Her dad picked up the survival blankets, shook off the snow, and bundled them under an arm. In silence they walked through the wood, following the path they themselves had trampled. When they reached the car, her dad stowed away his kit while Laura plucked the chocolate bar from her pocket, gripped it tightly in her fist as if to crush it, then raised her arm and lobbed it savagely across the track into the opposite bank. She hugged herself in an attempt to subdue-conceal-her shivering. The simus were right, men are predators. Sick, vile, brutish predators.
Dark, but never dark enough. Waiting. Endless sleepless hours waiting. Finally the soft click of the latch, the spill of pallid light and the sourish smell of him, the door sighing shut, the bolt snibbing into place. His footsteps, barefoot, onetwo threefour . . . at seven he always reaches the bed. Laura, he says, pretty little Laura kitten. No more waiting. He's waiting, she knows what to do. The magic ice cream cone which grows bigger with every lick.
'You're cold, we need to get you back home and into bed.' Her dad peeled off a glove and laid a hand on her forehead. 'A bit feverish.'
Sidestepping out of reach, Laura was about to blurt out a reflexive denial when she realised that bed, and sleep, would in fact be welcome. For a moment she ached to crawl into Zach's arms, to lie in the sweet simple reservoir of his warmth. But it would have to be a hot bath and flannel pyjamas, as after a bruising swim, and the sanctuary of bittersweet daydreams.
Why had she been so stupid? Why hadn't she remembered that even kittens have claws and teeth?
* * *
Once inside the car, her dad gripped the steering wheel without speaking. Laura waited, tears close again. Illness and fatigue make you trembly, shock, there was no reason to think she was going mad: seeing things that weren't there. Or things that were always there, imperceptible to a mind saned rather than sainted. Joan of Arc heard voices accompanied by a blaze of light. Poets have heard hierarchies of terrible angels. She and Max were siblings, weren't they? Is that why her dad wouldn't talk about Max?
The mind builds the walls of its own, perhaps its only, safehouse.
'How na飗e of me, how misguided to think I could keep them safe. How arrogant. I should have let Fulgur have them.' He turned to look at her, his eyes raw with the pain of it. 'At least they'd still be alive.'
Kids shouldn't have to give that sort of forgiveness to a parent. 'Who? You haven't explained.'
He switched on the engine, the headlights and wipers, jammed the car into reverse, gunned backwards, but when the wheels began to spin, he stopped and took an audible breath, collected himself.
'Simu twins, a bit younger than Max. Eliot and Nicola. And their foster mother.'
'You were hiding them?'
'Something like that.'
'Why? It's a pretty serious crime. I mean, I can understand about Max, he's your own son, but . . .'
'They were very gifted kids. Wonderful, trusting kids.' He removed his knitted cap and passed a hand through his hair, then stared at the damp wool till Laura was obliged to prompt him.
'And?'
'Max told you about the scare he had at the Christmas party, didn't he? It's only confirmed what I've suspected for a long time. Fulgur is keen to get its hands on a telepath. And Eliot and Nicola were telepaths, fearsome telepaths, so fearsome that it scared me sometimes.'
After a short silence Laura asked, 'What does Fulgur want with telepaths?'
'Has Zach said anything at all about his project?'
She shook her head.
'The wars over oil reserves are nothing compared to what we're likely to see in the near future. The mind-the cognoscens mind, especially-is our most valuable natural resource. Fulgur has just been quicker to recognise it.' He regarded his hat as if it had mistaken him for a hat rack, then tossed it onto the dashboard. 'I'm not surprised Zach has been scrupulous about not involving you. But if you care for him the way I think you do, it's far too late. You're already involved.'
* * *
Later that evening Max came into Laura's room while she was sitting cross-legged on her bed, Fabio's origami crow before her on the duvet. She'd succeeded in straightening it enough to roost without toppling, but it was lopsided and badly creased. She liked running a finger gently over the paper wings, and made it into a game: how much pressure could it withstand before falling on its side?
Max thrust a packet of her favourite toffee at her-his favourite too, yet unopened.
'Thanks,' she said, touched by this sign of affection. 'Want one?'
'They're for you, otherwise Zach will bite my head off.'
'What's Zach got to do with it?'
'They're from him.'
'You've seen him?'
With a sheepish grin Max shook his head, then looked at his feet.
'Max?'
'You know.'
She was silent for a moment, gnawing her underlip. It wasn't pretty, being jealous of your little brother.
'He talks to you?' she asked.
'I've taught him a few tricks.'
'Tricks, you call them? I'd love to see the website you got them magic tricks from!'
'Look, it's just a way to signal when he wants me to pay attention.' His cheeks pinked. 'I'm supposed to tell you he's thinking about you.'
'What's he done? Forgotten to pay his phone bill?'
'Mum.' Max rolled his eyes, that stupid mannerism he'd picked up from Owen's brother George. 'There've been a lot of calls. She's even taken your mobile so you won't be disturbed.'
'Yeah, right. That's her story. And stop rolling your eyes, it makes you look like a Moss family clone.' Angrily Laura tore open the packet and shook out several toffees onto the duvet. 'Go on. He won't mind.'
'You're sure?'
'Just don't forget to brush your milk teeth.' It wasn't like him not to retort, he hated any suggestion of childishness. Something was bothering him. Ashamed of having flared up, Laura patted the bed and slid towards the wall so that he could sit down. He picked up the paper bird and prodded its crooked beak, his own tentative smile the response.
'You ought to think of becoming a vet when you grow up,' she said.
Max unwrapped one of the chocolate-covered sort and popped it into his mouth. Laura didn't need any special gift to know that it was his way of evading the topic; the future. She reached out and touched two fingers to his bony wrist, just over the vulnerable nexus of veins.
He swallowed. 'Zach says he might be getting a bigger flat one day.'
'I suppose.'
Balancing the bird on the palm of his hand, Max kept his eyes on it as though it might spread its fragile wings and take flight. 'Do you think . . . maybe I could . . . I mean, I'd keep out of the way and everything.'
'Max, I haven't got a clue what you're talking about.'
For a while he continued to stare at the bird. When he finally looked up, he still didn't quite meet her eye, and his cheeks were even rosier. 'Zach said that in a year or two, Dad might let me move in. In a lot of places the code's not strictly enforced, and anyway, sometimes there's special permission.'
'Simus ought to stick together, eh?' Laura snatched the bird back from his hand, tossed it onto her bedside cabinet, and sprang to her feet. She strode across the room and yanked at the curtains, though in fact they were already drawn. 'Mum will fight like hell to keep you.' She took a deep breath, another, breathing in remembered warmth. 'Not that it'll do any good, but I'll take your side. Zach would look after you.' There's no finer man. Her back to Max, she continued to clutch the edges of the fabric while blinking hard. It would take someone like Zach to keep Max safe.
'You mean you wouldn't mind?' She could hear the relief in his voice.
'It's got nothing to do with me, does it?'
'Zach said you'd have to agree.'
Slowly she turned to face her brother, her heart beating too fast. It was obviously going to take some time before she was fit again. 'Whatever for?'
'But-'
'What?'
'If you guys are going to share a flat . . .' His voice trailed off, something in her face puzzling, or unsettling. 'I thought you wanted to live with him. If you don't, you've got to tell him, Laura. It's not fair.'
She came over and knelt at the side of the bed, a sensation like the fizz and tickle of a sparkling wine rizzling from her nostrils into her forehead into the very top of her head.
'He said we're going to share a flat?'
'Don't you want to? I thought-'
She pinched him. Hard.
'What was that for?' he whinged, rubbing his arm.
'Listen, little brother, stay out of my head, you hear?'
'I'm not like-' He hesitated, perturbed, then blurted out, 'There's something wrong, they're gone, and Dad won't answer my questions.'
'Who's gone?'
He chucked another toffee into his mouth.
'Max!'
Muffled, 'OK, OK.' He gulped the toffee. 'I'm not the only one, you know. There's a set of twins who are really good, much better than me.'
Without warning the door opened, and their mum pitched herself into their midst. 'What's going on in here? Laura is supposed to be sleeping!' Her eyes fell on the open packet of sweets. 'And where did you get that junk?'
Laura rose to her feet, then to her full height. She crossed her arms. 'From Zach.' Delicious to see vexation flare in her mother's eyes, as delicious as the toffees themselves. 'A goodbye present.' Smack me, Laura thought. Go on, smack me.
Once her grades had begun to improve, Laura had raised her hand in a lesson and rattled off the causes of the Sino-American War. There had been no mistaking the triggerflash of anger that Mr Fuckwit Chester was quick to shutter. A moment of grim illumination: never before had she realised that, far from disliking stupid pupils, teachers relish them, relish and cultivate them. From then on she'd begun to study in earnest, setting herself a punishing schedule.
Her mum took a deep breath. 'Just don't forget to brush your teeth,' she said, her mouth working as though a toffee were gummed to her own molars. 'Max, precisely, but I mean precisely, ten more minutes.'
As soon as she'd gone, Max and Laura exchanged looks, then dissolved into laughter. Laura settled back onto the bed.
'In the 9?minutes remaining, you're going to tell me precisely how long you've known about the twins.' One last bubble of laughter from Max-'9?- while she sobered, trying to figure out how, or even whether, to tell him about the fire.
'I've always known. Sometimes they forget to block. They're megastrong senders, and anyway they talk a lot to each other. OK, not talk-you know what I mean.'
'Why haven't you told me?'
He shrugged, then discovered a loose thread on the duvet to claim his attention. An uncomfortable suspicion crossed Laura's mind.
'What about Zach?'
Max looked away.
'You've told Zach but not me!'
'He made me promise to tell you. He said it was for me to do, not him.'
'He got that right at least.'
'Don't be racked at him. Please. He's so scared sometimes.'
'Then he'd better stop with all that political stuff before someone-'
'Don't say it!'
In Max's eyes she saw a curtain part to reveal the dark mid-winter night of his own fear. Pinpricks of light like stars glittered there, where the darkest matter conversed with fearsome uncertainties, implicate order concealed even from a cognoscens. What must it be like to have a billion billion voices yowling to lynch your soul?
'Is it ever quiet inside your head?' she asked softly.
Max sat up straight, his brow furrowing like a much older lad's. 'Close your eyes.'
'Why?'
'Just do it.'
She closed them, it was easier than arguing. She tried to blank off her mind, but he spoke straightaway.
'Now think of Zach. Think of him walking along the canal. He's wearing a thick sheepskin coat, collar turned up against the wind, and a woollen cap jammed far down on his head. His hair's tucked up under the cap so no one can see it. He doesn't want to be recognised. Though he's got gloves on, his hands are deep inside his pockets. He's cold. He's walking slowly. His toes are numb, the soles of his feet. His eyes are watering from the cold, his nose running. He's tired but doesn't want to go back to an empty flat. Doesn't want to eat something, alone. Doesn't want to sit at his desk, alone. Doesn't want to sleep in the bed alone where you-'
'Stop it!' She tore open her eyes. Viciously, 'At least you'll never be lonely when you've got all those companions in your head.'
Max stared at her for a moment, blinking as though her words were specks of grit kicked up by a dust devil into his eyes, now reddening slightly. Wind-blown sand can strip paint, carve rock, and like words, flay your skin raw.
'You know Aladdin's genie?' Max said. 'I'm just like him, except my oil lamp is made of bone. And there's no one to let me out.' He groped for the sweet packet but picked it up by the wrong end, so that the toffees tumbled out and scattered higgledy-piggledy like cobble across the floor.
As Laura bent down to help Max collect the toffees, they cracked heads. 'Oof,' she said, rubbing the sore spot, then as he followed suit, began to laugh. 'Maybe you can release the genie that way.'
Relieved to see him smile, albeit tremulously, she knelt to collect the last toffees. Go home, Zach, she whispered to herself. Please. The wind slicked its wintry tongue along the canal's bare skin, raising gooseflesh. A torn plastic bag, a sudden slither of ratblack, a patch of ice. In the distance the lonely chatter of an engine. Tomorrow Zach will have to face the prep team for a briefing; a new run is being planned. Tomorrow Zach will be warned by Slade that even an MVP cannot continue to flout the miscegenation code without ministerial dispensation; not that Slade minds personally, of course not, but despite its influence Fulgur can only do so much, and Mr Randall himself has given the magistrate a guarantee after the last little incident. Tomorrow they will hang a plastic bag filled with human shit from the handlebars of Zach's motorbike.
