to the reports. All of them were dreadful and tragic. None projected hope. A French channel broadcast what appeared to be a series of public executions of government officials. An English voice talked of skirmishes all along the south coast as boats from Europe attempted to land. One Spanish radio station played frantic guitar music with the presenter coughing and shouting over the top. Matt was pleased he didn’t speak Spanish.
He understood enough, though. He felt like that kid on the ocean liner, adrift and asking for help from a world that no longer had the ability to care.I’m mission commander, he thought, but the fact that there was no longer a mission and the only thing left to command was a dying crew…
He hated to think of them and himself like that, but it was the truth.
“I feel like that kid on the ship,” Lizzie said, and Matt laughed. There was no other way to react. “So, I’ve been thinking…” she said, but a noise from behind silenced her.
Gemma came up from mid-deck and gave them both a foodpacket. They were half-empty, the leftovers from yesterday. They’d stopped tasting of anything, but Matt still ate, and drank from the water bottle by his seat.
“Thinking what?” Gemma asked. She was quieter than ever now, eyes wide, the skin around them dark from exhaustion. She didn’t want to sleep, she said, because she wanted to grasp every minute left to them.
Matt heard the lie every time she spoke it, because she was grasping nothing. Gemma hung around on mid-deck most of the time, staring at the air lock entrance, sometimes with her head cocked. She watched them with those wide eyes, hardly saying anything.
“Nothing,” Lizzie said. “Just thinking.”
“Thinking about how we finish things,” Gemma said.
Lizzie caught Matt’s eye. He’d been thinking about that, too. There would soon come a day when the food ran out. It would be a long time before the water was gone, and he knew they could live for weeks without food, but they’d weaken, fade, and if they were going to do something…
“Yes,” Matt said. It needed saying. “Thinking about how we do that, when the time comes.”
“Time came days ago,” Gemma said. “Everything’s worse. Nothing’s better down there. Joslin’s rotting in Mission Control.”
“We can’t try to land,” Matt said. He was worried they were about to have that discussion again. But Gemma surprised him by nodding, smiling, and he thought it was the first time she’d smiled in a while.
“How long would we stay in orbit?” Gemma asked.
“A good while,” Lizzie said. “Years. Maybe a lot of years.”
“And our payload?” Gemma asked.
“Eventually our orbit will decay, and we’ll skim the atmosphere. Probably too shallow, andDiscoverywill come apart high up, and Matt says…” She looked at Matt, the truth that they’d already been discussing this now hanging between them.
“That high up, pollution from the warheads shouldn’t cause toomuch trouble down on the surface,” he said. “It’ll just be added to the upper atmosphere.”
“And so will we,” Gemma said. Matt and Lizzie followed her gaze through the window. “Kinda beautiful.”
“But that time’s not yet,” Matt said. “So how about you grab that illicit bottle of Jack I brought on board?”
Lizzie raised her eyebrows. “You’ve waited tilnow?”
“In the small locker behind my sleeping bag.”
