He came back to her side, sat down on the bed.
'We've got a lot to discuss,' he said.
'You mean you're actually going to talk to me?'
He bent to kiss her, and despite the hours of sleep since he'd cleaned his teeth, his mouth tasted wonderful. Then he began to unbutton her pyjama top.
'I thought you wanted to talk,' she said.
'Earlier, you spoke to me,' He gave her a quirky smile. 'Now it's your turn to listen.'
But after a while he leaned back to look at her. 'What am I doing wrong?'
'It's not you.' She turned her head away, so that he couldn't see her face.
'Laura?'
Still staring at the wall, she whispered, 'Maybe if you were a bit rougher.'
'How rougher?'
Like some species of jellyfish, her fantasy migrates to the surface mostly at night, or sometimes when Owen is working away at her. Its tentacles, though nearly invisible, have a long reach and deliver a painful sting. She glimpsed them now.
Zach put a hand on her chin and gently turned her face towards him. She spoke into the underwatery shadows between them.
'You said it yourself once.'
'Do you mean hurt you?'
'Something like that.'
'No. No way.'
* * *
They ate their meal in silence. As Laura rose from the table to clear her plate, Zach reached for her arm.
'Wait,' he said. 'Please sit down.'
She sat, but at the edge of her chair. 'If it's about sex, I guess we've made a mistake.'
'Is that what you really think?'
She didn't answer.
'Laura,' he said softly, 'it wasn't a mistake for me.'
'Even without-?'
'I'll never do what you don't want, or aren't ready for, no matter what I'd like. But it works both ways. You've got to understand that there are some things I won't do.'
She left the dishes on the table, threw on a jacket, and went out to the shed to deal with the generator.
* * *
Zach was chopping wood. Laura had told him not to bother, there was plenty of fuel, but he'd listened politely and headed for the woodpile. She'd made her phone call, listened politely both to her dad and her mum, and after ringing off decided to stop pretending to read and go outside to listen politely to the voice of an axe.
After half an hour of wielding a snow shovel and stamping her feet, she'd had enough. How much would he need to chop for a bonfire big enough to reduce his thoughts to ash? She waited for the right opportunity-no sense adding a gashed foot to their problems-then let loose with a well-packed snowball. The ensuing fight was the best she'd had in years.
'You play dirty,' she complained when they'd gone back inside to warm up.
'Boarding school teaches you that.'
'You went to a boarding school?'
'A euphemism.'
'I'll fetch my dictionary after tea,' she said.
'Come on, dry your hair.' He tossed her the towel. 'That's what the Foundation pretended to be. Still does, I suppose. It wasn't residential care, because most of us weren't orphans. It wasn't a secure unit, because we weren't mentally ill. And it wasn't a young offender institution, because we hadn't committed any crimes. Except the crime of being simus, of course.'
'How old were you when you went?'
His hesitation lasted no more than a second or two. 'My turn to cook.' He headed for the kitchen while Laura yearned for another snowball.
* * *
'What did your parents have to say?' Zach asked.
'The police want you for questioning.'
'Another euphemism.'
'Not according to my dad.'
Zach grinned over his soup spoon. 'So you do know what the word means.'
'I'm not a complete idiot.'
Zach put his spoon down. 'You're not an idiot at all.'
'Tell that to my mum.'
Suddenly she was staring into her bowl and blinking back tears. In a moment Zach was at her side.
'Listen to me, Laura.' He crouched and tucked a loose strand of her hair behind an ear, then continued to stroke a few imaginary ones into place. 'The bomb blast was a shock for both of us, and now that I've had time to think, I realise all I've succeeded in doing is make you an accessory.'
'First of all, you didn't make me. And second, how can I be an accessory if you haven't done anything criminal?'
'It's not that simple.'
'Oh yeah? Then explain it to me. For godsake, explain something to me.'
He was quiet for a long time, though he didn't remove his hand. Didn't seem to notice that his other hand was also speaking. Pleading.
'I never meant for anyone to die.'
'You're not telling me you did have something to do with the bombings after all, are you?'
'Of course not.'
'Then what?'
He rose to his feet and strode the length of the kitchen, where he snatched up a wooden spoon, whipped round, and smashed it against the edge of the worktop.
'I can't live like this any more!' he cried. 'I want a life, not one journey after another into nightmare. They have no idea what it's like. What it does to your mind, your dreams.' With his foot he kicked the splintered pieces of wood aside. 'And wouldn't care if they did.'
Laura had no inkling what Zach meant, but his torment splintered more than wood. Swiftly she went to him. At first his body was remote and wooden, a stranger's, then they were embracing fiercely. There was no gentleness in him now. Together they slammed against the kitchen door, her back catching the handle. She gasped at the pain. His jeans could barely contain him. Yes, she thought. Cunt. 'Tell me I'm a filthy cunt.'
'God no!' He released her, pushed her from him so that she nearly fell. He stepped back, still breathing hard, his face shaved of all expression.
'Zach-'
'Never!'
He tore open the door, spun out of the cottage, and was away.
* * *
Without a jacket he wouldn't be gone long, Laura told herself. And told herself, as darkness fell and it continued to snow.
Chapter 24
'So explain.'
Zach, of course, should have known that Lev has his own idea of what constitutes an explanation. And certainly should have guessed when told to set down his mug of tea. After that it's a matter of seconds for Lev to power up his little game. Zach's protest is strangled mid-breath by a roar of sound, and he whips his head round but the sound is here, within the tent, within him, a swithering tumult within.
too soon, he's not ready yet
you levellers have no
Zach raises a hand to his temple, trying to sort out the
more time with him, time to
sort out
why the dogs, they're not
lunging at our wings till
An angry wasp shrills inside Zach's skull, seethes and buzzes and shrieks, trapped, ricocheting ever louder as it finds no escape from within. 'Stop,' he mutters. He's going to throw up. He swallows, he closes his eyes, he stumbles to his feet.
'Sit down!' Lev orders.
The pressure in his head. He can't bear
Without a thought for the cold he staggers to the entrance and rips open the zip. Peels back his skin.
It's not the cold that stops him from vomiting, but the shock.
'Where are we?' he gasps, as Lev takes his arm and leads him back inside.
'The first time's the worst,' Lev says. 'Disorienting.'
'Where are we?'
'How much maths have they taught you?' When Zach shakes his head, unable to frame a coherent answer-unable even to recall what they've done in the last few lessons-Lev prompts him. 'What about imaginary numbers?'
'A classic misnomer,' Zach says, his distress easing. 'They're not really imaginary.'
'And I've already told you, neither is this place.'
* * *
Zach has never had any doubts about his intelligence, even as a small boy it was his weapon and armour both. Dumb monkeys, he'd spit at them till forced to spit blood. Later on, he learned to guard his mouth as well, so effectively that they never even suspected an insult. But dumb monkeys they've stayed, a mantra he repeats to himself the way others pray or swear.
'Do you think we're stupid?' he asks Lev.
'Who's we? Sapiens or cognoscens?'
Zach is silent for a moment.
'Both, I suppose,' he answers, reluctantly. Honestly.
He knew he'd see that glint in Lev's eyes, damn him.
'A few thousand years of philosophy and pure maths and physics and music ought to do it,' Lev teases. 'And some other fields whose names you couldn't pronounce. That's why I'm so reluctant to explain. Show rather than tell, I believe your writers like to say.'
'You mentioned imaginary numbers, not me.'
'As an analogy. You can't count the square root of -1 in the same way you can count mugs or muggles, but it exists. It's real. In your universe you need imaginary numbers to analyse electrical waves, for example, or in quantum mechanics.'
Zach doesn't fancy the sound of your universe, and says so.
'Another metaphor.'
'Metaphors are for literature, not science!'
Lev gestures towards the tent closure, his voice crisp. 'The ice is out there. It's real, Zach. Not perhaps the two-cheeseburgers-and-a-coke reality you've grown up with, but real nevertheless. A crossing place between universes may be the easiest way for you to picture it.' A laugh. 'Or training ground.'
The Pace board in Lev's lap emits its own form of laugh, a ripple of UV light which no sapiens would be able to see.
'What else can that thing do?' Zach asks. And immediately hears the opening notes of the Adagio from Mozart's clarinet concerto. They expand and fill the tent with warm Aegean blue-the colour he thought lost forever-the wonderful watery timbre of an authentic basset clarinet which he's always longed to own. 'One day,' he said, 'I'll play it for you on a period instrument.' Laura smiled. 'One day, we'll swim there together,' she said.
Nine weeks after writing his only clarinet concerto, Mozart was dead.
Bella lifts her head and whines, a high skirling tone which raises the hairs on the nape of Zach's neck. The blue light fades, and though the tent is battened tight, a seam of cold air slips over his skin as though an unseen door has opened.
'That's enough for now,' Lev says. 'You're getting there.'
'Did you hear it? The clarinet?'
'Not as such, but it's irrelevant. What matters is that you've heard it.'
'Don't treat me like an idiot!'
Lev's grin reminds Zach uncomfortably of his own, when listening to his classmates. 'If I thought you were an idiot, you wouldn't be here now.'
'Yeah, just imagine, I could be cuddled up nice and warm and cosy with someone who thinks I'm a lampshade or a doorknob.'
'Or an AK-47.'
Lev downs the rest of his tea, then goes to rinse the mug in their washing-up water. Dripping, it dangles from his fingers as he crouches over the bucket, suddenly alert. Bella too raises her head and cocks her ears. Despite his excellent hearing, Zach discerns nothing except the susurrus of snow against the walls of the tent; even the wind has ceased its vicious lashings. Nor are there any untoward shadows which threaten the mellow light from their little stove.
Still, there is something insistent about the near silence, which begins to stretch and stretch and stretch like a balloon, till you become disproportionately anxious that it will pop-for it to pop. Just before Zach can no longer hold his breath, Lev snaps his wrist to shake out the excess water and lays the mug upside down near the stove. He turns to Zach.
'It's time to leave. I discouraged the first lot of them, but they'll be back.'
'Are you planning to tell me who they are? And maybe-just maybe, mind you-why?'
'I could tell you they're fallen angels. I could tell you they're winged humans from another universe. I could tell you they're the incarnation of some madman's agenda. Or your race's overweening will to power. Which version do you prefer?'
'How about the truth? Frot it, they've slaughtered the dogs!'
'You're going to have to learn to make your own truth, Zach. That's why I'm here.'
Chapter 25
'It's getting worse, and we'd bloody well better take some sort of action!'
Pelly sipped from his glass of sparkling water to keep from smiling. Slade was competent enough as a research head, but the squat toad had no clue about PR, and very little about crisis management. Must be fifty-three, fifty-four already. There was no way he'd ever make it in politics-no charisma, no mystique, no animal magnetism. He could manipulate terrified rabbits like Litchfield, but pit him against someone who understands market dynamics, and he'd go down faster than the crows they'd shot as kids. It would be like asking your grandmother to pitch the latest condom flavours to the rainbow generation. Come to think of it, his, Pelly's, 78-year-old granny could probably do a better job of it than Slade.
The meeting wasn't going well. No meetings called for Monday morning at eight went well. Those who were expected to attend usually fortified themselves in their private offices beforehand-except for Huang and his dour p.a., of course-Pelly's choix du jour washed down with a hazelnut grande, extra cream no sugar. And when traffic was godawful, with a slurp of water from the tap, having just made it past security at a run. 'Where's the fire, Mr Pelly? Left your secretary on simmer?' Wanker could only get away with sexist remarks like that because he was nearing retirement.
Pelly glanced round the boardroom while several people shifted in their chairs. Slade was always a model of rectitude, never so much as a hell or damn out of him. Even Huang, inevitably deadpan, blinked several times in rapid succession.
