The Power of Five Oblivion

floor, dozens of check-in desks stretched in long lines, waiting for passengers who would never arrive. Escalators stood, frozen. All the TV screens that might once have announced the departures were blank. The atmosphere inside was warm and clammy – it had been a long time since the air-conditioning had been turned on – and the palm trees had wilted and died in their pots. The terminal was huge. Scarlett was reminded first of a factory, then of a cathedral. Everything here – the floors, the windows, the desks, the stairs – was hard and brittle. It was a place with no comfort at all.
    “Do you want to go on?” Scarlett asked. Her voice sounded very small.
    “Why not? Maybe we can pick up a drink in Duty Free.”
    They passed through the departure gate (PASSENGERS ONLY) and through the security area with its silent conveyor belts, its metal detectors and X-ray screens. It was a reminder of how the world had once been, the endless fear and suspicion that went with people’s determination to keep on travelling. Then there were the passport controls, modern cubicles at the end of a long stretch of marble. You are now leaving Dubai and entering the no-man’s-land of an international airport. You have hours of shopping and hanging around ahead. Thank you for coming .
    Only the Duty Free area was empty. All the shelves had been wiped clean. Richard and Scarlett found themselves in a long, subterranean arcade that ran the entire length of the terminal, with shops everywhere, a sports car parked at one end (WIN THIS CAR – US$25 A TICKET) and a bar decorated with a plastic palm tree. It was the same as the city. There had been people here, and then, quite suddenly, they had gone. It was as if they had bought everything that could be bought, right down to the last packet of cigarettes and the last king-sized tube of M&M’s and then leapt on the first plane and gone home.
    Richard and Scarlett kept going. Neither of them spoke. They didn’t want to express their disappointment. There was nothing here for them. They weren’t going to get so much as a drink.
    They reached a window looking out onto the runway. Richard pointed. “Look!”
    It was there after all, right in front of them. A plane. Perhaps the only plane in the whole airport. An Emirates airline Airbus, sitting on its own in the middle of the tarmac. A flight of steps had been wheeled against the cabin door and there was a man sitting there, dressed in dark blue trousers, a white shirt and sunglasses. The pilot. It had to be. He seemed to be waiting for them.
    Richard grabbed hold of Scarlett and the two of them set off, looking for a way out.

TWENTY-SEVEN
    Despite its name, getting out of the departure building was much harder than it had been getting in. Richard and Scarlett became increasingly frustrated as they followed winding corridors past door after door, each one of them locked with security codes known only to ground staff who had left long ago. Even though the electricity inside the terminal had either failed or been switched off, the magnetic locks hadn’t released themselves and the doors refused to open. Huge windows gave them tantalizing views of the tarmac they were trying to reach. Richard would have been tempted to pick up a chair and smash the glass but the chairs were bolted down, and anyway, the glass was probably too thick.
    Eventually they found what they were looking for. There was a boarding desk with a British Airways sign and, next to it, an open door with one of those long passageways that bent back on themselves and that used to lead directly onto an aircraft. This one jutted into open space. When Richard and Scarlett reached the end, they found themselves looking at a square of bright light with a drop to the ground that would break both their ankles if they weren’t careful. But there was no other way. They clambered over the edge, taking their full weight with their hands and their arms outstretched, then dropped. Even so, it was a hard landing. And the tarmac was burning hot.
    “You OK?”
    “Yeah.” Scarlett dusted herself down and looked around. The Airbus that they had spotted was now some distance away but the man was still there, smoking a cigarette.
    They hurried towards him. There was no breeze at all but it was drier and more pleasant than it had been inside the terminal. Scarlett was very aware of the silence. It was the last thing she would have associated with an airport and she felt lost in her