The Eidolon

by Libby McGugan

  “Leave it, Robert,” breathed Chris.

  All those months we spent at the edge, fine tuning it, pushing through disappointment after disappointment, and just when we can see the finish line, some little shit in a suit says it’s over? My fists clenched and the muscle man nearest me inched closer.

  Chris gripped my arm. “Let it go.”

  I tossed the file back into the box. The lean man smiled thinly and nodded to the others.

  I turned back to Chris, my insides burning. “Where’s Zimmer?”

  The door at the other end of the room crashed open and Zimmer stormed in, right on cue. His face matched the scarlet of his helmet and he barked at the phone held to his ear. The veins on his neck stood out like purple ropes.

  “Well interrupt his call! This is an urgent... you tell him that it’s Geoff Zimmer... YOU!” He covered the mouthpiece with his free hand as he bellowed at one of the intruders lifting a sheaf of paper from a shelf at the other side of the room. “PUT THAT BACK! ...No, no, I’m sorry, not you... wait... no, wait... Ah, shit!” He hurled the phone to the concrete floor and it smashed into pieces.

  “Don’t worry about it, boss,” says Chris. “We won’t be needing it anymore.”

  Geoff Zimmer took off his helmet and spectacles and pinched the bridge of his nose between his finger and thumb.

  “What the hell happened here, Geoff?”

  Zimmer sighed and slumped into an empty chair next to Chris. When he lifted his eyes, he looked beaten. “They didn’t even phone me. The first I knew about it was when I got here this morning. They’re closing the whole project down. They have it in writing.”

  “For fuck’s sake! When we’re this close? How can they stop it this far down the line?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “What about Norris? Have you spoken to the Science Minister?”

  “He signed the letter, Robert.”

  “But he endorsed the project!”

  “He seems to have changed his mind. I’m sorry, boys, there’s nothing I can do. This is way above our heads now. The others have already gone. They’re taking everything – I mean everything: programmes, discs, scrap paper, anything relating to the research.” He sat back. “They’re giving us one more month’s pay. If anything else comes up, you’ll be the first to know.”

  I turned to Chris. “Let’s get out of here.”

  CHRIS DROVE ME home in his dented red Mini. I stared out of the window at the grey buildings and sodden streets, frowning, and chewing my left thumbnail. I turned to Chris. “You’ve got back-up, right?”

  “Yeah. You?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  We drove on in silence.

  “So, what will you do?” I said eventually.

  Chris shrugged. “Dunno. See what else is out there, I suppose. If they can’t finance this project, the chances aren’t good of something else coming up. Not in this line of work. I know times are hard, but I’d didn’t think they’d pull the plug.”

  My teeth ground together as I thought about it. “You don’t buy that it’s just about the funding?”

  Chris shook his head. “No, I don’t. Maybe it’s better we don’t know.” He snorted. “Kay keeps on at me to take a break, so maybe this is the right time. What about you? What’ll you do?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’ll try to get into Romfield Labs again, go back to doing some work on the Grid. Or maybe do some lecturing work. There’s a temporary post going in Manchester.” I shrugged. “And I can always do some web design to tide things over.” It was how I got by as a student.

  “You won’t have any trouble. Not with your track record.”

  Of the two of us, I was in a far stronger position than Chris, and we both knew it. And of the two of us, he would be under more pressure to sort things out, with an eighteen-month-old child to consider. I don’t know how he stayed so level about the whole thing. I felt like I was on the edge. The slightest trigger and I’d detonate.

  The grey streets flashed past: glum mothers pushing prams, youths in baseball caps leaning against the walls of seedy pubs, puffing out smoke and waiting for life to happen, shuffling old men with nowhere left to go. Disillusionment festered where optimism once might have been.

  “How’s Cora?” Chris asked. “Is she, you know... okay?”

  “She still cries some nights, and she’s still not sleeping much. She’s back teaching yoga, at least, and she’s getting out a bit more.” I glanced at my watch. She’d be home from her lunchtime class soon. What the hell was I going to tell her?

  “How long’s it been now?”

  “Seven months.” God, had it really been that long? I couldn’t believe that Sarah had been dead for seven months.

  “They must have been pretty close. If Kay lost her sister, she’d cry for half an hour and then go shopping.”

  I snorted as the car pulled to a stop beside the tenement building. Fresh graffiti decorated the metal shutters of the shop beneath our flat; I stared at the frustration vented on them, feeling a mix of anger and empathy towards whoever had left their mark. I got out and leaned my forearm on the roof of the car. “Thanks for the lift. Let me know if you hear anything.”

  “No problem. See you... whenever.”

  I swung the door shut. The Mini chugged off and splashed a puddle of muddy water onto my legs. I stepped back, then stood for a moment looking up at the sky. The rain washed down in sheets.

  I CLIMBED THE stairwell, passing the door of Jenny and Arthur Randle, who were bawling at each other, again. Why the hell don’t they just give it up? Put it down to experience, move on, go their own separate ways and give the rest of us a break. On the second floor, a small pot of violet pansies sat by the red doorway – Cora’s idea; she’d painted it herself. I entered the flat, took off my coat and tossed it onto the chair next to the table with the lamp and the photograph of Cora and me on some Munro. We’d set the camera on a rock and rushed back to pose in time for the shot, giving us a slightly manic look, with Cora’s dark red hair whipping across her face and me with a crazed, half-fixed smile that made me look like the Joker. The almond-shaped face and messy, slightly spiky sandy coloured hair haven’t changed much, but my eyes have. Laughter lines, they call them, but the laughter seeped away without me noticing.

  I made myself an extra strong mug of black coffee and walked into the living room where Cora had concealed the tear in the brown couch with a blue rug. White candles of different sizes stood in the unused fireplace. Cora would light them every night when she came home. The place reeked of incense. She’d taken to burning it when she meditated, and even my clothes were beginning to stink of the stuff, to the point where Chris accused me of being a dopehead. Reminders of her time in India decorated the room: a large wall tapestry, faded rugs on the bare floorboards, a Buddha on the bookcase, squeezed between my books on climbing and her books on philosophy, Taoism and other weird stuff. My contribution to our home was the laptop on the wooden desk in front of the long, thin window – which rattled whenever the wind picked up – and the stack of journals on the floor; last night’s empty beer can sat on top of it. I sat down at the desk and checked for phone messages while the laptop booted up.

  Two messages. The first, the man from the garage. “Hi Robert, it’s Alf Barlow here. ’Fraid it’s not good news with the bike – the frame’s cracked the whole way through. If I could weld it together, I would, but it wouldn’t hold. It’s a death trap. It’d be cheaper to buy a new bike. Anyway, eh, give me a call when you get this.”

  Great.

  The second, Danny’s voice. “Robert, can you take your snow shovel? I can’t find mine. Think we’ll be okay with one between us. Only four weeks to go!”

  Four weeks till Tibet and he’s already packing. Only four weeks.

  I opened my inbox. The first message didn’t help. It was a knock-back from the Journal of Physics about my recent submission.

  Unfortunately, we feel that your research needs to be further forward bef
ore it justifies publication in this journal. However we would welcome a resubmission when you have validated your results.

  Well, that’s not happening now, is it? What a fucking day.

  Things got worse. The next email was from the lab, untitled. Maybe some kind of explanation. All the text said was ‘Update’. I clicked open the attachment as the phone rang.

  “Robert, is that you?” It was Chris.

  “Yeah, I’m just logging...”

  “Don’t open it!”

  “What?”

  “The email from the lab – don’t open it!”

  Too late. The screen flashed and flickered as fleeting programs and documents and files haemorrhaged down some invisible plughole. I dropped the phone. “No...” I punched into the settings and found the remote access enabled, and not listening to commands to turn it off.

  “Shit!” The chair toppled over behind me as I shot to my feet. I pressed and held the power key, but not before the curser blinked, having completed its task. I picked up the phone.

  “Robert?”

  “This happen to you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you trace it?”

  “No, it’s fixed the boot sector and overwritten the files. They got my backup, too.”

  “What?”

  “I had them on File-Safe.”

  “The commercial server?”

  “Yeah, but they got into it. My guess is they keylogged my login.” Do you have anything else?”

  “I’ll call you back.” I hung up.

  I BOLTED DOWN the stairwell and pushed through the door leading to the small strip of garden which we shared with the Randles. At the far end was a small shed. It’s well built and full of rusty tools left by the old man who was here before us. I unlocked the heavy padlock and the door creaked as I swung it open. A few years ago I had fixed a metal lock-box against the wall, and I kept my backup discs and keys in there. It’s cheaper than storage on a remote electronic server, and although it’s old fashioned, it feels like I have more control. I opened the box and took out the contents, then knocked on Jenny Randle’s door and asked if I could use her computer.

  All of the discs were blank.

  “WIPED?” SAID CHRIS when I called him back. “And you’re sure the box was locked?”

  “It must have been an electromagnet on the outside wall.”

  I heard Chris blow out a long breath.

  “No one knew about that locker, Chris. No one. Who the hell’s doing this?”

  “I called Zimmer. He says we need to let it go. No police, he said. It wouldn’t get us anywhere.”

  I ran my hand through my hair. “Oh, come on. We can’t just let this go! This isn’t just shutting down a project – it’s wiping out any evidence that it ever happened!”

  “Let it go, Robert. Whatever it is, it sounds like you don’t want it in your life. Look, call Zimmer yourself if you like. But you won’t get anywhere.”

  I did, and Chris was right. Zimmer was a wall. I don’t think he really knew what was going on, but he sounded scared. “It’s above our heads, Robert,” he said. “This is right from the top. It’s not worth it.”

  “It’s not worth it? It’s not worth everything we did for that project, for all those years? Come on, Zimmer! What happened to you?”

  “Leave it, Robert. Please. You won’t win this one. Let it go.”

  He said he’d do what he could to get me a place at Cavendish, but he couldn’t promise.

  I hung up in disgust, but I was shaken, more than I wanted to admit. I knew he was right.

  I HEARD THE front door open. Cora walked in, pulling a scarf laced with sparkly strands from around her neck.

  “What are you doing home so early?” she asked.

  She was dressed in jeans and a purple top that was too big for her and her hair was swept up on her head in the way that it usually was. Her jewellery was unchanged – plain leather bands around her slender wrist, a single, broad, silver ring on her thumb and the silver ring I bought her which she wore on a cord round her neck. She used to wear it on her index finger until she stopped eating well and it became too big for her. For all of her shiny accessories, her face still had a haunted look that had been there since her sister died.

  “What’s wrong?” She regarded me through narrowed green eyes beneath dark lashes.

  “I... eh. I got some bad news today.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “They’ve closed down the lab.”

  “What?”

  “No warning – even Zimmer didn’t know till this morning.”

  “Why, was it dangerous?”

  “No, nothing like that. We don’t know what’s going on. All we know is that we get a month’s pay, but the project’s finished.”

  “But can they do that? I mean, after everything you’ve done?”

  “They just did, Cora.”

  “Oh, Robert, I’m sorry...” Being bitter about it all was easy, but when she put arms around me, and held me tight, I felt like a child. For a moment, I was anchorless, like I couldn’t remember who I was any more. “After all your work,” she whispered. She stroked my hair. The fury melted into despair and threatened to spill onto my cheeks; I pulled away from her before it did.

  She held onto my hand, squeezing it gently. Her palm was cool and delicate in mine. “We’ll work it out, Robert. I’ll get some shifts in a café or something. There’s a waiting list for my class, so I’m sure I could run another one.”

  “It’s not going to be enough, though.”

  “Well, maybe you could go back to web design for a while, just until something else comes up.”

  I nodded and turned to the window where grey rain pattered on the glass.

  “Listen, let me make a phone call. I was going to go out tonight with Jacqui and Liz – I’ll let them know I won’t make it.”

  “Who?”

  “From my class.”

  “Oh. I didn’t know you socialised with them.”

  She shrugged, stooped to light a few candles. “You’re always late home.” Then she flushed and said, “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She sat on the sofa, watching me, and I turned to look out of the window to the sodden street below. Jenny Randle’s Fiat Punto was parked below, like it always was. The car hadn’t moved since I saw it this morning, but my whole life had. And I had no say in any of it.

  “Maybe we should go away for a while,” said Cora.

  “I need to get some work, Cora. I’ve no income now, remember?”

  “We’ve got some savings.”

  “Yeah, as a last resort. I need to get another job.”

  “Well,” she said, patiently, “you might be in a better place to deal with things if you take a break.”

  “I’ve already paid for the trip to Tibet. That’ll be enough of a break.”

  “I meant with me. We could go back to the cottage.”

  A few weeks after Sarah died, I had taken Cora to a cottage on the coast. I thought the change of scene would help, and it did, a little. We had some walks on the beach, drank a lot of wine and I held her each night as she cried herself to sleep. Watching her suffer was almost unbearable. I kept wishing I could take it all for her, but there’s nothing you can do with invisible wounds. We were closer then than we had been in a while, but when we got home, we fell back into our separate lives.

  “Or we could go up to the pottery,” she continued. “It won’t cost us anything, apart from the travel. My parents won’t be back till next month.”

  Cora’s parents, Evelyn and Frank, had bought the old pottery along the glen from where I grew up, on the west coast of Scotland. He was an engineer and she was a social worker who had taken a pottery evening class one autumn at the local polytechnic. They saw the light, as they said, and packed it all in, in exchange for the simple life. Grow your own veg, brew your own cider, summer solstice parties. You get the picture. One harsh winter without running water made them r
ealise that cities aren’t so bad and now they spend most of their time on city breaks. The longest they’ve been home since Sarah died is four weeks. Probably too quiet up there; nowhere to hide from their thoughts. I met Cora there seven years ago when I was up visiting my mum and she was helping set up the pottery. There was something about her that I couldn’t put my finger on, but we just clicked. We laughed a lot. She had a vibrancy about her that was infectious, mixed in with an intoxicating sense of calm. She had me hooked. It seemed like a long time ago.

  “Where are they off to this time?”

  “Barcelona. You know, we could go walking again, like we used to.”

  It was the first sign that she was in a better place, something I’d been hoping for, for seven months. Just in time for me to pass her on the way down.

  “That sounds good.”

  GRADUALLY WE SEEMED to switch roles. Now it was me who would wake up in the small hours, and she’d get up and sit with me, or make me a drink. She still carried her grief around with her, and sometimes her eyes would glisten whenever something triggered it, like a reference to family on the TV or a piece of music on the radio. But she seemed to box it away, in the way that a parent who’s hurting might box away their pain from their child, and smile as if everything is okay, and those tears on their cheeks don’t mean anything. I knew she was trying – she did get some extra shifts and took on another class, but I began to find it easier when I was on my own.

  “I don’t have a solution to all this, Robert,” she said once, “but I know there is one. You’ll find a job.”

  “And what if I don’t?”

  “You will. Just trust that it’ll work out.”

  I took her hand and tried to smile. I didn’t know you could feel lonely in your own home.

  The lecturer post had been filled and nothing came up with Zimmer’s plan for Cavendish, not that I expected it to. Zimmer cancelled our presentation at the conference, and I was copied into the reply.