by Anne Corlett
Home. The thought had a bit more weight to it this time.
The sun was warm on her skin, but there was a familiar brittleness to the heat. It didn’t go down deep. If you rubbed a northern summer between your fingers the warmth would crumble away like flaky pastry, revealing the chill underneath.
She dropped down onto the grass, landing slightly off-balance. The ship was listing to the side, and one set of landing gear had been torn off. The impact had gouged up great clods of earth, and steam was drifting out from underneath the hull.
Callan was moving along the side of the ship, one hand trailing along her metal flank, while Gracie stood back, arms folded, inspecting the Phaeacian through narrowed eyes.
Lowry appeared at the doors. He was moving slowly, and he winced as his feet jarred onto the ground. Rena followed him, scrambling gracelessly over the edge and landing in a hurried sprawl. When she got to her feet, she was breathing hard.
“We made it,” she said. “Thank God. Thank you, God.”
Jamie looked at Lowry.
“You okay?”
There was a gray tinge to his pallor, but he managed a half smile. “Not too bad as long as I don’t take a deep breath.”
“Where does it hurt?”
“Just my ribs. I may have cracked something. I’ll be fine. We’re lucky if this is the worst of it.”
There was a sound from the ship and Finn shuffled through the gap in the doors.
“Here.” Jamie reached up to guide him down, but he shook his head, sat down, and pushed off, landing in a crouch on the grass.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Finn nodded. “Earth?”
“Earth,” Jamie agreed.
The lad’s lips twitched in a brief smile as he walked away to examine a patch of bright yellow trefoil flowers.
“Have we done the right thing?” Lowry was looking at Callan, who had both hands pressed against the hull of his stricken ship.
Jamie felt a sudden drag of guilt.
“We all made the choice.” It came out much sharper than she intended.
“Do we know where we’ve landed?” Rena said. “We need to go. To Lindisfarne.”
“No hurry,” Lowry said. “We’re alive. That’s the most important thing right now.” He turned to Jamie. “Any idea where we are?”
“I’m not sure.” She looked around again. “It feels . . . I don’t know, it looks like England. The north.”
“It better be.” Callan walked over to join them. “I set course for the Wearside landing site. When our fuel ran out, I changed course to try to glide down onto open land northwest of there.”
“How much farther north?” Jamie asked.
Callan shrugged. “Fifty miles,” he said. “Maybe a bit more. The system’s down.”
“Fifty miles,” Lowry said. “If that’s right, then we’re close.” He looked up at Callan. “How’s the ship?”
Callan’s expression closed down. “Probably repairable. But not going anywhere—unless someone’s left a full fuel transport wherry somewhere handy, with the access codes stuck on a Post-it note.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Rena said. “We have to go on, not back.”
“Rena . . .” Lowry began, but Callan just turned and walked away, one hand pressed against his injured side.
Jamie followed, catching up with him just as he reached the doors.
I’m sorry was what she meant to say. But instead she looked up at him, meeting his gaze squarely for the first time since that night in his quarters. “Why did you do it?”
He shrugged. “Maybe I just don’t like being told what to do.”
“That . . .” She stopped and tried again, feeling her way around the edges of what it was she wanted to know. “You didn’t want to come. Why . . .”
He cut across her. “You’re here, aren’t you? Don’t tell me you’ve changed your mind now. If it was ever made up in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “Look, I’m not exactly sure I’ve done the right thing, so the last thing I need is someone going on at me about my reasons.” He hauled himself up onto the hold floor, breathing in sharply.
“I need to look at those stitches,” Jamie said.
“It’s fine.” He disappeared into the cargo hold, leaving her staring after him.
• • •
It took about an hour for Callan and Gracie to get the backup power on. When the emergency lights were working, Jamie and the others went up to their quarters for their things. There were no obvious signs of damage inside the ship, but the lights kept flickering, and Jamie expected to be plunged into that complete darkness again at any moment. She packed as quickly as she could.
Back outside, Callan and Gracie were studying a handheld map unit.
“Do you know where we are?” Jamie asked.
“Here.” Callan handed her the unit. “Might mean more to you than us.”
“The GPS is working?”
“Why wouldn’t it be?” Gracie said. “The satellites are still transmitting.”
“It just feels odd,” Jamie said. “Like those pictures you used to see of abandoned places. Chernobyl, or that place in Siberia after the chemical strike. Houses with plates still on the table, that sort of thing. How long do you think it will all keep running?”
Gracie shrugged. “Depends. The wind turbines should keep pumping out voltage indefinitely. There’s not much that can go wrong with them. Hydropower stations are a bit more labor-intensive. The solar panels should be all right for a while.”
“So we’ll have power?” Jamie said. “When we get to the coast, I mean.”
“Should have,” Gracie said. “Some of the mechanics will probably outlive us all.” She gave a slight smile. “I suppose that’s an immortality of sorts, for the people who built them.”
“There’s no such thing.” Rena had come up behind them. “Only God can grant immortality. And we don’t need the old world anymore. It should all be stripped away. All the markers of what we did.”
Gracie ignored her, turning back to tap her finger on the map reader. “We’re here. Do you know it?”
The map was zoomed out, and Jamie had to squint to read the tiny place-names.
Alwinton. Harbottle. Newton-on-the-Moor.
She looked up at the hills, trying to superimpose them onto the landscape of her memory. They couldn’t be far from the main road between Rothbury and Alnwick.
“I think we’re about twenty-five miles away. Thereabouts.”
“How are we going to get there?” Gracie asked. “Even if we could find a vehicle, we won’t have their access codes.”
“We walk, then,” Callan said.
“Walk?” Gracie looked horrified. “But we’ll have stuff to carry.”
“So we carry it,” Callan said. “We won’t need to take much.”
“You’re talking like we’re going with them,” the engineer said. “I never signed up for this pilgrimage, or whatever you want to call it.”
“Where else are we going to go?” Callan said. “Let’s just get there, and then we can think about what comes next. Unless you want to stay put and hope the administration turns up to rescue you, of course.” He turned to Jamie. “So which way from here?”
She pointed toward a line of trees. “I don’t think we’re more than a few hundred yards from the main road.”
Callan nodded. “Might as well get going, then.”
“What about the ship?” It felt wrong to just walk away, as though his sacrifice didn’t matter at all.
“It’s not going anywhere,” Callan said, turning to walk in the direction Jamie had indicated.
• • •
The road was an anonymous stretch of pitted tarmac, flanked by high hedgerows, but it spar
ked a random flash of memory—which could have been here or anywhere. Sitting in the back of the car with her two half sisters, her stepmother in the front, talking too fast, telling them what they were going to do when they got there, how much they’d all enjoy it.
“Which way now?” Callan said.
“We need to head toward Alnwick,” Jamie said. “That way.”
Callan set off at a brisk pace, despite the heavy pack on his shoulders. Rena hurried along at his heels, almost stumbling in her haste, while Gracie followed at a more moderate pace that Jamie suspected might have more to do with reluctance than with the weight of her own rucksack.
Lowry brought up the rear with Finn, who was walking cautiously, as though the tarmac might be hot.
“Are you all right?” Jamie asked Lowry.
The old man gave her a wry smile. “I’ll get there. Maybe a fair few hours after the rest of you, mind.”
Jamie looked up at the sound of a low whicker and saw a horse leaning over a nearby gate. It was a cobby chestnut, with a sprinkling of gray around the muzzle. Finn stopped dead, staring at it.
“No horses on Pangaea?” Lowry said.
Finn shook his head, keeping his eyes on the cob.
Jamie walked over and looked into the field, rubbing the horse’s muzzle. There was a shelter near the far fence.
“Just a minute.” Jamie opened the gate.
Inside the shelter she found a purple halter and lead rope, and a fleece rug with red and yellow stripes that had blurred into one another from too much washing. It took them a few minutes to load the heavier packs onto the horse’s back, fastening them together in pairs of makeshift panniers. Jamie folded the rug into a pad to stop the load from rubbing. Gracie insisted on keeping her rucksack, and Finn could not be persuaded to give up his small bag, but the others gladly off-loaded their burdens.
The horse seemed untroubled by the weight, walking briskly alongside Jamie, the lead rope hanging slack between them. Finn walked on the far side. Every now and again, his hand would move toward the horse, but he always snatched it back at the last moment.
“You can touch him.” Jamie placed her own hand on the horse’s warm neck. “Like this.”
Finn stretched out and brushed his fingers along the horse’s mane, pulling back sharply before reaching out again to rest his palm against the horse’s shoulder. They walked on like that, the two of them, connected by the swaying warmth of the old horse plodding along between them.
CHAPTER
20
It was midafternoon when they reached the outskirts of Alnwick. It had taken them a while to find a rhythm that would suit all the members of the party. But they’d eventually fallen into a pattern of walking for an hour, then resting for twenty minutes or so, while the horse grazed on a loose rein.
“I’m wondering how much farther we can go today,” Callan said, dropping back from his point position, a couple of hundred yards in front. He glanced at Lowry as he spoke. The older man had raised no complaint about the pace, but he looked pale and hadn’t been talking much.
“We’re about halfway,” Jamie said. “If we can manage another hour or so, there’s somewhere I know.”
Somewhere nice. It would have sounded foolish to say it. Like they were on a day trip to the countryside, looking for an upmarket tea shop.
“Okay,” Callan said.
Gracie joined them. She had a reader of some sort and was examining the screen. “Something’s transmitting around here.”
“A distress signal?” Callan asked.
Gracie shook her head. “No, nothing like that. A wireless code. Like someone’s uploading data on a local network.”
“Could it be automated?” Jamie asked. “If everything’s still running, then presumably the net will keep . . .” She hesitated, realizing she wasn’t entirely sure what the Internet actually did. It was just one of those things that was always there. Like air, like weather. “. . . working,” she finished, lamely.
Gracie gave her a faintly contemptuous look. “It will only keep running if it was automated in the first place. The net’s a lot more labor-intensive than people think it is.” She paused. “Was.” When she carried on, her tone was more neutral, as though that little slip had made her less dismissive of someone else’s ignorance. “Besides, you can tell the difference between the background hum of the net and someone actively making a change. There’s someone working on a server, and they’re nearby.”
“Any idea where?” Callan asked.
“I might be able to trace it.” Gracie glanced around the group. “Assuming we want to take the time, that is.”
“Of course we do,” Lowry said. “If we’re going to be settling here, we should try to find other people.”
“Why?” Rena said.
When they all turned to look at her, she stared back, her mouth a stubborn line. There were fresh scratches on her arms.
“What do you mean, Rena?” Lowry’s voice was gentle, as though talking to a child.
“Why do we need more people? That’s what they were doing on Alegria. Trying to make everyone do what they want. Be what they want. We’re beyond that now. Beyond all of that. We need to get there, and then we’ll see.”
“See what?” Jamie asked.
Rena shot her an almost pitying look. “Everything.”
Gracie had walked a few paces away. “I think it’s coming from this direction,” she said, as though Rena hadn’t spoken.
“Come on.” Lowry took Rena’s arm. “We’ve got to live in this world. It’s not just about getting here.”
“You don’t understand.” Rena looked at Lowry, an odd, almost tender expression coming over her face. “You’re always thinking about tomorrow, and you don’t need to keep doing that. Not now.” She gave a flimsy smile. “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow, and the world getting fuller by the minute. But not anymore.”
Lowry returned the smile, although his was strained and quick-fading. “You’re right. We should try to think more about the moment. Now we have the time to slow down.” He grimaced, his hand going to his chest. “In fact, we may have to slow down. A little bit, at least.”
Rena shook her head again. The movement went on for longer than it should have, giving her the appearance of an emphatic child. “That’s not it.” Her tone was fretful. “It’s not . . .”
“Shhh.” Lowry put his hand on her arm. “Rena, we’ll get where we’re going, and it will be okay. We’ll work it out. You don’t have to make us understand.”
Callan and Gracie had already set off.
“We should go,” Jamie said.
Rena hesitated but finally gave in to Lowry’s gentle pressure on her arm and fell into step beside him.
Gracie led them through the narrow streets, stopping every now and again to tilt her screen. When they reached the main road out of town, she stopped and looked up a cobbled slope toward a long building with a frosted glass roof. “It’s coming from here.”
“That’s the old railway station,” Jamie said. “It’s a bookshop now. They reopened the line during the first fuel crisis but built a new station on the other side of the tracks. Maybe there’s some sort of server there.”
Gracie shook her head. “It’s closer than that. I’m going to take a look inside.”
They made their way around to the entrance. When Callan tried the door, it slid open a few inches before jamming.
“There’s something against the door,” he said. “Looks like a bookcase has tipped over.” He gave the door another shove, but it didn’t move. Jamie tethered the horse to a ring in the wall and went over to join Callan, kneeling down and squeezing her arm through the gap until she could feel the edge of the bookcase. When she pushed at it, it shifted sideways a couple of centimeters. She wriggled around so that she was almost lying on the ground and forced her arm a little farther inside.
When she pushed again, the obstruction slid a little farther, allowing the door to open a few more inches, and then a few more, until Jamie could squeeze through and haul the bookcase out of the way.
“It looks like it was dragged there on purpose,” she said. “There’s nowhere around here it could have come from.”
Callan walked through the entrance hall, with its clutter of bookshelves and armchairs, into the high-roofed space that formed the main part of the shop. Jamie followed more slowly, running her fingers along the spines of the tight-packed books. She’d loved this place once. Often, when people were pressing too close and the village seemed too small and too familiar, she’d climb on one of the slow, sporadic buses and come here to lose herself in the maze of shelves.
“How would you ever find anything?” Gracie looked around disapprovingly. “Is there any order to it?”
“Anyone there?” Callan raised his voice.
There was no reply. Jamie walked over to a room just off the main shop floor, where the children’s books used to be. She stepped through the archway and then stopped.
The central shelves had been moved closer to the wall, forming a little nook around a pile of camping mattresses, topped with a pillow and a mess of blankets. The bookcases had been dragged away from the wall to the right and placed in front of the windows, sinking the room into a muted haze. Someone had begun the painstaking process of covering the bare wall with colored illustrations, each one enclosed in its own decorative pane, like a cartoon strip, but much more elaborate than any Jamie had seen before. She moved closer, studying the first few panels. There was a depiction of the Alnwick town square, crowded with people. The sky overhead was a clear blue, marred by a single cloud, heavy and low and picked out in ominous shades of purple and gray. In the next panel the square was empty, but for a shadowy figure in the entrance to one of the side streets. The same blurred figure featured in several other images. Walking down a street, the air heavy with a haze of dust. Standing in the doorway to the bookshop. Crouched between the stacks in the main part of the store.