Page 42 of Under Story

“Before I came to McMurdo, I knew that ANITA had found high-energy neutrinos, but I didn’t have access to the data. When I got here, I learned that they’d detected a specific energy signature: 480 PeV.”

Laurel hasn’t thought of that number in years, but the scene comes back to her: Eli’s crowded notebook, her hands in his hair.

“I was still cautious,” he adds. “We ran additional flights. The data was consistent. Which means that this particle—the neutrinos they’ve found—could be dark matter. Pouring out of the anomaly, like sand from an hourglass.”

She sets her coffee down. “From somewhere like your antiuniverse.”

Eli’s mouth twitches. “That’s total speculation. But it would explain the source of these neutrinos: a partner universe, with inverted properties. Here, dark matter would be made of right-handed neutrinos. And the left-handed neutrinos we know would be dark matter there.”

In Laurel is the sense of a huge bird soaring. “And the Arc—?”

“Some kind of hole,” Eli says.

“A portal.” She breathes. “Don’t you think?”

“I couldn’t make that claim,” says Eli. “Not without more evidence.”

“But the place where it leads is leaking dark matter. An inverted universe makes sense.”

She says it like she’s sure. Eli looks taken aback, and Laurel feels embarrassed. Has she forgotten all her scientific training?

“You’re giving me way too much credit. There are plenty of other theories. Even if it is a portal, we have no idea where it leads.”

“It would lead to their Antarctica. Their Arc.”

Eli hesitates. “The chances are so slim.”

Laurel can’t tell whether he truly believes this. Eli is both a dreamer and a realist. Maybe he’s changed; maybe her grasp of him is as outdated as their marriage. But if he is still the Eli she knew, then two things are true. He is too much of a dreamer not to wonder about the Arc—and too much of a realist to wonder without reason. They look at each other, indulgent with hope, and for a moment, such alignment feels like love. Then a drunken military contractor sloshes beer onto Laurel’s shoe, and Eli says, “Of course, now we’re talking science fiction.”

But Laurel walks back to her room like a nun: alone, sober with mission, her purpose like an egg she must not break. Something ecstatic at the edges. Faith.

That night, she emerges in the spaceship of her dreams. As she watches, the edge of something appears in the central window. In the past, this was how the dream ended, but now the edge continues to rise. Soon it is a semicircle, like the Arc, and climbing taller still. Laurel reaches down to feel her stomach, which is round as a globe, and the shape she feels is the shape she sees—for outside the ship is a circle, radiant, whole, and she wakes knowing what to tell Eli, what together they must do.

7

Bottomlands

Laurel drove to the orchard through drizzle. A truck was parked in front of the farmhouse, so she veered down to the lot. In the backseat, Silas was singing a made-up song and kicking his legs with excitement. When she unbuckled the car seat, he hopped out on his own, wearing yellow rubber boots that had been hers.

It was April of 2011, and the orchard was sloppy with life: everything melting or breaking through soil, everything covered in mud. Clare had offered to have Silas sleep over, giving Laurel and Eli a night to themselves.

They climbed the path that led up from Lower Orchard. When they reached the road, a man walked from the door of the farmhouse to the truck, which sputtered as he reversed out of the driveway.

Laurel found Clare at the dining room table.

“You wouldn’t,” Laurel said.

Some emotion moved across Clare’s face. Laurel thought it was guilt before she located it as fear. Fear of disappointing her child; fear of neglecting herself. Fear of having to choose.

“Laurel,” her mother said, standing. “Please understand.”

The man Laurel had seen was Sylvester Perkins. His own orchard was not far off. It had always been a competitor, not because Sly operated similarly to the Salters but because he didn’t. He had no heirloom varieties, no tolerance for blemish. Sly packed trees so closely together that they could not stand on their own. They had to be braced with steel wire instead.

“He isn’t growing apple trees,” Pete said once, as they drove by. The trunks were skinny as branches, the branches bowed beneath fruit. “He’s growing apples.”

“I can’t understand,” Laurel told Clare. “I cannot.”

The tabletop was chaotic: stacks of bills fanned beside coffee cups and the gray calculator Clare had used since the eighties. Underneath was a wicker basket with needles and yarn, which she rarely touched. She had sold the sheep several years earlier, unable to manage the work. Laurel had protested, but she would have had to leave college—and help full-time—to make a meaningful dent. Out of the question, Clare said.