“Which Hollywood actor?”

“Tom Cruise.”

Sana scooped the last scrap of sugary butter from her egg cup of comfort and licked it off the baby spoon. She spoke in whispers.

“That water has been untouched for millions of years. Do you understand? It has been sealed under four kilometres of ice. The human species is only 15 million years old.”

“Do you know what the final panels mean? I didn’t understand
them.”

“Suri.”

“What?”

“Tom Cruise’s child with Katie Holmes.”

“I didn’t know Tom Cruise had a child.”

Sana had trouble believing that I hadn’t heard about the birth of Suri. It took some time to convince her.

I stripped the logs. Sana erased the tapes. But it’s harder to undo a number in your mind — xxxxxx. The rest of the crew thought we were having an affair, the way we wouldn’t look at one another, speak to each other. Four months later, our research at Vostok ended, with disappointment for everyone. I took my holidays in Australia and watched all of Tom Cruise’s movies in chronological order. You can watch them a million times and there’s not a glimmer of anything there. Top Gun is my favourite. I understand from the magazines that he’s working on a film about a Nazi assassin now.

A year after leaving Antarctica, Sana committed suicide, in her typically precise way, by overdosing on fentanyl. Further mercies followed: nasa fired me a month and a half ago. It has abandoned all plans for Europa.