by Luiza Sauma
She can still hear the hum of electricity, the Hub’s mysterious processes. How much longer will it run for? Since it’s solar-powered, perhaps for ever. No – human creations don’t last as long as stars, moons and planets. The Hub will disintegrate, through lack of use. All the walls will eventually fall down. Alien moss and mould will grow in the Nyxians’ dirty sheets. By the time humans return to the planet, there will be complex ecosystems thriving in the building. The Hub will have taken on a faded grandeur, like those ruins in Detroit everyone went crazy for. Oh, what dreams they had, when they built this opulent theatre, this proud mansion, this state-of-the-art human colony on another planet. There’s nothing more poignant than the remnants of hope.
The control-room doors slide open with a gentle push. Iris is momentarily dazzled by the light from the curved panel of windows. The room looks like it’s been empty for years, not weeks. Or has it been months? She can’t remember. Two chairs lie on their sides on the ground. There is sand everywhere. A fine dust hangs in the air. The control panel is filthy, the buttons covered in smudges. Half a dozen fire-bugs fly around, their buzzing twice as loud as the hum of the machines. This is where it ends.
She crouches down under the control panel and crawls on her hands and knees as far as she can go, with her enormous belly brushing the floor. There it is, swerving to the left, as Abby described it: the mouth of a black tunnel, just big enough to squeeze through. Iris drags herself, gathering dirt from all sides. The heat of her body warms the tunnel, making her feel sweaty and claustrophobic. What if I get stuck? The only way to pass would be to give birth. But she doesn’t get stuck. At the end, she stands up in a small chamber. There’s a window to the outside, around five foot high, covered in fingerprints and grime from all the people who have stood there, bracing themselves, before stepping outside. She bends down and looks through the glass at the pink haze, blurred by dirt. This is where it ends. Or maybe it doesn’t. Her baby moves.
‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘We have to do this.’
She hears someone sighing close by, but there’s no one around.
‘God’s sake,’ she hears him say, through the wall on her right.
It’s just another metal wall, nothing special about it. But then something goes Bleep! and the wall slides open to reveal a tiny room full of electrical equipment – machines, wires, lights; beeping, humming, ticking. On the floor, a thin mattress is piled with blankets and dirty plates. A head pops up from behind a screen and Iris almost screams.
‘Oh my God,’ she says, ‘Norman.’
‘Yeah, hi.’ He raises a hand. His face doesn’t betray any emotion. No surprise, no anger, no particular interest. It simply says: there you are.
‘Sorry, you surprised me.’ Iris doesn’t know why she’s apologizing.
Norman moves his cracked glasses from his nose to the top of his head. He’s lost a lot of weight. His skull juts through his greasy skin; his grey hair is long and limp. He doesn’t brush it away from his face.
‘How’s it going?’ he says, in his weird, undefined accent. He forces a smile, showing dark tombstone teeth.
‘Fine,’ says Iris, before correcting herself. ‘Well, not really. No one’s fine.’ She has barely ever spoken to him before. ‘Where have you been all this time?’
‘Here and there. Mostly here.’
Iris’s heart throbs in her chest and her throat feels numb. She’s so nervous, the way she was whenever she spoke to Roger at Freedom & Co – a feeling of insignificance, near-invisibility. It seems stupid and pointless to feel this way now, so near the end. He’s just a person, she tells herself.
‘You’re the last one,’ he says, walking over bits of broken equipment, till he’s standing inches away from her. He glances at her belly. ‘The last two.’ He smells unwashed, bitter, like he hasn’t bathed in months.
‘Do we win a prize?’
‘A one-way ticket back to Earth. Ha!’ He smiles wide, as if this is the funniest thing he has ever said.
‘But actually, you’re the last one, Norman. I’m leaving.’
‘You won’t be able to come back.’
‘I know that.’
‘No, you don’t know.’ He crosses his arms across his body. ‘You people don’t know a fucking thing.’
Iris’s heart is thumping so hard it hurts. It really does feel, uncannily, like she is about to give a big presentation at Freedom & Co, the kind that will reassure her superiors that she deserves to keep her job. One last dazzling performance, a self-sacrifice.
‘How do you know I’m the last one?’ she says.
‘I saw you on camera. I haven’t seen anyone else in days.’
‘But they’re all broken.’
‘One of them still works. Look.’ He gestures at a screen on the wall, filming an empty corridor. ‘Do you have an imaginary friend?’
‘Huh?’
‘I keep seeing you talking to someone.’
Iris shakes her head, ignoring the question. ‘What have you been doing all this time – hiding in this room?’
‘I was taking a break.’
‘You abandoned us. You didn’t have the decency to announce the end of the show, to make some kind of plan –’
Norman scoffs. ‘There was no plan. You knew the risks.’ He rubs his face with his fingers, moving dirt across his skin. ‘No one forced any of you to come here.’
‘Well, everyone’s gone now.’ Iris realizes she knows nothing about Norman – whether he was married, whether he had children, who he left behind on Earth. Nobody spoke of him in those terms, as if he were a real person. ‘What are you going to do now?’
‘I’m staying till the end.’
Like the Dido song, Iris thinks. ‘When is the end?’
‘The end is the end.’ He pauses. ‘Do you regret coming here?’
‘What a question.’
Iris moves away from the room back to the chamber, facing the window. She doesn’t feel ready, but will she ever? When she swallowed those pills, twenty years ago, she had felt ready. If they had worked more quickly, if she hadn’t puked, she would have been wiped clean, gone, at the age of sixteen, and none of this would have happened.
‘Go ahead,’ says Norman. ‘Open the window. What, you don’t want me to watch?’
‘You’re a real arsehole, you know that?’
Norman points a finger at her and says, ‘You don’t get where I am without –’
‘Without being an arsehole? You’re just a man in a room.’
He sighs, avoiding her gaze, and then moves back towards his seat, clambering over the equipment, almost tripping over.
‘Good riddance to you all,’ he mutters.
He hits a button and the doors close.
Finally, Iris is alone, more or less. It feels like nothing special, being close to the end. Like any other moment in life. Iris tries to remember the Kaddish, to sweep away these dull feelings – not even the words, just the feel of it, its cadence – but of course she can’t. She can only remember ‘Amen’. She’s never believed in God, but it quietly slips from her mouth as she contemplates opening the door.
‘Amen,’ she says, ‘amen, amen, amen, amen.’
It wasn’t supposed to be like this. It was supposed to be … I don’t know, poetic? That’s what religion does, right? It lends poetry to these empty moments. She does remember one prayer off by heart: the Lord’s Prayer. She learned it through repetition, not belief, but now that she thinks of it, it seems suitably grand and meaningful. It conjures up the smell of the polished wooden floors and dusty drapes in her school’s assembly hall. Early-autumn chill on her bare legs. An itchy green skirt. Youth.
First, she kicks off her trainers. They’re falling apart, black with sweat on the inside. She wants to die barefoot, with the sand between her toes.
‘Our Father,’ she whispers, ‘who art in heaven …’
The baby turns, appreciatively. Yes, it says. Continue. Iris’s eyes begin to burn with tears. She wipes
them away and carries on reciting the prayer:
hallowed be thy name;
thy kingdom come;
thy will be done;
on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread.
And forgive us our trespasses,
as we forgive those who trespass against us.
Does Mona forgive my trespasses? Probably not. Do I forgive Earth? Maybe. It’s not such a bad planet, not entirely. Iris reaches for the metal handle. It’s cold to the touch. She lets go. Not yet.
And lead us not into temptation;
but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the kingdom,
the power and the glory,
for ever and ever.
She pauses and breathes twice, before saying, ‘Amen.’ In her head, a thousand girls say it together, wearing their leprechaun-green uniforms. The sound echoes around the old hall. Goodbye, she thinks. All these memories will soon be gone, all these thoughts.
She reaches for the handle, inhales deeply, holds her breath and opens the window. Before she can think twice, she bends down and steps outside. The sand is soft and lovely against her feet. She kicks the door shut and sits on the ground. It’s much hotter out here, perhaps forty degrees, like summer in Seville. Once I breathe, she thinks, it’ll be over. Holding it in, she looks around at the pale pink expanse and the ruins of Hub 2. To her right is the farm; to her left, the control quarters – both of them abandoned now. She feels the sun on her face, warm and nourishing. The breeze brushes her forehead, cooling her sweat. What bliss. The lake glimmers in the distance, on lower ground. Without a window in front of her, it feels closer – it looks real. She’s still holding her breath. The baby kicks. Breathe, Mother, breathe. She can’t restrain herself any longer. The processes that keep her alive can kill her, too.
Iris exhales and pauses, then inhales the Nyxian air for the first time. Hmm. It doesn’t burn her lungs. It tastes fine, normal. She exhales and inhales again. She isn’t dying. She leans her back against the Hub. Her body feels heavy against the hot metal. She’s breathing oxygen, she’s sure of that. Or perhaps I’m dead and this is this heaven? I’ve said the Lord’s Prayer, after all. St Peter decided I was OK and let me in, despite my sins.
She grabs at the window, putting her fingers around the edges, but it’s sealed shut. It can’t be opened from the outside.
She slowly stands up, leaning against the Hub for support, and strips down to her dirty underwear, leaving her clothes on the ground. Who cares, there’s no one here to see her. The sand is hot under her feet and the lake is so far away. In old movies, when people are trapped in the desert, they walk towards the oasis. That’s what she’ll do. Iris trudges forward several metres before turning to look at the Hub one last time – but it’s gone, it’s no longer there. Just pink sand and blue sky, pink sand and blue sky, as far as she can see. Even her clothes have disappeared.
‘You won’t be able to come back.’ That’s what Norman told her. ‘You people don’t know a fucking thing.’
I must be dead already.
Never mind. Nothing surprises her any more. She turns and walks on.
Half an hour passes, and then an hour. The lake becomes fatter and clearer, more violet than indigo.
Two hours later, Iris is covered in sweat. She is so very thirsty. She didn’t bring water.
Other colours and shapes start to form more clearly around the lake – pink, blue, purple, orange and yellow; wild, alien plants, flowers and trees. A mirage! she thinks. She hums the tune from Lawrence of Arabia. Sweat trickles into her mouth, down her back and her legs. She licks the salt from her lips. She wants to rest, but if she does, she won’t be able to carry on.
The trees around the lake have pink trunks and blue leaves, their branches heaving with orange fruit. Iris has read about this before – how when you’re close to death, you have one last, dazzling dream. It happens so that you go peacefully, willingly, like a stunned animal to the slaughter. Iris doesn’t care. She’s happy. Adrenaline fills her body. She starts running. She isn’t dead yet. After death there’s nothing and this doesn’t feel like nothing.
The sand ebbs away. Her feet begin to bleed as she treads on twigs and rocks. Under the canopy of trees, the air is cool and moist. Some of the fruit has fallen to the ground. She picks one up – it’s soft yet firm, like a ripe mango – and digs in her nails till it comes apart, revealing its pink flesh. It tastes sweet and sour, like a pineapple crossed with a strawberry, with the texture of an avocado, but unlike any of these things. It is the most delicious thing she has tasted since she left Earth. Her hands become sticky with juice. She licks her fingers. Birds are singing above her. No, not birds – some Nyxian creature with wings. She bats away a fire-bug and it stings her on the shoulder. Her skin burns and swells, but it’s OK – no worse than a bee sting. It’s a novelty to be stung for the first time in years.
At last, she reaches the lake – iridescent, flat and clear. Iris dips a toe into the water. It’s slightly cold, just right. When she walks in, the sores on her feet begin to sting, gratefully. The water covers her belly, soaking through her underwear.
‘This is a lake,’ she says to her baby. ‘We had them on Earth.’ Iris lets the water pour through her cupped hands, and then she drinks it – delicious, cool and sweet. A breeze blows on her face, making her shiver. She smiles deliriously. ‘This is the wind,’ she says.
She closes her eyes and enjoys the feeling of her skin rising in goosebumps. Small creatures swim around her, tickling her legs. They don’t have names yet. A light patter of rain falls on her face. She drops down, under the water, holds her breath and swims a few metres without coming up for air. She could be anywhere. She could be on Earth. She could be in the pond on Hampstead Heath. When she comes up and opens her eyes, she notices that the sky is darker than it was over the Hub, and the sun is peachy and low. She can even see a star in the sky, or another planet, twinkling. She has reached the edge of the Twilight.
Bodies of water.
A breeze.
The sun on her skin.
Rain.
Stars.
The night.
All of these things, she has them now.
The lake is still shallow enough for her to stand. It comes up to her neck. She is about to dive down again when she hears something – a shout, two syllables, a female voice.
‘What?’ says Iris.
The person shouts again. On the third go, Iris hears her name. It’s a familiar voice.
‘Iris! Iris!’
There’s a woman on the shore, in front of the trees, on the darker side of the lake – too far away for Iris to recognize. She looks either naked or half-naked. The figure waves her hands in the air. Iris squeezes her eyes, trying to focus. The woman has long, curly hair down to her waist, like Mona did. Of course. It’s my sister. She’s waiting for me to get out. We’ll put our clothes on over our wet underwear and walk home across the park, shivering in the dusk as the sun comes down.
‘Iris!’
Shush, she thinks, closing her eyes. I’m not here. I’m on Earth. I’m in the pond, feeling the weeds touch my toes. The cold water feels so good, like it could cure anything. A large white swan floats past, followed by three fluffy grey cygnets. It’s my favourite place on Earth. There’s no sign of London. It’s like the city has disappeared – gone!
‘Just a minute, Mona,’ she whispers. ‘I’m coming.’
Acknowledgements
Emma Paterson, the best literary agent on this planet (or any other). My brilliant editor at Viking, Mary Mount, who pushed me further than I thought I could go. Rosanna Forte, for her hard work and insightful suggestions. My sister and first reader, Julia Sauma. My old pal Poonam Vidyarthi, who helped to name Ravinder and Kiran. The rest of my family and friends, for all their love and support. As ever, Tim Goalen – for everything.
The premise of this book was partly inspired by ‘Hostile Planet’, an episode of the pod
cast Love + Radio. I highly recommend it.
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First published 2019
Copyright © Luiza Sauma, 2019
The moral right of the author has been asserted
ISBN: 978-0-241-36357-7
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