Anyone entering the country was supposed to be checked for foreign pathogens, but as she’d been on a British rig, she was allowed to forgo this extra kink of bureaucracy. Eventually the official handed back her passport, reluctant, as though only a lack of evidence compelled him to release her on this occasion. She stepped out of the hut at its other end, the red asphalt spongy underfoot.
“We’ve booked a car for you.” Warwick was already waiting, tapping at a phone. Cars and cellular phones. More special treatment.
“Thank you. Where do I go?”
“Oh, don’t worry. We’re coming with you.”
Hopper wondered if this was their whole job, escorting unwilling ex-protégées to meet dying saviors of the country. As though she’d overheard her, Warwick spoke.
“It’s a very unusual day for us, too, Dr. Hopper.” Again the slight crinkle at the corners of the mouth, switched off after half a second as if to save power.
Hopper said nothing, but Warwick continued undeterred. “Normally, of course, it’s desk work for me. I suppose they thought we needed the trip.” She nodded at her colleague standing ten yards away, surveying the field, his hollow cheeks reddened by the sun. The sudden possibility that they might be a couple occurred to Hopper. For some reason she found the idea illogically grotesque.
Warwick took out cigarettes, and offered Hopper one. Funny, really; surrounded by tar-soaked air, and the first thing she did was light up.
Cigarette still in hand, Warwick strode off to find the car, and Hopper stood and smoked for a minute, staring at the rest of Green Park outside the helicopter area. They had landed on the northern side, facing the old buildings of Piccadilly. At this distance, they were beautiful.
In fact, in this light, it was almost impossible to see anything wrong with London. Outside the helicopter landing zone, there were flower beds, and beige-suited gardeners carrying out their tasks. Beige for gardeners, she remembered; blue for street teams, black for police.
Here, you could kid yourself the Slow had never happened. The plants had clearly been selected to provide maximum cheerfulness for minimum water usage. She wondered whether Green Park was the final park being maintained—the rest ripped up and converted to crops, to shantytowns for the displaced, to nothing.
Beyond the park, London was quiet. A few cars made their way along Piccadilly, infrequently enough that each engine could be distinguished from the others by sound alone. Hopper smoked and stared until Warwick returned, saying: “The car’s here, if you’re ready.”
At the park’s entrance, an aged black sedan waited, augmented with blue government license plates. As long as cars were black and had blue plates, they qualified as government-issue. The make and model didn’t matter anymore.
“Only five minutes away, really, but it’s worth driving,” Warwick said brightly. Behind the wheel was the same young man who had piloted the helicopter. Warwick ducked ahead and opened the door for Hopper before moving around to her own side.
As the car moved off, Hopper noticed across the road a pair of blue-coated cadets scouring the wall. They were working their way inward, removing some red paint. All that remained of the daubed message were the words ON WHICH THE SUN, the crimson letters dripping to the pavement as they rubbed and scrubbed away.
* * *
With the roads as empty as they were, it took barely five minutes. They were heading to the site of the old Middlesex Hospital. The car swung right out of Green Park, the crunch of gravel beneath its wheels replaced by the low burr of tarmac, and proceeded sedately east along Piccadilly. Warwick sat beside her, staring out of her own window, giving Hopper room to look around.
On the right was St. James’s Church, still functioning—thriving, in fact, with extra pews sprouting into the old marketplace. As they passed, Hopper heard a choir inside, enthusiastically singing what sounded like “We Plow the Fields and Scatter.”
The resurgence of the English Church had been extraordinary. In the years before the Stop, the government had struggled with the nation’s lack of employment. There had been protests every day, and riots on the weekend. The long nights had played host to murders marked by the tang of ritual, sprouting like mushrooms in the darkness.
And then, somehow, amid this chaos, the established church had surged back, casting aside its old array of shopworn mumbled comforts. It had offered people meaning, struggle, the prospect of another life. Attendance had soared. There hadn’t been this many bishops per head of population since the fourteenth century.
Not even the rig was immune to religion, crewed as it was by soldiers raised on the mainland. On Sundays, the chaplain, Brandt, led prayers on deck for those who wanted them. Almost all the troops joined in with enthusiasm, and the services were occasionally surveyed by an amused, faintly embarrassed Schwimmer. Once, in an unguarded moment as they watched, he’d muttered to Hopper, “I always knew the Lord intended to divide the people of the Earth into the damned and the saved. I don’t think anyone expected he would do it with a fucking ruler.”
They were nearly at the end of Oxford Street now. Just before they turned left, Hopper saw the charred lower half of Centre Point up ahead—they had been talking about demolishing it three years ago, and clearly they were talking still. They moved up Rathbone Place and into the grounds of the New Middlesex.
Another reception desk; another bored guard-cum-receptionist. An orderly—a gentle young man, huge and stooping—swiped a keycard and led them through the double doors at the end of the entrance hall.
They walked for a minute or so along corridors studded with beech doors. Rooms, not wards: Warwick had been telling the truth about Thorne being treated well. A few of the doors were open, the beds interrupted by withered shapes. As Hopper looked into one room, a blue-shirted orderly was turning a figure on the mattress, and her eyes met those of the hairless, toothless creature on the bed for one desperate second before her movement carried her past.
Up a few flights, they stopped outside a windowless door. Warwick spoke curtly. “We’ll wait out here.” Then she and her colleague sank onto one of the benches lining the corridor wall.
Her mouth suddenly dry, her hands flexing, Hopper turned and entered.
The room she entered was light, warm, and protected from the corridor’s smell of floor cleaner by a large bouquet of flowers standing on a table at the end of the bed. In the corner, a television mounted on the wall babbled quietly, showing whatever cheap soap Albion Television had commissioned.
And in the bed lay Edward Thorne, former savior of England, now reduced to almost his simplest components: breath, and sight, and digestion, and little more.
SEVEN
She had arrived in Oxford for the first time in 2043, and had stayed throughout that year; the absence of a family home had made it more convenient to stay during the holidays. Only the college’s inability to provide accommodation over the summer months had forced her out. She had spent two months back in London, spending her inheritance on cheap lodgings and wasting whatever money she saved on endless half-filled cigarettes.
And then, a year after her first arrival, she was back, a second-year student, not knowing why, wondering whether she would be allowed to stay until the end of the term, whether she even wanted to.
The college’s central lawn was still unnaturally green: artificial, Hopper had learned soon after arriving. Only the very wealthiest colleges could afford lawns both green and real. Most had one expensive artificial lawn for show and left the real ones yellow and sparse.
She was sitting overlooking the main lawn with her friend Kat, another second-year undergraduate, a chemist. In the flower bed behind them, a blackbird hopped about, searching for grubs among the unpromising dirt. Kat spoke first.
“Harlow’s not coming back this year.”
“Why not?”
“His wife had a stroke in the break, so they’re moving to Nor
folk. He’s got family there.”
Harlow had been their last tutor; a disappointed man. His life had been marred by three things: a marriage undistinguished by love, a research career that had never quite caught light, and a frail child, cosseted from the sunshine by Harlow’s wife. He had worn the badges of these defeats heavily, and frequently reiterated the setbacks of their discipline with far more zeal than he did its successes. Hopper sometimes thought he was determined to make failures of his students so his own career might take on a less unexceptional light by comparison.
She felt a drop of water on her arm. The clouds above weren’t heavy enough to really rain. Poor Harlow.
“Apparently his replacement is someone impressive.”
Hopper felt a needle of interest. “Who?”
“He’s called Thorne. Apparently”—never wholly immune to the prospect of drama, Kat dragged on her cigarette before continuing—“apparently he’s some ex-government bigwig who got sacked, nobody knows why. He only got the job here because he’s pals with the warden.”
* * *
Two days later, at the first dinner of term, a lean, scarecrow-like man of about sixty sat at the warden’s right hand, talking to his other neighbor during the unpleasant fish starters, then angling his chair left and conferring closely with the warden for the rest of the meal. Their heads almost touched as they spoke.
Hopper was near the top of the hall, giving her ample opportunity to observe the pair. The warden: expounding, gesturing, animated, doubtless proposing some new pet theory of hers about the Reconstitution. The new arrival: pushing food around his plate but always listening, interjecting, occasionally pointing his fork for emphasis. He looked tired.
The hall was half-empty, even on the first night of term. All the colleges were half-empty these days, even in Oxford. Most other universities had been closed down, their grounds requisitioned, rooms used as barracks, playing fields converted to crop use. The universities had been one of Davenport’s first compulsory land reclamations, and it had been popular. Davenport had attended Oxford, so it was one of the few that had stayed open.
After the meal, the top table decamped to the senior common room, the largest of the warren of little chambers below the dining hall. Hopper’s college was not a wealthy one: it lingered an unfashionable distance north of the city center, its buildings a peculiar mishmash of the arch Victorian and the lumpen mid-twentieth-century extension. It was an awkward newcomer lingering in the doorway of a long-established party. She rather liked that.
A few gilt-framed paintings hung on the room’s walls, their sheen only drawing attention to the low ceilings, the faded fabric of the cushions, the cheap pine doors replacing older, sturdier wood. Heavy curtains shut out almost all the sun, creating an artificial evening.
Hopper accepted a drink from the waiter, took up a position by the wall, and surveyed the little crowd of dons and students. Her friends had promised they’d be in the White Horse around now. She would go after one free glass of the warden’s wine, maybe some of her fruit.
No, she would leave now. This was too dull. She turned to go, then turned back, trying to find a surface to put her glass down on; and in a moment, the crowds parted and the warden’s dining companion stood before her.
“Miss Hopper, is it?”
“Yes.” He didn’t reply immediately, and she felt herself pulled into the gap by his silence. “I’m just starting my second year. Earth sciences. I don’t think we’ve met.”
He nodded. “Forgive me—Caroline said I should introduce myself.” He gestured across the room to where the warden was lecturing two of her favorite history students. “I’m Edward Thorne. I’m joining your department this year. I believe I’ll be teaching you.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Dr. Thorne.” She stuck out her hand, regretting the gesture almost immediately, feeling gauche. He took it.
“And you. Please call me Edward. I’m not very used to formality.” For the moment, she gave up looking for a sideboard to ditch her drink on.
“So, what brings you to Oxford?” she asked, remembering Kat’s remark about him being sacked.
“Just a whim. The desire for change. One gets stagnant after too long in the same place. We all do.”
“So you came to Oxford? Nothing changes here. Half the world’s on fire and this place is still going.” She smiled. He smiled back, and she could not help noticing how much it changed his face. For an instant, he looked friendly and conspiratorial, almost roguish.
He nodded. “Perhaps ‘change’ isn’t the word, then. But it’ll be a bit of variety for me. You’re enjoying your studies?”
“Not hugely. I’m not sure many people teaching here know what they’re doing.” He arched his eyebrows. She was as surprised as him. She hadn’t intended to say it.
“What a worrying prospect. Perhaps we can talk about it over the next few days?”
“I doubt you’ll be able to do much about it. The authorities have suggested I leave if things don’t improve by the end of this term.”
“Well, as I’m teaching you, I would hope I’m exactly the right person to do something about it.” He smiled, gently sardonic. “Have you consulted your family about your concerns?”
“No.”
“Do you have a family?”
“Only a brother. My aunt was looking after us. She died two years ago.”
“I’m sorry to hear that. Do you mind if I ask how?”
“Just illness. Nothing sudden.” But it had been sudden. Hopper’s aunt had been bitten by an insect, and even after the wound had turned black, she had smiled and gritted her teeth. After three days sweating in an inadequate bed with no proper medicine, tangling the blankets around her thin limbs, she had died. The large house she had lived in had been in a requisition zone, and Hopper and her brother had received a small percentage of the value.
“And you were living with her?”
“Yes.” She saw a little wrestle between curiosity and tact in his countenance. Tact won. She decided to tell him anyway.
“She looked after me on and off for a few years, whenever I wasn’t at school. My father died when I was sixteen. He did infrastructure.”
“I see.”
Her father had been a connector, one of the government officers tasked with getting resources to remote communities between cities. It had been dangerous work, traveling the countryside in those years. But he had gone, and come back, and gone again. Until eventually, on one trip, his phalanx of supply vehicles—tankers of water, trucks of rations, inexperienced military escort—had been torn apart by men with guns who took everything they had and left two survivors from a party of fifty.
Thorne pursed his lips. “And your mother?”
“Six years before that. I was ten.” He nodded; again Hopper felt drawn in. “She was a doctor. She was working in Europe. Didn’t make it back.”
“I see.”
It had been nine years ago, in the middle of the second collapse—the wholesale flight of the populations living in the Hotzone, the part of the planet closest to the sun. The governments of those countries had kept going for a while: farming indoors with huge hydroponics, using the glut of solar power suddenly available, digging into the earth to house their populations. One day—not quite a day, but all had crumbled over the course of a single month—the entire region had failed, in a great chain of riotous collapse. Millions had died in the heat. The burned region had cleared, barring a few unhinged individuals who still lived there today, clad in armor and digging ever-deeper tunnels.
The long retreat had been a column of individuals, tens of millions, walking step after step in inadequate shoes, with inadequate shade. Hopper’s mother had been a doctor trying to help the straggling convoys making their way north to Europe, to give them medicines as they moved, to heal them once they reached France. It had been an impossible task. It would
have been impossible even to bury the bodies by the road. Hopper and her brother had visited her briefly, when there was nobody else to look after them. She still remembered it now.
“How did she die?”
“We’re not sure. But we know she made it back as far as the French coast. She had passage booked on a Greek civilian transport. That was just as the second round of sinkings started. She thought the ship she had found was safe. Nobody had told her it wasn’t.” She was surprised at herself for telling him. She usually found it much easier to fabricate parents still living.
“I’m so, so sorry.”
“I still have a brother. Others have lost a lot more.”
“It’s not a competition. You don’t have to have lost more than others to feel pain. And nobody should lose their mother like that.” For just a second, a look of intense emotion passed across his features, fleeting but unmistakable, and she felt a sudden extraordinary sympathy with him, one she had not felt for years. Since her aunt had died, she had been close to almost nobody; her brother was wrapped in his own studies, and she had no other family remaining. There was only her work, and she was on the brink of abandoning that, to go she knew not where.
She felt relieved when they were interrupted by a little barked shout.
“Teddy!”
The warden was moving toward them through the crowd, a sycophantic undergraduate hanging feebly in her wake. Hopper finished her glass, putting it down on the sideboard. “Nice to meet you anyway. Sorry it’ll be brief.”
“I hope you make it to our first session before you leave.”
She had had no intention of going to any more tutorials. But that moment of sympathy was still jarring within her, and she found herself saying, “It’s in a couple of days. I imagine I’ll still be here. Which are you teaching, geography or biology?”
The Last Day Page 5