‘He had four ex-wives?’ said Connie.
‘Don’t know,’ said Evelyn. ‘But you have to admit he looked the type.’
Ranjit couldn’t hold it in any longer.
‘OR THE ALIENS!’ he said. ‘THEY’RE ALREADY HERE! They… jumped out of the sea and did this.’
Everyone looked at him.
‘Would you like a tinfoil hat?’ asked Arnold politely.
‘How did they get in?’ said Evelyn. ‘Fishbowl?’
Ranjit pouted and folded his arms.
‘Look,’ said Arnold. ‘We’ve got a signal – possibly. Some kind of a signal from deepest space. That doesn’t mean they’re going to turn up and invade us on, like, the same day.’
‘In movies that’s totally always what it means,’ said Ranjit. ‘And maybe beautiful alien girls.’
‘We’ve been sending signals out for years,’ said Arnold. ‘It’s just exploratory. Possibly amazing. Incredible. And the chances of us having evolved in a remotely compatible fashion are insane: natural selection and all its little accidents, on a different time-scale, in a totally different environment…’
‘Or: conditions to support life are always the same on the same universe–length time-scale…’ mused Evelyn.
‘Don’t think so,’ said Arnold snootily. ‘We’ve got sixty-seven thousand different types of bug, remember?’
‘And every single one of them likes to overrun other bugs’ territories,’ said Evelyn.
They didn’t say much after that.
After a couple of hours, Nigel marched back into the room. He looked harassed.
‘You know all that stuff?’ he said. ‘Well. There’s more. A lot more.’
The five of them sat, grubby, anxious, behind a long desk on a stage in a huge lecture theatre in a far corner of the compound in front of at least a hundred scientists. Connie did her best to stumble through what she’d discovered and how, but she could see from the sceptical looks on the physicists’ faces that what she’d felt was closer to creative inspiration than anything else.
‘It’s not possible,’ a large, Scandinavian man with incredibly up-to-date glasses was saying. ‘There’s no way… Kepler-186f is so far away, learning this information… I mean, it couldn’t travel fast enough. They couldn’t know. It’s way, way beyond the speed of light. I mean, by factors. So, it can’t be anything to do with that.’
Arnold leaned back. He was enjoying this, Connie could tell. She suspected him of pretending to be on a panel at ComicCon.
‘Yeah, right, but of course we don’t give a fuck about that.’
‘Well, maybe you should,’ said the sarcastic Scandinavian. ‘It’s science.’
‘Quite. It ain’t maths. Maths don’t give a shit what your ideas are. Hundred years ago you thought an atom was an indivisible rock. Forty years ago you didn’t think little bits of quarky shit could travel backwards in time. Three hundred years ago, you thought the stars were God’s heavenly pinpricks. Doesn’t mean shit to us. Gravity could reverse tomorrow, you guys are all out of a job. But the maths stays exactly the same.’
The busy room fell silent.
In the end, after a long, long day, they were allowed to return to their college rooms. Everyone was made to sign a lot of paperwork, although how they expected to keep a secret among a team this large, Connie could not imagine. ‘It’s all right,’ Arnold had said. ‘Physicists have no mates.’
They were to report to the bunker again in the morning, keep working on the message – because they were messages, clearly now. They were to talk to no one. They were to expect visits from the police. And they were to tell someone the second anyone saw Luke Beith. They weren’t getting their phones back, but there would be a man posted. Partly, Nigel explained, to wait for Luke. Partly in case what had happened to the professor wasn’t an accident, and wasn’t an isolated case.
None of them mentioned Luke as they ate a late supper which had been left for them, isolated and alone in the huge, echoing refectory, students long cleared away, the smell of gravy lingering over everything. They could barely speak at all; all trapped in their private imaginings.
It couldn’t be odd, quirky Luke – God knows what it was at all. Connie was hoping for a bug: what else but a fast-acting bacteria could have wrought such devastation? Some bug, she thought anxiously, that wasn’t infectious. But why didn’t he come? Why didn’t he show himself? Where was he?
And the little doubt that was in everybody’s minds and nobody mentioned out loud for fear of sounding either ridiculous or terrifying: if an alien life-form had sent Earth a message, had an alien life-form started to kill?
Chapter Eight
As the others said their goodnights, Connie sidled along the end of the opposite corridor – there was a small flight of stairs, then she and Evelyn were to the right. Ranjit and Sé were the same a floor above them, and to the left on the same floor as Connie and Evelyn’s rooms were Arnold and Luke’ sets. Arnold had already knocked on Luke’s door, of course, but to no avail. After everyone had retired, though, Connie went across the stairs too.
It was very quiet in the stairwell, and ill-lit. No one was about. Connie approached the door – another old heavy, wooden-panelled thing, with the number ‘24’ written on it. She knocked quietly, then slightly more loudly. There was no response.
‘Luke?’ she whispered. ‘L?’
Nothing. She crouched down, then blinked. There was an old bolthole from the original door, but none of them had the large keys any longer; everything was locked with a Yale. She looked at the Yale lock. It was covered in dust; sticky. She put her finger to it. It looked as if nobody had put a key in there for a very long time.
Connie blinked. Very quietly, desperate not to creak, she glanced behind her. Still nobody there. Dare she? Could she?
Her hand, trembling, rested on the dull brass, round handle. She clasped it firmly and, no longer entirely sure what she was doing, turned it clockwise. It gave a faint, rusty, squeaking noise as it turned, which sounded incredibly loud to Connie’s ears. But nobody stirred.
The door slowly opened wide and she gazed in, her hands at her mouth.
‘Luke?’
Still nothing. The vestibule was exactly the same as hers except reversed: a coat rack, and a small set of steps up to the sitting room. There was a faint chalky smell in the air, nothing more. Moonlight was flooding through the high, mullioned windows. No lights were on. Glancing behind her, Connie thought the hallway looked very dark. Swallowing carefully, she realised that obviously he wasn’t here – but why the unlocked door? Had someone else already been through here? Was it just Luke being absentminded? She certainly wouldn’t put that past him. She shouldn’t be in here; she shouldn’t be looking through his stuff.
But where was he? Would he have left a clue?
She was up the steps before it occurred to her that the reason the door might be open might be because somebody was already there.
‘Hello?’
Her voice suddenly was quavering. She did the first thing she could think of and turned on the large overhead light, which hung down on a long chain from the ceiling.
Instantly the room normalised; the moonlight and the shadows were gone and she could look around at the mirror image of her own home: the fireplace, the tiny kitchen, the room leading into the… the bedroom.
Nothing stirred. There was not the sense one got that somebody was in a space even when you could not hear them. But still, Connie was absolutely ready to turn around and retreat… until something caught her eye.
At first she couldn’t work out quite what she was looking at. The room was exactly the same as hers – shabby sofa, fireplace, tables – with the same inability to decorate it given their fourteen-hour working days (although Evelyn’s remained a haven and was where they generally hung out). It lacked the enormous piles of speculative paper Connie tended to scribble on, unable to get the numbers out of her head even when she did collapse back home, but apart from that,
it was identical. Except… what was it? What was different?
She looked around. There were two coats hanging at the little entrance: one old and tweedy, one an expensive-looking, very old-fashioned raincoat. She had never seen Luke in a coat, regardless of the weather. But that didn’t mean he didn’t own some. No, it was something else… her eyes scanned the room. What was it, what was it…?
Eventually she realised. Where were all the books? There was no personality in the room at all; no pictures on the wall, no rugs. Why were there no books? she wondered. She had never met an academic with no books, never ever.
Something caught her eye suddenly, on top of the empty shelves. There was one thing and one thing only there; something lying discarded…
Connie reached up to the highest shelf to the small, dusty object and grabbed it with her hands. It was just what she had thought it was: a photo frame.
She looked at the old picture for a long time. At first she was disappointed, assumed it was exactly what it looked like: an overlooked picture from the last inhabitant. The frame was an old, dark wood, then there was an insert and a small faded photograph that was not, as she had first thought, black and white; instead it was from the seventies – must be – overexposed and very faded. It was a bunch of happy-looking young men outside the college, clutching some publications they were showing off proudly. The men were skinny, mostly bearded.
But what she noticed most about it was the young man second from left who was prominent in the shot. He had a lean, handsome face and heavy-rimmed spectacles. But it wasn’t that which caught her attention. It was the jacket he was wearing. It was obviously a cold day. The man was wearing what looked like – if she squinted – a checked shirt and a brown cord jacket with patches on the sleeves. Nothing too unusual about that in the sartorial academic scheme of things, she supposed. But clearly visible over his arm was – she turned back to check. Yes. It was the same. It was the Acquascutum raincoat currently hanging up in the vestibule. And although the colours were faded, she was reasonably sure the cord jacket had elbow patches.
Suddenly, Connie was very frightened. Her heart was beating so hard in her chest she was sure it must be audible to Arnold next door. But she couldn’t not see. She couldn’t not look. As if sleepwalking, barely able to breathe, she moved very slowly towards the bedroom.
The door was open. Connie didn’t allow herself to think what she would say if Luke walked in right now. She didn’t allow herself to finish the thought… whoever he was.
She put the light on straightaway. Same room but in reverse: four-poster, large old wardrobe by the door. She inched forward to the wardrobe and, carefully, desperately trying not to catch a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror, of her deeply guilty face, she pulled it open.
Tweed jackets; one corduroy. Checked shirts. Just as she’d seen. She picked up one of the jackets and looked in the inside. Sure enough, under the Turnbull & Asser brand name, were three initials: JMC.
Luke was wearing another man’s clothes. A man who appeared to have lived here before – for a long time, with his once fashionable clothes, and when he had finally had to leave, had done so in a typically scatty, academic way. Then Luke had moved in…
And then there appeared – she glanced around the bedroom now – no books, no papers, no clothes, no computer, no… no nothing. There seemed to be absolutely nothing of the man she knew as Luke Beith at all.
Connie was glad to escape the set, to creep back across the corridor, leaving the door open behind her. Now she understood why Luke didn’t bother to lock the door. He had literally nothing to lose.
In the bathroom of Luke’s set, the figure stayed absolutely still.
Chapter Nine
Connie took a bath, then fell into bed and was asleep in moments, her mind blank, overstretched; too much to take in.
She woke in the very darkest hour of the night, her heart pounding, no transitional period before being asleep and being absolutely alert. At first she thought a noise must have woken her, but there was nothing and nobody there. The entire city was asleep.
She crept over to her little nook behind the crenellations. From up here, nobody would guess she was there.
She looked out across the fens, over the small, rolling hills.
Just like last night, she thought she saw a figure. It wasn’t possible.
Then her heart began again to beat incredibly quickly in her chest. She clambered out of the window. Across from her was an old elm tree. She looked at it. Then she glanced down, into the street. Sure enough, there was a man standing there. He must be stationed. Looking out for them, yes, but she was pretty sure if she walked through the front gate, he would have something to say about it. She glanced over his shoulder. There was a glow, sure enough. Seriously, no way. She looked at her watch: it was 3.45 a.m. The deadest part of the night, and he was obviously freezing, knackered and trying to keep himself awake, till his relief came – at 6 a.m., she guessed. Although she didn’t know quite how this worked. Then presumably there’d be guys round the other side of the building, at its only entrance – maybe in a car? But nonetheless, there he was: absorbed, swiping one finger across a row of coloured sweets on his phone screen. Playing a game. Oblivious to the rest of the world.
She swallowed hard and weighed the odds. If that was a man out there, it was Luke, she was sure of it. If she was caught climbing down a tree to get out, she would be in enormous trouble, no doubt about it – immediately under suspicion. But if she did nothing…
Doing nothing didn’t even figure as an option. She pulled on her old jumper and her soft-soled Converse. She had never been the most outdoorsy of children; had never revelled in climbing a tree, or shinning up a rope. But she needed to do it now, and with a slight quiet ‘yikes’ and an exhalation of breath, she swung herself, feeling horrendously exposed, out of the crenellation and onto the top branches of the tree, which swayed to her weight as if a recipient of a mysterious breeze. She froze, expecting the guard to immediately look up, but she could still see the light of his phone, the pink and yellow candies moving about.
The tree’s trunk came out from the side; she ought, if she climbed down the right-hand side, to be invisible to him.
As long as she was very, very quiet.
She felt her hands grow slick with sweat as she wobbled slightly at the top of a tree. Surely you couldn’t get down a rustly tree without someone hearing you? At this, she heard the ping from the man’s phone, and felt a genuine breeze ruffle through the branches; a wind coming in from the east and the distant sea, for which she was intensely grateful. She stopped a moment more, then, when the next gust came, descended a few branches. And, holding on tortuously, sure at any moment she’d be spotted – by him, by the night porter, by any passer-by, by someone on the floor below, by the police who were presumably crawling through the town – she descended, slowly, slowly, slowly, until eventually her trainers softly padded on the ground and, hugging the wall closely, she sidestepped until she had made it around the corner into the shadow of the alley that separated their college from the great library, and then could patter forward quickly until she moved, back alley to back alley, across the town and hit the little path that led up into the low hills.
She didn’t need a torch – could not possibly have carried one in any case – and was grateful for the huge moon and the fact that she was wearing a dark sweater. The only thing she could do nothing about was her hair, but at least Luke would know it was her. There was not, strangely, the slightest doubt in her mind that it was him. It was as if he had called to her and all she had to do was follow. And, even more strangely, she was not afraid any more. In all of Connie’s organised, determined, motivated, intellectual life, this was very new. She had thought she would be more afraid: she was not.
He was lying in the same spot as she had encountered him before, flat on his back on a bed of gorse, looking contentedly at the moon.
‘Hair!’ he said in delight as she loomed into view: o
ut of breath, wide awake and alert from the strangeness and beauty of the evening, and the new nearness of the stars. Alive.
Chapter Ten
Connie sat cross-legged on the damp grass, staring at Luke. He had smiled and been pleased to see her, but his large eyes were straying, clearly, to the sky again, and his temperament was distracted.
‘Luke!’ she hissed. ‘Where were you today?’
He lifted his hands and shrugged at the same time with his shoulders. It was an odd gesture that he didn’t pull off terribly well.
‘I… I was. I don’t know. Thinking about things.’
‘You heard what happened? It’s so awful.’
Luke looked at her in surprise.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Tell me what happened. I heard music in the street though. Very loud. Intermittent. Not bad.’
Resistance is Futile Page 9