Laura's mates, who had survived by a dicey evasion of underage smoking laws, sucked every trace of rad from their ordeal. 'Who says cigarettes kill?' Derek repeated so often that even Tim finally told him to shut it or he'd wish he'd not gone outside for a fag. Olivia spent most of her free time with Damien, and Laura almost convinced herself that her friend's coolness derived from the incident in the club toilet. But Olivia remained loyal enough not to spread her insider info round-or else was saving it up like extra dosh for the right investment.
It was Laura's teachers who first remarked on the change. Mr Mitchell spoke to her after a maths lesson. 'I knew you had it in you all the time. If you continue to work like this, you'll soon be getting top marks.' Like everyone else, he assumed that a sideswipe with death had catapulted her into the overtaking lane. Whereas in fact she'd begun to study because she hated it, because she was dolt terrible at it. Soon afterwards, Olivia sent her a cryptic text in history class: Henry II said at Canterbury, 'Scourge me as I kneel at the tomb of the saint.' And hissed 'net it, if you're suddenly so bloody smart', when quizzed. Which Laura did, using her laptop. Aside from obvious precautions, she didn't know how to disable-or even detect-a trace on Zach's computer.
She went out with Owen; she went back to swimming; and she went to Zach's flat when all else failed. The first time she stayed less than fifteen minutes, startling at each mumbled complaint of heating and plumbing, an old building which protested arthritically at this unwonted intrusion. The flat was chilly and smelled musty. How quickly possessions take on an air of neglect, lifelessness: they might belong to anyone at all, and whatever Laura was searching for wouldn't be found among the lonely ranks of books on a shelf, tumble of clothing in a hamper.
She stayed away for two days. Then, after a particularly bitter fight with her mum, she stuffed schoolwork, her pod, and a sandwich into her backpack and headed for the library, with no intention of going to Zach's. As she was turning the key in the lock, the door to the adjacent flat opened-not the one with the dog, at least.
'What are you up to? There's nobody home.'
'I'm a friend.' The old man was glaring at her, so she added rather belligerently, 'I've got his permission.'
'Oh yeah? Prove it. Zach don't give nobody permission.'
It crossed her mind to ignore the whiskery snoop by hurrying into the flat and shutting the door in his face, but common sense prevailed. She jangled the keys in front of his beakish nose. In fact, he resembled a nasty old buzzard, with those protuberant eyes and feathery bits of whitish hair.
'I'm looking after Zach's place while he's gone.'
'You could have nicked them from him.'
Laura gave an exasperated sigh. 'Listen, I've been here lots of times already. Even my little brother's got a key.'
'Max is your brother?'
'You know him?'
'A nice kid. Polite, not like some.' His implication wasn't lost on her.
'Thanks.' She ought to go in for politics, she was becoming practised at the ambiguous response. She hefted her backpack. 'I need to do some studying, and I promised Zach I'd wash his clothes, so if you don't mind.'
'Not in any trouble again, is he?'
'I don't know what you mean.'
'Then either you're stupid or a liar.' He shuffled in her direction, and suddenly she realised by the way his eyes remained fixed on a point above her shoulder that something was wrong with his eyesight, that what she had mistaken for a stare might in fact be near blindness.
'Bloody-mindedness seems to be a side effect of deteriorating vision. My great uncle's got the same syndrome, but he takes pills for it. Maybe you should ask your GP for a prescription.'
To her surprise the man gave a bellow of laughter. 'That's telling me all right! Good, Zach needs someone who'll stick up for him, not some piece of candy floss who'll melt away after a poke or two from a fancy simu todger.'
Laura was glad he couldn't see her face redden. 'He'll be gone for a while.'
'A special assignment?'
'Something like that.' She couldn't decide how well Zach knew this man. 'His job.'
Better than she'd guessed. 'Zach's no terr, but they've got it in for him.' He waved a hand in the direction of the third flat on their floor. 'Brain-dead porkers included. Hope he's found a good place to take cover for a while.'
Laura squeezed her eyes shut, which merely threw the last hour at the cottage into relief, vivid as a burning tower in the dark, its gutted struts etched in stark, mute, defiant contrast to the raging flames. Where was he? She suspected that her Dad knew, or could find out, from the evasive way he answered her questions. And Max wouldn't talk much about it. 'I told you, I can't always tell about places. But Zach's OK so far.' When pressed for additional information, Max sounded sincere. 'Don't know. He wouldn't like it if I snooped.' Scant consolation that not everything had changed: she could still sense when Max was lying.
'He's a fine lad. Does my shopping for me. Takes me to the clinic, too.'
'Zach?' she whispered.
'A fine lad,' he repeated. 'Not many his age would bother. Maybe not any.'
Laura turned her head away, though he wouldn't have seen her eyes filling.
'Name's Josh,' he said, patting her on the shoulder. 'You go take care of your business, then come round later for a cup of tea.'
'OK. I'd like that.' And found that she meant it. Even his uneven yellow teeth no longer repelled her, his sagging skin.
'I'll babble on about my youth for a bit, then you'll be allowed to tell me about yourself.' At her chuckle, he added shrewdly, 'Reckon there's no one else you can talk to about Zach. Years ago had a Mongolian boyfriend, I remember how tough it can be.'
'You're not axing me, are you?'
'That's another thing about Zach. He looks beyond the wrinkles and baldness and shortness of breath.'
Once she'd let herself into the flat, Laura dropped her backpack by the door, threw off her jacket and boots, and went straight to the laundry hamper. A T-shirt was first to hand. She hauled it out, crept into Zach's bed, and cried with her face buried in the sweet stale smell till, exhausted, she fell asleep.
* * *
Dark and icy cold, with a glaze of frozen slush underfoot which numbed her toes despite thick-soled boots, the night aspired to hurry Laura along. By rights she shouldn't be out on these streets alone, even in good weather. The Christmas decorations already looked past their use-by date, though it was still a few weeks till the holiday, mismatched too, as if they'd been picked at random from a box of jumble. What the fuck was there to celebrate?
It was impossible to walk fast enough to suit her. Several times she threw a glance over her shoulder, several times stared into the shop windows, though they reflected no one else except the odd trudging figure muffled against the bitterest winter in years and intent only on a hot meal and bed. Not even any late shoppers in this district. Once a couple of noisy lads whose interest was perfunctory, something in her look warning them off: 'Aw, let her be. That one's got knives up her cunt.'
Halfway there she stopped and retraced her steps for almost a block, reluctant to involve Stella. Reluctant perhaps to face what there might be to face. Then, just before turning the last corner, she ducked into a bus shelter and leaned against a battle-scarred wall, shivering and hugging herself, telling herself she needed to make sure she wasn't being followed. Sulphurous light from a streetlamp dimly illuminated the graffiti. Among the usual assortment of hearts and vulgar comments was a crude drawing of a fat, snaggletoothed woman wearing a peaked witch's hat and lashed to a post in the midst of a bonfire. Laura grimaced but her nose was running, so she shrugged off her backpack and rummaged for a tissue, fingers clumsy in her woollen gloves, then slowly raised her head when the scrawl underneath the picture coalesced into words, into incendiary words. Grabbing up her backpack, she ran the rest of the distance.
The caf?was boarded up. Laura couldn't tell whether it had been looted first, but the blackened brick and lingering smell of smoke and the charred sign, once Stella's hand-painted pride, rendered the vicious graffiti sprayed across the plywood panels entirely superfluous.
Chapter 28
A cognoscens is unaccustomed to the complete absence of light. With returning consciousness Zach sees patterns in the deep blackness where there are none, patterns which hover on the threshold of signification. He fixes on them, dazzling and puzzling, a message to decode, a formula to derive, an art form to explore. Like ripples in water, they describe reiterations of a restless, ceaseless, seamless, senseless energy, his liquid mind flowing into itself. Is that why he's not afraid?
You're faced with a choice.
Lev?
Either the abort function is restored
I'll be able to go back?
or you'll remain to find the other way back.
It's Laura I need to find!
Then you've made your choice?
I don't understand the choice.
That's why it's a choice.
* * *
The iglu perches on a wafer of ice, adrift in a sea darker than the darkest wine. Even from the air it would be impossible to guess the island's size: the monochromic Arctic palette distorts scale as well as depth perception. Is there too much space in this place, or too little? Fulgur instrumentation would no doubt furnish a string of numbers, whose accuracy is an article of faith for their techs and scientists and policy makers. Yet absolute pitch doesn't make a Mozart; and absolute faith, a deity. Zach, however, will not get to see it from above. His wings have been clipped.
Nor will he get to see Ethan strangle Chloe.
* * *
Trap or shelter? This is the question Zach asks himself as he stares at the iglu before him, its walls glowing with muted but beckoning light. Slowly he turns to take stock of his surroundings, and his memory.
'Lev,' he calls.
'Lev,' he shouts. 'What's going on?'
'Lev!' he screams.
A fierce updraft flings snow like a round of curses into his face, once upon a bitter time playground bullies, now a ground blizzard. Skin already burning under his mask, he's left with little choice but to get out of the icy wind. As expected, the abort code proves useless. He scoots along the trench to the vestibule, then folds himself into the L-shaped cold sink at the entrance, a tight squeeze and at one point a panicky one, when it feels as though the trap has already been sprung and he will be wedged here forever, unable to wriggle forwards or back, frozen into the white purgatory of the Arctic. No one, he recollects grimly, talks about what happens to your head if you die in the Fulgrid. Are your neural circuits wiped so that you'll be watching snowy static and crooning white noise till someone pulls the plug?
Once inside, he gets to his feet and throws a tense glance to all sides, then hunches over with his hands on his thighs to catch his breath. If there's a trap, it's not in the guise of a harpoon-brandishing hunter defending hearth and home. The iglu is lit by a large, cheerful storm lantern-not the traditional kudlik, or saucer-shaped soapstone vessel which burns seal fat-with candles and a supply of kitchen matches placed in readiness on a low wooden table, alongside a length of sturdy twine, a water bottle, and basic cooking utensils. The double-burner campstove looks new, and Zach assumes that the storage box contains food. The walls and hard-packed floor are lined with caribou fur, likewise the rear sleeping platform, on which a down bag, more pelts, and a pair of sealskin kamiks wait like favourite soft toys abandoned till bedtime, a little shabby but still loyal. On the right he sees a metal bucket, a spade, even a machete-like panak for cutting snow. A drum which probably contains fuel. Not much else, but it's obvious that someone intends for him to survive. For now.
Zach huddles by the lantern, which emits a surprising amount of heat. Within a short time-measured by the metronome beat of his heart-he feels warm enough to take off his hat and mitts, unzip his anorak, and slump down onto the sleeping platform, where he gazes at the lantern, listens to its soft crooning, inhales the pungent smell of paraffin. The painful prickling of skin returning to normal body temperature seems genuine, yet he makes no move to undress further. With his fingertips he traces the line of jaw and cheek, the thin sharp slope of nose, at last his eyelids, trying to recapture the sensation of burning. But sensory memories are erased from the mind's buffer within fractions of a second, as irretrievable as the previous tick of a clock, the final beat of a heart. Briefly, he wishes for a mirror. 'Fool,' he mutters, 'as if that would prove anything.' Shaken by the sound of his own voice, he resolves not to speak aloud again.
He's tempted to remove his boots and crawl straight into the sleeping bag, but he forces himself to make a meal. And it's true, he feels better after the mug of pemmican-and-noodle soup, the fistful of raisins. Underestimating their energy needs killed a great many Arctic explorers. He settles back amid the furs on the sleeping platform to gnaw on a slab of dried meat, thickly edged with fat, and tries not to think of the horror stories they used to tell after lights-out. No one was ever scared; no one admitted to bug-eyed insomnia, to nightmares or-the cringing horror of it-a wet bed afterwards. Zombies, for him, had been the worst: the living dead, sapiens who looked normal but had become inhuman simulacra of an already horrifying species.
Going without sleep isn't an option. The other way back: WTF is that supposed to mean? Fulgur programmers ought not be allowed within reading distance of fantasy or science fiction. Even a spoilt dickhead like Owen would have no trouble foreseeing that the Abominable Snowman will seem a big, cuddly teddy bear, and the Snow Queen a fairy godmother, compared to the treats likely to be in store for Lord Zachariah, Archmage of the Realm of Fulgur-dupe, more like. He should have paid attention to the weirder totems of gaming, something no simu much bothers with.
