by Claire North
It was good to have him back on diamonds. I think my mother thought so too, because she looked at the diamond in my hand and said, “Another rivet in the ship,” just as she had done all those years ago, and once again I imagined a boat studded with sparkling rainbows, like something from a dream.
“How was the trip?” she asked, drying her eyes and settling onto the sofa with her sewing.
“Fine. And I visited the holding centre. Roger told me that the people don’t believe in Lalla because I never take her with me.” He laughed, but my mother didn’t even smile. He started to say more, then stopped and looked at me. “Kitten, is there any water? Could you fetch me some?”
I went to the kitchen. The boiled water in the stone jug was mine; my mother knew I hated the taste of the water sterilising tablets we were given at every re-registration. But it was hard to boil water when power was so scarce; my father and mother always used the tablets. I looked about for them, but the tone of my father’s voice stopped me. “Anna, listen,” he said quietly as soon as I was out of sight. “The troops are going to bomb St James’s Park. They’ve put the razor wire round it, and moved out the people who’ve got cards. It’s Regent’s Park all over again. We need to leave.”
Regent’s Park. It had been one of the first places opened up for people who had nowhere to go. I was thirteen when the government bombed it. Hundreds, thousands of people eliminated in a series of explosions that had made the windows of the flat vibrate. “Be glad I didn’t let you meet them,” my mother had said, taking away my screen so I couldn’t see anything more. “Then it would really hurt.” My parents had shut themselves away for hours after that; I heard them through their bedroom door, talking about the ship, then and for weeks afterwards. The ship, the ship, the ship, but nothing happened. There had been more food available at the food drops after the bombing, and my mother said it was because things were turning a corner, as she’d always said they would. But it hadn’t lasted, and now my birthday dinner was coming out of a single tin. I stood in the kitchen doorway, holding my diamond in my hand, and watched as my father knelt in front of my mother and took the sewing from her limp hands.
“You brought home a diamond,” she said. “You haven’t done that for ages. Surely that means things are getting better?”
“No. It means people have given up. I got that diamond for a tin of peaches.”
“A tin of peaches?” she said. I opened my hand and noticed for the first time how hard the diamond was, how cold. My stomach rumbled, and I wondered what would be inside the tin my mother had lighted on.
“It was a kind of joke,” my father said. “I was negotiating for the contents of a warehouse in Sussex. The guy said that diamonds were for those who believed in the future more than they cared about survival. I thought Lalla would like it, that’s all.”
“What did he take, if he didn’t want diamonds?”
“Munitions. He traded one warehouse for the means to protect the other, and pistols for his family. There is nothing left, Anna. Nothing. We have to leave. You won’t dissuade me this time.”
My mother fastened her length of thread, shook out the material—it was a red velvet curtain that she was making into a skirt for me—and pointed the needle at my father.
“You created this situation,” she said. She unspooled a length of thread and bit it off, looking up at him sharply.
“Me?” He stared at her. “Me? The Dove saved this country. Saved it.”
It hadn’t. You only had to look outside our window to see that. But my father no longer looked outside our window. His mind was made up, and his eyes were on places far beyond our London square. My mother picked a black button from her sewing box and said, “What about the people in the British Museum?”
“They’re squatting,” my father said quietly, sitting on the back of the sofa and stroking her hair. “It’s all very cooperative, but how can they build an alternative society when there’s nothing left to build it on? All the government can do—all it can do—is reduce the population in the hope of feeding what’s left. Bit by bit. The museum dwellers are idiots, corralling themselves so they can be eliminated. It’s time for us to leave.” He frowned and jabbed at his screen. “It’s been time for a long time.”
She bent her head over the button, and when she spoke her voice was so quiet I could barely hear her. “I’m not ready, Michael. However dreadful the process is, soon the population will be manageable, and all this will improve. The ship will be the last thing we do.”
“The last thing?” My father laughed, putting his screen down, swinging his legs over the back of the sofa and landing beside my mother with a bounce. “No, my darling, the ship is the start. Why do you cling to the end, when the beginning is waiting?”
“I want to grow things.”
He stopped bouncing and turned away. “Still?” he said. “The Land Allocation Act’s a failure. People are coming back from the countryside as fast as they left. And if they don’t come back, it’s because they’re dead. I’ve seen it.”
My mother put her sewing down. “What about the Lakes?” she said. “They didn’t do industrial farming there. Or fracking. The soil might still be good.”
“And you’d take that risk, even though we’ve never heard anything from any of the families who left? Remember the Freemans? The Kings? The Holloways? Think of the security we’d need just to get there. And the loneliness.”
Freemans, Kings, Holloways—names from a time I could barely remember. A time of restaurants, a time when Regent’s Park was a place to take a picnic, a time when people smiled at each other and sometimes stopped to talk. A time when there were still a few private cars in the street; when electricity was constant. Nothing but myths now, lost in time. But at sixteen, I knew about loneliness. I was lonely, so lonely that my stomach clenched with it at night.
“A life for Lalla,” my father said. “Isn’t that worth everything we have? A place to be a family, among friends, where we can learn and share without fear? A place for Lalla to grow in safety? Isn’t that what we set out to create?”
“A place without money,” my mother said softly, putting her arms around him. “No gold or guns. Just everyone working hard and sharing in the plenty we’ve provided.”
“No homelessness,” he replied, “and no hunger.” He turned in the circle of her arms and stroked the hair back from her face. “Tell me when, Anna. Please tell me when.”
“It was an insurance policy. Just that. Insurance. And now you’re making it a life plan. I don’t want to spend my life clinging to a lifeboat.”
“How much worse do you want things to get?”
“If you loved me, you’d stop pushing.”
“If you loved me, we’d have gone already.”
“I love you, Michael. I just don’t think you’re right.”
I stood in the doorway, forgetting I wasn’t meant to be listening. I clenched my fist and felt the diamond cutting into my palm. “I want to go,” I said. “If the ship is real, I want to go on it.”
BY CLAIRE NORTH
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Touch
The Sudden Appearance of Hope
The End of the Day
84K
THE GAMESHOUSE NOVELLAS
The Serpent (e-only)
The Thief (e-only)
The Master (e-only)
MATTHEW SWIFT NOVELS
(writing as Kate Griffin)
A Madness of Angels
The Midnight Mayor
The Neon Court
The Minority Council
MAGICALS ANONYMOUS NOVELS
(writing as Kate Griffin)
Stray Souls
The Glass God
Praise for
THE NOVELS OF CLAIRE NORTH
The End of the Day
“A beautiful, if occasionally uncomfortable, read that resists being labeled with any particular genre.”
—Library Journal (starred review)
—Kirkus
“North is an exciting voice in contemporary fantasy, and The End of the Day should be a welcome calling card from her to many new readers.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“North’s writing is poetic and accessible, imaginative and jam-packed full of knowledge … making The End of the Day a thoroughly engaging and astute read from start to finish.”
—SciFiNow
“North is a consistently intriguing writer.”
—Locus
“Just like Death itself, the story is unpredictable … But it’s moving, a novel you’ll sob to while reading.”
—SFX
The Sudden Appearance of Hope
“North … has established a reputation for tense, dense, science fiction/fantasy-inflected thrillers that defy facile expectations …. Simultaneously a tense conspiracy caper, a haunting meditation on loneliness and a brutally cynical examination of modern media …. Well-paced, brilliant and balanced.”
—New York Times
“Beautifully written, with a protagonist who is both tragic and heroic, the novel is remarkably powerful and deeply memorable, the latest in a string of terrific books from this newly emerged star in the genre-blending universe.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“This is an inquiry into modern human existence. Philosophical questions are threaded through the electrifying plot. Even the protagonist’s darkness alias is ‘why.’ Reminiscent of William Gibson’s best work, North leads us into a brilliant world of elite but mindless humans, and shines a sharp light on what a rare gift it is to be able to think for oneself and what the consequences of it are.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Claire North’s The Sudden Appearance of Hope is a novel with an argument to make about smartphone apps and online identity …. North isn’t here to lecture you or rehash tired debates. Instead, she’s produced something that feels at the same time absent and necessary: Smart, compelling fiction about this future that asks us to outsource ever-larger chunks of our selves to the cloud.”
—Tech Insider
“Claire North novels are … progressive and introspective—as chilling, invariably, as they are thrilling—and The Sudden Appearance of Hope is no exception.”
—Tor.com
“To me, the thing that’s perhaps the most sinister about Perfection isn’t that it offers you plastic surgery. But rather the way that the app decides what Perfection actually is. Instead of finding out what you want, and helping you achieve it, Perfection decides what you should want.”
—Flash Forward
“It’s intricate, but somehow, once again Claire North makes it all work …. A fantastic read featuring a unique protagonist with a unique problem … definitely worth remembering.”
—Kirkus
Touch
“Touch is a brilliantly balanced knife’s edge of a book—fast-paced and thrilling, it’s somehow also languorous, thoughtful, intelligently intimate. Kepler is a thoroughly absorbing and sympathetic anti-hero, trying to minimize harm while striving for survival …. I am left staggered into an awed slow-clap at everything North has accomplished here. Touch is touching, horrifying, magnificent; step into it, and it will step into you.”
—NPR Books
“The high stakes and breakneck pace of the plot will draw readers in, and the meditations on what it means to be human and to be loved will linger long after the last shot is fired.”
—Kirkus
“As masterful as her debut …. [A] fast-paced, imaginative novel …. There is plenty of conspiracy and intrigue in this deftly paced novel, but North also poses subtle questions about identity and love.”
—Washington Post
“This novel is utterly engaging, addictive, and thought-provoking. The characters are superbly drawn, their interactions realistic and engaging.”
—Civilian Reader
“Another thrilling leap into the unknown.”
—Toronto Sunday Star
“Little short of a masterpiece.”
—Independent (UK)
The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
“I don’t say this lightly but The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is one of the top ten books I’ve ever read.”
—James Dashner, New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Maze Runner
“An astonishing re-invention of the time travel narrative. Bold, magical and masterful.”
—M. R. Carey
“A thoughtful and considered time-travel novel, shocking twists and, most important of all, a beautiful character. Harry August will break your heart fifteen times.”
—Jared Shurin
“A subtle study of friendship, love and the complexity of existence.”
—Eric Brown, Guardian
“Fantastic.”
—io9
“Wonderful novel … held together by a compelling mystery involving nothing less than the end of the world itself. Beautifully written and structured … a remarkable book.”
—Booklist (Starred Review)
“A tremendously entertaining ride … You’re sure to enjoy the trip.”
—Toronto Sunday Star
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