Hugo Lamb dusts his sleeves. “You scansioned Holly, I presume?”
Extensively. I had to, to locate Esther Little.
“Did you find us in La Fontaine Saint-Agnиs? Holly and I?”
I hesitate too long.
“So you had a good gawp. Well. Now you have your answer.” More Dusk spills in, promising us it won’t hurt, it won’t hurt, it won’t hurt. A third of the floor is covered now. “Did you see her lay into Constantin? Irish blood, Gravesend muscle. Talk about breeding.”
You stood by andwatched that?
“Never been the have-a-go-hero type, me.”
Constantin recruited you. She was the Second Anchorite.
“I’ve always had a problem with authority figures. Rivas-Godoy turned right when we entered the labyrinth, so that was him finished from the outset, but I followed Constantin. Yes, she recruited me, but she bought into the women-and-children-first doctrine bigtime. So I cloaked myself, got lost, heard Holly, followed you … And here we are. Death-buddies. Who would have thought it?” We watch the sandy Dusk fill the domed chamber, getting deeper. I’m nagged by a thought that I’ve missed something obvious. Hugo Lamb coughs. “Did she love me too, Marinus? I don’t mean after she found out about my little … dalliance with a paranormal cult that scarred her family and attempted to animacide her brother. I mean, that night. In Switzerland. When we were young. Properly young. When Holly and I were snowed in.”
Two-thirds of the floor is covered. Lamb the corporeal has sixty seconds of life before the Dusk reaches him. I can hover a little longer, until the dome is full to the roof, if I really want to.
Then it hits me, what I’ve missed. Hugo Lamb missed it too. Even Constantin missed it. Dodging falling masonry, trying to avoid the Dusk, we all forgot an alternative exit. I could sublaugh. Will it work? If the Dusk got into the Way of Stones and erased the conduit, no … But it was a long way down.
I subask Lamb, How much voltage do you have left?
“Not a lot. Why? Fancy a psychoduel?”
If I ingress you, we might have enough together.
He’s confused. “To do what?”
To summon the Aperture.
October 26
AT THE FOOT OF THE STAIRS I hear this thought, He is on his way, and goosebumps shimmy up my arms. Who? Up ahead, Zimbra turns to see what’s keeping me. I sift the sounds of the late evening. The stove, clanking as it cools. Waves, shoulder-barging the rocks below the garden. The creaking bones of the old house. The creaking bones of Holly Sykes, come to that. I lean over the banister to peer through the kitchen-sink window up the slope to Mo’s bungalow. Her bedroom light’s on. All well there. No feet on the gravel garden path. Zimbra doesn’t sense a visitor. The hens are quiet, which at this hour is the way we want it. Lorelei and Rafiq are giggling in Lorelei’s room, playing shadow puppets: “That looks nothing likea kangaroo, Lol!”; “How would youknow?”; “Well, how would youknow?” Not so very long ago, I thought I’d never hear my two orphans laugh like that again.
So far so normal. No more audible thoughts. Someone’s always on their way. But, no, it was “ Heis on his way,” I’m sure. Or as sure as I can be. The problem is, if you’ve heard voices in your head once, you’re never sure again if a random thought isjust a random thought, or something more. And remember the date: the five-year anniversary of the ’38 Gigastorm, when Aoife’s and Цrvar’s 797 got snapped at twenty thousand feet, theirs and two hundred other airliners crossing the Pacific, snapped like a boy in a tantrum snapping the Airfix models Brendan used to hang from his bedroom ceiling.
“Oh, ignore me,” I mutter to Zimbra, and carry on up the stairs, the same stairs I once flew up and flew down. “Come on,” I tell Zimbra, “shift your bum.” I stroke the whorl of fur between his ears, one sticky-uppy and one floppy. Zimbra looks up, like he’s reading my mind with those big black eyes. “You’d tell me if there was anything to worry about, wouldn’t you, eh?”
Anything elseto worry about, that is, besides the fear that the dragging feeling in my right side is my cancer waking up again; and about what’ll happen to Lorelei and Rafiq when I die; and about the Taoiseach’s statement about Hinkley Point and the British government’s insistence that “a full meltdown of the reactor at Hinkley E is not going to happen”; and about Brendan, who lives only a few miles from the new exclusion zone; and about the Boat People landings near Wexford, and where and how these thousands of hungry, rootless men, women, and children will get through the winter; and about the rumors of Ratflu in Belfast; and our dwindling store of insulin; and Mo’s ankle; and …
Worrying times, Holly Sykes.
“I KNEW THAT was going to happen!” says Rafiq, swamped in Aoife’s old red coat that now serves as his dressing gown, hugging his knees at the foot of Lorelei’s bed. “When Marcus found the brooch was missing from his cloak, that was a—a deadgiveaway, like. You can’t nick a golden eagle from a tribe like the Painted People and expect to get away with it. For them, it’s like Marcus and Esca have stolen God. Of coursethey’ll come and hunt them down.” Then, ’cause he knows how much I love The Eagle of the Ninth, he tries his luck: “Holly, can’t we have just a bit of the next chapter?”
“It’s almost ten,” says Lorelei, “and school tomorrow,” and if I close my eyes I can almost imagine it’s Aoife at fifteen years old.
“All right. And is the slate recharged?”
“Yes, but there’s still no thread and no Net.”
“Is it reallytrue,” Rafiq shows no sign of shifting from Lorelei’s bed, “that when you were my age you used to get as much electricity as you wanted allthe time, like?”
“Do I detect a bedtime postponement tactic, young man?”
He grins. “Must’ve been magnoto have all that electricity.”
“It must’ve been what?”
“Magno. Everyone says it. Y’know: boss, class, epic, good.”
“Oh. Looking back, yes, it was ‘magno,’ but we all took it for granted back then.” I remember Ed’s pleasure at unlimited electricity each time he got back to our little house in Stoke Newington from Baghdad, where he and his colleagues had to power their laptops and satellite phones with car batteries brought by the battery guy. Sheep’s Head could do with a battery guy now, but his truck’d need diesel, and there isn’t any spare, which is why we need him.
“And airplanes used to fly allthe time, right?” sighs Rafiq. “Not just people from Oil States or Stability?”
“Yes, but …” I flounder for a way to change the subject. Lorelei, too, must be thinking dark thoughts about airplanes tonight.
“So where did you go, Holly?” Rafiq never tires of this conversation, no matter how often we do it.
“Everywhere,” says Lorelei, being brave and selfless. “Colombia, Australia, China, Iceland, Old New York. Didn’t you, Gran?”
“I did, yes.” I wonder what life in Cartagena, in Perth, in Shanghai is like now. Ten years ago I could have streetviewed the cities, but the Net’s so torn and ragged now that even when we have reception it runs at prebroadband speed. My tab’s getting old, too, and I only have one more in storage. If any arrive via Ringaskiddy Concession, they never make it out of Cork City. I remember the pictures of seawater flooding Fremantle during the deluge of ’33. Or was it the deluge of ’37? Or am I confusing it with pictures of the sea sluicing into the New York subway, when five thousand people drowned underground? Or was that Athens? Or Mumbai? Footage of catastrophes flowed so thick and fast through the thirties that it was hard to keep track of which coastal region had been devastated this week, or which city had been decimated by Ebola or Ratflu. The news turned into a plotless never-ending disaster movie I could hardly bring myself to watch. But since Netcrash One we’ve had hardly any news at all and, if anything, this is worse.