by L. Lee Lowe
'It's OK.' His smile was so rueful that for a moment she felt ashamed. 'You remember Xuxa?' he asked.
'The Brazilian exchange student?'
'Yeah.'
'Have I got the right one? Term before last. Gorgeous melting eyes, guitar, and triple-D cup?'
He blushed, and she had to remind herself what he and Tim and all the rest of them would gladly do to Zach. Even the augers themselves haven't been told the truth.
'This medical thing about the mulacs,' she said, 'you reckon my dad knows about it?'
'Probably, he's one of their top neuros.' His voice skidded in alarm. 'You're not going to ask him or anything?'
Laura moved closer, took the can from his hand, and sipped without swallowing. Then she pressed her mouth to his, and when he opened it, gave him a taste of her tongue along with the lager. His reaction was instantaneous.
'Do you want to?' she asked.
'You mean—'
'If you've got protection.'
'Have you ever—you know, with someone else?'
Laura pulled back enough to give her room for a proper show of disgust, the dribble of lager he wiped from his chin eliminating the need for much pretence. 'You're not suggesting I'd actually sleep with one of them, are you?'
'Shit, of course not. I only meant—I mean, there might have been—I mean . . .'
She giggled and kissed him again, her hand straying. 'You'll just have to teach me, won't you?'
Chapter 14
The nightmarish sound of howling rousts Zach from sleep. At least two or three wolves, possibly more. The human brain is an archaeobiological site of ancestral adaptations, so that cognoscens no less than sapiens will freeze when the ground opens at their feet, recoil (or flee) at the sight of a snake. After his heartbeat settles, after he drives any oneiric wargs from the threshold, after a thorough reality check, Zach throws off the covers and stumbles to the window. He presses his face against the glass, draws back to wipe away the condensation, and peers out again through the captive flames, only then noticing that he's still muzzy, perhaps a trifle queasy, but not in much pain. How long has he slept? For the first time he wishes for a watch, one of those fancy chronometers that do everything but sit up and bark. Out front Lev is feeding steaming chunks of something which hasn't seen a slaughterhouse, never mind a supermarket, to a pack of huskies. Zach swallows; Mishaal is a born-again Vegetarian. A sledge, humpbacked, crouches as if ready to spring.
As soon as Lev enters, Zach asks him where the dogs have come from.
'I'm dying for a cup of tea.' Lev is already halfway across the room, bringing the smell of intense cold with him. His nose and cheeks are bright red. 'The wind's fierce today.' He tosses his anorak onto a chair and goes to drape his hat and mitts over the mantelpiece before warming his hands at the fire. 'Feeling better?'
'Much better. Well enough, in fact, to blow your fucking limbic system into oblivion!'
'Care to try?' Again that indulgent note.
Their eyes meet and Zach shrugs, unwilling to test such thin ice. It might be a long winter. 'The dogs aren't black, are they?'
'Mostly white and cream and grey, though Bella's a gorgeous coppery brown, why?'
'Hellhounds, I hear, are the colour of midnight.'
'Like ravens?' Lev laughs. 'Nothing supernatural about my beauties. You'll soon see how smart and swift they are. How loyal.'
It might be a long winter, but Zach has no intention of skating in the dark. 'Planning a dogsledge race?'
'A small journey.'
'OK by me. Time to get back to basecamp anyway.'
'Sorry, but that's not on. We'll be heading in another direction.'
'No way. This isn't a holiday on ice. I've a job to do.'
'True. Only thing is, we're not talking about the same job.'
'Listen, I'm not going to abandon my clients, however borderline Chloe may be. You don't understand what Fulgur—'
Lev interrupts brusquely, not his usual style. 'And you don't understand what's at stake. Why else do you think I'd risk modifying the STrinth? Every event has a quantum co-event; too many, and there's the chance of a bounce.' He hesitates, then adds, 'Ethan and Chloe have plenty of supplies, they'll be fine for as long as it matters.'
From no information to an overload. Zach doesn't know what to ask first. 'Would you mind making at least a minimum of sense? What's a strinth, for example?'
'STrinthos is actually the customary translation, I seem to have picked up your penchant for abbreviations, your slang too.' The fire crackles and sends out a starburst of sparks. With a stockinged foot Lev nudges the largest ember back from the perimeter of the hearth and waits till it ceases to glow. 'Not a STrinth, but the STrinth. There's only one fundamental spacetime—well, call it spacetime entity. Your language is woefully inadequate to describe the cosmos.'
Zach is silent for a time, watching the flames. Even Mishaal wouldn't dare to saddle him with an alien straight out of a space opera, one with a penchant for quantumbabble. Slade and his ilk aren't precisely known for their sense of humour, nor their appreciation of parody. 'You act as if this place is real. It's only VR, for godsake. A very fancy sort of VR, but a simulation nevertheless.'
'I see that we are going to have some interesting discussions about the nature of reality on our journey,' Lev says dryly.
'I haven't agreed to go anywhere with you.'
From a pocket Lev removes something small enough to be concealed in his fist. A flick of his wrist, and it flies through the intervening space like a golden snake, uncoiling in midair. Zach's hand shoots out in time to snag it with his fingers.
'I thought you wanted to find Laura,' Lev says.
Her gold pendant is warm in Zach's palm, as though he's been wearing it next to his skin.
Chapter 15
By the end of a grey, rain-soaked week with little else except a minor incident over a teacher's palmer to distract anyone, Laura had been asked about Owen so often that she'd become adept at matching the right phrase to the right face, the way you automatically select golden koi lipgloss for a plain black T-shirt, slick bloodred when your lips need to slash a samurai arc. All the time her eyes wide, candid, alert for Zach.
Who was not in school. Who had left the hospital under escort, her mum had been quick to point out, and now seemed to have vanished. Who didn't want to be found—Laura hoped. The alternatives kept her awake long into the night. And however much she tried to outwit herself with outrageous scenarios of the lonely-megastar-meets-warmhearted-schoolgirl variety, hair like ribbons of black treacle, fingers like warm toast inevitably ended up feeding her fantasies.
At supper on Friday her father laid a sumptuous box of imported chocolates on the table.
'A celebration,' he said.
'For what?' Max asked, his eyes already reflecting the shiny glaze on the first piece he'd have, and the second. A third too, if they'd let him.
'A new patent.'
Laura's mum smiled, but it was a tight little smile. 'What about your promotion? You've been spending a lot of evenings at the lab lately.'
'It'll all help, Molly.'
'The way the mud in the car last night—and on your shoes—will help?'
Laura watched her father duck his head, colour high. She curled her fingers round her knife, then remembered how angry he'd been about Zach: the quiet, obstinate anger of a weak man who needed to prove something to himself, but who would never defy convention. Who would never dare to stand up to his wife, his boss. Probably not even to a paramedic. Her eyes suddenly prickled with tears.
'What have you done to him?' she cried.
Max looked at her in surprise, her parents at one another in alarm.
'I don't know what—' her father began.
'What's the patent for this time?' Laura cut in viciously. 'A device to control their thoughts? or merely to monitor them?'
She sprang up and slammed out of the room, thereby missing the frown which her dad quickly erased from his forehea
d. Molly already halfway out of her chair in furious pursuit, her husband was able to shake his head at Max, then mouth a word of caution without attracting her attention.
*****
When Laura pushed open the door, Stella was serving an old man whose greasy hair hung to his shoulders, striated with grey. He smelled unwashed, and Laura was in no hurry to breathe in his rancid exhalations. She'd had her omniflu noc, they wouldn't let you into school or a film or even the bloody supermarket without it, but you never knew about those weird mutations.
'Shut the fucken door, freezen my balls here,' he grumbled testily.
'No need for that.' Despite the rebuke, Stella's gaze passed over Laura as though over a ghost.
Laura closed the door but hovered on the threshold till the greaser dug his hand into a pocket for some coins, and his hair swung forward, curtaining his face. With his head bent, he looked for a moment like a singer pausing for a breath over his mike. Laura stared at him, disconcerted. As if aware of her scrutiny, he glanced up. Sallow eyes blood-webbed with drink or drugs or age, and beneath it all, a deathly fatigue. He'd seen her on a thousand street corners, her disgust as offhand as small change.
Ashamed, Laura hurried to the rack and grabbed the first magazine that came to hand. She was still flipping blindly through its pages when Stella removed it from her hands.
'If you're really into bodybuilding, there's a good gym round the corner,' Stella said. 'But don't crumple the merchandise.'
Laura played with the zip on her jacket, trying to remember her carefully rehearsed lines. The takeaway's plate-glass windows were fogged, and Laura had a momentary urge to scrawl a message in the condensation, press her nose like a child against the glass.
Stella jerked her head towards the empty table. 'Go on, sit down. I'll bring you a cup of tea.' She narrowed her eyes. 'On second thought, you look as if you could use a meal.'
Laura shook her head, but soon found herself eating the bowl of chilli Stella put before her. Stella settled her bulk onto the other chair, grunting a bit.
'You're looking for Zach,' she said without preamble.
'Yes.'
'What for?'
Laura decided to match Stella's bluntness. 'I'm worried about him.'
'You ought to be, after the trouble you've caused him.'
'He said that?'
'If you need to ask, you don't know him very well.'
The conversation was heading offshore, and Laura wasn't keen to do any swimming in these waters.
'Listen, all I want to know is that he's OK,' Laura said. 'Have you seen him?'
Stella leaned her elbows on the table, which tottered under her weight. Her dark brown eyes offered no safe harbour, so that it took a real effort for Laura to keep from dropping her own. She tucked her arms close to her torso in the hope that Stella wouldn't smell her sweat. Why were roll-ons only effective when you didn't need them?
A moment longer, and Laura would have capitulated. But Stella gave an abrupt nod, like a queen grudgingly approving an unwelcome edict.
'Finish your chilli,' she said.
And while Laura debated whether not eating the stuff would constitute civil disobedience or a mere tantrum, Stella locked the door to the café, flipped the hand-lettered sign to closed, and switched off the overhead fluorescents, leaving only a dim light behind the counter. Without a word she disappeared into a back room.
If she hasn't returned by the time the bowl is empty, Laura promised herself, I'll leave. She was hungry; the chilli was good. In fact, she was very hungry, but she ate more and more slowly. Footsteps prevented her from having to eat the rest a bean—a quarter bean—at a time.
Stella hung back in the passageway, observing the two of them. Though she'd told Zach that Laura was upstairs, his face changed when he saw her, his whole bearing. And the girl as well. The air around them stirred, and Stella could smell the cloves of her childhood, feel the hot sand burning the soles of her feet as she and Alan raced hand in hand, slipping and laughing when they tumbled together like puppies, kissing, running again towards their place between the old jetty and the endless fields of sugar cane. How she could run in those days! Sometimes she still couldn't believe that Alan was dead, drowned in that sudden storm, his father and brother too, while she'd managed to hold on to a cushion. Even here, in this cold and bitter country, so many years later, she'd turn and there he'd be—grinning his rascal grin, beckoning. Did the dead ever let you go? They could be so greedy . . .
With a sigh she never permitted herself, Stella slipped back into the dark corridor towards the little office where she kept a bed—slept most nights too, these days. Just a bit, she envied them their youth. As for the rest, she was nearly an old woman, after all. Tired, a lot of the time. But not quite resigned, not yet. And where was that wisdom which was supposed to compensate for being too damned stubborn to drown?
'Where have you been?' Laura asked Zach.
'Around.'
'Did they punish you?'
'I'm OK.'
They sat in silence for a while in the soft yolky glow, neither quite sure what came next. Finally Laura touched a finger to Zach's exposed wrist.
'Thank you,' she said.
Still he said nothing, his gaze fastened on her hand. But he didn't pull away. His skin was warm; his pulse, a small creature quickening under her fingertip. Hesitantly Laura began to stroke its fluttering limbs, its tremulous muzzle.
'Have you got long?' he asked, his voice low, a bit hoarse.
'Now?'
He nodded.
'Training at four. But Janey—my coach—won't tell my parents if I don't pitch up. She's already had one fight with my mum. Interfering cow, Janey called her.' The encounter belonged in Laura's archive of favourite memories. 'To her face.'
He seemed to make up his mind about something. 'Come on, eat up. You're too thin,' he said, pushing the bowl towards her.
'Girls are never too thin.'
Glinting with amusement, his eyes flicked to her chest. He helped himself to a sip from her tea, then sloshed some when she lifted her jumper and T-shirt in one swift movement. She wasn't wearing a bra.
'So?' she asked. 'Not big enough for you?'
He looked away. Looked back again. Then down at the teacup.
'Fix your clothes,' he said curtly. 'There's something I want to show you.'
A single dim bulb illuminated the stairs to the basement. Zach descended ahead of her, his footsteps echoing in the close air. Laura sniffed. Cigarettes, coffee, maybe something fried. Not just storage, then.
About halfway down, Zach stopped. He turned and looked up at her, licked his lips.
'No,' he said. 'Let's go back upstairs.'
She waited while he struggled with whatever was disquieting him. She could hear his breathing. Her own chest began to tighten, an underwater signal to come up for air, and she must have made a sound, for he took a step backwards, miscalculated, clutched at the handrail to avoid falling.
'Zach—'
'Don't hurt me, Laura. Please.'
His hair poured into her hands like rich black cream.
*****
There were three of them in a smoke-filled storeroom. Seated on a wooden crate, the younger lad was drinking from a mug of coffee while clutching some papers—black-and-white photoprints, it looked like. Spread on a low table was a large map of the city. The second lad, at a guess a few years older than Zach, glanced up from highlighting something near the Fulgur campus with a fluorescent marker, a high-end palmer in his hand. He frowned, but with far less hostility than the girl, who stubbed out her cigarette in the overflowing ashtray and snarled, 'What the fuck is she doing here?' She slammed her laptop shut, then rose and positioned herself close to Zach, touching him repeatedly, ostentatiously—on his hand, his shoulder, the crook of his elbow. Zach made an effort to be polite, but finally jerked back and muttered something to her under his breath when she went too far and fingered a strand of his hair. Afterwards she kept her distance, bu
t her eyes never left Laura.
Eyes whose unsettling nature neither long black lashes nor heavy makeup could disguise. Simus, all three of them. Laura tried to act as though they were about to break out the crisps and cokes, rad up a game, but she was sure that Zach was aware of her nervousness—and perhaps the older bloke, who said, not unkindly, 'Welcome to our humble paddock.' Then he jabbed the text marker in the girl's direction. 'Cut it, Jess. Let's hear what Zach's got to say.' But the younger lad muttered 'It had better be good' and dropped the photos facedown onto the map, fanning them out to cover most of its surface.
Zach took his time, first fetching coffee from the flask, then offering Laura a doughnut from a carton. She accepted one, it could be useful to hide behind a full mouth. While he introduced everyone, she noted the shelves of catering tins and supplies, the packing crates, the butcher's hooks, the bulky space heater which explained the almost stifling warmth. With its herringbone-bricked floor and triple-arched ceiling, the storeroom would have made an intimate jazz club, and even now, the odd pieces of furniture and broken tools wouldn't have detracted from its cosiness if it hadn't been for the undercurrents in the room, the feeling that she was going to need her most powerful stroke.
'Laura's the one who found the boy,' Zach said. 'She wants to help.'
Why the hell didn't he warn me? Laura thought. And ignored the tart response Olivia would have made. Though fresh, the doughnut was too sugary, Laura could hardly choke down the first bite.
'How?' Miles asked, his voice loud, just short of belligerent. 'She's a damned monkey.'
Zach moved to stand close to Laura, their shoulders brushing.
'Her dad's a top neuro at Fulgur.'
'You're mad!' Jessica said.
'I trust her,' Zach said.
'Yeah, right,' sneered Jessica, but was prevented from further eloquence by a muffled thump behind the shelf-lined wall. The room went still. Which enabled Laura to hear the groaning that followed, faint but unmistakable.