by Maile Meloy
“He didn’t make it,” I lied. “He fell into the sea.”
Danby searched my eyes to see if I was telling the truth.
“I’m the only one who got to the island,” I said. “I couldn’t save them.” A tear rolled down my cheek—for I did really feel hopeless—and I let it stay on my face. I didn’t know what to do except try to buy the apothecary time.
Then a loud alarm went off on the destroyer, and a Russian voice over a loudspeaker issued a command. I wondered if the ship was shielded in some way against the radiation, or whether the water alone would protect us, down below.
The Scar said, “We leave her on deck.”
Fear seized me. “You can’t! I’ll be poisoned and die!”
“Then that will be one problem solved,” the Scar said.
Danby smiled and let go of my shoulders. “That’s true,” he said. “I envy you for seeing what it really looks like, Janie. We have cameras, of course, but film is never the same. It should be very beautiful, so close.”
“Why are you doing this, Mr Danby?” I asked. “It can’t be because you read Anna Karenina when you were fifteen.”
Danby seemed surprised for a moment that I knew about his Tolstoy conversation, but then he considered the question. “What better reason could there be?” he said. “I want the nation that produced such a book to survive, and not to be annihilated by your naïve and vicious American government.”
“But a person produced that book,” I said. “Not a nation. That’s—” I caught myself using the present tense. “That was the great thing about the apothecary. He wasn’t working for a country. He was working to save people everywhere.”
“As am I!” Danby said. “A Soviet nuclear force is the only way to keep the Americans in check and ensure that their weapons will never be used. The US needs a deterrent. I’m sure your parents would agree. Now I really must go below.”
“Don’t leave me out here!” I said. The Latin words on his blackboard came into my head. “Decipimur specie—rectie! We are deceived by the appearance of right! Remember? You think you’re right, but this is wrong!”
Danby smiled at me. “You really were such a promising student, Miss Scott. I wish you all luck.”
He followed the Scar towards the last open door, to go below. I thought about running after them and trying to fight my way down, but I knew I would never be strong enough.
I turned to the rail of the ship. I’d been acting as if I believed the bomb would go off because the apothecary wasn’t around to stop it, but now I needed to believe that it wouldn’t. I had to believe that the apothecary was strong enough to stop something twenty times more powerful than he expected. I was alone on the grey deck of the destroyer, in the vast silver sea, and I wanted to be brave. Snow had started to fall. I stood a little straighter and tried to have some of Benjamin’s fire in my eyes.
Then I looked towards Nova Zembla and waited.
CHAPTER 34
The Bomb
For what seemed like a long time, I was alone on deck in the silence. I held my breath, standing at the rail and blinking at the island through the snow, hoping that Benjamin and his father had gone ahead with their plan—that Jin Lo’s net would work, and the Quintessence would absorb the radiation. Imagining them working away on the island helped. They would carry on and succeed, and save themselves and the Samoyeds on the island, and the reindeer and the fish and the Norwegian children—and also me, exposed on the deck of the destroyer. I didn’t want to think about what would happen next, when they would have to leave Nova Zembla. They couldn’t possibly rescue me from the Soviet Navy, and the idea left me feeling hollow and abandoned.
I tried to be selfless and hope only for Benjamin’s safety, since he and his father were trying to save the world. But what I really wanted was for all of us to be safe, and out of this wretched place. I just couldn’t see how that was going to happen.
As I strained my eyes at the horizon, it began to change. Something small grew out of the surface of Nova Zembla, blooming orange and red like a monstrous flower in the failing light. It rose slowly, ominously, into the air. Then there was the sound of the blast, bleeding into a long, diminishing roar, and the ship trembled on the surface of the water.
I thought of Benjamin in the lunchroom, saying, “We’ll be incinerated. We’ll turn to ash.” The idea that all of them were gone, instantly—Jin Lo with her fierce competence and her hidden sorrow, the affable Count Vili, the kind and haunted apothecary, and Benjamin, my Benjamin—was too intolerable for my brain to handle. The fact that radiation would be drifting towards me in toxic waves was nothing compared to my friends vanishing.
The orange cloud was building and roiling in a way that looked agonisingly slow, and I seized the hope that Count Vili was freezing time on Nova Zembla. That would mean he was still alive—that they all were. I ignored the nagging thought that the slow rising was just the nature of the explosion, and allowed a little hope to rise in my heart.
The orange bloom spilled over into a second cloud rising above it, separating until the stacked clouds had only a thread of orange light between them. The two clouds didn’t look intelligent in the way of the Dark Force, but they did look alive. They seethed with smoke and grew, expanding inexorably, unstoppably.
And then, instead of billowing ever upward, they stopped expanding. I thought of Jin Lo casting her shimmering net out over the sea, and hoped she had gotten it around the bomb. If she had, and it worked, then the polymer triggered by the radiation would contract and snare the explosion. I waited, holding my breath.
There was a moment of hesitating stillness, and then the topmost cloud rejoined the one below it with a kiss. They became one glowing shape again, and that shape, in turn, began slowly to contract. It looked like the newsreel of an atomic blast being played backward, in bright colour.
The cloud collapsed in on itself, growing smaller and smaller, and then it was gone, like an orange sun slipping below the horizon. There was a strange hush on the empty deck: no seabirds, no splashing waves.
And then a smell came towards me on a gust of wind. It was the sweetest smell I have ever known, even in the many years since. It was sweeter than orange blossoms, sweeter than night-blooming jasmine. It smelled like life, somehow: like green grass and sunlight and birdsong, and the ache in your heart when you love someone deeply.
I knew it must be the Quintessence, distilled from the blossoms in the garden to absorb the radiation. I saw tiny particles winking in the last of the light, among the drifting snowflakes.
The mushroom cloud had collapsed, and I felt a burst of pride and relief. The blast, even contained as it was, had been enormous, and my friends might not have survived. And if they had, I didn’t know how I was going to get back to them. But they had done it. I strained in vain for any sign of movement on the distant island, and saw nothing.
An hour must have passed before the hush on the destroyer ended. A few men ventured back on deck, speaking in Russian, moving as gingerly as people approaching a land mine that hadn’t gone off. A young sailor wore earphones attached to a box that I recognised from newsreels as a Geiger counter, for measuring radiation. He listened, frowning in confusion, and then handed the earphones off to someone else to see if he was mistaken: There was no radiation.
I tried to look inconspicuous and boyish, in my peacoat and watch cap, like a smallish crew member, but someone grabbed my arm roughly and turned me around.
“What happened out there?” Danby demanded, his face close to mine. “We felt the blast, but then something happened. The photographs don’t make any sense.”
“It was amazing,” I said. “It was beautiful. And you missed it, because you were afraid!”
Fury flashed in Danby’s eyes. “Is the apothecary on the island?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m here, remember?”
Danby dragged me towards the helicopter by the arm. The Scar followed.
“Where’s Sakharov?” Danby
demanded. “Where’s that bloody pilot? Bring that Geiger counter. We’re going back!”
CHAPTER 35
The Frozen Sea
The helicopter ride was no more pleasant now that I was human and could see out the windows. The rickety machine swung wildly with every gust of wind, and creaked and groaned as if it were ready to fall apart. It was too noisy for anyone aboard to bother speaking, and Sakharov and the Scar stared grimly down at the sea.
To keep myself from feeling sick and terrified, I tried to fix my eyes on something that wasn’t moving, like I did when I was carsick. That’s when I saw, out the window, a stationary black cloud. It was perfectly round and seemed to hold itself apart and aloof from the others. I thought of Count Vili’s genii, and of the Dark Force that had drifted away from the jaival tree.
Then the helicopter lurched, and my stomach seemed to flip into my chest, and we started to descend. Nova Zembla was as barren and white as it had been before, but there was a great charred circle where the shed with the bomb had been. The Samoyed houses were tiny in the distance, and seemed undisturbed, and so did the island’s spindly pine trees to the north. The helicopter avoided the burned patch and landed on the frozen ground a little distance away. The others climbed down, and Danby dragged me out into the snow.
The men walked with a dreadful tension towards the test site, staring at the cratered, blackened earth. The snow was melted even beyond the burned area, but there was nothing like the damage a nuclear bomb should have left. Danby gripped my arm so I wouldn’t run, but where would I go? There was no sign of any of the others, and I tried to think that they had escaped, far away. The charred ground seemed a fitting place for the desolate hope that my friends had abandoned me for their own safety. My heart felt as flattened as the little shed.
The young helicopter pilot carried the grey metal Geiger counter to test the radiation. He shook his head, baffled. “Chisto,” he said.
Sakharov grabbed the earphones from him and held them to his ear, listening, then dropped the headset. It swung from the cord in the young pilot’s hand. The faint sweet smell of the Quintessence still hung in the air. Sakharov looked around the deserted point.
“How is this possible?” he demanded in English. “It is not possible!” His intelligent face was in torment. He had bent atoms to his will, and he wasn’t used to being confronted by things he didn’t understand.
“The girl knows,” Danby said.
“The girl!” Sakharov said. “Where did the girl come from?”
“She was the bird,” Danby said. “I told you we should have searched the island.”
“She was the bird?”
“And she knows what happened.”
“I don’t,” I said. “I wasn’t here!”
“You are going to rot in a Soviet prison, Miss Scott, if you make it that far,” Danby said. He shook me by the arm so hard that I bit my tongue and tasted the metallic tang of blood. “What did the apothecary do?”
“I don’t know!”
Sakharov said, “I think I am not understanding this word, apothecary.”
“He’s not an ordinary apothecary,” Danby said. “He’s—a kind of alchemist. Or a magician.”
“A magician?”
“No, he’s a scientist,” I said, because Sakharov seemed my only hope. “Just like you are. You’d like him. They wanted to meet you, and thought you’d understand what they’re doing.”
“They?” Sakharov said. “Who is they? And what is it they are doing, besides destroying my work and my reputation?”
Then we heard a cry that sounded not entirely human, and my heart froze. I couldn’t tell where the sound was coming from, except that it was above us. It cried out again in terror, the voice nearly carried off by the wind. I looked up, over the sea, and saw a boy falling from the sky.
“Benjamin!” I screamed. I watched, horrified, as he plummeted into the waves.
“How fitting,” Danby said. “The boy who flew too high.”
“That was a boy?” Sakharov said.
I tried to pull my arm free of Danby’s grip, but he dug his fingers in. “We have to go save him!” I cried.
“The fall will have killed him,” Danby said. “Or if not, he’ll drown instantly, in that cold.”
“No!” I pounded Danby’s chest with my free arm, and he grabbed that wrist, too. I felt helpless, faced with his total indifference. It wouldn’t matter to him that I loved Benjamin, that he was fearless and clever and loyal and brave, and that he’d been trying to come back for me. I had to find a reason for Danby to want to save Benjamin, and the seconds were ticking away. “He knows all the secrets!” I said. “He knows everything about his father’s work.”
I saw a flicker of interest cross Danby’s face. I turned to Sakharov.
“That was the apothecary’s son who fell,” I said, trying to make my voice steady. “His apprentice, his closest ally. He can explain what happened to the bomb—how it was contained, and why there’s no radiation. You have to interrogate him! Don’t you want to know?”
I knew that if they took Benjamin alive, they would force him to give up what he could of his father’s secrets, or give up his father himself. That would be awful, but the alternative was worse. It was unthinkable that he might die right then, in that cold water. Danby and Sakharov looked at me. The pilot waited.
Finally Sakharov said, “Start the helicopter.”
We all ran for the horrible machine. It took off shakily into the wind, and flew low towards the place where Benjamin had fallen.
“There he is!” I yelled, over the noise of the rotors. I could just see Benjamin’s sandy hair, soaking wet, and his arm coming out of the water in a weakened crawl stroke, before a wave obscured him completely. My stomach felt as if it had been tied in a series of painful knots, and I willed Benjamin to stay afloat until we could get there.
The helicopter lowered a rope ladder, and the Scar climbed down it. The ladder whipped in the wind when he was halfway down, and he ducked his head and hung on. I never thought I’d be rooting for the Scar, but I desperately wanted him to keep going. He reached the bottom of the ladder, but he was still ten feet above Benjamin. Sakharov shouted something over his shoulder to the pilot. The helicopter dipped lower.
I’d lost sight of Benjamin in the flat light, with the surging waves and the ladder swinging below. I thought I saw him swimming away, as if he didn’t want to be rescued.
“Benjamin!” I screamed. “Come back!”
The helicopter lurched, and the ladder was over him again, but Benjamin was fighting against being taken. The Scar struck Benjamin across the face, then nearly tumbled off the ladder as it swung. I held my breath, hoping Benjamin would give in and the Scar would stay strong.
“Just get him!” Danby shouted impatiently, but his voice was carried off in the wind.
Then the Scar was lifting something heavy under one arm. He swung Benjamin like a rolled-up rug over his shoulder and pulled himself up one rung of the ladder, then another. Benjamin’s body was dead weight, and awkward, and I closed my eyes. I couldn’t watch the climb, not with Benjamin looking so still and lifeless, and the Scar looking like he might drop him.
I thought about the apothecary, and wondered if he had some kind of healing power that could bring Benjamin back to life. I thought about the sweet smell of the Quintessence, how it smelled like life itself, and I wondered if there was still enough of it lingering in the air to do Benjamin any good.
The Scar reached the top of the ladder, and Danby and Sakharov helped drag Benjamin, in his heavy, waterlogged clothes, into the helicopter. Sakharov felt his neck for a pulse, and listened to see if he was breathing. Then he rolled him on his side and pressed his fists under Benjamin’s sternum until seawater came up. Benjamin coughed, and threw up more water, and inhaled hoarsely, but his lips were purple with cold and he didn’t seem to be awake.
The Scar, too, was freezing and gasping for breath, and the helicopter pilot swung us back
towards the destroyer.
“We need vodka and blankets,” Sakharov said.
I was pretty sure that vodka was not what Benjamin needed, and I knew there was nothing for us on the destroyer but pain and death. They had saved Benjamin so they could interrogate him, but now I couldn’t let them hurt him, or force his father’s secrets out of him.
In a pouch hanging on the back of a seat were the tools the pilot had taken out of his toolbox, including the heavy wrench Sakharov had used to tighten the trigger mechanism on the bomb. The Scar was exhausted, and Danby and Sakharov were distracted with trying to revive Benjamin. I slipped the wrench from the pouch, and no one noticed. Sakharov put his jacket over Benjamin, who was shivering uncontrollably. I didn’t know what my next plan was, but if I could get rid of Danby, maybe I could persuade the pilot to land on Nova Zembla . . .
That was as far as I got before Danby turned to me. I saw suspicion cross his face, and I swung the wrench and hit his head with a sickening thud. He cried out in pain and surprise, and I caught his collar with my free hand. I tried to swing him towards the door, but he was heavy and immovable. He wrested the wrench away and held it furiously like a warrior with a club. His forehead was bleeding. I scrambled back and covered my head with my arm, waiting for the blow.
Then the pilot shouted something in Russian, and Danby turned.
I saw, out the windscreen, the dark cloud I had seen before, coming towards us. It was alone in the sky, and seemed to shift in the air, as if readying for something. Then it floated darkly around the windscreen, blotting out the light, and came through the open door. I felt a misty chill that wasn’t like the blunt Arctic cold but more insidious, as if damp fingers of fog were clutching at my heart. The dark vapour enveloped the helicopter. It wanted to envelop us. It was attacking.
The pilot, blinded by the vapour over the windscreen, shouted something in Russian. Danby dropped the wrench as the helicopter pitched suddenly to one side, and we all grabbed for something to hold on to. I caught a seat belt in one hand and Benjamin in the other, with my arm across his cold chest and under his arm. The helicopter was heading fast towards the water.