“Sorry.” Chris didn’t know where all this was coming from. “I don’t normally ramble and get emotional. That stuff they pumped into me is worse than beer.”
“It does no harm to express these things.”
“Yeah.”
“Ah, Major Trinder’s on his way now with Captain Fonseca.”
“How do you know?”
“Tracked chips. It’s a big site to search in an emergency.”
Chris realised he was still lagging a couple of minutes behind the conversation. “Did you really shoot one of those guys?”
“Yes. Jackson shot him as well. Taking prisoners was never going to work out.”
Chris wasn’t sure if that was a deadpan joke, but even if Solomon meant it, that made him okay in Chris’s book. He was still trying to work it out when Trinder and Fonseca arrived. The major looked him over as if he was counting how many limbs he had left.
And Chris remembered Fonseca. She’d been on the Lammergeier, and she looked a lot better in her working uniform than in the battledress she’d been wearing. Everything was making more sense now. He smiled at her and hoped he didn’t look creepy.
“How are you doing, Chris?” Trinder asked.
“Not too bad, sir.”
“I’m not sure where to start.” Trinder reached out to shake his hand as if this was some kind of reunion. “But sorry is probably as good a place as any. I’m really sorry about Jamie, and I’m sorry we didn’t spot the ambush sooner.”
“I should know better than to retrace a route.”
“I never lecture a man when I’ve never done his job.”
“Well, next time I’ll accept your support. Anyway, thanks. Your guys were on the ball.”
Fonseca pulled up a seat and leaned on the bedside conspiratorially. “You don’t need to go scavenging for ammo. Just let us know what you need. But keep it between us, okay? Regulations, management, the usual crap.”
Chris pointed up at the ceiling, the best he could do to indicate that Solomon might be listening. “Just us?”
Fonseca looked blank. Chris mouthed Solomon at her.
“Oh, don’t worry about Sol,” she said. “He’s in on it. He’s cooking the books.”
Chris knew he ought to wait until his head cleared before he started throwing in his lot with people he didn’t really know. If it hadn’t been for the firefight, he wouldn’t have felt he knew them at all. Part of his brain, the cells holding out against the onslaught of medication, was warning him that his judgement was addled by injury, drugs, and Jamie’s death, and that he couldn’t go from zero contact to best buddies in the space of a week. He had to ask questions. The world was never what it seemed.
“Is there anything weird going on? The medics seem agitated. Or are they always like that?”
“What do you mean by agitated?” Trinder asked.
Chris really wanted to lob in a mention of Pascoe’s Star to see their reaction, but that was probably best saved for when he was feeling more mentally agile. He could still test the waters, though.
“They were talking about whether they were going to go somewhere or not,” he said. “Never mind. Nothing to worry about, obviously.”
“You and I need a chat,” Trinder said. “But now isn’t a good time, not for either of us.” He looked at Fonseca, an are-we-doing-this-or-not kind of look, as if he was waiting for her to stop him. “Let’s get you fit and think about how we’ve ended up like this. We’re on the same side, whatever you think.”
Maybe Chris had misheard. The more he thought about it, the less he understood what it meant.
Trinder gave him a respectful nod and walked out. Fonseca hung back, took something out of her shoulder bag, and put it on the bedcover within his reach. Then, almost as an afterthought, she took hold of his hand and placed it on the object, as if she thought he couldn’t locate it. It was a slab of chocolate in a plain, transparent wrapper.
“Morale in a bar,” she said. “Get some sleep.”
Chris couldn’t tell if it was pity or if she was hitting on him. It was probably the former, even if he was hoping for the latter.
“Thank you,” he said.
“Door closed or open?”
“Closed, please.”
After she shut the door behind her, he managed to drag himself far enough across the bed to put the chocolate on the nightstand and grab the water bottle. Yeah, sleep. His body knew what was needed to fix him. He settled down again and hoped it would be complete oblivion once he shut his eyes. The lights dimmed to near darkness almost without him noticing.
Solomon. He’s always watching, then.
I’m gone. Good night. Sorry, Jamie.
At one point he was sure he’d woken from a dream about Dr Kim walking in and checking on him, but she wasn’t that type of doctor, and he wouldn’t have mattered to her at all.
* * *
The Brandt Farm, Kill Line:
1800 Hours
Joanne was hovering at the window, clutching a tea towel like a set of worry beads. In Kill Line, death was confined to the elderly and the occasional farm accident. Young men here didn’t die. They certainly didn’t get shot by strangers.
“Is Jared Talbot a tall black guy?” Joanne asked, stepping back from the window.
“Honey, when did we last get a stranger come to the door? Of course that’s Jared.” Doug prided himself on having a good supply of the right things to say in a crisis, but this was going to be tough. He looked over the spread on the dining room table. “I think that’s probably enough cake to keep the whole camp fed.”
“He doesn’t have to eat it. I can’t bear an empty table when people need comforting, that’s all. Food’s just a polite way of showing love.”
“I know, honey.” Doug went to let Jared in. “He’ll realise that.”
He’d known something serious had happened when he saw the two Lammergeiers take off a couple of days ago, followed by the activity on the road and the landing lights later. Ainatio security had radioed him with the news. Now the misery of the outside world had finally caught up with Kill Line and the town had changed forever.
“Come on in, Jared.” Doug shook Jared’s hand, but then felt helpless and just took a gentle grip on his arm. The man was taller than he recalled, but then he rarely saw him. He would have picked him out as a soldier right away, though. They all had that way of walking. “I’m so sorry for your loss. How’s Chris doing?”
“We’re going to visit him in the morning. Apparently the surgery went okay.”
“They’re pretty good surgeons up there.”
“Yeah. We’re lucky. If that had happened anywhere else, we’d have lost him as well.”
“Their security people called me. I’ve never known Ainatio to keep us informed about their comings and goings before.”
Jared sat down in the chair that Joanne offered and managed one of those polite but unhappy smiles. She loaded a plate and put it in front of him with a cup of coffee.
“I’m afraid I don’t know your friend’s name,” she said.
“Jamie. Jamie Wickens. Shot in the head. The convoy was ambushed on the way back. Chris was hit in the leg. The round went down through his thigh and took out his knee. A couple of the other guys got hit too, but nothing serious.”
“I feel terrible saying this, but I don’t think I ever saw Jamie.”
“Sure you did. The dark-haired kid who maintained the gun truck. You’d see him driving it around. Everybody liked him, so the camp’s pretty cut up now. Which is why I might need to ask a favour of you. It’s the first time we’ve lost someone since before we left Baltimore, and... uh... ”
Jared trailed off. Doug understood. After all that the vets and the refugees had been through, it seemed especially cruel for such a young guy to die on a simple foraging trip that he didn’t even have t
o make.
We could have helped. It’s not enough to wait for them to ask.
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Joanne said.
“The problem is we don’t know how to handle the funeral. We don’t even know what Jamie really believed, if anything. I mean, you don’t put on a uniform without giving some thought to what needs to be done if you don’t make it, but there’s no records left, no dog tag, no last letter to send home, no home to send it to, nothing. The best we can guess is Christian but probably not Catholic.”
Doug got the feeling that Jared was struggling to ask for help. Maybe he really did just want advice, but Doug didn’t want to force him to say it if he was actually asking for something more. An offer would spare him that.
“Would you like a service at St Thomas’s for him?” Doug asked. “Would you like him to be buried here in the churchyard? I don’t think God quibbles about the small print. We’ve got every belief in town from Baptist to Anglican to Iraqi Christian, and we’ve only got one church. We focus on what we have in common.”
“We thought of starting a cemetery at the camp.”
“You’d feel like it was the wrong place, though, is that it?”
“I feel bad even thinking it, but it just looks so damn lonely up there, and if we ever had to move on, it’d be nice to know he wasn’t alone and that his grave would be tended.” Jared took a breath. “It’s a lot to ask, I know. We’re strangers, pretty much.”
“No, it’s not a lot to ask. And you’re neighbours. Of course he can rest here.”
Jared shut his eyes for a moment. It wasn’t relief. It looked more like he was composing himself. “Thanks, Doug. We truly appreciate it. Can we visit the grave?”
“Any time. You’re always welcome. We’ll take care of the arrangements. You just decide on things like hymns and eulogies.”
Jared kept trying to eat a slice of cake, but every time he raised it to his mouth, he’d put it down again. Doug wondered if he was just trying to be polite when he didn’t actually want it, but then Jared turned his head and the light caught the wet trails of a couple of tears that had escaped and run down his cheek. It was hard to swallow anything when you were trying not to cry. The sight of this big, dignified guy keeping a lid on it was almost unbearable to watch.
“Thank you,” Jared said. “Really, we can’t thank you enough.”
“Jared, you look out for us. It’s our turn to look out for you. You never need to worry about asking for anything.”
“Thanks.”
Joanne wrapped some cake and gave it to Jared as he left in case he felt up to eating it later. Doug saw him to the door for a quiet word on the doorstep.
“If your people want to settle in town, we’ve got plenty of room,” Doug said. “I don’t think things are going to improve outside for a very long time.”
Jared nodded. “My wife and I worry about what the world’s going to be like when we have kids. A lot of folks didn’t have a family for that reason. It’s like we’re trying to go extinct. There’s got to be a better plan.”
Doug wasn’t sure if that was a maybe or not. He’d leave Jared to think it over. He also needed to be sure that he was doing it for their benefit and not just to soothe his own guilt. It now seemed wrong to have had so little contact with the transit camp, even if they wanted to keep their distance and hadn’t planned on staying. They made Kill Line feel safe, and they asked for nothing. He knew he should have tried harder to persuade them to come in.
But separation was the way things had always been around here. Chris and the camp keeping their distance seemed as normal as Ainatio staying inside their perimeter fence. People grew up with the habit of not mixing, not asking questions, and not trusting strangers. Ainatio’s secrecy seemed to contaminate everything around it.
Funny. I’ve never even asked Chris how he ended up with the folks that he brought here. Did he choose them, did they choose him, or didn’t that matter as long as they were alive?
Doug lay awake that night, wondering how so many people could stand not knowing if their family and friends had survived, or if they did know, having no place to visit to remember them. He understood the need for a proper grave and headstone for Jamie Wickens.
Next morning, he went to see the minister. Martin Berry was a hard man to surprise, and the phrase “broad church” had been made for him. He asked no questions about Jamie’s faith, but he did say something that put these times in perspective for Doug.
“Why does it take a young man’s death to build that bridge between us and them?” Martin asked.
“Maybe because it’s the first time we’ve seen the kind of world he came here to escape, and we realise we’ve had it easy,” Doug said. “So we try to atone somehow. But death’s got a way of waking people up and making them see what matters. Come on, let’s sort out the seating. We’ll have a full house, I think.”
“Do we have a date in mind?”
“It’ll have to be when his sergeant can leave the infirmary.”
“Let me know. No problem.” The minister patted Doug’s arm. “They came to you, after all this time. That sounds to me like they want some link with this community. So they’re ready to think about the future, and that’s an act of faith these days.”
“Or they might be thinking of moving on.”
“We’ll see. People end up where they need to be.”
Doug was a long way from feeling positive, but a life and a death that could cause people to unite had purpose, even if the deceased never saw what they’d set in motion. The invisible barrier between Kill Line and the camp seemed to be disappearing. Doug felt he could visit and not feel like he was intruding. When he had more information about the funeral, he’d go see Jared this time and maybe take some treats for the kids.
Now he had to sort out the flowers.
There were already narcissi poking through the soil, but he needed something in bloom. He took one of the farm quad bikes and rode towards the woods, looking for early wildflowers like bluet on patches of exposed land, but after an hour he still hadn’t found anything. Maybe the snowdrops were still in flower at the McKinnon farm. He couldn’t remember how long the blooms lasted, but it was worth looking, and if they’d died off already he could still bring back a few bulbs in leaf to plant on the grave.
He retraced his route to the farm, pleased with himself for remembering without a map, and parked near the remains of the old farmhouse chimney. But he couldn’t find any snowdrops at all, not even a dead flowerhead.
He squatted to poke around in the grass, certain that he was in the right place. He’d navigated from the chimney like the last time, so the plants had to be around here somewhere. It wasn’t easy to spot the leaves in grass but he could normally zero in on small variations in foliage with a farmer’s experienced eye. Where were they? They couldn’t have died off already.
No. Don’t even think it.
Doug told himself not to be so paranoid. Snowdrops were the wrong species and this was the wrong place. It couldn’t be die-back. Well, he couldn’t find the plants, so he’d have to get a wreath made out of evergreens, and see if someone in town had any indoor plants that they could donate. He started walking back to the quad bike, then looked back at the patch of grass that he’d searched.
The snowdrops were there somewhere, but he’d mention it to Col for testing anyway, just in case. It was better to look like a fool than say nothing and find out the hard way that he’d ignored a disaster.
07
I’m glad I’m not the guy who has to break it to Cabot that a lot of shit’s happened on Earth while they’ve been asleep.
Colin “Col” Croad, Ainatio environmental technician, on the imminent revival of the ship’s company
Heads of Department Meeting,
Conference room 4B:
two Days Later
“Do it,” s
aid Erskine, studying the paper schedule that still had her father’s handwritten comments on it. He’d always preferred hard copy. “Revive them now and complete by the end of March. It’s well within the supplies margin.”
Mangel shook his head. “I think you should give the crew as little time as possible to stew over what Alex has to tell them. If you think staff here are pissed at being lied to for so long, imagine what it’ll feel like to wake up and find your home’s a wasteland.”
“Todd, these people are nearly all ex-military,” Alex said. “They’re not like us. They deal with adversity and get on with the job. And they knew they were going to lose everything and everybody simply because of the timescales involved.”
“Nearly all military,” Mangel repeated. “One hundred and seventy-five crew, but thirty-six are civilian contractors. Not military contractors. Technicians and other specialists. Different mind-set. And as usual, we don’t have our most senior military man in these meetings. I think his input would be more useful than mine right now. The clever space stuff’s all but done.”
Erskine really didn’t like Mangel. For a moment, she imagined being stuck with him on Opis with no escape. “Todd, all these issues were considered by psychologists who knew the crew,” she said. “Tough humans cope. Australia might as well have been another planet when people were transported, but they built a nation pretty fast.” It was too late for this nonsense. The ship was almost at Nomad Base and survival was top of any organism’s to-do list. They’d make it work. “Okay, unless anyone’s got a scientific argument within their own field of expertise that says we should revive the crew at another time, we will go for March thirty-first as the end date, and start the first batch as soon as we’re able.”
Mangel just shrugged. Alex, who was looking increasingly frayed these days, busied himself swiping through his notes. Solomon’s voice drifted in.
“May we move on to ships’ readiness, Director?”
“Is it good news, Solomon? Just the headlines, please.”
“Latest estimate as of this morning is that Elcano will be ready to launch in six weeks, Shackleton in six months, Da Gama in twelve, and Eriksson in twenty.”
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