The Raft: A Novel (7 page)

The tail and y-shaped fin of a calf hung from the mother, lying still in the water. Barely half of it had been pushed out, the head was still inside. It was dead—that much was certain to us—before even having taken its first breath.

“You know why she did this, right? Got herself all beached up?” Daniel said. “Magnetic fields! Disrupted echolocation systems! Electromagnetic activity. I’m telling you! There’s tech being used somewhere. The grids are back up. They’re not telling us, but there’s
tech
being used by
someone
out there.”

The ocean raced up on either side of the whale mother, lifting the baby’s lifeless tail for a moment (offering the illusion that it was still alive) and then retreating. “So, should we take it out? I mean, out of its mother?”

Gideon and I held back an immediate reply. The rain continued to hurtle so ferociously hard that at one point I thought it had turned to hail. The ocean foamed, folding over itself and charging the shore, passing our knees as it came up and sucking hard on us as it went back out.

“Not right now,” Gideon said. “That’s my feeling on this. For now, we need to think about getting the mother back into the water, if it’s even possible. The baby is gone. We can’t waste time. Also, she could bleed to death if we try. I don’t know these things. Maybe it’s already too late.”

I agreed with Gideon. We needed a real plan.

Ultimately, we came up with less of a plan than a next step: Gideon and I would remain at the whale’s side while Daniel ran back to the commune to call for more help.

Daniel nodded at that and swiftly left.

Later, when the rain had finally stopped, he returned with around sixty large men, the log-herders who kept the beach fires stoked. They carried all the rope they’d been able to gather. Gideon and I stepped aside and allowed them to co-ordinate the task.

They discussed how they’d go about it, and then hurled thick ropes over the whale’s body. For the next hour or so, the men moved over and around her like a group of ants commandeering the corpse of a big, black beetle. In the end, satisfied the net of ropes was sufficiently fixed to her, they called on everyone to assist in the pulling. Gideon and I stepped forward and lined up to grab our section of the rope.

One of the men shouted a count, and we pulled. We dug our feet into the sand and urged each other on with grunts through clenched teeth. As time moved on, however, it felt as if we’d convinced ourselves we could reposition a mountain with little more than the determination of madmen. Others joined—bigger men than myself—and I gave up my position. I joined Daniel on the hillside, where he had been observing us the entire time. Sweating and drained, I collapsed next to him.

“How do you get a fifty-ton beached whale to move?” he asked offhandedly, leaning on an elbow and chewing a piece of grass. I didn’t say anything. He stared out and said, “You ask it
really
nicely.”

I turned to watch. Down on the beach the seventy-odd men appeared Lilliputian beside the colossal whale, and despite their efforts, hadn’t moved her at all. She moaned and the sounds of her distress reached us in a high-pitched wail. Even the small movements in her tail had ceased.

“She won’t go,” Gideon said, walking up to us. His shirt was spattered with dark patches of perspiration. “We can forget about this. She won’t go anywhere.”

I was afraid to agree with him. I watched as the biggest and strongest log-herders in the commune heaved and pulled to no avail. Too much time had passed—she was slowly being crushed under her own weight, waiting for it all to be over.

By the time the clouds parted to reveal the clear patches of a starry night, the group of large men, exhausted and without any new ideas, finally gave up. One stood and said that it was no use. That they had tried their best. They’d hoped the rising tide would assist in floating the whale back out, but it had sunk too deeply into the sand. There was nothing more to be done. In the morning the whale would be put out of its misery, doused in oil, and burned. If they couldn’t move it, they’d raze it to the ground, he said, since there was no other way to guarantee it didn’t become a decaying health hazard. Everyone agreed and then swiftly decided: they’d end her and set her alight at dawn.

With no need to consider it further, they rolled up their ropes, left the mother with the carcass of her unborn calf, and marched up the beach to their tents for the night.

The rest of the night was peaceful and soundless.

I was lying in my tent and staring at the blank ceiling. I pulled my blanket up to my neck and clutched it firmly with my hands. The image of the calf hanging from its mother wouldn’t leave my mind. This image was spliced with another: a terrible memory of my own, few of them that I had left. As I lay there, caught between sleep and wakefulness, memories and images slipped into and around each other:

My wife is running from the side of the road with our daughter in her arms. It’s dark and I can hardly see them. But my daughter’s body is limp in her arms, and my wife’s high-heeled shoe comes off her foot as she hurtles towards me through the small bushes. She’s screaming. No, not screaming. It’s a suffocated yelping I’ve never heard her make. Between the yelps, she’s saying,
Oh my god, oh my god, oh god, oh my god
… and then I see that calf in the whale. I see my daughter. And my wife’s standing in front of me. She shows me my daughter … and it’s the whale calf, and my daughter.

And they’re dead.

I opened my eyes in the dark and breathed softly.

Amid the silence of a sleeping commune, I heard someone cough. The coughing stopped. All that could be heard was the purring of a quiet ocean. I turned to my side and stared at the silhouettes of my few belongings. I felt incredibly alone. I was not meant to be there.

I whipped the sheet away from me and sat up in my bed. I rubbed my face with my hands and sighed, sprang to my feet and threw on my pants. I grabbed my shirt off the corner post of my bed and put it on. Moving carefully in my dark tent, I found my way to the paraffin lamp on the floor. I lit the wick with a match and the flickering light of the flame revealed the details of my makeshift dwelling.

I took my paraffin lamp by the wire handle, unzipped the tent, and stepped outside, into the brisk night air. I walked quietly through the sleeping commune.

The clouds had broken away from each other and were now hovering on the horizon. Millions of stars flickered against the black night, the moon was full and large, beaming bright and blue and dripping over the wrinkled surface of the ocean.

My lamp swung in my hand as I made my way along the cold, wet sand. I crossed the beach, climbed over the boulders, and approached the black giant.

The whale heaved as she breathed, droning softly now. I stopped beside her and placed the lamp on the sand. The orange light flared against the side of her body, revealing each of her barnacles. I laid my palms flat on her. I pressed my face against her side and felt the weak vibration of her enormous heart. Closing my eyes, I absorbed her movements. My breathing slowed until I could barely feel it enter and exit my body, and a calm enveloped me.

I pictured her back in the ocean, where she had belonged: a weightless beast moving effortlessly with her pod, bursting from the waters, touching the sun, twisting, and crashing back in. Once, she had been free to roam every shore on the planet, every dark and unchanging abyss, to bask in the warmth of the ocean’s surface, but now …

I put my back to the whale and slid down to the sand. I tipped my head back, turning my eyes to the sky. A comet appeared, trailed across the deep dark blue, and vanished into nothing.

Day Zero

O
n a warm Thursday morning in early November, Kayle Jenner got out of bed and kissed his wife goodbye. Sarah always left earlier for work than he did. He’d sleep in while she did her hair and put on her carefully selected outfit. He’d bury himself deep under the white duvet, all the while enduring the banshee shriek of the hairdryer and the irregular trot of her heels across their wooden floors. Just before she walked out the door for work, he’d muster his first bit of strength for the day to rise from his bed, compliment her on her looks, and see her off with a kiss and a wave.

On that particular morning, he stood at the door with his hands tucked into the pockets of his grey bathrobe and watched her walk to her autovehicle. The metal chimes hanging from the ceiling of the porch played a jangling tune in the morning breeze. The sun fell through the wooden slats above him and cast glowing stripes across the deck.

Kayle leaned against the doorframe and took in a deep breath. His wife really did look fantastic in her black shirt and ruffled orange skirt. Her hair was done up just the way he liked it, in a ponytail, with two curls falling softly on either side of her face.

The door of the AV opened. Sarah turned back and smiled at him, offering an awkward half-wave as she held the top of the car door. She had taken to wearing her large sunglasses, and he wished he could see her eyes. Was she wearing them deliberately, to protect him in some way—to save him from some emptiness she couldn’t bear to show? Kayle sighed, and forced a smile.

Ever since the accident, Sarah hadn’t quite come around to reality. He knew she blamed herself. She should have been keeping an eye on their Maggie. She should have realised their daughter had climbed out of the backseat and made her way to the road. Sarah was the one who’d been sitting in the front, reading some magazine when it happened. That was what she kept going back to, even though Kayle reminded her over and over that he’d left the back door open.
If only. I should have.
The same endless litany.

In the days and weeks that followed, both he and his wife were connected by the stark reality of their pain, if nothing else. They tried to talk each other through it. They saw somebody, some counsellor. It was considered healthy for them to pour out their grief in tears and nightly wails and fits of remorse—but then Sarah stopped, as if she’d cried herself dry and turned to dust. She shut down. She wandered the house in a trance. Her ability to care about the rest of her life slipped away with everything else. Now, five months later, there was little improvement. Heaven knows, Kayle was hurting as well. He missed his baby girl and went to cry in the bathroom, but for God’s sakes, he was
trying.
For Andy’s sake, if for anything and anyone. Was she even trying anymore? Could she be so selfish? Was
he
being selfish? He didn’t know what to think—who was right, who was wrong—but anger welled up in him like warm, thin bile as he watched her. He turned and went back inside, flushing it away.

He walked into the kitchen, instructed the room to play Abbey Lincoln and put on the kettle for a cup of coffee. The twiddling jazz piano filled the house. While the water boiled, he went down the hall into his son’s room and woke him for school. Andy sat up and rubbed his eyes, against the whole idea. His father patted him on the shoulder and told him to get up and be in the bathroom in three and a half minutes,
big guy
, before returning to the kitchen to prepare breakfast.

Kayle’s first lecture was only in a couple of hours—enough time for the two of them to have breakfast together and for Kayle to drop Andy at school before going to the university.

Andy sat at the kitchen table. He watched as his father plated up his eggs and the slice of toast that had had some advertisement for women’s shoes etched into it by their smart appliance. He smeared his butter over
Up to 60% off all high-heels at Guillian’s!
and bit into it. They sat and ate their breakfast together, saying little. Kayle asked about school and Andy’s answer was predictable; for him school was always the same old drag. They finished their breakfast, cleared their plates, and Andy went to pack his bag while Kayle shaved and changed. He grabbed a red shirt and chose a blue tie, a combination Sarah had always disliked, but she’d already left. She’d probably remark on it when he came home from work. By then he’d have been gone all day, offending everyone’s good taste. By then it would be too late.

The music haunting the rooms was now Beethoven’s “Adagio un poco mosso.” It escaped the windows through the soft white curtains that waved gently in the cool wind. Outside, Brandy and Whiskey, the two horses in their paddock, stood apart from each other and nibbled on the grass. Beyond the paddock, the green land rolled forever beneath the brilliant yellow sun.

Andy climbed into the backseat of the AV and dumped his bag at his feet. Kayle placed his hand on the ignition screen and the car hummed to life—the red bars on the solar-electrometer climbing as the car charged itself for the day’s driving. Kayle sighed and leaned his elbow on the lowered window, rubbing his face and pinching the bridge of his nose. He studied the blank expression on his son’s face in the rear-view mirror. The boy was staring back at the house. It rested on its overgrown plot like a primitive Woodhenge from a time nobody remembered.

Andy hadn’t been doing well. His grades had slipped. His friends had stopped calling. He was obviously wrestling with his own emotions. Not only had a daughter been lost, but a sister too. Kayle had to remember that, and keep remembering that. He had to be prepared to be patient.

The car beeped—it was ready to serve them. Kayle lowered the brakes and headed for the gate at the end of the gravel driveway. As he hit the narrow track leading to the public road, a cloud of orange dust hid the beams of the horse paddock, shrouding the shrinking house.

Kayle switched on the radio. A female news broadcaster was halfway through a story he had caught drift of a week earlier: Chang’e 11, the Chinese space-mining vessel that had left earth almost forty years earlier—the one that had famously lost communication and vanished without a trace—had somehow returned. According to the news, what was most peculiar was that the crew of nine astrominers had virtually no recollection of where they had been for forty years. Even stranger, they had not aged a day. It was a fascinating story and one that had captured the imaginations of people around the world. According to the news, however, the Chinese government was keeping it under wraps. There was growing international pressure on China to release more details (arguing that the return of Chang’e 11 constituted a case of global security), especially since the vessel had been back for a while and the world had only recently been allowed to know these few details.