by L. Lee Lowe
'I'll see to it,' Nigel said, getting to his feet.
'That's my job,' Zach said. 'She'll have to know.'
The argument was brief, and entirely silent. Laura dropped the doughnut onto a dirty plate and followed Zach into the passage. Unlocking the door to the adjoining room, he entered before her and flipped on an overhead light.
'Zach, no.'
'He deserves much worse.'
Slowly the man dropped his arm, which he'd used to shield his eyes from the sudden glare. He was lashed to a metal bedstead by a nylon rope around his waist, its ends fused, but otherwise he could move about freely—if that was the right word, Laura thought grimly, in the metre or so of space remaining. It looked as if he couldn't reach the light switch. There was a covered enamel bucket, from the stench obviously serving as a toilet, and even a roll of loo paper. Bottles of water, food on a tray. Warm clean clothes.
'Auger's cunt,' the man said, and spat at his feet. Perhaps he didn't dare to aim better. Or knew he wouldn't have the strength to do the job properly.
Expression grim, Zach moved in, and Laura expected him to strike the man. Instead, Zach peeled a long strip from the loo roll, wiped away the gob of spit, and dropped the twice-folded paper into the bucket, his movements as precise as ever. And then she thought he must be trying to impress her, because he crouched in front of the prisoner with the words, 'Go on, spit in my face. That's what you really want to do.'
Their eyes locked, the man's bleary with spite and fear and solitary confinement; Zach's, unblinking as only his kind's could be. The man worked his lips, tethered now by more than fibre.
Laura's mouth filled with spit, and she swallowed hard, afraid of throwing up. 'Sod this,' she muttered, and left Zach to his games.
Zach found her seated on the bottom step, head on her knees. When he squatted to address her, tucking his hands under his arms, she looked up and gave a humourless laugh. 'I suppose you'll challenge me to spit in your face now, too.'
The storeroom door opened, and Nigel peered out at them. 'Everything under control?'
Zach waved him back, and Laura noticed that his hand was trembling. She took it before he could thrust it out of sight again.
'I'm sorry,' she said. 'I shouldn't have said that.'
'I'd like to kill him. Slowly. Very slowly.'
'The boy?'
'Yeah. And god knows how many others.'
She brought his palm up to her cheek, careful not to kiss it. He closed his eyes for a moment.
'What are you going to do with him?' Laura asked.
'What would you have me do?'
'The police—'
Zach made an exasperated sound in his throat, snatching his hand away. He rose and paced to the end of the passage, returned, moved off again. Once he stopped at the door to their headquarters, but after glancing back at her, let go of the handle. He strode towards her again, bearing down fast, fast and hard, and her breath caught in her throat. I'll fight him, she thought. I want to fight him.
It took him several passes before he'd worked off enough of his agitation to stand before her, and even so, the walls could hardly contain his words. They splattered against her skin—angry, crimson.
'Do you have any idea what it's like?' he cried.
'The police?'
'Hatred.'
Laura rose to her feet. 'Let him go, Zach.' He gesticulated in frustration, but she avowed as much for herself as for him, 'You're no hater.'
'If I'm not, then I ought to be! You people have given me enough lessons.'
Reaching into his pocket, he flung something at her feet. She stared at him, then down at the floor, then back at Zach.
'What is it?' she asked.
He scooped up the folded piece of paper and started to shove it back into his pocket, but she intercepted his movement.
'Don't,' he said. 'I didn't mean for you to see it.'
But he didn't stop her when she unfolded the sheet. A crude, ugly drawing with the usual threats. Slowly she refolded it.
'It's not hatred. It's ignorance and—' she said.
'Hatred,' he said flatly. Wearily.
He watched her as she put the note into her own pocket.
'Maybe you'd better go,' he said. 'Before . . .' His eyes slid towards the storeroom door.
'No.'
'Then I hope you're prepared to be reviled.' His voice shook. 'To be despised every day, every single fucking endless day.' Dropped to a whisper. 'To look into someone's eyes and want him to spit at you.'
One step, then her hands at his waist. His on her shoulders. The single quaver of the snap, the uneven chromatic slide of the zip. His skin warm under her fingers. A resonant crescendo. Tentative fingerings, needing practice.
But the score was still too difficult.
'No!' he exclaimed, taking her wrists.
She felt the fiery flush of shame and tried to turn away, but he wouldn't let her go. Drew her close again, resting his cool forehead against hers. She listened to the singing of his blood, the drumming of his heart as, gradually, he brought his breath back to a settled tempo.
'Not here,' he murmured. 'Not like this.'
Chapter 16
One of the dogs is lame.
'We'll have to go back,' Lev says. 'That, or shoot her.'
'Can't we splint it?' Zach asks.
'She'll never keep up.'
'Or camp here till it heals?'
Lev wipes his goggles with a gloved hand, then with a dissatisfied frown lifts them to gaze out over the pack ice. They've taken the shortest route from a spit of embayed ice towards the opposite shore, after discussing the delay that travelling along the coast would entail. A stiff wind is blowing, numbing their faces through the thermal masks, and it has already begun to snow—thin stinging flakes which catch on Zach's lips and eyelids like barbed crystals whenever he slips off his goggles. Most of his kind struggle with the cold. To outrun the weather had been one of those good ideas which are so compelling at the time. But Zach is coming to appreciate that no one and nothing defeats the ice.
'Can't you do something?' Zach asks.
'Like what?'
Zach turns so that his back takes the brunt of the wind. His breath fogs in front of him, though not for long. It too seems to freeze into brittle particles, some of which find their way into his lungs.
'Like whatever it is you do.'
Lev laughs. 'A tropical paradise? I'm flattered, but geo-engineering is best left to the experts, and world-building to your novelists. You overestimate my capabilities.'
'And you, my patience.'
'Fine. Have a temper tantrum, if you think it'll help.'
Zach would like to stalk off, but he'd probably land on his arse—and where would he go? Strange, in the real world where it might matter, he can't bother to be accommodating, and here in electronic lalaland, he's learning circumspection. He rubs a hand across his chest.
'Still hurts?' Lev asks sympathetically.
'Some. It doesn't help to breath crushed glass.'
Lev nods. 'OK, we'll get you out of the cold soon.'
'How? It's hours back to basecamp.'
Lev turns and peers again into the distance, but visibility is poor in the absence of moonlight.
'We need to get off the pack ice,' he says. 'We're courting trouble with the wind picking up like this.'
It doesn't feel as though they're moving, but Zach remembers from his reading that displacement is mostly imperceptible on larger floes. Sea ice shifts erratically before the wind, often breaking loose from the pack and leaving any inadvertent hitcher stranded. A polar bear or walrus could swim, but neither he nor the dogs would last more than a few minutes in such water. As to Lev . . . anybody's guess.
Yet Lev is alarmed, and making no attempt to conceal it. He pushes back his hood, pulls off his mask, and tilts his head to listen intently. Despite layers of insulation and the obstinate wind, Zach too can hear the constant creak and groan and fretful grumble of the ice as it adjusts
and readjusts itself like a bedridden patient beset by sores.
'Wait here,' Lev says. 'I'll be right back.'
He dons his mask and strides off as if heading for the next bus stop. From his own attempts to walk boldly, Zach can tell that Lev has a very long acquaintanceship with snow—a bit like a sailor's sea legs. Within a few seconds Lev has disappeared, leaving Zach alone with the dogs.
Still in harness, the injured husky is curled up on the ice, while her team-mates are nosing about as if sensing Zach's restlessness. To unhitch them means risking a chase, for even when tired, huskies will run at will . . . and run . . . and run. The snow is gradually thickening into big fluffy flakes which melt on the dogs' coats. Zach puts out his tongue and catches one, remembering. Laura liked to say they taste like fresh-cut lemons. But this one has no flavour; perhaps his tongue is numb.
He crouches by the lame animal, whose eyes are a brilliant gold-flecked green. Has any of the programmers ever seen a husky? Mishaal can be damned snarky—sly almost—something's going on there, he's made more than a couple of cracks about Fabio's 'fuck me' eyes. You don't like to think about how close you yourself came . . . Can Lev sense physical stuff, that first sweet quickening? Incredible, that Max has remained so . . . so innocent. Yeah, fuckme eyes, green to fuck all greens.
Except that memory intensifies as it fades. The things we imagine become a vivid presence, daring to quicken where there is no flesh, to sicken where no virus. Zhou dreamt of a quantum consciousness—'a mind able to speak the language of God,' he'd said to appease the religionists. Laura's grandfather would condemn Fulgur from his pulpit—stone his own son-in-law—at the slightest hint of what they're up to, yet Zach can't even heal a ligament tear in the primitive neuroelectronic circuitry of the Fulgrid. 'I daydream about a better interface,' Andy once revealed in frustration. 'What Randall's geniuses know about cyberspace will someday be the equivalent of creationism.' Zach shivers and glances over his shoulder, strokes the dog's head, digs his fingers into her pelt. This place has become so alien that he's glad of any contact with a living creature—a familiar species. At home he sees as few people as possible, wanting only to be left alone. Here you find out tripletime about self-delusions. The ice lies like a cold-blooded mirror beneath the skin of snow.
As the minutes pass, Zach becomes perturbed, then agitated almost to the point of monkeydo panic. What if Lev has gone off for reasons of his own? Or if something has happened to him? No one is invulnerable, he'd learned that soon enough with Laura.
He springs up and stares blindly into the rising snowstorm. 'Lev,' he hears himself shouting. 'Lev!'
'You're not going to find her that way.'
Zach whirls, nearly losing his balance. Lev is directly behind him.
'What?' Zach asks stupidly.
'You were calling for Laura.'
Zach shakes his head. 'No, I was . . .' His voice trails off. What difference would it make?
'Stay with the dogs. Talk to them. I don't want to unnerve them.'
'What's going on?'
'The ice is breaking up ahead. We're going to have to abandon Leila.'
Working swiftly now, Lev attaches a line to the beautiful husky, separates her from her companions, and extracts what can only be some sort of handgun from a pack on the dogsledge. Before Zach has a chance to protest, Lev gestures beyond their rapidly shrinking field of view.
'There's a lead ahead. Open water. I prefer not to leave her body exposed.'
Zach's surprise at such sentimentality is short-lived.
'Somebody's stalking us,' Lev explains.
'Who?'
But Lev has already been swallowed up by the snow.
Chapter 17
Stella had been the only person allowed to trim Zach's hair till Laura offered to take over the task. This once, however, Stella insisted on plunking him down on a kitchen chair in her back room and draping a towel round his shoulders. 'You tell that girl of yours to keep it trimmed real good. Fact is, I'm going to take off a couple of extra inches, and I want you to think about a proper short cut like the other lads.'
He laughed. 'A skin job, you mean?'
'Fancy I nick some? You hold still now. And no more of your larking, I'm dead serious. It's high time you stopped this hair nonsense. You're a man, a man with responsibilities, not some sort of witchdoctor whose powers sprout from his scalp. Next thing you know, you'll start thinking you can shatter rocks with your baby blues or raise the dead or fly. Like one of them net characters, you know the ones I mean, fake as a tart's orgasm, what do you call them?'
'Avatars?'
'Yeah, avatars.'
'No worry. My eyes aren't blue.'
She snorted, then snipped away in silence till her mobile trilled from the shopfront. While she was gone, Zach got up to fetch a broom and began sweeping the hair together, only to pause mid-pass at the sight of the manky stray she'd recently adopted—or more accurately, who had adopted her—crouching under the radiator with something that was still moving, still alive. 'What have you got there, Ra?' He dropped to a knee, and the cat fled, abandoning his meal. It was left to Zach to manoeuvre the twitching, mangled, near-dead thing out with his broom. He sat back on his heels, regarding the creature half in disgust, half in fascination. What in god's name was it? At first glance it appeared to be a bird, a largish crow maybe, but Zach wasn't ornithologist enough to classify it on the basis of its body alone. For its head—that head! Tiny simian features, hairless and earless, mouth working as if mewling soundlessly, eyes already dulling like a stone when the tide retreats.
A shadow fell over him. From behind Stella reached out, snatched the thing up, and with one quick twist wrung its neck.
'An abomination,' she said.
For a while neither spoke. Then Zach asked, 'Where the hell did that come from?'
'You need to ask? And if we don't put a stop to it, there'll be more and more of them.' She crossed herself, something he'd never known her to do, then wrapped the corpse in several sheets of newspaper, dropped it into a lidded bucket, and washed her hands at the basin. 'I'll burn it out back later on.'
'It's going to take a lot more than graffiti and a couple of websites to stop the Fulgur juggernaut.'
'Exactly.'
*****
The first bomb detonated in a call box near the main gate to the Fulgur campus—harmlessly, TV news reports claimed, but word sped round the internet about the black tail and single white-booted cat's paw, now tinged pink, that needed to be scraped from the buckled pavement. The second bomb blew up an unoccupied cherry-red Lamborghini in the executive carpark, which at school was deemed to have served its owner right, since nobody over the age of thirty had any business driving such a sexy car, particularly a smug-arse Fulgur division head who would have done better to spend his extra cash on anti-dandruff shampoo, a reliable brand of deodorant, and lifetime membership in a fitness club.
The third bomb killed three people, one of them a five-month old baby.
Olivia caught up with Laura after Mandarin. 'I've got to talk to you.'
'What's the sudden push?' Laura asked. 'There are only two more lessons till lunch.'
Olivia moved closer to avoid the kids milling around them in the corridor. 'The canteen's no place for important stuff—private stuff. What are you doing after school?'
'Training.'
'Can't you skip it? This is urgent.'
'I don't know . . .' Janey had been pretty understanding lately, but Laura wondered just how far she dared test her coach's patience. Though her times hadn't suffered yet, they hadn't made much improvement, either. With the regional trials looming, there could be some serious rack if she missed any more sessions. 'Best not. Janey's going to be very—'
'After school by the wall. It's about that bloody Zach.' When Laura tightened her lips into a fair imitation of her mother's, Olivia hissed at her, 'Just be there,' then hurried away without a backward glance as the bell rang.
Despite the swipe cards, mos
t everyone knew how to manipulate the system to skive off lessons. Zach had started pitching up at school again, though he and Laura took good care never to meet alone, never to speak, never even to exchange glances in public. But Laura was always aware of his presence, warm as a gossamer shawl round her shoulders. He wasn't there today, which in itself wouldn't have worried her, not yet, if it hadn't been for Olivia. Before lunch Laura ducked out of the building and headed for Zach's flat. She had a key, and she'd used the cellar entrance before.
Zach wasn't in. Laura hadn't really expected him to be, but it was the first place to look. Usually tidy, almost compulsively so, he'd left three red socks on the floor next to his bed, one of them draped over her favourite chocolate bar. She smiled to herself, he was always trying to get her to eat.
One sock, get out fast; two, go to Stella's; three, wait for me. Kicking off her trainers, she peeled back the wrapper and took a bite of chocolate. Imagined them sharing the bar. Imagined . . . no, they weren't going there. Not till—but here's where she always back-pedalled. Not till what? She didn't want to spend her life with someone like Owen, did she? He could be sweet, but . . . he could be so . . . Christ, then what was she doing with him?
Annoyed at herself now, she tossed the chocolate bar down on the bedside cabinet, and picking up the remote, switched on the TV. She was pulling her fleece jumper over her head—the neck was too tight, the stupid thing always caught on her ears—when her ears caught the gist of the broadcast. Ripping the jumper free to the sound of a seam giving way, she stared at the screen. At the chaotic scene unfolding in the iconic glass-domed foyer at Fulgur. Then she sank to the floor, her hands gripping her forearms.
. . . from the blast which rocked one of the neurocognitive research laboratories just before noon . . . all buildings on the campus evacuated as a precaution . . . CEO Randall shortly to issue a statement . . . terrorist attack . . . no one yet claiming responsibility . . . at least three people killed . . . more than a dozen casualties . . . critically injured . . . no confirmation of exact death toll . . . Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Livingstone . . . released as soon as possible . . .