Good Morning, Midnight

SEVENTEEN

IT LASTED BARELY two minutes before the signal cut out, but during that brief exchange, clouded with atmospheric disturbance, Augustine learned quite a bit. The woman on the other end of the signal told him she was on board a spacecraft called Aether, an ambitious deep space exploration project he remembered hearing about while it was being built in Earth’s orbit some years ago, before he went north. She told him they were a little less than two hundred thousand miles from Earth, that they were headed home and had lost contact with their Mission Control team more than a year ago. He was the only radio contact they’d been able to make since then.

Augie told her he was at a research facility 81 degrees north, on the Canadian Arctic archipelago, that he’d been there for some time and had little information regarding the state of the world beyond his icebound island. He told her there had been murmurs of war, then an evacuation that he’d chosen to forgo, and then—nothing. Only silence and isolation. He wanted to tell her everything: how it felt to leave the observatory and cross the tundra, to make a new home for himself beside the lake, how it felt to kill the wolf and bury it in the snow, to take care of Iris, to feed her and teach her how to fish, to worry about her, to feel the stirrings of love; how it felt to watch the snow and the ice melt, to bathe in the light of the midnight sun and then watch it slip away. He wanted to tell her about these feelings—these overwhelming, disconcerting, glorious feelings that weren’t always good, were often very bad, but which were always so vivid, so immediate, so new to him.

He had so much to say. He wanted to ask about her journey, to hear how it felt to be among the stars as opposed to looking up at them. He wanted to ask how Earth looked from out there, how long she’d been gone—but the connection faltered and then slipped away. Given the vast distance the signal had to travel, the rotation of the earth and the fluctuation of the atmosphere, it wasn’t surprising. He saved the frequency and planned to monitor it for however long it took to regain the connection.

Over the next twelve hours he left the radio shed only once, to walk back to the tent and make himself a thermos of heavily sugared coffee. Iris was reading on one of the cots when he arrived, and Augustine told her everything that had happened—the woman, the spacecraft full of astronauts. She didn’t seem to care. He tried to get her to accompany him back to the radio shed, but she declined and kept reading. She seemed happy for him but utterly uninterested in the development. He wondered whether she understood the significance of it. He shrugged and shuffled back to the little building, thermos in hand, trying to imagine why Iris hadn’t leaped at the chance to hear a voice other than his, to talk to a woman not of this world.

Back in front of the equipment, his receivers trained on the correct wavelength and his ears pricked for anything unusual hiding amid the white noise, he leaned back in his chair and tried not to fall asleep.

IT TOOK HIM a moment to realize that he was hearing her voice again, emerging from a foggy dream and into the freezing shed. When he did he bolted upright and let the empty thermos fall to the floor. He scrambled for the microphone.

“I’m here,” he said, “KB1ZFI confirming receipt.” He held the Transmit button down a second or two longer, wondering where to begin—what to ask, what to tell. He told himself to be patient. Let her respond. “Over.”

A man’s voice arrived in his headphones a moment later, gravelly and distorted by the distance it was traveling.

“KB1ZFI, this is Aether’s commander, Gordon Harper. I can’t tell you how glad we are to speak with you. I’m here with Specialist Sullivan, whom you already know. Sully here tells me you’re as confused as we are about what’s happened. Confirm?”

“Confirmed,” Augie said. “A pleasure to speak with you also, welcome home. I’m only sorry it’s not under better circumstances. The truth is it’s been a long time since I’ve heard anything over the waves. Over a year since the evac. I’m guessing you have more information than I do, considering your vantage point. Over.”

There was a long pause and Augie worried he’d lost the connection, but then the commander spoke again.

“It’s too soon to tell. But we’ll do our best to keep you informed. How are you faring on your own? Over.”

“Surprisingly well. These research outposts are stocked to the gills. Not sure if things went nuclear or chemical warfare or what, but the effects in this part of the world are indiscernible, whatever happened. Wildlife is healthy, no sign of radiation poisoning. Over.”

Augie wanted to know if they would reenter the atmosphere, if they even could, and if they did—what they would find. What else was out there, beyond his frozen home? What did the rest of the planet look like? He wasn’t sure how to ask. They were still so far away. After so many months of just surviving, he was suddenly burning with curiosity to know—to know everything. There was an even longer pause this time, and he imagined what they might be saying to each other.

“KB1ZFI, this is Sullivan, I think we’re about to lose—” And they were gone.

“Standing by,” he said out loud to the emptiness.

AUGUSTINE HAD SEEN the last of the sun. It was officially autumn. The polar night began, and with it the temperatures grew extreme. It was time for hibernation again, for staying inside the main tent and keeping the oil stove burning hot. His short walks to the radio shed became more and more difficult; he felt his health failing, and breathing the subzero air hurt his lungs. The more he exerted himself the harder he breathed, and the harder he breathed the sicker he got.

Even so—he kept his vigil. He kept standing by, as often as he could. He fell in and out of dreams as he waited by the microphone in the little radio shed, dreams that grew more vivid as time passed, until he could no longer differentiate between sleep and consciousness. A fever kept him warm, heating his blood to a simmer within his veins. Eventually he heard the woman’s voice again and shook himself awake. He wasn’t sure how long it had been. Hours, or days.

“KB1ZFI,” she was saying, over and over. “KB1ZFI, KB1ZFI,” until finally he could rouse himself and find the microphone.

“Copy,” he said, “KB1ZFI responding.”

“I thought I’d lost you,” she said, relieved.

“Not yet,” he answered, his voice rusty, his throat full of phlegm. “Call me Augustine.” He released the Transmit button to cough a deep, chestbound rattle. He wondered how much longer he had.

“All right, then, Augustine. I’m Sully. It’s just me today. Tell me about the sky,” she said, “or the animals. Hell, tell me about the dirt.”

He smiled. It must have been a long time since she’d set her eyes on any of those things.

“Well,” he began, “the sky is dark all day here. I’m guessing it’s late October? No sun till spring, just stars.”

“It’s October all right. What about the animals? The weather?”

“It’s cold these days—maybe twenty, thirty below. And the birds, they’re mostly gone. The wolves, though, they’re still here, still howling, and Arctic hares, scampering around on the ice like that damn rabbit with the pocket watch, you know the one I mean. Oh, and there’s a bear. He shouldn’t be this far inland this time of year, but he is. Saw his prints in the snow myself. Between you and me, I think he’s been following me.”

“A polar bear? Following you? That doesn’t sound so good.”

“No, no, he’s all right—he’s easy company, keeps to himself. And the dirt—well, the dirt is frozen. Not much else to tell you here. Just hunkering down for the winter. And you?”

“Fair enough,” she said. “We’re in orbit now. Going to dock with the ISS if we can, see about rounding up the reentry modules.”

“And your trip? What did you see?”

“Jupiter,” she said. She sounded wistful. “Mars. The Jovian moons. Stars. Emptiness. I don’t know—it’s hard to describe it all. We were gone so long. Augustine? I think I’m going to lose the signal in a minute, we’re orbiting toward the Southern Hemisphere. But listen—take care of yourself, okay? I’m not sure what’s going to happen next. I hope we talk again. I hope—”

She was gone. Augie turned off the equipment and struggled back to the tent. He collapsed on his cot fully clothed. It was hours before the stove thawed him enough that he could move again, and when he did manage to remove his boots and his parka, a slippery thought crept into his consciousness and then fell away into his subconscious, in and out, in and out, until he fell asleep.

THE FEVER HAD its claws in him. He dreamed vividly of returning to the radio shed, of methodically turning on the generator, then the transceivers, but then he’d realize he was still on his cot, unable to move, and the dream would begin again in a loop: his mind would wake and go to the shed, and his body would remain. The rare moments of true wakefulness were painful and brief. He was hot and cold, shivering and sweating. For the most part he hovered on the edge of consciousness, dreaming about waking up, dreaming about dreaming about waking up. His brain was trapped in never-ending layers of his subconscious: each layer he pulled back led him to another and another.

Iris was there, in real life, or perhaps it was only in the dreams, he couldn’t tell. She was hovering over the cot with anxious eyes. She laid cool, damp rags on his forehead and steaming, hot rags on his chest. She sang to him; the wolves sang along with their faraway howls. At times he mistook her for Jean, at other times for his own mother.

When he eventually fought his way back to consciousness the tent was dark and cold, the electric lamp had burned out, and the oil stove had run dry. How long had it been? Where was Iris? He found a small reserve of strength, went outside and changed the oil drum, then rekindled the stove before he collapsed once more. He drank half a gallon of water, so cold it made his head ache.

He set the jug down and there was Iris, coming in the door, latching it behind her. Lifting the glass chimney from one of the kerosene lamps, then lighting the wick with a match and lowering the chimney back into place. Adjusting the flame. Carrying it to Augie’s bedside, holding the light over him for a moment and then setting it down on the table. Laying her palm against his forehead, sitting down on the edge of the cot and smiling. Her eyes said Go back to sleep, but her lips said nothing at all.