As soon as he had left the city limits and the hopper port behind, Jeff took manual control, ignoring the dashboard’s warning that his insurance was void if he didn’t stick to automatic so long as the weather bureau warned of adverse conditions. He took pleasure in the feel of the steering wheel under his hands, despite the periodic squalls of rain that lashed at his windscreen, but after a while the rain faded to a light drizzle and the car altered its configuration, becoming lower and more aerodynamic, and even changing colour according to some pre- programmed algorithm. After a couple of hours, a break in the clouds suddenly appeared, and Jeff soon found himself driving through sunlight of such glorious intensity that it seemed to bore through his eyes to touch against the back of his skull.
He took the off-ramp when the car instructed him to, the roads thereafter becoming gradually steeper, higher and narrower, until finally he followed a series of switchbacks, up the side of a hill above Flathead Lake, to a gravelled driveway fronting a gable-roofed log house.
Jeff climbed out and walked around, stretching his legs after such a long drive, while his car sidled over to the grassy slope, there sucking up leaves and twigs and any other available biomass. He tucked his hands into the pockets of his down jacket, and gazed down the slope of the wooded hill to where the waters of the lake shimmered gold and silver. The evening was drawing in as the sun dipped down towards the peaks on the far side of the lake, the last of the rain clouds evaporating even as their fading shadows drifted across hills dense with larch and aspen.
When he felt ready, he walked around to the rear of the cabin and checked the mini-tokamak that supplied it with power. He next headed over to a tool shed standing below some trees that grew up the slope behind the cabin, where he stepped inside and cleared away a tarpaulin laid across the floor. Beneath was a metal doorspe a combination lock. He rotated it in different directions a couple of times until the lid clicked open, then withdrew a foil blister-pack from inside his jacket and placed it inside the safe, before locking it once more.
As he returned to the car to collect his luggage, Jeff accessed his UP and saw there were new messages waiting for him, all left by Olivia. He left them unopened, afraid that, if he did read them, he might make the mistake of calling her back and telling her all the things he’d struggled to keep hidden from her.
He woke with a start not long after dawn. He had been dreaming of Site 17, of walking through the abyssal dark with lights strung along on either side. Farad had been standing in front of him, his face full of alarm, shouting at him silently through his visor.
Jeff got up, his body stiff and sore, and ate a sparse breakfast before driving the rental downhill to where a trail met the road close by the lake. He still retained vivid memories of hiking along this same trail in what now felt like another lifetime. He’d been working on his graduate thesis the first time he’d come here and, although he’d hiked across other parks and trails in the years since, Flathead Lake still held a special place in his heart. The girl he’d brought with him all those years ago was long gone, but he’d come back almost every year since. The bonuses he and Olivia had received for their work on the Jupiter platform had gone towards the down-payment on the cabin, and they had spent several summers there together, before things had soured.
Later hiking trips, whether with other people or on his own, had taught him that particularly intractable problems – whether related to his work in the University of California’s exobiology department or to his intermittent love life – could often be best solved during his traversing of the trails scattered around the lake. On such occasions, the mountains and sky became a great blank canvas for his thoughts, a cosmic whiteboard that left him feeling he understood the way the world worked just a little bit better than before.
But this time was different. This time he didn’t want to think at all. He wanted to become lost in the scent of budding wildflowers, the sight of whitetail deer or the occasional elk picking their way down forest slopes, or amidst the meltwater cascading down those same slopes in the first weeks of spring.
He pushed himself hard for the first half-dozen kilometres, sweating beneath his down jacket, despite the freezing temperatures, his feet chafing painfully inside stiff new hiking boots. And, for a while, it worked; but the first time he stopped to eat a granola bar and take in the view, looking out across a world he could almost imagine was devoid of people, all he could really see was a great pyramidal mass under a starless sky, squatting on an airless plain in a future he would have found unimaginable if he hadn’t already visited it.
He felt, to his bitter annoyance, lonely. So when an unexpected visitor appeared as if out of nowhere, a few days later, he felt pathetically grateful even while he knew the only reason they could possibly be here was to bring him very bad news.
Jeff squinted into the brilliant morning light, beyond the porch, to see the lean figure of Dan Rush, his long, sallow features and weather-beaten skin somehow more appropriate to an ageing cowboy than a materials analyst.
‘Dan?’ Jeff peered at him groggily, his dressing gown clutched around his shoulders, as he’d slept well past midday. ‘What the fuck are you doing out here?’
Dan rocked from foot to foot on the narrow porch, looking at him expectantly, dressed only in a light sports jacket more suited to visiting a bar than the great outdoors. A second hire car was parked near Jeff’s own, where it shuffled closer to the verge and began tearing up the same patch of grass, sucking the biomass deep into its guts prior to converting it to ethanol.
Jeff glanced down and saw that Dan was wearing dress shoes, even less appropriate to the Rockies, at the tail end of winter.
‘Will you just let me in?’ Dan demanded, shoving his hands into his pockets and shivering. ‘It’s cold as hell out here.’
Jeff pressed the fingers of one hand into the corners of his eyes before stepping to one side, waving for Dan to come in.
Dan headed straight for the fire that Jeff had left smouldering overnight in the hearth. He leaned over it with his collar pulled up, still shivering, rubbing his hands vigorously before the naked heat. He glanced briefly at the dozen beer bottles piled up on a table next to the couch, but elected to say nothing.
‘I’ve got coffee on the go,’ Jeff mumbled, head still throbbing from his night of drinking and channel-surfing. ‘You want some?’
Dan glanced at him and nodded, before returning his attention to the hearth.
Jeff checked the filter had finished dripping the last of the Arabica into a pot, and nuked a packet of frozen waffles while he was at it. Given the long drive to the cabin, he guessed Dan probably hadn’t eaten any breakfast. He then grabbed a couple of mugs and put them on a tray, along with the coffee and waffles. By the time he returned to the living room, Dan had pulled a chair up next to the hearth, and sat there staring contemplatively into the flames.
They ate in silence at first, Jeff watching Dan plough his way through most of the waffles. He seemed twitchy
