On the Edge of Gone Read online

  And I’ll nod, or I’ll say yes, or I’ll say, “Worse,” and I’ll slip away.

  I see people who were crumpled against the walls earlier. Now they grin with hope. Others are shouting that we should’ve left weeks ago.

  My head pounds. Even my one-word responses fade into nothing. I don’t think a day and a half of rest in that cabin with Iris is enough to return me to normal.

  We get three more level-one messages. One from the head of engineering, saying they’re trying to override the delay. One from the captain, saying he’ll hear people out. One from Iris and Max, their heads together, telling the passengers where to gather and how to make their opinions known.

  I find myself back in front of Els’s office. It’s quieter here. My fingers glide over the door’s surface. I don’t swipe at it yet. I steel myself for that whine.

  “You’ve made things on board very interesting,” Els says, coming up behind me.

  “Not me. Can I talk to the captain?”

  “He’s a little busy.”

  “I have information. He may be more likely to listen to me than Iris.”

  “Are we OK . . . after . . . ?”

  I shake my head, then stop when I realize how Els may take it. “Not now,” I say. “I can’t. Not now.”

  “I just want to know . . .”

  I find the right words: “One thing at a time.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  TEN MINUTES LATER, ELS HAS PULLED Captain Van Zand aside for me.

  “Are you in on this?” he demands. We’re in a corner outside a database center where he was talking to one of Max’s bosses.

  I shake my head.

  “Your sister is.”

  I nod.

  “She’s caused a hell of a lot of problems. I’m not happy.”

  I don’t know whether to shake my head or nod.

  “Are you going to say anything? I don’t have time for this.”

  I’m getting so sick of talking. It’s like holding the wrong kind of magnets together: I can try and try, but it takes brute force, and the second I relax, the magnets simply slide past each other. “Have you spoken with Max or Iris yet?”

  “No. They don’t want us tracking them. Why are you here, Denise?”

  “You should do what they say.”

  He throws up his hands and turns away. “That’s all you’ve got? I have a ship to take care of.”

  “You’re the one people depend on to survive.”

  “Yes!” He turns back, gets up in my face. I flinch. “More than six hundred people depend on me! We were about to escape this planet—six hundred people and who knows how many future generations! We were on the edge of panic and Max shoved us over.”

  I prepared these words. I can—one last time—“You’re thinking of the bigger picture. The future of mankind.”

  “Yes!”

  “The people on the planet are part of that future.”

  “And if I try to save everyone, we all die. Do you think I enjoy having to pick and choose? Sometimes, it’s necessary.”

  “Necessary isn’t always—it’s not—it’s the easy way out sometimes. Listen. The survivors have a plan.” I’m getting louder. I clench and unclench my fists. I left the book with Els since I couldn’t very well be taken seriously holding it, but I miss its weight in my arms. “They’ve identified local harbors. They’ll find functional boats and go down the canals and rivers to ferry people back and forth. We can help. They need small transport—water scooters, printed rafts—to find those boats. They need engineers to break into and repair the boats. They need skippers who can take the boats through rough waters. They need tabs and signal boosters to communicate across distances. They need air filters. The Nassau can help with all that. Maybe waiting for actual rescue would take too long, but the Nassau can help with the planning, the infrastructure . . .” Breathe, breathe. I scramble for what else I had prepared. “It’d only be a few days.”

  “We can’t last a few days. There could be a new disaster. Another tsunami. An earthquake. We’d have to start repairs from scratch.”

  I’m pressed up against the wall. Others are already trying to get Captain Van Zand’s attention. I’m hyperaware of the captain’s eyes on mine, of my sluggish tongue, of the people impatiently rushing back and forth. “Imagine how screwed the people in those shelters would be.”

  I wrap my arm around myself. I need to go.

  “I have responsibilities—”

  “OK” is all I say.

  “I understand you have friends out there. And people you might . . . relate to. This is personal for you. But I have to be objective.”

  I don’t argue. As he leaves, my face crumples and I drag myself away, to silence. In the darkness of my old room, stripped of anything that made it mine, I wait.

  I breathe.

  Protestors nearby shout. They’ve gathered in the park. I should watch. I don’t know whether Iris and Max are talking to the group now, or whether the protestors assembled on their own. I don’t know whether Captain Van Zand is listening. I doubt it. He had to pick and choose, and he chose.

  But he should stop pretending he’s so objective. Doesn’t he have his ship? His passengers? His position?

  Even if I am too close, if it is too personal, I don’t know if that makes me any less right. Maybe it’s the opposite. Maybe closeness lets you see something for what it really is, and see the damage it does.

  Maybe there is no bigger picture. We all have our own pictures to worry about.

  My tab buzzes.

  “Four days,” Iris says, out of breath. I can barely hear her over the cacophony in the background. In the projection, her hair looks tangled, her face sweaty. Her grin breaks wide. “The captain gave us four days.”

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  THAT AFTERNOON, IRIS GOES TO LOOK after Mom at the airport and tell her the three of us are staying on Earth together. Iris and I will be on the ship a few more days to help organize the rescue missions.

  After that, we’ll leave.

  Iris returns hours later, weary. I don’t need to guess at the state she found Mom in. All she’ll say is “She’s happy we’re staying together.”

  Then she’s off to talk logistics. They have boats to find.

  Me, I stay in the background. The ship is too hectic with people upset that we’re staying, people thrilled that we’re helping, people furiously hoping they can find their families in the shelters.

  I linger in our old cabin and in the quiet nooks and crannies I’ve discovered the past two weeks. I spend a lot of time in the dark. I’ll have to get used to light coming from flashlight beams and lightstrip glows, rather than from above.

  I read my book. I avoid Anke in the hallways and notice her avoiding me in return. I go to the med bay to have my arm checked, where I ask—rehearsed and reluctant—if Dr. Meijer has any valerian. She hands it over and gestures at a chair and says, “I’d like to talk.”

  Afterward, I sit on a walkway overlooking the park. Sanne sits by my side, explaining that many more volunteers offered to help the rescue operation than they know what to do with. I’m quiet, mostly. Sanne says, “I’m impressed, you know. With what you did.”

  I don’t know how to answer. But I know I’m not the only one responsible.

  Late the second day, I track down Max. He has a corner to himself in a meeting room that’s converted into a temporary headquarters. He leans back, ankles crossed on the desk in front of him. His fingers dance around the angled projection hovering overhead. The lights are dim: energy rations have been halved.

  When Max sees me, he blows a lock of hair off his forehead. Blue shadows run under his eyes, like he’s barely slept. “Heyyy,” he drawls. “Your sling is gone.”

  “I just came from Dr. Meijer. What are you working on?”

  With a flick of his hand, Max tilts the projection toward me. “Last night, engineers set up signal boosters around town. Look, a straight line from us to the Nieuwe Meer”—he points at a
city map and several dotted lines—“and from there to the deeper canals. Now we can communicate with the people investigating the boats. We’re printing boosters to extend reach to the IJ. I’m trying to optimize the spread so we can get the most coverage.”

  I follow about half of that. “Do you know where Iris is?”

  He draws a vague circle west of the city. “Visiting shelters to find people with boating experience, last I heard.”

  “Didn’t we find volunteers on board?”

  “Not experts. The water’s a mess with all the debris. If we can find someone with more experience . . .” He stifles a yawn.

  It’s still cute, the way he does that, the way he lies back lazily. I like how Max seems like a blur—fuzzy, half there, but pleasant—that only sharpens when he concentrates. I like how sturdy he looks, his broad neck, his thick arms.

  I don’t know if I like him the way I did, but I like him. And I miss him.

  “If Iris hadn’t mentioned the helicopters, you’d have let us go,” I say.

  His teeth clack together. “I don’t know. I’d been looking at that video on your tab—”

  “If I hadn’t run back to confront Els, we’d have been gone already.”

  He cringes.

  “My sister lied to me. Els lied to me.” I look at my feet. “You, your mother . . . I should be angry. What you did was wrong.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Are you sorry?”

  “Yes! I said—”

  “OK.”

  “What?”

  “OK.” I’m still staring at my feet. My hair covers my face on both sides, blocking out most of the room. “I’m tired. I don’t want to be angry. And you set all this in motion, even though you might’ve gotten kicked off, too. So. OK.”

  “Oh. Well. OK.”

  “Did you? Get kicked off?”

  “The captain is angry. But a lot of people are on my side; he did lie to them all. He says he’ll decide later. For now, I’m handling technical details.” Max taps the projection.

  I let my eyes wander to the wall past him. “Can I help?”

  The pattern I noticed in the cabin Iris and I were locked into repeats itself across the ship. The wall behind Max and those in the mazes of the lower decks have the same horizontal slats. I’ll walk past, my neck crooked, studying the panels from bottom to top. Wide, wider, narrow, wide, narrow, then that one strip that’s the narrowest, then wide, narrow—

  They match every time.

  • • •

  By day three, the ship is almost back to how it was before, except people are no longer stopping me in the hallways. I can visit the dining rooms or wander around stroking the leaves wrapped around the balcony railings, and not worry about anyone grabbing my shoulder to turn me around, or about screaming arguments over how the launch should never have been delayed.

  I end up dawdling outside Captain Van Zand’s office. Every time I gather the courage to announce my presence, I slink away, twist around in the hallways, recite what I want to ask for the umpteenth time.

  The captain’s door slides open. Captain Van Zand walks out, almost missing me. “Denise? Did you want something?” His hair is a mess. It reminds me of Max’s, sticking out every which way. And—though they’re less noticeable on the captain’s skin—he has the same bags under his eyes, dark and thick.

  “Why did you decide to delay the launch? After we talked, I thought . . .”

  I think he wants to walk away or dismiss me, but he says, “You want to know the truth?”

  I nod.

  “The passengers were too riled up. If I’d proceeded with the launch . . . We have a long journey ahead of us. We can’t start it off with bad blood.”

  “So you never actually changed your mind.”

  “If it were up to me, we’d already be generating our own gravity up there.” He points his head toward the ceiling. “I enjoyed my benevolent Van Zand dictatorship for those few weeks. But I guess we’re a democracy now.”

  “Are you angry at Iris and Max?”

  “Livid.” He turns as if to walk away, then stops. “That doesn’t mean I don’t understand. And that part of me isn’t thankful.”

  I smile, slight and timid.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Curiosity,” I lie.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  I’VE BEEN DOING MY BEST TO HELP MAX. He’s got little tasks for me: clean up a map, send it to the others, cross-reference lists of survivors, check the radio signals.

  I tweak updates about the activity outside and put them online the same way I did before. I receive videos to share: dark, shaky images of water scooters approaching a shelter, of the boat they found in the Nieuwe Meer proudly sailing through, of frazzled survivors and rescue workers. And one video of a shelter they found down by Amstelveen, where the ceiling collapsed and the water swept in.

  I cut the videos to size and upload the relevant parts.

  I try, at least. Sometimes that means a content buzz of accomplishment. Other times it means rising panic and my fists pressed against my eyes, unidentifiable sounds coming from my throat, because I can’t, I can’t, I can’t.

  And I don’t know whether I’m thinking about the work, or something else.

  “Hey,” Iris whispers.

  I drop my fists. I stare at the hallway ahead rather than the shape of my sister crouching by my side. I hadn’t realized she was here; she spends most of her time outside. When she is on board, she’s sleeping or planning.

  “I can talk,” I say after a few moments.

  “OK?”

  “I didn’t want you to think . . .”

  “It’s fine if you can’t.”

  She must’ve come from outside. Her pants are coated with dirt. I thought I’d gotten used to it, but after a few unbroken days on the Nassau with its spotless walls, the muddy streaks are jarring.

  “Those videos you’ve been working on are tough,” she says.

  I nod. “I saw you on them.”

  “Yeah? How’d I look? I’m not photogenic.”

  “You looked natural.”

  She hesitates. “’Nise . . . I’m barely nineteen. Takeout and essays and all-nighters are natural. Don’t think that—”

  “I can’t be useful.”

  “What?”

  I repeat myself. I shuffle my feet over the floor, wait until someone has gone by before I continue. “I’ve been trying my best. Like you. Like them. But I just want the Way Station.” My voice thickens. “I just want the cats.”

  “Sweetie . . . You don’t have to help Max.”

  She’s right. What I should do is follow Iris’s example: rescue survivors, trek across the city, rebuild. I suppose I will be doing all that soon enough. The extra time Van Zand gave us is running out.

  It might be the right thing to do, but I’m—I’m scared.

  “I just want to do nothing.” I’m almost whispering now. “Just for a while. Just as long as it takes.” Stop, I tell myself, stop, Iris is tired, too. When I continue, my voice is steady. But the rest of me shakes. “I don’t think I’m built for the end of the world. I tried to be strong, and work hard, forget the cats . . . I can’t be useful.”

  Iris edges closer. “Whether someone is useful only matters if you value people by their use.”

  I dip my head, unsure how to look at her.

  “It’s been stressful. You’re doing your best. End of story. If anyone gives you shit—well, I’m not signing up for any end of the world that my sister can’t be part of. We can’t survive by giving up all the reasons we want to survive. That’s not the way. Forget the cats? I like that you like cats! I like that you have this whole hierarchy of fruit that you can and can’t eat. I like that you’re faced with an interstellar spaceship and decide that what it really needs is fewer typos. And I—I like that when your sister is missing, you print a damn raft and brave an impact winter to find her, but . . .” Iris wipes at her face. “But mostly, I like that you like cats.”

>   She bumps into me lightly. My lips twitch.

  “I mean, love cats. Love. You’re kind of obsessed, sweetie.”

  I laugh. I don’t say anything else.

  But I listen.

  I watch the videos they sent me to edit. I extend my projection over the ceiling of my cabin and lie on my bed. The image is shaky at the edges, stretched too far.

  My room is dark. The only light comes from the projection, where the cameraperson’s flashlight is aimed at a little girl and at Antonia, who’s helping the girl climb from a shelter. “That’s right,” Antonia says, her eyes flicking at the camera on occasion, “just . . . step onto the scooter, right here, behind your mommy . . . she’ll take you to a boat, OK? It’ll take you to this big old factory, where it’s dry.”

  I switch to the video taken at the abandoned factory a few dozen meters from the shoreline, where they’re setting up the first survivors until they can connect with others and spread out among better locations. Beds are lined up in rows. It looks like the shelter in Weesp. Bedrolls, airbeds, stretchers, foldouts.

  I guess there’s no reason for that to be different.

  Other parts are: there’s more space. Kids are chasing each other around, screaming accusations of Cheater cheater and No, no, I was fastest! and a minute later they’re laughing raucously, the argument forgotten. Air filters gleam by their mouths when the light hits them right. They wear coats thick with grime.

  I catch a glimpse of Heleen, distributing food they recovered from the drowned Amstelveen shelter. Samira kneels by a crying boy in a wheelchair.

  People will survive. I’m more sure of that than ever. Earth is harried and dirty and chaos and life and future, always.

  But I don’t know if it’s mine.

  “Can I still stay?” I ask Els.

  We’ve barely spoken. Short messages about the announcements. Nothing else.

  I stand in the doorway of her office. Leyla is sitting across from Els, her broken leg extended before her.

  “My name is cleared. So do I still have my spot? Can I change my mind about leaving?” I lick my lips. “Even if I can’t work?”