“What language do you use for the programs?”
“C and C ++.” He holds up the Canadian crippler. “This one’s a generic program – you could use it against any system operating on Linux 6.”
Like here? I think, but I don’t say it.
He replaces it in its slot in the top right corner of the foam base and slides the drawer in. It beeps and locks with a click.
“So is this what ORB does? Shut down banks and the IMF?”
“Those were my endeavours. Nothing to do with ORB.”
“Right.” It makes me feel a bit better. I realise that I’m talking to someone who has operated in high-end digital crime, but we’re here for the greater good – I have to keep telling myself that.
I pause while he empties another packet of cola bottles into the fruit bowl, then ask, “What about the security cameras?”
“Not a problem. When you work out how you’re going to do it, email your contact. I’ll tap into the cameras in the Computer Centre over the next couple of days and record some of the shifts – your contact can overlay it onto the security recordings when you make an appearance. They won’t see a thing. Anything else?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Fine.They’ll be growing mushrooms on the CERN site in a couple of years.”
He leans down and opens a mini fridge under the desk, pulling out something grey and furry. I retreat back into my chair as he opens the lid of the tank and drops the dead rat inside. There’s a rustle and a slither as the snake unhinges its jaws and engulfs the rodent. Mr Y watches my reaction.
“His name’s Reggie,” he says.
“Oh.”
“Do you like snakes?”
“Never given it much thought.” Of course I don’t like snakes, you fucking weirdo.
Mr Y grins for the first time, revealing rotting teeth, the product of too many sweets. He picks up the phone on his desk and dials. “I’ve finished with him. You can take him away.”
AS THE PARTITION slides closed behind us, Dana glances at her watch and lifts her phone to her ear. “Carson, when’s the last departure tonight?” A pause. “Okay. Let the pilot know to be ready in ten minutes. And bring Mr Strong’s rucksack to the atrium.” She turns to me. “I think you’ll make the last flight.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our aircraft will take you to Heathrow airport, where you can board your flight for Geneva.”
“What, tonight?”
“You need to become established in the CERN community as soon as possible. The last of the tests are being conducted over the next six days, and we need you in there for as many of them as possible, starting tomorrow morning. We’ve arranged all the paperwork. They’ll be expecting you.”
“But I don’t have my passport –”
“Like I said: it’s all taken care of.”
WHEN WE REACH the atrium, a woman at the desk hands me a large brown envelope. “You’ll find your tickets and everything else you need inside,” says Dana.
A man walks briskly towards us as she ushers me onto a buggy. He hands over my rucksack as the buggy pulls away.
THE SKY IS overcast and there’s a cold drizzle on the air, when the substation doors open onto the field. The cab door is pulled back and the pilot’s checking the overhead controls in the cockpit. Outside, an engineer is tinkering with the engine. I climb into the cabin.
“We’ll forward the final product to you within twenty-four hours,” says Dana. “We’ll be in touch with further instructions. You did a good job, Robert. Thank you.” She smiles and looks beautiful.
“It’s clamped out over the whole country,” the pilot says to her. “There’s no IFR option, so we’ll go down the east coast and refuel at Newcastle. I’ll do what I can, but we may be pushing it for your flight. ”
There’s a thud as the engine compartment closes and the engineer steps back from the aircraft. I recognise him – Abrams – the guy from the library. He wipes a rag over a spanner and glances up at me as the engine whirs into life. Dana swings the cab door closed, then backs away as the blades begin to spin, blowing her dark hair across her face. The pilot turns to me, handing me a set of headphones. When I put them on, I hear his voice. “Switch off your mobile phone, Mr Strong.”
As I reach into my pocket for my phone, something falls onto the floor of the aircraft beside me. I pick it up: the photograph Banks dropped yesterday; the woman with the dangerous eyes.
“Can you get this to Peter Banks when you get back?”
“Hold onto it until we touch down,” says the pilot. “We need to keep ahead of the weather. There’s a cold front coming in from the west and this cab doesn’t have icing clearance.”
I look out over the darkening clouds as I push the photograph back into my pocket. “Is it safe to fly?”
He turns and grins. “As safe as it’s going to get today.”
The helicopter lifts and banks into the cloud.
What am I doing?
I close my eyes and try to sleep the thought away, concentrating on the purr of the engine, the thub-thub of the blades. I drift in and out, uneasy dreams coming and going.
A SUDDEN JOLT jars me awake. I grip the seat to steady myself. “What the hell...”
“Make sure you’re strapped in,” comes the pilot’s voice. “Things could get a little bumpy.”
Another violent lurch thrusts me forwards, locking me against the harness as an alarm sounds from the cockpit.
“Shit!” comes the pilot’s voice over the headset.
I grip the straps of my harness as the helicopter plummets, amidst a high-pitched whine.
“MAYDAY! MAYDAY! MAYDAY! Alpha-whisky-two-one smoke in the cockpit forced landing position two miles east of Crail...”
Is this really happening? The scream of the engine ringing in my ears, the stench of smoke, the harness squeezing my chest like a vice; all of it beyond my control.
“BRACE! BRACE! BRACE!”
I squeeze my eyes shut, gripping the shoulder straps like a lifeline, something swelling in the pit of my gut.
Impact. A meteorite striking granite, it rocks my core, every fibre bouncing with the force, which rips the air into pieces with the deafening screech of breaking metal. My head smacks the headrest, the lights go out. Water, flooding in as cold as ice... seeping up onto my shins, my thighs, my torso. My breaths are shards of glass in my chest. My fingers, numb and useless in the frozen water, fumbling at the buckle that’s pressing into me. Water’s rising to my neck, I’m panting like a dog, shivering, dizzy with it. I’m grappling with the catch, another lurch, forcing my head into the liquid tomb, enveloping me in watery sounds. I seize a last breath, and go under.
Groaning in the darkness, scraping and screeching – a tortured whale-song, consuming me. I’m falling into cold black... Open the fucking harness! The catch bursts loose. I’m fumbling in the dark... what way’s up? A door... a handle. I yank at it as my lungs scream for air... must breathe... a tearing pain in my chest. My head pounding like it will explode... Air... please... my heart’s splitting; it’s going to burst... air...
Fear erupts in me – deep, visceral, wild fear. It’s happening all over again – it’s all coming back to me. I’m not ready, not yet.
The door glides away from me into the black. I push through the threshold and then...
...and then...
Peace.
I am still.
I float gently in the current, the urge to struggle gone, the pain, a distant memory.
I become the water, the waves, the tide, part of it all. Such stillness, such peace.
I’d forgotten.
There’s light, a gentle radiance, flooding me with all the peace that ever was. It’s brightening. A blizzard of silent light.
It makes sense now.
There is nothing to fear.
Chapter Eight
I FEEL AS though I’m being washed clean and all that’s bad is flooding away and in its place there is warmt
h and refuge. My senses come alive and every particle in my body seems perfectly tuned, vibrating in unison with everything. I’m energised and alive and radiant, like nothing I’ve ever experienced.
The world falls away. Suspended amongst the galaxies and the gas clouds and the suns, I watch as the cosmos creates and destroys itself in its timeless cycle of birth and death. Red giants folding in on themselves, great seething furnaces of gold and crimson in their last fervent gasps. Cataclysmic explosions, scattering white light and energy and the elements of life into the darkest corners of the universe – new beginnings. Space isn’t black. It’s not silent or empty or cold or unchanging. It’s dynamic, full of violence and turmoil and evolution, an animal continually struggling to shed its old skin to make way for the new creature inside. There’s something else, between all those suns – a radiant, billowing web of myriad colour. And I’m part of it, part of that unspeakable majesty, just as it is part of me. And then, for a moment as brief as it is eternal, I know everything there is to know.
I meet myself at last.
I HAD A dream about death. It wasn’t a bad dream, and, like all dreams, it made sense at the time.
There is no judgement. There is no fear, or suspicion, or criticism, because how can you feel these things towards something else when you and the other are the same thing? When you are the same thing you’re part of a greater whole and you see that the ‘I’ that you knew before was only an illusion, a vehicle of life and consciousness. All the things that once concerned the ‘I’ no longer matter, because they’re all just experiences. It’s something beyond pain and suffering, and hardship and cruelty, it’s beyond happiness and excitement and pleasure. There are no words to describe it, because it simply is all that is. But it’s a wonderful thing to know you are a part of it, this ultimate communion.
We share that moment of understanding, like old friends who have long since said all that needs to be said and are comfortable with the silence between them.
SOMETHING GRASPS MY shoulder, powerful, insistent.
Leave me. Let me stay.
But it won’t let go, it’s wresting with me, dragging me up from the depths of my peace. I feel the stillness, that perfect emptiness, flooding from me, and the snowstorm of light goes out.
I am standing on a pebbled shore. Don’t ask me how I got here, or where it is. In the distance the searchlights from the rescue boats scour the unsettled, murky waters. Heavy clouds unravel from the west and the low sun illuminates their underbellies with an eerie, orange glow. The restless gulls call and swoop in the last of the light. I turn to see a small crowd nearby, people I don’t know. Standing in their waterproof jackets, hoods up, huddled around something on the shore, watching in silence. I move in to look. A man with a bushy beard and red cheeks is kneeling over a body, pumping the chest with a firm, steady rhythm. He looks up and says, “How long?”
“They say less than ten minutes,” says a middle-aged woman at the edge of the crowd.
I inch closer, peering at the body.
My muscles seize as the world rushes at me in that single, nauseating vision. I stumble backwards, my legs losing their footing on the pebbles, and I hear my own voice whispering, “No, no, no...” I shake my head. My breaths come in spasms, but make no mark on the cold, coastal air.
“Robert,” says a voice from behind, “it is you, lad.”
I spin round. “Casimir? What the fuck!” I back away from the old man. He’s standing in front of me, looking at me. He’s looking at me. “What is this?”
Casimir watches me with a level gaze, but says nothing. I squeeze my eyes shut and when I look up again the ridiculous vision is still there. Casimir, the man I lowered into the ground only a few days ago, standing calmly before me, and the crowd huddled around the cold, pale body. I hold onto my stomach, certain that I’m going to be sick. My breaths come in slow, deep waves from the pit of my gut.
The man who’s pummelling the body’s chest spits through gritted teeth, “Come on!” The crowd stares on, whispering amongst themselves. I edge closer, I have to be certain.
My own face, cold and sunken and the colour of death. The lips light blue, the eyes half open and glazed with a light mist.
I collapse to my hands and knees, and retch.
I feel a hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Robert,” says Casimir. “It’s up to you. You can hold on, or you can let go. It’s up to you.”
I look up at him. “I don’t understand. What’s happening?” I stagger to my feet, the world swaying beneath me.
“Your lifeline.” He nods towards my right hand. “It’s your choice.”
I feel something on my palm and I stare as the thing takes form. A fine silvery cord, pulsing and fading, pulsing and fading. It feels like silk in my hand. My eyes follow it, to the corpse lying on the stones, to the middle of its chest. My fingers close round it.
“What happens if I let go?”
“You already know.”
It comes back to me. That feeling I had in the dream about death. Nothing comes close. I didn’t want to lose it; I resented that I did. But what if it isn’t like that? What if it’s not alright? What the hell do I know about this? I used to think I knew. I used to speak about it with conviction, like it wasn’t something to worry about. Maybe I even thought that it wouldn’t really happen, not to me. Now I know the truth: I don’t know anything.
My grip on the cord makes my nails dig into my palm.
“I can’t do it,” I whisper. My whole body’s trembling. “I can’t do it.”
Images flash in my mind: all those things I haven’t done, I haven’t even begun. Cora. The stone in my chest swells and shatters as my life with her slides out of reach. It’s so clear to me now, what matters most and what doesn’t. Why couldn’t I see it before? How many opportunities did I squander because I always thought there would be more time? But there’s no time. There’s no more time. Not a minute of it now.
My fist closes around the thread. I’m not giving up, I can’t give up... this is insane...
“And if I hold on?”
“Then you go back.”
I look down at the sweaty red-faced man whose locked fists continue to pump my chest.
The lifeline tugs at my hand, yearning to break free.
So this is it.
I’m standing at the edge of the Big Secret. We’ve seen what lies beyond the solar system, we’ve conquered illness, we’ve split the atom. But death? It’s a dark, uncharted land that lies foreboding in the distance, until the day it comes to you. All the certainty of a lifetime fades away when it comes to your door, because it is a visitor that will not leave.
The waves rush in and reach to take back the pebbles on the shore, as the amber dusk takes back the daylight. Everything ends. That’s just the way of things.
But I’m not ready.
Not yet.
I turn to Casimir. “I’ve more to do.”
He studies me for a moment, a smile settling on his lips. “If that’s what you choose.”
I HAD A dream about death.
It disentangles itself from my mind as I begin to stir, and I have that feeling that you get when you try to hold onto a dream, because something in it made sense, something you don’t want to lose. But already it’s fading. Bits of it come back, like the echo of a memory. Casimir was there. The rest, I think I’ve forgotten.
I knew someone who told me once that his best mate died of leukaemia. They were both into karate and used to spar in the dojo every Tuesday night. One night, this guy, Gerry, had a dream that they were sparring away and his best mate, the one with leukaemia, said to him in his dream, “Thanks for coming to see me when I was in hospital. It meant a lot to me.” And they carried on sparring. Then the phone rang and woke Gerry from his sleep. It was the call to say that his friend had just died. Nice story, I said to Gerry. You’ve gone soft in the head, I thought.
What else was in this dream of mine? Something about a silver thread, letting go. S
omething about unity, oneness.
Oneness? For Christ’s sake, Robert.
MY CHEST CAVES in over and over, like I’m being punched repeatedly on the same fresh bruise. A fierce sense of suffocation grips me – I try to breathe but no air shifts into my lungs and the pain is so intense it feels like my chest is being ripped open from the inside. Death hovers nearby, holding its breath.
Fuck you, Death.
I gasp air into my lungs, like a first breath, and it makes me cough so violently that I spit out a plug of mucus and vomit, my head swimming in a sea of nausea, the world a blur.
But I’m breathing, I’m breathing.
I’m alive.
THERE’S AN IRRITATING beep. There’s the stench of plastic and something on my face, digging into my right ear and the bridge of my nose. I can hear my own breathing, like I’m in a tunnel.
Did you hear me? Turn the beep off.
I open my eyes, but it’s all a blur. Two blurs, to be exact, one standing on either side of me, looking down.
“They dragged him out of the sea.” A woman’s voice. Young. “He had no output on scene. Some local gave him CPR and got him back. He was GCS 9 on arrival, temp thirty-two, saturations maintained at ninety-five on twenty-eight per cent oxygen. Pan CT was normal. He doesn’t seem to have any focal neurology, at the moment.”
Hey! Get off! A finger in my eyes, forcing my eyelids open. The blur on the right leans closer and is obliterated by a white light that slices into my brain. Turn that light out, you bastard!
“Any signs of aspiration?” A man’s voice, ignoring me completely.
The Eidolon Page 13