David nearly laughed, with open and outright contempt, at the word relax.

Relax?

The image of Alphonse was cut into his thoughts, tattooed on his neocortex. A man burnt to cinders, screaming his death agony: Miguel inhaling the scent of the meat. The Cannibalistic Cagot…

He suppressed his shudder and finished breakfast. Bread and fruit and cheese. No meat. They talked about the penguins and the seals on the islands offshore. Eloise said she had found a sandrose on the beach the previous day, a beautiful sandrose.

‘And there are agates too!’

Her enthusiasm was touching, and teenage, and winning, but David couldn’t cope. It was all too much. He just couldn’t make small talk. Just couldn’t. He pushed back his chair, and stretched and apologized – he needed to be alone. Amy looked his way and he tried to smile and failed, but he didn’t say anything. He didn’t want to talk about anything.

David walked across the terrace, down some concrete steps onto the empty beach. A big factory ship was way offshore, beyond the islands. The sands were grey and shining in the hot sun. The coastline, as far as he could see, was lunar in its sterility. The coastline of the Forbidden Zone. Last refuge of the Cagots.

‘Hey?’

He swivelled. It was Angus, joining him.

‘David. You OK?’

A brief and piercing pause.

‘I’m fine.’

The Scotsman’s answering smile was sad, and sceptical. He said nothing. David could bear it no longer. He had to confess; he needed to confess.

‘Angus…do you think it is possible…’ He had to force the words out of himself. ‘That I am a Cagot? Of Cagot decent, at least. I’ve been thinking about my grandfather. His guilt and shame. The only thing that makes sense is…that he was a Cagot too. Maybe he found out at Gurs, like José Garovillo.’

The scientist tilted his head, his pale white face even paler in the harsh Sperrgebiet sun.

‘I had wondered if you would reach that conclusion.’

‘So? What do you think?’

‘To my mind, you do not present any of the obvious Cagot syndromes, but you do have, maybe, the colouration.’

‘S’what I thought. Jesus.’

‘It doesn’t mean you will go mad. Not definitely. You may be fine, like Eloise. And then again you may not be.’

‘Christ.’

‘The only way we can know for sure is genetic testing. If you want. If you want I can do that here, in the labs. Do you really want to know?’

The truth was close, yet utterly unbearable. Like an HIV test, but infinitely worse. David stared out to sea. A smaller boat was floating there, closer than the great factory boat. Maybe a skiff, belonging to local fishermen.

David exhaled.

‘I don’t know, Angus. It’s…so fucking difficult. I’m frightened, if I’m honest. I don’t want to know that…I am like Miguel. How could I tolerate knowing that?’

‘Of course.’

The two men kicked stones, and walked further down the beach, talking quietly. Angus was in pensive, discursive mood: speaking of the Serpent Seed, the Biblical tales of separate races of men. Then the scientist stopped, and stared at the virulent blue sea, the little islands offshore; he was speaking of earlier forms of hominid, Homo antecessor, Homo habilis, and then Homo floresiensis, a dwarf-like relative of man.

‘You know they may have lived into recorded history,’ Angus surveyed the rocky islets. ‘How creepy is that? Lost on the islands of Indonesia: an elf, a hobbit, a goblin…’

David barely listened. Silent and brooding.

Angus pointed out to the waters.

‘Sea nettles.’

A few metres out, the coastal seawater was patched and dotted with dozens of diaphanous scarlet jellyfish, some of them a metre across, their fronds and tentacles pulsing organically.

They were beautiful yet repulsive. Angus elaborated.

‘Chrysaora Hysoscella. Namibian sea nettles. They always remind me of vaginas. The colour and movement. The peristalsis of female orgasm.’ He gazed. ‘But now they remind me of floating…wounds. Big floating red wounds.’

Angus looked at David. And then the scientist said, quite fiercely: ‘I just let him die. Didn’t I?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Alfie. My little Alfie. I let them kill him – that fucker Miguel.’

‘No, Angus. You tried to save him.’

‘But I failed. I failed…’

The Scotsman looked vulnerable; the chutzpah was gone, the persistent smile, the chattering self confidence. His face was twitching, close to tears.

‘I was trying to think of a better way out! I really was. I was. And I did. The euphorbia. But it was too late.’ The Scotsman knelt and picked up a beautiful seashell, a whorl of creamy porcelain veined with pink and yellow, and a thread of tenderest red. Tender and vulnerable.

The seashell lay nestled in his palm. Angus gazed down; he was choked, almost sobbing.

‘This is why I believe in God, David. I mean. Look at this shell. Why is it so beautiful? Why? It’s pointlessly beautiful, isn’t it? Purposelessly beautiful, why make a seashell so beautiful? Who does that benefit? What’s the point? It’s excessive. Evolution is itself excessive. This is where creationists have it wrong, the universe isn’t designed – it is inspired.’

He dropped the shell. He kicked it away. Again David didn’t know what to say.

Angus was still talking.

‘I lied back then, David.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘At breakfast, I lied.’

‘How?’

‘I’m not sure they will be stalled by the guards. The Society. Not for long.’

‘So…’ David felt the horror of the inevitable thought: Miguel still out there, coming for them. ‘What do we do?’

‘Nathan is too arrogant to listen. I tried to tell him earlier but he wouldn’t listen. He thinks he is impregnable here, the Forbidden Zone. Safe in his dynastic fortress. The great Kellermans of the Sperrgebiet. But he isn’t safe. Kellerman Namcorp is powerful, but not that fucking powerful. The whole church? If they want to get at us they will find a way.’ The sunlight made Angus’s red hair almost coppery. ‘We need a plan. Because they will come. Tomorrow, a few days, next week. They are coming for us as we speak.’

David stared across the tarnished silver of the sea. The Scotsman was surely right: they needed a means of escape.

The barks of the seals on the island were carried by the hot and savoury breeze. Penguins were chittering in their colonies on the smaller islands. It was, David realized, a world of unwitnessed beauty, the beauty of nothingness, no one ever saw this: the dead quartz and glittering ashes, the agates and buried sandroses: a wasteland of loveliness.

Out there on the blue severe waves, someone was observing. David looked, hard. It was a man, standing on the deck of the skiff. A man with a pair of binoculars, or something. The man was standing and gazing through the binoculars – at the buildings on the shore.

This man was staring straight at them. And there was a man next to him, pointing. But the man wasn’t pointing.

David felt the uncomfortable prickle of anxiety.

Now he realized: the man had some kind of…device. A long black shape. Directed their way.

Angus was heading for the sheltering rocks. ‘Run! David!

Run!’

But David stood on the beach, gaping with the horror.

The first missile streaked eagerly through the clear blue sky.