When We Have Wings
Page 24
A wind shear tossed them across the sky, its force smashing into her chest, knocking her breath from her, crushing her wings against her. She fluttered, frail as a moth. No guarantee she was flying straight, that all her desperate effort was hauling them out of this by so much as a metre. She could just be thrown around and around endlessly by the storm, a broken twig smacked around the rim of this whirlpool in the sky.
The sky, once dark, ripped with yellow light, was now utterly black, its only illumination coming from lightning flashing over wastes of rain-lashed sea. The rain hadn’t reached her yet but it was coming; it would finish her off. She hadn’t preened her wings with the oil used for long sea trips. Most of the water would roll off her wings but some would stay, dampening feathers, weighing her down.
Rain poured in torrents, waterfalls in the sky. They were tossed higher than ever, then pitched into a roaring abyss. Peri had no idea how high above the waves they were. The rain struck hard and icy. Some of it was ice, rattling into them, pinching, biting. As they were flung higher, into colder air, they were thrown into the middle of a hailstorm, balls of ice the size of oranges slamming into them, bruising them. A warm spot opened on her forearm. Blood where ice split skin.
Terrified, Peri threw her arms around Hugo. His hat had long since been clawed away. He was dangerously cold.
Peri’s strength was failing. How long had they been struggling in the maelstrom? Pointless to fight the storm: some gusts pushed her up and sideways, helping to keep them aloft. But she couldn’t leave it to the storm to keep her up. No time to worry about keeping her wings level; she had to concentrate only on generating lift, forward motion and thrust, whenever the wind allowed. Her wings ached from the hail and deep pain from exhaustion cramped her muscles.
She rubbed Hugo hard, trying to warm him. She lifted her own skims, fitting them over Hugo’s head so his body was next to her skin. The temperature was still dropping.
A bank of thunder cracked, falling all around. The sound threw them through the dark, reverberations shivering their bones. Peri felt like her flesh, her organs had been vibrated to jelly. How was she still conscious?
Her wings numb, Peri pushed forward with one last burst of strength. No reserves left. If she couldn’t force her way out of the storm now they were gone.
Havoc’s hoary old joke: What do you call a flier who doesn’t check the weather? A flier who doesn’t make a flight plan? Who didn’t do any of a dozen things he claimed were necessary? The answer always the same: A little late. Ha ha ha.
A blast knocked them sideways, spinning. Time slowed. Don’t move. You’ll fall. The wind surfing them along, higher and higher.
Now they were dropping.
No more strength. Drained away in the cold, burned up against the wind. You’ll fall. It didn’t matter what she did now. You’ll fall. Her will to save Hugo was all that had been keeping them up. For how long? An ice age. Not enough. Not good enough.
Something on her cheek. Water that was not icy rain.
I’m sorry, Hugo.
No way of knowing whether she was whispering it or screaming it or thinking it as they fell into the dark.
A thundering wall of night rises ahead, howling upwards with more power than an express train. The noise of it is beyond horror. To touch that funnel of whirling dark is certain death but now they are seized and flung up, helpless and light as leaves.
Higher and higher they surf, zooming upwards so fast through blackness and wind that Peri can’t breathe, she can’t hear, they’ve breached the wall of rotating cyclone at the storm’s heart.
Oxygen levels are dropping, temperature plummeting.
Spiralling into blackness. Dots of starlight prickling her eyes.
Ice coats her body. She’s losing consciousness as they rocket higher, faster and faster. As she blacks out, a thought glances across her mind: How strange. I’m going to die from falling up.
I’m sorry, Hugo.
Night roaring upwards, sky zooming up, stars falling past them into the abyss, tossed for a second above the cloud so very high that for one flaring instant she sees the rim of the earth shining.
Falling into blackness again.
Terminal velocity.
Over three hundred kilometres per hour. Ninety metres per second.
When you have wings, you can fall.
Wind and rain and thunder are all the world.
Bright light, so bright I squint and blink. Fresh green comes into focus. Sun falls on a meadow in a forest, starred with white flowers. Lily hands me a glass of wine and we walk hand in hand along a path into the darker trees. I’m happy but something isn’t right. There’s something I’ve forgotten. Lily points and I look up. A pair of eagles circles over our heads. I’ve never seen an eagle before and I’m excited. They tilt and balance on the wind, the ends of their huge wings fringed, separ- ated like fingers. We walk along the path into the gloom under the trees but the path is blocked by a barbed-wire fence. Lily’s ahead of me, she’s reached the fence but she’s run away and I’m about to run after her when I look back because something big and dark is tangled in the wire. It’s one of the eagles, upside down, wings pegged out along the fenceline. The ground is falling away beneath my feet; there’s a white moon where the eagle’s head should be. Its wings are still moving. I don’t want to turn my head to look at the moon because I know what it is. My neck locks, muscles rigid. I wrench my head around. The white moon is Tom’s face.
Thursday, but only just. Two in the morning. A rotten night’s sleep, even by my standards. I checked my slick and the result was the same as the last two hundred times—no signal. I told myself Peri might still turn up but couldn’t get rid of the sick dread writhing like a trapped octopus in the pit of my stomach. The device could’ve fallen off but the worst-case scenario was most likely: it stopped signalling because something bad had happened to Hugo and Peri. And it was my fault. I was followed into RaRA-land; I led the Raptor straight to her. After my encounter with Chesshyre on the bridge I was seriously worried about what he’d do when he found out Peri and Hugo were missing.
Now I couldn’t even doze. I lay there, eyes staring hard and dry into the dark, willing myself not to check the slick again. Nothing from Wilson, either. Should’ve got back to me by now. What’s happening, hikikomori boy?
The only feeling bleaker than two in the morning is three in the morning and that was on its way, shadow looming over the horizon. By four in the morning you can kid yourself you’re starting the day early. But you can’t put a good face on three am. It’s a desert, the hour when you’re stranded, high and dry, tormented by how terrifying life is, aware you survive by refusing to see the truth of this.
I blinked my eyes, trying to relieve their painful dryness, my back aching, trying not to think of all the other pains age has in store for me. Thomas’s physical absence nagged like an old injury and I fretted about the failures I’d already chalked up as a father: the ordinary grief and shame of parenting, the everyday betrayals of even the most loving home, one sharp word as bad as a blow to Thomas’s cheek. Worst of all was my impatience in the face of Tom’s relentless love, my inability to just sit with him and look into his perfect face, into the green curve of his eye, rounded like the rim of the earth. This failing hurt more than any other: I was always distracted, always busy, always adult, working, cooking, reading, doing. I couldn’t just be with Tom. He wanted me now, I was his best friend, but for how long? When he’s older, he won’t have time for me. I know this already, I know this before it’s too late and still I can’t just soak him up till I’m so full it will last me the rest of my life.
I turned on my reading light and fished out Peri’s letters from where I’d stored them in the bedside drawer. I had already read them over obsessively, looking for clues.
Dear Hugo,
Your first, favourite toy was
a blue and red parrot with stretchy legs. You could just fit its triangle feet in your mouth. The parrot crackled like paper and tinkled like a bell, depending on if you crumpled it or shook it. I wanted to tell you before we forget. Before I forget.
I put the letters away and turned off the light. Hunting the fugitive coolness stored on its underside, I shoved my head under my pillow. Its freshness vanished in seconds. Groaning, I punched the pillow and turned onto my side.
When I woke again it was four-thirty. I lay there, thinking about a section of law I’d read over and over recently. A statute meant to protect flier and non-flier alike. That law said no buildings were to be built that non-fliers couldn’t use, as if we were disabled and needed special provisions for access. I could see this law was dissolving in a sea of change so deep and wide we were already in well over our heads.
We get claustrophobia, they get vertigo.
I could hear Henryk’s dry voice, saying, as he did about virtually every case he’d worked on: If all you’ve got on your side is the law, then you know your arse is well and truly in a sling.
Finally, defeated, I got up at five and took Frisk for his walk. We didn’t run together after the first time; lions don’t really like running. My right knee, I had to admit, was grateful for that.
We wandered the quiet streets near my flat for nearly two hours. I thought hard as we walked, passing women who were up early to take their offerings to the temples. Should I go to Henryk right away? I agonised with each step. If I turned the case over to the police now and Peri then turned up as we’d agreed, I’d ruin everything, not just for myself but for Peri too. Chesshyre would be incandescent with rage and it was just possible he was still trying to protect Peri as well as himself. On the other hand, if the missing signal meant Peri and Hugo had come to grief, I’d never forgive myself for delaying.
I kept glancing up at the sky. No large spots circling. Didn’t see too many fliers hovering over my part of town.
As I walked I didn’t really see the small offerings of fruit and flowers wrapped in banana leaves that had already been set out in the intersections of streets and on the steps of shops but I absent-mindedly stepped over them all the same. By the time the sun rose, people on bicycles and scooters were passing us, calling out greetings to Frisk, who padded along the street, lowering his big head to sniff at the offerings, pricking his ears to listen to a bird talking in a cage hanging on a verandah, picking up his paws delicately to avoid the grimy water sluicing down the gutters. Hello, the bird called after us. I’ve got no money. That’s alright. Hello. Hello!
Frisk pulled at his lead, dragging me towards one of the food stalls near the 80 Metre Road intersection. Something large and glossy black flew past my line of sight and I cringed. The black creature landed next to a food stall and started tearing at a garbage bag with its thick, arched beak. Cau cau cau. Bloody jungle crow. Frisk gave him a wide berth; the thing looked like it could have our eyes out in seconds.
The smell of pork and mango fritters deep-frying floated through the still-cool morning air. I bought a bag and shared them with Frisk as we walked back to the flat.
My slick vibrated and I was so anxious to answer I almost dropped it into the gutter, my fingers still greasy from the fritters.
Lily.
Hello, I said, my head spinning with adrenaline and the heat of the morning sun and my lack of sleep.
Standing in the garden at the front of Ventura, I fished in my pocket for my key. I looked up. This was becoming obsessive; couldn’t seem to stop doing it.
My whole body went cold.
Cold like I’d stood under a cold tap.
A dark figure was circling. Very high. Not a jungle crow.
Oh, come on.
No way.
Jesus wept, Zeke, would you get an everlovin’ grip? Probably been lots of fliers circling here, there, wherever, you just never noticed, never looked for them before. Said yourself you hardly looked at the sky anymore.
Shaking my head, I let Frisk in, fed him properly, made tea. Lily had informed me she’d scheduled the initial screening and assessment tests for Thomas; if he passed those, he could start the treatments as early as next week. Lily always did work fast. When she made up her mind to act then yesterday was already too late for Lily. Once the results of the screenings were known, I would be expected to give my consent to the procedures. I told her I’d spoken to Ruokonen and that I’d left her office with grave misgivings but Lily didn’t pause for breath and I doubted she’d even heard me. If I was going to fight her over this, I’d have to make up my mind to do it soon.
I took a deep breath and scratched my head. Thunder reverberated and seconds later the rains came pouring down, as they had virtually every day so far that summer. Water cascaded down my window, distorting my view of the mango trees in the front yard and the street beyond. Vittorio and I had nagged Ventura’s body corporate to get the damn gutters fixed but here they were, overflowing again as they did in every rainstorm.
It never rains but it pours, as my mother had been fond of saying. Peri and Hugo were missing. I had until Saturday morning to come up with something credible for Chesshyre but today I had to work on my black ops job. On Saturday, Chesshyre would be demanding to know where Hugo was. I’d better have some answers.
And now I had less than a week to decide if I wanted my son to be a flier.
I glared at the black mould creeping up the ceiling, thanks to the rains and Ventura’s disintegrating gutters. This dump was crumbling in front of my eyes. And Taj was dead. My only partner, disappeared as if he’d never been. ‘The forces of entropy are well and truly arrayed against us, Frisk.’ He looked up at me from the dusty floor, where he lay grooming himself with his tongue.
Henryk called. ‘I’ve done one more thing. I’ve put in a request to CaFS to see if they’ve got a file on Perros—wouldn’t have thought to do that without knowing the department’s a factor in your case. So far, Almond’s the only lead we’ve got on Perros.’
‘LAC Jasinski,’ I said, ‘that’s above. And beyond.’
‘Always,’ said Henryk. ‘When there’s a dead body involved, I always go that extra distance. One day they’re going to find that out and stop promoting me. I sure am looking forward to that witness statement from Almond, Zeke.’
Oh shit. One more reason Peri not coming back was a disaster. ‘What makes you think a dead body is involved, Henryk? Seeing as your people didn’t find one?’
‘Had a bad feeling. So, you know, we often go back for another look, right?’
‘Yes?’
‘The unit I sent did find something.’
‘Wasn’t a ring by any chance?’
‘How the hell did you know?’
‘Silver ring, gull motif?’
‘Always knew you were psychic.’
‘Peri had one and I wondered who in her life would give her something like that. It was the sort of cheap ring young girls exchange sometimes. I thought, well, who’d care about her becoming a flier? Not the kind of thing the Chesshyres would ever do.’
‘Sounds like it could belong to Perros. We can compare it to your girl’s, show it to her when she comes in.’
I took a deep breath. ‘About that. Henryk, I’m really worried about Peri and Hugo. They were on their way back to the City yesterday but the signal tracking them cut out.’
‘So you want me to look out for them? Great, Zeke. Wait till your little plan goes haywire, then call for help. But my problem is that they haven’t been reported missing either. I have no evidence of any crime or misadventure in their case and I can’t continue to allocate police resources on the whim of an ex-colleague.’
I was silent while he got this off his chest. Then I said, ‘But this thing with Perros does suggest there’s something bigger going on than just a missing persons case.’
I thanked Henryk and drained the rest of my now-cold tea. I needed to get cracking on my black ops job—investigating the Seraphim MP—especially as this might be my only paying job soon enough. But focusing on that job was going to be difficult. Henryk’s news hardened the dread I felt into fear; it proved that not only could Peri and Hugo be dead, it was probable. I had to do all I could to find out what had happened. Well, Chesshyre had wanted a good investigator, and he’d got one. No need for him to know just how much investigating I was doing on his time or that my investigations were broadening far beyond what he wanted.
I had to have that data from Little Angels, which I hoped would provide the information I needed to unleash Cam onto the departmental files. Eliseev’s records were critical too. He was the only other piece of the puzzle I had. Time to send another urgent message to hikikomori boy, but knowing his hours, he was most likely asleep for the day.
I showered and dressed in my best suit for my job interview at the Church of the Seraphim, arranged for me by Sunil—though the Seraphim MP, David Brilliant, didn’t know that. Sunil had arranged for my name to be among those chosen for interview by the recruitment company.
Craning my neck, I stared up at the ice fall of the Church of the Seraphim, with its rope of mist unbraiding itself. Peter’s design took my breath away. Simple, even severe, it had the irregular harmony of a natural form—landslide, glacier edge. But I resented its inaccessibility to non-fliers. Chesshyre’s doing too. Peter couldn’t care less; he’s above worrying about that sort of thing, Halley had said. I had to wait for a flunky to escort me up into the inner sanctum because I needed special arrangements to enter this church. Arrogant bastards. The flunky, a young man, appeared and I followed him into the office block next door, the one still sporting gold letters that said: if GOD wanted you to FLY, he’d have made you RICH.