I had to return to Base while it was still dark. I couldn’t risk anyone finding out what I’d been up to. I climbed into bed with a couple of hours to go until morning, but it was impossible to sleep, I was too amazed and elated. It had been me all along, after all; I was the reason for Jonah’s appearance. It was me, not Robeen and emphatically not the stupid celephet, which had been a complete waste of time. The information it sought could never have been got out of Jonah through torture, he’d assured me of that. How thoroughly nasty and cruel Doc Carter’s experiment had been. I was so glad I’d put an end to it. How I’d love to tell him that when he got back from Mumbai and why shouldn’t I enjoy the moment when I revealed that I wasn’t as stupid and talentless as they all thought?

Why? Because I was certain telling the truth would be dangerous in ways I couldn’t begin to imagine. Even if they believed me, was I naive enough to think they’d just leave me and Jonah in peace to carry on writing our poetry in the darkness of the fossil room? No, they’d find some more horrible way of getting at him through me, using whatever vicious means they deemed necessary. Above all else, I had to protect Jonah.

Tired but happy, I was mulling all this over at breakfast, sitting by myself in the corner where I wouldn’t be disturbed, when Lana detoured in my direction. She looked worried. This wasn’t good.

‘I heard from Doc Carter this morning,’ she said. ‘He tried calling you but couldn’t get through. Perhaps you have “call” switched off on your tile?’

I did, of course, on purpose.

‘He’s a bit concerned,’ she went on. ‘Well, more than a bit, actually. Has something gone wrong with your celephet?’ She knew the name of it now. ‘The information it’s been sending him has just stopped.’

‘My celephet?’ What could I say? Of course Carter would have found out that it wasn’t transmitting, even if he wasn’t working on the data on the other side of the planet. My hand strayed up to my neck.

‘Yes. As soon as he’s back he can check for himself but … can I just take a look? I promised to call him back.’ She put down her breakfast tray.

‘It came off,’ I said quickly. ‘Please don’t look, it’s very sore. I just found it lying on the pillow in the middle of the night. I didn’t know what to do. I’ve been very upset about it.’ Not having had a chance to rehearse this excuse properly, I hoped it sounded convincing.

‘Come on, I’d better see. Promise I’ll be gentle.’ I had to lift my hair and let her take a look. ‘Ow, that does look sore,’ she said. ‘Did you remember to medicate?’

I nodded.

‘Well, I suppose when he gets back, Doc Carter might be able to reattach it.’ She looked very perturbed.

‘I have it safe in my drawer upstairs.’

Lana lifted her eyebrows. ‘He’s not going to like it but I’ll have to tell him,’ she said. ‘Or you? You could give him a call.’

I looked up at her pleadingly and shook my head.

‘All right. I’m sure there’s no need to be scared. I’ll explain it to him, but when he gets back, you’ll have to tell him exactly what happened, right?’

I felt a little guilty. Judging by her reaction, I guessed Carter might have ordered her to keep an eye on me even though she didn’t seem to know much about the experiment. I didn’t want to get her in trouble as well.

Before Robeen and I headed out, I pretended I’d forgotten something and went back upstairs. Opening my cabinet drawer, I took out the celephet and stabbed a laying-out pin, one of my archaeological tools, right through it, pulling so the pinprick elongated into a ragged little tear which might look as though the slivery patch had snagged on something. If the celephet had caught on a sharp object and torn, it might have ceased to work and might have ‘died’ and dropped off on its own. I wanted to make absolutely sure it couldn’t be fixed and looking at it now, I thought I’d probably succeeded. Carter might have had several more up his sleeve, but he had said mine was the prototype. Robeen, Nisien and Halley must all have been fitted with dummies. It was scary sitting there with the celephet in my hand, seeing the state it was in and knowing that I was the one who’d wrecked Carter’s experiment. I just hoped I could make him believe my feeble excuse.

A cruise along the canals cleared my head before we arrived at the Museum. Robeen had decided to compare the tonal qualities of ancient musical instruments for her project and intended spending the morning sorting through the other instruments in the room where we’d found the cello. I knew exactly where I wanted to be.

I knelt in the darkness, waiting patiently for the feeling to arrive that someone was there with me.

‘Jonah,’ I whispered into the dark. ‘Jonah, I’m back.’

After a while I switched my attention to the next line of the poem. It worked. When I looked up again, the air was beginning to contract around the shape of Jonah, a human shape darker than the dark surrounding it.

YOU

The word appeared on my tile.

‘Yes?’ I answered out loud rather than responding on my tile. It just seemed right.

BREE

‘Yes.’

DON’T WANT TO SEE ME

What could I say? I didn’t, but I didn’t want to insult him either. ‘I’m sorry. I’m scared,’ I said. ‘I saw you once before, remember? It gave me such a fright. Can’t we just carry on like this?’

WANT TO HEAR ME?

I remembered the other time I’d heard his voice and still didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t likely to shout this time, but to hear a dead man’s voice speaking to me over the centuries? It was hard to get my head around. Yet I was happy to hold millions-of-years-old fossils in my hands and they were old and dead. ‘Go on, then,’ I said.

His voice, when it started, came and went as if he was tuning in; now louder, now quieter, now more distinct and now tangled with static. His voice came from all around me and seemed to be inside my head as well.

‘Bree, I’m here, Bree, I’m here,’ he said again and again.

‘I’m here, Jonah.’ I thought it might be important to keep talking. ‘You’re doing well,’ I said. ‘Don’t give up. I want you to talk to me, I really do. I want to hear your voice.’

Jonah’s voice eventually seemed to settle within the fuzzy human shape. ‘Thank you, Bree.’ He sounded exhausted, as though his presence were a heavy object he had to lift into the world. Despite this, it was a young man’s voice. ‘It’s been a long time … a long time. It’s … a shock.’

‘For me too,’ I said. ‘It’s shocking, but I’m glad. I’ve got shivers running down my spine right now, I’m shivering all over. I can’t believe you’re actually here speaking to me.’

‘I can communicate with you,’ the voice said. ‘You, no one else.’

I smiled at the shape in the darkness.

‘Why me?’ I chanced. It felt as though I might be fishing for compliments but having beaten myself up so many times about being so talentless and stupid, I guess I was allowed.

Jonah’s voice was starting to fade again. ‘I can connect with you. I am … I am…’

‘Please stay with me, Jonah. You are a poet, aren’t you? Like me?’

‘Geologist,’ he corrected me. ‘But I do write poetry … keep it mainly to myself.’

I could relate to this, I did exactly the same. ‘Then I’m privileged. What’s it like where you are … or where you’ve been … where you’ve just come from?’ I hoped that wasn’t an unacceptable question.

The voice of Jonah came and went, above my head this time. It sounded like a large bird swooping around the room. A bird trying to find a place to land.

‘Sorry, I didn’t hear you?’ I said. ‘Can you say it again?’

‘I’m here with you.’ The voice was right in front of me again, sudden, sharp, and it made me jump. He hadn’t answered my question and I didn’t feel like asking again.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said. ‘Thank you for being here and helping me. You don’t know how much you have helped me.’

‘I’ve been away a long time … a long time…’ It was extraordinary how this normal-sounding human voice was coming from a shape almost touching distance away. ‘Then again, it might only have been a heartbeat.’

Does he realise he’s dead? I wondered. This seemed too sensitive a question to ask until we knew one another better. ‘Do you work here, at the Museum?’ I decided to stick to the present tense.

‘Work? Yes and live here.’

‘Live’ might square with what Doc Carter had told me about the Museum being the headquarters of the resistance movement, if Jonah had belonged to that. If times were bad, members of the resistance might have ended up living here. The place was built like a fortress after all. If times were bad… I remembered the drawings in the gallery upstairs and shuddered.

I noticed Jonah never took the initiative to speak and decided I’d better keep talking. ‘I was thinking of calling our collection of poems “Missing Earth” or something like that. What do you think? When I get home, there’s a lot I’m going to miss about this place.’

‘There’s a lot I miss,’ said Jonah. ‘Earth was so beautiful … but in these last days…’ His voice cracked. ‘…in these last days…’

‘I think I’ve seen something of what happened in the last days,’ I said. ‘There are drawings upstairs on the walls. All those enormous insects attacking the people. It looks like some kind of hell.’

‘Yes,’ Jonah replied. ‘The drawings. Malaky’s drawings. He spent hours up there … hours and hours and days and days; drawing, drawing… He wouldn’t come away. His mind had gone. His mind had gone. That’s all he had left.’ There was something so chilling about the matter-of-fact way he said it.

‘You couldn’t go outside?’ I said.

‘Of course not,’ said Jonah. ‘You don’t remember?’

‘I wasn’t there.’

‘You weren’t … there?’

There was a catch in his voice and I was afraid of upsetting him with further questions about these ‘last days’. Afraid of upsetting a ghost? If he didn’t realise he was a ghost, it seemed likely the realisation would come as a blow. Jonah sounded confused, his voice was slow and thoughtful as though he were trying to make sense of the situation. I thought it best to return to the poem. I picked up a section of ammonite, polished to reveal the intricate patterns through the spiral.

‘Didn’t these become extinct the same time as the dinosaurs?’ I knew the answer but it was a way to get him talking about something else.

‘Yes, but it has a relative, the nautilus. It swims in deeper seas, of course, the ammonites lived in shallow, tropical waters.’ You could tell from his voice that Jonah was pleased to be talking about his specialist subject. Relieved, too.

‘Tell me about them.’

And he did. Jonah rambled on about ammonites and nautili, explaining their structure, their secret coil of chambers which were added to by one chamber each year, their means of jet propulsion through the water and the way they caught food with their grasping tentacles. It was completely fascinating and as he warmed to his subject, his voice grew stronger and more animated.

I learnt so much more about the Earth that day just sitting in that dark room and listening to his voice: how Earth came to be and about the evolution of different species. I think he even forgot I was there for a lot of the time and I was too entranced to ask many questions. On and on he talked about the formation and variety of gemstones in the Earth and the work of volcanoes in shaping the land; of the rise of the continents through different geological eras; describing a variety of exotic animals now extinct; how birds evolved from dinosaurs; how the eye evolved in response to light. For the first time I really took on board the almost unimaginable timescales involved. When you really thought about it, it made the rate at which decisions were currently being made about the Earth seem reckless.

Listening to Jonah was wonderful. But a slow, uncomfortable feeling was stealing over me. Previous doubts I’d had were beginning to crystallise into something more certain.

When you’ve been brought up believing in something, I guess you’re bound to feel guilty the first time you start to question it. I’d grown up pledging an unquestioning allegiance to our Great Quest and Purpose, to the expansion of human settlement beyond Mars, and so had everyone else I knew. Sitting there in the dark, listening to the amazing story of Earth, something which had been nagging at me all the time I’d been on Earth now hardened into a plain fact.

If our Great Quest and Purpose meant stripping our motherplanet of all its precious and unrecoverable assets, then it was wrong.

There wasn’t much writing done that day. Time was growing short before Doc Carter’s return, when I’d have to answer for what had happened to the celephet. As Jonah and I said goodbye late that afternoon, as his voice and his shape melted into the darkness, I resolved to return alone that night and make more progress on what I now thought of as our poem. I really wanted to get on with it while there was still time.

Unfortunately, I was so exhausted, having barely slept for forty-eight hours, that I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep the moment I laid down my head and was conscious of nothing until morning.

I felt really angry with myself, so when at breakfast I discovered that Doc Carter and Halley wouldn’t be returning until the following day, I could have wept with joy. One more uninterrupted day with Jonah – it seemed that this would definitely be my last.

It may seem strange how I could carry on these meetings with Jonah without Robeen getting the slightest bit suspicious, but you don’t know Robeen: she was so thoroughly immersed in her ancient instrument research, nothing else mattered, certainly not whatever I was up to. She didn’t ask me any more about the celephet, she just left me alone. In every respect, she was the perfect partner. That extra day felt like a gift from the gods.

Outside, it was extremely bright and sunny and some of the golden warmth seemed to seep into the ancient building, even as far as its darkest heart, where Jonah and I sat together. Out amongst the statues in the hall, Robeen played Bach very expertly and beautifully on the variety of stringed instruments she’d found and Jonah loved the music, but I didn’t feel threatened by this now. I felt safe in the knowledge that I was the real reason he was there. We spent the whole day on the poem, sparking ideas off each other, batting words back and forth, chatting, even laughing. I forgot he was, that word again, a ghost. I was really excited with what we had created. It was a wonderful day.

My last good day.

‘Tell me again what happened?’ Doc Carter nursed his creased forehead with one hand and held the torn celephet in the other. Although clearly angry, he hadn’t blown his top the way I’d feared.

‘It was exactly as I told you: I was at the Museum, exploring some of the rooms in the dark. My foot caught in a rope, I bent down to free it and I felt something scratch the back of my neck. It may have been a nail sticking out of an old picture frame, there are lots of things like that lying about in those rooms.’ Having rehearsed my story so many times, I was afraid that it might sound too polished. I tried my best to re-phrase bits of what I’d said last time and the time before. ‘I didn’t realise it was damaged but the next morning when I woke up, there it was lying on the pillow. I was so shocked and worried and … and frightened about what you’d say. I’m really disappointed with myself. I’m sorry.’

‘Well, I still have all that data to analyse from before I left…’ He rested his chin on his knuckles, his eyes still fixed on the celephet. He hadn’t looked at me, his trained monkey, once.

‘Mmmm,’ I nodded. ‘That’s good.’

I wondered if he was really buying my story.

‘Why was your message function turned off, Bree? I was trying to contact you for days.’

‘I’m sorry but I always keep “call” turned off when I’m writing.’

‘You’re not writing poems all the time!’ he almost yelled, just reining it in at the last moment. ‘You should have contacted me straight away, as soon as this happened.’

‘I know. I was worried.’

I really felt like yelling back at him but knew I couldn’t. Even after everything that had happened since I’d last seen Carter, even though I was so thrilled I’d made contact with Jonah, I couldn’t forget the way the Doctor had lied to me and I resented him for thinking me so stupid, especially now. If only he knew that I was the one who had made contact with a spirit from the past and not just made contact either but was actually communicating with an ancient human. It wasn’t his precious invention doing this, it was me.

But he couldn’t know. I had to keep it to myself if I was going to protect Jonah.

‘That’s quite a nasty scar you have but it will heal,’ he said. ‘In a few weeks we can try again.’

‘You think you can mend the celephet?’ I faltered. ‘It looks pretty wrecked.’

‘I brought some replacement components and there are facilities I can use in the lab downstairs. It’ll be tricky but I think I can manage it.’

With sudden exasperation, he slammed his fist on the table. I jumped.

‘Damn it, we’re this close, this close.’ He held up his thumb and forefinger, indicating a tiny gap. ‘We have to try again. If the data we’ve collected already doesn’t give us the answer, we must.’

‘Doc Carter,’ I knew I was risking being shouted at but had to say it anyway, ‘I don’t know if the celephet was doing any good.’

He goggled at me. The look on his face said it all: how dare this stupid girl doubt my invention?

‘What I mean is,’ I went on, hastily, swallowing my own temper, ‘all the energy ever did was shout and scream at the celephet to go away.’

‘That’s all you heard, Bree,’ he snapped. ‘The celephet may have picked up more.’

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But all it seemed to do was torture this poor energy.’

‘It got results.’

‘But through torture? Is that really the best way?’

‘Bree, anyone would think this energy has feelings. It is just a residual energy in the atmosphere, nothing more. It’s something from the distant past that the celephet has been clever enough to tune into. You can’t torture energy.’

So: stupid Bree, clever celephet.

‘It felt like torture. You weren’t there,’ I protested.

‘Yes, well, when we try the experiment again … and I mean when Bree, not if, I’ll be keeping a much, much closer eye on you. Remember why we’re doing this. Remember it’s to further our Great Quest and Purpose.’

More like your own quest and purpose, I thought. Your own fame and fortune, Doc Carter. He swung round on his stool and I took it as my signal to leave. Despite his annoyance, I’d expected something far worse and guessed that he’d gone easy on me because he’d obviously need my help with his revolting experiment once the celephet was fixed. I wasn’t about to refuse to ever wear it again, that would have been very dangerous. I assumed from what he’d said that it would take weeks to mend the nasty thing and that left me time enough to come up with a plan.

Facing Carter was bad enough but I’d been dreading seeing Halley again. We ran into each other in the corridor, near the window where we’d viewed the moon together the night we first arrived. He greeted me with a huge smile plastered across his face. He was so wrapped up in what he wanted to tell me that he didn’t notice how forced my own smile was. He put his arm through mine, keeping in step with me. We carried on up the stairs to the fourth-floor common room.

‘You will not believe what I have to tell you,’ he began.

‘Whatever it is, you look pretty pleased with yourself,’ I said. ‘How was India?’

‘Oh!’ He let go of my arm and did a funny little jig of a dance as though words alone couldn’t express his delight. He rounded it off with one word, ‘Grrreat!’

He waited until we entered the common room before telling me more. This was the most comfortable room in the building with super-squashy sofas facing a panoramic view of Cardiff, but it was usually empty in the daytime when everyone was busy at work. I’d just wanted a quiet place where I could get my head together following my interview with Doc Carter, but now here I was with Halley.

‘Ah, good, we can be alone,’ he said, stressing the word ‘alone’ in comical fashion.

Fantastic, I thought.

He threw himself onto one sofa and I sat on the edge of a different one.

‘Go on, then,’ I said.

‘Where shall I begin?’ I felt like slapping the sappy grin off his face but sat patiently, waiting for whatever he was itching to say. ‘All right. I didn’t know I was going until half an hour before, so sorry to start with,’ he said. ‘I did try calling you in Mumbai but your “call” signal was switched off?’

I shrugged. I didn’t see why I should explain this again and to him of all people. He must have thought I was annoyed at him for leaving without saying goodbye.

‘Anyway,’ he continued, ‘if I could have persuaded Doc Carter to take you along, I would have done, but of course he wanted you to stay here, didn’t he?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Bree…’ He sat on the edge of his seat, leaning towards me and waving his hands to emphasise what he was saying. ‘I have seen such amazing things. I’ve walked on golden sandy beaches. I’ve explored tropical forests. I’ve been out in nature. It’s like our canals but much, much more. It’s so different from here.’

‘What about the dragomansk?’

‘Oh, they’re there like they’re everywhere. I got to see some amazing metamansk, so big they filled the sky. We had to take the usual precautions. The heat is so much worse, we had to wear these special suits with cool air circulating inside or our enzymes would have started breaking down. It’s even less habitable than here.’ He tried to reach out and take my hand but I flinched and withdrew it. ‘Bree, I know you’re mad at me for going without you but I couldn’t help that. Please let me tell you what I saw there, it was unbelievable.’

My dislike of him was deepening. He was so different from the last time we’d met, when he’d seemed so distraught. Doc Carter had bought him off with this amazing trip and now he’d do anything Carter asked of him, I just knew it. Including spying on me again.

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’m waiting.’

‘There were shells on the beach, huge conch shells in all colours. They reminded me of your fossils. Best of all was the sea. It was the clearest, purest blue I have ever seen, clear as a crystal. We actually went into the sea, Bree, can you imagine that? We saw everything there is to see in the water.’

‘How? You didn’t swim? You couldn’t have.’

‘In an amphibical!’ He laughed. ‘The larger ones – the class fours – can go underwater. We were down there for hours. I saw great shoals of fish, all the colours of the rainbow. I saw sharks and eels and seahorses and … I saw a nautilus. A real nautilus, like the ammonites you like at the Museum? I saw a real live one in the sea!’

‘I’m surprised Doc Carter had time for all that,’ I cut in, stunned by the horrible coincidence. It was almost as though he’d just butted in on one of my and Jonah’s conversations.

‘Oh, he didn’t, he was working. It was just a bit of a treat for me. I went with some of the scientists from their Base who’ve been surveying the minerals underwater. I was thinking about you, Bree. I was wishing you were there with me the whole time.’ He reached across again. I stood up and folded my arms.

‘You should count yourself lucky,’ I said curtly.

‘I do. Bree, if I’d only had the chance I would have taken you with me…’

‘I would only have got in the way.’

‘No!’

‘I have to go.’ I turned for the door.

‘Wait,’ he said. ‘Listen. We’re only here on Earth for a short time. Any chance we get, we should be out there looking at it, experiencing it! It’s difficult, I know, but we should at least try! You spend all your time in that Museum amongst the old rocks and fossils, but they’re dead, Bree, and it’s dark in there and depressing. I know Doc Carter wants you there some of the time but you need to get out, into the light. I want to show you what you’ve been missing.’

I turned back to face him. ‘You think you know about the Museum, but you don’t. I’m happy there. Look!’ I spun around and showed him the back of my neck. ‘This happened while you were away. The celephet fell off. I’m not allowed back there until it’s repaired and that could take weeks. The Museum’s the only place on Earth I want to be, Halley. The only place.’

It wasn’t exactly true. What he’d described sounded amazing and part of me longed to see it for myself, but I didn’t want to go anywhere in Halley’s company ever again. In any case, I really was having the best time of my life at the Museum with Jonah.

‘Oh please, listen to yourself!’ He threw back his head, exasperated.

‘When I should listen to you, I suppose?’ I cried. I hadn’t intended having a full-blown row with Halley but now I’d started, I couldn’t stop, much as I tried keeping my voice down. ‘Why can’t I make up my own mind? Why can’t I decide what I want to do? If I want to sit in the dark and write poems, that’s up to me, surely?’

‘That really is what you came all the way to Earth to do?’

‘Yes, it is!’

‘I’ve never heard anything so stupid.’

‘Oh.’ My breath was short now. ‘Is that what you think of me then? Stupid? Making all these stupid decisions for myself? Who the hell do I think I am, making my own choices? How ridiculous. Why don’t I just listen to the intelligent ones on board this mission?’

‘I didn’t say you’re stupid. I don’t think that. Bree, will you just shut up a minute? Shut up!’

Now we were talking across each other, our voices raised, and I was past the point of caring whether anyone heard us. Still, I wasn’t about to reveal to Halley how I’d overheard him and Doc Carter arguing the night before they left, otherwise he’d just scamper back to Carter like a faithful little pet and tell him everything.

‘Bree.’ He put out his hand but I moved so the sofa was between us. ‘What’s happened? You and me, we came all the way here dreaming of what we were going to see and do together. I thought we were friends? I thought of you as my best friend.’

I couldn’t say anything. I was shaking with anger.

‘What’s happened?’ he asked again. ‘This isn’t about me going to Mumbai without you, is it? Please tell me what I’ve done wrong.’

‘Nothing.’ On the verge of tears, I bolted from the room.