The descent, p.4
The Descent, page 4
‘What happened up there, Mum?’
She looks up at me. ‘What happened where?’
I point. ‘Up there, Mum. On the ridge. When we first arrived.’
She is quiet a long time, holding my arm. And then she sighs. ‘Oh Lewis, what do you mean?’
‘Not Lewis, Mum. Kweku.’
‘Yes, of course. Pardon, mon chou.’
Mum spoke French, her mother tongue, to us when we were growing up, and even now reverts to it when we are alone.
‘I mean the baby you had after we arrived here. The one that’s buried up there.’
She lets go of my arm and takes a step back. ‘I don’t know what you mean, Lewis.’
‘Kweku, Mum. Are you telling me it didn’t happen?’
‘Where did you get this idea? There’s nothing up there. Nothing.’
‘Uncle Liberty told me.’
‘Uncle Liberty. You spoke to him?’
‘Yes, Mum. I did. That’s what he said.’
‘Uncle Liberty. How is he?’
‘Why would he tell me that, Mum?’
‘Tell you what, dear?’ Her eyes are clear, that same autumn gold, but clouded with confusion.
‘Nothing, Mum. Nothing.’
She takes my arm again, smiles as if nothing was said. ‘Let’s go back now, Lewis. I’m cold.’
We start back down the hill.
June 2024
In the end, nothing about that space flight turned out the way the Boss wanted. The helicopter came to the roof the day after the Boss got back to Earth, and we flew to a small airstrip near Allentown. I had the full PR briefing report ready to go, just needed a couple of hours to polish my presentation. I’d arranged the meeting with Bragg’s people, and the pharma deal was ready to sign – I had the papers with me.
By the time the helicopter landed Bryce was waiting for us with the Gulfstream. I could see him standing there beside the open stairway in his pilot’s uniform, his arms bare, looking across the wet tarmac towards us as the turbine spun down and the rotors slowed. The door opened and I stepped onto the concrete with my bags. The wind swirled over my bare legs and flipped up my skirt before I could smooth it down, and he smiled and I knew that the smile was for me, and despite myself I couldn’t help but smile back as he started walking towards us. He took my bags from me and as he did his fingers brushed my bare wrist and I could smell him and my pulse rate went crazy and I could feel my heart fluttering inside me like some big fat hummingbird, and it was as if her wings were wired directly to all the places I wanted him to touch.
The flight down to the desert was pure hell. Bryce came back to talk to me after we’d levelled out, but I had to work on my presentation so I brushed him off. All I could think about was clause sixteen of my personal employment contract. Basically, no romances or sexual relationships with other members of the organisation, or with clients or contractors of the organisation, unless okayed or directed by the Boss specifically. So far, I’d not been directed. That party with the Malaysians back when I’d first met him had been as close as it had come, but I knew some of the other girls had been told to do things. When I’d asked them if they had, they’d all said the same thing, more of less: of course. But still, it was clearly a warning. Somehow, he knew that I had the hots for his chief pilot, and I was pretty sure the feeling was reciprocated. It was probably the wife who’d brought it to his attention – it was definitely not something he would notice. She was such a bitch. I didn’t know why she stayed with him. She knew about Astrid and the other women he had parked all over the world, about the parties he and the colleagues threw. And she had her own money. But then again, we were all in the same trap. Money and power are a gravity you can’t escape, unless you own your own rocket, I guess.
So, after we landed and Bryce held me back for a second in the cabin after everyone had deplaned, and he tried to kiss me, one hand on the bulkhead, leaning over me, I pushed him away. He was a gentleman about it, straightened, smiled, said something like: ‘Had to try, sorry.’ I mumbled something stupid and entirely unconvincing like ‘it’s okay,’ but every part of me was dying.
The Boss was sullen and withdrawn in a way I’d never seen him before, like a kid who’d been grounded or had device privileges taken away. Even Astrid’s libidinous presence did nothing to buoy his mood. He sat in the meeting room at the head of the table, twitching and distracted as Paolo briefed him on the pharma deal and I laid out the documents for him to sign. And then I went through my presentation with him. I knew he wasn’t going to be pleased, and I’d done my best to be positive, but there was no other way to say it: the space flight had been a PR disaster.
He sat a while, very still all of a sudden, looking out the picture window at the desert. Then he stood and walked to the sideboard, where the staff had laid out a working lunch: shrimp, lobster, and a selection of salads, cut fruit, Dom on ice. He picked up a shrimp and eyed it for a moment and then put it carefully back in the bowl. And then his body coiled and in one motion he swept the whole banquet to the floor in a crash of serving plates and smashing glass, then he stood looking down at all that beautiful food spread across the floor.
He looked at me then, with those eyes that destabilised you with their brute intensity. ‘What about overseas, our target markets for pharma?’
‘Same thing,’ I said, my voice wavering. I gulped some air. ‘While we were having that hurricane, Europe was being blasted by a record heatwave, and fires were burning out of control in Spain and Greece.’ It sounded like what Trig had told us would be happening on a routine basis now. ‘The press, social media, it was all the same. Billionaire goes galivanting to space at a cost of untold billions while normal people suffer through yet another disaster.’
‘Fuck.’
‘But very good for business,’ said Paolo. ‘Demand for electricity for cooling is through the roof, no pun intended. Our power stations all across Europe and the Middle East are going full bore. Spot prices are double what they were last year. We’re making a fortune, Boss.’
This didn’t seem to help. He stood there blazing at us. ‘And what about that Swedish slut?’
‘Astrid?’ I said. ‘What about her?’
‘No, not Asteroid.’ He rolled his eyes, but didn’t call me an idiot, which I was. ‘Dahlberg.’
‘It’s what you’d expect, Boss.’ I didn’t want to antagonise him further by going into detail.
‘Tell me, for Christ’s sake.’
I could see Paolo brace himself before he said: ‘The events of the last few weeks are unequivocal expressions of a rapidly changing climate driven by our society’s absolute addiction to fossil fuels, and are going to get a lot worse unless massive changes are made, now. She called you irresponsible, selfish, and a symbol of everything that’s wrong with the world.’
The Boss stepped over the food and stood looking out of the window, his back to us. ‘Get someone to clean that up,’ he said.
I made a call.
‘So, nothing new,’ he said. ‘Same old bullshit.’
Paolo started to speak again: ‘Trig said —’ But he didn’t get any further.
‘Fuck that egghead. Whatever he’s spouting we have to kill it, once and for all.’
‘We’ve been trying for years, Boss. They just keep coming back.’
‘Maybe, but we’ve kept them at bay. It’s worked. Our balance sheet proves that. But now we need to take it one step further. We need to end it.’ He turned and faced me. ‘Tell me about Dahlberg.’
I braced myself. ‘In the wake of your trip, she’s calling for a global tax on the super-wealthy to pay for massive emission-reduction programmes and climate-adaptation efforts.’
The Boss ran his hand through his hair. ‘Go on.’
‘She wants to tax all income over fifty million a year at ninety percent.’
The Boss laughed, genuine mirth. ‘Right. Who the hell is going to take that seriously?’
‘Apparently a lot of people,’ said Paolo. ‘Sweden is going to bring a motion to the UN.’
‘I bet Bragg is incandescent. It will never fly.’
‘Of course he is, and of course it won’t,’ said Paolo. ‘But there are a lot of people here lining up behind the idea. In other countries, too.’
‘Fucking liberals.’
‘Not just them.’
The Boss directed his gaze at me. ‘How is Bragg doing in the primaries?’
‘He will get the nomination, according to our experts.’
‘Good. Send him an extra twenty million.’
Paolo nodded, scribbled something in his journal.
The Boss walked back to the head of the table, sat down in his chair and leaned back. Just then a couple of maids came in and whisked up the spilled food and replaced the banquet as it had been before. He watched them leave then nodded to me, and I made up a plate for him the way he liked it, with the shrimp and the lobster tail set out just so. I put the plate in front of him and poured him a flute of champagne. Paolo and I made up plates for ourselves and we all sat and ate in silence.
When he was finished, the Boss dabbed his lips with a napkin. ‘Sell it,’ he said.
Paolo set his flute on the table. ‘Sell what, Boss?’
The Boss swept his hand left to right in a broad arc. ‘This,’ he said. ‘All of it.’
‘Will do, Boss,’ said Paolo. ‘Good move.’
‘And put half of what we get for it into charity.’
Paolo coughed, shook his head. ‘Into what?’
‘You heard me. I don’t care what. Make me look good.’
And that was the start of it, a whole new play. I went home and violated clause four of my employment contract by writing it all down longhand in my diary.
Jennifer
That afternoon I walk to the transmitter cabin and send the next chapter of The Forcing, the part where Mum disappears and my dad and Papa are trying to find her. I finish the transmission, sit back in the chair, lace my hands behind my head and flex my arms. The band crackles and hisses. A voice emerges from the static.
‘To the boys in Australia, come in please.’
I key back. ‘We’re here.’
‘I am going to time my transmissions with yours. Please keep to this schedule. And keep going.’
‘We will. What shall we call you?’
The line is quiet, warbling across the miles. And then: ‘Just call me Sparkplug.’
‘Understood, Sparkplug.’
She begins her transmission. I listen through as she describes her boss’s space flight and its aftermath. And when it’s over, I sit in the cabin, remembering how Mum and Papa used to talk about that world, before the Repudiation and everything that came after, running the transmission over again in my mind. I can’t help but shake my head. So much of everything – a world of surplus for many, crushing deficit for others, but still, everything. What would I have done in such a world, if I had had the chance? What would I have called myself? Historian perhaps? Papa taught me and Lewis science and mathematics, about how the universe works, but I always loved history. I don’t think about that stuff so much now, gravity and light and time, the forces that govern our world. But re-reading Papa’s manuscript, and now hearing Sparkplug telling her story of that time, I find myself wondering about this recent history of the world. What actually happened? How could we have got it so wrong?
If there is one person who can tell me what my mother is unwilling or unable to, it is Aunty Jennifer. When you saw them together you could see they shared a special bond, two women cast away from all they’d known, raising small children together in a time of turmoil and isolation.
I set out a couple of days later, the weather still coming across the sound in ocean-blown ranks, the rain slanting down from dark, fast-moving clouds. When I arrive, Uncle Liberty and Aunty Jenny coax up the fire and put on tea.
Jenny hands me a mug, kisses my cheek. ‘Kwe.’
‘Suppose you’ve talked to your mum,’ says Liberty.
I nod.
‘And.’
‘She said nothing’s up there. I thought maybe she said something to you, Aunty.’
Jenny sips her tea, glances over at her husband. ‘Uncle told me he took you up there, told you what he saw that day.’
‘Yes.’
‘When Uncle told me, all those years ago, I didn’t believe it. Not her. A doctor, a mother. I know your mum, Kwe. We’ve been through a lot together.’
‘That’s why I wanted to talk to you.’
Jenny glanced at her husband a moment. ‘Understand, Kwe, I didn’t see it myself, what my husband thinks he saw. He shouldn’t have told you.’
Liberty sips his tea. ‘Feller deserves to know.’
‘No, husband. Not everything. Did you tell him what you were doing up there that night?’
‘Makes no difference what I was doin’.’
‘It makes all the difference. Poor boy. Tell him, husband. Please.’
Liberty says nothing, stares into the fire.
‘He was on walkabout, Kwe,’ says Jenny. ‘Fasting, speaking to the ancestors. Six days wandering without food. You saw all manner of things out there, husband. Real and spirit.’
Liberty grunts, tips the rest of his tea into the fire. ‘Saw what I saw. There’s reason for it.’
‘I know, my love. But the boy deserves to as well.’
Next morning, I thank them both and start back. Aunty Jenny hugs me, kisses my cheek. Liberty tells me to walk well. A few hours later I am back at the stone Liberty showed me, looking out across twenty years of water. How am I to make sense of what happened to the entire world if my own family’s story is beyond me? And suddenly it doesn’t seem so unfathomable that we destroyed ourselves. Each of us an impossible complexity of fear and desire and sheer, burning will, half governed, animals still, and yet so much more. Divine. Psychotic. Atomic.
When I get back, I go straight to see Mum. It’s evening, and she has a lamp burning. She is sitting at the table with a cup of tea and a book.
‘Hello, Kweku.’
I kiss her and sit, place a small canvas bag on the table between us.
‘What’s this?’
‘Open it, Mum.’
She looks up at me and smiles. That smile I’ve known all my life. She reaches for the bag, unties the drawstring. Her hands are strong still, sun-patched, the knuckles and fingerbones ridged in parchment.
She looks inside, and then back up at me. ‘I don’t understand, Kwe. What is it?’
‘Take it out, Mum.’
She reaches inside, withdraws her hand. I watch as her mouth falls open and her eyes widen. She sits in silence, staring at the tiny skull cupped in her palm.
July 2024
It was about then, just after the Boss decided to sell the space programme and launch his new career as a celebrated philanthropist, that everything changed for me.
By then I knew that he liked me a lot. I’d caught him looking at me several times. Not just the leching stares he gave any pretty woman, but something else, some kind of longing there in his eyes. But each time I caught him, he just looked away and disappeared again behind those cold, clear blues. I knew I wasn’t the prettiest of girls, not like Astrid and the other regulars, but I knew guys found me attractive. I still thought about Bryce now and then, but since I’d rebuffed him on the Gulfstream, he’d cooled right off, and now if we spoke it was all business and space.
And so that day when the Boss called me into his office, I was totally unprepared for what happened, not only there at his desk, but, more importantly, later on at the penthouse.
He was sitting at his desk when I entered, and I could feel him looking me over, lingering on my legs and my boobs. He told me to sit at the coding station, the one that he used for end-to-end encrypted high-level communication off-web. One of the military contractors had set it up for him a few years before. It kept his business dealings well away from anyone he didn’t like and who didn’t like him. And there were a lot of them, believe me.
I sat at the console and entered the password string. I’m good with numbers and letters, that sort of thing. We changed the password every week, and the Boss had a separate authentication. I waited while he authenticated on his phone, counted four blinks of the cursor. ‘Ready, Boss.’
‘Stockholm,’ he said. I typed.
The cursor flashed and the response came up. ‘Ready.’
‘Order follows.’
‘Ready.’
‘Destruction order: Frederik Hedberg.’ He spelled the name out for me. ‘Senior partner, Lansing, Hedberg and Nylander, attorneys, Stockholm.’
‘Confirmation.’
‘Standard rate.’
‘Acknowledged.’
‘Confirm Completion.’
‘Conclude.’
‘Conclude.’
I shut down the console, sat staring at the blank screen. He stood behind me and put a hand on my bare shoulder, ran a finger up the back of my neck. Even now, looking back, I’m not sure what I felt. That fat hummingbird was there, her wingtips touching just about everything inside me. But there was something else too, something darker, and I knew then that I was being pulled into a place that I would never be able to leave.
‘Hedberg?’ I managed.
‘That Swedish bitch’s key adviser. I’m sending her a little warning.’
He stood back and told me to go and lock the door. I did it and he told me to come back. By now he was sitting behind his desk. He told me to stand before him and undress, as if I was being interviewed for a porno role or something. There was calmness in his voice. I guess I’d known this time would come, the way he was, but even so I was surprised at myself as I unzipped my dress and let it fall to the floor. I was wearing a G-string and a lacy half-cup bra underneath, and I could see his eyes glimmer a moment and a smile creep across his face. I found myself wondering if I’d picked this outfit to prompt just this, but pushed it from my mind. Some things are too dirty.
