'I'm going to ring them,' her dad said, breaking the silence. He reached for the phone, which had been centred between them like a piece in a bizarre game of feint and counterfeint-who would seize it first?
Zach stopped his pacing. 'Don't be a fool.'
'I haven't noticed that you've made any useful suggestions.'
'Who else do you expect me to call? Randall? The head of the Purist Party? The Almighty Himself?'
Laura thumped her mug onto the table, sloshing coffee. 'Stop it, both of you.'
The phone rang.
They all stared at it, and Laura was reminded of an old picture book of Max's in which some children find a board game whose playing pieces come ominously to life. She couldn't remember, however, if the story ended well.
Her dad snatched up the handset and thumbed the talk key. 'Yes?' He listened for only a minute or two, then rung off with a curt 'All right, I understand.' Pushing back his chair, he beckoned for them to follow. 'We'd best switch on the pc.'
* * *
It was impossible, and yet it was happening: Max gagged, bound, and blindfolded on a bed in a darkened room; after a few seconds, Fabio under harsh lights. Trussed to a chair with wide bands of duct tape, metres and metres of it, he stared into the webcam as though his eyes alone, green as serpentine, green as goldengrove, a raw and blazing green, could bridge the strips sealing his mouth. Moments ahead of Laura, Zach understood why Fabio was allowed to see his captors.
'Don't look,' Zach said grimly and gripped her hand.
Though the voice that spoke was distorted through some sort of filter, there was no mistaking the message. 'If you want to see your son again, then provide us with the formula for the serum, and complete instructions for its production. No police and no tracer and no negotiations. You've got till 7:00 a.m. for Laura to bring it on her own. She knows where. We'll be waiting.' The voice broke off to whisper something. 'And to show you that we don't play around, watch carefully.'
Fabio jerked now, throwing himself against his restraints, straining against an off-camera threat, against and against. His head whipped as far to the side as the bonds permitted but there was nowhere to go, no escape from the already. His back arched. The tendons of his neck ridged in protest, and a strangled cry issued from his stoppered throat. Laura dug her fingernails into Zach's hand. 'Please,' she whispered. 'Please no.' But which gods could you beseech for this?
A sound that she recognised from a million movies.
'This is a live transmission.' A laugh. 'Or was.'
More distorted laughter as the camera panned to convey the mise en sc鑞e, then the screen went blank.
The silence which entered the room had a palpable presence. It felt heavy on Laura's chest, and in her lungs; the sensation of air too dense to breathe. Once on holiday they'd stepped from a chilly air-conditioned airport into the humid heat of a tropical island. It had been her first experience of the solidity and sheer weight-the thingness-of things not seen.
She didn't want to go back there.
She would have to go back there.
For a long while no one moved. Then Zach released Laura's hand. He ran the ball of his thumb along her lifeline, slowly, gently, back and forth several times, before caressing each finger in turn.
'I'm going outside for a moment,' he said.
'I'll come with you.' Laura said. 'It's too warm in here.'
He shook his head. 'I want to try to communicate with Max again. He must be terrified, and he's also going to need his medication soon.'
Laura glanced at her dad, whose lips were moving as he played with his wedding band. She couldn't imagine her dad praying, so it had to be another sort of mantra. The formula for the fucking serum, maybe? She felt her arms begin to itch, and she had to make an effort not to dig at them while Zach was still in the room. It wasn't just that he'd notice. He had a way of looking at her which made her look at the things she'd rather not see-a certain blistering truth which burned like sunlight. You could only take so much exposure before you ended up with skin cancer; with cataracts.
Her father was one of their chief neuros. It was possible-no, it was likely that he'd helped develop the genetic defect and its fix. How ironic, she thought viciously, that he would be made to pay in this way. Then she remembered that it was Max who was paying, and Fabio who'd already paid. And how many others?
Zach returned from the doorway to remove her hand. 'Don't scratch,' he said. 'We'll get him back safely.' She almost believed him, so flinty were his eyes despite the windscreen of lashes. A slight spin of circumstance, the smallest spark, and he'd ignite.
'Is it a complicated formula?' she asked her dad once Zach had gone.
Her dad left off fiddling with his ring. She saw something very sobering in his gaze, so that the start of a new unease sharpened her voice. 'You will give it to them, won't you?'
'There's nothing to give.'
'What?'
'There's no formula, not in the way they mean.'
'But surely a good-'
Her dad didn't let her finish. 'Laura, you don't understand. No serum exists, and no genetic flaw. I expect the kidnappers are simus who hope to break free of Fulgur. And they're not going to believe me.' His eyes glistened, as close to tears as Laura had ever seen him. 'They'll think I'm holding out on them. We all saw what they're prepared to do.'
'What do you mean, no genetic flaw?'
Her dad spread his hands helplessly, then went over to their old upright piano and stared at the framed photos on display, which her mum had programmed to change each Sunday. He picked up the one in which Max, legs and kit streaked with dirt, was squinting in bright sunlight, a football under his arm. The grass was very green, its blades sharply defined. An ordinary day not too long ago. After a lengthy silence, her dad replaced the picture and turned to face her, though he blinked rapidly, and his eyes kept sliding sideways.
'There was never any question of defects. Fulgur needed a way to control the simus, that's all. This seemed the easiest solution.'
Her brain felt sluggish. 'But I've seen for myself what happens when Zach goes too long without the stuff.'
'The withdrawal symptoms are even nastier than from heroin. And the damage from long-term use, unfortunately, much more profound.'
It took a few seconds for this to sink in. 'Fulgur has reduced the simus to junkies?'
Just above a whisper. 'Yes.'
'Which drug is it? A form of heroin?'
For a moment she thought he wasn't going to answer. 'No. It's purpose-made.'
'By who?' His reluctance forced her to walk across the room and stand right in front of him, repeating, 'Who?'
He gestured with his face averted.
'Answer me! Say it, damn you.'
'I did. I developed it.'
'And you give to Max? To your own child?'
'No. He gets something else for his special needs. Something non-addictive. Something safe.'
Safe. All at once Laura couldn't breathe the same air as this monster. She spun on her heel and strode away, but paused at the doorway with one last question.
'Tell me, Dad, just how many years have you stolen from Zach's life?'
She slammed the door without waiting for a response.
* * *
She was crying in fear-fuelled rage by the time she located Zach, who was sitting on their old childhood swing in the cherry tree. He rose, unzipped his jacket, and folded her under its wings.
'It's too cold for you to be out here only in a jumper,' he said, wiping her face with a gloved hand. 'And your tears are going to freeze to your skin in a moment.'
She gave a watery laugh, then rested quietly in this temporary shelter while working up the courage to tell him what she'd learned. To her bewilderment he showed no sign of anger; not much reaction at all.
'Zach, did you hear me?'
'All of us, all these years . . .' Pensive, he pulled off his gloves, stuffed them into a pocket, and felt for her chain. She'd noticed how often he ran it through his fingers while working something out. For all his smarts, he had some dead weird habits. Maybe she ought to buy him a rosary. (Or ask her granddad for one, she could just imagine his face.) The more she came to know him, the more of an impossible, infuriating, rackety, wickedly gorgeous enigma he became. Those Fulgur neuros, they were idiots, imagining they could replicate a person like Zach with a bit of silicon and a handful of novy algorithms. Any ten-year-old had more sense.
He tucked the chain back under her collar. 'It's not good, but it's not so bad either. I detest the cold. Fancy living someplace where you can swim outdoors all year round? In a hot-pink thong?'
'How can you joke about it? They've turned you into an addict.'
'Addictions can be broken.' He nuzzled her, very not-Zach. 'Some kinds.'
'I hate him!'
'Your dad?'
When she nodded, tears welling again, Zach said, unconvincingly offhand, 'Listen, the kidnappers won't believe you or your dad, but they'll believe me. I'm going in your stead.'
'Sod that! Don't you dare even think it. You heard their instructions. They'll kill you on sight.'
'I don't kill all that easily.'
'And Max?'
'He's a simu. They won't hurt him, not when I tell them.'
'What if they're not simus?'
'Trust me, they're simus.'
'They're also bloody murderers who know exactly what'll happen to them.'
'Not if nobody else finds out.'
'You can't do that. What about Fabio?'
Zach was quiet for a moment or two. 'He was after the formula, he told me himself about some sort of plan. I don't know what went wrong, but the only way I can find out is by talking to them.'
'They'll never believe you won't turn them in.'
'Simus don't betray each other, Laura. And Fabio's the last person to want me to. Fabio damage the Janu cause? No chance. Not to avenge himself, not even to avenge his brother. They may be calling me Corvus, but Fabio is the real mover, the cognoscens he could never be, farsighted and driven and just demented enough to haunt you. Yeah, he's made enemies, and there have been times when I could have throttled him myself, but everyone recognises him for the rare person he is.' At last, a breath like a gash. 'Was. A visionary.'
A fanatic, more like. This wasn't the first time she wondered if Zach could be a touch na飗e when it came to Fabio. But he was dead, and she didn't like to speak ill of the dead. In another century, they would have walked in retribution.
An anxious wind berated them for lingering. Zach insisted on giving her his jacket, though his cheeks and nose were already reddened from the cold. As they made their way back towards the house, a flash of light from the far corner of the garden caught Laura's attention, and she swung round, expecting her mystery figure. Maybe Zach would believe her now; maybe he'd even see the man for himself. But it was merely the neighbour's motion sensor, triggered by the swaying branches of a rhododendron, whose frosted leaves glinted in the sudden illumination.
'Come on, you're going to get pneumonia out here,' she said, glancing round again.
'I won't mind if you promise to give me hourly sponge baths to bring down the fever.' More preoccupied than deadpan, he didn't even attempt a smile, and he sounded far too much like Fabio. If this was the best he could do . . .
'You won't need them,' she said testily. 'In about ten minutes your body temperature will be below freezing.' She turned to leave but he snared her arm.
'Where are they?'
She watched the vapour formed by his breath, as if something ghostly had appeared between them, or was dissipating. Smoke lingers for days, even now it might rise from the ruins of the cottage.
Zach wasn't her dad. Zach had caught that child molester, hadn't he? The Zach she knew would never ignore a monstrous crime. But she wasn't her dad either.
Moving closer, she teased a finger the length of his zip, then quite deliberately began to arouse him. For a moment he leaned into her, his cock trapped within the narrow leg of his jeans, trapped under the flat of her hand, and she thought he would give himself over to the relief of pure sensation, but after a harsh intake of breath he grasped her wrist and broke away. 'Don't.' Unlike her dad, he held her gaze. 'No. I want you to tell me.'
'I'm going by myself.'
'Out of the question. You know that I'm right, they'll never believe you. And if you're hoping to get away with a bogus formula, I'm certain they'll hang onto Max till they've run their tests.'
Still she hesitated, her thoughts scrabbling like a drowning skater at the frozen ceiling overhead; scrambling for air, for an out, for a solution, for another way to rescue her brother.
'Laura, if we fail, if I don't do this, it will always lie between us like thin ice. One false step, and you'll plunge through, or I will. I promise you, we'll end up hating each other.'
'I could never hate you.'
Exasperated, he grasped her by the shoulders and spun her round to face the deep night, its tenting so moth-eaten that the cold light of far-distant galaxies drilled into her face. She expected him to argue, but as usual he surprised her. Though his lips were close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath, she had to strain to hear him.
'When I was first sent to the Foundation, I'd wait till my roommates were fast asleep, then get up and open the curtains. I can still remember the feel of the heavy cotton. It was rough. It smelled dusty. Someone told me they'd saved money by purchasing an auction lot of the same sort of sheeting exported for burial shrouds.' Lightly he stroked her left shoulder as if back in that room, back at that window, the fabric of the past unfurling beneath his fingertips. 'From my bed I had a clear view of the window. I couldn't stand being indoors but it took me a while to figure out how to sneak past the night guard. It's not like we were locked in, exactly. It only felt that way.'
