The Last Day

by Andrew Hunter Murray

  Her real work. And there he was again, the man who had first taught her all about what she was doing now. She could hear the words of his letter in his voice, apologetic and low, as it had been the last time she’d seen him.

  I have done you great harm. I know that. But I also know exactly how I must atone. You are the only person who can help. I trust nobody else.

  The rig was in sight now. The reactor towers were always visible first, and the wisps of steam from the heating system, little puffs issuing from chimneys designed for greater use. There it was, the closest thing she had to a home: an icy stack of radiation-riddled metal, parked in the freezing sea.

  On opening, the rig had been heralded as a pioneer. Today it sat, abortive and decrepit, two hundred miles off the southwest coast of England: the first of a new species and the last of its kind. She knew from conversation with Harv that its reactors still produced enough energy to keep itself going, with some left over for the mainland. As soon as that slight functionality fell away, it would be abandoned, unlamented, like so much else in this rotting world.

  And the final lines in the letter, that entreaty. Not for forgiveness, but for—oh, who knew what else? Some useless attempt to apologize, most likely, dangled with the bait of a secret. Hopper had no interest in secrets anymore.

  Please contact me discreetly at the address above. Ellen, do not attempt to come any closer. The risks to you are substantial. But contact me. Please. I have something you must see.

  And then nothing but the shaky signature: Edward Thorne.

  She had burned the letter. She had taken pleasure in holding it at just the right angle so its beginning had burned last. The last words visible were Ellen, please do not destroy this letter, then Ellen, please do not and finally just Ellen. She had deliberately refused to learn the address he had included, in case her resolve weakened later. She had sent no reply.

  They were closer to the rig now. The whole thing was visible above the waves, sorrowful and weather-beaten. It looked like a titanic iron crown: the last remnants of some huge drowned king. The four legs were scuffed with rust, the anchor chains around them buffeted by spray and clanking in the North Atlantic breeze. At its base, the rig had turned green, furred with plant life that stuck doggedly to it, as though aware there was no better home for hundreds of miles.

  Hopper unclipped her water tin from her side, poured some into her mouth, and stared out to sea in case of an unexpected whale.

  And then, as the boat coasted toward the rig, she looked back at it, and saw for the first time the large black helicopter squatting like a bluebottle on the deck.

  THREE

  Now, thirty years after it all ended, the Slow seemed the most natural thing in the world. It felt quaint to imagine people reacting to it with shock.

  Hopper knew she was one of the last “before” children: born four years before the planet’s rotation finally stopped. She was a rarity. There had been plenty born since, of course, but the birth rate had plummeted in those final years. The world had paused, waiting for the cataclysm, and those children already young had been treated like royalty—fed well, treated whenever possible, as if in premature apology for a ruined planet their parents could not mend.

  But during those years, new children were perceived at best as an extravagance, at worst as a cruelty. Why bring a child into a world winding itself down? The chaos and shortages at the end of the Slow had kept the planet’s libido in check. Many pregnancies had been brought to an end, prematurely and inexactly.

  The imprecision of timekeeping toward the final sunrise meant no child was formally identified as the last one to know the old world: the world of dawns, sunsets, and cool, clear evenings. Even if some great clock had been stopped exactly with the planet’s spin, and the hospitals of the world scoured for the final birth, it would have been a pointless endeavor. Whoever the child was, the odds were it was now dead.

  Hopper’s generation, consequently, was smaller than those on either side. Things were better now, on the mainland: more babies, more families, more weddings. In the old days there had been whole magazines devoted to weddings. Hopper had seen one in her father’s house, annotated in her mother’s beautiful handwriting—asterisks here, flower arrangements ringed elsewhere. It was hard, now, imagining having that much paper to waste. As she thought of her mother, she felt the customary stab of pain: dulled by time, still unbearable.

  Regeneration. A new factory each month, she read in the bulletins. Each week more farmland under the harrow, each year more schools, more roads, more food. Two years ago, a new railway line. The Great British Resurgence was well under way. Sometimes, from a rust-bitten rig frozen in a permanent autumn morning, it was hard to perceive. But the dispatches remained optimistic.

  They weren’t strictly true, of course. Everyone knew there were patches of the country where governmental control was more honored in the breach than the observance: up north, in the huge new grain belt across Scotland, in lots of places outside the big cities. There were riots, wearily suppressed; every so often the corpse of some blameless agricultural inspector might be left in a public square with a sign asking for collection by the authorities. None of this was officially acknowledged, of course, but it was remarkable how much could be known despite never appearing in either newspaper.

  And now, appearing from nowhere, a helicopter. Its body was thick, squat, the glass bubble on its front resembling an insect’s eye.

  The rig had a helipad, but this was the first time it had been used in Hopper’s time here. Fuel was scarce, and was used for important governmental work only. The soldiers had spotted the aircraft too, nudging one another and gesturing. Hopper felt an unaccountable hostility toward it.

  For a moment she wondered whether they were coming for Harv, because of the sirens thing. Then she managed to laugh at herself. Last month, Harv had managed to discover that Schwimmer’s birthday was coming up soon. So on the day, as the soldiers had lined up on deck for morning inspection—just as Schwimmer was about to open his mouth—Harv had triggered the rig’s sirens to play a strained electronic “Happy Birthday,” off-key and wailing. Hopper had laughed as she watched from the mess: the soldiers singing, Schwimmer’s face purpling as anger and amusement fought it out within him.

  As Schwimmer’s adjutant, Harv could have been punished severely, but he had talked the CO around. That was Harv. Always charming.

  If the government could spare enough helicopter fuel to fly out and talk to Harv over something like that, England must be a more peaceful and better-governed place than she had imagined.

  The Rig Rocket had almost passed beneath the iron entryway into the dock, where it met the water. Just as it did, a figure appeared by the helicopter—in dark clothes, with the smudge of a white band on its arm.

  The boat puttered to a stop, coasting into the little bay, and the soldiers jumped out and started hauling it up the slipway. Hopper climbed onto the platform and watched them.

  What merited a helicopter? A change of commander? The new one would surely just come out on the supply boat. A medical emergency? It would have to be something really bad, and she’d heard nothing of that. Then again, she realized with a lurch, they could have come because of the letter.

  Harv spoke in her ear, startling her. “You’ll find out soon enough.”

  “Find out what?”

  “Who’s come to play.”

  She took a breath. “I’m sure it’s nothing.”

  He grinned. “Suit yourself.”

  The soldiers removed their orange overalls, hanging them in the gunmetal lockers lining the bay. Hers and Harv’s would have to be cleaned. She ditched hers, and the salvaged food tins, in the makeshift decontamination box—really just an equipment crate lined with lead plates, a homemade skull and crossbones glued on the top in fluorescent fabric. If the tins didn’t show any radiation, they would be cleaned and eaten. If they
did, they’d be jettisoned, strapped to a waste container so they could poison the seabed instead of the rig.

  The troops finished their work, numbered off and left through the metal hatch. The steel door clanged shut after them. She and Harv were left alone in the bay, the water bobbing black and tarry in the central square. The slap of the sea against the outer walls made her shiver.

  “I hate those ones.” She still felt nauseous, remembering the sickly swaying of the fishing boat, angry with herself for revealing her weakness even as she said it.

  “The boats? Nobody likes them, El. You’d be a bit sick to like ’em.” Harv’s deep voice still carried a touch of an accent: he’d grown up in Boston at first, one parent English and one American. He’d moved here as a child, just before it all started, had been one of the last lucky ones unquestioningly granted full citizenship. Knowing him as well as she did, she sometimes noticed him burying his American side, trimming his vowels, determined to show enough loyalty that nobody could question his nationality based on his voice.

  “Where do you think they were all from?”

  “Best not to think about them. They probably haven’t been in a position to worry about anything for a while now.”

  “You can’t tell me you like sinking them.”

  “I’d rather be sunk than float around forever. Come on.”

  Hopper followed Harv through the door, to the staircase up to the deck. They hadn’t had that many bodies for a while. The last two boats had been almost unoccupied. But the one before that, a South American ferry three months ago, had been much fuller. She still dreamed about it at least once a week.

  “What do you think it is?” She couldn’t help asking. They had found out Thorne had written to her. They must have done. But how? And why was it important enough to send someone all the way out here from the mainland?

  “What, the helicopter? Probably just some tight-ass mainlander checking we’re not eating too many chickpeas, or making sure our blankets are the regulation thickness. Won’t be anything serious.”

  He turned and smiled, showing his teeth. Harv had a tooth missing—knocked out by a club in a fight up near the borders, he had said. He was handsome, but Hopper sensed he was proud to have acquired some obvious mark of conflict in his appearance.

  She thought. “Supply run?”

  “Helicopters that size can hardly bring anything. It won’t be that unless the last supply boat forgot the tin opener.”

  “Medical evac?”

  Harv shrugged. “Everyone was healthy last night as far as I know. And Donaghy has every medicine he could possibly need for the next quarter, assuming all we get is syphilis and headaches. So: news, is my money. Either way, the chopper’s one of ours.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I recognized it. British model.”

  “Maybe the Scandis have invaded and we’re the final refuge of the British Empire.”

  He snorted at that. They lapsed into silence, Harv’s heavy boots clumping up the iron steps, her trainers squeaking. The rig was several floors deep. Parts of the power station were nonoperational these days: half of it was off-limits, full of old machinery useful only to be cannibalized for parts. On her day off, Hopper sometimes went walking through the corridors to see how long she could go without bumping into anyone else. Her record was two and a quarter hours.

  They reached the top of the stairs. Harv leaned into the door, and the cold air came rushing in. It was never freezing out on deck—it must have been grim in the hours of darkness, before the Stop—but it was usually chilly enough that coming back in was a relief. Hopper knew; she ran laps of the deck for an hour each morning.

  Across the rig’s platform was the long, curved roof of the mess hall and rec rooms, designed to give residents a view of the ocean. They walked over, passing the helicopter. Leaning on the railings, facing the sea, was the figure Hopper had glimpsed from the boat: a man, with bleached hair cropped close to his skull. He looked like a motorcyclist—leather jacket, black trousers, high boots. He ignored them, staring out to sea, a cigarette burning unattended in his hand.

  As they approached the mess hall, Hopper saw, through the doors, Schwimmer’s bald patch facing away. He was sitting at one of the long steel benches and twisted at their approach.

  Harv saluted. Schwimmer saluted back, murmuring, “At ease,” as he did so, then added, “Good morning, Dr. Hopper.”

  “Good morning, Colonel.”

  “Captain. Report?”

  “Yes, sir. Intercepted it about 0645. Small boat. We all went aboard, except for Drachmann, who kept watch. On boarding we noted . . .”

  As Harv continued, Hopper took in the rest of the room, her eyes adjusting to the gloom after the brightness of the deck. Two figures sat facing Schwimmer on the other side of the table. A man, still in his overcoat, and a woman.

  The woman was imposing—apparently taller than the man, although perhaps she just had better posture. She was in her middle forties, Hopper guessed, and looked like a Hollywood siren gone somewhat to seed. Her dark brown hair, tinged with red, was curled elaborately, and her mouth was bright with thick red lipstick, with a slight, built-in curl of satisfaction at the sides.

  The man was a few years older. He was tall, his hair greasy and receding, just starting to gray. His complexion was gray too, except around the jawline, where a blunt razor had left the skin angry and reddened. His shirt collar pinched his neck, making a vein bulge out a little. He looked tired and uninterested.

  Before the pair, on the long steel bench, rested two cups of the rig’s appalling coffee. “Neptune’s piss,” Harv called it. No steam rising from the cups; they must have been here a while. She tuned back in to Harv’s voice.

  “. . . ready whenever Fraser wants to step down and decontaminate, sir.”

  “Thank you, Captain. That’ll be all.”

  “Sir.”

  Another salute, and Harv vanished back through the door to the deck. Hopper watched his figure as he moved, and turned back only to realize she’d missed something Schwimmer had said.

  “I’m sorry, sir?”

  Schwimmer was too urbane to note her inattention. “I was just saying, it’s fortunate you joined Captain McCrum, Doctor. You have visitors. From London.” There was a ghost of mockery in the last drawled word—Fancy, these Londoners coming to see you. He gestured to the table as the woman stood and offered a hand. Hopper took it.

  “Good morning, Dr. Hopper. I’m Ruth Warwick. I’m from the Home Office. I thought I might wake you, but evidently you were up even earlier this morning than we were.” She smiled suddenly, a smile of bright, flat artificiality that left her face as quickly as it had arrived. She did not introduce her colleague.

  She turned to Schwimmer. “As discussed, Colonel, might we speak to Dr. Hopper in private for a few minutes?”

  She sounded well educated. Hopper thought she knew the type. Private school, then straight into the military as an extension of boarding school, rather than wasting three years at one of the few universities still going. A few years in the army, then a turn to the civilian, with a faint regret for simpler times and a residual love of receiving orders. Not much family, Hopper reckoned. She wore a wedding ring, though, a thick gold band too masculine-looking even for her large hand.

  Schwimmer nodded. “Of course. If you need anything, I’ll be in the office.” Office. That was clearly intended to make the room—a six-by-nine-foot steel box overflowing with pointless paperwork—sound more impressive than what it was, which was somewhere for Schwimmer to sit apart from the troops in the evenings. Schwimmer never had been especially good with people, for which Hopper liked him. He nodded at her, wearing his familiar crumpled-neutral expression, then turned and left them.

  After the door shut behind him, silence filled the canteen for a few seconds. Hopper stood across the table from the two visit
ors, feeling like she’d been called to the headmistress’s study again, remembering the sympathetic secretary who’d sat in the outer office. Miss Vernon, that was it. She wondered where Miss Vernon was these days. Almost certainly dead.

  Please. I have something you must see. The words from the letter returned to her without prompting.

  “Have a seat, Dr. Hopper. Thank you so much for sparing us the time.” Now Schwimmer was gone, Warwick spoke informally, with a warm, well-cushioned timbre to her voice.

  Hopper sat, feeling the cold of the steel slats through her thin trousers. “This must be important, if you’ve come all this way. Which part of the Home Office are you from?”

  “Technically, Security. But Inspector Blake and I”—she gestured to her colleague—“are not here on security business. Dr. Hopper, you’re the chief scientific officer here, yes?”

  “‘Chief’ is a rather grand word. I’m the only one.”

  “Very remote lifestyle you lead. Quite a self-imposed hermitage. The commanding officer was telling us you spend your time lassoing icebergs.”

  “Only when requested.”

  “What do you spend the rest of your time on?”

  “Measuring currents, water composition, temperature, salinity. Testing for DNA in the water, to see if there are any fish we don’t know about.”

  “You’re an observer, then. Not a doer. Seems a rather abstruse path to follow when there are people to feed.”

  Hopper shrugged. She did not want to explain her work to this woman any further than was necessary.

  Warwick carried on. “But I suppose it affects the land, is that right? The water flow and so on?”

  “What’s this about, please? I’m sure you didn’t come this far for a job satisfaction survey.”