She had her phone out. Kneeling down she took one look at him and declared the need for an ambulance.
‘No! Alison, please. It’s complicated.’
She was feeling for his pulse, and she tried to turn his wrist over. He curled on his side, teeth bared in pain, and his hands tightened on the briefcase.
‘Dr Sorle. Kisi. Stay with me. We’re trying to help you.’
His eyes were squeezed shut. But his fingers found the latches and before I realised what he was doing, the briefcase sprang open. The briefcase that I’d battered and thrashed and prised at to no avail, it opened for him with a big pale smile. He put his hand inside.
Before my visual cortex could process what was inside the aperture, a wall of hard flesh hit me in the face. I was thrown back, stunned, landing on my ass in the sand. There was a woof of violently relocated air, and the quetzlcoatlus now crouched where Kisi and the briefcase had been. Its head was as big as the body of a horse. Its wings splayed across the sand and up on to the concrete walkway.
‘Oh my god.’ Alison had been thrown against her vehicle; her leg was blocking one headlight.
‘He’s full of bullets,’ I told her.
‘I know I’m still drunk,’ Alison said. ‘But I’ve never in my life dropped acid.’
‘Can you help?’ I said. ‘Because if you can’t, no one can.’
‘How am I supposed to get near it?’
‘Leave it to me.’
I approached the quetzlcoatlus and knelt by its head, in line with the left eye. It was like a laser in some sort of reverse; I could feel the thread of light not drilling into me, but pulling me in to the quetzlcoatlus’ labyrinthine mind as if it were a fishing line.
It was as though this creature could suck me in just by perceiving me.
I shook my head to throw off the bad thoughts that were gatecrashing my mind. Instead, I told myself this was a miracle, and I reached out. At first when I touched the animal I was only halfway believing it was there, in the sense of blood and guts anyway. The muzzle was fever-hot, almost too hot to sustain a biological process that relies on enzymes, and lice were crawling through the faint soft fur under its long jaw. I flinched when one of them crawled on my hand. Some past participle of air blasted through the vertical slits of the quetzlcoatlus’ nostrils, a gas far too ancient for any human.
Where had this thing really come from? What was it, really?
Alison was cracking open the blister-packs of whatever medical miracles I’d been silly enough to think she could work. Alison wasn’t screaming and running, but I could feel her body trembling from two metres away.
There was more going on here than Late Cretaceous tomfoolery. The scalloped edges of its nostrils with their tiny hairs. One black fang, like a sliver of night, like volcano glass. I touched because there was no other way to believe it was true.
My skin was singing discordantly with awareness of pain – the creature was burning up from the inside, too much kinetic energy coming from this world or some other. I can’t ignore suffering. Not built to turn away. I took a deep breath, knowing I could put my lips to this animal as if the burning place were a snakebite and I could suck out his pain.
‘Pearl. Give me a hand. Can you hold its . . . claw . . .?’
Why. Isometrics. Are. Useful.
Let me count the reasons. Number 47: because you never know when your obliging vet friend will ask you to hold an unconscious pterosaur’s leg out of the way while she roots around with her forceps, looking for the place where the bullet chatters against the bone.
I’m not trying to move something, I’m trying to hold it still. Isometric effort. People make a fuss about the lift, the magical gravity-defying surge when spectacular change happens. But everything has a history, and the sweet spot is only one moment in a continuum.
We begin by not being crushed to death and progress from there.
There’s a thing Marquita used to tell me about the philosophy of the Resistance. She said, ‘If human beings didn’t want to find the magic, the shortcut, the underlying truth, then we wouldn’t have the big brains. We’d just have the big biceps, Pearl.’
Good thing I got the biceps right now, that’s all I’m thinking as I hold the mofo heavy paw up out of the way. Sweat peels away from my skin and falls on the cold grass.
A couple of teenagers were walking along the beach, talking and smoking. I brushed them away with my feathertips, sending them west towards a chippie. There was a faint smoke rising from the pterosaur. One of the kids was troubled about his parents’ break-up. I bolstered his faith in himself where I could.
Multi-tasking. It never ends.
‘Hand me those big calipers,’ Alison said. ‘It’s in there deep.’
I leaned on the animal’s shoulder and watched Alison. She was crouched on the ground, head bent in and torch trained on the wound, her right hand gently exploring the edges of the torn flesh. Where she touched the creature, instead of flinching from her, it felt better. I felt better looking at her, too. Her curling grey hair was clean and blew in ragged wisps, and I could smell the brand of washing powder she used on her clothes. I liked the way her tendons lay against her bones. I liked her skin. It had fine lines like waves leave on the sand after the tide’s gone out.
Alison didn’t have a mission. She was a healer. She was a human who knew what she was doing and why she was doing it. She wasn’t afraid to put herself on the line, but she didn’t just throw herself in front of the bus for people, either. I could learn a lot just from observing her. I’m not sure when exactly I realised I was in love with her. She was so small and gentle, but also so confined. I wanted to make her feel things she’d never felt before, take her to places she never thought she could go – except I had no idea what those were or how to find them for her, and the thought of it brought a trembling, as of a memory of the future.
I wanted to fix her but she was already perfect. Just looking at her made me ache and feel whole at the same time.
I don’t like admitting my need, because it seems creepy. As if I get off on people being damaged. It’s just what I do. Toasters, microwaves, humans – I’m a fixer-upper. I tried to find some gap in Alison that would indicate what possible help I could offer. The only problem with her was that she was resigned to a small life, when she was cut out for big things.
‘Pearl!’ she snapped. ‘Pay attention! I said, pass the antiseptic, please.’
I let go the leg with one hand and got her the antiseptic.
We exchanged glances over the bleeding wing as she took the bottle. Her eyes said, How crazy is this?
And mine said: It’s what you were born to do.
Fucks like a gerbil
After the bullets were out, the quetzlcoatlus lifted its head and tried to break away from me. Sand flew in great sheets as it swung down the beach with the gait of a person on crutches, using the claws on its wings as forelimbs. I clung to the edge of the left wing by my fingertips, pulling the animal off balance. Its head came round and its mouth opened, foul and meaty.
I wanted my component back. I thought of Dr Sorle, so easily overwritten. I wasn’t going to settle for this.
I curled my fingers around the bone on the leading edge of the wing. I put all of my effort in, firing motor neurons and raising rate coding in my cortex until HD opened and I could see the minute passageways that connect and sustain reality like a coral reef sustains life. And once again, the quetzlcoatlus folded and collapsed into a briefcase in the arms of Dr Sorle.
My fingers were numb.
‘Help me get him in the car,’ I gasped. I managed to get the briefcase off him this time, and between us we rolled Dr Sorle unconscious into the back of the 4WD.
‘He can’t go to A&E,’ Alison said. ‘But my flat’s not big enough, either. I don’t even think the yard is big enough. And it’s cold.’
I was already piling horse blankets on top of him. His body was softer than the other Kisi’s, and I was worried about shock.
‘I hope you’re right,’ Alison said. ‘My insurance doesn’t cover acts of pterosaur.’
* * *
We turfed the cats out of Alison’s spare room and I carried Dr Sorle to the bed as if he were a sleeping child. Spots of blood showed through his bandages, but he didn’t wake.
I took the briefcase into the bathroom with me and washed the blood off my face and hands. Alison threw my clothes in the washing machine and started a cycle, bringing me a too-small pair of pj bottoms and a hoodie that one of her sons had left behind. It was gloriously soft and roomy, but I couldn’t stop shaking. While Alison was letting the dogs out and checking the sick cat one more time, I made us tea and brought it upstairs. I set a chair by Dr Sorle’s bed, positioning the curtains so I could watch the front of the building without being seen from outside.
My teeth hurt. And my eyes hurt. I was running what had happened on the bridge through my mind, trying to draw conclusions. The people who rammed us weren’t doing it for effect or intimidation. They didn’t simply want to grab the briefcase or capture Dr Sorle.
They hadn’t been law enforcement. They might have been working for Pace. They might have been working for IIF.
Or they might have been Resistance. According to Kisi, the Resistance saw me as a threat. I watched him sleep. In the amber lamplight I noticed the sparkle of pale sand caught in the hairs on his forearm that lay outside the duvet. His body had slipped in and out of HD so beautifully, but not in time to dodge the bullets. There was a little of his blood on the briefcase where he’d held it.
I no longer knew who the bad guys were.
Alison and the dogs came in. She passed me the biscuit tin, then sat down heavily on a wooden chest at the foot of the bed.
‘I knew you were going to have trouble with him,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t text when I said I would. Not that I could have done anything. My god. I hardly know where to start.’
‘I’m sorry to bring this all on you,’ I mumbled through the biscuits I was wolfing down.
‘Yeah, well. So when you said “prehistoric frog” you weren’t taking poetic licence.’
I smiled. ‘It’s really late. We’re both shattered. There are things you want to know, and I can’t explain them to you.’
‘You could try.’
I lifted up the briefcase and showed her the bullet holes. ‘Look inside the hole and tell me what you see.’
The briefcase wobbled as I passed it to her. She braced it on her knees and peered into the hole.
‘It’s . . . That’s funny. I can’t seem to— I thought it was dark, like a hole, but it actually seems to disappear when I look right at it. It becomes a slit and then it disappears. Like an optical illusion.’
She tried to poke her finger in.
‘Don’t—’ I began. But she couldn’t do it.
‘Ooh, it’s like trying to put two magnets together at the wrong end. It won’t let me. Feels like . . . swimming against a current.’
I reached over and took it back from her. ‘Maybe better not to do that. Just to be on the safe side.’
She said, ‘I see from the local feed that Bethany’s car has been smithereened on the Forth Road Bridge. Should I expect the police?’
‘Maybe, if they talk to Liam and he connects me and you. But it’s not the police I’m most afraid of. I need to get Dr Sorle out of here as soon as possible. I just don’t know where to bring him.’
Alison focused on her tea. Lamplight put deep crags in her face, and fainter lines, too, like the script of some language spoken far away. She was thinking. I didn’t intrude, though I desperately wanted to know what she was thinking.
‘You can’t bring him anywhere right now,’ she said. ‘I’m going to bed. Call me if he wakes up, or if you need anything. I put an extra toothbrush in the bathroom for you.’
She put a hand on my shoulder before she went out. I have no idea why, but when my body felt the warmth of her hand I nearly burst into tears.
* * *
I turned off the lamp and sat listening to the soft breathing of the dogs and Dr Sorle. My insides were trembling. I had never had enemies before. I knew they were out there, hunting me or my component or both of us, but I couldn’t see them and I couldn’t even be sure who they were. It made everything worse. Everyone had become a potential threat. If I was right about the attack on the bridge, I had been mistaken for a stain that needed to be removed, a weed that should be pulled, an insect that must be poisoned. My existence was no longer required.
But I felt the opposite. My existence was very much required by me, and I wasn’t going to be stopped so easily. I sat watching the street and waiting. Before it was light, the morning traffic started up little by little. A delivery van pulled up to the Spar across the road. Then a taxi coming from the direction of the New Town pulled up outside Alison’s. The back door opened and a man got out. He looked like a professional wrestler. I stared, my blood surging up. He held the door open and a slim young woman with blond hair got out. She looked up at the window where I was standing and took out her phone.
I heard Alison’s mobile go off from the sitting room. I ran to silence it, waking the dogs. They piled after me down the interior stairs to the hall shared by Alison’s offices. I looked out the window beside the front door and saw the big man looking up and down the street warily. The woman was leaving a voicemail. Then she looked up, straight at me.
We both jolted when we saw each other. I fumbled to open the door.
‘Bethany!’ I cried. I had to restrain myself from throwing my arms around her and rejoicing that she wasn’t dead. The dogs were ecstatic. Even as the big man stepped between Bethany and me protectively, they rushed outside, surged around him, and budged up against her, wagging. She glanced once at me and then bent to attend to them.
‘Oh, my ickle wickle babies!’ Bethany cooed. ‘So this is where you’ve been. Mummy’s come for you.’
She straightened and looked at me with quite a bit less affection. ‘Where’s Teacake?’
I gestured for her to come in. She looked at me darkly.
‘Get Alison, please. I don’t know who you are. Apparently you’ve been in my house. Pretending to be a friend. I’ve never seen you in my life.’
Alison was already coming down the stairs, tying her dressing gown.
‘Well, that’s a relief,’ she said. ‘We thought you’d come to harm. You ran out of the house without your bag or anything.’
Bethany said, ‘It’s complicated. I just got back from St Kitts and found the dogs missing and Liam told me Teacake had been poisoned.’
So she’d spoken to Liam. I wondered if he’d really been waiting for us in Queensferry or if that had just been a story to draw Kisi out. There had been something so random and excessive about the attack on the bridge.
‘Come on, you can see Teacake,’ Alison said. ‘Pearl, could you put the kettle on. Again.’
The big man stepped into the house first.
‘I need to check for threats,’ he said, but I stood in front of the door to the stairs.
‘That’s my flat,’ Alison said firmly. ‘I assure you there are no threats up there. Come along. Nothing in the back but a sick cat and a couple of rabbits.’
* * *
I left them in the surgery and went upstairs to check Dr Sorle. Then I put the kettle on. I could hear Alison and Bethany talking down in the hall. Murmuring, really. I crept down the stairs and listened.
‘At first I thought you’d finally left him, but when Pearl said she found the house wide open we were really worried.’
‘Pearl! Who is that woman? She’s posing as my friend.’
‘It’s a bit complicated. She’s a sort of government agent.’
‘Oh Jesus fuck, well, keep her away from me. I’m so done with all of this. Do you know, I nearly got killed that day I took
off? I grabbed my other passport and got out of here.’
‘Other passport? To St Kitts?’
‘They gave me a passport when I invested in property down there,’ Bethany whispered. ‘Liam’s been involved in this crazy offshore deal. He asked me to use my citizenship to open an account, and I did, but then he messed me about. He fucked off because he’s afraid of some American psychopath who poses as a doctor. He didn’t warn me. I was completely unprotected. I swear, Alison, the guy came to my house and threatened me. It was a near thing!’
‘Yes, how awful . . .’
‘I’ve had it with this rubbish. I was going to leave Liam anyway. He fucks like a gerbil. I went down and moved the money.’
‘You how?’ Alison yelped.
It was all I could do not to jerk the door open and go crashing into the hall. The Resistance. She had moved the money that was intended to establish the Resistance.
‘Shhhh! I don’t want her to hear.’
‘Sorry,’ Alison whispered. ‘What a dangerous thing to do.’
‘I was going to leave him anyway. The whole deal they set up is falling apart since Austen Stevens disappeared. Liam’s bound to get caught, but there’s nothing to connect me to any of it because the money was all secret anyway. No one knows where it is.’
‘Hen, this sounds like a handy way to get yourself killed. You want to rethink your plan.’
‘Liam’s the only one who knows, and he won’t kill me. And I’ve got Kostya. And the dogs.’
After that I stopped listening. I went back to the guest room and called Marquita. I had to warn her about the Resistance. Even if Filippe had put out a hit on me, it wasn’t Marquita’s fault. What would happen to Marquita if the Resistance un-ravelled?
When I dialled her number, the line was already dead.
Hilda Doolittle
I don’t give up easily. I could find no trace of Marquita’s travel agency, and her social network profiles placed her in Mozambique working for an NGO. Her privacy settings were locked but it was easy to get through and find out that she was married to a Mozambiquan political activist and had grown children in Florida, had adopted three more in Maputo. Her face was the same but her hair was different.
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