‘It makes me… it makes me very happy that you have so much belief in me,’ he said.
‘Are you kidding?’ said Connie. ‘Did you hear what he said? You basically saved their entire planet. There are statues of you! You’re famous.’
Luke made a face.
‘What?’
‘“Famous” is a strange concept to me. You emotionally torture physically symmetrical individuals. I don’t really understand it.’
‘No,’ said Connie, vowing to stop reading internet newspapers with pictures of women in bikinis drinking coffee. It was odd, but the weird purity of Luke, his lack of cultural context… it made her feel like a blank canvas too. It made her want to fill her brain and her heart only with the beautiful things and beautiful places of the world, and share them with him for the first time too.
Suddenly, Luke stiffened. She felt it, then moved backwards out of his arms to attempt to see what he was gazing at. She turned around and gasped. A thin, bald figure, ghostly white in the moonlight, was moving towards them from the other end of the field.
Chapter Twenty-Five
‘Can I get up now?’ said Arnold. ‘Only this floor has physicist cooties all over it.’
Everyone ignored him. There was an absolutely massive barney going on with everybody shouting at once in stern voices, threatening to go to the papers or speak directly to the US or Russian presidents which, it was pointed out, would trigger a massive international panic and ruin the world just as surely as the aliens could manage blowing it up. The security guard was glancing around the room to make sure nobody left or took out their phones, but hadn’t had the order to take his foot off Arnold’s neck, so he didn’t bother. Ranjit was looking at the other security guard next to him.
‘Can I touch your gun?’
‘No.’
The noise levels rose, with even the Prime Minister unable to do much in the way of restoring order, and Anyali managed to thread her way across to Nigel.
‘What the hell do you think we should do?’ she said.
Nigel shrugged. ‘I’ve done my bit,’ he said, hanging up his phone. ‘Belarussian forces are on their way.’ He answered her enquiring glance. ‘No, they just think he’s a suspected terrorist. But they’re under strict instructions not to shoot him.’
‘Oh, well, if you’ve told them off in a stern voice,’ said Anyali. ‘I’m sure that helps scared, trigger-happy young soldiers in the dark.’
Nigel rolled his eyes. ‘Special forces,’ he said. ‘They’re not sending down the Boy Scouts. They know he’s molten gold to us.’
‘What if we don’t get him?’ said Anyali. ‘What if he does some alien thing to them and kills them all?’
Nigel had considered this too and didn’t want to think about it.
‘Not sure,’ he said. ‘Have we still got all those nuclear shelters?’
Pol was holding up a sheet of paper.
‘Well, this is ridiculous,’ he said loudly, and everyone went quiet to listen to him.
‘What?’ said Anyali impatiently. Pol was rather milking his moment.
‘We’ve found the sector it’s in, we’ve focused the telescopes – but there’s still nothing there: nothing to see at all. It’s like they’re completely invisible.’
The night was growing less dark, and Luke straightened up slowly as the figure came towards them, slowly at first, then faster and faster. When it got close enough for Luke to see it properly, he let out a cry and opened his arms, and the figure ran full pelt towards him.
‘Galina!’
‘Luke!’
The thin figure threw herself into Luke’s arms, and he pulled her close. Connie felt a flash of totally uncharacteristic jealousy. Who was this?
The woman – it was a woman – had been wearing a headscarf, which had fallen off, but which she now wound expertly again around her head. She let out a long stream in a foreign language, as Connie looked on, baffled, and then she pulled herself back from Luke’s embrace and started to touch his face all over, remarking as she did so.
‘Um, hello?’ said Connie. Luke turned around.
‘Sorry,’ said Luke. ‘Sorry, how could I… Galina, this is …’
If you forget my name right now, thought Connie, I shall kill you, spaceman under pressure or not.
‘… um, Connie. This is Galina.’
Galina started talking again.
‘I can’t understand what she’s saying,’ pointed out Connie.
‘Oh yes! You speak different things. Sorry. Do you speak her language?’
‘No.’
Luke smiled.
‘Wow, there’s a lot of languages you don’t speak.’
‘Uh, yeah, let me see you do up some buttons?’
He smiled at her and turned back to Galina. ‘Ci možacie vy havaryć pa-anhieĺsku?’
Galina nodded. ‘Dy. Yes. Yes. Hello, how are you?’
Connie shook hands.
‘Nice to meet you.’
‘I say to him, I see blowing up of moon and I think, that will be him! I have not seen this boy in years and years… how handsome he is, no? He look same as my Artem. Just same! He is exactly what my boy would be if he had…’
Her voice trailed off.
Connie glanced at the glass pebble in Luke’s hands. It was completely immobile, without its usual glow. Whatever was being discussed, there was nothing they could do about it now, and she had absolutely no idea how long it might take.
‘Why don’t you tell us all about it?’ she said.
In the end, they sat down close to the trees. Galina expertly made a little fire out of bracken and twigs, which flickered merrily in the pre-dawn chill, and Connie remembered the bottle of Polish vodka in their bag which had miraculously survived the fall, and which she and Galina each had a swig of.
‘I was born,’ Galina began, her English improved by the vodka and, she said later, the days she spent watching American films when she felt too weak to move.
‘I was born in the autumn of 1986.’
Connie was shocked: there was hardly any difference in their ages, but Galina looked old enough to be her mother.
‘I know, I know. I am not doing the age well,’ Galina said dryly, leaning her hand out to caress Luke’s hair again. ‘You have girlfriend?’ she asked, smiling. ‘Does she know about you?’
Luke nodded.
‘Yes.’
Galina had no eyebrows, but if she did she’d have raised them. She looked at Connie.
‘You love Fish Man Thing?’
Connie flushed to the roots of her hair. She couldn’t look at him.
‘Um,’ she said. ‘Yes. Yes I think so.’
Luke turned to her – for once, the wry smile was not playing on his lips. Instead, he looked solemn. He reached out and took her hand. Galina chuckled. ‘Well, everybody need somebody love, yes? You have Fish Man Thing, I had my Artem, and so the world goes.’
She took another slug of the vodka.
‘I was in mother’s belly when explosion happened. You have heard? Chernobyl?’
Connie gasped in surprise. She had had absolutely no idea where they were.
‘One hundred kilometres from here. You could hear it, mother said. You could see it. And authorities they said, don’t worry, it is fine, is mighty Soviet engineering, and then authorities say no actually thank you very much you should move but we were poor and we could not move. And what Chernobyl did we do not see: it put something deep inside me, you understand? In the insides of bones, and I can never be well.’
Luke’s other hand went out to pat Galina on the arm, but she grabbed it and held on to it.
‘But one time, I am young, I am “in remission” is called, and I want go out with friends and be like other girls, and I go dancing and I drink too much vodka, and I meet a handsome boy.’
She stared unabashedly at Luke.
‘He look very like you.’
Luke nodded.
‘And so. And boy, he left joined the army, bu
t he left something. And I was happy because I was sick and I wanted something, something good to happen, for once in life, one good thing. And my mother happy because she had sick child and she want healthy child. And when Artem was born, he most beautiful, wonderful boy in all of world.’
She sighed deeply, and buried her head in her hands. Connie moved round to the other side of her and put her arm around her.
‘But he was sick too. Everyone here sick. The government said, do not worry, no sick. We are all sick. Not straightaway, you know, not fast. No. But it is inside, deep inside and it was inside boy. My boy.
‘And he often could not go to school, and treatment burns him. But so clever! He worked and he worked and he had best computer we bought for him and he was best quick what he could do. He was brilliant genius.’
Luke nodded. ‘He really was.’
‘And one day he wants to go out, get out of bed in the night… he has discovered something, he says, something that is strange and giving out things that are strange…’
Luke nodded at the memory.
‘It was my fault,’ he said. ‘I’d just landed, and I took the communicator device outside, which means it gives out a signal.’
His head drooped.
‘It was a mistake. Beyond any mistake I ever made.’
Galina rubbed his head.
‘Ah, chlopčyk, it was not your fault. You did not mean it. And to us you were never mistake. You were best thing that ever happened.’
‘And to me,’ said Connie. There was a pause.
‘Please go on,’ she said to Galina.
The SCIF team gathered round the monitor. The display from the telescopes was utterly, utterly beautiful: the edge of the solar system, the termination shock visible, hot orange colours dancing and swirling as the solar winds and interstellar gas started to mix. Suddenly, something flashed, and they all saw it.
‘Was that…?’
‘It has to be the bow shock,’ said someone. ‘Look at the bubble shape.’
Everyone leaned closer. There was barely any light, nothing could reflect and they were too far away from the sun. But there was the definite sensation that something was hanging there… something that looked like a massive soap bubble.
‘We’ll just have to wait,’ said the PM. ‘No calls, no plans, no nothing until they talk to us again.’
He turned to Nigel, his voice stern.
‘And GET YOUR CHAP IN HERE, do you understand me?’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Nigel.
‘Can we order pizza?’ said Arnold from the floor.
‘They met. By river,’ said Galina. ‘Artem, he never wanted to be outside. Before. Being with computer, that was all he wanted. No trees, no grass, no anything. And then, he meet fishman and he make friend.’
‘Seriously,’ said Connie.
‘He was scared at first,’ said Luke. ‘I was scared at first.’
‘Then he go every day – in cold – and I say why and he say I make friend and I think bad man, bad man in wood want my boy and I scared too. Everybody scared!’
‘What did you do?’ she said to Luke. Luke shrugged. ‘He liked maths.’
‘You talked to him about maths?’
‘He was such clever boy,’ said Galina. ‘Clever, clever boy. And I go and they do every day the equations and the talking I do not even understand it! And they draw in the sand! And he is nine years old! Brilliant.’
‘You just did maths?’ said Connie again. ‘You didn’t ask him about the world, learn lots of stuff?’
Luke shrugged.
‘A little bit. But he wasn’t really interested in the world, and I didn’t understand it, and maths was the same for both of us, so…’
‘Boys,’ said Connie.
‘I know he loved his mother,’ said Luke.
But Galina was not to be side-tracked now.
‘And then,’ she said. ‘And then summer come.’
‘The river,’ explained Luke. ‘It is cold enough where we jumped… but here, hidden, it gets warmer and… and I start to…’
‘I know,’ said Connie.
Luke nodded. ‘We discussed the problem. I could form my body; I could make it the shape of a human, more or less. But without any colour.’
‘Mmm,’ said Connie.
‘And my Artem, he very sick. Sicker every day,’ said Galina. ‘There was nothing that could fix him. All he wanted to do was see his Luke, his Luca. It was a joke, you see. Stupid English joke they had. Because he could not see things. Look, Luke! Artem learned English from television you know. So clever. So clever.’
‘You couldn’t fix him?’ said Connie. Luke shook his head. ‘Sorry. I had no idea what it was. It’s not… I don’t think it’s something we get. And I am not a doctor.’
‘But he helped him!’ said Galina, indignant Connie might think Luke had done something wrong.
‘He took him swims before it got too warm. He was so happy swimming,’ she went on. ‘So happy. It was best times of his life. Because his life was not good and my life was not good. But you know, you should see how Fish Man swims.’
Connie smiled a little, and nodded.
‘He can swim, Fish Man Thing, and Artem, he loved that more than anything; he would laugh and laugh. Until that summer. And he too sick then, he was worse and worse.
‘And then when he was close, they thought… they thought…’
‘He gave me his colour,’ said Luke. ‘He gave it to me. I didn’t take it, Connie, I promise. I didn’t even know I could take it. It was his idea.’
‘There was nothing to be done,’ said Galina.
‘I have always believed you,’ said Connie. ‘But, how?’
‘Before he died, Artem told me what he wanted to do, and we tried it a little.’
‘Ach, his hand!’ said Artem’s mother. ‘That was, you know. That was the last thing he ever thought was funny: the see-through hand.’
‘And it did not hurt. But it made him very sleepy. And to do more…’
Galina took another swig of the vodka and turned to face Connie, cross suddenly.
‘You are not mother.’
‘No,’ said Connie, although it was not a question.
‘You have never had child built to suffer. I will tell you, English girl, it is a pain worse than anything in world. It is worse than anything universe could devise or visit on you. I begged him.’
She spat into the fire. ‘I begged him to take Artem’s pain away. Pointless, endless, meaningless pain.’
Luke’s eyes were watering and he rubbed them fiercely.
‘Artem never cried.’
‘You did not see him always last weeks,’ said Galina. ‘For you, smiles. Every second else, he was crying, or screaming, or begging, because cancer eats you; it eats you and it eats you from inside out, and it will not let you die and now it is doing the same to me.’
The anger left her voice.
‘But for me, I do not care,’ she said. ‘I should kill myself. But I always hope; I always wish I see Artem again.’
Dreamily, she played with Luke’s hair and hummed a little.
Jurja! Ŭstavaj rana,
Jurja! Ŭmyjsia biela,
Jurja! Vaźmi kliučy,
Jurja! Vyjdzi ŭpolie …
‘What happened?’ said Connie.
‘I held him,’ said Luke. ‘He gave it to me. I took it. It was not painful for him. He was not unhappy. He slept.’
There was a long silence. In the distance, an owl hooted.
Luke lowered his head.
‘Then I had to leave, of course. Because of the questions.’
‘There were no questions!’ said Galina, banging down the now half-empty vodka bottle for emphasis. ‘They did not even ask questions! They do not ask questions around Chernobyl because they are cowards, they are scared, they took my boy away in a closed coffin and they say NOTHING in case they lose their jobs, even though he lies there beautiful as if he made of ice. But I knew he was not really dead. Becau
se there is some of him in you.’
‘And I am privileged,’ said Luke. ‘Beyond privileged.’
‘Here’s the thing I want to know,’ said Connie. ‘Artem must have told you about the frozen north. Why didn’t you just go north, live up there, be cold all the time, live out your days naturally? Why did you go to the UK?’
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