At the Edge Read online

  I push myself up from the bench and feel the last of my motivation, my belief and momentum, bleed out of my feet and into the concrete floor.

  He crosses his arms over his chest and plants his feet a hip-width apart, the glass firmly gripped in each hand. In that moment I see how Jamie will always echo Dan’s defiance and his sense of justice. The fragile sutures that hold my heart together snap.

  ‘Give them to me.’

  ‘No!’ Jamie yells.

  ‘Yes.’

  The hand I’ve put out for Jamie to put the glass in is steady. There’s no external evidence I’m being seismically undone from the inside.

  I need to leave Jamie with someone responsible because I’m not. I’m completely tapped out. Barely hanging on.

  The howl of wind overhead intensifies and the lights in the lab flicker and drop out for a second.

  ‘Where’s Alice?’

  ‘No Alice.’

  ‘Yes, Alice.’

  ‘No, no. NO-NO-NO-NO.’ He swipes his arm across the bench and half the failed samples shatter around my feet.

  ‘You little shit!’ I scream as the building rocks with the ferocity of the thunder.

  I lunge for him but I’m slowed by fatigue, my anger only hot enough to ignite an impotent explosion. Jamie jumps from the step and runs with the speed only small children are blessed with, out of the coolness of the lab, down the corridor of the building and into the vicious night.

  ‘Jamie!’ I chase him across the old playground, through eddies of dust, rising in columns from the parched earth. ‘Jamie, stop!’

  My pelvis protests. The bones clash against each other and I slow down.

  Jamie’s never seen a dust storm much less been out in one.

  He’ll stop. He’ll come back. He will.

  I pull my t-shirt up over my mouth to keep the air breathable and try to follow his outline blurred by the opaque air. At the gate, I lose sight of him for a moment. It becomes several moments, then a fragment of a minute where time stops and overhead the sky is torn open by lightning and night becomes day. In the x-ray after-burn, there is no silhouette of a small boy running into the maw of the storm.

  ‘Jamie!’ I scream, his name stamped out by a series of deafening booms that shake the ground.

  Dust scores my eyes and ears, fills my throat. My bare skin smarts and bleeds as though it’s being rubbed with a thousand tiny pieces of sandpaper.

  The wind strengthens. I lean into it. Push against it.

  Buffeted by gusts, I stagger out of the schoolyard. Across the buckled bitumen and into the decimated bush. I’ve lost him.

  I can’t search by myself, blinded and barely able to breathe, yet I can’t turn back for help and leave him out here alone.

  *

  In the nightmares that crowd my sleep, his body is encased in glass and an electrical storm rages inside the box. He lies there, like Sleeping Beauty, waiting to be woken. Waiting for me to find a way to fix his broken body so he can live again. But I can’t theorise and experiment to find the breakthrough because there’s too much noise. A cacophony of his name shouted in hysterical desperation. I try to tell them to stop searching because I’ve found him. He’s safe. He’s with me. But when I look at the glass box he is gone, and I wake screaming his name.

  Afterwards, I lie in a clammy shroud of sweat and fear and force myself to think of anything – the periodic table, the genus of all extinct plants, every clause in the ’79 Immigration and Resettlement Act – anything to not think about Jackson carrying the limp body from the graveyard of trees. Or the massive haematoma on his forehead that my hand couldn’t smooth away. And I won’t wonder if the fall killed him, or if, face down, he suffocated in the dust. I won’t imagine how scared he might have been in those last seconds, disorientated and alone in the fury of the storm. I won’t remember rocking and keening in the dirt with his lifeless body in my arms, wishing my tears were all that was needed to bring him back.

  Outside, rain falls and I begin to recite to myself the atmospheric convection modelling for storm prediction they taught us in first-year uni. I will fill my thoughts with anything to keep me from thinking of all the ways I should have dealt with Jamie’s defiance. How it was my responsibility to keep him safe.

  *

  The click of the door pulls me from a listless sleep. I roll over. My body aches from weeks of lying in a cocoon of grief and filthy sheets. On the pillow beside me is a dirty square of glass. I snatch it up to hurl it at the wall, the fucking glass, but as I touch it I realise it’s smooth. I rub dirt from the corners until I find the number and letter: L20. Through the fog of grief something shifts.

  This is the last sample piece I put under the microscope.

  Even though the lab belongs to a different lifetime, a past I want to forget, questions form like tenacious bubbles: is the square one of the pieces Jamie took? Did he have it in his hand when he ran into the storm?

  I rub more dirt from it. The epidermal shattering is gone; all layers of the triple-glazing are unblemished, lightly shaded grey in the weak twilight.

  My little boy died, while the glass lived.

  The epiphany roils inside me and I know no matter how hard I try to hide from it, the knowledge will dog me.

  I walk stiffly down the back stairs of the house and across the playground to the old school building. Max is sitting on a stool, with Dan’s old tool belt around his waist, waiting for me. The small-boy roundness is gone from his face, but the curious glint still lights his eyes.

  ‘I found the first one out near the fence,’ he says, sliding off the stool. ‘Jackson and I found another one near—’ He stumbles over a couple of words and finally says, ‘out in the bush.’

  I look down at my feet. Scientific discovery is often a consequence of accident and chance, but this—

  ‘It was the dirt and the rain,’ Max continues, and the tone reminds me of the talks he used to practise for school. ‘You were trying to grow glass like plants, without any of the things plants need.’

  I nod. My lack of common sense, my tunnel vision, the obsession with obliterating Morrison, of wanting there to be some kind of legacy in Dan’s pain. And all I ended up doing was losing Jamie.

  No. He’s not a set of keys. Not a book or a pair of glasses you misplace only to find later. He is gone.

  ‘I tried it with the others. River water works better than tank water. The dirt out in the bush is better than the soil in the greenhouses.’

  I nod again and look at the samples lined up on the bench. Smooth. Impervious. Flawless.

  The pressure in my skull releases. The haze burns away.

  ‘We could call it JTD glass,’ he says, and I finally look at him. ‘Jamie can save the world like Superman.’

  And in the space that clears in my head I see terminal glass healing. I see old buildings refitted, new ones constructed, borders reopened and people leaving internment camps, moving north to cross the Byron Line to re-inhabit the homes they fled. I see a different world. Not the world of the past I wanted so desperately for my boys. Instead, there’s the possibility of a world where my boys have options for where and how they live. Leaves might once again fall, but from the trees they grow in their lounge rooms. Where the constructed world and the natural world are no longer clearly defined as one or the other.

  Tears of hope, tears I thought I would never cry again, pour down my face. Max’s skinny arms wrap around me. On my knees, I hug him tight, his body warm, his heart thumping against mine, his breath tickling my ear.

  In every cell of my body, I feel how easy it is to be defined by what’s broken – been taken – and stay that way. It’s harder to trust in living again and hope that in time, all fissures might heal.

  The Urge

  Carlington Black

  Wed, February 3, 2027

  John Quant’s
nose tickles like he is fifteen again – hot flush, spikey cells, and crackling snot.

  Something is wrong with the air. Not the usual wrong that we’ve got used to – the monoxide, the tarry putrefaction of urban life. Something wrong not in what we’ve added, but in what’s always been there.

  He must ignore it. Rise above it. Concentrate.

  He is trained to look at the data. He is self-trained over 40 years to keep the senses in check.

  Tomorrow will be busy. They will be analysing results from January.

  The results. The numbers. The final units remote in with their telemetry data. John is calm. The data is completing.

  But his nose still itches. He looks around the lab, tucks his chin to his chest, and extracts the dried nasal mucus.

  Thurs, February 4

  Damon sends through the first datasets from the Project Aeolos measurement sites. His memo points out a spike in krypton across all sites. He heads his dispatch ‘Extraordinary’. John reprimands him. These notes go into the official record. Hyperbole is improper. Even in these days of hipster science, there is no place in the discipline for looseness. Save that for the girlfriend – if you have one.

  Quant likes Damon. He sees his younger self in him. A quiet resolute intelligence wrapped in a square rugged frame.

  Quant’s dad said that a body should be used for more than carrying around his soft mind. Quant played rugby. He cried when he got hurt. He cried when the referee said he broke the rules.

  Damon plays social rugby. His body has responded accordingly to the physical stimulation.

  There is no doubt about Damon’s data. Krypton should be at 1.14 parts per million of the atmosphere. Yet the project has measured 1.21ppm average across all sites, peaking to 1.49ppm by month’s end. That’s beyond previously observed variability for this narcotic gas.

  Quant removes the krypton data – as they were not looking at it – and forwards the remaining results to Project HQ in London. London won’t be happy though. Quant’s team is meant to be looking for the markers of climate change. All that data is static.

  It is Maena’s birthday today. Quant gets Veronique, the team secretary, to send flowers, and organise the children to draw some cards. Maena will have arranged for them to do something on the weekend to celebrate.

  That night, Maena only engages with Quant in bed once she confirms tomorrow’s schedule, double-checks the alarm, checks Facebook, and is sure the kids are asleep.

  Friday, February 5

  A note comes from the international project leader. He questions whether Quant has the project set up according to their specifications. The first dataset delivered an outcome in discordance with the Project Aeolos hypothesis. The levels of carbon monoxide should be climbing. But the data is not moving. He says the lack of predicted numbers is undermining the result. Quant knows he means that the team is undermining HQ’s chances in the next funding round. The leader says Quant will have to recalibrate the instruments. Quant has not budgeted for that, so cannot ask for more money. Quant decides to face that problem with Jim Casey next week.

  Tues, February 9

  Quant covers off the recalibration with Jim. Casey is irritated. That is unusual.

  But Casey authorises Quant’s proposal that Damon and Julie visit all nineteen sites. It will take the month. They are both happy to go. Thank goodness for the enthusiasm and industry of youth. But that writes off February – which is now feasibly another faulty dataset.

  Maena has scheduled a family walk along the beach this evening. The children keep picking up conical molluscs. Bright blue and about the size of a fingernail. It’s not Quant’s speciality, so he can’t answer their question why the ebbing tide was leaving deep trails of them in waves down the beach.

  He holds Maena’s squat hand. Her palm stays dry despite the humidity.

  Fri, February 12

  Damon has reported back each day this week as they visited the first three sites. All tested within the confidence and tolerance level for the project guidelines. They recalibrated them anyway. Quant asks them to do that for each site. He orders Flynn to join them next week with a new calibration kit. Flynn will QA the process. Quant must be sure.

  Saturday, February 13

  Maena has organised for the family to BBQ with the Fergusons. They live in a tiny valley that cuts into the Eastbourne Hills opposite Pūriri Street. Leonard Ferguson is a nuclear physicist who works at GNS. He’s also good at BBQ. Their children get on exceedingly well, so keep themselves occupied after dinner. The adults sit on their deck through the rest of the warm evening. The sun vanishes and the clack of cicadas gives way to the chirchirp of crickets. Maena thinks she sees green and white clouds in the night sky. Her skin fluxes pleasantly against her thin cotton dress while serving tea. Quant thinks it a very pleasant evening.

  Sunday, February 14

  Quant tries to BBQ for the family. It doesn’t go so well. He throws the mess to the dogs and takes himself to the beach to calm down. Those blue shells are now ankle deep. Great shin-high rifts of them. There is also a vague taint to the air. He causally links it to the rotting flesh of the shellfish. By the time he gets back, Maena has rescued things with a selection of salads.

  Tues, February 16

  The city finally hits summer. It’s come late, but with retribution for being wantonly anticipated. Temperature and humidity is high. Standing at the bus stop this morning, Quant feels an end-of-day tiredness. The bus pulls up, hydraulics fizzing.

  The cicadas’ mating call reaches a volume that breaks into Quant’s awareness. Once he notices, the clamour is astounding. Each and every tree bristles with them. Their dry snappy clack echoes through the hills. Now he hears them all the time. He can’t get the clack out of his head.

  Friday, February 19

  Not a single instrument has been found inaccurate. Quant didn’t think they would be. They were getting the same sorts of readings across all the units. There were no rogue results. The whole lot is uncommon in unison.

  He requests that Damon sends the group data for the month to date. Krypton is rising quickly – imperceptible unless you are looking. Quant knows that’s strange. But he doesn’t want to risk the project by including the data in the package uploaded to London. It’s not what they’re meant to be looking for.

  Sunday, February 21

  Quant gets up to go to the toilet. It is 3.17am. The cicadas are still casting their calls, sonically drowning the crickets. They are snapping, like fingers cracking in your ear. So loud, it’s distorted.

  Quant thought they only made that noise during the day. He sits at the computer and does some research. No one has studied cicadas intensely. He supposes that it doesn’t make for a sufficiently interesting funding proposal.

  In New Zealand, the various species of cicadas have life cycles of between three to five years. The population is periodical, meaning every three, five or seven years, depending on the species, the population surges. Quant immediately notices the cycle is made of prime numbers. This must be one of those cyclical years.

  The curious scent taints the air continuously now, and it’s everywhere – not just at the beach. So it’s not emanating from the molluscs. It’s not the thick clumpy scent of decomposition. It’s altogether sharper – like ozone. It can’t be the rising krypton, which is odourless.

  Monday, February 22

  Quant asks at work, but no one else smells anything unusual. The answer makes him feel as if he has a form of nasal tinnitus. He won’t ask again.

  Damon, Julie and Flynn have gone AWOL. Quant can’t get them on their phones. Neither is there an answer at either of their hotel rooms.

  Tuesday, February 23

  Quant gets hold of Julie. She answers the phone in Damon’s room. She sounds sleepy. Her voice soft like a Robitussin addict. She explains that they were out at the remote Kihikihi site yester
day. They were getting ready to leave for Paeroa.

  Quant imagines Julie as a phone sex girl. The fingers of her left hand grip the receiver. Her thin red-brown lips brush, sticking momentarily to the phone cup. Quant snaps back to the call, chastising himself as he issues an affirmation on Paeroa.

  Wednesday, February 24

  A cicada is trapped on the morning bus. It crashes into windows. Through each successive collision, crusty thorax on glass, the whirring transforms into a damaged flacking sound. Quant watches, embarrassed for its desperation. The cicada clips the ear of a passenger and comes to an abrupt stop on the forearm of Quant’s shirt. It is bright green, shimmering like Soho neon. It picks out its spindly legs from where they spiked the cotton. Quant pinches lightly at its thorax and pulls it away from the shirt. He holds it to the morning sunlight. The cicada’s legs trace helpless arcs. Its dark pixel eyes stare at him. Quant stares back.

  Friday, February 26

  Damon, Julie and Flynn are again not reachable by phone, but the occasional short text message from each indicates they’re on track. All instruments are testing okay. Quant absolves himself of responsibility: when the data assimilation is complete and the results stay the same, it is up to London to accommodate the facts. Screw their hypothesis – get a new one.

  Saturday, February 27

  Cicadas are everywhere. Not just on the trees, but on buildings, fences, vehicles, and food. They clatter about the backyard, snap, thwack and bang. The kids are greatly amused – catching them by the dozen. They bring each one to Quant, arm outstretched and palm open. The cicadas don’t bother flying away. They just scritch themselves into position on the kids’ hands and start clacking. The kids love the big ones the best. They peer at them closely, watching the viridescent exoskeleton on their carcasses flex, making that cracking noise.

  Everywhere and anywhere, cicadas pair up swiftly and mate. The frantic functionality of the hundreds of cicada matings in the backyard is an opportunity for Quant to introduce the topic of sex to the two eldest, Fiona and Jonno. They watch the quick urgent pairings, fascinated.