Page 10 of Under Story

The natural leaders take control early, Number One claiming he remembers the way to the outhouse while Number Ten insists on the opposite direction. Both routes dead-end in empty space. They trace their way back to base camp to regroup. Number Six suggests that two volunteers venture out while the rest hang back, offering instructions, but the group is no better at directing the volunteers than they were in searching for Gavin themselves.

They set out for a third time, trying to find the flags that stretch from base camp to the outhouse. An image interrupts Laurel in the way they always do, with callous indifference to her present circumstances. She dried Silas with a towel. The towel had a hood that was shaped like a sheep’s head, and she used it to pat his curls, soft as cashmere.

On a slick patch of ice, she loses her balance, and the bucket slams into her face. She puts out her hands to catch the ground. It occurs to her—not for the first time, but more seriously—that she could die here. Of the cold alone. Or like the climatologist, in a crevasse, her footing sure until it isn’t.

She is oddly indifferent to the thought. Eighteen months ago, she woke in darkness, wracked by misery. Eli was sleeping, so she took her laptop to the window seat and opened an email to Gloria. She did not bother with a salutation or a sign-off; they had long since abandoned such niceties.

What do you think happens when we die? Not to the body, I mean—Gloria had spent her career investigating that—but to the rest of us?

She couldn’t bring herself to write spirit, or soul; she was too much a scientist, bound by the imperative to appear rational. Gloria’s response arrived in minutes, as if she had known Laurel’s email was coming.

I think we rejoin that vast and dazzling universe of which we have always been part. E = mc2, etc. After we die, we’re still matter.

As for whether we see our loved ones again—I’m skeptical of anything so literal. Eyes belong to the body, and the body stays here. But if energy is matter, I suppose I think it’s not so much we see them as we are them.

Minutes later, Gloria sent a second email.

But Laurel, if you’re asking this for personal reasons—not for Silas, I mean, but for you—then promise you’ll come talk to me.

Laurel was, of course. Drunken nights slurred into morning headaches. During the day, she maintained a sober, merciless self-judgment, as if that were the same as holding vigil. Many times, she pondered the pills that sat on a shelf above the bathroom sink, sedatives her doctor had prescribed. What stopped her was the thought of her own mother. Laurel had done enough damage already.

Voices carry from a distance: the campers are running roll call. Laurel’s hands are empty. She strains to listen, groping air.

“This is Number Five. Number Six?”

“Number Six, paging Number Seven.”

“Copy that. Number Seven here. Copy, Number Eight?”

Number Eight is Laurel. She clears her throat to shout.

“I’m here.” Her voice rebounds back. “But I can’t find my rope.”

“That’s okay, Number Eight. I’ve got you. Follow my voice,” says Number Seven, the sound muffled by the bucket but reaching for her all the same.

—

Unlike igloos, which are made of snow blocks, the quinzee—first built by Native people in the planet’s northern forests—is a mound of compacted snow with a chamber inside. Gavin hands out duffel bags, each of which contains a sleep kit, and tells the campers to form small groups. Laurel, Charlie, and Louis pile their duffels and pack snow on top. While the quinzee hardens, they crowd over the camp stove to make freeze-dried chili and hot-water bottles. After dinner, they extract the duffels and use shovels to enlarge the hollow. Two hours later, wet and bone-tired, Laurel and Charlie admire their work.

“Don’t get too excited,” Louis says. “It feels like sleeping inside a refrigerator.”

They wriggle through the opening. Inside, the walls are wavy as meringue. The ceiling is too low for them to sit, so they lie down to trade galley gossip. Light leaches through the ice, bathing the quinzee in strange, perpetual dusk. It reminds Laurel of a cave. Despite the refrigeration, heat spreads through her chest, and the walls feel even closer than they are.

“I’ll be back,” Laurel says, and then she crawls outside. She wants to be in open space. She needs to see the Arc.

She isn’t the only one. At least a dozen other campers have spread across the snow. Some lean against their quinzees; others sit cross-legged on the ground. Even the ecologist has joined them.

Rustling noises come from Laurel’s quinzee, followed by a thud.

“Owie,” Louis says, snaking through the hole with his hot-water bottle.

Charlie follows. “Claustrophobic?” she asks.

Laurel nods. That’s close enough. Charlie and Louis settle on either side of her, and together they look at the Arc.

It calls up the rainbows Laurel saw as a child: bright half rings hung high, as if conjured by invisible magicians. Those summer days were drowsy and fairy-like, mossy green trees and benevolent shadow, a feeling of gilded fertility: the whole orchard glowed. Rain, when it came, was warm and fleeting. Sound acquired strange qualities, so that someone on the next farm over seemed to be speaking into her ear.

Yet the Arc is its own phenomenon. There is the strangeness of the shape, not a line but a dome—and then there’s what it does to her. When Laurel focuses like this, she almost feels that she can see inside it, as though the Arc is a shell enclosing some uncanny tissue. It seems to pulse, even to breathe. In her it sparks what science used to: a hungry, looming excitement.