by Ruth Morgan
I waited but there were no more messages. The only other time I’d received a message from ‘sender unknown’ was in the Museum and that had turned out to be…
The man in the chair.
But why would the man in the chair be sending me messages? The celephet was gone and so was Robeen’s cello music, the reason he’d responded so gently the last time. There was no reason for him to be there, no reason at all. If this was someone’s idea of a joke, I would find out soon enough, but if it was the man in the chair, why should he want to contact me of all people? I’d have to send a message to ‘sender unknown’.
‘Who are you?’ I sent. Again, immediately, came the reply:
JONAH
‘Where are you Jonah?’ I sent.
HERE WITH BREE
Seeing my name flash up on my tile made me want to bolt again. But somehow I steadied myself, resolving to sit tight and see it out to the end.
‘Why are you contacting me?’
WRITING A POEM
‘Yes? And?’
ME TOO
‘You write poems, Jonah?’ I asked, inanely.
YES
I didn’t know what to type next. I felt I wasn’t alone in the room any more, the same feeling I was used to by now. Whoever was there knew what I’d written on my tile, which was supposed to be completely private. There was only one way to settle it.
‘Are you the man in the chair, Jonah? The man who appeared to me downstairs?’
YES
I was trying not to remember the man as I’d seen him, his pale skin, brows contracted and eyes closed, his lips slightly parted, it was too scary. Yet I’d seen him with my own eyes, so why wouldn’t I believe he was sending me these messages now? My tile bleeped with a new message.
QUESTIONS STOPPED
I wondered what this meant, then realised he must be referring to the celephet and its repeated question.
‘I stopped it,’ I sent.
IT WAS TORTURE
The face on Doc Carter’s holoscreen. I had been right: the face had looked as though it was being tortured.
‘I’m sorry,’ I sent.
NEVER AGAIN PLEASE
‘Yes, I promise.’ I was reasonably confident that I’d completely disabled the celephet.
I had to get to the heart of this, the reason Jonah was speaking to me. It wasn’t the celephet and it wasn’t Robeen’s music, so what was it?
‘Jonah,’ I typed. ‘Why are you making contact with me? Why are you talking now? Why are you awake?’ I didn’t know how else to put it. What had made this consciousness, however and wherever it was stored, wake up? I sent the message.
YOU
‘Me, Jonah? What do you mean?’
YOU, BREE
ONLY YOU
I stared at the message, with hope waking in my heart. Another message came through almost immediately.
LET’S WRITE A POEM
I had to return to Base while it was still dark. I couldn’t risk anyone finding out what I’d been up to. I climbed into bed with a couple of hours to go until morning, but it was impossible to sleep, I was too amazed and elated. It had been me all along, after all; I was the reason for Jonah’s appearance. It was me, not Robeen and emphatically not the stupid celephet, which had been a complete waste of time. The information it sought could never have been got out of Jonah through torture, he’d assured me of that. How thoroughly nasty and cruel Doc Carter’s experiment had been. I was so glad I’d put an end to it. How I’d love to tell him that when he got back from Mumbai and why shouldn’t I enjoy the moment when I revealed that I wasn’t as stupid and talentless as they all thought?
Why? Because I was certain telling the truth would be dangerous in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine. Even if they believed me, was I naive enough to think they’d just leave me and Jonah in peace to carry on writing our poetry in the darkness of the fossil room? No, they’d find some more horrible way of getting at him through me, using whatever vicious means they deemed necessary. Above all else, I had to protect Jonah.
Tired but happy, I was mulling all this over at breakfast, sitting by myself in the corner where I wouldn’t be disturbed, when Lana detoured in my direction. She looked worried. This wasn’t good.
‘I heard from Doc Carter this morning,’ she said. ‘He tried calling you but couldn’t get through. Perhaps you have “call” switched off on your tile?’
I did, of course, on purpose.
‘He’s a bit concerned,’ she went on. ‘Well, more than a bit, actually. Has something gone wrong with your celephet?’ She knew the name of it now. ‘The information it’s been sending him has just stopped.’
‘My celephet?’ What could I say? Of course Carter would have found out that it wasn’t transmitting, even if he wasn’t working on the data on the other side of the planet. My hand strayed up to my neck.
‘Yes. As soon as he’s back he can check for himself but … can I just take a look? I promised to call him back.’ She put down her breakfast tray.
‘It came off,’ I said quickly. ‘Please don’t look, it’s very sore. I just found it lying on the pillow in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been very upset about it.’ Not having had a chance to rehearse this excuse properly, I hoped it sounded convincing.
‘Come on, I’d better see. Promise I’ll be gentle.’ I had to lift my hair and let her take a look. ‘Ow, that does look sore,’ she said. ‘Did you remember to medicate?’
I nodded.
‘Well, I suppose when he gets back, Doc Carter might be able to reattach it.’ She looked very perturbed.
‘I have it safe in my drawer upstairs.’
Lana lifted her eyebrows. ‘He’s not going to like it but I’ll have to tell him,’ she said. ‘Or you? You could give him a call.’
I looked up at her pleadingly and shook my head.
‘All right. I’m sure there’s no need to be scared. I’ll explain it to him, but when he gets back, you’ll have to tell him exactly what happened, right?’
I felt a little guilty. Judging by her reaction, I guessed Carter might have ordered her to keep an eye on me even though she didn’t seem to know much about the experiment. I didn’t want to get her in trouble as well.
Before Robeen and I headed out, I pretended I’d forgotten something and went back upstairs. Opening my cabinet drawer, I took out the celephet and stabbed a laying-out pin, one of my archaeological tools, right through it, pulling so the pinprick elongated into a ragged little tear which might look as though the slivery patch had snagged on something. If the celephet had caught on a sharp object and torn, it might have ceased to work and might have ‘died’ and dropped off on its own. I wanted to make absolutely sure it couldn’t be fixed and looking at it now, I thought I’d probably succeeded. Carter might have had several more up his sleeve, but he had said mine was the prototype. Robeen, Nisien and Halley must all have been fitted with dummies. It was scary sitting there with the celephet in my hand, seeing the state it was in and knowing that I was the one who’d wrecked Carter’s experiment. I just hoped I could make him believe my feeble excuse.
A cruise along the canals cleared my head before we arrived at the Museum. Robeen had decided to compare the tonal qualities of ancient musical instruments for her project and intended spending the morning sorting through the other instruments in the room where we’d found the cello. I knew exactly where I wanted to be.
I knelt in the darkness, waiting patiently for the feeling to arrive that someone was there with me.
‘Jonah,’ I whispered into the dark. ‘Jonah, I’m back.’
After a while I switched my attention to the next line of the poem. It worked. When I looked up again, the air was beginning to contract around the shape of Jonah, a human shape darker than the dark surrounding it.
YOU
The word appeared on my tile.
‘Yes?’ I answered out loud rather than responding on my tile. It just seemed right.
; BREE
‘Yes.’
DON’T WANT TO SEE ME
What could I say? I didn’t, but I didn’t want to insult him either. ‘I’m sorry. I’m scared,’ I said. ‘I saw you once before, remember? It gave me such a fright. Can’t we just carry on like this?’
WANT TO HEAR ME?
I remembered the other time I’d heard his voice and still didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t likely to shout this time, but to hear a dead man’s voice speaking to me over the centuries? It was hard to get my head around. Yet I was happy to hold millions-of-years-old fossils in my hands and they were old and dead. ‘Go on, then,’ I said.
His voice, when it started, came and went as if he was tuning in; now louder, now quieter, now more distinct and now tangled with static. His voice came from all around me and seemed to be inside my head as well.
‘Bree, I’m here, Bree, I’m here,’ he said again and again.
‘I’m here, Jonah.’ I thought it might be important to keep talking. ‘You’re doing well,’ I said. ‘Don’t give up. I want you to talk to me, I really do. I want to hear your voice.’
Jonah’s voice eventually seemed to settle within the fuzzy human shape. ‘Thank you, Bree.’ He sounded exhausted, as though his presence were a heavy object he had to lift into the world. Despite this, it was a young man’s voice. ‘It’s been a long time … a long time. It’s … a shock.’
‘For me too,’ I said. ‘It’s shocking, but I’m glad. I’ve got shivers running down my spine right now, I’m shivering all over. I can’t believe you’re actually here speaking to me.’
‘I can communicate with you,’ the voice said. ‘You, no one else.’
I smiled at the shape in the darkness.
‘Why me?’ I chanced. It felt as though I might be fishing for compliments but having beaten myself up so many times about being so talentless and stupid, I guess I was allowed.
Jonah’s voice was starting to fade again. ‘I can connect with you. I am … I am…’
‘Please stay with me, Jonah. You are a poet, aren’t you? Like me?’
‘Geologist,’ he corrected me. ‘But I do write poetry … keep it mainly to myself.’
I could relate to this, I did exactly the same. ‘Then I’m privileged. What’s it like where you are … or where you’ve been … where you’ve just come from?’ I hoped that wasn’t an unacceptable question.
The voice of Jonah came and went, above my head this time. It sounded like a large bird swooping around the room. A bird trying to find a place to land.
‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you?’ I said. ‘Can you say it again?’
‘I’m here with you.’ The voice was right in front of me again, sudden, sharp, and it made me jump. He hadn’t answered my question and I didn’t feel like asking again.
‘Thank you for coming,’ I said. ‘Thank you for being here and helping me. You don’t know how much you have helped me.’
‘I’ve been away a long time … a long time…’ It was extraordinary how this normal-sounding human voice was coming from a shape almost touching distance away. ‘Then again, it might only have been a heartbeat.’
Does he realise he’s dead? I wondered. This seemed too sensitive a question to ask until we knew one another better. ‘Do you work here, at the Museum?’ I decided to stick to the present tense.
‘Work? Yes and live here.’
‘Live’ might square with what Doc Carter had told me about the Museum being the headquarters of the resistance movement, if Jonah had belonged to that. If times were bad, members of the resistance might have ended up living here. The place was built like a fortress after all. If times were bad… I remembered the drawings in the gallery upstairs and shuddered.
I noticed Jonah never took the initiative to speak and decided I’d better keep talking. ‘I was thinking of calling our collection of poems “Missing Earth” or something like that. What do you think? When I get home, there’s a lot I’m going to miss about this place.’
‘There’s a lot I miss,’ said Jonah. ‘Earth was so beautiful … but in these last days…’ His voice cracked. ‘…in these last days…’
‘I think I’ve seen something of what happened in the last days,’ I said. ‘There are drawings upstairs on the walls. All those enormous insects attacking the people. It looks like some kind of hell.’
‘Yes,’ Jonah replied. ‘The drawings. Malaky’s drawings. He spent hours up there … hours and hours and days and days; drawing, drawing… He wouldn’t come away. His mind had gone. His mind had gone. That’s all he had left.’ There was something so chilling about the matter-of-fact way he said it.
‘You couldn’t go outside?’ I said.
‘Of course not,’ said Jonah. ‘You don’t remember?’
‘I wasn’t there.’
‘You weren’t … there?’
There was a catch in his voice and I was afraid of upsetting him with further questions about these ‘last days’. Afraid of upsetting a ghost? If he didn’t realise he was a ghost, it seemed likely the realisation would come as a blow. Jonah sounded confused, his voice was slow and thoughtful as though he were trying to make sense of the situation. I thought it best to return to the poem. I picked up a section of ammonite, polished to reveal the intricate patterns through the spiral.
‘Didn’t these become extinct the same time as the dinosaurs?’ I knew the answer but it was a way to get him talking about something else.
‘Yes, but it has a relative, the nautilus. It swims in deeper seas, of course, the ammonites lived in shallow, tropical waters.’ You could tell from his voice that Jonah was pleased to be talking about his specialist subject. Relieved, too.
‘Tell me about them.’
And he did. Jonah rambled on about ammonites and nautili, explaining their structure, their secret coil of chambers which were added to by one chamber each year, their means of jet propulsion through the water and the way they caught food with their grasping tentacles. It was completely fascinating and as he warmed to his subject, his voice grew stronger and more animated.
I learnt so much more about the Earth that day just sitting in that dark room and listening to his voice: how Earth came to be and about the evolution of different species. I think he even forgot I was there for a lot of the time and I was too entranced to ask many questions. On and on he talked about the formation and variety of gemstones in the Earth and the work of volcanoes in shaping the land; of the rise of the continents through different geological eras; describing a variety of exotic animals now extinct; how birds evolved from dinosaurs; how the eye evolved in response to light. For the first time I really took on board the almost unimaginable timescales involved. When you really thought about it, it made the rate at which decisions were currently being made about the Earth seem reckless.
Listening to Jonah was wonderful. But a slow, uncomfortable feeling was stealing over me. Previous doubts I’d had were beginning to crystallise into something more certain.
When you’ve been brought up believing in something, I guess you’re bound to feel guilty the first time you start to question it. I’d grown up pledging an unquestioning allegiance to our Great Quest and Purpose, to the expansion of human settlement beyond Mars, and so had everyone else I knew. Sitting there in the dark, listening to the amazing story of Earth, something which had been nagging at me all the time I’d been on Earth now hardened into a plain fact.
If our Great Quest and Purpose meant stripping our motherplanet of all its precious and unrecoverable assets, then it was wrong.
There wasn’t much writing done that day. Time was growing short before Doc Carter’s return, when I’d have to answer for what had happened to the celephet. As Jonah and I said goodbye late that afternoon, as his voice and his shape melted into the darkness, I resolved to return alone that night and make more progress on what I now thought of as our poem. I really wanted to get on with it while there was still time.
Unfortunately, I was so exhausted, having
barely slept for forty-eight hours, that I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep the moment I laid down my head and was conscious of nothing until morning.
I felt really angry with myself, so when at breakfast I discovered that Doc Carter and Halley wouldn’t be returning until the following day, I could have wept with joy. One more uninterrupted day with Jonah – it seemed that this would definitely be my last.
It may seem strange how I could carry on these meetings with Jonah without Robeen getting the slightest bit suspicious, but you don’t know Robeen: she was so thoroughly immersed in her ancient instrument research, nothing else mattered, certainly not whatever I was up to. She didn’t ask me any more about the celephet, she just left me alone. In every respect, she was the perfect partner. That extra day felt like a gift from the gods.
Outside, it was extremely bright and sunny and some of the golden warmth seemed to seep into the ancient building, even as far as its darkest heart, where Jonah and I sat together. Out amongst the statues in the hall, Robeen played Bach very expertly and beautifully on the variety of stringed instruments she’d found and Jonah loved the music, but I didn’t feel threatened by this now. I felt safe in the knowledge that I was the real reason he was there. We spent the whole day on the poem, sparking ideas off each other, batting words back and forth, chatting, even laughing. I forgot he was, that word again, a ghost. I was really excited with what we had created. It was a wonderful day.
My last good day.
‘Tell me again what happened?’ Doc Carter nursed his creased forehead with one hand and held the torn celephet in the other. Although clearly angry, he hadn’t blown his top the way I’d feared.
‘It was exactly as I told you: I was at the Museum, exploring some of the rooms in the dark. My foot caught in a rope, I bent down to free it and I felt something scratch the back of my neck. It may have been a nail sticking out of an old picture frame, there are lots of things like that lying about in those rooms.’ Having rehearsed my story so many times, I was afraid that it might sound too polished. I tried my best to re-phrase bits of what I’d said last time and the time before. ‘I didn’t realise it was damaged but the next morning when I woke up, there it was lying on the pillow. I was so shocked and worried and … and frightened about what you’d say. I’m really disappointed with myself. I’m sorry.’
