Corvus

  'Is that how you know?' Rafi asked, a slight edge to his voice. 'A brother or sister, a cousin maybe?'

  'Not exactly.'

  'Then how?' The edge sharpened on the whetstone of their hardscrabble lives. For all her gifts, Leonie was still a young child who sensed more than she always understood.

  'There was a girl—' He glanced sideways at Zadie. 'My girl, till the accident.' A gust of wind stirred the embers, sifting ash over the plates of meat, wafting chalky swarf into his face so that he was forced to blink several times in rapid succession. 'At least that's what the police called it when they closed the case.'

  With a soft gasp Leonie shucked her thumb, but Rafi didn't even look her way. 'Right, boet,' he said, gesturing briskly towards their meal. 'Let's eat.'

  The meat smelled good, but these kids needed every calorie—which lowlife nicked from a beggar's bowl? Gamely Mark and Zadie split a tactful piece, pied crow proving to be gamey but perfectly edible, a bit chewy perhaps. Within a month, they were sharing a flat. Within six months, married. Within a year, she was pregnant with Zach.

  *****

  It wouldn't be till his stay in Cape Town that Zach learned of his parents' role in founding the cognoscens network which by then provided training camps for politicised simus worldwide—nobody, it seemed, could do it better than the South Africans, and drug-money rumours notwithstanding, support from private foundations and wealthy Fulgur rivals (or wannabe rivals like flamboyant biotronics magnate Leo Chandra) kept the Scorpions from making any key arrests. At the outset Mark's confidence matched Rafi's, but he'd not grown up with knives and taped pipes as his cricket bats; muggings, his test matches. A single disembodied incident might not have done it, but when Leonie was found dismembered on the strand, crows already feeding, something broke inside him, tore loose like a bough in a gale. He stopped writing. He stopped surfing. One evening from the shelter of their veranda Zadie watched him drag driftwood into a heap just beyond the dunes and set it ablaze, standing so close that she feared for his hair, his eyebrows, his skin. She didn't interfere when he emptied a sack of crows—five, six, nine, maybe ten, where had he collected so many?—onto the flames, the stench nothing like the smell of roasting meat. Next morning at the corner shop she was forced to tell old Ibrahim a stammered lie, which he was too kindly to dispute. Two days later they had the results of the prenatal genetic workup, and providentially after a tattered night, Chandra's offer of a lectureship. Though Mark's father was dead, and his mother dissuasively remarried to a Californian banker, Mark was relieved to go home. In celebration they bought two dozen oysters, but one look at the first plump and quivering mollusc on its splayed shell, its liquor briny as sweat, and he was unable to sever its lower adductor muscle. They ate a supper of bread, cheese, and sunny mangoes instead.

  *****

  Laura was in and out of Max's room fast enough to have changed into a fleece tracksuit, a good dark green, by the time Zach knocked. 'I'm just about ready,' she said, but he came in and shut the door on the sound of her mother's snoring. Nervously she thrust a hand into the deep right-hand pocket; needn't have bothered. Preoccupied, he circled the room, not quite pacing, not quite breaking off mid-sentence, since he actually said nothing, yet breaking off nevertheless. Couples develop their own duolect, a sort of textese, though in Zach's case often textease; she was obliged to read the message even when there seemed to be no signal.

  His attention fell upon Josh's album, which lay open on her desk. Most of the photos on view were stiff, cheesy poses in front of bazaar or amphitheatre or mosque, sunburnt faces of lads in khaki shorts and sandals who were interchangeable in their anonymity—there were no labels, not even a date—and about as lifelike as an effigy. We hitchhiked everywhere, Josh had said, what a summer. She'd squinted over the pictures trying to recognise him, without success. If the faces of the young are a roadmap of their future, the resolution was too low for her to zoom to the present. Or maybe, quite simply, he was always holding the camera.

  One photo, however, didn't belong to the set. It looked so much like the 'hi, having a great time, wish you were here' postcards people used to send—a recent row had erupted when her mum had clandestinely 'sorted' her dad's overzealous collection—that Laura had prised it from the page to check. It was undoubtedly a photograph: a weathered beachfront cottage, almost a shack, with shaved dunes as front yard. The lush collection of plants in hanging pots and huge terracotta urns offset the slight air of neglect. But what drew the eye, possessed it, were the two glossy ravens perched on a skeletal piece of driftwood near the steps. Heads cocked, they were gazing at the photographer—the viewer—so raptly that everything else faded into insignificance, like an incident not worth recalling. The image didn't look photoshopped. When she asked Josh, he denied any knowledge of it: 'No such photo. Trying to test me, eh? Worried I'm getting senile?' For an old man, his memory was good, his stories about each picture even better (and often ribald), so that he was probably ashamed to admit he'd forgotten.

  'Where did you get this?' Zach asked.

  'It's the album Josh gave me.'

  'But this photo . . .'

  'Strange, isn't it? Beautiful too, looks almost like some art gallery thing.'

  He looked up at her, and she noticed he was beginning to shiver. 'Zach, what is it?' When he didn't answer, she went over to him. 'It's just an old picture, the crows mean nothing. Even Josh can't remember why it's here. I'll throw it away.' She reached for photo, but he stopped her with a brusque grip.

  'No, you don't understand. I know this place. I've been there.'

  'You have? Where is it?' His shivering was worsening. 'Zach?'

  With a harsh sound he shrugged away and crossed the room to lower himself onto her bed. She gave the photo one last look, then marched to his side. She wasn't in the mood for patience.

  'Look, I'm leaving for the Rex. Stay here and shiver till you feel like talking.'

  He raised his head, a welcome flash of anger loosening his tongue. 'It's near Cape Town. They took me to see it while I was there.'

  'So that's where the parcel came from.'

  He nodded. 'Yeah, it was stupid of me, I suppose, but I couldn't help myself.'

  'A snowflake from South Africa, how droll.'

  'Actually, it snows sometimes on Table Mountain, elsewhere in the mountains too.' He gestured in a way that she understood, and she took his hand. His fingers were cold. 'My parents'—a deep breath—'my parents lived for a while in that cottage before I was born. I don't understand how Josh could have a photo of it.'

  'Ask him, maybe he'll remember.'

  They were quiet for a few minutes, then both spoke at once.

  'We'd best get going before my mum—'

  'About Ben—'

  His grip tightened so that she knew to give him this interlude. Max, she thought, if you can hear me, we're on our way, we'll get you out of there, those bastards will believe Zach, he's pretty fucking amazing. Without releasing his hand, she crouched before him. 'The Ben you dream about?' Still he didn't speak, though he met her eyes with the look of a small boy who's begun his recorder solo—his chance, thoroughly rehearsed, to shine onstage in front of his parents—then three bars in, loses his place, blanks out, and can't go on. His mum and dad would have been gentle with him afterwards; terribly tender and understanding. 'Zach, who is he? Who's Ben?'

  Softly, as though from a distant slope. 'My little brother.'

  Laura grabbed for his knee with her free hand to steady herself. 'I see. Only a little brother. You don't happen to have a little wife as well? Or a son tucked away who you've forgotten to mention?' Then felt her throat tighten when saw his eyes begin to fill. 'Shit, Zach, I'm sorry.'

  When the burden is too great, a snowpack will fracture and fail, triggering an accumulating avalanche, the rush and roar of it, time unhinged as a slab of the past tears free. Try outrunning it, you'll suffocate or be pulverised under the weighted truncate of memory.

  'I was eleven when
they'—

  *****

  The cupboard under the stairs is dark and dusty and crammed with creepy stuff and the vacuum cleaner smells like Marc's car. It's not a good hiding place, so he pinches his nose to keep from sneezing. Dad shoved him in so fast that Ben burst into tears. Through the door Zach heard Dad hissing at Ben to be quiet, then the sound of a smack. Ben began to howl and Zach, to shiver. Mark never hits his boys, only crude parents need to resort to violence. If the Insects take someone away, what do they do to him? Mum and Dad would never say, exactly. In books they cane pupils in boarding school, though Mum laughed when, goofy years ago, he'd asked about the board. But soon she'd been weeping.

  Now he can hear an angry jumble of voices from the sitting room, now Dad talking the way he talks to a student complaining about a bad mark. Maybe a student whose father is a bigshot, though Mark always says he will not bow to threats whenever Zadie argues with him. So far, he gets his way—'gets away with it,' according to Mum.

  Footsteps. One set going into the kitchen, two sets clattering upstairs, one set lingering in the hall. Zach shuts his eyes and hugs himself to stop the shivering. He holds his breath. What if they've got a simu with them, someone who can hear like him? 'How did they find out?' his mum had cried as she came running in from the studio. His dad, 'We've made the worst mistake you can make about your enemy. Underestimating them.'

  The odd noises from the sitting room have stopped, but Ben is still sobbing, though more quietly.

  Zach's chest feels hot and itchy, he needs to breath. Ten, count to ten, you can hold on that long. Three, four, five. Peeing can wait. Upstairs they're in Ben's room now. They must know about his hearing, why are they so loud?

  —Fucking little freak, where's he hiding?

  His eyelids reddening.

  —They'll slap an e-tattoo on him after this crap.

  His skin prickling.

  —Ought to geld him at the same time.

  His scalp tingling.

  —Quiet, the chief'll hear.

  His head floating. Hold

  —Nah, I know too much about him and his cunts. The mum's a looker, eh? See the tits on her?

  He sucks in a lungful of air, chokes on some spit, sputters, and the door is yanked open.

  'Got him!'

  A hot stream of pee fills his jeans and runs down into his trainers as the man grabs him by the arm and hauls him out. Feet squelching, he's dragged into the sitting room while the pair charge from Ben's room and hurtle downstairs.

  His dad is seated on the piano bench, duct tape binding his arms behind his back, his feet, his mouth. Ben is whimpering and clinging to Mum's leg. They've gagged her too, but only tied her arms. One of the Insects has a gun trained on her. She moans upon seeing Zach and tries to speak, stops straightaway at the warning oath. His dad's eyes shift back and forth between his wife and Zach, back and forth.

  At the sight of his big brother, his hero, his god, Ben cries 'Zach!' and bolts towards him. The shot is loud. With an animal noise his dad launches himself from the stool and falls to the floor, writhing as if caught in a leghold trap and making dreadful sounds in his throat. His mum is keening through the tape but they've seized her now and she can't run. Zach hears hoarse screaming coming from his throat. Then the Insect raises his gun again.

  *****

  —'when they came for me.'

  Zach's voice faded to an unstable silence, a fragile layer of ice over depth hoar which could shear or collapse at any moment. His face was pale, and though he was still shivering, Laura dared not touch him.

  'It took so long for him to die,' Zach said after a while. 'I've never understood that.'

  A person who's drowning can lose consciousness within two minutes; in an avalanche suffocation must take about as long. She took a long breath, and then another, longer one.

  'And your parents?' she asked.

  He stood and went back to her desk, switched on the lamp, fingered the corner of the photo. It might be the only one he had, or at least the only one he knew of. Maybe now he'd open the envelope from his parents.

  He lifted his head to listen, and a few seconds later she heard footsteps on the landing, her dad's which halted briefly at his own bedroom door, his and Molly's, then moved on to Max's room. She pictured her dad switching on the light, looking round hungrily, picking up a T-shirt from the floor, sitting down on the bed, smoothing the hollow from Max's pillow.

  'You once asked me about nightmares.' Zach gave a bitter laugh. 'For years there were only nightmares.'

  'Wasn't there anyone you could talk to? If not a teacher, one of the older simus? And in spite of his ghastly jokes, Josh makes a good listener.'

  Zach's gaze was elsewhere. 'I didn't even know men could do such things to a woman. Probably I'd already heard the word rape, and afterwards at school I certainly read it in this or that book, I was always in the library, but it wasn't till much later that one of the boys explained, and even then it took ages for me to make the connection. To grasp, really grasp, that what happens in books is what I'd seen.'

  'They made you watch?'

  'They made us both watch before they shot my dad.'

  'Oh god.'

  'They made us watch.' His voice breaking, 'Laura, they made us—'

  Keep telling him.

  Chapter 46

  As soon as Zach emerges from the iglu, an icy wind snatches the breath from his lungs. He shuts his eyes and doubles over, gripping his knees till a shout drags him upright. Through his tears he discerns Pani silhouetted against the horizon, gesticulating anxiously. Despite the clouds, colour is returning to the world. Has he really forgotten how beautiful even weak sunlight can be? There, beyond the iglu, lies a low bank of rubble, blushing at its own mounds and crevices. There, the lead sheeted in crumpled purple. And there, shyly, lifting the curtain on the first morning after, the sun. My god, has he been blind! The promise of it has no counterpart in fact. One day he'll not visit Svalbard or Greenland as a tourist. Not walk on the ice, what remains of it. Not listen to the groaning of the distant, dying glaciers. Not scan the tundra for a sign of polar bear. Not shiver except in the chilly breezes of memory. For only here, in Thule, his Thule, is the wind fierce enough to defy the guardian equations of time. 'I'll never let you go,' she said. He turns his face to the punishing wind, wondering how long it would have been before she left; before he'd have wanted her to leave. For only here, in Thule, their Thule, the light itself can sing.

  Then, Zach, you have still not understood the Arctic.

  'Lev?'

  Though Zach peers in all directions, there's no sign of man or bear.

  Pani is nimble-footed, but Zach slips midway across an innocent-looking belt of glossy, meringue-like crust, lands awkwardly on one knee, and while recovering from the jolt of pain, makes out a dull wingbeat overhead which sends him scrambling to his feet.

  'What is it?' Pani asks upon doubling back. 'Some sort of bird?'

  The air quivers as if to the flight of a pterodactyl. They stare into the sky, the black dots which Zach first takes for afterimages from unaccustomed exposure to the sun—simus are particularly susceptible to retinal damage—quickly transforming his blindspots into birds into raptors into paratroopers into a menacing sense of déjà vu. He curses himself for his foolish daydreaming. Even Pani wouldn't make it back to the iglu now, not that it would offer more than a short-lived bulwark against the swarm dropping from the cloud cover. The winged figures swoop straight for them, fifteen of them, twenty, and as they descend, Pani grabs Zach's arm with a soft cry, while Zach at last recalls the source of his dread.

  'No one move!'

  The warning has the opposite effect on Pani, who whirls into a half-crouch, mitt at his feet and panak already grasped in a fist. Zach has barely enough time to wonder how long it takes to perfect such a slick manoeuvre swathed in thick furs before a soundless burst of light sends the boy sprawling.

  'Pani!' Zach dives for him. A second flash of light, this time ai
med at Zach. Though he maintains a desperate hold on consciousness, the sensory overload stuns him, and he just manages not to vomit, not to lose control of his bladder, not to let go of Pani.

  'Another rash stunt, and the boy is dead.'

  Within moments they're surrounded. At a signal from the spokesman, Zach gets slowly, dazedly, to his feet. Pani is still crumpled on the ice. Zach stares at the creatures, trying to make sense of what he sees: tall, graceful men clothed in the thinnest of black bodysuits, masks, and boots, but whose enormous wings, no matter how virtual, pulse with cold-defying life. He's never envied Max his particular gift, but right now an inkling of their intentions would be welcome. These are not the monstrous chimeras of ancient myth, of psychosexual nightmare, of budget flick and massive multiplayer games, but have a fearsome Blakean beauty which confounds him. And then a grim thought: is this how the sapiens see us?

  The same spokesman beckons for Zach to approach.

  'Don't hurt the boy,' he says. 'Please.'

  'That's up to you.' The birdman levels his right hand at Pani, and a weak pulse of light arcs from a fingertip to strike the boy, who jerks slightly and moans.

  'No!' At a peremptory and unbirdlike gesture, 'OK, OK, I'll do whatever you want. Just tell me what it is.' Zach stumbles aside, exaggerating however his weakness.

  'First, your chain.'

  'My what?'

  This time the finger is pointed at Zach's throat, and within a fraction of a second he snatches off the pendant and flings it at the man's feet, then fingers the blister already forming on his skin.

  The man bends to retrieve Laura's pendant. 'We're not inhuman, you know. Those dogs you were fond of—I'd never have removed them if they hadn't been so menacing. Some of the retrogrades cannot seem to tolerate us. And though I genuinely regret the need to deprive you of your keepsake, your age has yet to understand the full nature of entanglement.'