Cadel was sprawled at the bottom of the boat, among various bits of maritime equipment: a rope, a distress flare, a lifejacket, a couple of oars, a manually operated bilge pump. Above him, the ceiling seemed to be rushing by at a rapidly accelerating pace. But although he saw the concrete beams, and the strip lighting, and the furled roller door, they didn’t fully register. He didn’t really absorb them, because he was too busy processing what he had just heard.
The bus? he thought. I didn’t mention that bus.
Suddenly he found himself looking directly up at the sky, which was low and dark and full of movement. Rain splashed into his eyes, making them sting. He rolled about, head bouncing; beneath him, sand and rock scraped roughly against the keel until, with a swelling heave and a loud slap, the boat hit water.
‘I didn’t say anything about a bus,’ he croaked.
Prosper wasn’t listening. Perhaps he hadn’t even heard. What with the wind, the waves, and the clatter of loose oars, it wasn’t easy to hear such a small, weak, wobbly voice. Certainly Prosper didn’t reply. Instead he gave the dinghy a huge shove, leaping into it before it could get away from him.
The impact was tremendous. For one nasty moment, it felt as if the vessel was about to flip over. But it remained buoyant, despite his wild scrabblings.
Cadel was nearly kicked in the head as Prosper tried to get the outboard motor started. Already, their boat was being pushed back towards the tunnel’s entrance by a tumultuous surf.
‘I didn’t –’ Cadel began, at which point the two-stroke engine roared to life, drowning out his second attempt to speak.
Chugga-chugga-chugga-v-r-R-O-M-M.
Prosper laughed. He was wet and dirty, and his skin was grey with cold, and his long hair whipped across his spray-flecked glasses with every gust of wind. Nevertheless, he looked exultant.
‘God, it’s good to be in the open air!’ he exclaimed, steering the boat out to sea. Hitting swell after swell, the little dinghy rocked and lurched. Cadel couldn’t sit up – not with his hands tied behind him. The bucking of the keel kept throwing him from side to side.
It was Prosper who finally leaned across and dragged Cadel into a sitting position, before glancing back over his shoulder.
No activity was visible on the edge of the receding cliff-top. The hole in the cliff was gone, replaced by polyurethane rockfall that looked just like a genuine rockfall. The only sign that it had ever swung open were two semicircular lines that had been scored in the sand. And they were quickly being expunged by the rain.
‘I don’t see anyone up there, do you?’ Prosper inquired, at the top of his voice. But Cadel didn’t choose to answer this question. Instead he asked a question of his own.
‘How did you know about the bus?’ was his response, pitched high and loud over the swishing of raindrops, the clop of water hitting aluminium, and the engine’s throaty putt-putt-putt. ‘I thought you hadn’t been told what was going on?’
This time, Prosper heard. His smile evaporated. The sparkle in his eyes was snuffed out. But he didn’t say a word as he locked gazes with Cadel – whose own eyes widened in horror.
‘You knew all along.’ It was suddenly, blindingly obvious. Prosper had been lying. Of course he had been lying. He was a habitual liar. ‘You – you did this,’ Cadel stammered. ‘You tried to kill me.’
Prosper frowned. ‘What?’ he said, straining to hear.
‘You tried to kill me!’
‘No.’ Prosper shook his head.
‘You did! It was you!’ Cadel found himself gasping, like someone being punched in the chest. ‘You were the one, right from the start! You gave the orders! You kicked things off!’ The dinghy bounced over the crest of a very large wave, but Cadel hardly noticed. He had forgotten his bruises, and his nausea, and his fear of drowning. His whole attention was fixed on the hunched, lanky, sodden figure at the helm. ‘Why did you do it?’ he wailed. ‘I was minding my own business!’
Prosper took a deep breath. ‘This is hardly the time or the place –’ he began. Cadel, however, interrupted him.
‘I was leaving you alone! I was perfectly happy! I was leading my own life!’ bawled Cadel. ‘Why did you have to mess it all up? Why do you always have to come back and mess it all up?’
Prosper lowered his chin. Though his glasses were covered in smears of salt, there was no mistaking the anger that flared up in the inky depths of his eyes. With his long yellow teeth bared in a snarl, and his hair billowing wildly around his head, and his bony frame folded into origami angles, he looked like a cornered beast.
‘I didn’t mess anything up!’ he shouted, into the wind. ‘You made a mess of your life, not me!’
‘What are you talking about?’ Cadel was almost hysterical with disbelief. ‘I was fine! Everything was fine until you came along!’
‘Pottering around in the suburbs, with a bunch of cripples and gardeners! Wasting your time at school, surrounded by simple-minded wage-slaves!’ Practically retching with disgust, Prosper couldn’t contain himself. A faint flush was staining his hollow cheeks. The veins were standing out on his temples. ‘What’s the matter with you? Where’s your self-respect? How can you stand that kind of servitude?’
Cadel’s jaw dropped.
‘It’s pitiful!’ Prosper railed. ‘All the work and money and time that went into raising you, and this is the result! This pettiness! This mediocrity!’ He leaned forward, white-knuckled, to drive his point home. ‘Can’t you see what you’ve become? You’re throwing your life away!’
Oh, my God, thought Cadel. Suddenly he understood. And he said, in tones of wonder, ‘You’re jealous.’
Prosper’s head jerked back, as if he were recoiling from a blow. But his reply, when it came, was scornful. ‘Don’t be a fool!’ he barked.
‘You wanted to screw up my life because you’ve screwed up your own.’ The truth of this was so painfully clear. Prosper was stir-crazy. He’d been trapped in an underground bunker for months and months, skulking like a sewer-rat while Cadel enjoyed a carefree, sunlit existence. ‘You couldn’t bear to see me happy,’ Cadel cried, ‘because you don’t know how to be happy yourself!’
Prosper grinned. But it was a rictus of a grin, like a jagged cut gaping open to reveal white bone.
‘You weren’t happy!’ he retorted,
‘I was!’
‘You weren’t! Not until I gave you something to do with yourself!’ Prosper’s sudden laugh was like a shutter banging, or shots being fired. ‘Hasn’t life been more exciting, since I forced you to flex your muscles a bit? I wasn’t trying to kill you, I was trying to set you free! I was teaching you to make use of those God-given talents that no one else seems to appreciate! And I was right – do you see? Because here you are, really living!’
Cadel opened his mouth. He wanted to explain that he was no longer a warped little puppet with a blinkered view of the world; that a normal life was all he needed; that he now had a family, to which Prosper didn’t belong. He wanted to slam a door in Prosper’s face, by rejecting their shared past. He wanted to point out that Prosper was deluded, and maladjusted, and caught in a trap of his own making.
Before any of this could be said, however, the outboard motor sputtered, choked, and died.
THIRTY-FIVE
‘Goddammit,’ said Prosper.
He tried to restart the engine, but wasn’t successful. Again and again, the result was a discouraging ugga-ugga-ugga. Meanwhile, the boat began to drift.
‘Untie me!’ Cadel shrieked, almost dislocating his shoulder as he struggled to free himself. ‘Quick! Or I’ll drown!’
But Prosper was fiddling with the outboard motor. He swore as the keel beneath him pitched and tossed helplessly.
‘This is ridiculous,’ he protested, turning to peer at all the loose supplies that were sliding around underfoot. ‘There must be a spare can …’
‘Please! Oh, please!’ Cadel could see the rocky shoreline inching nearer and nearer. ‘You’ve got to help me
, we’re running out of time!’
‘Why the hell would you have an escape boat with an empty tank?’ said Prosper, who seemed to be talking to himself. He certainly gave no indication that he had heard Cadel. ‘Rex thought of everything else, for God’s sake – why not petrol?’
‘Because he used it all up trying to attract attention!’ Cadel screamed. The answer was so obvious that he couldn’t understand why he hadn’t thought of it before. Rex must have run the engine for hours, hoping that its throbbing rumble would spark the curiosity of passing beachcombers. But the noise hadn’t been loud enough – and the fumes had probably killed him. ‘If we’re out of petrol, we’re going to crash! You’ve got to untie me!’
Again, Prosper didn’t respond. He was squinting at the cliffs that loomed to his left, a pensive frown on his face. Then all at once he reached for the oars.
‘Please,’ Cadel sobbed, ‘please let me go, I don’t want to drown!’
‘Oh, stop it!’ snapped Prosper. ‘You’re not going to drown!’ Having fitted each oar into an oarlock, he began to row. He did it very well, with smooth and powerful strokes that did a lot to stabilise the storm-tossed dinghy. Cadel, however, wasn’t reassured. By this time the bottom of the boat was awash, and the rain-veiled cliffs looked awfully close.
‘There’s a distress flare in here!’ he cried. ‘We should light it!’
Prosper shook his head.
‘Do you still have that police radio?’ Cadel demanded. ‘Maybe you could call for help!’
‘No.’ The strain of exertion was clearly evident in Prosper’s voice as he swung back and forth. His cheeks were flushed and his breathing laboured.
‘I could do it myself!’ pleaded Cadel. ‘You wouldn’t have to stop rowing! It won’t take a minute to untie me!’
‘That radio is back in the house,’ said Prosper, stubbornly plying his oars. So Cadel tried another tack.
‘You’re not going to get away! Not without an engine! Can’t you see that?’ No reply. ‘There’ll be a state-wide alert! Even if we don’t capsize, the police will pick you up as soon as you hit solid ground!’
Finally Prosper found the breath to speak. ‘Not in Mexico, they won’t,’ he rejoined, into the teeth of the wind.
‘Mexico?’
‘It’s not very far.’ Cre-e-eack went the oars in their oarlocks. ‘I’ll call Wilfreda when we get there.’
For a split second, Cadel was distracted. For one fleeting moment, he forgot all about the jolting waves, the threatening cliffs, and the water sloshing around his ankles. ‘You said you didn’t know where Wilfreda was!’ he exclaimed.
‘I don’t,’ Prosper admitted. ‘But I do have her number.’
At that instant, a wave broke over the bow, dumping several bucketloads of water into the wallowing dinghy. Cadel gasped. Prosper scowled.
He turned to peer at the nearby cliff-top, his profile colourless against a darkening backdrop of slate-grey sea and sky. Though he was trying to head south, the swell was pushing him eastwards, straight towards land.
Cadel could see this with perfect clarity. And he was quite sure that Prosper couldn’t have missed it.
‘Let me bail out the boat! I promise I won’t do anything else!’ Sitting in a puddle of bilge, Cadel realised that hysterical ranting wasn’t going to get him anywhere. He had to argue his case, calmly and firmly. He had to reason with Prosper. ‘I’d be stupid to hit you,’ he went on, in a far more subdued fashion. ‘I can’t row this boat by myself. I swear to God, I’ll do whatever you tell me, just untie my hands!’
The psychologist kept rowing, lunging forward and pulling back, his muscles braced against the boat’s far more erratic movements. But his hooded gaze was now fixed on Cadel – rather than on the surrounding scene of stormy chaos – and something about that unreadable gaze was oddly encouraging.
Had Prosper decided to see reason, at long last?
Suddenly the oars lifted. They swung back on board, as if the vessel were folding its wings. Instead of reaching for Cadel, however, Prosper bent down and grabbed the distress flare.
‘No point taking any risks,’ he said, tossing it over the side. Then he began to pluck at Cadel’s knotted sleeves.
Cadel didn’t cry out. Though he saw the flare vanish with a plop, he didn’t utter a word of protest. What was the point? Prosper had gone mad. It was almost as if he wanted to die. Either that, or he genuinely believed that he was invincible.
Cadel knew better. He also knew that, if he was going to survive, he would have to choose his words with care. It was important that Prosper not be angered or alarmed. He had to be lulled into a false sense of security.
For that reason, Cadel made his eyes very big (and his voice very small) as he thanked the psychologist for untying him. Furthermore, despite the fact that a serviceable handgun was still tucked into Prosper’s waistband, Cadel made no immediate attempt to arm himself. The time wasn’t right for a frontal assault. I’ll wait until he’s rowing again, Cadel decided.
Almost on cue, their boat spun around in a circle, like a leaf going down a plughole.
‘Jesus!’ Prosper exclaimed. He snatched at the oars and wrestled them back into position, while Cadel frantically tore off his oilskin coat. The bilge pump was rattling around nearby; it looked a bit like a bicycle pump, except that it was bigger, with an attached hose. After a moment’s intense contemplation, Cadel pushed one end of this hose over the side.
The other end was attached to the top of the pump, near the handle.
‘How well can you swim?’ Prosper asked, unexpectedly. Though he was short of breath and straining to be heard, his tone was almost conversational. ‘I’m a pretty strong swimmer – are you?’
‘No,’ Cadel replied, furiously working the pump. It wasn’t very efficient. Though it did suck up brine from the surging, splashing pool in which he crouched, the volume of water being moved was dangerously small, in Cadel’s opinion – especially in view of the fact that he was being constantly interrupted. Every roll of the boat threw him off balance. He would bounce off the side, or fall on his face.
‘So after all those lessons, you’re still not much good?’ Prosper sounded more amused than annoyed. The way he was talking, he could have been steering a paddleboat across a pond. ‘I should have strangled that coach of yours with her own silver whistle!’
Cadel lifted his gaze. He licked his salty lips. ‘You think we’ll have to swim? Is that what you’re saying?’ he inquired hoarsely.
‘Not at all. I’m just wondering who should get the lifejacket.’ Prosper fell silent for a moment, panting as he rowed. He had to fill his lungs a few times before proceeding. ‘I certainly don’t think it’ll do you much good, if you’re a weak swimmer anyway. But it might make a world of difference to me.’
Another pause. Another stroke. Prosper seemed to be expecting some kind of reaction, to judge from the smirk that was tugging at the corner of his mouth. Though Cadel stiffened, however, he didn’t speak. He didn’t try to contend that the weakest swimmer deserved the most help, because he knew that Prosper would only make some barbed comment about the survival of the fittest.
‘Trouble is,’ Prosper added, pitching his voice high above the wind, ‘I don’t know how I can put that lifejacket on, unless you take the oars.’ Though his lips were blue, and his teeth were chattering, and his hands were shaking as he dragged at the oars’ slippery shafts, he seemed almost to be teasing Cadel. ‘What a conundrum, eh? Should I give you the lifejacket or should I give you the oars?’
Cadel swallowed. ‘The lifejacket,’ he retorted.
‘Oh, really? Why?’
Because the oars aren’t going to save either of us, Cadel thought. But aloud he said, ‘Because I’m not strong enough to row.’
Suddenly a huge wave slammed into them. It nearly flipped the dinghy over, and it sent Cadel reeling. He was pitched straight into Prosper’s lap as the psychologist lurched sideways. Then the boat righted itself. A loose oar slipp
ed into the sea. Prosper stretched an arm over the side, reaching desperately.
He had to lean past Cadel, who was now sprawled at his feet – and as he did so, Cadel spotted the gun-butt. It was protruding from Prosper’s waistband, right under Cadel’s nose.
‘Got it!’ yelped Prosper, seizing the oar.
At that very instant, Cadel grabbed the gun.
‘Freeze!’ he shrilled.
The boat rolled again, steeply. To prevent himself from sliding into the stern, Cadel had to hook one arm around an oarlock and hold on for dear life. The bilge pump bounced off his ribs. Seawater slapped him in the face.
Then Prosper caught at his free hand, pushing it upwards. With his wrist immobilised, and his gun pointed at the clouds, Cadel couldn’t do a thing. In fact he probably would have been overpowered, if Prosper hadn’t been tired out – and if Prosper’s own free hand hadn’t been occupied with the rescued oar.
For what seemed like hours, but was probably only a few seconds, the two of them remained trapped in a stalemate. Prosper couldn’t afford to drop his oar, while Cadel couldn’t risk letting go of the oarlock. Neither could achieve any kind of ascendancy – not while they were both throwing every ounce of strength they had into a bout of elevated arm-wrestling.
Finally Prosper began to laugh.
‘I should have known this is how it would end,’ he brayed. ‘You dragging me down for the third time in a row.’ Grinning like a skull, he narrowed his eyes. ‘So what was all that about not trying anything?’ he said. ‘It’s good to see that you still can’t be trusted. I’d hate to think you’d completely rejected your upbringing.’
Bang! Bang! Bang-bang-bang!
A volley of gunshots rang out as Cadel fired into the air. He knew that Prosper couldn’t shoot him without bullets. It was also possible that someone, somewhere, might hear the shots. Though he realised that he would be left defenceless, Cadel had calculated that an unloaded gun would be a safer option than the alternative. So he kept squeezing the trigger until it produced nothing but a sad little click.
The Genius Wars Page 37