Luke didn’t answer that.
‘Well, if… WHEN you do…’
She paused.
‘Is there an Earth prison that could hold you?’
He shook his head.
‘Wouldn’t have thought so,’ came the low voice. ‘I don’t think anyone realises how strong I am here. They won’t: I had no idea. I’m not, back home.’
‘Thought not,’ she said. ‘And if I had to go to prison, would you wait for me?’
‘No,’ said Luke.
She turned towards him with an enquiring look on her face.
‘I’d come and get you,’ he said.
She smiled.
Two seconds later, they blew up the moon.
Chapter Twenty-One
There was no noise, of course: nothing that could travel across the vacuum of space. But the effects were immediately obvious: a huge, fiery meteor storm visible from everywhere on the night side.
All across the hemisphere, people ran out of their houses, those who grew up in the seventies noticeable by their sunglasses.
Above the SPIC, the astronomers groaned and threw their headphones across the room, half deafened by the static hiss which had become the noise of a thousand snakes filling their heads. But in the next second, they too were running to the window.
‘What the fuck is that?’ said Nigel, leaping up from the desk. He marched outside. ‘Christ,’ he said. One of the astronomers sidled up to him.
‘What’s our status report?’
‘Um,’ said the young man, whose name was Damon but liked to be called D’amon. ‘It’s… and Hawaii and VLA are confirming this… it looks like a chunk of the moonhas simply exploded.’
‘Fuck. How much? How big?’
D’amon shook his head. ‘Not very big. Doesn’t need to be.’
‘It doesn’t,’ said Nigel. ‘If this is a warning. It’s a warning.’ He felt his insides turn to ice water. First the moon, then what? What did they want from them? What did they need to know?
‘The special frequency is going bananas,’ mumbled D’amon.
Nigel looked at him.
‘Right. Thanks,’ he said.
There was something they wanted. There was something they needed from them. And the only people who could tell them what it was were God knows…
Malik came through the door.
‘Sir?’
He looked as solid and untiring as ever. Nigel was desperate to get home and take a shower and change, and he looked at the DCI with some resentment.
Malik held up a paper message.
‘There’s been a sighting. Warsaw.’
‘Good,’ said Nigel wearily. ‘Wake up Interpol and shout their fucking heads off. Bring these buggers back and do it now, and spend the GDP of a small country to do it if you have to. I have a call I have to make.’
The sky was filled with the beautiful falling meteor storm twinkling through the sky, most to burn out harmlessly in the ocean. Children watched through bedroom windows; drunks thought they’d imagined it; couples got engaged and conceived children to it.
The news media was going absolutely ballistic, and the internet was close to meltdown. Nigel picked up the phone.
‘It’s them?’ came down the line.
‘It is.’
Anyali sighed.
‘Tell NASA to accept responsibility,’ said Nigel. ‘Promise them we’ll talk to them tomorrow. But you get the PM to call the president, tell them we’ve got this all under control, we know what we’re doing, and please, please, please get NASA to say they blew up a fucking Mars Rover or a piece fell off a satellite or something.’
‘You have to give me more than that,’ said Anyali, her voice sharp. ‘You have to.’
‘Send me two guys,’ said Nigel grimly. ‘It’ll be done. Sooner rather than later. G-trained.’
‘Seriously? Mr Principles?’
‘They just blew up half the fucking moon,’ said Nigel. ‘What’s next – Tokyo?’
‘The Americans aren’t going to be happy,’ said Anyali.
‘Nobody,’ said Nigel, ‘nobody is fucking happy.’
‘Can’t we just say it was a meteor shower?’
‘You can, till someone notices there’s a chunk missing from the fucking moon.’
Anyali sighed. ‘The conspiracy theorists are going to go nuts.’
‘What could they possibly theorise,’ said Nigel, ‘that’s worse than what’s actually happening?’
Luke and Connie watched the meteors fall from the sky as they crossed the border into Belarus.
‘Oh my God,’ said Connie. ‘Was that them?’
Luke nodded. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Oh GOD, this thing needs to get there. Everything on Earth is so slow.’
‘We could have flown,’ said Connie. ‘But I think they’d have caught us.’
‘I should have spoken to them from the beginning,’ said Luke, balling his fists. ‘I should have gone straight to the white place and done it right away.’
‘They’d never have let you,’ said Connie. ‘Be serious. They wouldn’t have believed you. Then when you’d proved it, they’d have put you in some stupid lab and cut bits off you. They would have given you up in ten seconds. You’d have been halfway across the galaxy by now.’
They watched the lights arc across the sky.
‘Even so,’ said Luke. Up and down the train, they could hear the oohs.
‘I wonder where he is,’ he said. ‘The one who’s already here.’
‘Can they pick you out?’ said Connie.
‘Did you?’
‘Yes,’ said Connie. ‘But not for that reason.’
He nodded and glanced out of the window.
‘Oh God, hurry up. Hurry up.’
As long as they don’t stop the train, Connie thought. As long as they don’t stop all the trains and planes and buses and tear the earth apart looking for him.
But the train did not stop; it rocked on through steppes and ever more mountainous terrain, towards the east, and it grew darker, and the lights seemed to burn in the sky for ever, searing themselves onto their retinas so that Connie could still see them go after she closed her eyes.
They were so close. So near. Mazyr was a small town, on the opposite side of the river, so close they could almost touch it when the train came to a deliberate stop in the middle of the fine, high, metal bridge. It was night but not pitch-dark; the moon was bright. Connie looked at the distant town in anguish.
And up the corridor of the train she could hear, suddenly, knocking at all the small cabin doors. Polite enquiries. ‘Passport, please? Passports. Reisepässe. Paszport.’
Nigel stole a look at his Breitling. 11 p.m. That made it 1 a.m. in Poland. They were sending men up from London. He had time to go home and change quickly before the next phase. He wasn’t looking forward to the next phase. He didn’t think they were bad people. But they knew something, goddammit. They knew something.
The roads were empty driving home; everyone was out watching the lights fall and burn up sparkling in mid-air – it was beautiful – or was uploading pictures of it from their phones, or writing long blog posts with black backgrounds, white type and lots and lots of capital letters.
Nigel sighed in frustration as he turned into Meadow Oasis Dwellings. Normally he was careful and quiet when he got home, but not tonight. Ignoring his phone which was full of missed calls and voice mails which would lead to more conversations with Anyali that he wasn’t looking forward to in the slightest, he slammed the front door until the house’s flimsy foundations shook. Upstairs Annabel, who had drifted off in front of One Born Every Minute, then woken up at the lights outside her window, had moved to the ‘feature window’ in the back, spare room and was sitting there on an expensive, pink corner-seat feature they never used, hypnotised by the sight.
‘Darling?’
She moved through to their bedroom, and started re-piling cushions on the bed – there were a lot of them – nervously.
&
nbsp; ‘It’s just me,’ said Nigel in a low tone, mounting the stairs two at a time. He was already pulling off his tie and instead of hanging it up like he normally did, he balled it up and hurled it into the corner of the room with some force. ‘I’m just back to change.’
‘What’s going on out there, do you know?’
‘How the hell should I know?’ said Nigel tersely. Normally Annabel knew better than to ask him about work and she looked down guiltily.
‘The radio says NASA blew something up by mistake,’ said Annabel.
‘Did it now,’ said Nigel.
Annabel blinked.
‘Tough day?’ she asked gently.
‘You have NO fucking idea,’ snarled Nigel, then turned to her, crestfallen. He really couldn’t bear the idea of shouting at her.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve had an absolute… Well. I can’t tell you. But I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.’
Annabel looked up at the beautiful light show still streaking across the sky. She moved over suddenly to the bed and pulled off her demure nightie. She looked straight at him.
‘Take it out on me,’ she said in a tone of voice Nigel had never heard before.
‘What? Sorry, love…’
‘Take it out on me,’ she said again, and if she hadn’t been so deadly serious, it might have been funny.
Nigel glanced at his watch.
‘I have to…’
She shook her head and moved towards him putting her fingers over his mouth, while it looked like the stars themselves were falling behind them.
‘This won’t take long,’ she said. And she raked her perfect nails down his perfectly creased shirt, and tore off the buttons, one by one.
Afterwards, Nigel showered quickly and changed. Annabel lay there, happy, pink, watching him.
‘So are these little green men?’ she said. ‘Is that what this is? Have they come to Earth to blow up the moon? Are they everywhere?’
Nigel shook his head.
‘No, of course not,’ he said.
Then he turned sharply and looked at her, blinking rapidly.
‘If they were everywhere… if they were here… if there was a reason for the six to be so obstructive…’
He swore and pounded his fist on the windowsill.
‘Jesus,’ he said. ‘Jesus. I think you might have it. I think we’ve been looking for a murderer. They wouldn’t protect a murderer. But they might protect…
‘I have to go.’
Connie ran to the train window and looked down. It was a spare, skeletal, steel bridge with high square arches up above them, and a huge, nine-storey drop to the water below. It wasn’t so much the drop though, but the look of the river; there were mountains up ahead, and the water churned and bounced its way at a frightening speed, licking white, along lines of treacherous rocks on either side. She glanced at Luke.
‘It’s suicide,’ she murmured.
He looked at it, and shrugged. ‘What do you think?’
‘Couldn’t we… I don’t know – knock out the guard?’ said Connie.
‘Hit him?’
‘Um, yeah?’
He looked at her.
‘What?’ said Connie.
‘You would just hit another human being to stop them getting in your way?’
‘If it would save us I would,’ said Connie, shaking. The knocking was getting closer; people she could hear were grumbling about being woken up. They didn’t have much time.
‘But an attack against the person,’ said Luke. ‘Does it help us move on from where we began?’
‘Aargh,’ said Connie. ‘I don’t know. They do it all the time in films.’
‘I haven’t seen a lot of films.’
‘Have you seen any?’
He brightened briefly.
‘I’ve seen Mary Poppins. I liked it a lot.’
‘Okay, well, you summon some dancing penguins,’ said Connie, starting to fret. ‘Next time you decide to see one human film, can you make it Die Hard?’
‘Die Hard?’ mused Luke. ‘What does that even mean…?’
The knocking was next door now.
‘Not the time for our first row,’ said Connie in a warning tone.
Luke moved over to the window, and squinted so he could see down.
‘We could do this,’ he said.
‘You could,’ said Connie. ‘I’d crack my head on the rails and plummet to a tumbling death like… someone in a film about a big boat you haven’t seen.’
He shook his head.
‘No, we could.’
‘I can’t swim in that.’
‘You can if I hold you,’ he said.
‘I don’t think this is the time for…’
‘No. I can… I can absorb you without it being that… I think it’s like…’
His brow furrowed.
‘I think it’s like what Arnold says.’
‘What does Arnold say?’ said Connie, unable to help herself.
‘He said girls say, “Oh, let’s just cuddle.”’
Connie looked at him for a long moment and suddenly burst out laughing.
‘Oh my,’ she said. ‘Oh lord. Okay. Okay. Every time I’ve trusted you so far, it’s gone… Well, it’s happened.’
There was a knock at the door.
‘Passports! Reisepässe! Paszport!’
As if he were casually pressing a button, Luke pushed the large train window straight out of its mouldings. A fierce wind tore into the carriage as the window immediately caught on the rails beneath their feet and shattered into a million pieces.
There was no help for it. Nigel couldn’t get Annabel’s idea out of his head, but he couldn’t get through to the group in any way.
Nigel pushed back his hair, still wet from the shower, and stood outside the SKIF facility in the dark, hating himself. A large, expensive and slightly sinister-looking black car slid into the courtyard. He rolled his eyes. He supposed this was all part of their culture of intimidation and entitlement. When two white men got out, both shaven-headed and thick-necked, and gave him the old up and down he felt like rolling his eyes again, but he didn’t want to get more into it.
‘Ah, the Kiefers are here,’ he said, aware as he did so that they would think he was yet another fey Englishman. ‘Follow me.’
He glanced at his watch. It was 11.30 p.m.
After the corridors with the locked doors was a room at the end with a sluice. It was deep underground, with no windows and natural soundproofing. Nigel had to believe that when they had extended the facility, they had had absolutely no idea what it could possibly be used for. He wished he was in his pretty office at the very top, having Dahlia be rude to him.
He looked down the list of names. Regardless of political correctness, he couldn’t bear the thought of bringing a woman in here. Couldn’t bear it. Couldn’t bear that he was even having to make these decisions. Kiefer 1 and Kiefer 2 moved into the room, pacing around it like panthers, starting to set up by the large sink. Nigel didn’t look at them but instead concentrated on what was more important: the world. The world. Someone was coming for the world and he needed to find out who, and why.
It didn’t help. The world at this point seemed all too real and cruel, right in front of him.
He looked at the list again, and mentally crossed off Ranjit. He was a child. He couldn’t have that babbling baby on his conscience, and he was highly suspicious of his ability to formulate anything like the truth in his mass panic.
The Kiefers were testing a syringe. They worked in silence. Nigel wondered how long it would take to learn how to do this happily in silence, then tried to stop thinking about that too.
Two names left. Arnold annoyed the shit out of him. That would rationally be a good reason to get him in here first, but to Nigel he felt less of a… Bad Guy… he realised to himself.
His knock on the door was gentle. Sé was not asleep.
There was swearing from the other side of the door as the guar
d heard and felt the roar of the wind and tried the handle, finding it locked. The noise was unbelievable, the torrid air and the roar of the river filling Connie’s ears. What had looked rather high from inside the carriage, as she joined hands with Luke and peered over the ledge, was now absurdly dangerous: a long ledge to clear, then a huge drop to a river they hadn’t the faintest idea – now, in early summer – how deep it was. There was nothing to say that they wouldn’t simply hit their heads on the bottom. Connie hoped fervently, looking down, that at least it would be quick.
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