“We’ll help you tidy up in the morning.”
“Oh.” Graham swallows. “Well. It’s just pots and pans tied across the door. I’d completely forgotten I’d set it. You scared the life out of me.”
“You scared the life out of us!” Tom laughs, keeping the conversation moving, away from questions about Bea. “Didn’t he, Kate?”
“With this?” Graham’s eyes scintillate as he pats the stick leaning against the sofa. It resembles something like a gun, in silhouette at least. “I clapped two big books together!” he chortles, and stretches his feet toward the fire. When he stops laughing, after some calming silence in which he watches them, he asks carefully, “Did you go far, then?”
“North,” Tom says. “Where’s Sean?”
Graham spreads his hands in a way that says it all.
“And you didn’t go with him?”
He stares into the fire. “Sean went to find Jack. You’d gone to . . . find Bea. And I’d be going to look for . . . what? I’m old. I’d just get in the way. No one needs to have me around. I’m just . . . My mind has . . .”
Tom glances at Sylene sadly as the old man drifts off. Even though Graham is smiling, something in him has gone. Or maybe because he’s smiling, at the fire, into nothing, for no reason at all.
“Is the generator okay?” Tom asks after the pause has trailed on for long enough that he is sure there are no more words coming, that the previous thought has become lost somewhere as Graham stares into the flames. “Graham? How’s your Chronicle?”
The old man starts and then turns away, his face darkening. “What about this is worth recording?”
“Well,” Tom says, clapping his palms gently together. “Is the generator working?”
“The last time I used it, yes.” Graham’s voice has a sudden veneer of enthusiasm. “It’s so much bother to get going, though, and I . . . well, I find I don’t really need it. The thing, the—what is it? You have to dry the sparky bit out each time. And I’m fine without hot water, Tom. I don’t really like electric light. I’ve missed your cooking, though, Kate.” He leans forward and clasps Sylene’s hand.
“It’s good to be back, Graham,” Sylene says. “Bea’s first words were in this room, you know?”
“Ah, yes,” Graham says. He steeples his fingers, raises his eyebrows, and smiles. “Yes, yes, I remember well. Jane really loves that girl. Have you said hello to her yet?”
Tom chokes, halfway to speaking. Graham’s expression stops him. He’s smiling, hopefully, determinedly, yet he’s crying silently while he nods and nods away.
They leave the study when the fire dies down and go through to the darkness of the hallway. Graham stoops at the back door and shuts it firmly behind him as he heads out into the night. Tom meanwhile lifts the candle and lights the way upstairs. It throws a tentative light along the corridor as Sylene stops at the top. Tom waits for her to go to their bedroom, but she doesn’t.
“Sorry,” he says with a start. “It’s the first door on the right.”
At the threshold to the room he stands close enough to smell her hair as the candle reveals their unmade bed and the chair beside it and the cupboard and the drawers. Everything as it was, but freezing and dark. He draws the curtains, surveys the bundled comforter and lifts it, throws it out and plumps it up. The last time he had slept here the camp had been attacked. Panic was the last thing that had happened in this bed. Nothing has been the same since. Bea had been in the children’s hut, being watched by Danny, while Kate had been watching Tom sleep.
Sylene is already unlacing her boots, her sweater off. She lets her trousers fall. The curve of her belly is pronounced.
“You take the bed,” Tom says. “I’ll go in the chair. Or I can go back downstairs if you want. Graham’s in his hut. He won’t know.”
Now she pulls the comforter up, kicking her legs to warm it. “Don’t be silly.” Her voice is already getting lost in the pillow. “You can get in here.”
Tom heel-toes his shoes off and the floorboards creak just, once they’ve done it, as he remembers. The candle shines in the cut-glass mirror as it always did. He watches her, the rise and the fall of Kate’s body as she breathes, the vulnerable curve of her throat. She is sleeping on his side of the bed.
Tom wakes to sounds he hasn’t heard for a long time: rain smacking against glass and clattering onto the roof; wind working its way into the house through its ancient chinks and cracks. He pulls the curtains back. Through the cracked windowpane, the sky is balled up, the ground looks sodden, and the air between them thick with rain. Sylene spreads out. She forces an eyelid open.
“Don’t make me go outside.”
Laughing, he says, “I won’t. Sleep. Rest.”
He dresses and goes downstairs. The grandfather clock, he notices, is silent, and all the rotas have been pulled from the board. He collects the pans and pots from the kitchen floor and piles them by the sink, then opens the door to let in the wet gray light. The larder smells like it used to. Kate’s secret stash of whitened chocolate is where it always was. He takes things down: tins of what is, hopefully, fruit and sealed containers of greening flour. With everything laid out on the table, he runs into the rain. It is cold and very damp in the shed, where he pulls out and dries the spark plug and pulls the starter cord five, six, seven times until a jet of sooty air coughs out around his ankles. Who cares about conserving fuel now?
Back in the kitchen, he makes a mixture for biscuits as the oven growls beside him. He tries to remember how Kate did it. He is spooning far-too-viscous stuff onto a tray when Graham enters, his legs sodden.
“You’ve brought the weather, Tom.” He sighs, then chuckles, and then frowns as he sits, looking around as if for something lost. Tom watches the old man scratch the tabletop absently. So many meals, so many camp meetings here, and now just the two of them.
After a very long silence, he asks, “What’s wrong, Graham?”
The old man looks at him as if he had forgotten he was there. For a split second he seems confused, and then he spreads his hands across the table and a wan smile across his face. “In sooth I know not why I am so sad.”
“Are you missing Jane?”
Graham shrugs.
“And everyone left the camp, so . . .”
Graham, his voice barely a grumble, mumbles, “Everyone didn’t. I’m still here. Life is what it is. And if you’ve got that straight, no one can ever touch you.”
“Graham,” Tom says softly, “I’m just saying that you have lots of reasons to be sad.”
“It’s the awful pain of hope, Tom.” Graham sighs again. His posture is strong, his chin held high but clearly straining. His eyes are moist. “If life has taught me anything, it’s that none of it is permanent. Property, happiness, things. I’ve been alone for months now, and do you know what? It’s been pure. No one could touch me because I had nothing to lose anymore. So it’s lovely to see you, Tom, but at the same time . . .”
Tom nods slowly. “Would you like a biscuit?”
“When they’re cooked. They’ll still be raw. Where’s Kate?”
“Resting.”
“She’s pregnant again.”
“Yes.” Tom grins. “We’re very excited.”
Graham nods, his eyes on the floor. “And Bea? I know you didn’t want me to ask yesterday, but I have to know, Tom. Did you find her?”
Tom wipes his hands on a cloth. How to tell the old man that he is right: that they will be going again soon; that, indeed, he has nothing much more to live for?
“We’ve come back for supplies, Graham. We think . . . we may know how to find her.” He chews his lip and bobs his head deeply, wanting to speak, wanting to fuel the hope glinting in Graham’s eyes, but afraid in the end to explain it to this ages-old Resister. “SaveYou. Your memories were saved in case you had an accident, so your thoughts could be rebooted if you suffered trauma or an attack. It helped police solve murders, because the evidence was there—very clear what happened, be
fore the moment of death. It was part of the Premium Service. Were you aware of it?”
Graham brushes Tom’s question away, his eyes darkening. “Of course.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
Graham fixes him with a look of disgust. “We’re not computers.”
“I’m not saying you have to like it, Graham, but this”—Tom starts to talk more quickly—“if you think about it, is how we find Bea. She wasn’t at the facility and we can’t find her. We’ve tried. But we can find out where she is because her thoughts will have been stored. We can see what happened to her, where she was taken, where she is now, via the Feed.”
“But, Tom . . .” Graham blinks, confused again, before continuing, sure of himself once more. “The Feed went down.”
“But SaveYou, the program that sends out the BackUps, is still active,” Tom continues rapidly. “Listen, Graham, the Feed implant is biotech, right? No batteries needed because the battery is us.” He hits his chest while Graham sits back in his chair, shaking his head.
“Playing at God,” the old man mutters, and stretches out an arm as he declaims, “Technology outstripping our moral capacity. Ripping this world apart! For money, for greed, for—”
“Graham, please!” Tom wants the man to understand. He needs him to believe. “I agree with you, we’ve discussed this all before, but put your Resister dogma to the side. Please.”
“Let it go, Tom.” Graham leans forward, his eyes icy. “Leave it. Because all I’m hearing from you is thoughtless hope. If you hope blindly, you can’t protect yourself from what really is. I can see the pain it’s giving you! It’s obvious: it’s right there on your face! So stop it. Live in the real world. Bea’s gone. Like Danny, like Jane, you’ve lost her, she’s dead—”
“I met one, Graham.” Tom’s words threaten to break his speech apart. “I met one of the taken and they told me the truth. SaveYou is still transmitting. That’s how they tether to our minds—”
Graham recoils. “Who do?”
“You’re right, Graham, our morals were spent: they’re from the future and they had to escape the world because we had devoured the planet in their past. They sent people back to try to change history, to stop us from destroying the earth.”
Graham stands. “I’m not listening to this anymore.”
“It’s the truth,” Tom retorts.
Graham’s fists are clenched as he shakes with rage. “I want you to find Bea, of course I do—the poor girl! But, Tom, this is lunacy! She doesn’t even have a Feed!”
“No, you’re wrong, because . . .” Tom shakes his head vehemently, even though his voice has lost its drive. “Because the Feed became genetic, Graham! It didn’t need to be implanted anymore!”
Deep sorrow sags in Graham’s eyes. “Tom, this all sounds so willful. The Feed became genetic? We’re being invaded from the future? Who on earth told you all this? You say they invade us through the Feed?”
“Yes,” Tom replies. “Yes, that’s correct.”
Graham’s expression is exhausted; there is no victory there. “But Jane didn’t have the Feed, Tom. So how did they take her? Have you really been told the truth?”
When the rain stops, they put on boots and hats. Tom finds a scarf for Sylene. Outside, the sun is already low enough to shine slantways across the land, rounding the bellies of the clouds with molten gold. It refracts in the amber beads of rain clinging to the grasses as they climb the hill. At the top, a lone piece of planking links the earth and the clouds. The grave has been tended and words carved inelegantly into the wood. Jane’s name. Her dates, and a cross.
“What do you remember about her?” Graham’s voice is thin. “Because for all the years, I can’t remember much. Her smile sometimes. But I can’t hear her voice anymore. I wonder sometimes if I . . .” He turns to Sylene apologetically. “What do you remember about her, Kate?”
“Oh, Graham—”
“She was a happy soul, Graham,” Tom interrupts. “She had the wisdom of the earth.”
That alone is enough to make Graham weep, and as time stretches out, Tom glances awkwardly at Sylene. He is surprised to see that her eyes are also wet. Her hands are clasped so tightly that her knuckles strain. Her lips are moving, whispering something to herself or someone who isn’t there. Whether she senses being watched or not, she angles her face to the ground. He turns from her too and gulps something back as the wind wraps around them. A very light rain passes like a shadow, like a sketch from a curling wisp of cloud. By the time Graham has collected himself and leads Sylene over the rise, the clouds have stretched to scuffs of pink. Lagging behind them as he leaves Jane’s grave, Tom’s own tears fall suddenly free. Although he tries to stifle the sounds, Sylene waits for him and wipes his cheek with her thumb, and in that moment he sees something in her eyes—does he?—a sorrow, perhaps, before she leads him on, linking her arm through his. And he realizes then that he trusts her. What other choice does he have?
Graham waits for them by the forest. Under a layer of softening leaves, another grave lies.
“You did everything you could, Kate, but the stitches didn’t hold. It was too large a wound to cauterize. We tried to pack it shut with wax.”
Sylene gasps. “Didn’t you use medical aids?”
“What do you mean?” Graham peers at her.
“I mean . . . I’m sorry I wasn’t here to help.”
“Sean thought the camp unsafe. He left. And it’s all because I killed that man.”
Graham’s face contorts into a disgusted scowl. He turns away and stares into the woods steadfastly, shrunken somehow in his coat. He looks haggard, depleted in his skin. Sylene glances at Tom, who shakes his head for her to stay quiet before his gaze is pulled back to Danny’s grave.
“I don’t deserve to live anymore!” Graham wails suddenly. It’s a strangled voice, not one that should be heard. “The children gone, Danny dead, in revenge for what I did! I think I’m . . .” He wheels back around to them and gestures at his head. “Sometimes I think my mind is going, my memory, like my mother’s, and . . . It would give me peace, to forget would give me peace, but I’m terrified, I’m—”
“It’s not true, Graham,” Tom interrupts. He scrambles over Danny’s grave and stumbles into the old man. “We went to the facility and it wasn’t them. They didn’t take her. It wasn’t your fault.” He shakes his head as a fresh patter of rain scatters over the leaf bed. He holds Graham’s thin hands and stares into his animal eyes. “And I’m sure you’re not losing your memory. With your mother—”
“It’s genetic,” Graham says pointedly, and his expression stiffens suddenly as the trees shush and wheeze. Leaves roll heavily across the ground. Then he walks away; he just turns and heads back to the camp.
Tom and Sylene follow. Graham is suddenly and resolutely taciturn, musing hard on something as they trudge their way over the oozing ground. When they reach the porch of his hut, Sylene breaks the silence: “Graham, would you like to sleep with us tonight? We could sleep in a rota. For safety.”
“To be honest, Kate, I think if they take me, they take me, so what,” Graham mumbles, slapping his chest. “Someone else could probably make better use of this old thing than me, whoever the hell they are. And it’s not like there’s anyone here anymore who would need to be protected from me, is there? Some nights I hope they do take me!” Then he raises his arms and waves at them cheerily before closing the door hard.
They stand in the darkness.
The wind in the distant trees sounds familiar, which is either Tom’s imagination or because he is home.
“Home?” he asks her, and as they walk, he puts an arm around her. “That was kind of you.”
“He looks lonely.”
“I’m sure he is. But you know he can’t be taken? He doesn’t have the Feed. His wife . . .” He shakes his head. “Poor Jane. She was enabled when she was young. Then she met Graham, who was a fundamental Resister, and she didn’t ever admit it. She hid it from him their
whole life, and she never came to peace. I always thought her incredibly heroic: she protected him from knowledge that would have hurt him. She took that hit, and he was happy. Originally, she wanted to have it uninstalled, but who had that done? The operation was too expensive. This was all first-generation tech. Once you were in, you were in. Which all makes it doubly unfair.”
“What?”
“That she was taken. One of your lot came through and Graham had to kill her. She was sleeping in their bed, in their hut there. That poor old ancient man. That’s the world you made, Sylene. When even people like Graham . . .”
Tom stops and looks up at the sky. He puts his hands in his pockets. Then he veers away around the farmhouse. The gazebo is dark at the back. The power cables and light wires look like fractures across the sky. Not so long ago, they were lit up. He and Kate danced here. Bea heard her first music beneath these lights. They all danced around the fire to celebrate her birthday . . .
“It’s cold, Tom. Shall we go inside?”
“I just wanted to say: I’ll care for you, for you and the baby. You know that, don’t you?”
“Tom . . .”
“You’re a good person, Sylene. Do you recognize it here?”
“No, I—”
“You remember that music in the Pharmacist’s house?”
“The Rollins? Yes.”
“Well, Kate hated jazz. I always loved it.” He takes her shoulders and kisses her. At first she doesn’t move, but as he presses closer, she pulls back and turns out of his grasp.
“Kate, I just—”
“I’m Sylene!”
“I’m sorry. It was an accident! Your name, calling you that, was an accident—not the . . . You’re a good person, Sylene.” Tom can’t see her in the darkness, can’t make out her expression as she looks up at the stars, breathing heavily. The echo of his own voice reverberates in his ears: its hoarseness, its pleading tone. There is a roaring sound in his head, and his chest heaves as if a valve in his neck has been drawn tightly shut.
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