'I saw what they did to your place,' Laura said. 'I'm sorry.'
Stella nodded, then unwound her scarf to free her jaw. 'I reckon I'll never get used to the cold.'
'Did anyone get hurt?'
'Only my pet iguana.' Stella guffawed at the expression on Laura's face, a sound like a jackal's call. Laura remembered reading that jackals were highly intelligent animals. 'They don't take down old Stella that easy. You can't joke, you might as well order the coffin.' Her eyebrows snapped towards each other like feinting pups. 'Only so many times you can cheat the hangman, though.'
Laura would have liked to ask where the woman was staying, what she was living on, but satisfied herself with a less risky question. Stella was perfectly capable of leaving without another word if offended, never to approach Laura again.
'How did you find me?'
'You mean why, don't you?'
Laura crossed her arms in an attempt to disguise her shiver. But Stella smiled, a genuine smile this time, and the two of them regarded each other with mutual respect, the one thing uniting them acknowledged at last.
'Where-' Laura cleared her voice of a slight hoarseness. 'Where is he?'
'I've got good ears for my age. Word is, you swim a lot. Word is, you swim like no one else in the entire city.' Stella leaned forward to inspect the pendant that, contrary to club rules, Laura wouldn't remove during training-and would definitely, defiantly, not remove while competing tomorrow. 'Word is, you've got flippers hidden inside those skinny limbs of yours. I sure hope so. My da used to fish with a speargun. It takes some mighty powerful swimming to outrace them cunts. And the hate-tipped ones-they're poison. You swim with Zach, it's not going to be in a turquoise pool under gently swaying coconut palms, with the five stars of a tropical paradise to lighten his sultry skin.' She saw Laura begin to shake her head. 'Listen, sugar, some things never change. Once a nigger lover, always a nigger lover. Only now they call them augers.'
* * *
After the meet her mum carted off Laura's medals as though she, her mum, had won them herself. Which, in a way, she had. Her euphoria would last as long as it took her to remember the sloppy turn in the 400-m individual medley, and the new record Laura had missed setting by a microsliver of a second in the 200-m fly. Laura made the most of her triumph: two parties, and Owen would bring her home afterwards. His absence at the meet, she'd explained to her mum, couldn't be helped, a family commitment. In fact, he'd be at his grandmother's birthday celebration till late, and she'd been invited.
Laura put in an appearance at the club's victory bash, then let everyone know she was expected at Owen's. Her parents had given her enough money for a taxi, which she'd supplemented with a withdrawal from her sock fund; harder to trace than mobie credit. The taxi driver made no comment as she gave him the address, but his frown, however fleeting, didn't escape her notice. Though she would have preferred to make her own way by bus, there simply wasn't enough time. She'd have to trust that no one would be inquiring. Never explain too much: how many times had she tried to teach Max the cardinal rule of crack lying? The less she said, the more likely the driver would be to forget the one odd fare among many in the pre-Christmas rush. And with such broken English, he probably wasn't some bright student earning extra dosh at night.
She had a moment of trepidation when the taxi pulled away, leaving her, despite her mobile, to wonder whether she was heading into rough, perhaps shark-infested waters. She glanced round nervously and then, turtling further into the hood of her jacket, picked her way across the uneven pavement towards the side entrance Stella had described, not unlike crossing coarse, slippery shingle strewn with wrack. There wasn't much light, and though she'd tucked a small torch into her bag, it would spotlight her presence. She wrinkled her nose, even the cold couldn't deaden the pong. She ought to be relieved that she couldn't see what lay nearby, under the crust of snow.
There was no response to the pre-arranged signal, and after several more attempts, it seemed as though something had gone wrong. The alternative-a nasty sort of stunt-Laura considered for a moment, then dismissed. Without naming names, Stella had warned her of a fair amount of opposition to her, Laura's, involvement, but in the end the group had come to a consensus. Zach was no longer in police custody, Fulgur having produced enough evidence (or leverage) to secure his release. To dissociate themselves from any hint of terrorist activity, the Janus needed to move above ground. 'Convince them,' Stella had said, 'that there are a lot more sapies like you, sapies who aren't terror-stricken, who are prepared to work together with the simus. Who better than the daughter of one of Fulgur's hotshot scientists?'
'But where's Zach?' Laura had repeated. 'Why hasn't he-' She'd stopped herself in time, but Stella wasn't fooled. 'Why hasn't he gone back to his flat?'
'He'll have his reasons.'
'Is Fulgur threatening to cut off his serum?'
'The formula would be a sign of good faith.'
'So that's the real purpose of this visit.'
Stella's silence like no other, Laura heard herself speaking roughly, belligerently-fearfully. 'What aren't you telling me?'
'Zach does his own telling, you ought to know that by now.'
'Or not-telling.'
Stella nodded grimly. 'You got it, girl. Maybe, sometimes, we need to do the telling for him.'
She couldn't know, could she? Though Laura's pulse rate would have betrayed her, she'd studied Stella without faltering. (What a wimp she'd been, cowering for so many years behind her lies! Why hadn't she realised that you could practise assertiveness like your crawl?) No matter how thoroughly the simus were disliked, few people cared for police brutality, and a backlash would further the Janu cause. But to disclose the circumstances of his arrest . . . Laura's gooseflesh was no less real for being imagined.
Whatever the woman's suspicions, she could be as close-mouthed as Zach himself, and probably just as unforgiving. The conversation had begun to feel like a chess game predestined, at best, to stalemate. At the sight of tears, always a useful gambit but in this match ridiculously easy to muster, Stella had relented enough to admit that no one was quite certain of Zach's whereabouts, or how far Fulgur's protection would extend. 'When I was a girl, we had a scrappy little dog who followed me everywhere.' Grunting a bit, she'd bent and hiked up the right leg of her trousers, exposing a large, shiny, raised, and altogether ugly scar on her shin. 'Till he turned on me and bit. Then my da put him down.' She laughed. 'Or so he thought. We kids found Rook in time and took him to my uncle's. The scrappy ones survive.'
That simu boy-over the past weeks Laura had thought about him a lot. Zach had freed his captive, but wouldn't go into detail. 'We've given him a good scare, I've more than enough on my conscience.' It had been Max who'd told her that dying was often not as scary as living. 'And kids go to awesome places. Rad magical places like in films, only better. The boy you mean, the one who died, I did catch him sometimes. He chased dragons: hot sun, sharp salty wind, blue blue waves. His hair like black wings, his feet flying the surf. The sea tasting of fish and chips with plenty of vinegar. All the chips you can eat.' When Laura asked why the fuck he hadn't told anyone before it was too late, Max had regarded her with confused resentment. 'I didn't know where he really was. I've already told you, I can't always tell. Anyway, who should I have told except Dad, and I did go to him, but something was wrong with the boy, Dad wouldn't say, but I guess it was a neuro thing, and once Fulgur rejects you, and if you've got no family, and no one will give you your serum or medicine or food even . . . people who're hungry imagine mountains and mountains of food . . .' She batted his hand away from his neckline. 'Yeah, like I asked for this? It sucks that there's so much bad shit out there!' Less hotly, 'Ask Zach. One day things will change.'
'And just how am I supposed to ask Zach?'
'He'll be back, Lolly.' Max touched her wrist. 'He's OK, you'll see, things are going to change.' But he refused to be goaded by supplication; her unspoken imprecations.
Once more Laura rapped on the door, then pounded it brashly in frustration. Political stuff didn't much interest her, mainly she'd come to see for herself what Stella might be hiding. The woman was too canny, surely, to believe someone like Laura's dad would breach Fulgur security to a family member, whatever she might claim-or ask of Laura. Maybe these people knew all along where Zach could be found.
The echo dwindling in what must be a long, empty corridor, she yanked off her gloves to check a tad compulsively for her mobile. The old Rex Cinema was huge, a dream palace abandoned at least twenty years before, when this district had begun to deteriorate and film-goers preferred the smaller places anyway, but a sentry-of sorts-was meant to be waiting for her.
Later on, she could never decide what made her try the handle. The footfall behind her? Which she realised after slamming and bolting the metal door-a wooden one would have been axed ages ago-was probably three-quarters imagination and one-quarter stray cat or rodent. But she was in, and she had her torch. To leave now would leave her guessing forever, and hating herself for scuttling away. At least as a crab, you needn't despise yourself for burrowing into the sand. Ever since she was seven, she'd become very good at burrowing.
Lies taste like a mouthful of sand.
She switched on the torch but didn't budge from the spot. There wasn't much to be seen-remnants of peeling wallpaper, once richly embossed; a twist of wires where wall fixtures had been removed, though one tarnished sconce still dangled like a wild bird left to hang before roasting; a dark red carpet, surprisingly intact if muddied; some water damage in the corner of the ceiling right above her head. She played the torch in all directions.
Somebody had cleared away the usual rubbish that accumulates in a derelict building, or the place had been kept well barricaded-nothing more than a few cigarette stubs, a board leaning against the wall, one crumpled ball of newspaper, which she had, her mother's daughter, a momentary urge to pick up. And there was no sign of the usual vandalism, no graffiti.
The air, though dampish, was still. Too still for her to call out and announce her presence. Despite her determination to proceed, she found it hard to move away from the exit; from what might be her only exit. At last she removed her mobile and stared at it, then thrust it back in her bag when she realised that the only person she wanted to text couldn't be reached.
'I'll find you,' she whispered.
In the cinema itself all but the last ten rows or so of seats seemed to be in place, and Laura surmised that the missing ones had been sold off by the original owners, so clean were the wounds. At a guess the cinema could have accommodated upwards of a thousand viewers-a very blind guess. The vast space was as dark as an underground cavern, into which her torch shone only a narrow, meagre light. From the upper circle she felt like Jonah, entering not the whale, but the mouth of some even larger prehistoric creature whose multiple rows of teeth would soon grind her to a paste. Though she tried to plot the dimensions of the theatre, whenever she moved towards one wall, the others receded into darkness. Finally she worked her way back to the centre, doing her best to ignore the increasing chill.
* * *
A step at a time, Laura descended from the upper level along the central aisle, swinging her torch alternately to the left, to the right. Here too everything was tidy-too tidy, as though the cleaners had just come through with vacuum and rubbish bags. She paused as gooseflesh rose on her arms, no longer able to remember why she'd felt compelled to search the building. It was obviously deserted, the group she was supposed to join long fled. She promised herself she'd leave upon reaching the main floor: a cinema this size must have emergency exits on either side. For some reason she didn't fancy turning her back to the screen.
She finds them near the bottom.
Near the bottom she finds them, three in a row, and four more in the next row down: positioned as if watching a film; slumping a bit, as if bored, or half asleep; leaning against each other as if sharing a secret, an embrace.
Straighten up, this is no time for snogging.
She gave a great hiccup of laughter, then swung about, the torch wavering wildly. Was anyone there? She clamped her left hand round her right to steady the beam of light, not very successfully. Was anyone still there? There had already been ample opportunity to attack her, hadn't there?
A line of reasoning which might have worked while tucked up under her duvet with a cup of hot chocolate on her bedside cabinet and her terror confined to the printed page and the dustball monsters under her bed, her dad's snoring comforting if inaudible.
To keep from bolting, she told herself she had to be sure-that they were dead, that no one she knew . . .
Don't go there.
With great care Laura sidled along the row of seats till she came to the first body. She studied the lad's face, his eyes closed, his mouth only slightly agape, his skin fairer than Zach's, his hair too-he might really have been sleeping, his head reposing on the shoulder of the girl next to him, and even that track of dried spit not out of place. She bent close, so that his eyelashes trembled delicately at the stir of her breath, though it was her own eyes which stung. How had he died? There seemed to be no frontal wounds, but she wasn't prepared to pull his torso forward to check for bullet holes, stab marks. Despite little reason to hope, she forced herself to feel for a pulse. Then on to the next body. And the next. By the time she reached the last, her hands had stopped shaking; her agitation replaced by a dry-eyed calm.
