by Karen Swan
‘Are you saying my voice sounds fat?’ she laughed and he noticed how her face lifted as she smiled. When he’d first caught the drift of her name in the square and seen her, she’d caught his eyes because of how desolate she’d looked amongst the crowd, the light in her eyes dimmed as though something inside her had been shut down. She had been trying to leave, that much was apparent, and he wondered if it had been something to do with her friend Lucy; there was an evident tension between them, Lucy’s eyes constantly resting on Meg, whilst Meg’s stayed on the ground. Was it something to do with the baby’s name? He remembered Meg’s expression when he’d innocently asked and it had been a visible relief for all when Lucy and her husband had decided against coming on to the after-party. (‘No place for a newborn,’ Tuck had said despondently.)
But Meg’s smile was like the striking of a match, that sudden spark of ignition enlivening her face, and he couldn’t help but smile back. ‘Well, how did you think I’d look?’ he asked.
‘Bald. Five foot tall. Walk with a limp. Hook for a hand.’
It was his turn to laugh. ‘Ah, no, that’s Sergei. You must have confused us.’ He looked across at her. ‘Although your sister said you watched the landing, so you did see me before? Perhaps you had the advantage just now.’
She shrugged and he thought she looked a little embarrassed. ‘You looked very different back then.’
‘I felt very different.’ He rolled his eyes.
‘Was it hard, reacclimatizing?’
‘Worse than I expected. The nausea was extreme. And once they got us back to base, I literally slept for fifteen hours solid and didn’t move once, not even a finger. They said they had to keep coming in to check on me and make sure I hadn’t died!’
They had reached the bar, a short queue bottle-necking at the bottom of the steps that led to the entrance. They looked back to find Ronnie and Jack had lagged behind a little. Deliberately?
Jonas looked across at her again, still trying to tally her face to her voice. He could remember her so clearly from that first night, her voice thrown into the void like a brittle bone, panic shaking her core. ‘I can’t believe we ran into each other like that just now,’ he said. ‘What are the chances?’
‘I guess smaller than the chances of meeting the way we first did.’
‘That’s true!’ he agreed. ‘We must be destined to keep meeting against the odds.’
He had intended it as a quip but it must have been the wrong thing to say for she looked away suddenly.
‘I would have called you up, you know. That was my intention. I wouldn’t have just come here and left without saying hello.’ She glanced up at him then and he tilted his head, watching her. ‘Would that have been OK, if I had?’
‘Of course.’
‘Only, when you stopped writing, I wasn’t sure if . . .’ He looked at her, pulled an apologetic-funny face. ‘Was it something I said?’
He waited, wanting an answer. The way she had just cut off contact so abruptly . . .
‘Of course not.’
‘I mean, I couldn’t work it out. I thought something must have happened to you, Meg. Something bad.’ And when she looked back at him, uncomprehending of the devastation he’d felt at her sudden departure from his life: ‘I didn’t know if you were dead or alive.’
‘You thought I’d died?’ She looked shocked.
‘Well yeah! I didn’t know what to think! It was so abrupt. One minute we’re sharing jokes, the next minute . . . you were gone.’
She shook her head, staring down at the ground as she scuffed the snow with her foot. ‘I’m sorry. I just . . .’ She trailed off.
‘You just what?’
‘I just kind of assumed that you’d lose interest in talking to me once you were back here. I’m hardly the most fascinating pen pal to have. Let’s face it, there was way more upside for me than for you. You’re an astronaut, for God’s sake!’ She gave another of her embarrassed smiles. ‘I guess I just didn’t want you to feel obligated in some way.’
‘Obligated? Why would I feel that?’
‘Well, because of the way we met. The circumstances . . .’
He realized suddenly what she meant. ‘You mean you think I was only in contact with you out of pity?’
She swallowed. ‘I dunno. Maybe.’
He looked down at her, his mouth already open to tell her she couldn’t have been more wrong – that maybe it had started out that way but it had changed so much, so quickly; they’d been friends, hadn’t they? – but Ronnie and Jack bowled up.
‘Do we need tickets?’ Jack asked.
‘It’s OK, I already bought some,’ Meg said, pulling her hand out of her pocket and holding up three.
Jack frowned. ‘But what about Jonas? We’re one short. Unless you’ve already got one?’ Jack looked at him and Jonas had to shake his head in reply.
‘It’s fine. Bill’s a friend,’ Ronnie said, patting Jack’s arm. ‘We’re not in the city now, you know.’
She was right. They got to the bottom of the steps and climbed, the guy taking tickets by the door at the top waving them through without even asking to see theirs. ‘Hey, Meg,’ he winked, tipping his uniform Stetson at her.
‘Hey, Jon.’ She spoke over her shoulder as they walked in. ‘His dad’s our dentist.’
The first floor saloon was already becoming crowded, which was really saying something as it was a big space. There were numerous seating areas – booths in the windows, stools by the 360-degree bar which was positioned centrally in the room and dramatically lit with blue lights – and a mechanical rodeo bull in one large cordoned-off area. Meg seemed to keep her head down as they passed, as though avoiding people.
Jack motioned for them to grab a table whilst he went to the bar. Music was pumping and Jonas felt the bass throb through his boots, his eyes squinting automatically at the flashing strobe lights.
Meg noticed, putting a hand towards his arm but not quite touching. ‘Are you OK?’
He nodded. ‘Yeah, sorry . . . it’s just one of the hangovers from space, that’s all. Radiation exposure.’
Meg pulled out her chair, shooting him an alarmed look. ‘Radiation?’
‘It’s nothing serious. In fact, it’s quite common in astronauts. Down here, the atmosphere and magnetic field mean we’re protected but in space, the high-energy particles from the cosmic rays just make direct hits on the optic nerves. It’s all right, it just means I see flashing lights in my furthest peripheral vision when I close my eyes, that’s all.’ He pulled a face as they sat down, watching as Meg took off her bobble hat, her dark hair falling free around her face. He grinned, unable to believe his luck that he’d found her again. ‘It’s brilliant, really – I get to have a disco in my head, all the time.’
‘Are there any long-term effects on your eyesight?’ Ronnie asked, looking fascinated as she placed one hand on top of the other on the table and leaned in.
‘Well, eyesight definitely does degrade but there’s no evidence of increased rates of cancer or cataracts.’ Jonas remembered Meg telling him her sister was a doctor.
Ronnie grinned and joshed Meg with her elbow. ‘I still can’t believe you literally bumped into this guy in space. A real-life astronaut.’
Jonas looked at Meg again. He was fairly used to the reaction his job engendered. ‘Well, you could be an astronaut,’ he said to Ronnie.
‘Me?’ Ronnie spluttered.
‘Why not? It’s basically a laboratory in the sky. Plenty of astronauts have medical backgrounds. Just do your space training for a few years and you’re good to go.’
Ronnie laughed. ‘That easy, huh?’
‘Exactly,’ he grinned, even though his post-graduate degree and several years in the Norwegian Air Force as a jet-fighter pilot had been merely the minimum entry requirements for the basic astronaut programme; after beating over ten thousand applicants, he’d then had to complete that two-year course and qualify for a further three years’ training on mission-specifi
c material. On average, it took most successful applicants eight years until their first space flight; he’d done it in six.
‘So what were you, before you became an astronaut?’ Ronnie asked.
‘I was a fighter pilot in the Royal Norwegian Air Force.’
Ronnie frowned. ‘How old are you?’
‘Thirty-three.’
‘How can you have done all that by thirty-three? I mean, isn’t that really young to have already been in space? I always think of astronauts as being, like, proper grown-ups.’
‘So you think I’m not a proper grown-up?’ Jonas grinned, bemused.
‘You know what I mean,’ Ronnie grinned. ‘Forties.’
He nodded. ‘I am pretty young to have done an expedition already.’ He glanced across at Meg. She was sitting to his left, her head resting in her left hand, watching him. He liked how it made him feel, to have her attention.
‘So that was your first then?’ Ronnie pressed.
He nodded, bringing his focus back to her again.
‘And when are you going up next?’
Jonas smiled. He liked Ronnie’s directness, her evident intellect and enquiring curiosity. ‘There’s no guarantee I will. But it would be another few years at least.’
‘And you want to?’
Jonas glanced at Meg again, trying to draw her into the conversation. ‘Yes. Although only if your sister promises to write. I don’t know which were funnier – her jokes or her call signs.’
Meg narrowed her eyes and stuck out her tongue – ‘Oh, ha, ha’ – just as Jack came back with the drinks on a tray and set them down. ‘Beer OK?’ he asked, handing the first one to Jonas.
‘Great.’
‘Bet it tastes even better than before, doesn’t it?’ Jack asked, serving the girls too.
‘Like you wouldn’t believe. Everything tastes of cardboard up there.’
Jack held up his bottle as he sat down and joined them. ‘Well, cheers – to new friends and new frontiers.’
‘Cheers!’ the others said, clinking their bottles together.
‘Or as we say in Norway – Skål,’ Jonas added.
‘Skål!’ they all said again.
‘So where are you from?’ Jack asked.
‘A small village called Stavanger, five hundred and fifty kilometres south-west of Oslo. It’s pretty similar to here really – mountains, lakes . . .’ He shrugged.
‘Did you see it from the ISS?’
‘I did. I sent the photographs to my mother for her birthday.’
‘Oh, my God,’ Ronnie breathed, dead impressed. ‘Ha! Beat that, people!’
Jonas smiled at Ronnie, liking her more and more.
‘And did you see here? I mean, did you look, specifically?’
‘Yes, I . . .’ He glanced at Meg. ‘Once Meg and I became friends, I made a point of looking down whenever I knew we were in range.’
‘Did you take any photos?’ Ronnie asked, getting excited.
‘Of course.’ He took in Ronnie and Jack’s wide eyes; even Meg appeared to be holding her breath. ‘Would you like to see?’
‘You’ve got them here?’
‘Sure. I can get them off my cloud.’
Ronnie gave an excited squeak as Jonas fiddled with his phone, Jack squeezing her knee and kissing her affectionately on the temple, one arm slung languidly over her shoulder.
‘There’s a few of Banff, actually.’ He put his phone on the table and watched as the three of them huddled together, heads touching as they swiped. ‘I made a little folder especially, in case I got to meet you – I wondered if you might be interested,’ he said to Meg and she smiled.
‘So that’s . . .’ Ronnie asked.
Jonas leaned forward, identifying the image. It had been taken in the morning, a thin veil of clouds like a haze between photographer and subject, the topography more like a crumpled piece of paper, the land beneath a rich, lush, verdant green, only the sharp shadowing betraying that it was actually a mountain range. ‘This isn’t the best one. It was pretty cloudy that day – but you can make out the Vermilion Lakes, see the way this one hooks?’
‘Oh, yeah!’ Ronnie said. ‘I didn’t realize it was so angled.’
‘There’s the ski area.’
‘Wow.’
Jonas glanced at Meg. She was rapt, her hair tucked behind one ear, her brownish-green eyes moving slowly as she appeared to take in every detail.
‘The Rockies look like ripples,’ she murmured, her eyes meeting his briefly. ‘And the town, it’s just a dot.’
‘Well, this one was taken at a particularly high elevation. There are others that were closer. You can see more of the town . . . see, here.’ He swiped to the next photo. It was taken significantly closer to Earth, the individual parcels of land on the valley floor differently coloured and creating a kind of geometric patchwork effect. There was no telltale curve of the Earth in the corner of this image; in fact, it could almost have been taken from a plane and the fat scudding clouds looked like pillows or cotton-wool balls or even sheep, their shadows on the Earth so dark and distinct.
‘Is that Mount Rundle?’ Jack asked, peering closer.
‘It is.’
The next image had been taken at night and it looked almost as though the sky had fallen to Earth, with several clusters of blazing light constellations and all around them, the pitch black of a night sea.
‘So you’re here,’ Jonas murmured, orientating himself as he stared at it too. ‘There’s Calgary to the right, Vancouver just in shot to the bottom left there.’
‘And we’re – what?’ Ronnie asked, squinting hard. ‘That teeny smattering of lights?’
Jonas nodded.
But Meg shook her head. ‘We’re so insignificant. It’s like we’re barely a presence. No one would ever know we’re here.’
‘I knew.’
Meg glanced at him and he saw it again in her eyes: that guarded look.
Jack flicked to the next photo and Ronnie gave an audible gasp. ‘What the—?’
‘Whoa, holy shit,’ Jack murmured. ‘Mother Nature’s killin’ it there.’
Meg and Jonas looked back down at the phone and Jonas winced. He had forgotten this one was in here, not sure whether Meg would want to see it, although he had stared at the picture many times. The image had been taken at a high elevation and at dawn, that first chink of sunlight like a brass skin being peeled over the Earth’s white flesh. But it wasn’t the extraordinary light that had elicited Ronnie’s shock, nor the polar uniformity of the all-white landscape, but the thick cloud swirl that spun in the very centre of the image, like a ballerina’s netted tutu. The sheer power of the storm – a Category 5 – was visible even from this far above; at its furthermost edges, the clouds seemed friable and tattered, but as it pirouetted and tightened into a coil, the striations were as clearly defined as meringue whites and almost traceable with one’s finger, with a small articulated ‘lid’ in the centre.
‘Where was I?’ Meg’s voice was quiet and he knew she hadn’t needed to clock the date in the bottom-right corner to understand what she was seeing.
Jonas hesitated, before leaning forward and pointing to the part of the storm where the cloud was most dense, like towels being tumbled.
Meg looked back at him, aghast, and he could put that face now to the voice he knew. He felt a rush of protectiveness towards her again; he instinctively wanted to grab her hand and hold it, to put his arm around her shoulder and lead her away from the horror. But he couldn’t do that. She was his friend, but still a stranger.
It had been no footless hall of air that night, Meg realized, staring at the photo – that sky had killed Mitch as surely as if it had been shooting arrows instead of snowflakes from the clouds.
‘You OK, sis?’ She looked up to see Ronnie’s arm reaching across the table towards her.
‘Of course.’ She nodded too, for good measure.
‘I’m sorry, I should have realized—’ Jonas took his phone back.
> ‘Really. I’m OK.’
Jonas glanced at her but she could see her reassurances sounded false to his ear too and there was a heavy silence as everyone simultaneously drank their beer. They watched a girl get up on the rodeo bull, her hair beginning to fly as it rotated and dipped, going faster and faster.
Meg knew it was her fault, ruining the party mood; nearly nine months on and she couldn’t hide the devastation of her loss. She drew a deep breath, trying to pull herself together. She was a terrible hostess.
‘So what are your plans for this week?’ she asked with staged brightness.
Jonas shrugged in his easy way. ‘I’ll go with the flow. My only commitment is handing out a special prize on Awards Night.’
‘Well, there’s so much to do, you’ll love it,’ she said with forced cheer.
‘Yeah? What kind of things?’
Meg considered. ‘Well, Tuck and—’ She stopped herself. She had automatically gone to say Mitch’s name. She took another breath. ‘Tuck loves going to the film-making workshops. They get these really experienced adventure-film producers and they go through editing and camera work, narrative, cinematography, script-writing . . . I think they even get a chance to pitch documentary ideas to National Geographic.’ She smiled. ‘Oh, my goodness, I bet they’d love to hear from you.’
Jonas looked intrigued. ‘Well, I did do quite a lot of filming on board. Time-lapse photography too.’
‘Well, then you should go! Check it out.’ Meg’s eyes brightened and she saw him smile, as though her smile was infectious.
‘Perhaps I will. And if Tuck’s doing it too . . . He seemed nice.’
Tuck. The thought of him deflated her again. There was no doubt he’d been friendly to Jonas – friendlier than Lucy, in fact – but then putting on the charm had never been Tuck’s problem.
‘What other things do they do?’ Jonas was watching her still, his eyes steady upon her.
‘Uh . . . loads of film screenings. Oh! And you can actually go on a training session with some of the sponsors’ athletes if you want. I think it’s North Face who host it.’
‘What kind of training?’ Jack asked. ‘I don’t think I’d fancy doing pull-ups with a professional mountaineer.’
