The Quality of Silence

by Rosamund Lupton

  However much breath Ruby forced from her lungs, however perfect her movements and co-ordination of tongue and lips and palate, her voice would remain unheard by her and the world would be silent around her. Since she’d been three years old Ruby had wanted a mirror in every room. Yasmin understood now her need to verify her physical presence in a place.

  They put on their arctic clothes before getting out of the cab. The temperature was no longer the killing cold of the storm but was twenty-five below freezing and it was still dark.

  We’ve got out of the cab and we’re super-stiff, like we’re dolls that have been packed into a too-small box. I bet Dad’s doing what we’re doing, because an aputiak isn’t very big either, so he’ll be stretching and doing jumbo steps too. I’m looking out for animals, but I can’t see much in the dark. And I don’t want to look too hard because I’m scared that I might see the man who’s killing the animals, though he hasn’t emailed us for ages and Mum says she thinks he’s given up now. And anyway the police will be here soon.

  Mum taps me lightly on the shoulder. Her hands in the light from the cab tell me to look up.

  It’s SUPER-COOLIO-AWESOME-SAUCE-BEAUTIFUL!!! There’s gazillions of stars above us and everywhere you look, the roof and walls of the sky glittering and shining. And it’s not like home when you see stars because the thing is, it’s so so dark here. Just dark everywhere you look. Black black black. But in the ginormous sky there’s diamonds and laser-bright dots and thousands of bits of sunlight caught and held up in the sky. Like glitter on velvet and light breaking on glass and they are magic and they are real!

  Mum’s staring up, her head tilted right back and I can see that she’s thinking

  SUPER-COOLIO-AWESOME-SAUCE-BEAUTIFUL!!!

  Yasmin had never seen a night sky as beautiful or as clear and perfect as this one; no man-made light pollution at all, with the air washed clean. During the storm, she’d clung to her belief that Matt was safe. Looking at this extraordinary night sky strengthened her belief. He had survived and the police would find him and they would all be together.

  She searched the sky for Polaris. Since the age of thirteen she’d scanned the night sky, first with binoculars, then later with a telescope and trips to an observatory, and each and every time, in order to orientate herself in relation to the stars, she would first locate Polaris, the constant Pole Star, marker of due north. And she’d feel kinship with the sailors and explorers centuries before who had navigated using this star.

  She found Polaris and it was right above them. She was standing at the top of the planet.

  We’re looking at the sky for a police helicopter and while we do that Mum shows me the Big Dipper and from the Big Dipper how to find a star called Polaris, which shows due north.

  ‘Is that the same as the North Star?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes. We’re at the very top of the Earth, Ruby,’ she says. ‘The world is revolving around us.’

  I laugh, but she says ‘It’s true! Imagine an invisible string going from space – down through where our feet are right now – all the way through the Earth and out again at the bottom, which is the South Pole. The Earth spins on that string, so it really is spinning around us.’

  I love that.

  She’s still staring up at the sky, but her face has got really serious-looking.

  ‘I need to use your laptop, OK?’

  She goes inside and I go after her because I want to tell her something she might not know. Dad told me that when birds migrate they use the North Star to know where they are. Baby birds study the stars in the night sky so they can learn about them. Cross-my-heart true! It’s how they find their way home in the dark. I think she and Dad should compare notes on the super-coolio North Star.

  She’s opened my laptop and is looking at the photo of the poor musk ox all torn apart and now she’s scrolling down to the numbers at the bottom: 68950119 149994621.

  ‘I thought these numbers were linked to the subject numbers, the DSC ones, but they’re not,’ she says. ‘I’d guess that the DSC ones are something to do with a camera file, but these longer numbers are different.’

  She must see that I’m confused because she signs really carefully.

  ‘We divide the Earth up into segments like a peeled satsuma,’ she says. ‘And the lines between the segments are called lines of longitude. They all meet at the North Pole, very near to where we are now, and at the South Pole, where the piece of invisible string comes out the other side.’

  She opens the photo of the poor wolves. I can see she really wants to hurry with something, but she’s taking time to talk to me with her hands.

  ‘And there are invisible circles going the other way; like hula hoops around the Earth and they are lines of latitude. One of the really important hula hoops is the Arctic Circle. It’s latitude is sixty-six point five six then some smaller numbers, two five, if I remember properly. The Antarctic Circle is exactly the same but with an S for south.’

  She points at the numbers under the wolves photograph: 68945304 149992659

  ‘A decimal point in the first set of numbers makes it a latitude reading – a little way north of the Arctic Circle.’

  I don’t understand, but it doesn’t really matter because it’s like she’s talking to herself in sign. Dad does that sometimes too, but I’ve never seen Mum do it.

  She writes 68.945304

  ‘Then we do the same with the second set of numbers, with a minus sign as I’m pretty sure it’s a longitude reading west of the prime meridian.’

  She writes, ‘-149.992659’ and I have no clue what she means. Then she opens each email and writes all the numbers on the back of Mr Azizi’s map; she says that my job is to keep a lookout for the police helicopter.

  Yasmin had once thought that latitude and longitude, as well as being an inventive practical tool, was a way of mankind claiming ownership of the planet. She’d liked these global invisible markings far more than the arbitrary and bloody lines drawn for countries. The encompassing nature of the bisecting lines, their impartial mathematical logic and scientific precision had made the world feel more secure to her. She’d liked it too that a historic way of mapping the planet was used every day in humdrum modern life as people drove their cars using GPS, not realising that they were being safely guided by longitude and latitude co-ordinates, obtained through the triangulation of satellite signals in space.

  Perhaps it was because she’d long associated longitude and latitude with security and order that she hadn’t realised what the numbers were. Their juxtaposition with the grotesque photographs had camouflaged them, allowing them to get past her usually scientific brain unidentified. Or perhaps it was simply that those terrible images had demanded all her attention; afraid and tired she hadn’t had the calm or the clarity to recognise them.

  Trying to still her anxiety, she opened up Google Earth on Ruby’s computer. The numbers would pinpoint this man’s location to within a few feet. He would soon have a physical presence in a specific place out there in the darkness.

  In the search box, she typed in the numbers that were under the photo of the mutilated musk ox, adding decimal points and a minus sign: 68.950119, -149.994621.

  The screen showed a globe, then it spun to show the north of the planet – Russia, Canada and Alaska – then it homed in to show just Alaska, moving across Alaska before it stopped.

  This must be the place where he’d killed and photographed the musk ox.

  She dropped a pin icon to mark the location of the musk ox and moved the cursor in for more detail.

  She saw Anaktue marked on the map.

  Using the ruler tool, she measured the distance between the butchered musk ox and Anaktue. It was eight miles.

  Why did he send her a location? It must be unintentional surely. She

  thought his satellite terminal must have a built in GPS and had tagged the photo automatically and he hadn’t realised.

  She put in the numbers that had come with the raven photo int
o the search box: 69.051605, -150.116989.

  The raven’s location was exactly at Anaktue. Had Matt seen this man?

  She wasn’t sure that the time frame of the emails matched the distances travelled, but there must be glitches in sending emails in a place this remote.

  She typed in the numbers that were under the photo of the wolves: 68.945304, -149.992659.

  Again, she dropped a pin and measured. The location of the wolves was barely half a mile from the musk ox.

  She put in the numbers in the last email she’d received, the arctic fox cub: 68. 733615, -149.695998.

  He’d moved eighteen miles away from the wolves, heading away from Anaktue.

  She opened her email account. A new email had arrived an hour ago, while they were still asleep.

  * * *

  This is the worst photo. A family of river otters. A mother and father and three babies. River otters are really shy, but when no one’s watching they play games, the grown-ups too: hide and seek and catch, all sorts of games. And they’re graceful swimmers, and they build these super-coolio dens, with just a teeny opening to go in and out so that they’ll be safe. But they weren’t safe.

  Mum’s asking me to put the co-ordinates into Google Earth. I think she wants to take my mind off the poor otters, but even if I’m not looking at the photo I can still see them really clearly.

  Yasmin left the cab. Standing on the top step, she scanned the sky for a helicopter, but couldn’t see any lights apart from the stars. She listened, but there was nothing, not even the wind; an immense silence and stillness.

  She thought she heard breathing and a footstep. Surely she was conjuring up the sounds in her own imagination, spooking herself.

  Ruby was banging on the cab window.

  There was another email.

  A photo of stars filled the back-lit screen, their light puncturing the darkness; the same sky that was above them now. Yasmin felt abruptly shockingly vulnerable, as if she was standing naked in front of him. How did he know to send her this? It was as if he knew the hiding places of her mind.

  Ruby had put the co-ordinates of the otters email into Google Earth. He’d moved nine and a half miles away from the fox cub email, and he was still moving away from Anaktue.

  She entered the co-ordinates of the stars photo: 69.602132, -147.680371.

  The picture of stars was taken six and a half miles from the otters. Again he was moving away from Anaktue.

  He must be running away.

  She thought the stars photograph was a final act of intimidation, but instead of threatening her he had given her his location. She could tell the police exactly where he was.

  She pulled down the CB.

  There was no connection.

  She tried again and again to get a connection, but there was nothing. She felt dread slipping inside her.

  ‘Here’s what we’re going to do,’ she said to Ruby. ‘I want you to try to get hold of the police by email and tell them we need them to get to us as quickly as possible. Tell them that we don’t have the CB radio any more. Can you try to do that?’

  Ruby nodded.

  ‘Good girl. I am going to chip the ice out of the wheels. I don’t want Mr Azizi’s truck to be left here. I’d like to get it ready for a policeman to drive it back for him.

  She hoped Ruby didn’t know she was lying and that she had to get them away as fast as possible. She fastened her gloves, took the ice pick out of Adeeb’s toolbox and went outside.

  On the top step, she listened again for footsteps and breathing but could hear nothing. The hurricane-force wind had blown the snow wheeling over the road and across the tundra; it hadn’t settled around the truck as she’d feared.

  She crawled under the truck with Adeeb’s torch. She positioned the torch and got out the ice pick. Her ice-scalded left hand was sharply painful as it supported her while her right hand chipped at the ice.

  Mum and Dad don’t let me Google things on my own and teachers always give us a website to go to if we need the internet for homework so I haven’t done anything like this before. I’ve put ‘Alaska police’ into the box and there are lots and lots of things, but I don’t know which one is right. I thought I’d found a website that would help us but it’s just for jobs. I’m typing ‘police in Fairbanks’ because that’s the only town I know, apart from Deadhorse, and I don’t know if Deadhorse even has any police. A website! It’s got phone numbers but we don’t have a phone. I look and look because there must be an email address, but there isn’t and I don’t know what to do.

  My bracelet vibrates and the internet connection stops at the exact same time.

  Mum is running towards me and she’s hurrying up the steps and getting in. She sees me and her whole face seems to smile, though she still looks really worried. She tells me to put on my seat belt, but before I have she’s already driving. My bracelet only vibrates if there’s a loud noise.

  Mum’s breathing is super-fast, I can see it even through all her layers of clothes. She must have got the ice out because the truck isn’t juddering.

  I put on Voice Magic because I know she can’t sign when she’s driving. Voice Magic doesn’t need the internet.

  ‘Did you tell the police?’ she asks me.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

  She’s just looking straight ahead and driving. And after a little bit, she must see how bad I feel, because her face looks all soft and she says, ‘It’s OK, really. The police will be on their way.’

  Yasmin had just finished chipping the worst of the ice out, when she’d heard a shot splintering through the frozen silence and the crack as it hit something on the truck. She’d seen the satellite receiver crash down. She’d run towards Ruby and seen a torch heading away from her along the road; briefly its light had glinted off metal on the tanker. All this time he hadn’t been on the other side of the avalanche but waiting the storm out. And then he’d crept up on them in the dark, snapping off the antenna of the CB; shooting down the satellite receiver.

  He’d probably intended to do worse and had first wanted to make sure they couldn’t call for help by CB or satellite.

  She was driving fast now, swerving twice to avoid snowdrifts that had gathered on the road.

  ‘What was the loud noise?’ Ruby asked.

  She didn’t know what to tell her.

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Someone broke the satellite dish,’ she said. ‘I think whoever it is doesn’t want us talking to anyone. But the police won’t be much longer.’

  The police would spot them easily. There were no trees or even bushes; added to which they had a bloody huge prefab on their truck. How hard could it be to see them?

  They had no CB. No satellite connection. The nearest house was over a hundred miles away.

  I should have emailed someone at school; Jimmy, because I know his email off by heart. I did think of that, but I thought it was night in England and he wouldn’t get my email till morning and that was too long. But I don’t know if it is night at home. I don’t even know if it’s night here. It feels like it’s night everywhere; like night has swallowed up the days.

  I’m looking out of my window because I’m hoping to see ptarmigan wing prints again, but there’s just snow and darkness.

  I suddenly know what I should have done and it makes me feel sick.

  ‘I should have tweeted,’ I say to Mum.

  ‘There was nothing you could have done. Really.’

  She probably thinks it’s a stupid idea. But it isn’t. And now it’s too late.

  Before Dad went to Alaska he said he wanted to make sure no trolls had sneaked their way into my Twitter followers, like in ‘Three Billy Goats Gruff’, with me as a billy goat.

  He said, ‘Your followers are retweeting you like crazy. It’s like you’ve got six hundred baby three-wattled bellbirds.’

  He said that because only baby birds make a tweeting sound, and the three-wattled bellbirds are really really loud, so their babies tweeting would be
really noisy too.

  ‘Although,’ Dad said, ‘some people say the superb lyrebird is louder.’

  I laughed, because I think it’s super-coolio to have ‘superb’ as a part of your name.

  Then he said ‘How about I call you the Superb Ruby?’

  That would just be embarrassing.

  And then he said, ‘Have you seen this? You have followers all over the place. America, Australia, Japan, Canada, all over Europe, everywhere.’

  So somewhere it must be daytime and somebody would have been up and seen my tweet asking for help, and they’d be a grown-up and know what to do.

  Now it’s too late.

  Mum gives my hand a quick squeeze. ‘It’s OK,’ she says. ‘Really.’

  I don’t think it is OK.

  ‘He’s turned around,’ Mum says. ‘There’s no lights behind us any more.’

  I twist round and check and she’s right. It’s just black behind us. I look for ages and ages and there’s nobody there.

  ‘He knows there’s a police helicopter looking for us and doesn’t want them to find him too,’ Mum says. ‘He’s running away. And so is the man who sent us the emails.’

  I do a hoorah sign, which makes Mum laugh.

  Yasmin had driven for fifteen minutes and still no lights behind them.

  Ruby tapped her arm. On the side of the road there was a post sticking up out of the snow, splintered wood at the top where the sign had been ripped away. Next to the broken signpost was a turning.

  If Ruby hadn’t been looking out of the passenger window and alerted her Yasmin would never have seen it. She remembered checking Adeeb’s map, hoping there was a river-road they could drive on to Anaktue. She’d seen the River Alatnak looping close to the highway. They’d now reached that point. Adeeb had said it would only be possible to drive on the river-road if a link road had been built to it. This must be the link road. She guessed that Soagil Energy had already started building their infrastructure.

  Anaktue was thirty-five miles away. If the river-road was safe, she could drive to Matt and be with him in less than two hours. The police helicopter would still spot them, they’d be close to the Dalton and their truck was huge. She could lead the police to him.