The Quality of Silence

by Rosamund Lupton

  ‘When astronauts first went into space,’ Yasmin said. ‘They took photos of Earth. And then everyone could see that it was just one planet; a beautiful blue planet in the darkness of space.’

  ‘Animals and birds don’t know about countries,’ Matt said. ‘Some of them migrate for thousands of miles, all the way across the world. It’s just one planet for them too.’

  ‘You’re fucking tree huggers now?’ Jack said, but he’d stopped walking towards the aputiak.

  ‘Just saying we have a bigger picture than yours,’ Matt said. He turned to Grayling. ‘And you haven’t convinced me. Not yet.’

  ‘The truth is, the reality is, we do have individual territories,’ Grayling said. ‘And people fight each other over oil. And we send our boys to die overseas.’

  ‘You think fracking will end wars?’ Matt asked.

  He heard a sound behind him and turned to grab hold of Ruby, put his body between her and these men, but it was just the strengthening wind disturbing a pile of waste containers behind them.

  I’ve got right to the top, because when I went a little bit further my feet were going downwards, so I came back to here.

  The wind is slapping my face WHACK! WHACK!

  I can’t see any stars, just the dark and snow coming down and down, like fuzzy cold white blossom.

  Up there, above where the blossom snow comes from, are satellites.

  I remember Dad in Scotland, telling me what to do. I take Dad’s terminal out of the backpack and turn up my laptop screen to the brightest it will go, but it’s still hard to see where to put the cable to link the laptop to the terminal. I try and feel for the holes with my gloves but it’s super-fiddly. I take my gloves off and just use the thin liners.

  I’ve linked them up and done what Daddy showed me to do. My keyboard isn’t freezing because of the special cover.

  The terminal is looking for a satellite up in space. On the screen it says ‘Searching . . .’

  I open up Dad’s and my blog with the photos and co-ordinates, which are where the animals died all along the river. When the terminal finds a satellite, I’m going to publish it, even the silly bits with me talking to Daddy because I don’t have time to delete them. I hope Daddy doesn’t mind that I’m doing this because it’s an emergency.

  My fingers are getting really cold.

  It still says ‘Searching . . .’

  Mum said that a group of satellites are called a constellation, just like stars. But I think there’ll only be one or two above me here.

  There were no flames in the bonfire; just ash glowing in pockmarked red spots. Yasmin’s stomach hurt from needing to be with Ruby, she could feel her fingers trying to grasp at a child who wasn’t there.

  Matt was arguing with Grayling and Jack, trying to keep their focus on him, telling them that the next wars would be fought over clean water. Yasmin thought that Jack’s patriotism was thin and fragile as an eggshell; that it was muscular greed and entitlement that motivated him and, at any moment, he’d cut this short and go to the aputiak; discover Ruby had gone. Jack would kill them without pity or compunction, she knew that, but there was a chance Grayling might stop him.

  ‘Do you know how much water it takes to frack a single well?’ Matt asked. ‘Five million gallons. Which is legally polluted by poisonous chemicals to turn it into fracking fluid. No one knows how to dispose of it. That’s without any leak into the groundwater, the aquifers, the rivers.’

  He spoke with conviction, his knowledge of fracking from the villagers’ campaign, but his focus was still on the darkness; as if he’d be able to catch a glimpse of Ruby if he stared at it hard enough.

  ‘It’s clean water that’s going to be as precious as fuel one day,’ Matt continued. ‘More so, because you can cut down your energy needs; if it gets desperate you can go back to how we lived before electricity or the car was even invented. Live like the Inupiaq. But water is essential for life itself and it’s global. Wars over water won’t be for power, like they are now, but for survival.’

  ‘I’ve listened to enough,’ Jack said. He turned to Grayling, ‘I’ll start the chopper. You get the terminal and laptop.’

  Grayling didn’t move. It would be Jack who flew the helicopter away from here, Yasmin thought, but she didn’t know if Grayling would be his passenger.

  ‘We can’t leave them,’ Grayling said. ‘They have no shelter. No means of keeping warm.’

  ‘But you will leave them, Davey. Just like you didn’t tell your pals where they were in the storm.’

  ‘I thought I could find them myself and—’

  ‘Still haven’t told your pals where they are now, have you?’

  Jack was walking towards the aputiak. Grayling didn’t reply.

  ‘Davey’s the eldest,’ Jack said. ‘Eleven cousins, and him at the top. He likes people to look up to him, always has. Even as a boy he had to be admired. The good boy; the good guy; the state trooper. Even his son died patriotically – that’s the image, isn’t it, Davey?’

  Grayling was silent. They reached the aputiak, lit from inside by the kudlik. The pale yellow light caught on their goggles, reflecting tiny images of itself.

  Matt saw a gleam of light on metal. Jack was levelling his gun at the aputiak. He and Grayling thought Ruby was inside.

  ‘I never intended this,’ Jack said, anger in his voice. ‘But you left me no fucking option.’

  A sound cracked through the falling snow, metal punctured through the snow walls. Yasmin screamed.

  ‘It’s much kinder to do it quickly,’ Jack said and Matt thought that he believed his crime would be less if the time taken to die was less.

  He fired another bullet at the aputiak. Yasmin wanted to shout a warning to Ruby that the man had a gun and to hide.

  He fired again and she thought about the tree falling, the sound turning into a mossy tremble, a leaf brushing against Ruby’s cheek; she was trying to think calm things for Ruby, as if that would help her.

  The qulliq inside the aputiak, dampened by falling snow and ice, was extinguished.

  Jack switched on his torch. It glinted on the badge Grayling’s arm and then shone on his face. He had barely reacted.

  Jack went into the half-destroyed aputiak and found no child; instead a dead husky mutilated by bullets. Matt saw that the dog enraged him.

  It’s taking so long. I’m thinking of the paint-splattered purple heather in Scotland and Dad’s funny Superman T-shirt and being warm but it’s pitch-black-dark and so so cold. I think of Dad up here, all on his own, and I must be brave too.

  I’ve got a picture of a flashing satellite!!

  Our blog is publishing onto the net. All the pictures and the co-ordinates and everything!

  But we don’t have any followers for our blog. Not one. Nobody even knows about it. No one will see it and help.

  I can’t see the yellow glow from the aputiak or the orange bonfire dot. I don’t know how to get back to Mum and Dad.

  Jack made Matt and Yasmin take off their jackets, face-masks and goggles. As he locked their protective clothes in the helicopter, they ran from him towards the hill, because surely that’s where Ruby had gone, the place where Matt had sent his emails. Without arctic protection, they quickly lost body heat and their muscles became weaker and they couldn’t run fast.

  A searchlight from the helicopter shone out into the darkness. Jack was looking for Ruby. He swung the beam towards the hill. A child was illuminated at the top, silhouetted through the falling snow.

  * * *

  There’s a bright light from down the hill, really really bright. I want to think it’s Dad or Mum looking for me but I don’t think it is.

  I open up Twitter. I have to type super-carefully because if I make a mistake in the blog address no one will be able to help us. My fingers hurt so much, like I’m tearing them out of barbed wire but I can’t type in gloves. I remember what Mum told me.

  @Words_No_Sounds

  653 followers

 
; help us follow link aweekinalaskablog.com anaktue villagers dead b4 fire long nos r longitude & latitude add decimal points and minus

  I don’t know if it’s night or day here or at home but somewhere in the world it’s day, the part that’s twizzled on the string to face the sun. And someone will be awake and read my tweet and be a grown-up and know what to do.

  The bright light goes off and it’s all dark now.

  Yasmin was holding the torch, Matt next to her. She heard Grayling calling to them but didn’t stop, stumbling on over the ice and snow. Jack ran past, holding a gun and a torch. The cold was shutting down her body’s ability to keep functioning and she felt her mind clouding around one sharp bright splinter of need to protect Ruby. Then Grayling had grabbed her, and was giving her their jackets and face masks and goggles. They hurriedly put them on. Grayling continued ahead of them.

  * * *

  My fingers feel so funny; like they’re numb and hurt at the same time.

  Our blog doesn’t have where we are because that was the last email Dad sent of the stars, and I didn’t put the stars on our blog. I go into Mum’s emails. I’m copying the numbers under the photo of the stars. Dad must know how much she loves stars. Then I open up Twitter and paste the numbers. I put in the minus and the decimal, just like Mum did. But I keep making mistakes because my fingers aren’t working properly.

  Grayling was far ahead of the parents now because he was already properly dressed in arctic clothes. He’d turned off the searchlight on the chopper to try and slow Jack’s hunt for the child. Now his torch showed Jack a hundred or so metres in front of him. He sprinted over the snow and ice, his chest burning as the frozen air was dragged deep inside his lungs.

  When Yasmin had told him that the little girl was asleep inside the aputiak he’d known she was lying. He’d seen the parents’ faces and recognised their terror.

  He’d felt the same when Timothy was fighting in Iraq and he didn’t know day to day, hour to hour, if he was still alive. So he’d known all along that their child wasn’t inside; that they didn’t know where she was. He was a good detective, not hard for him to deduce the parents were engaging him and Jack in arguments to stop them going after their daughter.

  He was gaining on Jack. Just twenty metres ahead now.

  From the beginning of this, he’d lacked integrity and chosen to be blind; chosen to believe that Jack wouldn’t hurt them, not because he had faith in Jack’s good character, but because otherwise he himself would have been a part of something wicked.

  Then Jack had shot at the aputiak, thinking he was shooting the little girl, and there was no hiding any more from Jack’s viciousness or his own culpability. When he saw bullets puncturing through the snow walls of the aputiak, he’d seen that there was no bigger picture; there could be no evil greater than this and therefore no justifying greater good.

  He’d felt as if something in him had woken up and stood straight again.

  A few paces ahead of him, Jack stopped. He shone his torch at the child, two hundred metres away, and then he took aim with his gun. Grayling stood in front of him to shield her from his bullet.

  My bracelet vibrates and I want to take it off. I want to hear stillness. I crouch down so it’ll be harder for the bad man to see me. My fingers won’t work but I’ve typed the tweet now.

  @Words_No_Sounds

  653 followers

  69.602132, -147.680371 we r here on hill by fracking wells help us I think he has gun

  Grayling lay on the snow and instead of pain felt strangely warm. It was snowing down on his face and he felt the land under his body and all around him. Yasmin had been right to accuse him of protecting himself and self-interest. Because in some peculiar way he’d believed that if he cared enough to try to prevent war for oil, broke all the rules and laws, then someone a decade ago, a father like him, would have cared enough too and war would have ended sooner and Timothy would still be alive, his face smiling at something he’d explain to his Dad in a minute, not buried in a coffin unrecognisable. Of course it didn’t work like that, he knew that; laws of reality didn’t bend and change themselves to accommodate his irrational emotional truth. Perhaps it was simply that he hadn’t wanted another parent to suffer preventable grief; caustic as battery acid in your throat and gut and eyelids when you tried to sleep; never wanted another human being to know that hurt. And thou no breath at all. So he’d chosen to believe Jack, chosen to look at a bigger picture and not at the ugliness involved in its creation. Timothy’s beautiful face. Jack had exploited his love for his son and his love for his country; the two loves that made him who he was. And his love had been mutilated into something else. He felt the land scarred around him, bleeding poison.

  I’m waiting and waiting for my tweets to post. But somewhere above me in space is a satellite. And Dad’s little box is like the catch-your-breath-amazing Tudor mollusc, and I will get a connection and it will all be OK. Because the internet is like the magnetosphere covering the whole world.

  Matt and Yasmin saw the light from Jack’s torch, going up the steep slope. They were powerless to get to Ruby before him. Yasmin knew that nobody would come to their aid. No one would come and no one would know. Years could pass, decades, centuries even, without anyone coming here.

  My tweets have posted!! I try and do the ‘Hoorah!!’ sign but I can’t feel my hands at all. They don’t even hurt. I wish they would hurt.

  There’s a torch coming towards me through the dark. I hope that it’s Mum and Dad but I don’t think it is.

  There’s an animal in front of my laptop screen, really close – an arctic hare; its eyes shiny bright like it’s interested in my laptop.

  Someone has tweeted me back already! Then another person! And another! That awesome-sauce fast! That super-coolio amazing! They are superb lyrebird chicks and three-wattled baby bellbirds!

  The hare goes stock still and I know it’s afraid. Maybe the tweets make a noise, like a PING, which scare it, but Dad turned off the sound on my laptop.

  The torch is really close.

  I don’t know where to run.

  He’s here. I turn my laptop screen at him so I can see him. He has a gun. He takes my laptop.

  He’s got his gun in one hand my laptop in the other. He’s reading the tweets and the light of the screen reflects on his goggles. I hope there’s more and more tweets because then he’ll keep on reading and he won’t point his gun at me and Mum and Dad might get to me.

  He throws my laptop onto the snow. I want to read the tweets but he shoots my laptop over and over and my bracelet vibrates and vibrates and vibrates, making my arm tingle like it’s going to be sick; and my laptop is thousands of tiny pieces freckling the snow.

  I think he’ll shoot me now.

  He’s turning away from me.

  The light of his torch is getting smaller and smaller. It’s just a tiny pinprick and now it’s nothing at all.

  He’s gone!

  I think he saw that their tweets are like gossip feathers and he could never pick them all up.

  I don’t have the light from my laptop any more. No light at all.

  Dark dark black.

  I think about the night swallowing all the days and I like thinking that, because it’s like the whale swallowing Raven, and inside the dark whale his heart and soul were a girl who was dancing.

  A light is coming towards me, going up and down because the person is running and I see Mum and Dad.

  Dad bends down and hugs me and Mum’s taking off her big mittens and she puts them over my hands. She has frozen tears inside her goggles. She blows her breath into the mittens on my hands.

  I want to tell them that my words were stronger than his bullets.

  And I want to tell them that the superb lyrebird chicks and three-wattled baby bellbirds are making sure everyone knows about the poor people at Anaktue and the animals and they are getting us help.

  In the light from Dad’s torch, white snowflakes are flickering down from the sk
y and I think that their typed words to me aren’t like feathers at all but snowflakes and they reached us here, falling all around us.

  Snow makes no sound when it falls.

  We wait here, the three of us, close together for ages and ages. There are stars above us and I think of the baby birds learning the night sky so they can fly home. There’s a little new light in the sky, like a slow shooting star, coming towards us. But I know that there’s no such things as shooting stars.

  Mum’s still blowing her breath inside my mittens, all steamy warm.

  A ball of snow starts moving, then another and another; arctic hares are uncurling themselves from the snow. They lollop off across the snow into the dark.

  I can feel my fingers again and I have a voice.

  It is here, in this bad, that we reach

  The last purity of the knowledge of good.

  Wallace Stevens

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  I want to thank the following people for so generously sharing their knowledge with me. Any errors I have made are entirely my own:

  Jacob Tompkins, expert in hydrology and MD of Waterwise, and a passionate and brilliant advocator of the importance and value of clean water

  Jimmy Stotts, President of the Alaska branch of Inuit Circumpolar Council

  Dr Sebastian Hendricks, consultant in paediatric audiovestibular medicine (specialist for hearing and balance problems in children)

  Dr Amir Sam, senior lecturer at Imperial College and consultant endocrinologist

  Dr Rob Scott, physicist currently working with the UK Space Agency and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory’s Earth and Atmospheric Science Division

  Gerry Gillespie,aeronautical engineer and provider of excellent machine stories

  Jean Straus, journalist and reviewer for Action on Hearing Loss

  The Farnham Astronomical society

  For their creative help with this novel, I’d like to thank the following people:

  First and foremost, Felicity Blunt at Curtis Brown who saw the novel when it began as a single image and has been a driving force ever since. I could not have written it without her intelligence, imaginative criticism and insight.