Sam caught Ned watching her again and quickly looked down. On the page, she saw she had drawn a cuttlefish in the margins of the unanswered essay question. Its fins rippled at her. She scratched it out.
She wanted that warmth of double time, the secure satisfaction of arriving in a perfect re-enactment. Pure, hers, for a small moment. But afterwards, Sam felt bereft and cold. They lay in the quiet house, resting side by side in her single bed; there was no space between them, but still she was alone. She’d proven nothing. The shameful sensation in her belly was just as she remembered it, a dreadful buzzing like a knot of hot wasps. Ned lay on his back, but his head was turned towards her.
‘That was weird,’ he said.
‘Thanks.’ Sam shuffled closer to the wall. He was right, it had felt strange, and not in a good way. It was all wrong. She tried, but the vision had shed its cloak of pleasure. The migraine had lost its glow.
‘Are you okay?’ He shifted beside her, peered over her shoulder.
‘I’m fine,’ she said, turning away. ‘But yeah. It wasn’t right.’
‘It’s not like we’re brother and sister,’ Ned said. He pushed the tangled sheets aside and sat up. When she turned he was already up, looking for clothes, ready to get away from her. His awkwardness was common, homely. He was normal people.
‘That’s not what I mean. I mean I saw this happening.’
He paused with his hands holding up his pants. Shock on his face made him look younger, almost ugly. There was a pimple on one side of his chin, below the mouth.
‘I saw all of this,’ she said, dismissing the room, his body, with a hand. It was mean, but she wouldn’t baby him, she wouldn’t take care. He kept looking at her, making a calculation of his own.
‘Everything seems to disappoint you lately,’ he said.
She leaned back into the warm space of her bed. ‘It’s not as good,’ she said. Then, because it was her fault to begin with, she put more gentleness into her voice. ‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said anything.’
He sat on the end of the narrow bed, put his hand out to touch her leg through the blanket. Her skin prickled. She wanted him to leave. She wanted to be mad at him for making her apologise, but could not muster much emotion. Beyond disappointment, all was boredom.
‘You could have warned me,’ he said.
‘What would you have done?’ She moved away, pulled her shirt down over her chest beneath the blanket, tried to shrink herself to something near absence. ‘You wouldn’t have been able to avoid it,’ she said. ‘I just . . . I wanted to get it over with.’
Ned sighed. ‘We both need someone,’ he said, speaking almost to himself. ‘Just not like this.’
‘I don’t need anyone.’ Sam sat up, ready to argue. ‘And you’ve got Ed.’ He was proof of nothing; he was only his father’s spy.
He got up and went to the door, but he stopped there, looked out into the corridor, then closed it again and turned. ‘Ed’s not my real dad.’
‘What?’ Sam felt a wave of sickness lift in her, swallowed it down.
‘I’m not his son, I’m his employee. He hired me.’
‘You’re joking,’ she said. But he was serious. She re-examined his stranger’s face. He was so careful with his expression, even now, calculating. ‘Why are you telling me?’
‘I want to help you,’ he said.
‘You can’t help.’ She was sick of people trying to protect her. Everyone lied, she thought, and perhaps when you realised that it made things simpler, at least on the surface.
‘Listen,’ he said. ‘Just be careful. Don’t tell him everything. Keep something back for yourself.’
He didn’t need to tell her that. She could take care of herself. But she saw through his composure that he expected something in return; he felt she owed him something now, for this piece of useless advice. Everything was debt, taking and giving, like an economy. There had to be more to people than a set of transactions and bargains. But at this moment it was hard to see how else to get through living.
‘There’s more coming,’ she said. ‘There’s this fog.’
His eyes were darker for a moment. She watched his brow accordion and settle. She waited for him to ask the only question: When?
‘Can you describe the fog?’ he asked instead.
‘What difference does it make?’ She wanted him to go now, to leave her alone with her own body, complete in herself. Let him tell Ed that she had lost her mind. It would only confirm what he anyway suspected.
‘I want to know what it looked like.’ Another spot appeared above one eyebrow. The more you looked at people, the more blemishes you saw. She curled her legs beneath the blanket. He sat down on the edge of her narrow bed again, making himself at ease.
‘I don’t know. White. Like chalk, sort of. It stays close to the ground. It doesn’t matter.’
‘Denser than air,’ he said.
‘What do you care?’
‘The question is when,’ he said. ‘But you can’t answer that, can you?’
She sat up, let the blanket fall to her waist. ‘Don’t worry, it’s years away, and you’ll be long gone.’ She reached across for her phone.
‘White chalk,’ Ned said, as though in wonder. ‘And I’m not here. You’re sure about that?’
The memory, fragile as a cuttlebone, dissolved inside her. It was not so far between there and here, but so much could be lost in transit. She was worn down by the weight of visions, the drag and drift in her. There was no point to all this sickness, no logic in it. No-one who could share it, and nothing to be gained by it. Let them all go, let the old facade of memory tumble down around her. It already lurched and shifted at the joints. All it needed was a little tremor, a little kick.
‘I’m sure,’ she said.
Ned decided very quickly after that, surprising everyone by choosing geology. The course was in Brisbane. He was moving as far away as he could get.
Sam put him out of her mind; she had enough to do. Ed needed her to come and check the village, to see if anything needed adjusting. If Ned had told him anything, he wasn’t acting like it. In return, Sam behaved just like he expected her to. A fair transaction. She followed him up to the village with something resembling enthusiasm.
There was already a structure you could walk in and out of. ‘Shaped like a trilobite,’ is how Ed described it as he went, but Sam, following him through its open mouth, saw the segments and thought of a cockroach. He was already moving on, talking fast. Some of his old glow was back.
‘Looks great, don’t you think?’ One periwinkle glinted under its shell.
She looked up at the frame, searching for something she recognised, then for something she might criticise. ‘It’s smaller than I thought,’ she said at last.
He frowned. ‘It will look bigger again once the walls are on. Is something wrong with it?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘This is right.’
Ed moved to put a hand on her shoulder, but to Sam’s relief withdrew it.
‘This will be the dome. Special filtered glass, air purification.’ He carried on, apparently unconcerned, stepping through the empty walls. Steel frames held the roof up and, between them, timber frames cross-hatched with wiring. Sam could see the hills through this composite of lines and boxes. The same shade of dusty pink as ever, though without their smokestack punctuation they always seemed unfinished.
She watched him wander off through the frames, still talking.
‘Fifty per cent of the power will be generated by inbuilt solar,’ Ed said. He was making a speech to the building now, not to her. ‘I’ve already ordered them a three thousand dollar barbecue. Room for an indoor garden, if that’s what they want.’ He dusted his hands against his trousers. ‘I mean, they’ll have to consider the maintenance.’
Sam blinked against the sharp sun. ‘Don’t you mean we?�
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‘What did I say?’ He turned his head, half in shadow.
‘You said they.’ One retina clouded with ink.
‘Well, I meant we. All of us.’
Sam gazed past him at the hills. A tiny cloud passed over the sun, and she felt the air turn cooler.
‘Ivy won’t change her mind,’ she said.
‘She will. She’ll see the benefits.’
He was so convinced of his version of reality. That was how he did it. There were no cracks in his self-belief; everyone who hit it just slid down its smooth surface. Ivy couldn’t challenge him, anyone could see that. He simply went on as if his version was the right one. He stood with one hand on a post, solid and unmoving.
Sam couldn’t see herself living here either. She never had. There was nothing after that spill of white chalk. Either her vision couldn’t reach past it or there was nothing else to see. No after. No world.
Unless it could be changed.
Ed grinned, and turned; his eyes were gold in the evening sun. ‘Come on, Sam. Let’s go. I’ve got a surprise for you.’
31
Sam opens her eyes, disappears from behind them. Pain swarms in front of her, shadows her sight. The world is dense, her body a gesture. Nothing is as it was. This isn’t the now she knows.
She is neither on land nor underwater. There are metal bars, and they are tentacles, then waving grasses; they bounce and cross and tangle. She takes a long swig of water, empties the jug and lets it fall to the ground beside her head, which is not earth but rust. Light pierces the sky. Sweat will coat the edges of her face. Hot and, before that, cold. The breeze on her skin, on the tiny particles of sweat against the hairs, prickles with an awful, dispersed intensity.
She’s got no sequence. It’s all connected. Detail derails. The bars will spangle and have quivered.
Only a migraine, which was important in the past, a long time ago. Going forward.
She swings from having swung to will be swinging.
Below, the chains and bars and cables that suspend her in the air are also moved by it; they sing in the wind, and it hurts her through until her bones sing with them. But slowly, as she listens, there is no wind, no singing, has never will never be anything other than a drone song enfolding. Her head was filling with blood which is only machinery. Will be a leak in faulty machinery. Faulty DNA, fatal genes, a waste. Something wet and skinless rose in her. Now is whirring. This whirring has always been, like a heartbeat, the mumbling of an organ, its awful, automatic constant. The creaking comes and goes, the mind deletes itself, forgetting. This noise sounds nothing like music. A brutal hinge: risk-noise. Risk-noise. Rocking like a boat.
She wanted air. She wants what’s next. Not for herself. Just – anything. Forward.
This is something else.
She was pulled beneath, will sink and struggle in deep water.
Her body elongates, it contracts and folds, pressing itself through its new form: blood and piss and rot and ink and asphalt. She has no bones now. The cage widens around her. Light disperses, breaks against a surface that withdraws overhead. Sam’s down in the dark, moving into hiding.
The sequence of things, the sequence of things, it is sediment, a trap. Time bends, and she’s pulsing out through the crack of the plastic eye into a living sea. Life turns and shuffles past itself in another form. Transform, transform. The elements are time and light and water. There is a camouflage, so close to blood. She is all pulse. Won’t fight the current. Has let, has to let, the water rush through her, in all its tenses.
Tentacle-stretch, a reach before consequence. The knowledge of the body in a body of water. Know not to get in the way. Be like sea, surrender. That’s where it’s hiding. Voices speak to her aquatically, from rocks and humps of grass or what resembled them. She touches what disintegrates. White dust leaves clouds.
Inside, a rare mind dimly calculates its sudden bandwidth. Contemplates the new proportions of its body, proportionately water. Figures out the weight that counters density. Wonders at the minority of land, seen only at edges and at death’s edge. Sees the solid of rock as a darkness past living, down deep. And then it flicks its skin, and shimmers. Forms papillae, and light.
This isn’t her mind.
The small Sam part of that mind is a head that turns on a body being buckled into a ride: wait, wait, I want to get off
There’s no time, not now. The time’s already turning.
32
The consultant’s name was Alice Chan. She was dressed all in black with a pointed haircut and a brooch that looked like it was made of bird bones. Alice placed a small box on the table in front of them. From its cotton-wool interior, she brought out a tiny model, the size of a garden snail. Even in miniature it had a graceful air, suggesting movement, life. She handed it to Ed, who nodded, lifted it ceremoniously, and passed it to Sam.
Sam held it on her open palm, mesmerised by the play of light on its surface. It was a version, a bead that had slipped through time. She looked up across the table, where Ivy held a cup of tea in her hands. Ed stood behind her mother, his hand on her shoulder, like he was posing for a portrait.
If he knew she knew about Ned, he was buying her silence.
‘We’ve been working on it for months,’ he said. ‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s beautiful,’ she said, watching its surface shift. ‘How’s it doing that?’
‘This is just a simplification,’ said Alice. ‘It’s a new kind of solar fabric. It’s heat- and motion-sensitive, so it can react to the presence of people around it, people inside. It will change responsively. It’s going to be a little bit magical, I think.’
‘Inside?’ Sam replaced the model in its padded box. It flared at her, then gradually went dull.
‘It’ll be a hollow structure, so inside you’ll have the cuttlebone shaped into a roof, and the sharp beak pointing down over the entrance. A visitor centre. You’ll be able to walk inside between its arms. We’ve been talking about 3D displays, a holographic aquarium. Something educational,’ Alice said. ‘It could become an icon of sustainable technology.’ She glanced at Ed, then hesitated. ‘Of course, it’s up to the client to decide on the specifics.’
Digital displays, holographic life. This was the future. The cuttlefish would live on in pixels, in its tomb. This way, it would never become that other thing, that white monster lurking in the weeds. She’d stepped out of that world now, and into this.
He knew her price.
‘Isn’t it magic?’ Ed said.
The miniature rested in its open box. Sam saw that its animated skin had not stopped functioning, but was slowly growing pale to match its surroundings. It could be anything. A thousand possibilities rippled out from its existence. Among them, the things she’d seen before were no more true than anything else. Just dreams, broken apart by waves into tiny pieces, distributed along the tideline for the birds.
‘Well, what do you think? Say something,’ said Ivy.
‘It’s perfect,’ she said.
Ivy’s shoulders dropped. She sipped her tea to hide her expression. Sam felt herself disintegrate. She was nothing at all now, nothing. But if that was true, she was free.
Development accelerated quickly around her. The village grew walls, plumbing, rooms. Glass was ordered for the dome. The rest of the park was taking shape, too. The steel-framed barn was erected, cladded with ply and painted bright blue. The miniature railway station was constructed, decorated, awaiting the more expensive tracks and train. The clock on its flat-faced tower was a blank circle. Sam watched with pleasure.
After the public presentation of its prototype, the build of the Giant Cuttlefish had begun. The miniature took pride of place in the model up in Hummock, which was dusted clean. Every day Sam walked past the park and saw it was a little further along, a little more solid. If she regretted anything, it was not having dared
to make more changes, now that she saw that she was capable.
That summer was a happy one, until it overstayed its welcome.
Everyone in Clapstone was unsettled by the weather. It was a long summer, a hot autumn, then a late winter. The days were grey and humid. There was too much lightning, too little rain. Sudden gusts of wind appeared, then fell still just as quickly. Dogs lay down under porches, discouraged by the unpredictability. If the dogs were shy, what more could be expected from cuttlefish? They were secretive creatures. They spent most of their lives in hiding, in disguise.
Jill was waiting for her on the front step of her house. Her bike leaned against the fence. ‘They’re back,’ she said. ‘Dad’s going out with Curdie to see them. There’s a spare snorkel for you, if you want to come.’
It was a grey afternoon, and rain was threatening. ‘I don’t know,’ said Sam, ‘I haven’t been feeling too good.’ She hadn’t been out that far, out over the seagrass of their breeding grounds, for years. At least since the jetty washed away.
‘You don’t have to swim,’ said Jill, defensively. ‘It’s just, what if it’s the last chance?’
Sam hesitated. As a kid she’d been afraid of the water, but maybe she’d grown out of that. ‘Okay,’ she said.
They rode their bikes down to the car park, let them fall on the asphalt and climbed down the rocks to where Curdie and Mr Ellison waited with the boat, each of them hanging on to a rock with one hand. The boat had been for sale in the Foodtown’s window for the last six months. It had a frame for a big fishing net, but Curdie hardly fished with it any more. Sam grabbed hold of the frame and stepped in, shivering, passing her arms into the life jacket Curdie tossed her. She sat down by Jill’s side, making room for her feet between piled wetsuits, masks and snorkels. The men were excited, laughing like kids as they pushed away from the rocks, but Sam felt solemn.
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