Page 119 of Under Story

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Well, the cruise isn’t really the point. It’s just a way to get back to the continent. Louis, she writes, I’d really love to see you.

ill check my schedule, Louis says. Before she can respond, the green circle turns red.

—

The cruise begins in Ushuaia, the world’s southernmost city. Silas has never flown on a plane before. He spends the flight to Atlanta buoyant and the one to Buenos Aires crying, having lost one of the two beads he found at the pool. On the final leg, he sleeps. Laurel reads about their ship, the Astralis. During the descent, she notices that Eli looks peaked.

“Dramamine?” asks Laurel, reaching for her purse, but Eli shakes his head.

“I think that you should do the dive,” he says.

At home, they decided that Eli would be the one to test the entropy device. Laurel puts down her book. “I’m sure you’ll feel better when we get there.”

“It’s not that.” In the seat between them, Silas lies with his cheek on the tray table. Eli checks to make sure he’s still asleep. “On the first dive, you noticed things that I didn’t. It’s like you were reading the basin. Somehow you knew what to do.”

“I don’t have those instincts this time.” She feels like an imposter, a pianist who can no longer play a note.

Eli squeezes her hand.

“Don’t doubt yourself,” he says. “When you’re down there, they’ll come back to you.”

—

They step outside to a surge of Patagonian wind. In this summer month, the city straddles seasons: white horses lie in green grass, but the mountains are wreathed with snow.

At a café near the harbor, a sign creaks on its hinges. Bienvenidos al fin del mundo, it reads. Below is an English translation:

Welcome to the End of the World.

14

The Albatross

Forty hours into the Drake Passage, the Astralis passes its first iceberg.

It’s nearly midnight. Laurel, Eli, and Silas rush outside with expedition jackets over their pajamas. The iceberg stands alone, colossal and incongruous, as if cut and pasted from another planet. Minutes later, a whale rises beside the boat.

“A blue,” someone gasps: the biggest creature on earth, endangered nearly to extinction, its five-foot heart the largest in the world.

Silas tugs her hand. “Why you crying, Mama?”

Until now, Laurel has seen this trip as a quest: her focus has been the portal, not the continent. She forgot the cerulean glow of the ice. And the drama of the light, as if a skirmish between good and evil has been staged. She forgot the scale of the glaciers, the danger, the smells of the Southern Ocean. She forgot that water could be so clear.

Laurel holds Silas to her chest and says, “Because I love it here.”

—

The Astralis is the most lavish ship in the Heroic Expeditions fleet. Laurel, Eli, and Silas arrived in their double room to a dish of caviar and a bottle of champagne. After a welcome reception, they toured the dining room, the spa, and the medical facility. The walls are lined with cream sconces and sleek mahogany panels.

The lowest-priced Standard rooms, which include their own, have two portholes. Prices escalate along with viewing space. The Triple Porthole is followed by the Quadruple; the Deluxe has one window, while the Superior has two. In the Penthouse, French doors lead to a private balcony. The Owner’s Suite features a whirlpool bath, a private dining room, and windows that stretch from floor to ceiling.

The occupant of the Owner’s Suite was no mystery. Laurel recognized Harry Cooke, a CEO whose energy company was recently sued for concealing oil spills. In the 2050s, the industry—formerly invested in micronuclear and fusion reactors—discovered a simpler, cheaper source of fuel: natural gas. Coal followed. Harry Cooke’s genius was to connect this to the problem of plastic. Plastic waste could be managed, he argued, if you turned it into fuel—and that fuel could power the economy of the future.

Laurel found this profoundly demoralizing. When Harry Cooke appeared as a talking head on the news, she turned it off. Still, she couldn’t avoid the mantra he popularized: Coal’s on a roll! streamed across billboards and ads on social media. Now Harry is rumored to be lobbying for a new cause: the lifting of restrictions on fossil fuel exploration in Antarctica. Mining is banned south of sixty degrees latitude, but proponents have argued that the Antarctic Treaty should be renegotiated. Laurel fears that the treaty will disintegrate in 1959, the year of its founding in her universe.

The other passengers include executives, wealthy retirees, and a travel influencer who doesn’t leave her room without a ring light. All are experienced jet-setters: at meals, conversation often drifts to the best abacha in Lagos, or the least crowded month to visit Cairo.