'That's insane . . . barbaric.' Those rumours-surely they were exaggerated.
A soft whooshing, less a sound than a quiver of the air. Laura ducked as a small dark shape hurtled past. It disappeared into the tunnel, never in any danger of collision. Zach hadn't moved, though his lips were pursed.
Laura stared after the bat for a moment, then rounded on Zach.
'If that's your idea of a joke-'
'Go back to your nice safe boyfriend, Laura. It was a mistake to bring you to a cave inhabited by wild animals.'
His mouth crooked at the corner, but there was no smile in his eyes. Not much of anything, in fact.
Angrily, Laura swooped towards her clothes, which she'd left on a ledge of shelfstone overhanging the pool. Too late, she heard Zach's warning cry.
'Look out!'
She felt a sharp burning sensation on her forearm, like the time at a concert when she'd swung the back of her hand into a lit cigarette. Surprised, she looked down. Two puncture marks, a few drops of blood.
Zach was already at her side. He examined her arm, then snatched up her clothes.
'I'll help you dress. Time to go.'
'What?'
He held out her sweatshirt. 'Come on, slip it on.'
She rubbed her fingers over the bite, which was beginning to hurt. Zach grabbed her hand and pulled it away.
'Don't do that. You'll only spread the venom faster.'
Only then did she fully apprehend what had happened.
'A snake?' she asked.
'An adder. Rarely fatal, so you don't have to worry. But we need to get you to hospital as soon as possible.'
'I don't want to go to hospital.' She stepped back, swung her head from side to side, feeling trapped. Her heart beating fast. 'Oh god, not more trouble. My dad. My mum.' The last came out strangled, as though someone had upholstered her face in plastic wrap.
'We'll deal with it.'
We.
She could breathe again. Zach helped her into her clothes, even tying her trainers, then made her lie down on the ground while he dressed quickly and tossed their stuff into his backpack. A brief attempt to use his mobile came to nothing. 'No reception,' he muttered. From her towel he fashioned a sling for her arm, which he slipped round her neck.
'Now listen,' he said. 'You shouldn't move any more than absolutely necessary, to slow absorption of the poison. I can carry you some of the time, but you're going to have to use your limbs to climb into the tunnel. After that, we'll immobilise your arm in the sling.'
'I can walk.'
'Fly too, I expect.'
At the mouth of the tunnel, Zach made a stirrup with his hands to give her a leg up, but despite his strength, it took several tries to drag herself over the lip and onto the ledge. Her right arm was beginning to throb, its muscles unresponsive to her increasingly desperate commands. Without her swimmer's stamina, what would Zach have done? She made it at last, but only because of his single-minded determination not to give up. She knew no one else who would have been able to lift her so high.
After a brief rest, she crawled forward to make space for Zach, who mounted easily. He used his sleeve to wipe away the film of sweat on his forehead, but he wasn't out of breath. Impatient, though.
'I'll walk,' she said.
'Put your arm in the sling.'
He waited till it was adjusted to his satisfaction, then tucked away the torch and picked her up without taking the least notice of her protests. Moving quickly, he seemed to have no difficulty navigating in the dark.
'Just like a bat,' she murmured into his chest, and giggled.
'What?'
'Getting tired?'
'I'm fine.'
By the time Zach could no longer walk erect, her arm was swelling noticeably. Despite his caution, he jostled it as he set her down. She gasped, then knelt with her head low, a touch giddy. A touch short of breath. Zach switched on the torch.
'Look, I don't think you can manage this. I'm going to leave you here for a few minutes while I go ahead and lash together some branches. We'll use them like a sledge to pull you out.'
'No! Don't leave me alone in here.'
'Laura, exertion will only make things worse.'
'Please.'
He stared at her, his pupils dark as obsidian.
'You said an adder isn't deadly.'
Dark as the berries of black nightshade.
'Please-' She heard the quiver in her voice.
He hesitated so long that she wondered what it would take to convince him of something really difficult. At last he said, 'You go first. When you're ready.'
It was still dark when they emerged, as though no time had passed. Her vision blurring slightly, Laura put out a hand to steady herself against the rockface. Her legs were as slack as old elastic, so that she could almost believe she'd just come out of the pool from a long training session.
'Are you OK?' Zach asked.
She nodded, but as she stepped towards him the top of her head began to float away from the rest of her body. Instantly he wrapped his arms around her, lowering her to the ground, gently brushing her hair out of her eyes. He whipped out his mobile. His end of the conversation retreated into the shadowland beyond the trees.
At one point along the trek to the roadside Laura roused herself to his panting.
'It's too far, put me down.'
'Shut up.'
Her chest felt tight, as if she'd squeezed into a wetsuit several sizes too small. Then she realised that the laboured breathing was coming from her, not Zach.
Only metres from the ambulance she stirred again.
'You know, I think I'd like to kiss you,' she said.
'What, now?' His buttery caramel laugh, the moreish one.
The ambulance crew had been waiting for them beside their vehicle, rear doors already open. Zach explained what had happened.
'Good job,' the paramedic said, 'we'll take over from here.' A tall beefy man, mid-thirties, shaved head, sultry accent.
Within seconds he and the technician had laid Laura on a trolley inside the ambulance, started their assessment.
'You're sure it was an adder?' the paramedic asked.
'Positive.'
'Allergic reaction, then.'
The paramedic slipped an oxygen mask over Laura's face, checked her pulse, listened to her lungs, administered an injection. He continued to monitor her blood pressure and oxygen levels.
'Blue her in?' the EMT asked the paramedic.
'Best to play it safe.'
'That your bike?' the technician asked before swinging into the driver's seat.
'Yeah,' Zach said.
'We're off then.'
The paramedic began to close the rear doors.
'Wait,' Zach said. 'I'm riding with her.'
'Sorry, mate, against the rules. You know that.'
Zach shoved a hand between the doors, and the two stared at each other. Laura raised her head from the stretcher. Her eyes were pleading above the oxygen mask.
'If you're afraid of losing your job, I'll tell them I forced you,' Zach said. 'At gun point, if you like.'
The paramedic made a thoroughly unprofessional sound, then glanced from Zach to his patient, and back to Zach again. He let out a deep sigh.
'You needn't worry about my skin, lad.' He jerked his head to indicate that Zach should hop in. 'My people went through this sort of thing for plenty of years. Come on, your girl's waiting.'
Chapter 12
'What the hell have you been up to?'
With an angry set to his shoulders Lev tosses down his satchel and seizes the lamp off the floor. In a moment it's burning brightly again, a stark light which accentuates the planes and angles of his face. But his examination is as skilful and sensitive as before, and this time Zach feels a liquid warmth spread under his skin, a warmth which reminds him of spilled sunlight. Until Lev fingers the pendant with a provocative lift to his eyebrows.
'No!' Zach cries, and clamps Lev's hand in his own. 'Don't touch it.'
'Let go,' Zach says, 'or I'll break your fingers.'
Lev regards Zach without flinching, a frank appraisal. It's not easy to intimidate someone who can face a polar bear with more steel in his balls than fist. Slowly he nods and Zach releases his hand, which Lev flexes with no apparent resentment. Appreciatively, even.
'Laura's,' Lev says.
Zach's hand slides back to the pendant. A long silence, in which Lev trims the lamp, moves it to a less prominent position, waits. Zach counts, then recounts the stone figures lined up on a shelf, half of them in creamy green, the other half a dark burgundy. Thirty-one, thirty-two. Lev could have filled the air with verbal shrapnel-most people do. After a struggle, Zach allows that he might need more than Lev's medical skills.
'How do you know about Laura?' Zach asks.
Lev reaches for a pouch lying on the mantel. 'Mind if I smoke?'
Curtly, 'No.'
'I'd offer you one, but it's best you wait till you're fully healed.'
'I don't smoke.'
Lev extracts a packet of cigarette papers and some tobacco, whose sweet aroma, even unlit and from across the room, is distinctive if slightly noisome. Zach eyes the chessmen intermittently while Lev rolls his cigarette, touches a taper to the hot embers in place of a match, and inhales with serene pleasure, then notices the direction of Zach's gaze.
'Do you play?' Lev asks.
'A bit.'
'I carved them myself. Fine occupation of an evening. Like to see one?'
'You must think me an idiot!'
They study each other again. Lev wears a mask of smoke, no doubt aiming the two thin streams upwards from his nostrils as deliberately as Zach himself would have done.
'How did you get her chain?' Zach asks at last.
'What you really mean is, have I seen her?'
'Well, have you?'
'Let's just say I'm aware of her importance.'
Testily Zach brushes his hair off his forehead, only to grimace. His hair is greasy and needs a good wash. He needs a good wash. Meanwhile, Lev flips the end of his cigarette into the fire and proceeds to rummage in his bag.
'Here,' he says, handing Zach an unopened toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. 'Do you want me to help you bath?'
'No. What I want is to understand what's going on.'
'Will it allay your suspicions to learn we have certain interests in common?'
Zach casts his blanket aside, rises to his feet, and makes his way slowly and laboriously to the shelf on which the stone chessmen rest. He picks up a red pawn and cradles it in his hand. Runs his thumb over its surface. Beautifully carved for such a minor piece. Yet even a mediocre player knows the value of safeguarding his rooks. He sets it back down and turns to Lev.
'Are you telling me that you're also looking for Laura?' Zach asks.
Lev joins him at the shelf, where he plucks an irregular piece of dull red stone from beside the chessmen. He weighs it in his hand for a few minutes. 'Funny, but I sometimes prefer the raw stone, unprepossessing as it seems.' He replaces the stone with the air of a small boy who's been showing off his treasures. Proud, yet not quite sure someone else will appreciate their worth. 'How about something to eat? I don't know about you, but I'm famished.'
At Lev's words Zach's stomach grumbles, alerting him that some of the residual ache may be hunger. He has no idea when he's last eaten; no idea, in fact, how long he's been here. Despite Lev's trickster mindset, Zach finds himself asking that very question.
'I'll fetch some bowls. It's warmer by the fire.' Lev hoists the lamp and takes a few steps towards the kitchen.
'Hold on. You can't treat me like this.'
Eyes crinkling, Lev pauses to look from Zach to the chess set. 'It must be that simus are exempt from military service. Every soldier knows what it means to be a pawn-vital, but not always privy to command information.'
'And every simu knows not to take orders from self-serving monkeys!'
'Before jumping to conclusions, ask yourself why the abort function didn't work.'
'What the fuck are you trying to prove? That you're cleverer than me?'
'Intelligence-at least the sort to which you cling like men drowning-is vastly overrated in the larger scale of things.'
In exasperation, Zach sweeps a hand through the air as though clearing away a cobweb, the kind which hangs in horror films and ghost stories. 'Any more catchy-' he begins, then happens to glance down at his fingers. His mouth snaps shut. With mild distaste he rubs his fingers on his trackpants to dislodge the desiccated fly and sticky strands clinging to his skin.
'Enough's enough,' he mutters. Then louder, 'Abort the bloody run, you arseholes. There's a serious malfunction.' Again he tries the code; as a last resort, the escape key implanted in his upper left third molar, which he's always thought of as another of Mishaal's jokes.
'You still think it's a malfunction?' Lev asks, amused.
'What else?'
Lev lowers the lamp below knee level, making him look much older. Not just older-more skelemental, as though his skin has thinned to reveal struts and fathomless conduits, the very viruses swarming through his system. But a virus is unable to replicate without a host. It's not alive. Zach feels the hairs on the nape of his neck stir even before Lev speaks.
'I've disabled the return functions precisely so that Fulgur can no longer get its hands on you. Not till you're ready to deal with them.'
'Impossible!'
'Think so?'
'Look, it's obvious that whoever you are, you have some understanding of the interface. Maybe I imagined the cobweb, maybe I've been so ill that I can't remember how I got here, maybe even one of the programmers somehow learned about Laura's chain, but one thing is dead certain-the coding can't be altered from within. First of all, it's out of the question technically. And it would be madness to give that sort of power to anyone.' After a brief pause he concedes, 'Even to a simu.'
