But your surfboard, like you, was nowhere to be seen.
I FOUND YOU at your usual cove. The storm had dragged a fleet of smooth, rolling waves in its wake, and as I staggered down the rocks to the beach, I saw the shape of you move beneath the water. My feet touched sand, and you emerged. Your hair, face and torso glistened in a film of sun-bright seawater, and you slid effortlessly upon the board, bobbing as the waves passed beneath. You smiled, my lungs emptied, and I waded in.
The water was warm and as high as my chest when I reached you. My cloak swirled in its currents. Flushed and dripping, you looked down at me with no trace of the agony that had contorted your face the night before.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’
‘How do you feel?’
You gave a nervous laugh.
‘Incredible.’ You turned your palms and inspected them. ‘Everything feels new. Slower, somehow. Deeper, clearer. What did you give me?’
‘A kind of medicine to help your blood.’
Your eyes glittered with reflections from the sun-dappled water.
‘Well, whatever it was, it worked.’
You glanced behind at a swell in the water.
‘Watch out,’ you said, paddling round to face it.
‘What do I do?’ I said. The sea rose above us, cresting with froth.
‘Go under.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes, now.’
You ducked your board and I followed you through the curved face of the wave. The world disappeared, replaced by a roaring, dark maelstrom and the taste of salt. My body was lifted from the seabed and I floundered, weightless. Then, with an almighty kick I emerged from the wave’s rear face, back into the world.
Crashing back into the sea beside you, I inhaled and made a noise. It was a whoop. I had never whooped before.
Finding that my legs no longer reached the bottom, I kicked to keep afloat. You grinned at me.
‘Fun, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I replied, pulling a straggle of weed from my hair. ‘Yes, I believe it is.’
‘I can explain it now,’ you said, turning to the horizon. ‘It’s not about connection at all. It’s the opposite.’
‘What do you mean?’
You paused, giving your board an affectionate stroke as you thought.
‘You spend your whole life thinking you’re this thing, this unit sitting in the middle of everything else. You think it’s all for you, that you’re important somehow, that even though the sun and the Earth and the stars and the planets have all been around a lot longer than you, and will be after you’re gone, they’re somehow here just for you. Everything’s here to support your little life. And then you get in the ocean and float on a plank, and the sea lifts you up and crashes you down without a thought, and it reminds you.’ You turned back to me. ‘It reminds you that you’re nothing. You’re just a speck floating around in it all, and nothing matters. So it’s disconnection, not connection. Does that make sense?’
‘Like I said before,’ I said, ‘you could spend a thousand years explaining it and I still wouldn’t understand.’
Another grin.
‘That may be true. But I don’t have to explain it, do I?’
‘What do you mean?’
You rolled from the board and pushed it towards me.
‘Try it.’
‘You can’t be serious.’
‘Go on.’
The board drifted into my arms, and bobbed in the water’s playful slaps
‘But I don’t know how.’
‘You’re an erta. Work it out.’
You looked over your shoulder.
‘There’s one coming,’ you said, swimming past me. ‘I’d get on if I were you.’
‘But I can’t… I mean, what if…?’
‘Just hop on.’
I hopped on. The board wobbled—there went another unusual whoop—and threatened to tip me back in. My eyes glazed as I felt gravity’s equations run across the surface of the shifting water.
‘A little further back,’ you said from somewhere ahead.
‘I already knew that,’ I said, adjusting my position. ‘There, that’s better. I understand now, it’s simple quadratics. Surface tension, depth, muscle torque, water suction. There are about 175 of them I need to balance. Shouldn’t take long.’
‘Ima.’
‘Yes?’ I said, looking up.
‘You need to paddle.’
‘I need to do what?’
You looked above me. I felt a shadow pass.
‘Paddle hard with your arms. Now.’
You sprang back into the water and swam for the shore. I turned to see a wall of water rising behind me, blotting out the sun and sucking me into its maw like a hungry whale. I released another noise—not a whoop this time but a kind of excited bark—and plunged ahead.
I knew it was possible for me to out-swim the wave—I was easily strong enough—but my strength was not the problem; my lack of technique was. I had never swum before, let alone on top of a plank. It took me ten strokes before I had mastered the art of cupping my hands, then another five before I realised I had to keep my legs tight together, by which time the wave was almost upon me. A monstrous roar filled my ears, and I focussed on the ever-growing pile of equations that seemed to grow with the watery mountain. The metric tonnage of ocean, the vector of the board against the seventeen riptides beneath me, its changing angle against the surface, the speed with which my muscles were capable of shifting my balance as I rose up and the sea dropped beneath me. I could see the beach now, and the dunes, and the trees beyond, and somewhere in the falling water I saw you.
‘Ima!’ you cried. ‘Stop thinking. Just relax. Breathe. Let it carry you in.’
The sound of your voice did as much as the words it spoke, and I felt my shoulders fall. I gripped the board’s nose and placed my forehead against it, smelling wax, and from nowhere a surge of power yanked me ahead.
I was flying, but not through air. There was no horse beneath me and my limbs were perfectly still—the water itself was carrying me, and the speed of it seemed to tear all thought from my mind. There were shouts and whoops which must have come from me, but I did not know because for those few seconds I was not me at all. I was nothing but the rushing of the air, and the roar of the surf and the wheeling of the sky, and everything else that had been before me and would be afterwards. For a moment, just a moment, I was disconnected from it all, and it was the most glorious feeling.
Somewhere on my journey to the beach I felt your presence and glanced left. The wave had taken you too and you scudded along its face, making your own noises of joy.
‘Hold on!’ you cried, and I looked ahead to see the beach approaching fast. I gripped the board, and with one last final surge the wave lifted me up and tossed me ahead. The board and I parted company, and before I knew it I was under the water again, in that same tumult of noise and darkness and salt, before springing out once again and landing on my back, gasping for air.
I heard a thump and a splutter as you landed too, not far from where I lay. The sea receded, its task complete, and we lay in stunned silence. Then you began to giggle, and I joined you, until we were both laughing, quite incapable of stopping, or closing our eyes as we stared straight up at the bright blue sky.
‘Having fun?’ said a voice.
We jumped to our feet.
‘Payha,’ you cried, ‘you’re all right!’
Payha, pale and wrapped in a blanket, smiled as you pulled her into a tight embrace.
‘I am better,’ she said, looking you up and down. ‘But not as better as you, it seems, just look at you. How long was I out?’ She turned to me. ‘Am I allowed to reconsider your suggestion?’
‘Don’t even think about it.’
‘Payha—’ you began.
‘Don’t,’ said Payha. ‘Mieko is distraught at what she said, and you have nothing to feel sorry about. Where’s Jorne?’
‘I’m here.’
We looked up to see Jorne standing on a dune. He frowned down at us, then put his hands on his hips.
‘Am I to believe I have just made a wasted trip?’
— SIXTY-ONE —
‘YOU’VE NEVER BEEN in the sea, have you?’ said Reed as we wandered back.
‘No, and you’ve never been in the sky.’
So the next day I took you up in my balloon, which I had stored safely in one of the Sundra’s sheds. You were afraid as we left the ground and grabbed me as the capsule wobbled, which I enjoyed immensely.
We skirted the coast, careful to keep from Ertanea’s sight, and roamed the northern tundra. Then we circled south, taking in the great ocean, its ragged islands, and the ancient mountains of the land against which they flocked, where humans had once lived, and loved, and squabbled, and died.
‘Shall we go higher?’ I said, raising the cabin pressure and sealing the vents. As the thruster pulled us up, the horizon bent beneath us and your eyes filled with wonder. At 30,000 metres we stopped and hovered, looking out across a glowing blue hemisphere dotted with clouds. The shape of our coastline was visible to the north, but so far away and ill-defined that it barely seemed to exist at all. You breathed out and stared at the spectacle, with something like sadness and love all wrapped up in a single expression.
‘It’s beautiful,’ you said.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ I replied. ‘It took some time and effort.’
‘What was it like when you started?’
I paused, remembering that blast of stale air the first time I had stepped from Nyström’s laboratory.
‘Not like this.’
‘Will it stay like this now?’
‘No. Nothing stays like anything.’ A sudden urgency gripped me. ‘Reed, I could talk to my mother again. If the council would let you speak, then maybe you could convince them.’
Your laugh took me by surprise.
‘Convince them of what? Humanity’s right to live? That all those wars they waged faded in comparison to their paintings and songs and bridges?’
‘It wasn’t just paintings and songs and bridges.’
‘Am I supposed to tell them it wasn’t their fault they were greedy, or that they couldn’t help killing each other for profit?’ You opened your arms to the world below. ‘Tell them they didn’t mean to spoil all this, and that they’ll do better next time?’
Your expression bore no trace of anger—just a question you had already answered.
‘Because I don’t think I could do that, Ima. I just don’t believe it, and even if I did then how is the word of a boy who has never met another human being supposed to save a species?’
I paused.
‘You’re being very incisive today.’
‘I told you I felt clearer. Whatever you gave me, it worked.’
‘No shit,’ I said.
You smiled and let your gaze travel the coastline of a distant land.
‘I still think you’re wrong, anyway.’
‘About what?’
‘I think there are still humans out there.’
‘I told you, Reed, it’s impossible.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they made sure of it. They released a virus, and by the time I was born the entire population was sterilised.’
‘And are you trying to tell me that nobody tried to counter it? Create an antidote or something?’
‘Impossible. It was too sophisticated.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because that’s what I was told.’
I felt the idiocy of the words, but you did not mock them.
‘They would have kept themselves hidden,’ you said. ‘That’s what I would have done.’
‘Four centuries is a long time to stay hidden.’
I sensed you tighten in the silence that followed.
‘What will happen now?’
‘They will come for us.’
‘Then let’s run,’ you said. ‘Let’s hide.’
SO THAT IS what we set out to do. The Sundra had decided to disperse when the time was right, and we agreed that we were safer away from them for the six months before the sweeps began. Payha wanted to stay with Mieko, of course, so you, Jorne and I set up a camp high in the hills. We built a house by a river—you even helped us—and packed my balloon safely in a cave while we made our plans to leave. We would depart as near to the sweeps as possible, to maximise the probability of them having already dismantled and removed most of the various monitoring systems that would find us, my beacons included; we wanted their hunt to be as lean as possible.
We were uneasy at first, aware that if we left our escape too early or too late then it might fail before we had had a chance to find a place to hide. But our nerves grew less as time wore on. It was summer, the weather was fine, and we had picked a good spot in which to live. We became absorbed in the daily routine of fishing, hunting and food preparation, and soon I realised we were living a life I had not thought possible before. There were no longer any lies, and nothing went unspoken between the three of us. Jorne and I made our love and took long walks through the woods, talking of things we had never talked of before—possibilities and futures that had once seemed out of reach but now seemed less so, if only because we were allowing ourselves to consider them. Every day the threat seemed smaller and more distant, as weak as the coloured lights that streamed from the Drift every dawn and dusk. We turned our backs on them as you sang us songs from your records around the fire, and you taught me more of what you had learned in the forest, like how to smoke and dry fish and meat, make water flasks from animal hides, and forge weapons with which to protect ourselves from whatever perils lurked in our new futures.
But of course the real perils were the lanterns I knew we would face when the sweeps began, and I turned my mind to how we might elude them. We had managed to outrun two in the mountains, but an army would be a different matter. There must be a way to disable them, I reasoned, and thought of the failed code Benedikt had whispered in my ear that day in the Halls of Reason, before our visit to Oonagh.
Oonagh.
One day the three of us made that same trek west, keeping a close lookout for the lantern—there was at least one left—patrolling Oonagh’s mountain. We found her before her fire once again, looking even older than before. Her face was grey and leathery, but it lit up when she saw you.
‘You have her eyes,’ she said.
‘Ima’s?’ you replied.
‘No. Hers.’
We helped her to her bed and, at her request, left her. It would not be long, she said.
The weeks wore on. Our bliss continued, but I sensed your unease return as summer gave way to autumn. You spent hours sitting in a favourite spot, whittling sticks and looking out towards the sea. I watched you from a distance, as I had done when you were a child playing blocks. Sometimes you would glance at Ertanea, as if you had suddenly remembered it in fright, and words formed upon your lips that I could not read. For all our recent closeness, I was still no nearer to understanding your secrets.
ONE MORNING AS we were collecting firewood, we saw a figure emerge from the forest. She clasped her hands, and her white hair streamed out behind her.
‘Zadie,’ you said, dropping the log you were carrying and running down the hill.
‘Wait,’ I said.
But you did not.
She met you with a hug, then proceeded to make imploring gestures with her hands, as if expressing some kind of frustrated hope. Jorne came to my side.
‘What is she saying,’ I said, watching her, and feeling strangely like a hawk. ‘What does she want?’
‘Leave them. They’re just talking.’
‘I don’t trust her. Look, they’re going into the forest now. Jorne, where is she taking him?
‘Ima, let them be.’
‘I’m going to follow them.’
He pulled me back and kissed my temple.
‘Let them b
e.’
I DID NOT follow you, but I waited on that spot until you returned some hours later. You both appeared flushed and happy with whatever had transpired within the safety of the trees, and parted company with a look that was longer than the kiss that preceded it.
‘What did she want?’ I said, as you sauntered back to the house.
‘To apologise,’ you said.
Something about the smile on your face suggested that Zadie was highly effective at saying sorry.
— SIXTY-TWO —
AFTER ZADIE’S VISIT, a change came over you. It was nothing spectacular, but you walked a little taller and a less awkwardly, and a smile lingered permanently at the corners of your mouth and eyes. More than that, you seemed ever more intent on our plan of escape. I found your determination infectious, as did Jorne, and we grew restless again.
From the sounds of it, we were not the only ones.
Jorne and I sat with you on our rock that afternoon, watching the lights along the shore. The sky was clear and the first frigid breaths of winter blew down from the mountains. Summer was gone.
‘Zadie told me they’re all losing themselves down there,’ you said. ‘They’re mumbling, distracted, making no sense. Her own father doesn’t even look at her any more. Williome—he just keeps saying those words. She said it’s as if their past is fading. They’re so obsessed with transcendence that they don’t remember anything else—the Sundra, Ertanea, me.’ Hope swam across the newly serene waters of your face. ‘Perhaps they won’t even look for us.’
‘Did she say how many are left?’ said Jorne.
‘No, but she’s the daughter of a council member and she’s going today. There can’t be many.’
‘They must be ahead of schedule,’ I said. ‘It is time.’
Jorne was already on his feet.
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