An Astronaut's Life (17 page)

‘She was on twenty-four-hour watch?'

‘She was. There's nothing my team could have done. There's nothing we can do now.'

The entire unit of marine biologists looks on as Ann pleads their case, bringing
to mind the unspoken fate of the others: the missing architect, the disappeared foreman.
What errors did they make?

‘Is she in pain?'

‘No. There's no longer any brain activity. She feels nothing.'

Mr Wei looks up at the dark body of the whale and the tube extending to her mid-section
and he knows the sight brings to mind similar memories for all of them. They have
all seen loved ones in this state, full of dutiful tubes that sustain life, but not
hope.

‘No one can know about this,' he says. ‘Let's tell technical to change the touch
screens, say—
Blue whales are nocturnal, sleep deep during the day, breathe only once
every few hours, maybe less.
Something like that?'

‘Right.' Ann's rubbed her short hair with a towel so it sticks straight up from her
head. She looks around at her team. ‘We all clear?'

There's a murmur of assent.

‘No one can know about this,' she says.

Ann meets Mr Wei's eyes and her nod might be grateful, or apologetic, he can't tell.
He stretches his hand to tap the glass twice. Poor Vera.

She had come to them, like most of the park's animals, through non-specific and probably
shady means. The practice of keeping large whales in captivity had been popular for
a brief period under the pretence of salvaging them from deteriorating conditions
in their natural habitats. There were laws prohibiting their capture, but
those proved
difficult to enforce. Wealthy homeowners and private casinos bribed authorities and
pool cleaners for their silence, but it soon became impossible to maintain enough
water or food for the whales anyway, and so they died out on land, as they had in
the oceans.

Vera had been kept in a shopping mall and was then passed to a private owner who
tagged and returned her to the sea, championing her right to be free before reconsidering
and selling her to the park for an unknown sum. Satellite and acoustic tracking led
a crew of trappers straight to her.

Now she floats above Mr Wei. He has often wondered what she might know of her predicament.
She would put an eye close to the glass, her wrinkles shifting as she eyed them.
He was never sure what she could see or what she would make of the humans who constrained
her.

Mr Wei checks his phone. He is set to meet Petro, who is head of hygiene, and together
they will check the park's twelve bathroom complexes for cleanliness and function.

Petro waits outside as Mr Wei slips off his shoes to avoid dirtying the tiles. He
gives each bathroom a quick once
over, checking repairs made to hand dryers, basins
and sky lights. The taps are the brightest silver, the basins unmarked by water.
The toilet paper must be replaced—the mist has left it moist and unfit for use. He
pauses in one of the cubicles, takes his phone from his pocket and calls his sister,
but there's no answer.

I'm worried
, he types. Then he deletes each letter. He breathes to calm his nerves.

Please send update if you can. I hope things are going well and as planned.

Mr Wei skips the last two bathrooms because time is short and Petro is a reliable
worker. He hurries to inspect the remaining installations; he rides the curves of
the Reef's Revenge Rollercoaster, takes a turn on the Tundra Teacups, pulls on a
helmet and navigates the virtual Antarctic plains of the Emperor Penguin Strikes
Back, until he is struck down by a penguin with laser-shooting eyes.

Carla can't see what's happening.

‘Is everything okay?' Her voice is flat and unfamiliar.

‘It's just fine, he's just fine,' her mother says. Carla takes this for the truth,
but they don't bring her baby.

Her mother is the only person Carla can rely on
through the drugs and the exhaustion,
and she trusts her. But she can't hear her baby cry.

She thinks of Uncle Carl. Sees him in his office with the phone to his ear, his neat
hair and pressed polo shirt, left hand in his pocket to hide his two missing fingers.
His expression composed, as always, to hide his discontent.

How will she tell him if the baby is gone, after all they have already lost?

Her father, her own husband, her aunt. All the others with their diseased and wheezing
lungs, hospital machines pumping air into their fading bodies. The doctors will check
the baby for any sign of respiratory disease—they do that early now. Maybe that is
what's taking so long?

Her mother squeezes her hand. The room has been silent for minutes when she hears
her baby's cry.

‘See? See?' her mother says.

‘Your son is doing fine.'

A doctor places the child on Carla's chest.

‘We had to help him breathe. He's big, though. His lungs will be strong.'

The crowd gathering at the park's entry is bigger than
it's supposed to be. Mr Wei
is early, but the investors are already impatient and they heave forward as he greets
them. This is their park—how dare they be kept waiting.

Mr Wei signals to security to open the gate and the visitors push their way inside.
There are fifty of them, maybe more. And children, at least twenty children.

‘Please, be orderly. I need to check your names. Are you all on my list of names?'
Mr Wei says.

The investors in their suits and high heels refuse to line up. They form a semicircle
and point out children who are not on the list and are already heading off towards
the Lake of Amphibians. Mr Wei makes a show of taking down details and counting up
all the extras in an exasperated way, but he can't send them home or make them wait
outside the park, these unaccompanied children.

‘This way, please all follow.' Mr Wei makes his way to the front of the group and
starts off along the walkway. He signals to security to hurry the stragglers.

‘Hello, hello?'

He raises his voice to draw everyone in his direction.

‘Okay, thank you. Welcome to the park, to the World of Lost Wonders. You are our
first ever guests, which is very special. I hope you will feel special.'

Mr Wei thinks that there is nothing special about these people, who are already wandering
out of earshot.

‘Stay with me, please. Parents, adults, this park is under construction, some parts
of it are not safe for your children. We cannot go further until we have all children.
What about that one over there? Someone get that one. Hey!'

Security guards signal that they will bring up the rear of the group and begin herding
the stragglers together.

‘Behold!' Mr Wei says. ‘Our first stop, The Safari of the Walking Dead. Climb aboard,
my friends.'

This part of the tour has been scripted and Mr Wei is relieved to read from his notes
without any genuine feeling, then shuffle the visitors inside where the safari team
will take over for the next twenty-five minutes.

As he waits outside, he calls Ann.

‘Is everything ready?'

‘Yes. She's ready. How far away are you?'

‘Still an hour. But they bought children, twenty of them.'

‘So?'

‘I don't want them upset, if they discover what we've done—a dead whale displayed
in front of their children.'

‘They won't. Mr Wei, the children won't know.'

It's crossed his mind, the way she looked at him in the control room and her tone
now, her acceptance—could Ann have done this, killed the whale or hastened its death?
He knows the patient anger they've carried all these months, their shared distrust
of the investors. Could it have driven her to this?

‘It's okay, Mr Wei. You were not involved in anything. I'll tell them that, if it
goes that way. I know what you must think.'

He ends the conversation because he does not want to hear her admission or be implicated,
especially over the phone. And anyway, she does not know what he thinks. His feelings
are mixed.

The world's last blue whale is here
, the investment prospectus reads,
and with us
she is safe from the ravages of the natural world.

After the safari, the tour continues with scripted introductions and intermittent
toilet stops.

The visitors are impressed by the penguins and amused by a ride on the teacups. They
are taken in by both the animatronic Galapagos turtles and the holographic owls,
although the rollercoaster proves
divisive, and those who are too small or too scared
are left to wait with Mr Wei.

He takes the hands of the two youngest boys and leads his group, five smaller children
and two with medical conditions, over to the unopened Hall of Undersea Secrets.

‘We weren't going to take you in here today.' He talks to them quietly, in confidence.
‘This is a special surprise for you.'

Doors swing open and lights flicker on. The sea lion pool is dissected by glass so
visitors can stand beside the animals as they rest on the rocks or play underwater.

The children are timid, the boys cower at Mr Wei's side and he pats his hands across
their fine hair and assures them they are very safe with him. Only one girl approaches
the enclosure.

‘There you go,' Mr Wei says. ‘They're very friendly.'

The girl steps forward and taps her knuckles on the glass. When there's no response
from the sea lions inside, she presses her face against it and begins to make a low
hum.

‘Hell-ooooo,' she says.

The glass is thick, the animals won't hear more than a murmur. The largest sea lion
opens its eyes but does
not move. The rest of them lie on the rocks and they do nothing,
even when the girl knocks again, much harder, and goes on knocking until it hurts
her knuckles and she stops.

Of all the extinctions in recent years, the sea lion's was the most affecting. Species
had been disappearing for decades, though usually in a way that went unnoticed by
everyone but the scientists most dedicated to their cause. The sea lions put up a
fight. Whatever disease it was that took them in the end, it was gruesome. Not just
the dead ones that washed up deformed and decayed, but the live ones with swollen
heads, skin stretched to bursting and sometimes beyond, with gaping wounds and wide,
questioning eyes. They became a favourite subject of documentary-makers who built
a narrative of resilience that persists: the defiant, dying sea lions huddled over
the swollen form of their pups, refusing veterinary aid or food, savaging all who
came near.

As their disease progressed, the value of the survivors soared. The workers of the
park dedicated themselves to keeping these last remaining pups alive, and here they
were, a success—but for what?

The children look up at Mr Wei with uncertain
faces. Again he wonders: is it Ann
who has done the right thing?

Mr Wei moves the group on. The Hall of Undersea Secrets has betrayed their expectations.
He will not bring the investors here.

Carla is left to lie with her son. Someone has wiped her blood from the floor and
the doctors and midwives and nurses have finally left her to regain some sense of
her own body, and come to terms with the reality of the small bundle lying against
her chest. Her mother is there, somewhere in the corner, watching over. She will
take the child if Carla falls too deeply into sleep.

Her son has his fists closed tight as he moves his face to find Carla's nipple. She
leads him there and cradles him, this helpless pup, like one of Uncle Carl's rescued
sea lions.

She likes to think of him, up at dawn to watch over those pups. Her absent uncle
learning how to feed a baby sea lion, then back to work, welding steel, laying concrete
all day. He'd rarely sounded so happy as when the under-staffed vets had let him
stay up half the night feeding formula to those animals.

Not since his promotion, though. Plucked from
obscurity, no management experience,
a fifty-eight-year-old builder with two missing fingers now the foreman of a multibillion-dollar
project? She pretended she didn't know what it meant. She pretended not to have figured
it out.

The missing architect. The missing foreman. They knew.

Uncle Carl was careful. She told him to get through it, to come home. What's done
is done, she said. Don't speak of it on the phone. They think you are someone who
will never figure it out, a lowly worker who will never catch on.

The baby makes a whimper and Carla seeks out the shape of her mother, slumped in
a chair in the corner.

‘Mum?'

Her mother stirs.

‘Can you send a message?'

The pollution had been incidental. But there was money to be made, cures for the
ailments it caused, the provision of clean air and water, strategies for abatement—a
new world of business opportunities. The extinctions were collateral damage, at first,
then they were strategic. The world's biggest theme park featuring the only surviving
examples of key animal and bird species, an estimated 500,000 visitors a day. Why
not? The park had tripled in value in a year based on the prospectus alone. The worse
things became, the more people needed a park like this. The worse things became,
the more the investors stood to benefit.

Their last stop on the tour is the whale. Mr Wei reads from his amended script, explaining
the rare and enormous thing they are about to see. He manages without a shake in
his voice and the visitors fall quiet and file into the aquarium. They slow at the
entrance, it's dark and their eyes take a minute to adjust, and so the tour group
bottlenecks until whispers from behind (
Hey! Move up!
) send the front-runners blindly
forward.