The Echo (34 page)

I shout, ‘I wish that you were here, Tomas!’ and I mean it as instead of me, but perhaps alongside me would be equally fine. I could tell him to his face. I could beg that he repented and that I forgive him. He would not, though. He would see this as what it was: his choice.

My eyes wet, I think that I see the glimmer again, so I push forward. My stomach hurts. I haven’t eaten in a while. Or had anything to drink; that was probably an oversight. I have no idea what I’m going to find here. It could be anything. I wonder if, back on Earth, they know that this is growing, or moving, or whatever. That it’s coming towards them. I wonder if Tomas knows how to deal with it. Maybe I have been useful. Maybe I will be a hero, because my being here will give them an answer. He will be the one to tell them, of course, and he’ll tell them about my sacrifice. There’s no way he’ll let my name die out. He’ll think of something appropriate, I’m sure, because he will want it to reflect well on him. He will say that I was a scientist.

How deep is this? I keep going. When you have no point of reference it feels like you are staying still, so I keep looking at the
Lära
. I am going further and further. Before, when I spoke to myself, I said that we were meeting in the middle. I suppose that was true. I wonder why I said it.

I have hidden the numbers of how much air I have left from the inside of the helmet, because I don’t want it to be a countdown. I only want a rough idea of how long I have before I cannot find the glimmer any more, before that hope is gone, and that will be enough. Because I know that, at that point, there will be nothing to be done about it.

When Tomas and I stopped talking for a while after our mother’s death, he said to me, You think you know best, don’t you? And I had to tell him that I didn’t. That such thoughts weren’t even close to me, nowhere near me. I said to him, She knew what she wanted, and I am only her son. I wanted what was best for my mother. I have always wanted to help those in pain. He said, There were other medicines, and I told him that he was mad. That she was suffering. Now, I wonder if this is my penance. If he thought that I was suffering, somehow. This is him making my pain cease. Does that make it better, if I think of him as that? As somehow rendering my name endless, timeless, part of history? Knowing I could never achieve as he does, and will in the future? He has given me something else. I wonder if that’s how he sleeps, after he sees the dreams of me dying. He tells himself that he did this for my benefit. He is benevolent.

I have to make my peace with him, somehow. I do not know how.

So I move on, and concentrate on other things. Inna. Hikaru. I am so glad that I was able to do right by them, and Wallace. His poor children. At least they might have a chance of knowing his absolute fate now, burying him. That matters. I wonder what he would have made of this, had he seen it. He was so much weaker than I thought, so desperately afraid of what we had found. We should have picked up on it. We should have known that he was a powder keg; and Hikaru, that he was liable to break down. That Inna was dying, or had come so close before.

But perhaps Tomas knew. Perhaps this was it: a crew of expendables, a crew that weren’t meant to live past this? Capable – no, perfectly able, at the top of their game, even – of completing the mission, but with no mind as to whether they came back. Led by me, the weakling twin. The one who did not achieve without his brother’s say. The one who stayed behind the curtain, but not because he was the one with all of the power; but because he was afraid.

I think about how they died. I watch it over and over, in my mind. Here in this darkness there is not much else to watch. I think about how much air I have left, and how it is going down whether I like it or not. I estimate an hour gone, even though I wasn’t going to do this. I could check. Everything is a countdown, whether I like it or not. Here is a timer until we lift off. Here is how long it will take to reach the anomaly. Here is how long you have got left. Twelve days to see me. Now wait twelve days until you can leave. Two hours until you die. Time moves slower, it seems, the faster the countdown. As if you give yourself more time to think.

I wonder if they will try this again? To reach the anomaly and to see what they can see? Probably not, assuming that Tomas knows everything I know, that I have worked out. Instead, he will try to work out how to stop it. He will prepare the world with tales of atmospheric interference, or say that it will herald meteor showers. He is an expert, the only expert, now. They’ll listen to him. They’ll ask him how they can ready themselves for the oncoming anomaly, and he’ll up his research budget. He will be able to write his own budget, in fact. He might sacrifice more of us, in the other ship. More expendables, thrown into the abyss to see what he can gain from it. He will claim, if anybody accuses him of anything, that it’s utilitarian. For the good of the people of planet Earth, that’s why he does it. He will tell them all that it’s no less than we deserve: a man who is willing to get things done. And I suppose they’ll thank him. They should, probably. I don’t know, maybe he was right. Maybe he knew where it was heading all along, and this was his way of … I don’t know. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter any more.

What matters now is the people back there. If this reaches Earth, what happens? Does everybody cycle? Is that how this ends? In perpetual life? Do we ride it out until it passes? Will it ever pass?

How much bigger can this get?

Behind me, the
Lära
is tiny, now. He will be waiting, counting down the hours. Talking to himself. I am past the point where I can regret this and return. There is only forward. I am getting tired. I wonder if that’s natural. This must burn energy. The suit is designed to only take so much, and I’m only human. I think about Inna again. I always return to her. I think about her on the table that time. I wish I could think about the good things more, that my mind wandered there. But I think of her, like my mother. I think of those plastic organs.

I haven’t seen the glimmer again. I can’t see anything, now, not really. My eyes aren’t what they used to be. Now the
Lära
is out of sight. I think that maybe I can see the light from it, maybe, but it’s probably me fooling myself. The blackness is so thick, so encompassing, I doubt I can see past it. I turn and then realize that I have lost my bearing. Have I turned back enough? I start to panic, because there is only one reason that I am here now, and it’s that glimmer. I breathe too quickly and have to calm myself. Breathing fast makes my supply go down. It’s not a set time. Everything seems a mistake.

I never wanted to die with regrets. I move forward, because I cannot die like this. Where will I start my cycle from, assuming I start one? Where will I begin again? It would be cruel to make me go through this all over again. I think, if ever you questioned the existence of a god, here is your proof. This is cruelty; this is nothingness.

I am sobbing in my suit, and the glass is misting. I try and hold myself back, because I know that my gasps are ruining me. The air is thinning. It is becoming nothing. It’s not even time to make my peace.

I want to tell my mother that I love her. And Tomas, for all his sins. He would say that I have sinned worse than he ever could. That at least my death had purpose. He would say that I brought this on myself. So there is nothing here, and he would say that he knew that. I would tell him that I was so sure, and he would say, It was a trick of the light. It was seeing faces in clouds. You’re good at that, Mira. It’s how you’ve always been. I would argue, saying that there are no clouds here to see faces in. The glimmer must have come from somewhere. And he would stand back and look smug, because that would have been his point all along. I know so well how his mind works, exactly how he thinks.

The air is so thin, and I have to breathe twice where I previously needed one, huffing in the air that is left. I think of Inna, dying. I can still see her face. I cannot stand to think that I will die. I stop the boosters, because I would rather know where I am. I turn around. I try to find the glimmer. This cannot have been in vain. It cannot.

Nothing. Just the nothing.

My tears, and my pain. I wonder if this was destined. Pre-ordained, somehow. How I was always meant to go. I am going to choke. I am going to die. I want, more than anything, this to be an end. Only me: I am the only one who will feel this. I am singular, and distinct, but then I see him: another version of me. He is here, and he is dead; drifting. Realization. He is in the suit. I see him, and I turn around, and there is another, fighting against it, choking. He is me in a minute’s time, from the future; and behind him, me coming forward, looking for this, from the past. One is a future that I will suffer through, one that I have already done. Around this, there are other versions of me: drifting off into the nothing. Some of them have been here a long time, I think. I know: I see their faces, and they are not me. As Cormac aged, so have they. Unexplainable, but this is where everything changes. I am in a sea of myself. I struggle to keep the tears in, to stop myself hyperventilating, and I manage it.

‘You’re stronger than this,’ I say to myself, but then I try to breathe, and I cannot. That was my last. I hold it. My head aches, and my eyes feel dead inside my head. I look around, trying to count them all, and I lose track of where I am. I am not righted; I am not in any direction. I am everywhere, and everything. I think that I am dead, that I am gone.

Then: the glimmer. It has been here the whole time, above me, below me, all around me. It unfolds itself. My eyes are heavy, and I can barely keep them open, but I need to. Because here is what I was looking for this entire time. I was wrong, and Tomas was wrong, and none of us knew. We were unprepared, and we will always be unprepared.

It is a parcel, a rip, a hole and it unfolds itself into space and delicacy. Everything was so dark before. It peels backwards and inside it there is light: pure, absolute light; and I stare at it, up close, forcing myself to look. I tell myself that this isn’t real, but I want to believe it; that inside this anomaly there is something so pure that it is made so that I do not understand, and have no need to understand. Outside, rushing away from it, I can see veins, thin red and white lines, spooling off as branches and rivers, splayed and rushing. Living things have veins, and blood, and life in them. It makes sense to me that there are things we cannot understand; that there is life that we cannot conceive. Maybe things that we should not, as well; that are not for us to know. I know that this is one. I have seen things that no other man has seen. I have my answer to the question: the question of what the anomaly is. It is final, and it is my answer alone, and I think that nobody else will ever know. Perhaps that it okay. Perhaps that I have an answer is enough.

As I die, as I feel death coursing through my body, I look away from the heart of the anomaly, and down at the blackness below. It looks like I could fall: like there is nothing at all below me, and I am already falling, down and into forever.

Then it says, ‘I am here for you.’

And I say, ‘I know.’

I shut my eyes. It envelops me.

Thanks to my amazing editor Amy McCulloch and the team at Voyager UK; Diana Gill and Voyager US; Laura Deacon and Blue Door; and all the sales, marketing, publicity, design and everything else people that worked so hard on these books. Thanks also to Sam Copeland, my agent, and all at RCW.

Enormous thanks to Kim Curran, Will Hill, Tom Pollock, James Dawson and Nikesh Shukla, all of who made me want to be better at this.

Lastly, thanks to my family for the unending support.

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She opens the door to a deliveryman, and the Machine, which has come in three parts, all wrapped in thick paper. Each of the parts is too big to get through the door.

We’ll have to try the window, the man says.

She shows him which one it is, along the communal balcony. It’s already at its widest, to let some air into the flat, to try and counteract the invasive heat from outside. Still not wide enough, so the men – the first has been joined by another from the van, having just heaved another thick cream-paper-wrapped packet the size of a kitchen appliance from the van, and left it leaning against the bollards – tell her that they’ll have to take the window out.

We’ve got the tools for it, this other man says.

Beth stands back and watches as they unscrew the bolts on the attaching arms, and then lift the whole sheet down. Others in the estate have stuck their heads out of their windows, or come out of their front doors to watch. Next door, the woman with all the daughters stands and watches, and her girls run around inside. The littlest one stands at the woman’s legs, clutching onto her skirt.

Gawpers, the first man says. Always wanting to know what we’re up to.

The deliverymen don’t know what’s inside the packages. They’re just paid to deliver them. Beth wonders if she’s going to be able to assemble it herself, or if she’s better off asking them for help. Slip them a fifty, they’d probably stand around with her for an hour and figure it out. She doesn’t know how easy it will actually be: if there will be wires, or if it’s just a case of plugging the pieces together. The man she bought it from said it would be simple. They struggle up the stairwell with the first piece, stopping to mop their brows. They still wear dark-blue overalls, in this weather, and their now-sweaty palms leave dark-brown prints on the paper wrapped around the Machine’s pieces. The first piece makes it through the window maw, twisted in the frame as if this is one of those logic games. Manipulate the pieces.