“I’m sorry I could not give you what you wanted,” says the Celt. “The only reassurance I can offer you is this: however you decide, whatever outcome is brought about, I will think no less of you.”
Miri does not mistake the finality of her tone. She is being dismissed, albeit with diplomacy and tenderness. She turns away abruptly, her disappointment compounded by a sudden stab of shame. How childish the Celt must think her.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have come,” Miri says.
For a moment, the Celt is still. “I’m glad that you did. You cannot know… you cannot know how it pleases me to see you. I wish there was more I could do…” the Celt gives a soft sigh. “Come and see me again when you have made your decision. I… I don’t want it to break you.”
Not knowing what else to say, Miri gets to her feet and begins the slow walk back along the upper ward, feeling the Celt’s eyes upon her but not daring to look around. Only when she reaches the lower ward does she allow herself to give silent voice to her resentment. She trusted the Celt above all others and now what does she have to show for it? Nothing. The shame of it stings beyond belief; an indignity worsened by knowing how easy it would have been for the Celt to help, to make things clear, to tell her what to do. But the woman refused. You are free to choose however you think best. If that’s what counts for freedom, then Miri wants no part of it.
Rounding a corner, she finds Alix tending a new patient. Her mother looks up at her with a smile and Miri feels something within her shift; a fragment of her dashed hopes beginning to settle and quietly rebuild.
“There you are,” says Alix warmly.
“There you are,” repeats Miri, grabbing a fresh pair of surgical gloves and hastening forward to help her mother.
31
Deep below the North Sea, Jac is experiencing first-hand what it means to be sealed into a narrow, windowless capsule and shunted through a thousand miles of pipeline. Driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors, the NAX pods are capable of reaching tremendous speeds and right now, the acceleration force is crushing.
This is her fault, of course. If she’d thought to tell the Archivist how to control the acceleration of the pod at the start of the journey, the pressure might be more bearable. But she didn’t and now she’s reaping the consequences, pinned down to the floor and overwhelmed by a nausea that does not improve when she considers what would happen if she vomited inside her hazmat suit. She tries to distract herself, thinking of cool waters, clear skies. A drink of sweet cordial over crushed ice. The images do not come easy in the all-consuming dark.
Jac’s only real comfort is the knowledge that her ordeal will be over soon. In the space of a few hours, she will have crossed an entire ocean; travelled from one continent to another in less time than it would usually take her to get from London to Inbhir Nis. It won’t be long before she can leave her lightless prison. For the time being, the promise of this is enough.
She tries not to think of the strangeness of it, of how, saving the occasional trip to Alba, this is the first time she has been outside of the Federated Counties. Before, the prospect would have excited her. Now, it only makes her nausea worse, knowing she is further from home than she ever imagined she would be.
The first turn nearly blinds her. Without any warning, the cargo pod hurtles around a bend and she is thrown against the side, pinned there briefly in a gravity-defying contortion and then released, falling back to the floor. Her head hits the metal with an almighty crack and then something warm trickles down her lip; blood from where she caught her tongue between her teeth. She lets out a thin groan and thinks wildly of the damage that might have been done to her hazmat suit: did the visor shatter? Were the connections of her air supply knocked loose? Even as her breathing becomes ragged and frantic with desperation, a cooler part of her mind kicks in. Her air supply must be alright, or she’d be suffocating to death already. As to the rest of the damage, there is nothing she can do about it now. Even if she could move beneath the crushing G-force, she wouldn’t be able to tell the extent of it from touch alone, not through the thick gloves. All she can do is stay still and hope, concentrating on her breathing until it slows and steadies.
When the next bend comes, she is ready for it, and the next and the next. Or, rather, she accepts the inevitability of being once more smashed into the side of the cargo pod. She keeps her eyes screwed tight and her jaw clenched. She focuses her entire conscious mind on breathing, on that one single act that reassures her she is still safe – no matter how battered and bruised – and that her air supply is still working.
Then, when she feels she cannot have got more than halfway, there’s a change in the pod’s movement. She senses it at once, though she can’t tell what it means. Only when the crushing weight begins to ease does she realise what’s happening. The pod is slowing down.
For a space, she is not entirely sure she can believe it, convinced it must be some trick of perception, some expression of the enormous strain under which she has placed her body. But soon there’s no denying it. At last, everything falls still.
The pod has stopped.
Jac’s mind wanders inexorably to the sea above the cargo pipe. Suddenly, the walls of her pod seem laughably fragile beneath the hammering pressure of all that water. If only she could laugh. But she’s never been more frightened.
What is it? she thinks, her eyes still screwed shut. What’s happened? Why have we stopped? All at once, an image emerges unbidden out of the swirl and prickle of colours behind her eyelids. There’s a flash of bright white, followed by neat lines of black type. A document. Something she remembers finding its way onto her desk in London. Something she signed. In another moment, she has it.
The Energy Diversion Measure.
Fuck.
For years now, the Borlaug’s Inbhir Nis facility – including the NAX – has had a chokehold on the Alban power-grid, receiving priority supply. About six months ago, following a series of local outages, she was finally pressed to sign a measure loosening that chokehold as a show of good faith. Now, whenever there’s a major drop in the electrical output of the Alban grid, energy is diverted as a priority to local services, hospitals chief among them.
On these occasions, energy usage within the facility itself has to be prioritised accordingly, most of it being channelled into ensuring the continued safe storage of nuclear materials. But the NAX… that can be temporarily suspended with minimal risk. If any samples were in the pipe, they could simply be held in place. Travelling in their hermetically sealed cases, they would incur little damage and could be held indefinitely. Once energy levels returned to an agreed baseline, the NAX would start up again. No harm done.
Or so she thought when she signed the measure.
So, she’s stuck. And with no way of knowing how long the NAX may be suspended. With increasing alarm, she thinks of her suit’s air system. It was enough, she hoped, to get to Greenland and back. Now there’s no telling. The outage might last for hours. Or it might last for days. When the oxygen starts to run out–
Don’t think about it, she tells herself firmly. Don’t panic before you have to. In fact, don’t do anything. Don’t talk. Don’t move. Don’t do anything that will increase oxygen consumption.
She lies there in the dark – in what will likely be her coffin – and hopes. Time slips by in quick seconds, drains out in agonisingly slow minutes – she has no idea, no reliable way of measuring its passage.
Please, she thinks. Not like this. I can’t miss my Offset. No one has ever missed an Offset. She remembers well when the final trading bloc fell and how the Governor of London marched up the steps of the Gallery to his own Offset regardless. The pigsuits stood in lines outside his family home to protect the child against the Activists begging for her to change her mind: “Pick your other father!” they screamed. “Leave our Governor alone!”
But it was the Governor’s duty to climb those steps. Not just to the people of London – blinded though the
y were by their craving for the continued security of his leadership – and not just to the world, either; it was his duty to his child, to whom he was bound in covenant before all others.
Jac’s life is Miri’s alone to take away. In putting herself in mortal danger now, she has risked something unthinkable. The greatest taboo.
If she dies here, her body will likely never be recovered. When the NAX finally makes it to Greenland, the contents of the pods will be processed and securely disposed of – she’ll probably end up buried deep in the Gunnbjørn Mountain along with the rest of the radioactive cores. What will happen when her disappearance is noticed? What will it mean for the Archivist, the last person to have seen her alive? What suspicion will fall on him? For all her animosity towards him, the idea of him being burdened with that is intolerable. And as for Miri–
No, she says silently to herself. Enough. She can’t let herself keep thinking about it.
She doesn’t know how long it’s been before she begins to feel a creeping light-headedness that might be exhaustion and might be something far worse. A desire to fight comes with the clawing at the edges of her consciousness and she forces herself – really, this time, really forces herself – to concentrate, frantically summoning a hundred images to mind. The Energy Diversion Measure, the pages of her report that meticulously charted every discrepancy she found, long streams of numbers, figures… the Archivist, his face behind the visor… Alix, the freckles that dapple her cheeks and nose, her strawberry-blonde hair, her wild rose and poppy perfume… Miri, Miri as a baby, red-faced in her arms, Miri as a petulant teenager, slamming the door to the Warren… Miri…
When the pod begins to ease forward, Jac gives a cry of relief. Soon she can’t move again beneath the accelerating force, but it doesn’t matter, not now. She isn’t going to die. Not there, lying still, crushed at the bottom of the sea.
32
When Miri awakes the following morning – the day of her birthday, the day she turns eighteen, the day Jac Boltanski will die – it is with the unfamiliar feeling of health. Her mind is perfectly clear, the constant discomfort of her bloated stomach has eased off, and the hundred aches and pains which normally plague her do not bother her in quite the way they once did. When she looks in the mirror, she even fancies that the sores on her face are beginning to heal, though that may well be pure fantasy on her part.
It was late by the time she and Alix made it back from the clinic the previous night. Miri, keen to avoid being drawn into answering questions about where she disappeared to at the end of the day, allowed Alix to insist on getting a rickshaw, even if only for the sake of making the journey shorter.
As it turned out, she had to do very little to conceal the things that were troubling her. Alix, tired but evidently energised by her spell of volunteering, kept up an animated but somewhat one-sided flurry of observational remarks all the way back to the Warren. It was only when they finally entered the house that her wide smile had slipped and contracted. Miri understood why at once. Jac was supposed to be there, but the house was dark and empty.
Miri couldn’t say she was sorry that her mother had been detained. Dealing with the Offset would be easier without having to see her first. But she was sorry for Alix. Whatever Jac’s faults, Miri had never doubted her love for Alix. It was absolute and above question. Or so Miri had thought. Now she wasn’t so sure. What could be so important that it would be worth spending her final hours apart from the woman she loved?
Alix’s first response on discovering Jac’s absence was to check the phone for messages. There had been a landline at the Warren for as long as Miri remembered. For the first sixteen years of her life, she had thought it was normal, assumed that every house had one. Then she had abruptly discovered that, for most people, reality was quite different.
“Well?” Miri prompted, watching as her mother stood in the hall, phone cord winding round her thumb, the receiver pressed to one ear.
“There’s a message,” she said. She listened for several long minutes, her expression serious but inscrutable. At long last, she put the phone down and jabbed at the combination of buttons on the dial pad that would delete the message. “Wrong number,” she said.
Miri didn’t believe that for a second. Alix bade her goodnight then and there, marching up the stairs to the master bedroom without so much as a backward glance.
Now, the morning of her eighteenth birthday, Miri leaves her old room and goes in search of her mother. The light is off in the hall outside and the house seems to be quiet. Miri crosses to the top of the stairs and stops, arrested by the sudden ring of the telephone below. She waits, expecting Alix to come bustling out any moment to answer the call, but the phone just rings on and on.
Frowning, Miri slopes down to the kitchen. Alix is there, sipping coffee from a shallow china cup. Her eyes are half-shut and the corners of her mouth are drawn down, her lower lip protruding slightly as she holds her jaw slack. When she sees Miri, she hastily composes her expression, flattening it into something more agreeable.
“Happy birthday. Did you sleep well?”
Miri shrugs and heads straight for the coffee pot. Everything is just where she remembers; the fine china cups, the sterling teaspoons in the drawer. The coffee is tepid but strong. She drains her cup in one and then pours out another. Only then does she notice the loaf cake on the counter, the top dusted with sugar. She freezes. Then she turns back to her mother, taking in for the first time the places that have been set with elaborate care: the rose-patterned plates, the delicate cake forks, the cloth napkins folded into neat triangles.
“It’s a big day,” says Alix, voice barely above a whisper. “Why don’t you bring over the cake? There’s a knife in the drawer.”
“I’m… I’m not hungry.”
Alix gives her a look. “I think we both know that’s not true. We’ve spoken about this–”
“It’s just too early,” says Miri quickly. “I’ll have something later.” Even as the words leave her mouth, she knows the excuse is a feeble one. She waits for her mother’s rebuke and is surprised when none is forthcoming.
“Bring it over for me then,” says Alix. “I’d like a piece.”
Struggling to find a reason why not, Miri does as she asks, rummaging in the drawer for the silver knife and then bringing it over with the plate. Then she retreats to the safety of the countertop where she left her cup.
“Why don’t you come sit with me while you finish your coffee?”
“Please, Mum–”
“I don’t think it’s so much to ask, is it?” says Alix, cutting her off. “Really, Miri, it won’t hurt you to sit down for five minutes.”
Miri falters. She doesn’t want to argue with Alix, not today. Hesitantly, she carries her cup to the table and takes a seat across from her mother.
Alix gives a wan smile. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” Then she picks up the knife. “Now, how are you planning to get to the Gallery?” she asks, sinking the blade into the cake. “Do you want me to come with you? I could call a rickshaw.”
“I’ll walk.”
“Suit yourself. Here,” says Alix, sliding a thick-cut slice onto one of the rose-patterned plates.
Miri stares at it. “I said I didn’t want any.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” says Alix. “It’s your birthday. It’s only right you should have a little something to celebrate.” She gouges a forkful from her own slice and takes a bite. “You’re not going to make me eat this alone, are you?” Then, catching the look on her daughter’s face: “Come on, Miri, don’t be so stubborn. You always loved pound cake when you were little. It was your favourite.”
Was it? thinks Miri. She looks at the cake; the soft yellow sponge, the rich brown crust. It looks blandly ordinary and stirs in her no recollection, no residual fondness. And yet Alix is so certain.
“Come on, try a bit.”
Miri shakes her head, wishing she could find the words to make Alix stop. Finally, she pushes the cak
e away. “I don’t feel like it, sorry.”
All at once, her mother’s face goes blank. For a moment, everything is still. Then Alix casts her fork down with a ringing clatter. “If that’s how you want it…” Getting abruptly to her feet, she reaches for the plates of uneaten cake and scrapes them unceremoniously into the bin.
“Mum!” shouts Miri, as dismayed by the waste as she is by her mother’s sudden distemper.
“You didn’t want it,” replies Alix coolly, dropping the plates into the sink. Then her lips tremble and curve downwards as her anger gives way. “I don’t know what I did to deserve this,” she says more quietly.
“Please, Mum. I don’t want to fight. I don’t want to upset you.”
“Don’t you?” she snaps. “Why are you still here, Miri? Just go. Go make your nomination. I don’t care anymore.” She stumbles from the room, tears cascading down her face.
Miri starts after her and then falls back. Without realising what she’s doing, she brings her hands level with her chest and starts to lace them together, finger over thumb.
33
Jac is uncertain of what time it is when her pod finally makes it to Greenland. When the hatch opens, she stays lying where she is for several long minutes. At last, she feels strong enough to get up and she pulls herself to her feet, straightening one vertebra at a time, going extra slow to make sure that she’s not overwhelmed by a sudden rush of blood to the head. Picking up the silver rucksack, she steps out of the hatch, relieved to at last escape the confines of the cargo pod.
The dosimeter on the front of her suit beeps once, signalling an effective dose approximate to a full-body X-ray. The shrill sound is muffled through the protective shell of her hazmat suit. Jac shakes her head and moves on.
Sited at ground level, the Greenland loading bay is the exact replica of the one in Inbhir Nis, save for the bank of robotic arms that hang dormant, waiting until the next batch of core samples are ready to be despatched. She walks the length of the bay until she comes to a heavy door of marine steel with a hand wheel set in the middle. Taking a firm grip, she heaves it to the left, cranking the wheel round and round until the door clunks open.
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