The Pattern Maker

by Nicholas Lim

  “It was.”

  “Did you always want children?” Zahra bent her head to select an objective lens.

  Garrett studied Zahra a moment. She put a test tube back in a rack.

  “Yes.”

  “And was the pregnancy planned?”

  “No.”

  “So did you think about not having it?”

  Garrett watched Zahra peer into the microscope.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever regretted it?”

  Garrett thought about the pain of the last two years, the violent arguments and brief, stilted phone calls. “No never.”

  Zahra sighed. “Of course not. That's what every mother says.” Her fingers whitened where one hand gripped the lab bench. She looked up at Garrett. “I'm pregnant.”

  When Garrett said nothing, Zahra swung away from the microscope. “It was an accident! And it's such bad timing!”

  “Why?”

  “I'm not ready.” Zahra looked around the lab then at Garrett. “Did you feel ready?”

  Garrett smiled. “No.”

  “I'm too young. Plus, the father–” Zahra stopped speaking.

  “What does he say?”

  Zahra snorted. “He doesn't want to know. My mother says we've got to get married but even if he would, I don't even like him! She says I don't realise how hard it is raising a child, that I won't cope on my own. Do you think that's true?”

  “It is hard. But mothers usually find a way. How far along are you?”

  “I'm twenty-one weeks!” Zahra glanced at the clock, as if she was in a race. “I feel sick all the time! And my dad! He's the worst! You know he called me a slut. He says abortion is haram, forbidden.” Zahra put a hand on her stomach. She looked at Garrett. “He says I'll go to hell. Do you think I'll go to hell?”

  “No.”

  Bryce stepped into the lab. “Still here?”

  Zahra bent towards Garrett and whispered, “Please don't mention anything.” She turned off her microscope and stood up. “Yes I'm late! Home time.”

  “Has George fixed you up somewhere to stay yet?” Bryce asked Garrett.

  “Yes.” Garrett nodded once at Zahra. “It was good of him.”

  “It’s the least we can do. We have the facilities. Lots of researchers stay over. And it'll save you a three-hour commute.”

  “He said South Row?”

  “I'll walk you over. Be good to get some fresh air.”

  Garrett took a deep breath. It was a relief to be able to look up and see distant objects and the horizon beyond walls. She could smell dust and grass. The time in the containment lab with its elaborate isolation and investigation apparatus seemed like a voyage in some alien craft.

  The long summer's day was over but the memory of heat was still in the ground. Bryce guided Garrett through Porton Down’s campus-like area of tree-lined lawns and regimental buildings. He had promised a short walk to her accommodation.

  A few late-leaving cars rolled slowly around curving access roads, their paired headlights gleaming in the twilight. Two cyclists glided ahead of them like low-flying insects, wheel spokes flashing like light trembling on water, silent except for the greeting tinkle of a bell. All the movements of the evening seemed to have adapted to the tired end of a long day. Garrett curbed a childish impulse to swing her arms and break into a run. She reached up to massage the back of her neck.

  “Lab work can be tiring,” Bryce said. His Welsh lilt deepened and rolled his rrrs.

  “It’s good to be out.”

  “It’s easy to lose track of time down in those labs. They’re like casinos. White light and stale air.”

  He veered to his right, and steered Garrett by the elbow around a dip in the pavement. He raised an arm to point across her chest. Grassland, visible between buildings, rolled to the horizon like a grey sea. “Up here you can breathe.”

  They walked silently together a while. Bryce took a spur road out towards a line of buildings on the campus perimeter. High and flowering grasses bordered the road, a vast hay meadow gone wild. Occasional chalk outcrops showed through the vegetation like scars, or patches of baldness.

  “Rheinnalt – that’s northern Welsh?”

  “Very good. My family are originally from Ceredigion, that’s on the North West coast. I go back when I can. Most weekends.”

  “That’s a lot. I suppose there isn’t much research work around Cardigan Bay.”

  “You’d be surprised–” For a moment Garrett believed him, then was astonished at herself. Bryce smiled. “No.”

  “Of course that’s no excuse. To the true Welsh I’m a traitor for leaving. But then, as my ma used to say, Y mae dafad ddu ym mhob praidd.”

  When Garrett looked at him, he added, “Every flock has its black sheep.”

  “How long have you been working here?”

  “Couple of years.”

  “What brought you?”

  “I was already working with George on some outsourced research. A position came up.” Bryce smiled. “I'm not the saluting type. You can probably tell. But I'm on a civilian contract and the facilities here are the best.”

  Bryce started describing equipment. Garrett considered how men liked to show women how their toys worked, and stopped a smile.

  “I’m boring you.”

  Garrett shook her head. “No, I’m sorry. I've been thinking about what you said about Mendel, about the dangers... Somehow, I can't shake off the feeling that something is happening, something we don't know about yet.”

  “Something unseen? Sounds a bit superstitious to me. Have you any evidence?”

  “Yes, okay I deserved that,” Garrett’s brief grin faded. She turned her head. To the west, a single thunderhead rose tall and white on the horizon.

  Garrett recognised a cumulonimbus, the tallest of all clouds, full of rain and ice. She estimated the cloud base at around three thousand feet, the top perhaps thirty thousand or higher, shorn off flat by high wind. Above ten thousand feet or so the cloud would be pure ice crystals.

  “I had a dream last night.” Garrett kept her eyes on the distant cloud. “I was back in my kindergarten playground. It was break time. One of the boys had a box of matches. While I was watching him playing, I noticed his arms were covered in thin scales. When I looked closer I saw his skin was made of matches. I looked at myself and my friends. We all were. The teachers were made of larger sticks, of explosives. And the ground and school buildings were pure phosphorous. And this little boy was striking match after match after match, trying to light one. I ran towards him, shouting, calling out, but he couldn't hear me. Then I saw his face. It was Jason, my son. I screamed. Then I woke up.”

  “It was a catastrophe dream,” Bryce said quietly. “A projection of fear.”

  “It was horrible.”

  “I know you feel strongly about this case. I don't understand why exactly, but–”

  “When I did the autopsy, I saw something on Paul Fletcher's body.” Garrett stopped speaking. Bryce led the way towards an isolated row of houses facing fields. She liked the way he didn't feel the need to fill each silence.

  “He had a tattoo on his right shoulder. It was an eye, stylised. I recognised it. It's a logo.”

  “Of a brand you mean?”

  “No, it’s the sign of a religious organisation.”

  “What religion?”

  “Well, it’s more of a cult.”

  “What's it called?”

  “Asari.”

  “How did you recognise it?”

  “Jason my son is a member.”

  Bryce nodded. “I understand. Of course. Your interest in this case is natural.”

  Garrett frowned.

  “You're afraid for your son.”

  Bryce shook his head slightly. The glints from his glasses kept time to the soft, steady rhythms of his speech.

  “Yes, I’m worried about him – and if he’s in trouble I’m worried he won’t call. There's a distance between us right now.” Garrett
looked away. “Sometimes I think it's my fault, because I didn’t… I can’t listen the way he needs me to."

  “The mother-son bond is very hard to break.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It is the strongest relationship we have – so it’s natural. I understand your fear. But you mustn’t worry.”

  “I can’t stop.”

  Bryce was silent, for once without a ready answer. When he spoke again it was with unusual reserve. “Sometimes understanding isn’t enough is it? Seeing effects and tracing causes – it doesn’t always change how we feel.”

  They walked together side by side. She kept her eyes on the pavement in front of her.

  “What did you mean, ‘The dark always passes?’” Garrett said. Bryce was silent for a long while. Garrett wondered if she'd offended him.

  "Missing people can be one of the hardest things we bear, don't you think?” Bryce spoke softly, as if from far away. “And if your pain separates you, you become divided, always a fraction of yourself. But when you face your fears,” he turned slightly towards her, “the loss, the dark passes."

  Again Garrett sensed the curious intensity Skinner had mentioned and wondered why she didn’t mind.

  “Back there in the lab, in the dark when the lights went out, you were strong even though you were frightened. You faced your fear. That took courage. I felt it.” Bryce hesitated, for once awkward, and Garrett liked him for it.

  “We haven’t known each other long, Christine. But perhaps we share more than we realise. I have been through my own dark times. You know, our fears don’t have to be faced alone.”

  He stopped at the first gate in a knee-high picket fence bordering a row of crew-cut lawns. Crazy-paved paths led up to a line of semi-detached houses with pebble-dashed walls. It was as if one side of a sixties suburban street had been picked up, flown cross-country and dropped into a field.

  “Here we are.”

  Bryce indicated the first house, distinguished from the others by its size and build. A leaded fanlight gleamed above the door. “You'll be comfortable. I’ve stayed a few times here myself.”

  “Thank you.” Garrett unlocked the front door.

  Bryce hesitated then entered first. “I’ll check the utilities for you.”

  Adjoining rooms were furnished but empty as a hotel suite. A carpet covered the wooden hallway floor. It was expensive. Garrett counted eleven colours in the intricate floral patterns.

  “There's tidy then,” Bryce returned from the kitchen. “Well I'll say goodnight.”

  “Goodnight.” She noted a twelfth colour. She waited.

  Bryce turned in a slow circle. “Do you like it? It’s Persian.”

  Garrett held the knotted repeats of leaves and flowers whole in her mind. The pattern was soothing. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Although it looks perfectly symmetrical, it isn’t.” Bryce began walking the perimeter of the carpet. “There is in fact a deliberate error–”

  “–in Islam, it is blasphemous,” Garrett picked up the thread unbroken, “to create perfection.”

  Bryce smiled at her. Garrett looked away and said, “It’s actually a common weaver’s superstition. Found also in Native American spirit beading and the quilter's humility square.”

  “I didn’t know that but somehow I’m not surprised you do.” He placed his left foot beside a tulip design the size of a small hand. The stem was crooked. “A concealed flaw. Appropriate, no?”

  “To what?” Reluctant but wishing to see, Garrett came to look more closely.

  “Isn’t that what you do?” His voice dropped. “Search for the patterns and breaks?” Bryce stepped behind her. His aftershave smelled of cut grass. The muscles in her back tensed. “Search for order in the muddle of things?” Garrett felt his hands on her waist. She held still.

  “Find beetles in the dark?”

  Bryce turned her gently to face him. Garrett wondered if we always remember where we are first touched. David had held her chin first. She shook her head.

  “Don’t.”

  The reflection in his glasses, too bright, confused Garrett for a moment. Then she saw his eyes, half-closed, as if focussed on a distant object. They seemed to see through her. He brought a finger to her lips. “Shhh.”

  “Don’t Rheinnalt.”

  Bryce’s eyes still had a faraway look. She wondered if he were dreaming. Slowly he leaned forward to kiss her, his movements like a man under water.

  “Shhh.”

  Unhurried, eyes still half-closed, he reached for her chin.

  Her slap was harder than she intended, and loud in the hallway.

  “I–”

  He stepped back, shook his head. She watched his eyes widen and focus. There was a red mark on his cheek. A look – was it sorrow? or a queer kindness? – passed over his face.

  “Don't be afraid Christine.”

  He took another step back. He smiled at her. She didn’t want him to speak, but when he did his voice was kind.

  “If you wait the dark always passes.”

  When she said nothing he spoke again, his voice falsely light, “I’m sorry. I–”

  He stopped. She felt his awareness of her grow sharper still. His body thickened as it absorbed her anger. He inclined his head and stepped off the carpet.

  “I understand. Don’t worry, I won’t bother you again. Good night.”

  His heels sounded bare wood then stone. Garrett waited a long while before she stepped to the door. The front garden was deserted. There was no-one on the access road. She rubbed the side of her waist where he had held her.

  Damn.

  She sat on the front step and watched the sun set over the grasslands. To the west, the distant thunderhead caught the last of the light. From the cloud’s base Garrett could see protruding mammatus, the strange appendages that indicated the atmosphere was unstable; they meant rain. The cloud glowed darkly red.

  It was time to go back to Brighton, back to field work. She would leave in the morning.

  Chapter 17

  The morning light threw shadows without edges across the walls of the cell. Cracks branched against a damp sky of plaster. The breathing of a family repeated in sighs from under coarse blankets in a steel-framed bunk bed.

  Professor Stephen Richardson knew in the bunk above him his daughter Adele had her pillow pulled round over her ears. His wife lay beside him hands folded across her chest, her body not touching his. What time was it? Eight? Coming up to nine? He reflected he hadn’t slept in this much since a student. Undergraduate days. Happy days, when they were young and energetic and free, with nothing forbidden, everything possible.

  Whispered words replayed in his head on a loop. An outbreak. In England. The south coast. His eyes climbed the cracks in the wall. Sweat seeped into the stale bedding as his thoughts circled again, around his wife lying silent beside him, his child above, the surrounding walls of the cell, the compound, the world outside, London, England. He was helpless in the face of the impending catastrophe.

  He blinked hard, trying not to feel sorry for himself. He thought of propagation speeds and population densities, of international airports and hub cities. Beneath the sheets his fingers closed and opened like claws in time with his shortening, shallow breaths. The warning words from a famous confession repeated silently in his ears. “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most were silent.” Oppenheimer’s words continued, a relentless whisper. “When you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead and do it and you argue about what to do about it after.”

  Could the rumour be a lie? No. Whatever else he was, Osei was not a liar; and he would know first. Richardson tried to regain control of his breathing. He unclenched his fingers, forced his thoughts beyond paralysis, beyond the cell walls.

  His eyes focussed on a series of three-letter words scratched on the plaster wall by his head. CAT, GAG, TAG, ACT. Not quite anagrams. Nearly. He closed his eyes again.

&
nbsp; “Daddy?”

  His wife rose from the bed. Richardson followed. He swayed on his feet, rubbed the hair on the back of his head where his scalped itched. His daughter was half-hidden at the back of the top bunk. She peered at him over her pillow.

  “Morning Adele.”

  A metal desk, a chair, and the wide double bunk bed stood on a concrete floor. The otherwise-bare room was lit by a single fluorescent tube in the ceiling and the morning light from a barred window. Through the bars the geodesic roof of the House of Healing was visible. Above it Richardson could see the steel chimney stack of the lab where he worked.

  He watched his wife get dressed. He noticed she moved like an old woman in the mornings now. She sat down at the table, straightened her back, settled her hands in her lap and stared at the wall in front of her.

  “Daddy.”

  Richardson smiled. “Yes Adele?”

  “Yesterday Mummy made me go through all my alphabet. Ten times. One-oh times. A, B, C, D… She says I have to do it every day.” She swung her long yellow hair back and forward in a slow pendulum motion, “Do I?”

  Richardson tried to improve on his smile. His daughter’s voice filled him with worry. She was seven years old, going on four. The regression appeared to be accelerating. She emerged from behind her pillow and began to climb down from the bunk. Her mother looked up.

  “Yes Adele.” The order was flat, emotionless as a speaking clock.

  The young girl looked at her father then climbed back quickly into bed. Richardson wanted to go over to comfort but he knew his wife would forbid it.

  Muffled words sounded through the cell door. “Five minutes Sikanda!”

  He dressed.

  “Is that my breakfast I see? Just let me eat Adele.”

  Richardson crossed to the table where his wife sat and an uneaten plate of food waited. Thirty-year-old habits turned his face. His wife remained motionless.

  “I had to stay late in the lab,” Richardson said softly. “Thank you for saving the food.”

  “It was brought by the guard.”

  There was no place for him at the table. Richardson took the plate over to the window and ate standing. A white trail of exhaust drifted away across the morning sky from the steel chimney stack. Richardson watched the faint constellations hang in their places in the lightening sky. Somewhere behind him he could hear his wife cough.