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James Fitzjames is the unlikely name of the man Harry has never met before, but who appears to know everything about him. He wears civilian clothes — a very expensive-looking double-breasted and pinstriped suit, which is trim and elegantly tailored while also making him look — Harry thinks — a good deal broader than he actually is. He is tall too, and stoops a little through the door of the strange soundproofed cabin.
There is a studio backdrop, bright white lights, a camera and tripod, and a woman.
“First impressions count for everything,” Fitzjames chuckles. “Any immediate reason why you two shouldn’t go down together?”
Harry warily eyes the woman, and finds she is doing much the same. There is an almost-scowl set to her brow that Harry is willing to forgive as neutral rather than actively hostile. They wouldn’t put anyone hostile in here, would they? She raises no objection and neither does he. In fact, they do not speak at all.
They stand stiffly side by side for the photograph.
“Right then, I’ll see you again in a week,” continues Fitzjames, determined in his jollity. Who knows how many awkward pairs of strangers he has shepherded through this process. “You can say your goodbyes to friends and family, of course, but please be reminded of your contracts. Only cleared persons may know where you are going.”
Harry realises he had hoped to see Graham again. A foolish fancy given the nature of the assignment, but nonetheless.
Graham was a distance runner by interest, with a penchant for extreme conditions; high altitudes, the bloody Sahara, et cetera, and Harry had never discovered his profession. He only knew that the thought of five years underground greatly excited Graham as an opportunity for another adventure. Harry was quickly tying and tourniqueting the dummy his group were working on when Graham had bumped a jocular shoulder against his.
“Oh, you’re rather good at that,” Graham grinned, and it had made Harry blush.
Alex, who was an army surgeon recently returned from Afghanistan, and doing a much better job of her own work, leaned over and joked: “Aye, but can you do it while the fireworks are going off, hen?”
He wouldn’t see either of them again.
*****
The house — and he isn’t sure where it is exactly, the windows of the car that brought him here were blacked out — is small and unassuming, with a fire burning in the hearth and a tiled roof leaking drops of rainwater into strategically placed buckets and flowerpots in the kitchen. The caretaker, as he is introduced, is Mr Crozier, and his enormous dog is Neptune. Harry and Silna and Fitzjames and Crozier stand in the kitchen waiting, presumably, for some signal that they are to go ahead. Fitzjames’ arm hangs loose by his side, and Neptune presses his sodden slathering muzzle into his palm.
“He slobbers almost as enthusiastically as you, Francis,” Fitzjames says to the caretaker in a low voice Harry is certain he was not meant to hear.
There are metal steps that wind down and down in a tight spiral.
“I’m Harry,” Harry says and his words ricochet around the walls along with the sound of their footsteps. They’re alone now, more so with every step, deeper below the house.
“I know,” she says.
“You’re Silna,” he prompts, when she fails to introduce herself.
“I know that too.”
She stops when they reach the bottom of the stairs. “We’ve got five years, Doctor Harry Goodsir. No need to rush things.”
*****
Harry watches the metal door as it clamps tight shut behind them, the gears and bars inside it already sealing them off from everything they have ever known. To the left of the door he sees the photographs, and below each one a little label with dates but no names. The previous occupiers and operatives of this hidden facility look back at him, all of them standing as graceless and distant as he and Silna, inches of dead air between them. Theirs is the fifth photograph, the last photograph. He wishes he had smiled. He knows he could not.
On the walls of Harry’s parents’ house are pictures where he looks happy. In one he is a child, doing a handstand while his cousins hold his ankles in the air. He is an upside down star, his hair falling in thick dark strands, wet from the sprinkler they spent those days running through. Seconds later, when the other children had let go, Harry’s heel caught Jenny in the face and they crumpled to the grass together. They never stopped giggling, even when her eyes went wide and she spat a tiny tooth out into her hand and held it up to him. In Jenny’s parents’ house there is a picture of her, grinning gap-toothed, squinting and freckled in the summer sun.
To the right of the metal door are all the same couples again, happiness and relief shining bright in their eyes. The women have fuller cheeks, bigger smiles, and broader hips. The men have pleasant little paunches, poor posture, and the occasional beard. Harry makes a note to keep up with his morning calisthenics. They stand closer together, at ease in each other’s company, arms wrapped around shoulders and hands resting on hips. One of the couples has a child, almost two years old at a guess.
“Imagine,” Harry says, “Getting a head start on repopulating the-”
He turns around and Silna is nowhere to be seen. She could be anywhere in the labyrinth of steel-lined tunnels that make up their— Harry stumbles. Home isn’t quite right. Not yet.
“Silna?” he calls, and waits, and gets no response.
He finds her in the dry store, looking over an apparent lifetime’s worth of rations. She’s holding a bottle of vodka.
“We should get a bell for your neck,” he says.
Silna stares at him, and where he had felt before that she might only be indifferent, he is now under the full force of her scrutiny and contempt.
“Oh. No. I didn’t mean. Sorry. I-”
“There’s alcohol in here,” she says, gesturing to the many other bottles of spirits and wine, and letting him off the hook for what he suspects will be the first and only time.
“If there wasn’t, people would make their own,” he says, with a small smile of gratitude. “That would be worse.”
“Oh goodness,” Harry says the first time they walk into the silo. “I didn’t know we were this far under.”
Silna shakes her head. “You read the information packet.”
“A few times now.”
“Well. That’s what two hundred feet looks like.”
The missile looms like an ancient metal oak tree. It is impossibly, stupidly tall.
There’s a panel of light switches by the door and she shuts off the ones marked CEILING. The top of the tower vanishes into darkness. Then she switches them back on and shuts off the PLANT LEVEL and Harry’s world inverts, his stomach lurching as though it is trying to fling itself at the light two hundred feet away. He grabs at her arm.
“Don’t. Sorry. Vertigo.”
She shakes her head again.
They do the ground checks together, and log the readings for air quality and temperature. He takes the Geiger counter and climbs the ladder up the wall to the warhead. She stands at the control panel and watches him with a glint in her eye and her hand hovering over the big red button.
“What did you answer?” she asks.
“When?”
“When they asked if you could push the button.”
“They didn’t ask me.”
His group had worked on a few emergency procedures, how to fix the air or the water filters if they got stuck, how to switch power to the backup generator, and how to seal the bunker if there was a leak. The missile had not been part of it.
“That’s not what we’re supposed to do, is it?”
*****
The waiting is strange. They are coiled ready and waiting for the four-minute warning, and they take it in turns to sleep. They sit under a cloud of idleness, unwilling to begin any task in case it is interrupted. They startle at the sound of water expanding in the pipes. It is at once familiar and not. In the emergency room, and in search and rescue, the ideal outcome is that each shift passes uneventfully, that there is no need for urgent response, and that nothing happens at all. But something always does. More happens in twenty minutes outside than will happen down here in years.
They play gin rummy until Silna gets bored, and they play snap until Harry’s heart is racing and they can’t keep track of the rules they add with each round — jack of hearts, sandwich pairs, run of three — and they fall backwards on the settee, laughing and with their limbs twitching with adrenaline.
“It was Mum's birthday two days ago,” Harry says with a start while they're having breakfast. “I forgot.”
Silna looks confused. “What would you have done?”
“Wished her well, I suppose,” Harry says forlornly, and chews on his scrambled egg on toast.
He would like to have a fresh one, soft-boiled and runny-yolked, and real butter on his toast, cut into soldiers for dipping. But he is becoming used to this, reformed and rehydrated, washed down with his vitamin pills and iodine.
The truth is he wouldn’t have done anything, and the well-wishes would have been for himself, an attempt at a connection that he doesn’t have. Before they came down here Harry had written five birthday cards, and handed them to his father in secret, bundled together with an elastic band. His father would remember. He would have made plans, and arranged some flowers in a vase, and set Harry's card up between the salt and pepper shakers on the kitchen table. And no one would know Harry forgot.
*****
“Help.”
The word barely makes it out of his mouth, brushing too lightly over his lips and vanishing before it finds an audience. The breaths that follow are louder as panic begins to rise in his chest, pushing out the air in his lungs.
“Help.”
He can hear her in the next room.
The water in the basin is clear and warm, and his hands feel good, floating there as blood unspools. There is no pain. The blood marbles through the water, thin and faint here, bold and bright there, waving like long stripes of red kelp, reaching out to the surface.
She pulls him away.
“Watch out,” he says. “Glass.”
She dunks a whole tea towel into the water and brings it out pink and soaked. She wraps it tightly around his hand and holds it there. She swims about in front of him until he pulls her into focus. She’s looking right into his eyes, brow furrowed into concern. Her body is tight and tense and he can feel her looking around, remembering which cupboard the medical stuff is in, working out what she needs to do.
She sits him down and moves his arm across his body, places his hand wrapped in its towel on his shoulder and presses down.
“Hold that there.”
“It’s getting my shirt wet,” he says, feeling the damp spreading across his skin.
He can hear the cellophane and the cardboard and then the smell, the sharp and irritating chemical needles. Pinpricks of light dance in his eyes.
“What happened?” she asks, her hands busy with little packets.
“I just put a glass down,” he says, and the words slur together, his lips stuck to the front of his teeth. “Or it fell. In the sink.”
She looks over at the sink full of water and blood, and then back to him, her head tilted and eyebrows raised in a silent question.
“It broke,” he says. “I just grabbed the piece, I wasn’t thinking.”
“You need to keep your arm up.”
“I know.”
He feels six years old, scraped and grazed, grass stains and dirt. But he hasn't been outside for years. He hasn't seen the sun or the sky or fallen out of a tree. The blue latex gloves are cold and feel strange as she takes his hand in uncanny artificial skin. He looks away.
“I’m going to clean this and it’s going to hurt. Three, two, one.”
The freezing knife of the antiseptic hits his hand. Every muscle contracts, he wants to clench his fist but instead holds it open while his arm explodes. There’s a swipe of something thick and oily, he can’t remember the name. There’s a soft tear of another packet, and she presses a cold wad of fabric into his palm.
He murmurs a noise. He is becoming numb. Everything is slowing down and he wants to sleep. He wants to go away.
“Are you going to tell me what happened?” she asks him again.
She’s softer, and her eyes are kind. She strokes the side of his face and smiles.
“Dropped a glass.”
“Why are you here?” she asks.
He wonders if she ever spoke to anyone else like that. She is gentle when she remembers to be.
“My boss recommended me,” he says. “But I think perhaps he just wanted me out of the way. And I suppose it sounded exciting.”
He can feel the change in her breathing. She’s getting better at not immediately calling him an idiot.
He unwraps the bandage on his hand and pokes at the raw little flaps of skin. The bleeding had stopped quickly. He didn’t even need stitches. It will knit back together and mend and fade to nothing. Silly really.
“It’s noble,” he says, and that catches her attention. She takes his hand in hers and runs her thumb over the cut. It stings and he flinches but does not pull away.
“If we start from the beginning again, we can start right. Try not to make such a bloody mess of it.”
She leans forward and kisses him and he makes a surprised sound into her mouth. Her fingers wind into the curls of his hair. He had thought it was growing too long, but perhaps it can stay. She kisses like she does everything else, completely and certainly and without apology. It makes him smile and she pulls away.
“Can you do that again?” he asks.
“If I do, will you promise not to try and kill yourself?”
“Yes,” he answers so quickly it makes her laugh.
*****
They sleep in the silo sometimes. It started as a dare, because he was squeamish about the radiation.
“It's as safe as anywhere else,” she had said. “I’ll stay with you.”
They drag in all the bedding they can find and make a nest out of pillows and duvets and settee cushions, and then abandon it to lay with their backs on the hard floor, staring up into darkness.
If he is very very still he can pretend they’re outside. He can hear the wind and the movement of trees. He can see stars in the blackness at the top of the tower. If he is not very very still the smallest noise will hit the concrete walls and clatter about in an endless echo.
Inuktitut has similar sounds from the throat as Scots and Gaelic.
They run through his limited vocabulary, until he gets tired of her laughing at his accent, and where he forgets to lengthen his vowels. He doesn’t have as much Scots to teach her in return, a few words for disagreeable weather, and several more for disagreeable people. In Gaelic he knows only one song, one his grandmother used to sing. She says she's been practising, and when she sings the sound cascades around the silo in a chorus. He wipes away his tears before she can see them.
“Would we be friends, do you think? In real life?”
He lays his head in her lap and looks up at her while she combs her fingers through his hair. The sheets are bunched up and crumpled around them like cumulus clouds or snow drifts.
“Where would we meet, Doctor Harry Goodsir?” she laughs, looking at him fondly. “Do you often find yourself in the Arctic?”
She holds his chin in her hand over the thick bristles of his beard, and he sticks out his tongue at her.
“Maybe you would visit England. You’d get into some terrible accident and I’d have to help you.”
That one gets a bigger laugh and he drops his head bashfully, hides for a second in the sheets gathered around her waist. She strokes down over his chest and finds his hand, and closes her fingers around his.
“Very romantic,” she says and rolls her eyes. “You wish me harm, I see, so you can be a hero.”
“Then maybe I’d ask you out for a drink,” he says and now the fantasy really takes flight. He tries to remember the last time he asked anyone anything. “And you would say yes, of course, because of my irresistible charm.”
“Is that why I would say yes?”
She bares her teeth in a grin and digs her fingers into the soft folds of his belly and under his ribs until he squirms and yelps and kicks and begs her to stop. They’re breathing hard as he shuffles up the bed to wrap his arms around her.
She’s still smiling softly and a little wistfully at him.
“No,” she says. “I don’t think we would be friends.”
*****
It's his turn to do the checks. Over time they got lax with it, and filled in the log book without taking the measurements. On the home stretch though, they dig in. Everything is pristine and ready for inspection. He doesn't even know if there is an inspection. Perhaps no one will ever read the old log books. He did, but he wasn't looking at the numbers; he was looking at the handwriting, and touching the ink on the page as if he could speak through it. I'm here too, now, where are you?
He measures the temperature, the air quality, and the radiation. He writes them in the log book, the same as yesterday, exactly the same.
He left the door open, and he can hear her listening to music.
She has become fond of Wagner, and the walls of the bunker resonate with clanging anvils and stirring horns. She stands in the middle of the room and conducts a record player, and he smiles at her determined, impassioned face and applauds.
“Why do I need to know what a bassoon is?” she asked. “Do you know how to prepare a seal? A rabbit? We’ll do that first.”
They skinned and gutted pillows and hung them up in the kitchen, and he attempted to draw a bassoon from memory before going to see if there was one in the encyclopedia.
The lights at the top of the silo are turned off, the last fifty feet or so in total darkness. It looks like it should be infinite. But it isn't.
Everything they have is within these walls, and sealed on all sides. They never knew each other on the surface; they never met until a team of people watched them go about their tests and tasks and decided they made a match, and a man called James Fitzjames took their photograph and sent them down here. One of the couples has a child. That's not for them, Harry knows. Silna knows too.
Fitzjames will return for them, they will walk up the winding metal steps to meet him and arrive breathless and discombobulated, to a world that has managed very well without them. And for a while at least that will be enough to keep them together, the certainty of each other in an unfamiliar time and place. But the time that they have had in abundance underground will become scarce on the surface, and the places they call home will keep them apart. They will be diluted, decayed and dispersed.
The clock ticks and measures the time they have left together. If something happened, out there, they could stay for longer.
Harry Goodsir thinks about the big red button, and he’s tempted.