l. lee lowe » Corvus
By L. Lee Lowe
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Podcast Description
In an alternate present the minds of teen offenders are uploaded into computers for rehabilitation—a form of virtual wilderness therapy. Zach is a homo cognoscens, one of the new humans who can navigate the Fulgrid. Though still a high school student, he is indentured to the Fulgur Corporation as a counsellor. Laura is a homo sapiens. Their story is part odyssey, part tragedy, part riff on the nature of consciousness.
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Eight | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 'You are here to become that Corvus,' the birdman says. Zach shrugs off his hood, the wind slicing through his jaggedly shorn hair as though determined to bareblade him. He misses Stella terribly; get real, she'd have told this creature with an earthy laugh. It's easy to picture the flash of her scissors, clipping the overzealous wings. Pani thrusts his chin forward like a stolid little wooden nutcracker, the Christmas ornament sort. 'Mr Bird,' he says, 'what's an avatar?' 'Pay no—' Zach says, but the birdman interrupts. 'One of your spirit selves. Come, I'll show you.' At a flick of his wrist, the dragon pillar reproduces a solemn, mussed-hair, chipped-tooth likeness of Max, vivid as ever despite the amnesiac snow. Zach grabs for Pani, who wriggles free to run across the circle and press his face against the ice. Surprised, 'It's not cold at all.' And then, excitedly, 'I can hear him!' 'Pani, don't,' Zach says. 'He's not real, it's a trick.' Moving to draw the boy away, he stops, not at the whisper of a remembered voice, not at the unfurling of wings, not even at the birdman's raised hand, but at the change in Pani himself. 'He's calling me,' Pani says. 'No!' Hastily Zach steps backwards, hoping that this will reverse whatever has been set in motion. But as the air around him glitters, Pani continues to fade. 'Pani, look at me! Pani!' For a moment it seems to work. Transparent as frost on glass, Pani throws a glance over his shoulder, then fetches halfway round. Ice can carry sound with astonishing clarity, even over great distances. Play your music, Zach. A gust of wind blows loose snow across Zach's face, obscuring his vision with the dazzle and sting of a prism ground to fine powder. Through a prickle of tears he sees the snow rime to Pani, rendering him as delicate as wind chimes, as fine-blown as a crystal bauble. Indistinct now except for his fiery, speaking eyes, he makes no attempt to speak, but the supplicating notes of a clarinet tremble in Zach's ear. 'Don't—' Zach breaks off, fearful, as he's always been fearful, of a future riven by fearful symmetry. After a moment he ventures a hesitant 'Pani,' then falters once more. He's right to fear. Pani is shaking his head, colour and texture returning to his skin, while Max, a grieving and lonely and vulnerable Max, is beginning to waver, waver and dim. *Let It Be* 'Weigh your choices carefully,' the birdman says. Oh yes, carefully. *Fulgur uploads carefully selected participants in the rehabilitation trials, each a volunteer with full parental consent. All other individuals a facilitator will encounter are modules carefully designed and programmed for verisimilitude.*1 Zach chooses not to wring the birdman's neck, most carefully. After brushing phantom hair from his eyes with a small, bitter laugh, he scoops up a handful of snow for one last snowball, but the crystals are too cold to compact. Without taking his eyes from Pani, he lets the snow trickle from his hand. He lets it trickle until the boy is gone, leaving only a memory to shimmer against the outspread wings. Zach learned early on that adults wield secrets like swords, a will to power. The real childhood secret, the thing to do, is not to play the game. He reminds himself of this dictum at the sound of wings, the wind plunging its cold steel into his gut as he cranes his head to watch the figures vanish into the clouds. Their spokesman, however, remains behind as if Pani's death—and it certainly feels like a death—is just a practice drill with wasters. 'Not curious what they're up to?' the birdman asks. 'Not particularly.' 'Not even if I tell you they're meeting with Lev?' 'Not even if you tell me they're meeting with Laura.' 'There's no need for that. You may not believe me, but I'm on your side.' 'Then prove it. Find her.' | 8 7 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Seven | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF At Stella's name, Zach closed his eyes against and against, lashes trembling. He made no sound except the sound of a laboured bellows, as if he had to remind himself to breathe. Is there ever a right time for such news? His scar glinted with the veneer of healing, a pearly sheen, and a small dark shape scuttled along the alley, but Laura was unable to fix her gaze on anything for long. They were both shivering, and the air smelled of snow. Zach needed shelter more than the anaesthesia of cold. Whatever else was waiting for them inside the Rex, it wasn't an impending snowstorm. If the door was bolted, Zach might be persuaded to leave. If the door was bolted, Max might already be wedged into a threadbare seat. Gloveless, she gripped the metal handle, and gripped. The cold cut into her palm. 'Why haven't you told me this before? I've been trying to find out what's happened to her. To all of them.' The door to the cinema swung open smoothly—too smoothly. Could someone have oiled the hinges? She slipped inside, Zach followed and shut the door behind them. 'Why haven't you told me? ' 'I—' Laura found herself repeating the account of her first visit, elaborating it, filling in details, drawing attention to each face, each shaky step she'd taken. Though unfeigned, her nervousness served like a magician's practised patter to misdirect Zach from the gaps in her story—those images on the screen. He'd never believe her; she wasn't quite sure she believed it herself. Sometimes it seemed as if she'd hallucinated the whole episode—not the bodies, not that, but she'd been so desperate to find Zach . . . 'I don't know, exactly,' she answered. 'I guess I was afraid.' 'Of me?' When she said nothing, Zach's face darkened. At first she thought he was angry, and she stepped backwards towards the exit, stepped backwards without, at least, flinching. He lowered the torch, which cast his features into waxen, high-contrast relief. Almost imperceptibly the skin surrounding his eyes took on the tautness of a mask as though she'd said something vicious and hurtful, and then she realised that she had, in her silence even more than in her words. But she didn't know how to explain, and this was hardly the moment for it anyway. An inkling of a disturbing possibility crossed her mind: *was* she in some way afraid of Zach? 'I've been doing a little reading,' he said softly, 'Abuse victims often spend their lives self-destructing, driven by their desires, consumed by them, which are raw and ugly and conjoined to the abuse itself. Is that what I am to you?' 'Zach—' She swallowed, longing for a glass of water. 'Zach, you're the most beautiful thing that's ever happened to me.' She glanced the length of the dark corridor ahead of them, the end of which remained shadowy despite the beam from their torch. She couldn't remember the passage being quite so long. 'Look, we're both on edge, and you're way too whacked to be anywhere except in bed.' Again she searched the corridor. 'I don't like this. Something feels wrong, really wrong. Maybe we ought to leave while we still can.' 'You're absolutely certain everyone was dead? Stella?' 'I didn't imagine it!' 'That's not what I'm suggesting. They could have been drugged or in a coma.' 'They were dead,' she said flatly. In response Zach took her by the arm, drew her away from the exit, and handed her the torch. Then, to her astonishment, he began to undress. 'What are you doing?' she asked. He gave her a sardonic grin, Fabio's influence all too apparent. 'We'll celebrate *after* we get Max to safety.' He was already down to his boxers. 'Stay here with my stuff. I want them to see straight off that I'm unarmed. If I'm not back in half an hour, ring for a taxi and go home.' 'Yeah, right. And do what? Make popcorn?' | 1 7 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Six | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF As soon as Zach emerges from the iglu, an icy wind snatches the breath from his lungs. He shuts his eyes and doubles over, gripping his knees till a shout drags him upright. Through his tears he discerns Pani silhouetted against the horizon, gesticulating anxiously. Despite the clouds, colour is returning to the world. Has he really forgotten how beautiful even weak sunlight can be? There, beyond the iglu, lies a low bank of rubble, blushing at its own mounds and crevices. There, the lead sheeted in crumpled purple. And there, shyly, lifting the curtain on the first morning after, the sun. My god, has he been blind! The promise of it has no counterpart in fact. One day he'll not visit Svalbard or Greenland as a tourist. Not walk on the ice, what remains of it. Not listen to the groaning of the distant, dying glaciers. Not scan the tundra for a sign of polar bear. Not shiver except in the chilly breezes of memory. For only here, in Thule, his Thule, is the wind fierce enough to defy the guardian equations of time. 'I'll never let you go,' she said. He turns his face to the punishing wind, wondering how long it would have been before she left; before he'd have *wanted* her to leave. For only here, in Thule, their Thule, the light itself can sing. Then, Zach, you have still not understood the Arctic. 'Lev?' Though Zach peers in all directions, there's no sign of man or bear. Pani is nimble-footed, but Zach slips midway across an innocent-looking belt of glossy, meringue-like crust, lands awkwardly on one knee, and while recovering from the jolt of pain, makes out a dull wingbeat overhead which sends him scrambling to his feet. 'What is it?' Pani asks upon doubling back. 'Some sort of bird?' The air quivers as if to the flight of a pterodactyl. They stare into the sky, the black dots which Zach first takes for afterimages from unaccustomed exposure to the sun—simus are particularly susceptible to retinal damage—quickly transforming his blindspots into birds into raptors into paratroopers into a menacing sense of déjà vu. He curses himself for his foolish daydreaming. Even Pani wouldn't make it back to the iglu now, not that it would offer more than a short-lived bulwark against the swarm dropping from the cloud cover. The winged figures swoop straight for them, fifteen of them, twenty, and as they descend, Pani grabs Zach's arm with a soft cry, while Zach at last recalls the source of his dread. 'No one move!' The warning has the opposite effect on Pani, who whirls into a half-crouch, mitt at his feet and panak already grasped in a fist. Zach has barely enough time to wonder how long it takes to perfect such a slick manoeuvre swathed in thick furs before a soundless burst of light sends the boy sprawling. 'Pani!' Zach dives for him. A second flash of light, this time aimed at Zach. Though he maintains a desperate hold on consciousness, the sensory overload stuns him, and he just manages not to vomit, not to lose control of his bladder, not to let go of Pani. 'Another rash stunt, and the boy is dead.' Within moments they're surrounded. At a signal from the spokesman, Zach gets slowly, dazedly, to his feet. Pani is still crumpled on the ice. Zach stares at the creatures, trying to make sense of what he sees: tall, graceful men clothed in the thinnest of black bodysuits, masks, and boots, but whose enormous wings, no matter how virtual, pulse with cold-defying life. He's never envied Max his particular gift, but right now an inkling of their intentions would be welcome. These are not the monstrous chimeras of ancient myth, of psychosexual nightmare, of budget flick and massive multiplayer games, but have a fearsome Blakean beauty which confounds him. And then a grim thought: is this how the sapiens see *us*? The same spokesman beckons for Zach to approach. 'Don't hurt the boy, | 24 6 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Five | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Zadie set a large latte down in front of the backpacker studying his *Lonely Planet* (http://shop.lonelyplanet.com/Primary/Region/AFRICA/Southern_Africa/PRD_PRD_2206/Cape+Town+City+Guide.jsp?ASSORTMENT%3C%3East_id=1408474395181057&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302025838&PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524441768137&bmUID=1276797696479&lpaffil=lpdest-shoppod). 'You don't want to go there,' she said, indicating the left-hand page. 'You'll get ripped off, that's a market for tourists.' Sometimes advice was rewarded with a bigger tip, but this lad looked as if he could barely pay for his coffee. He glanced at her, then down at his mug. 'That's me, Mophead Mark.' She liked the bottlebrush hair, the freckled ugliness, the seafoam eyes flecked with turbulence, his slow smile. 'It's terrific, who made it?' Coffee art—another good source of tips. But she was giving this one away. 'I'm a design student. Keeps me from getting bored on the job.' 'It takes real talent to catch a likeness with only a few strokes—and in froth no less.' 'Nah, it's mere trickery, like being able to add up a column of numbers in your head. It doesn't make you Ramanujan; it doesn't even make you an accountant.' He seemed surprised by her mention of the mathematician. 'You're local?' 'I didn't peg you for a racist.' 'Wow, a bit touchy, aren't you?' 'In South Africa you'll learn race is the *first* thing everyone thinks about.' 'A few more years, skin colour will be irrelevant.' 'A post-racial world?' she scoffed. 'Depends how you define race. I hear there's already a cognoscens presence in Cape Town.' From the corner of her eye she saw Anton come through the swing door from the kitchen and hurriedly pulled out her order pad, then scrawled a number. 'Here, ring me after six, and I'll show you round. There's a few places might interest you.' That evening, succumbing to his entreaties—'on your stubborn mophead, then!'—Zadie led him down to the beach. They ate the gutsy samoosas she'd brought, licking their fingers and laughing as the southeaster freewheeled like a surfer high on his own recklessness. Mark wasn't much of drinker, so the second can of beer stayed in her backpack. He offered a joint, though. Barefoot, they walked along the ribbon of firm, vermiculated sand, and stopped to talk, to gaze into the moonlit spindrift, and walked on again. He liked the way her hips moved as if she were treading water, a serene swell. He liked her liquid accent, and the way it raced away from her when she described a recent exhibit, her new kitten, the hungry stick kids up north. He liked the way she pretended that sand in your pubic hair was erotic, not messy and uncomfortable. Towards midnight they began to retrace their steps, she knew a jazz club where the drinks were cheap, and the music Cape Town's best-kept secret: 'Even if you could find it, they'd never let you in. Security tighter than the Island (http://www.robben-island.org.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=9&Itemid=9), back in Mandela's time.' 'They don't fancy foreigners?' 'They don't fancy rich white boys.' 'So if I had a fanny . . .' She laughed then, and gave him further reason to appreciate his endowments. Later, when he came to write his first novel, he'd invoke a surfer's finely tuned sense of wind and wave, but now there was no metaphor, no transcendence, now no heady rip of words, only the stoptime of breathing in rhythmic unison—a break in the incessant hiphop of pounding surf and pounding wind and pounding thoughts. 'It'll be your cash, and no friggin s**t, ya hear?' Hastily they uncoupled and stared at the two kids, one with a knife glinting in the moonlight, the other with a screwdriver. Zadie reacted first; nodded, unslung her backpack, handed it over—every movement slow and smooth, unthreatening. | 17 6 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Four | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Pani has saved his strength for good reason, needing every bit of it, and then some, to haul hard on the line while Zach braces himself and heaves, claws and heaves and finally flails over the lip of the crevasse. Both sprawl in the snow till they catch their breath, though it's Pani who recovers first, who urges Zach to get up and move about. Still drained, Zach lifts his head to stare at the deposit of rubbled ice, some slabs the size of prehistoric megaliths. It doesn't take much to imagine a team of extraplanetary archaeologists excavating this site centuries from now, speculating about what destroyed such massive tower blocks. The ivu has obliterated any landmarks he'd have recognised; obliterated everything, it seems, but the deadly cold, and the shrilling of the wind. He thinks of the banshee legends he's read about and scrambles to his feet. Ghosts in Fulgur's god machine? Pani butts Zach in the stomach and sends him sprawling again. 'Why?' Pani screams. 'You're a shaman, you saved my life, why not theirs?' Zach holds the sobbing boy, all the while trying to figure out how they're going to survive without food or equipment or destination. They've lost track of time, and Zach suspects they're lost. Overhead the stars provide a measure of illumination, frost smoke rising deceptively above the open lead at their feet in mimicry of hot springs. Pani bends to examine a darkish clump in the snow. 'Polar bear kill,' he explains. 'And we're lucky, he's left enough for us.' 'What is it?' 'Natsiq. A ringed seal. Most of the skin and fat is gone, but there's some meat.' Zach gazes across the black channel of water, ridged on the far side with debris, beyond which lies a deeply fissured, torturous icescape. It's doubtful he could make the leap even in peak condition, not to mention half frozen and falling-down exhausted; and he wouldn't allow Pani to try under any circumstances. Which leaves them where? Scavenging a chewed-over carcass. When you're hungry, a little polar bear saliva sounds as tasty as a dollop of aioli. 'If the bear has eaten, I guess it won't attack,' Zach says. 'He's probably far away by now.' Zach moves off a few steps to conceal his shivering, but Pani follows and takes his arm. 'I'm tired, Zach. Can we stop here and build an iglu?' At least they still have Pani's harpoon, panak, and pouches, as well as Zach's pocket knife; they've eaten the purloined blubber hours before. Left to himself, Zach would simply burrow into a drift the way dogs will do, hunters if caught out in a blizzard. Despite their arduous trek, Pani moves nimbly to search for suitable building snow—not too soft, not too icy, not too granular. Once Pani has found a supply, Zach does his best to assist but his trembling has become despotic by now, and no amount of exertion can warm him. Finally Pani lays down his snowknife on one of the dozen or so auviqs already extracted from the drift. 'Go and sit down for a bit,' Pani says, pointing to the nearest block. When he sees that Zach is about to refuse, he abandons his attempt to spare Zach's pride. 'Please. I can do it faster alone. Rest for a couple of minutes till I call you. I promise, I won't let you freeze.' The auviqs spiral upwards with such speed that Zach finds himself blinking back tears—the boy could have walked for hours yet. Teeth chattering, Zach hugs himself and rocks back and forth while he considers their options. Even if Pani is right about another winter camp, his sole information is that it lies vaguely westward along the shear line—‘four, maybe five days away.' With some food in their bellies, they might just make it that far, or at least Pani might. The truth is, Zach isn't much use, and by tomorrow, with no source of heat, he'll be none at all. Worse than none. 'It's not your fault,' Laura said. | 10 6 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Three | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF As it turned out, Zach didn't get his hour of sleep, not then, and not later that night either. Laura rushed back after about twenty minutes, her mobile clutched in her hand. It was hateful to rob him of the rest he obviously needed, and under other circumstances she'd have been alarmed at how long it took to rouse him, how drugged he seemed. He muttered a few incomprehensible phrases before opening his eyes, then groaned and squinted as she switched on the bedside lamp. He was still so groggy that for a moment she wondered if someone had slipped him a drink. Urgency overrode her qualms. She shook him, no doubt too roughly, but it worked. As soon as she told him about Max, he threw back the covers, made it to his feet, and stumbled into the bathroom to pee and dash cold water into his face. 'Don't worry, I'm not going to bother shaving,' he said when he saw her hovering in the doorway. Not that she ever minded his stubble. After tying back his hair, he yanked on his jeans while she went to brew some strong coffee, which he then gulped fast enough to scald his mouth. Though at first he grimaced at the suggestion of food, she pointed out, quite reasonably, that he'd need the energy. He ate some lasagne straight from the pan, standing at the hob and spooning it in like medicine. 'What are you going to do?' she asked while he poured a second mug of coffee. 'First try to contact Max.' 'That signalling he's taught you? What's the point, if you can't hear him?' 'To reassure him.' In order to concentrate, Zach, mug in hand, went into the living room, leaving Laura to drink the last of the coffee despite her jitteriness; leaving her to regret her promise to her dad; leaving her to remember the fire, and the other kids he'd tried to protect. There's a rash-like persistence to the memories you'd rather forget—often quiescent, mostly in fact, yet itchier than hell, and uglier too, when you need them least. One year her dad had bought her mum a hand-carved mahogany music stand for her birthday, a 100-year-old antique which no one else was allowed to touch. Max must have been four or five at the time, Laura couldn't remember precisely. On the afternoon Dad had brought it home, her mum was out—shopping, or a rehearsal, maybe. They'd seen her dad carry it in from the car and take it upstairs to hide in the loft. 'Don't tell your mum,' he'd said, 'it's a surprise.' When the babysitter left, Laura persuaded Max to spring the secret at supper. 'I *told* him not to say anything,' she pronounced over her chicken leg with just the right note of innocent dismay. She'd been a good liar, even then. Her mum had never bothered to disguise her preference for Max, but his wails of protest were too loud to be convincing (aided by a judicious pinch under the table). He knew better than to provoke Laura's wrath, whereas there'd be no punishment from their dad; he didn't do punishment, except the punishment of disappointment. And better yet, he'd blamed himself for mismanaging the whole business. Her dad must have already begun drugging Max. How else could her brother have missed the nasty pus oozing from her brain cells? Laura pushed back a sleeve and scratched her forearm, and scratched. Severe itching is close to pain. Her dad would have explained that they share some neurophysiological pathways. Not ten minutes later Zach came back into the kitchen. He stared at the red welts she'd raised, then took her arm and ran a hand over her skin, smoothing it as only he was able, smoothing and easing the ache. 'We'll find him,' he said. 'I promise.' 'I'm terrified that Fulgur's got him.' He shook his head, then regarded her intently. 'Why Fulgur?' Though it had never disturbed her before, concealment felt a good deal like subterfuge, like deceit. Keep something back, Olivia liked to say. Secrets are sexy. | 4 6 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-Two | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Pani has cleared overhanging snow from a section of the crevasse, shaved away its lip, and tamped down his harpoon as reinforcement, across the shaft of which he lowers a line that reaches Zach's brow but looks too fragile to support his weight. To loop it round his chest is all but impossible. Zach tests its hold with stiff fingers. He dare not wait till his hands are frozen into useless claws to decide between slackening grip or loose, unwieldy mitts. It will have to be the mitts. 'Ready?' Pani says. 'I'm going to back away from the edge, I can anchor the line better that way, but I'm not strong enough to haul you up on my own. You've got to climb.' 'Where are the others?' Silence as Pani retreats from view. 'Pani?' 'There are no others.' Though muffled, his voice quivers for an instant. 'I'm doing the best I can. Now come on.' A quick oath under his breath, directed at shapeshifting gatekeepers who desert their posts when most needed, then Zach grasps the strip of triple-ply hide with outstretched arms, pulls himself up till he can wrap one leg round the line—tricky to secure with heavy boots—and slowly begins to ascend. The first third is straightforward, but his arms are soon aching, and he feels the leather stretching, hears it creaking under his weight. It'll hold a seal, won't it? a walrus? At what he hopes is the halfway mark he stops to catch his breath and ease the strain one arm at a time by bracing himself against the wall. You can do this, he tells himself. You *have* to do this. When Pani calls out, a note of impatience—or is it nervousness?—in his voice, Zach prises himself loose from the ice. 'Just resting for a second.' Lift knees, anchor feet, stand, reach; again. How many more times? Don't look, he warns himself, and there's a second when it seems he won't, and another second when it seems it won't matter, and one more when he says 'oh f**k' as, sickeningly, he plummets and thuds and rebounds and cries out and then then *then* the line jerks—jerks and holds. He's too shaken to gasp a question. 'Zach! ZACH!' 'I'm here. Are you OK?' 'Hang on.' Very slightly, the line gives. 'The harpoon tip's broken loose, but I'm sitting on the line. Try to hurry.' Desperately, 'Please.' Zach wipes his face with the back of a mitt, cautiously, before the drops of sweat freeze and, cautiously, glances upwards. It's not as bad as might be: he's lost maybe two metres. Pani is alone up there; Zach can imagine only one circumstance in which Uakuak, or any of the camp for that matter, wouldn't have rushed to help. From a distance the ice appears solid, but it shifts as all things in his life shift, precipitously and without the least regard for consequence. The sounds it makes, the deep groans and crangs of a living creature, the way it rises up to gobble the unwary: what Fulgur swallows, it never releases whole. Ben had no f*****g chance, had he? The sudden flare of memory is intense, as jolting as an ember flicked into his inner eye: 'Leave me alone, Ben, I'm practising.' Not that there were ever any reprimands, any accusations of wasting Sean's time when Zach came badly prepared to a lesson: just those quizzical brown eyes and a lift to his eyebrows, then with a patient smile, the piece played as it ought on Sean's battered clarinet. Zach remembers how discomfited he'd been that his own instrument was so spang—so much newer and more valuable—his boyish indignation at life's unfairness tainted, however, by a scarcely acknowledged smugness that *his* family could afford top quality. Had Sean realised? It would have been like him not to let on. Yet another injury for which he, Zach, won't get to make amends. He blinks at the hot sting of tears. 'You're doing a great job, Pani. I'm nearly there.' He takes a deep breath and begins to climb. | 27 5 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty-One | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Obediently, the lift halted at the third floor. Zach stepped into the corridor, his eyes travelling from the familiar security doors to the ID card in his hand to the lens of the prominent surveillance camera. Mockery will get you nowhere, Jiao would say in a voice whose chilly menace had hovered over their days like a winged omen. Zach saluted the camera with a military gesture, then gave a tired laugh. Nowhere was exactly where he'd like to be. 'Where the f**k have you been?' Andy snarled as soon as Zach entered the prerun room. 'Randall insisted on seeing me.' Zach barely acknowledged Fabio, who ought to have explained. There was no other reason for his presence. 'I'll fetch Charles.' Andy limped away without a glance at his console, a sure sign his departure had been pre-arranged. And sure enough, Fabio plunged into a rapidhit cross-examination which only ceased when Zach sank down onto a bench adjoining the neural imager and gripped his head as though it were too heavy to support without manual assistance. In the silence which followed, the carrion past smelled so sharp and rank that it brought tears to his eyes. 'Knackered,' he said in response to Fabio's frown. In a few days it would be Ben's birthday. Without a grave there could be no graveyard lilacs to sweeten the spring. The owlie's all rained and broken, Zach, can't you fix it? Not an owl, a crow, but don't touch, it's full of germs, must have been a cat. This would be a good moment for a footnote, to explain how whole futures came into being in Zach's struggle for compass. Qliworlds quantise even as they are born—or *before*, to translate Wu's third theorem into a simple conjunction. In one Zach will have chosen Laura, in another loneliness. The mind is a reverberant space like the great cathedrals: time hewn from mute bone. Wu, of course, will not turn out to be wrong, merely one of the great sapiens visionaries. Confucius' teachings are still contemplated, Shakespeare's plays performed, Gauss' proofs admired, Darwin's works read, Bach's cantatas sung. Levian causality admits of an infinite variety of organised complexity, unlike fledgling cosmologies. Time, Lev will tell Zach, is the strangest, the subtlest, the most beautiful metaphor of all. 'Perhaps it's time to move to the next level,' Fabio said. 'What?' Zach lifted his head, but his eyes were remote, his face like a clock which has stopped. 'We're ready for serious networking,' Fabio said. 'A lot of people are starting to watch you very closely. And a lot like what they see—the power to inspire, the fierceness, the foresight and ideas and imagination, the *mystique*. This is it, this is the now-or-never moment to sell you big time as the newest new thing. Everyone is sick to death of the old political models. You're hot, Zach, you're the start-up in someone's garage that's going blow the competition away. I've been negotiating with Bender, I think he'll be willing to take a leave of absence from Netwind if you talk to him, he's viewed a couple of your meetings but he wants a one-on-one to assess things for himself. Not just the wow-factor, but your smarts and guts and staying power. And mostly whether he can trust you.' 'Bender's an entrepreneur, someone who's built a mammoth social networking site. Sure he's a wizard, but what does he know about politics?' 'You've got to be sudsing me. No funds, no politics. You can't power a movement, any kind of movement, without cold, hard cash—and plenty of it. Bender understands money and he understands the new media. We're going to do grassroots the Netwind way: online, friend to friend to friend, quid by quid.' 'So now I'm viral?' Enough of a smile to suggest Fabio's campaign was working. 'Not every virus is pernicious.' Zach glanced down at his hands. Pernicious . . . vicious . . . malicious. | 20 5 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Forty | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Pitched echoes descant above the sound of water. Zach follows the flight of two—no, three—small silvery bats, wondering how the course of history would have differed if humans had been able to comprehend the language of animals. Less bloodshed or more? Sapiens have always preferred to rid themselves of inconvenient voices. He studies the cave at length, then moves towards the pool. The light reminds him of *l'heure bleue* just before nightfall, a favourite of photographers and filmmakers. In summer it's the time when flowers release their heaviest opiate, but it's also an hour of uncertain visibility, particularly for simus whose aconal photoreceptors and subsidiary optic nerve play havoc with, temporarily, their superb eyesight; the hour in fact of his only motorbike accident, when he skidded to miss a girl on a bicycle, narrowly, dislocating a shoulder and breaking his collarbone. No one would have cared that her lights weren't working, himself least of all. Even with blindsight he would sense if Laura were here, which doesn't stop him from peering behind the toadstools for a discarded towel, a pair of jeans, her trainers or socks. The yellow rubber ducky with motorcycle helmet she'd given him for a razz only proves that his memory is still intact. He picks it up, squeezes it, recalls how she laughed at the expression on his face at the awful squawk: 'An authentic biker's mating call, they swore at the shop. Or my money back.' The cave is warm, and he removes his mitts and cap and then his parka. When he reaches for her pendant, hunger swells within him, within and against and despite, its pressure compelling. Why does he always have to tremble? After the funeral he bought himself a small handbuilt raku pot, misshapen and costly, whose torn mouth gives it the appearance of having been pounced on and chewed by a dog at the leather-hard stage. Most people would dismiss the pot as worthless, unable to see that its fragile beauty rests in its very imperfection, not least the contrast between the lustrous metallic blues and the crazing lines typical of raku firing, which is so unpredictable that pieces may explode from thermal stress. His skin feels hot underneath the chain, on the verge of crackling. And still he is shivering, always shivering: shivering when her fingers played over the touchpad of his tattoo, as if entering a code to unlock his innermost self; shivering when she kissed his back, shivering when she brushed his hair, brushed and plaited it. In those moments he heard nothing, not even the gun which his neurons fire whenever there is silence. Semen is the body's own morphine for the disease of time. On impulse he digs out his pocket knife, tests its edge, and whets it on the nearest rock, then loosens his hair from its leather tie. He lops off the plait of white and black hairs, and twists it round the seal, then drops the whole back over his head. It may be that Fulgur is arrogating his memory to its incomprehensible, and probably reprehensible, ends. It may be that Lev is merely some fancy bit of programming, determined from the very outset of the run. It may be that quantum entanglement of mind is an illusion, and Laura will no more hear him than the god to which her grandfather prays. Zach shuts his eyes and hugs his ribs; his shivering is getting worse. 'Laura,' he whispers, 'just this once, that's all I ask.' Who is he fooling? To fail now might well mean to fail forever. He passes his gaze one last time over the interior of the cave, over the objects he's furnished it with, as if to fix their thingness in his mind, then closes his eyes, brings his hands into position, licks his lips, and draws upon tactile memory. If every formation and every candle and every detail is perfect, why not this? Don't speak, he tells himself, afraid of the incantatory power of words themselves, | 14 5 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Nine | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF History favours the grandiose—the magnificent failures no less than the heroes. Zach would never imagine himself as either one, but by the time of his final run at Fulgur, he will have already become an urban legend; hated by many, idolised by many others. In time the explosive power of his grief will engage historians as well as alternate historians, a conundrum like an unending time loop: what if he hadn't undertaken the run? The moment you realise there are some things you can't alter is the moment you leave childhood behind; so they used to say. Of all his many bad decisions Zach will torment himself most savagely about yielding to Laura over the matter of the Rex. And yet the Rex will become the first cognoscens museum; almost, a shrine. Tuesday. A morose afternoon, grey snow underfoot and the light already failing. Laura barely noticed the clutch of younger kids just beyond the school gates when she came out of the building, Owen at her side. 'What's that crossfuck doing back here?' Tim snarled, loud enough to carry. 'Sod this for a lark!' 'Too right, time to get rid of him for good,' came a loyal echo. The group of wannabe bikers parted as Zach lowered the kickstand, tossed back his hair, swung his leg over the saddle, and advanced on Tim. Already other kids were drawing near like iron filings towards a magnet, though the lines of flux had yet to be fixed. Already the excited whispers were beginning. Everybody, it seemed, loved a fight. Zach stopped within spitting range of Tim. 'Care to hit me again?' Zach asked. 'Zach—' Laura began. He turned his gaze on her for the first time. 'Choose,' he said. 'What?' she asked. 'Right here, right now. In front of all your mates. Choose. I'm on my way to a meeting. You can come with me if you're prepared to stand up on the podium and take sides, not hang about near the exit. Or you can return my key.' 'You've got a key to his flat?' Owen asked in disbelief. Laura ignored Owen. 'I thought you didn't want me at your meetings.' 'I've changed my mind.' Zach gave her a humourless smile. 'Or are only monkeys granted that prerogative?' 'Don't call us dirty names or I'll shove them down your gob!' Tim said hotly. 'Tim, be quiet.' Laura took a step towards Zach. 'What's wrong?' she asked softly. His gaze shifted inwards for a moment. Then with finality, 'Choose.' From the corner of her eye Laura caught the look on Olivia's face, the same glazed look she'd seen her friend give a triple-dip chocolate fudge ice cream cone before taking her first lick. Laura knew Zach had slept with plenty of girls; had any one of them ever held him when he shivered? (Had he slept with *Olivia*?) She took a deep breath, preparing herself for the icy plunge; this pool was unheated. 'Hey, mulac, how come you got away? Word's out on the net they blew up an entire classroom block in that fancypants school of yours.' Everyone within range swivelled to stare at Cormac, an outer with more mouth than brains; and more swiffled than stone cold sane. All except Laura, who kept her eyes fastened on Zach. 'Hidin' in the bog like a nerdy turdy while your mates are screechin' and bleedin' and scrabblin' for their body parts?' A gust of wind blew Zach's hair across his face. Her own eyes tearing in the cold, her cheeks stinging, Laura could see his gloved hands tremble slightly as he wrangled with it. She tugged off her gloves and woollen cap, plucked the elastic from her ponytail, and jammed her gloves into a pocket and her cap back in place. One step, and she was at his side. 'Bend down, you idiot. And where's your helmet?' As he ducked his head, no smile appeared on his face, no gleam of satisfaction. His hair felt alive in her hands, warmer than it should be in this weather, and sinuous as an electric reelingout of whiplash sound. | 6 5 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Eight | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 'What does your name mean?' Pani asks. 'What a little pest you are!' Zach says, caught off guard. 'Names are important,' Pani insists, unabashed. 'They're part of your soul.' 'What makes you so sure I've got one?' 'If you've left it somewhere, I'll lend you a piece of mine.' 'Not the tailpiece, I hope.' Pani ducks his head, but not before Zach catches sight of the merriment in the boy's eyes. Under other circumstances he'd have been the school daredevil, this lovely child. Zach leans forward and pantomimes a stitching movement in front of Pani's lips. 'I thought you didn't want anyone to hear us.' At Pani's instigation the two of them have slipped away before the rest of the camp is fully awake, though they've been careful to avoid the communal room where, in a sleepy bustle, the aunties are beginning to prepare the morning meal. Weeks ago Pani and a few of the other lads excavated their own access route in a small storage annexe, the sort of enterprise that Zach remembers from his Foundation days. A narrow squeeze, this tunnel, and he refrains from suggesting that Uakuak is far too canny not to be aware of it. There's probably a great deal the old hunter doesn't reveal, particularly to his son. Without a torch it's slow going, even though Pani swears to know every centimetre of the terrain. They struggle against a brisk headwind, which is the very reason for harpoon practice before the hunt. 'My father took his first seal when he was two years younger than me.' By the time they cross an unforgiving stretch of icy washboard sastrugi to reach the edge of a polynya, Zach promises himself ten minutes alone with Angu. Pani delicately probes the matte surface of the water with his harpoon tip, then kneels in scrutiny. 'Ugurugizak—greasy ice.' He clears a patch not much larger than a breathing hole, lowers a weighted sealskin bladder, and passes the line to Zach. Rising and stepping back several metres, Pani readies his harpoon. As instructed, Zach waits for a self-determined interval before hauling up the target with a sharp jerk. The boy misses. They repeat the exercise. Again Pani misses, though not by much. Further attempts merely worsen Pani's aim, and he's unable to disguise his mounting frustration. After a while Zach calls a halt to walk about, clapping his hands together and stamping his feet. Despite caribou skin mitts and fur-lined parka—Uakuak insisted on outfitting Zach with as much 'proper' clothing as would fit—the cold is quick to penetrate his defences. Pani eyes him with a worried expression, the kind a much older lad might use towards a small brother with fever, a beloved dog who's just been injured. 'Are you OK?' Pani asks. 'Maybe we ought to go back.' 'A bit cold, that's all.' Unconvinced, Pani shakes his head. 'Your face is too pale.' He'd of course know the signs of frostbite. 'Stop fussing, I'm fine. Let's give it one more try.' Pani regards Zach a moment longer, then lays his harpoon aside and tugs at Zach's sleeve. 'Bend down,' he orders, and proceeds to blow on Zach's face till it begins to sting; on his eyes—his *eyes*, why hasn't he thought of that? 'Pani, do things sometimes looked blurred to you?' 'Not close up.' 'How close?' 'Arm's length, I guess.' What kind of cruel joke is this? Program a young hunter to need glasses in a world where there's none to be had. Pani roots in his pouch and hands Zach a piece of frozen blubber. 'Here, this will warm you.' Zach dislikes the fibrous consistency and especially the tracery of blood—the nutty flavour isn't actually unpleasant—but he chews on it as much to please Pani as to replenish his own energy while mulling the eyesight problem. 'You haven't answered me, Zach. About your name.' Persistent little b****r. 'It comes from an ancient language nobody speaks any more.' | 29 4 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Seven | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 'I know about Max.' Laura's father did nothing dramatic like jam on the brakes or swerve into a parked car. Perhaps he hadn't heard, so s... | 22 4 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Six | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Zach has gone back to studying the sculpted tusk when Nashuk appears with a steaming bowl. 'I've brought you some broth.' 'Thank you,' he says. 'Smells good.' She indicates the tusk. 'Mikitok is always making something. Do you like it?' 'It's very beautiful.' 'I'll tell you the story while you drink.' Standing on one leg, she rubs an instep with the toes of her other foot and smiles so that her plump cheeks dimple. 'Sit down, you're tired. Let me take off your kamiks and massage your feet.' Zach feels his face redden. 'That's very kind but . . . I mean, it's not that you're not . . . I mean, I don't think . . .' He takes a sip of broth to cover his confusion. She giggles. 'You're sweet. Are you sure?' He nods, too embarrassed to answer. 'Never mind. But sit down anyway. It's a good story.' She selects a fur from the heap on the platform, spreads it on the floor near the kudlik, and kneels so that her face is turned towards the carving. 'In the beginning before the beginning,' Nashuk begins, her voice taking on the lilt of a practised storyteller, 'the world is dark and silent and covered by endless water. There is no night and no day, no yesterday and no tomorrow. Only two creatures share the world—a pure white seal and a bird black as the water, swift as the wind, powerful as a great spirit. The seal commands the sea, which nourishes her. The bird, who rules the sky, also has no need of flesh, for the air fills his belly and the cool breezes quench his thirst—except the one thirst from which he has no rest, and that is the thirst for song. The bird, you see, cannot sing, and where there should be music, there is only emptiness and yearning. So he circles the earth, soaring high above the sea, in search of his voice. He is always listening for the keynote that will unlock his throat. Sometimes his wings tire despite his enormous strength, and then he glides with the currents, allowing them to carry him downwards towards the airless depths. Towards the airless depths he glides, each time a little closer. Perhaps it hides there, he thinks. Still he does not dare to shear the water till, riding a long downwind, he spots a pearly glimmer in the darkness beneath him and sweeps low enough to skim the unfamiliar swells. *This is my realm*, says the seal. You have nothing to seek here. The bird would answer her, but though he opens his beak and sucks in an immense breastful of air and strives with all his might, he makes no sound. *Go from here*, commands the seal in disgust, for a dumb creature is no creature at all, merely an abomination on the face of the waters. Saddened, the bird flaps his wings and is gone. Again this happens, and again the seal sends the bird away. But the third time the bird is so filled with grief that a tear falls from his eye onto the smooth surface of the sea. As soon as water meets water, a crystalline note rings out and a small drop of ice forms, as white as the pelt of the seal herself. *Do that again*, she says. The bird hovers into the wind, and another tear falls into the sea. The ice grows larger at the sound of a different note, as pure and silvery as the first. The seal is entranced. *And again*. But there are no more tears, for the bird opens his beak and with joy beyond measure trills and trills the two notes he has learned as he sweeps up and away into the air, his sleek glossy feathers and gleaming eyes quickly lost from sight. It is the seal's turn to be saddened. She has never heard birdsong, which has awakened a new feeling in her breast. The sea has always been her home and her delight, and she has lacked for nothing. So it is to the sea she returns for comfort, diving deep and swimming far. But what had once been a perfect and limitless reach now seems too dark, too salty, too cold. | 15 4 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Five | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Fulgur headquarters is located on a substrata of Jurassic oolitic limestone, deposited after the breakup of Pangaea when sea levels rose a good 200 million years ago. Fossilised dinosaur bones and footprints have been found throughout the region, where swamps and salty lakes remained once the seas subsided again. Andrea Frechen, principal architect for the complex, sleeps very little. She's known for her eccentricities, particularly her habit of driving to the site of her current project in the middle of the night and walking round for an hour or more. It soothes me, she tells the security guards, but any laughter isn't malicious, for she's always been well liked. Aware of the importance of the Fulgur campus, no one was surprised by the young architect's frequent visits. And it was Frechen who, one rainy November night during the early stages of construction, spotted what turned out to be an almost complete skeleton in its prehistoric resting place, along with well-preserved if puzzling tools. In contravention of the right of sepulchre and in a move that she will never be able to explain satisfactorily to herself, she disinterred the bones without calling in the proper authorities, first hiding the remains in her 4 x 4, then in an outbuilding on her private property. An archaeologist would cheerfully sacrifice his right arm for a glimpse of the skull alone, which Frechen isn't trained to recognise as neither sapiens nor Neanderthal. Nevertheless, she has been prescient enough to safeguard the find, and in time it will surface and cause an upheaval in thinking about human evolution. Lev, of course, could have saved everyone the trouble. At the sound of overboiling Laura wrenched herself back to the present. Zach wasn't in the kitchen. She rose, and after an instant of light-headedness, went to deal with the soup. The air in the room had the feel of half-congealed aspic, transparent but slightly clouded; gelatinous. Just lifting the stockpot and wiping down the hob filmed her forehead in sweat, and she leaned on the worktop to catch her breath. She debated whether to finish laying the table, but the trip to the fridge for butter seemed only a fraction less daunting than a clean dive from the 10m platform. She must have been awfully ill to tire so easily. Slowly she made her way through the flat, her hand on the wall, her legs wobbling and near to buckling, her thoughts trailing like exhaust from an airplane. The door to the bathroom was ajar. Laura leaned against the doorjamb; she could see Zach washing his hands at the basin. His hair, no longer bound in a ponytail, fell forward to screen his face. He didn't look up, and at first she thought he was merely concentrating on the task with his usual intensity; it always thrilled her to watch him clandestinely, and even now, when she could barely stand, his presence felt like a secret hoard of sweets: the best ones wrapped individually in metallic foil, so that you couldn't cram them into your mouth all at once; each with its own signal pleasure—the orange, filled with tangy cream; the blue, with the heady bite of a liqueur; the green, concealing the crack and crunch of praline; and her favourite, the gold, bittersweet chocolate wrapped round a rich ganache centre. She'd once kept a collection of the papers, which she used to make a collage for a school art project—how could she have forgotten that airplane, resplendent as a stained-glass bird in full sunlight, soaring like the spires of a cathedral above tiny leaden earthbound figures? She wondered what had happened to it; for the longest time it had hung in the passage like all of their drawings and paintings. Zach rinsed the soap from his hands. The water still running, he ran his fingers through his hair. The water still running, he hunched over the basin. The water still running, | 8 4 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Four | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Zach stumbles from the canoe, chastened by the ease with which Uakuak, despite his age, has pulled for hours against a sea becoming rougher and rougher, a surly headwind. They've beached near a camp from which several young boys erupt at a brisk trot to help drag the kayaks over the groundfast ice to safety. A necessary precaution, Angu explains, because the wind, already erratic, may shift direction and tumble debris about. 'Like feathers from moulting snow geese,' says Pani gleefully, with a child's delight in cataclysm. Even from a distance Zach can see that the hunters' camp is surprisingly good-sized. Still warmed by exertion, he hangs back until Pani takes his hand. 'Come on, Zach, I'm hungry.' As they approach the camp, some of the dogs rise so sluggishly to their feet, and some not at all, that Zach reckons they've just been fed. A rich meaty aroma wraps its fingers round his gut and tugs. Saliva spurts into his mouth, and he stops to sniff. 'Fresh seal,' Pani says. 'Yum.' The large snowhouse is built like a spoked wheel, with a communal workroom at its hub and tunnels leading to private family quarters radiating outwards on all sides. At a guess, there are about forty people sharing the winter camp. Because he's a stranger, Zach learns from Pani, he's been given a small chamber of his own, one vacated in his honour by a young couple with a tiny infant. He washes and changes into the traditional clothes that Pani's big sister Nashuk offers him, her eyes as lively as her brother's. Pani reluctantly returns Zach's pocket knife, fascinated as any lad with a new gadget he's been allowed to play with. The day's hunt has been successful, so there's plenty of stew to go round. Zach eats with the men and older boys, then listens sleepily to the talk while they mend dog harnesses: the typical male-only jokes, the swapping of stories, a complaint or two, a long, detailed, occasionally derailed and increasingly heated back-and-forth about tomorrow's hunt which reveals a good deal about the social fabric of this little community. Newcomers are encroaching on traditional territory, rogue hunters, as yet unsighted, who don't scruple to slaughter dogs and leave their carcases strewn about. There's some mystery about the tracks, but Zach doesn't follow all the speculation. (Did someone really say *rabbit head snow*?) These outsiders appear to hunt with large birds of prey, since outsized feathers have been found twice near the remains. Egged on by Angu, a number of the younger men argue for an aggressive course of action, a trap or ambush. Uakuak has Pani fetch a black feather to show Zach, who, despite its striking length and exquisite indigo shimmer, is unable to identify its source. Perhaps now the old man will quietly drop his shaman nonsense. There are no sideways glances at Zach, no sly or provocative remarks, no cross-examination—no questions whatsoever, in fact. If the men are disappointed, they're too polite to make it obvious, and he returns their courtesy with a tale about a girlfriend, a pair of thermal pants, and a jealous wolf pup, only slightly exaggerated. He basks in their laughter, some of it undoubtedly relief that, at least for the moment, tempers have been diffused. In this crowded, smoky, noisy, almost festive room, constructed from little more than ice, how easy it is to be seduced by hospitality and warmth, by simple acceptance! Through the long years at the Foundation he'd carried mistrust in his back pocket. Friendships would struggle to survive among the tensions and rivalries and loneliness, the undercurrents and homesickness, part boarding school and part something else entirely. Adult hypocrisy is destructive to kids, but nothing like the harm that comes from treating them like lumps of clay, malleable but inanimate. And a touch rank. You need to *matter*. | 1 4 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Three | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF The fountain was never turned off, and Laura had always meant to ask her father how they prevented the water from freezing. Tonight it flowed gold-shot red and green in keeping with the Christmas season, one colour from each of the dragon's twin jaws, and Laura couldn't help admiring the skill with which an illusion of flame was created. Shivering in the icy wind that even Fulgur engineers hadn't succeeded in controlling, she stepped back to avoid a sudden gusting of spray and grumbled to Max, 'Couldn't we have talked somewhere warm?' Instead of answering, Max swung his head like a hunter searching for signs of prey, except there wasn't much predator in his running nose and thin, hunched shoulders and bright red cap, nor his coin-sized pupils. He turned to peer behind them, his eyes gleaming like a cat's in the streetlight, and for the first time, from that angle, Laura saw a glimmer of the cognoscens deep within; the lustrous ore, not the counterfeit surety of an alloy. 'Have you got any money for a taxi?' Max asked. 'I'm scared of snugs.' 'If Zach's in danger, I'm not going anywhere.' Again the darting glances, one shoulder raised as if to fend off a blow. Laura grabbed his arm. 'Will you tell me what's going on before I leave you here to freeze your pygmy walnuts off!' 'They're big enough!' he retorted heatedly. Blokes! Never too young to bristle when you dissed their todgers. Useful, though, when you wanted to p***k them into action. She crossed her arms. 'I'm counting.' 'Come on, then.' In the bus shelter he leaned against the glass wall to catch his breath, little puffs of vapour fleeing from the sound of his panting. Ashamed of herself now, she patted him clumsily on the shoulder—a habit she was picking up from Josh. As long as she didn't start scratching her balls when it seemed no one was looking. 'I don't know what to do,' Max finally said. 'Maybe we'd better talk to Dad.' 'You still haven't explained.' 'It's sort of muddled, but there's someone in the building whose thoughts are dead kank. Like nothing I've ever come across.' Her hand still ached. 'A cat?' 'Zach's told you about the animal stuff?' She nodded, leaving the details for another time, it was Zach who was important. But Max carried on without further prompting. 'No, they're OK. I *hate* what's being done to them, and most of them don't live very long, and I can only hear a couple of them anyway, but they don't hide their thoughts, which aren't simple at all. They don't care very much what people think of them. People are the stupid ones, mostly.' 'Then a simu?' 'I'm not sure . . . maybe . . .' He closed his eyes for a few seconds and appeared to be listening. The cold had rouged his cheeks like an old woman's clownish makeup, highlighting rather than disguising the chalkiness of his skin. '. . . maybe not a true cognoscens. Dad explained it to me, it's a quantum thing. That's why distance doesn't matter. But I ought to be able to hear better. I can't even tell if it's a man or a woman. They've done something scary to him, to his mind. Or hers.' 'What's this got to do with Zach?' He wiped his nose on his sleeve. 'I *told* you, it's not very clear, but I think she's trying to warn me. They want me, or someone like me.' 'And Zach?' When tears filled his eyes, she finally realised what Max was too scared to say. 'They're going to *make* Zach tell them about you.' She rummaged in her pocket for a tissue, then stamped her feet and clapped her hands together, which were beginning to numb. When she tried flexing her fingers, her glove chafed Jasmine's scratches. Underfoot there was no snow or ice; she stepped outside the shelter and scrutinised the well-lit carpark to give Max a chance to wipe away his tears. For the first time she took in, really took in, how immaculate the tarmac was. | 25 3 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-Two | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Absorbed by the intricacies of the sonata, Zach hears nothing until a small clump of snow slides to the floor by the cold sink, followed by a second. He lowers the clarinet to listen, but assumes it's only some pieces breaking off from the roof of the entry porch. Almost immediately, a shouted greeting brings him to his feet. Casting the instrument onto the sleeping platform, he snatches up the panak and hastens to peer up the narrow passageway. The voice doesn't sound hostile. 'Lev? Is that you?' he calls out with more hope than conviction. 'Hunters,' comes the response. 'What do you want?' A laugh, followed by a second and deeper voice. An older voice, Zach guesses. 'A mug of tea would be welcome.' Zach lowers the snowknife. 'How many are you?' 'Three. Two and a half.' It's the half that intrigues Zach, and he bids them to join him, leaning his knife within easy reach against the storage box. Traditionally dressed, the three remove their mitts, parkas, and outer boots, while Zach puts water to boil and sets out dried fruit and biscuits. Hospitality first, questions afterwards. (Could these be Lev's hunters?) The older man settles on the fuel drum, keeping an avuncular eye on the *half*, a boy perhaps Max's age, who first arranges the parkas on Zach's line, then collects the mitts and boots to take to the cold sink, where he flips them inside out and scrapes the cuffs free of snow and ice with his panak. Hardly a word is exchanged, so well does the lad know his routine, but his eyes, bright with curiosity, dart often to the clarinet. The younger man refuses a seat on the sleeping platform, preferring instead to squat by the stove. After the last mitt is hung up to dry, he takes out a chunk of frozen meat from a leather pouch for the boy to shave into thin slices. 'Caribou,' the man says, flashing, of all things, a facetted gold gem implanted in perfect teeth. And their accents! It has to be Mishaal and that bizarre sense of humour of his. 'It's good. Eat.' It's also raw, but Zach takes a tentative bite, then gnaws away upon realising that the boy will not touch his share till the adults have eaten. The tea passed round, all of them stir in plenty of sugar, and for a while slurping noises fill the iglu, a discreet belch or two. From somewhere another pouch appears in the younger man's hand. 'Smoke?' 'No thank you, but please go ahead.' Soon the pall of tobacco mingles with the smell of stale sweat and drying fur, all smells which remind Zach of Lev and Bella and the glow of a small, improbable stove in a blizzard. There's never been a run where things hurt so much, never a run where the rabbit hole loops straight back into his own cerebral vortex, and looping, traps him in the prism, or chasm, of memory. Chesterton: 'It is an act of faith to assert that our thoughts have any relation to reality at all.' How long can he, a simu, yes, and yes, one of their trained Fulgriders—one of their *chosen*—yet willy-nilly flesh & blood, p**s & puke, little more in fact than a rough, slouching beast, just how long can he remain in the gyre and reel and icy thrall of this place, his thoughts ever snowier, his memories ever more arctic, before he dims and dims and dims, finally to go out altogether like a guttering lantern? Are there limits to how much irreality the mind can absorb? He'd like to believe that despite Fulgur, despite reason, despite all that he knows about the interface, he'll turn round one balmy April afternoon at a tap on his shoulder and there, there will be Lev, smiling his irksome, unrepentant, cream-lapping, and utterly beautiful smile. He'd like to believe in answers, not riddles. Damn it, he'd at least like to believe he'll remember the questions. 'What are you hunting?' Zach asks, a safe start. 'Seal,' says the younger man. | 18 3 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty-One | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 'Who's there?' Laura cried, whirling instinctively to peer behind her. There was no answer, and though she could see the flickering on the screen from the corner of her eye, there was no beam of light from the projection booth either. Her hand unsteady, she swept her torch over the seats, discovering nothing—discovering how many wells of darkness there were in which to hide. Finally, with deep reluctance, she turned round again to face the screen. She discovered you could gasp without making a sound. Zach was sitting on a platform made of ice, shoulders slumped and head propped on one hand. Aqua light tinted everything, even his hair and skin, but this was no underwater setting. Could he be inside an ice cave or grotto? a glacier? He looked so tired—so defeated—that Laura found herself descending the steps towards the screen as though she could take him in her arms, but halted with a shiver of recognition at the sound of his clarinet. Suddenly light-headed, she dropped to the carpeted tread and hugged her ribs. This was impossible—*impossible*. Maybe the dead could also rise up and speak. Her neckhairs stirred, and for a moment she was tempted to crawl under one of the cinema seats, the way she'd done as a small child. She'd nearly forgotten: her dad used to take her to his favourite scifi films, the classic ones with scary aliens and megalomaniac cyborgs and grotesque virus-deformed plague victims, till her mum got wind of where they'd been. Nearly forgotten, too, the ice cream and popcorn; the delicious taste of conspiracy. I'm not going to look at them, she told herself. The dead stay dead. After a quick backwards glance, she raised her eyes to the screen. As if on signal, Zach lifted his face, and she could see tears wetting his cheeks. He put his free hand to his hair—his beautiful hair, now uncombed, dirty, lank as Zach himself. Never more beautiful. 'Zach,' she said, hoping that whatever window had opened between them wasn't glazed in mirrored glass. 'Zach, where are you?' He raked his fingers repeatedly through his hair, then straightened up. Laura glimpsed a tousled, black-haired head asleep on his lap. The sight drove her to her feet. 'Damn you,' she said, 'I get to find dead bodies while you—' She stopped, conscious of how ridiculous her words sounded, even if nobody could hear. How contemptible. For there was no mistaking the despair on Zach's face. Plainly thinking himself unobserved, he closed his eyes, and fresh tears continued to slip from under his lids to the accompaniment of unfamiliar but exquisite music—music which she suspected was his own. He'd lost weight again, and there were smudges under his eyes, dark cratered smudges deriving from more than lack of sleep. The cigarette burn on his cheek had healed to a pearly cameo, crimped at the edges and likely to remain beardless. Where had they taken him? Fulgur's network was so extensive that he could be thousands of kilometres away—even, she supposed, on one of the outstations. Laura studied the scene: the blocks of ice, Zach's clothes, the intense, almost surreal blue light. She felt like directing the camera operator to pan for her. Under her fixed stare, the picture was beginning to blur. She wiped her eyes angrily, she couldn't afford to miss any details which might provide a clue, though how she intended to penetrate some secret installation had not yet occurred to her—but it would. Then she noticed that the music was fading as well. 'No,' she cried, her voice like a wrong note, 'wait!' Now the image was dimming visibly, so that it reminded her of a transparent webskin. 'Zach!' The webbed texture of the screen itself lent Zach's skin a macabre reptilian appearance. Frantically Laura started down the stairs, caught her foot, and flailed the rest of the way to the bottom, | 11 3 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirty | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF On the third day . . . no, Zach can't be sure any more about the passage of time, it might be only two days, or already five. Without change there's no measurement, and it's only the amount of his food and fuel that changes. At least he supposes it changes, he seems to have become muddled in his calculations. When he opened the drum after his last restless doze—he no longer sleeps properly—there was more paraffin than the time before. And he could swear that he's already eaten all the dried apricots, yet now he's staring at a whole handful. He lays them out carefully on the table to count them: 1, 2, 3 . . . 27. He has no pen or pencil, but this time he'll carve the number into a block of ice. And if that thaws a bit in the heat from his stove before refreezing, there's always his skin—his snowy infinite skin. Go inside, Zach. He holds out his arm towards the lantern. The Arctic winter is waning though the sun has not yet pierced the horizon, whose skin bulges with gathering light. A delicate apricot warmth flushes the air, and he breathes deeply, deeply. The scent penetrates his pores, as nourishing as fruit. No need to worry about food when the entire universe is prepared to feed him. Zach, listen to me. You must go back into the iglu. 'Max?' His voice creaks in the long-unused oarlock of his throat, and the sound startles a school of fish into the open—saffron cod, he thinks. Their only natural predator is the seal. One of them nibbles at his hand, another nudges his groin, still another drifts into the seaweed tangle of his hair. He swims a lazy stroke or two. 'Max, come and join me.' The froth of bubbles makes him laugh, and he wonders why he's been so afraid to speak. To tell her, all he needs to do is migrate with the cod, who have a lifespan of at least eleven years—time enough to savour their silvery flanks, palest yellow belly, creamy throat. Zach! With a gasp he breaks the watery surface of his mind to find he's lying near-buried in a pillowy drift of snow against the wall of the iglu, which is probably what has saved his life. He doesn't move. Doesn't speak. There's a hum like the crackle of radio static in his head. Stiff and drowsy, he's glad to let Max sweep away the snow, brush it from his numb, waxen face. What's happened to his mask and goggles? Max gets him to his feet. At least you didn't strip, Max says. They make slow progress through the deep snow, though the wind is light. Zach keeps one mitted hand on the iglu for support, tracing its circumference until they reach the entrance. Max jumps into the trench, then helps Zach slither down. A dusting of powdery snow clings to Zach's lips and eyebrows, even his lashes. The bucket he abandoned after filling with snow stands where he left it. You first, Max says. I'll hand you down the bucket. By now more alert, Zach turns and searches the sky. He remembers that he'd seen the aurora borealis and went to climb the iglu for a better look. There are still ripples and folds of colour, as if large panels of diaphanous watered silk in amethyst and rose madder and jade hang from the stars and billow in the solar wind. Mesmerised as before by the flutter and flow of light, as ethereal as the spirits of the Inuit dead, he stares till his eyes blur. He blinks rapidly, repeatedly, then turns to Max. 'Magnificent, isn't it?' he says. 'Your sister—' But once again he's alone. Though inside the iglu it's warm, almost hot in fact, Zach turns up the stove to maximum capacity, the lantern as well, yet is still shivering when his coffee is ready. He adds more sugar than usual and gulps down the first few mouthfuls before he can restrain himself. Somehow he'd resisted his impulse to scour the vicinity for Max, merely peering instead over the rim of the trench, but the jumbled tracks told him nothing and he'd hastened indoors. | 4 3 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Nine | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF The freeze continued, promising a white Christmas. Promising Yuletide Blessings. Seasons Greetings and Best Wishes for the New Year. Through deep snow may Friendship's glow our hearts unite this Christmas. Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men. Homo sapiens, of course. There were no further bombings in the weeks before the holiday, but the three other simus at school disappeared over a single weekend. The youngest, a girl who was a year ahead of Max, had eaten lunch with Zach in the canteen a couple of times at the beginning of term, and once had matched her steps to Laura's in the corridor to ask if there were any openings on the swimming team. Though by herself, Laura had muttered 'check with Saunders' without stopping, without so much as a brief smile, and had veered away towards a group of kids she barely recognised, some of the loathsome Purist types. What was the girl's name? Lily? Leslie? Something like that. Maybe Max would know. It was a bit late to start feeling guilty about such a trivial slight, and at school there was no way she could show any but generic interest in the girl. *Generic*, she thought with a familiar ache. The Head had made an official announcement that Fulgur was opening a new on-campus secondary school for the gifted: 'Naturally we will miss our cognoscens pupils, who, thanks to the generosity and continued support of the Fulgur Corporation, have enriched our intellectual life immeasurably, and provided our school with a unique opportunity to practise mutual tolerance, but it would be churlish to regret what is clearly in the young simus' own best interests.' Olivia nudged her in assembly, while he went on to describe the new media facilities. 'Fartbag. The augers are being rounded up by I.S.' Lately Olivia used auger as often as possible in Laura's presence, priming her hotglot for an explosion, with juicy radioactive fallout. But that was the old Laura. Resigned to the growing coolness between them, she only continued to sit with Olivia to avoid suspicion. No, she was lying to herself, there was a certain longing as well—maybe it was like smoking, they said you never got over wanting a cigarette even years after you'd quit. On the Friday before regionals, Laura came into the kitchen to pack up a sandwich and a bottle of juice, maybe some biscuits. She was always ravenous after training, and her mum was baking again, the whole house smelled like the inside of a warm oven. Three gingerbread slabs were cooling on the worktop, packets of sweets for decoration nearby—one of the seasonal exceptions to the no-teeth-rot rule—but her mum was staring at the contents of a parcel spread across the table. 'Christmas presents?' Laura asked. 'It looks that way, though nothing's gift-wrapped.' 'Who's it from?' 'That's the strangest part.' Her mum pointed to the packaging. 'There's no sender's name, only a PO box in Cape Town, and no note. South African stamps.' 'I didn't know you've got friends there.' 'We don't.' 'How weird.' Laura said, examining the dark-grained Mancala board obviously intended for her dad, a battered single-stringed musical instrument, and a football in an acrylic display case which proved to be autographed by Pelé. 'Rad, wait till Max gets a look at this!' 'This one's yours.' Her mum took a white envelope with *Laura* printed neatly on its face from her apron pocket. 'Open it.' Laura succeeded in keeping her hands steady as she turned it over. The seal still intact, her mum must have just unpacked the parcel. Lifting the flap on her backpack to slip the envelope inside, Laura headed for the door. The pool snackbar was open till nine. 'Can't, I'm already late, Janey will murder me.' Clipboard in hand, Janey beckoned Laura from her lane, then flipped through the top sheets to tap a finger on a printed notice. | 25 2 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Eight | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 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, | 18 2 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Seven | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF His head next to hers at the window, Zach murmured something inconsequential about her hair. He noticed such things—a pair of new earrings, ... | 11 2 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Six | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF With only one husky, it's slow going—visibility poor, the ground jagged and uneven beneath the thick layer of snow, the horizon obliterated.... | 4 2 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Five | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF '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?' W****r 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. 'Perhaps more surveillance devices?' Helena de la Croix suggested. She crossed her legs, and normally the hiss of her sheer black tights compensated for the commonplaces she uttered, the utter fatuousness of her proposals. There was always one at executive level—somebody smart and very hungry, but without the least soupcon of imagination. Even Slade could do better than CCTV, for Christ's sake. But Helena was an asset to Fulgur, and Pelly knew it. Huang knew it. Hell, Fulgur himself probably knew it (and there *were* those rumours, subterranean as termites, about a radical project he'd initiated before his sudden death). Unless Legal Affairs poached Addison from Cortech, they'd find no one in the entire country with as comprehensive knowledge of international corporate law as Helena. Sometimes Pelly wondered whether a near photographic memory commandeered too many brain cells or synapses or whatever, so that not enough were left over for creative thinking. She was a great f**k, though, and absolutely as discreet as her profession required. At a signal, Huang's p.a. clicked through the next slides in the presentation. The images were cleverly arranged. (What else? Pelly himself had done it.) The latest bombing incident, first from a distance, then closer and closer shots, till they saw only a corpse . . . then parts of a corpse . . . then flesh that could have been an abstract mural . . . then bright gore. The sequence interspersed with graffiti in bright gory colours, everywhere in the city, and spreading like a virus: *f**k augers, kill the Fulgur transfucks, Fulgur hires terrs, bomb Fulgur not babies.* 'As you can see,' Huang said, 'we have a situation.' 'Do we really need to worry about some street vandals?' Claire Murphy asked. Most of the others nodded, and the new blimpish bloke with the beard that didn't quite conceal his scars—on loan from Jo'burg, supposed to be some sort of genius with net space—muttered 'storm in a teacup' under his breath. Obviously one of those pathetic sods who could copulate with the cyber world, but not the real one. Lopez sat up from his disarming slouch and indicated with a flick of a finger that he'd like to speak. Nobody could ignore those brazen eyes. | 28 1 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Four | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF '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 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPjtRSgg2fg). 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. | 21 1 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Three | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF By the time they'd reached the cottage, Laura understood about rigor mortis. Zach put both feet on the ground while she eased herself off the motorbike. Not quite suppressing a groan, she stretched, removed her helmet, and took a few stiff, painful steps through the deep snow. Then she noticed that Zach had folded his arms across the handlebars to rest his head, his shoulders sagging with weariness. It had been a long ride, and as they'd ploughed through—sometimes crept through—the blizzard she could feel Zach growing tense, then tenser still. The woodland lane worst of all, there'd been nothing much to do except hang on and will him strength. Will him her trust. Her grandfather, never at a loss for words, never silenced by a strong headwind, never one to miss an opportunity however mundane, would have exhorted her to pray. She touched Zach's shoulder but he didn't stir. 'Come on, let's go inside.' He wasn't good with the cold, he'd told her, and it was obvious that he was thoroughly chilled. She raised his head and helped him to remove his helmet. His face was ashen, his pupils dilated, lips cyanic. Had he remembered his serum? Her face close to his, she breathed on his eyes, his cheeks, his lips. His lips, and despite the freezing wind and falling snow, she felt a belly-deep tongue of heat, sudden and sharp, then warmth seeping towards longing to take him in her arms. Perhaps he felt it too, for he drew away and came off the bike like the peel of an apple under a blunt paring knife. 'Should I wheel it into the shed?' she asked. 'I can do it.' Zach insisted on carrying the saddlebags and his backpack, but left her to lock the shed while he trudged round the cottage to the front door. Once inside, Laura snapped on a torch from several kept on a row of pegs. Zach slumped against the wall and closed his eyes, as if the torch were drawing its energy directly from him. 'Put this on,' she said, handing him one of the thick handknit jumpers which were as old as Zach himself. After a moment, he straightened and removed his jacket, then stared at his boots till Laura bit back an exasperated snick of her tongue and bent to tug them off. He leaned a hand on her shoulder, then gave her a smile so rare, so different to his usual wry assortment of smiles, so *naked* that her throat clogged, and for the first time she realised what it must cost him to have to stand on his own, always on his own. Don't apologise, she wanted to tell him. But she didn't speak, and he removed his hand; by himself, his snowlogged boots. Her own ankle was still tender, though bearable. Together they made their way to the kitchen, where Laura propelled Zach into a chair and soon had a lantern glowing snugly. It was a few hours till sunrise. 'It's very tidy,' Zach said. 'My mum comes up regularly. Dirt is an enemy worse than menopause, I reckon. But at least she keeps the pantry well stocked.' Still shivering, Zach sat quietly while Laura also slipped on one of the woollen jumpers and went back outside in wellies for extra wood to fire up the range. But there was a small bottled-gas cooker as well, and before long they were drinking tea. 'Maybe I'll leave the generator for tomorrow,' Laura said. 'The range ought to give us enough heat for sleeping, though it takes a couple of hours. And there's a wood-burning stove in my parents' bedroom. I'll put you in there.' 'How many bedrooms are there?' 'Four, but they're tiny.' He snorted. 'This place is a palace.' 'Rubbish. You should see Owen's summerhouse. Pool, sauna, *and* jacuzzi. Boathouse.' His lips thinned, and he looked away. Hurriedly Laura rose and began unpacking their saddlebags. 'I'll make us something to eat.' Zach shook his head. 'I'm OK. You go ahead, though.' When she frowned, he added, 'Please. Just show me where I can sleep. | 14 1 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-Two | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF For the next three days Zach practises a great deal on what could be deemed a clarinet only by a play of his imagination, gradually developing his facility so that, at times, the instrument becomes his own. Lev dismisses Zach's questions with an infuriating 'the best learning is self-taught'—admittedly reminiscent of Sean—and as the tent shrinks, Zach spends longer and longer outside in the blizzard. He and Lev take turns exercising the dogs, though Lev insists on a safety line, as if Zach were fool enough to race off at the first whiff of caribou. When Lev proposes yet another game of Pace, Zach barely controls his flare of irritation. He stalks to the strut from which the traces are hanging. 'I'll be back soon,' he mutters, 'the dogs could use a run.' 'Don't forget your own tether.' 'Sod it, stop reminding me!' 'Need to cool off?' Lev asks rather too solicitously. Zach tells himself that he'd probably be ready to throttle a *teddy bear* after another day at such close quarters. The wind has dropped, and though it's still snowing, the flakes are fat and soft and almost frothy, falling lushly rather than flinging themselves like shards of glass into his face. The temperature must be rising; in the extreme cold, snow is powdery. The last time he'd gone out, his goggles clogged, and he made the mistake of lifting them. The tears which spurted into his eyes froze his lids shut almost straightaway, and he hauled himself back to the tent along the guide rope, blind and thoroughly chagrined. Perhaps they'll be able to break camp tomorrow. He stops to switch off the torch and peer at the sky, trying to convince himself that the cloud cover is thinning. He hasn't seen the moon in days but knows it's out there. Out there, and singing offkey. With a bitter laugh at his own absurdity, he nevertheless risks frostbite by baring his ears for a spell of magical listening. In the meanwhile the dogs vanish like wraiths, their silhouettes blanching into the snow on their extra-long traces. There's a moment of cognitive fade, when it's impossible to tell whether he still sees them or merely remembers their shape. Bella is the last to disappear. In thickly falling snow you move through a labyrinth of self-sealing chambers, recursive like the worst metafiction. Now would be the time for Someone Authorial to pitch up and juggle those fictional devil sticks. Yo Zach, break outa that sad sealed self. Rap an epiphany? An alchemist's retort? A matrioshka brainwave? Or how 'bout Ben? Pesky, tagalonelong Ben? Gotcha. WHAM! BANG! ZAP! Right over there, bro. But no matter which way you turn, you see no further than the billowing sheets of snowy, tangled neurofibrils. No matter how loud you call, your voice won't be heard. What would you say to Ben, anyway? The treasure was never real? You're sorry, so f*****g sorry? Two choices, Zacho, that's all we get: to untie the tether or take it in our clumsy mitts and flounder through the fragile, lonely, dogged business of survival. Torch in hand, Zach trudges back to the tent, where he tramples a short path in front of the entrance, but makes no effort to clear away the snow which has drifted high above the snow flaps and helps insulate the interior from the cold. His chest twinges, though it's nothing like that early pain. A few more days, and he'll be ready to run in harness with the huskies. A few more days, and he'll run naked, tearing at his skin. Back and forth he tramps, back and forth, playing out the rope to its limit. A bit out of breath now, he forces himself to keep going. Slack muscles will slow them down. And he certainly doesn't want to give Lev an excuse to put off their departure. Bella comes bounding out of nowhere. Zach rubs a hand across his goggles and through the smeared plastic sees Patsy and Jagger close behind. All the dogs are covered in snow, | 7 1 10 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty-One | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 'It's too risky,' Laura said. 'Let me go.' 'No,' Zach said. Voices muted, they stared up at his windows from beneath the cast-iron canal footbridge. Their puffs of breath resembled the wavy speech balloons from Max's comics, dialogue faded to tremulous wisps. The falling snow afforded a quiet which was eerie in a city that was never truly quiet, and it was all too easy to imagine themselves safely hidden in a priest hole surrounded by flaking mortared walls. But Laura had no illusions about what would happen if they were caught. 'You must have left a light burning,' she said. 'The police would be waiting in the dark, wouldn't they?' At that moment a shadow passed behind the drawn curtains in Zach's living room. Laura clutched his arm. 'There's someone in your flat,' she said. 'Stay here,' he said. 'Without keys my motorbike's useless. I'll be back as soon as I've packed a few things.' 'But what about—' He was gone before she could complete the question. Stubborn idiot, she thought. Owen would at least *pretend* to listen. Yeah, a small mean voice countered, he'd listen the same way a well-trained pet listens, a sweet spoon-fed monkey. 'Shut up,' Laura muttered. She didn't want to think about Owen. And then she remembered that she didn't want to think about any of her mates—not now, not yet. She still had her keys to Zach's flat. Even with his keen hearing, five minutes' headstart ought to suffice in this weather, but she added another three or four to be certain, then made her way along the towpath until she reached the short flight of steps from which, in daylight, a decaying boat and derelict boathouse with half caved-in roof could be seen on the opposite bank. Streetlamps, set far apart on this stretch of canal, illuminated little more than the itinerant snowflakes. Laura followed Zach's footprints up the steps, smudged parallel tracks which soon veered off to the left across uneven ground in the direction of the main entrance to his building. Careful to avoid a fall, she crossed the intervening tract, glancing frequently at the windows above her, frequently towards the towpath at her back. It was late, Zach's neighbours all seemed to be asleep, and no abominations arose from the depths of the cut to accost her, no stalkers. No police. She was going to need new shoes, maybe new feet. Her mum, perfect homemaker that she fancied herself, kept complete sets of both sturdy walking boots and wellies at the cottage for the family *and* spares for guests. But feet . . . good, another item to add to the tally of things beyond her mum's command. Laura stopped and wriggled her numb toes, then with a final look behind her, ducked into the rear stairwell, grateful that no motion sensor was attached to the wall of the building, merely a low-watt bulb in a grimy fixture above the door. Undisturbed by shovel or rubber sole, the steps were slippery beneath the drifted snow, and despite her caution Laura lost her footing on the third step from the bottom and with an involuntary cry landed awkwardly on a metal grate. Rubbing her chin, she listened intently for a few seconds, but when she rose, cursing half in self-disgust and half in relief under her breath, her right ankle protested. That's all we need, she thought balefully, and yanked off a glove. It took her a few minutes to fit and turn the key—her fingers were stiff with cold, clumsy with nervousness. What if Zach came out and found her gone? What if Zach didn't come out at all? In the end she got her fingers and pulse under control, and with only a slight limp navigated the corridor and staircase till she climbed to Zach's floor. Heedless of the wooden floorboards, somebody had left three sledges propped up against the wall on the landing, along with several child-sized pairs of boots in a greyish puddle, | 31 12 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twenty | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Zach awakes to ferocious gusting. With luck Lev won't have heard his groan. Their world has been compressed into this small, temporary shelter where they may be warm, they may be fed, they may even be safe, but Zach knows that if he were to risk a few steps beyond the tent, he'd be taken by the storm. It's supposed to be a sleepy kind of death. Once the violent shivering subsides. Do they program dreams to taunt him? No Inuk would ever club a seal senseless, then shove it into the water to drown. He stretches as unobtrusively as possible, mostly his cramped legs, which could have used another four or five centimetres of sleeping bag. Back to back, he and Lev have managed to preserve a semblance of privacy, but Lev rolls over, slips an arm out, and unzips his bag. There's not much he misses. 'I'll turn up the heat and put on the kettle,' Lev says. 'Get up and move round a bit.' 'I'm fine,' Zach says. 'It was just a dream.' 'Remind me to add an entry to my translator. *Fine* can also be used for *stubborn*.' Light is soon flickering along the sides of the tent, whose billowing and snapping remind Zach of sheets hanging from a washing line. Crisp sunshine, a last brisk day. To elude Ben he dodges through the heaving walls of the maze, where the three-eyed, sword-toothed monster guards the treasure. This time he's going to reach it for sure, and find the gold, and the spell-locked casket of jewels, and win the sloe-eyed princess's hand. The air smells of autumn and woodsmoke. Leaves crunch underfoot. His father is chopping wood, his mother collecting walnuts in a basket. The wind kicks and pummels like a small, baffled child wailing to be let into the snowy labyrinth of memory. 'Zach?' Lev says. The boy, and the incident, vanish in a whiteout. They take turns at knee-bends and toe-touching, the dogs watching with somnolent amusement. His self-appointed guard hugs Zach's side while they drink tea. Up close, her coarse fur smells pleasantly oily, like fresh-toasted wheat germ, and Zach finds himself combing her coat with his hand, digging his fingers into her thick ruff. 'Bella's very discerning,' Lev says. 'She's got the team's best nose.' 'I don't suppose you smell any sweeter.' 'Is it my scintillating wit and delightful company, or have you always been so touchy?' After a moment Zach releases a laugh. 'OK, I deserve that.' Lev rolls a cigarette, permits himself two brief drags, then extinguishes both it and the light before crawling back into his sleeping bag. 'Let's rest while we can. It's going to be a difficult trek to the hunters' camp.' 'How long will the storm last?' Zach asks. 'No telling. We'll have to wait it out.' Lev's teas are very soothing. Zach yawns, closes his eyes, drowsily listens for the sound of a zip, the usual pre-sleep noises. They don't come. Instead, Lev's hand skims Zach's shoulder, so lightly that at first he wonders if he'd drifted off for an instant. 'You're welcome to share my sleeping bag.' So much for sleep. At the end of a held breath Zach mutters, 'Look, it's not that I don't like you.' 'No need to be so nervous.' A soft chuckle. 'I'm not going to jump you.' Embarrassed, Zach blurts out, 'Is homosexuality common where you come from?' 'Our categories are somewhat different,' Lev says dryly. Zach rolls to face Bella, who works herself into the harbourage of his body. He moves his hand to her neck, again plies the firm stratum of muscle beneath her coat, and she gives a little whimper of pleasure. Dogs are heavily taxed, enough of a luxury for Laura to have called it her mum's perfect excuse whenever Max asked for a new puppy to replace the spaniel which died young—one of those new and devastating metaviruses. F*****g morons, wanking round with uploads when they can't even develop some decent antivirals. | 24 12 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Nineteen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Andy comes off the court with sweat soaking his torn vest. The corporate gyms have become a favourite venue, particularly with younger employees. None of the techs wears top-of-the-line gear, though they could easily afford it, and Andy's ancient sneakers stink. 'Way to go,' Fabio says, slapping Andy on the back. 'Last hoop was pure gold, we'll make a baller out of you yet.' With intense green eyes, earring, and shoulder-length hair, Fabio doesn't look to fit the Fulgur culture. He grew up in Rio, his stubborn streak showing itself early on—no football for him. Claims his mum gave birth to him on a court between games. After a couple of lagers, he's been known to admit he could have played pro ball. But he's one of Fulgur's star execs-in-training, who bashes out directives even faster than a rim-buster. Andy glances round to make sure they won't be overheard, then draws Fabio towards a bench at the far wall. 'Something's worrying me,' Andy says. 'If it's about that crazy bitch, tell her to—' 'She's no problem.' Again Andy checks the gym. The others have already headed for the showers. 'But if anyone asks, that's what we were talking about.' Fabio's eyebrows shoot upwards like a sweet singin' jump shot. Though Andy is smiling, the expression in his eyes comes straight from the favelas. Fabio wipes his forehead with the flat of his hand, then settles himself on the bench. Andy sits down next to him, and they both slump forwards, propping their forearms on their knees and staring at the floor between wide-planted feet as if they're too wrecked to move. 'So talk about her,' Fabio says. 'They don't wire the gym, do they?' 'Man, you're one jumpy dude.' But with a half-smile he lifts his left hand and directs a few words in Portuguese at his wrister, which beeps two tones in sequence, an octave apart. 'That'll run any interference we need.' 'You've got a matilda?' 'Yeah. Anyone listening in is going to get an earful of some great Brazilian choro. Ragtime meets samba.' Fabio sees incredulity lingering on Andy's face. 'Where I grew up, you learn to watch your back and be prepared.' A story no one would believe, Fabio least of all. Possession of such a device is so rare—and so suggestive—that to reveal its existence is a sign of real trust: Andy makes a fist and punches his friend lightly on a sculpted bicep. 'The next bottle is on me,' Andy says. 'Damn right. Now talk.' Like any good professional, Andy keeps his comments brief and succinct: the problem with Zach's run yesterday, Litchfield's reaction, Andy's own fears. He ends by adding, 'I've tried to abort the run on my own, but it hasn't worked.' 'I hope you've got a lot of gigs lined up. You're looking to get fired. *And* blackballed.' 'Fabio, I can't just ignore it. By rights we ought to be bringing in some other top brains, Jakobi in Sweden, Gao, Hill maybe.' 'That serious?' 'I think so.' No one who has ever worked with Andy doubts his instincts, which border on the uncanny—some say clairvoyant. Fabio's current assignment is Human Resources, it's his job to know. Andy will be believed if this gets round. He's no Mateus, of course, but they share something of the same hot-headedness. Slade's a fool not to manage his division better. And as for Litchfield . . . just how much has he told his best tech? 'It might not be a malfunction,' Fabio says. 'Look, I'd like to be wrong but—' 'Not wrong like that.' Fabio removes his sweatband, tugs off his trademark black velvet scrunchie, and runs a hand through his hair several times—an uncharacteristic gesture—before securing it again. 'Wrong about the grounds for a so-called malfunction. If you hung around more with your workmates instead of playing that infernal bass,' —he ducks— 'then you'd have heard some of the rumours.' 'Such as?' | 17 12 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Eighteen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF While the dogs feed in the open, Zach and Lev set about unpacking their gear and securing the sledge. Lev cuts some blocks of snow to melt for water, and though not the usual Arctic practice, the huskies are allowed to join them inside the tent. After thwacking the snow from their boots and outer clothing, Lev installs a shivering Zach inside a down sleeping bag on top of several insulating pads, then hangs their clothing to dry from a line strung for that purpose. The temperature rises rapidly once Lev powers up the cunning little device on which their supper is now simmering, a stove which also provides heat and light and appears to work on a type of fuel cell. The tent is snug if a touch overcrowded; the dogs radiate considerable warmth of their own, having consumed a good meal of frozen caribou and fish. With one husky fewer, there are more than enough supplies, including two large sacks of dry nuggets, to last till they reach their destination, a hunters' settlement. Zach has been keen to curtail their rest since learning that a 'white seal' has recently been sighted there—a visitor, sacred in some way, and very beautiful—a piece of information which Lev hadn't scrupled to conceal earlier, and all he claims to know. 'I thought you're worried about being followed,' Zach says. 'We're well hidden here.' They've pitched camp in the lee of a pressure ridge, a wind-sheltered site which a she-bear herself might have chosen as a maternity den. The snow is still falling heavily, and already their tracks have been obscured. Whereas the glow from their stove is sure to be visible at close range, it's unlikely that anyone will happen their way in near-blizzard conditions. There's no coaxing further information about unwanted visitors from Lev; no coercing, no tricking. 'Here,' Lev says, passing Zach a mug of a thick hot soup which smells similar to fresh-ground almonds. And though Zach doesn't recognise its ingredients, it tastes wonderful, with a gingery afterbite. He finishes it quickly, hungrily, wrapped in his sleeping bag. 'What is it?' Zach asks, holding out his mug for a refill. 'Quarsh. A particularly nutritious grain.' They drink in silence, companionably enough, while the dogs shift and snuffle, the stove hisses, the wind mutters. While Zach mulls Lev's words. 'Where's it from?' Zach eventually asks. 'Quarsh?' At Zach's nod, Lev says, 'It's native to a high-mass, slightly warmer world than yours.' 'Don't you reckon it's time you finally explain who you are? Or is there some magic number of times I've got to ask?' Perhaps their isolation—their forced intimacy—induces Lev to answer. Or perhaps he too is simply lonely and needs to speak. 'A facilitator of sorts, I suppose you'd call me.' Zach laughs. '*I* wouldn't, I hate their psychospeak.' 'Nothing to do with Fulgur, and it does fit, but if you prefer, think of me as a gatekeeper.' 'To where?' 'You wouldn't believe me—not yet.' 'I'm starting to think I'd believe anything of you.' 'Is that a vote of confidence or condemnation?' Zach shifts inside his sleeping bag, then unzips it partway. The tent is so warm that he's beginning to sweat. 'Why don't you just tell me?' Zach asks, though not belligerently. At this rate he'd soon qualify for the diplomatic corps, he thinks wryly. Not that they accept any of his kind. '*Your kind* isn't all that different from those you despise.' Zach shoots him a startled look. 'You *can* read my thoughts.' 'Only a few of the stray surface ones. And only because you're a cognoscens. The sapiens neural network is too rudimentary.' 'Then don't lump us together with the f*****g croakers.' Lev leans forward and throws a handful of herbs into the boiling kettle, then lowers the power source on the stove. In the dim light his face is shadowed, and weary. | 10 12 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Seventeen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Stella had been the only person allowed to trim Zach's hair till Laura offered to take over the task. This once, however, Stella insisted on plunking him down on a kitchen chair in her back room and draping a towel round his shoulders. 'You tell that girl of yours to keep it trimmed real good. Fact is, I'm going to take off a couple of extra inches, and I want you to think about a proper short cut like the other lads.' He laughed. 'A skin job, you mean?' 'Fancy I nick some? You hold still now. And no more of your larking, I'm dead serious. It's high time you stopped this hair nonsense. You're a *man*, a man with responsibilities, not some sort of witchdoctor whose powers sprout from his scalp. Next thing you know, you'll start thinking you can shatter rocks with your baby blues or raise the dead or fly. Like one of them net characters, you know the ones I mean, fake as a tart's orgasm, what do you call them?' 'Avatars?' 'Yeah, avatars.' 'No worry. My eyes aren't blue.' She snorted, then snipped away in silence till her mobile trilled from the shopfront. While she was gone, Zach got up to fetch a broom and began sweeping the hair together, only to pause mid-pass at the sight of the manky stray she'd recently adopted—or more accurately, who had adopted her—crouching under the radiator with something that was still moving, still alive. 'What have you got there, Ra?' He dropped to a knee, and the cat fled, abandoning his meal. It was left to Zach to manoeuvre the twitching, mangled, near-dead thing out with his broom. He sat back on his heels, regarding the creature half in disgust, half in fascination. What in god's name was it? At first glance it appeared to be a bird, a largish crow maybe, but Zach wasn't ornithologist enough to classify it on the basis of its body alone. For its head—that head! Tiny simian features, hairless and earless, mouth working as if mewling soundlessly, eyes already dulling like a stone when the tide retreats. A shadow fell over him. From behind Stella reached out, snatched the thing up, and with one quick twist wrung its neck. 'An abomination,' she said. For a while neither spoke. Then Zach asked, 'Where the hell did that come from?' 'You need to ask? And if we don't put a stop to it, there'll be more and more of them.' She crossed herself, something he'd never known her to do, then wrapped the corpse in several sheets of newspaper, dropped it into a lidded bucket, and washed her hands at the basin. 'I'll burn it out back later on.' 'It's going to take a lot more than graffiti and a couple of websites to stop the Fulgur juggernaut.' 'Exactly.' The first bomb detonated in a call box near the main gate to the Fulgur campus—*harmlessly*, TV news reports claimed, but word sped round the internet about the black tail and single white-booted cat's paw, now tinged pink, that needed to be scraped from the buckled pavement. The second bomb blew up an unoccupied cherry-red Lamborghini in the executive carpark, which at school was deemed to have served its owner right, since nobody over the age of thirty had any business driving such a sexy car, particularly a smug-a**e Fulgur division head who would have done better to spend his extra cash on anti-dandruff shampoo, a reliable brand of deodorant, and lifetime membership in a fitness club. The third bomb killed three people, one of them a five-month old baby. Olivia caught up with Laura after Mandarin. 'I've got to talk to you.' 'What's the sudden push?' Laura asked. 'There are only two more lessons till lunch.' Olivia moved closer to avoid the kids milling around them in the corridor. 'The canteen's no place for important stuff—private stuff. What are you doing after school?' 'Training.' 'Can't you skip it? This is *urgent*.' 'I don't know . . . | 3 12 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Sixteen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF One of the dogs is lame. 'We'll have to go back,' Lev says. 'That, or shoot her.' 'Can't we splint it?' Zach asks. 'She'll never keep up.' 'Or camp here till it heals?' Lev wipes his goggles with a gloved hand, then with a dissatisfied frown lifts them to gaze out over the pack ice. They've taken the shortest route from a spit of embayed ice towards the opposite shore, after discussing the delay that travelling along the coast would entail. A stiff wind is blowing, numbing their faces through the thermal masks, and it has already begun to snow—thin stinging flakes which catch on Zach's lips and eyelids like barbed crystals whenever he slips off his goggles. Most of his kind struggle with the cold. To outrun the weather had been one of those *good ideas* which are so compelling at the time. But Zach is coming to appreciate that no one and nothing defeats the ice. 'Can't you do something?' Zach asks. 'Like what?' Zach turns so that his back takes the brunt of the wind. His breath fogs in front of him, though not for long. It too seems to freeze into brittle particles, some of which find their way into his lungs. 'Like whatever it is you do.' Lev laughs. 'A tropical paradise? I'm flattered, but geo-engineering is best left to the experts, and world-building to your novelists. You overestimate my capabilities.' 'And you, my patience.' 'Fine. Have a temper tantrum, if you think it'll help.' Zach would like to stalk off, but he'd probably land on his arse—and where would he go? Strange, in the real world where it might matter, he can't bother to be accommodating, and here in electronic lalaland, he's learning circumspection. He rubs a hand across his chest. 'Still hurts?' Lev asks sympathetically. 'Some. It doesn't help to breath crushed glass.' Lev nods. 'OK, we'll get you out of the cold soon.' 'How? It's hours back to basecamp.' Lev turns and peers again into the distance, but visibility is poor in the absence of moonlight. 'We need to get off the pack ice,' he says. 'We're courting trouble with the wind picking up like this.' It doesn't feel as though they're moving, but Zach remembers from his reading that displacement is mostly imperceptible on larger floes. Sea ice shifts erratically before the wind, often breaking loose from the pack and leaving any inadvertent hitcher stranded. A polar bear or walrus could swim, but neither he nor the dogs would last more than a few minutes in such water. As to Lev . . . anybody's guess. Yet Lev is alarmed, and making no attempt to conceal it. He pushes back his hood, pulls off his mask, and tilts his head to listen intently. Despite layers of insulation and the obstinate wind, Zach too can hear the constant creak and groan and fretful grumble of the ice as it adjusts and readjusts itself like a bedridden patient beset by sores. 'Wait here,' Lev says. 'I'll be right back.' He dons his mask and goggles, strides off as if heading for the next bus stop. From his own attempts to walk boldly, Zach can tell that Lev has a very long acquaintanceship with snow—a bit like a sailor's sea legs. Within a few seconds Lev has disappeared, leaving Zach alone with the dogs. Still in harness, the injured husky is curled up on the ice, while her team-mates are nosing about as if sensing Zach's restlessness. To unhitch them means risking a chase, for even when tired, huskies will run at will . . . and run . . . and run. The snow is gradually thickening into big fluffy flakes which melt on the dogs' coats. Zach puts out his tongue and catches one, remembering. Laura liked to say they taste like fresh-cut lemons. But this one has no flavour; perhaps his tongue is numb. He crouches by the lame animal, whose eyes are a brilliant gold-flecked green. Has any of the programmers ever seen a husky? | 26 11 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Fifteen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF By the end of a grey, rain-soaked week with little else except a minor incident over a teacher's palmer to distract anyone, Laura had been asked about Owen so often that she'd become adept at matching the right phrase to the right face, the way you automatically select golden koi lipgloss for a plain black T-shirt, slick bloodred when your lips need to slash a samurai arc. All the time her eyes wide, candid, alert for Zach. Who was not in school. Who had left the hospital under escort, her mum had been quick to point out, and now seemed to have vanished. Who didn't want to be found—Laura hoped. The alternatives kept her awake long into the night. And however much she tried to outwit herself with outrageous scenarios of the lonely-megastar-meets-warmhearted-schoolgirl variety, hair like ribbons of black treacle, fingers like warm toast inevitably ended up feeding her fantasies. At supper on Friday her father laid a sumptuous box of imported chocolates on the table. 'A celebration,' he said. 'For what?' Max asked, his eyes already reflecting the shiny glaze on the first piece he'd have, and the second. A third too, if they'd let him. 'A new patent.' Laura's mum smiled, but it was a tight little smile. 'What about your promotion? You've been spending a lot of evenings at the lab lately.' 'It'll all help, Molly.' 'The way the mud in the car last night—and on your shoes—will help?' Laura watched her father duck his head, colour high. She curled her fingers round her knife, then remembered how angry he'd been about Zach: the quiet, obstinate anger of a weak man who needed to prove something to himself, but who would never defy convention. Who would never dare to stand up to his wife, his boss. Probably not even to a paramedic. Her eyes suddenly prickled with tears. 'What have you done to him?' she cried. Max looked at her in surprise, her parents at one another in alarm. 'I don't know what—' her father began. 'What's the patent for this time?' Laura cut in viciously. 'A device to control their thoughts? or merely to monitor them?' She sprang up and slammed out of the room, thereby missing the frown which her dad quickly erased from his forehead. Molly already halfway out of her chair in furious pursuit, her husband was able to shake his head at Max, then mouth a word of caution without attracting her attention. When Laura pushed open the door, Stella was serving an old man whose greasy hair hung to his shoulders, striated with grey. He smelled unwashed, and Laura was in no hurry to breathe in his rancid exhalations. She'd had her omniflu noc, they wouldn't let you into school or a film or even the bloody supermarket without it, but you never knew about those weird mutations. 'Shut the fucken door, freezen my balls here,' he grumbled testily. 'No need for that.' Despite the rebuke, Stella's gaze passed over Laura as though over a ghost. Laura closed the door but hovered on the threshold till the greaser dug his hand into a pocket for some coins, and his hair swung forward, curtaining his face. With his head bent, he looked for a moment like a singer pausing for a breath over his mike. Laura stared at him, disconcerted. As if aware of her scrutiny, he glanced up. Sallow eyes blood-webbed with drink or drugs or age, and beneath it all, a deathly fatigue. He'd seen her on a thousand street corners, her disgust as offhand as small change. Ashamed, Laura hurried to the rack and grabbed the first magazine that came to hand. She was still flipping blindly through its pages when Stella removed it from her hands. 'If you're really into bodybuilding, there's a good gym round the corner,' Stella said. 'But don't crumple the merchandise.' Laura played with the zip on her jacket, trying to remember her carefully rehearsed lines. | 19 11 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Fourteen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF The nightmarish sound of howling rousts Zach from sleep. At least two or three wolves, possibly more. The human brain is an archaeobiological site of ancestral adaptations, so that cognoscens no less than sapiens will freeze when the ground opens at their feet, recoil (or flee) at the sight of a snake. After his heartbeat settles, after he drives any oneiric wargs from the threshold, after a thorough reality check, Zach throws off the covers and stumbles to the window. He presses his face against the glass, draws back to wipe away the condensation, and peers out again through the captive flames, only then noticing that he's still muzzy, perhaps a trifle queasy, but not in much pain. How long has he slept? For the first time he wishes for a watch, one of those fancy chronometers that do everything but sit up and bark. Out front Lev is feeding steaming chunks of something which hasn't seen a slaughterhouse, never mind a supermarket, to a pack of huskies. Zach swallows; Mishaal is a born-again Vegetarian. A sledge, humpbacked, crouches as if ready to spring. As soon as Lev enters, Zach asks him where the dogs have come from. 'I'm dying for a cup of tea.' Lev is already halfway across the room, bringing the smell of intense cold with him. His nose and cheeks are bright red. 'The wind's fierce today.' He tosses his anorak onto a chair and goes to drape his hat and mitts over the mantelpiece before warming his hands at the fire. 'Feeling better?' 'Much better. Well enough, in fact, to blow your f*****g limbic system into oblivion!' 'Care to try?' Again that indulgent note. Their eyes meet and Zach shrugs, unwilling to test such thin ice. It might be a long winter. 'The dogs aren't black, are they?' 'Mostly white and cream and grey, though Bella's a gorgeous coppery brown, why?' 'Hellhounds, I hear, are the colour of midnight.' 'Like ravens?' Lev laughs. 'Nothing supernatural about my beauties. You'll soon see how smart and swift they are. How loyal.' It might be a long winter, but Zach has no intention of skating in the dark. 'Planning a dogsledge race?' 'A small journey.' 'OK by me. Time to get back to basecamp anyway.' 'Sorry, but that's not on. We'll be heading in another direction.' 'No way. This isn't a holiday on ice. I've a job to do.' 'True. Only thing is, we're not talking about the same job.' 'Listen, I'm not going to abandon my clients, however borderline Chloe may be. You don't understand what Fulgur—' Lev interrupts brusquely, not his usual style. 'And you don't understand what's at stake. Why else do you think I'd risk modifying the STrinth? Every event has a quantum co-event; too many, and there's the chance of a bounce.' He hesitates, then adds, 'Ethan and Chloe have plenty of supplies, they'll be fine for as long as it matters.' From no information to an overload. Zach doesn't know what to ask first. 'Would you mind making at least a minimum of sense? What's a strinth, for example?' 'STrinthos is actually the customary translation, I seem to have picked up your penchant for abbreviations, your slang too.' The fire crackles and sends out a starburst of sparks. With a stockinged foot Lev nudges the largest ember back from the perimeter of the hearth and waits till it ceases to glow. 'Not *a* STrinth, but *the* STrinth. There's only one fundamental spacetime—well, call it *spacetime entity*. Your language is woefully inadequate to describe the cosmos.' Zach is silent for a time, watching the flames. Even Mishaal wouldn't dare to saddle him with an alien straight out of a space opera, one with a *penchant* for quantumbabble. Slade and his ilk aren't precisely known for their sense of humour, nor their appreciation of parody. 'You act as if this place is *real*. It's only VR, for godsake. A very fancy sort of VR, but a simulation nevertheless.' | 12 11 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Thirteen | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF The division head waved Litchfield to a seat. 'Coffee, Charles?' Slade asked. 'Thank you, no.' He settled himself on the edge of the hide-upholstered chair. It never did to act as if they were having an awards-ceremony natter, despite his superior's genial smile. Slade was active in local politics, and if Molly's girlfriends could be believed, eyeing the soon-to-be-contested MP seat. A wartime stint in the oil zone was routinely touted, a tweet short of overkill. His squat, toad-like appearance worked entirely to his advantage, reminding you of a favourite bald uncle. Charles would never have known about the women if the adjoining flat hadn't belonged to Max's godmother, a piece of information he was hoarding like knowledge of falsified data. There were few others with his knack of reading a gatlas. He'd pick one up most evenings the way others indulged in bedtime thrillers, or Molly, trashy romances. 'How's Molly?' 'Very well, thanks.' 'And the children? Here it comes, Charles thought, but years of marriage had trained him well. 'Just fine, both of them. Max's teachers are very pleased with his work, especially in science and maths, and he's shaping up nicely as a striker. And Laura's gone back to swimming. The usual adolescent ups and downs with her, and of course we wish she were a bit more academically minded, but nothing we can't handle.' 'I've heard that she had to spend a few days in hospital. Not a chronic condition, I trust.' 'Nothing of the sort.' He reminded himself that this fool sat in on assessments—their ridiculous Vertical Mobility Advisory Board. Andy had another name for it. 'An allergic reaction. Unfortunate, but we'll be very vigilant it doesn't recur.' Slade leaned his elbows on his gleaming desk and steepled his hands against his lips. He regarded a single sheet of paper in front of him, at which Charles was careful not to stare. Not that he needed to. After a measured silence, Slade smiled, picked up the paper, and tore it neatly in half before feeding the pieces through the shredder under his desk. Even in a largely paperless age, it was sometimes best to leave carbon rather than electronic footprints. 'I'm glad to hear that, Charles. We're men who understand the need for high standards.' His voice took on a slight sing-song tone that reminded Charles of his father-in-law in the pulpit. 'In our homes as well as our work, and above all in society as a whole. We live in unsettled times. We must never forget that the future lies with our children.' Charles slowly let out his breath. A calculated risk, but the odds had been good—this time. He'd have to arrange a permanent solution. A pity, Zach was one of their best. But if Fulgur fired you, there was the dole, or scrubbing urinals in the morgue—not even cadavers. 'I couldn't agree with you more, Russell. Laura and Max mean everything to Molly and me. Well, almost everything.' He gave a deprecating cough. 'You know that my—*our*—commitment to Fulgur is 100%.' 'No need for that. We never expect more than 98%.' They laughed together, two men sharing a pleasant joke. Then Slade's face took on the solemn look of distant relatives at a funeral. He reached forward and flicked a switch on his console. 'No calls or interruptions, please, Penelope.' He opened a drawer and removed a flat file. 'Now about Project Elysium—' 'You've been going through my things.' Her mum laid the iron on its side and reached over to turn down the radio. Bach, thought Laura, when it ought to be Wagner. 'What do you expect?' Molly asked. 'I'm nearly eighteen. I've got the right to my privacy,' Laura said hotly. 'Not if you break rules.' Molly's voice hardened. 'Break laws.' 'I'll buy a lock to keep you out, if I have to.' 'To keep you in would be better. Away from that—that simu.' | 5 11 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Twelve | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF 'What the hell have you been up to?' With an angry set to his shoulders Lev tosses down his satchel and seizes the lamp off the floor. In a moment it's burning brightly again, a stark light which accentuates the planes and angles of his face. But his examination is as skilful and sensitive as before, and this time Zach feels a liquid warmth spread under his skin, a warmth which reminds him of spilled sunlight. Until Lev fingers the pendant with a provocative lift to his eyebrows. 'No!' Zach cries, and clamps Lev's hand in his own. 'Don't touch it.' 'Let go,' Zach says, 'or I'll break your fingers.' Lev regards Zach without flinching, a frank appraisal. It's not easy to intimidate someone who can face a polar bear with more steel in his balls than fist. Slowly he nods and Zach releases his hand, which Lev flexes with no apparent resentment. Appreciatively, even. 'Laura's,' Lev says. Zach's hand slides back to the pendant. A long silence, in which Lev trims the lamp, moves it to a less prominent position, waits. Zach counts, then recounts the stone figures lined up on a shelf, half of them in creamy green, the other half a dark burgundy. Thirty-one, thirty-two. Lev could have filled the air with verbal shrapnel—most people do. After a struggle, Zach allows that he might need more than Lev's medical skills. 'How do you know about Laura?' Zach asks. Lev reaches for a pouch lying on the mantel. 'Mind if I smoke?' Curtly, 'No.' 'I'd offer you one, but it's best you wait till you're fully healed.' 'I don't smoke.' Lev extracts a packet of cigarette papers and some tobacco, whose sweet aroma, even unlit and from across the room, is distinctive if slightly noisome. Zach eyes the chessmen intermittently while Lev rolls his cigarette, touches a taper to the hot embers in place of a match, and inhales with serene pleasure, then notices the direction of Zach's gaze. 'Do you play?' Lev asks. 'A bit.' 'I carved them myself. Fine occupation of an evening. Like to see one?' 'You must think me an idiot!' They study each other again. Lev wears a mask of smoke, no doubt aiming the two thin streams upwards from his nostrils as deliberately as Zach himself would have done. 'How did you get her chain?' Zach asks at last. 'What you really mean is, have I seen her?' 'Well, have you?' 'Let's just say I'm aware of her importance.' Testily Zach brushes his hair off his forehead, only to grimace. His hair is greasy and needs a good wash. *He* needs a good wash. Meanwhile, Lev flips the end of his cigarette into the fire and proceeds to rummage in his bag. 'Here,' he says, handing Zach an unopened toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste. 'Do you want me to help you bath?' 'No. What I *want* is to understand what's going on.' 'Will it allay your suspicions to learn we have certain interests in common?' Zach casts his blanket aside, rises to his feet, and makes his way slowly and laboriously to the shelf on which the stone chessmen rest. He picks up a red pawn and cradles it in his hand. Runs his thumb over its surface. Beautifully carved for such a minor piece. Yet even a mediocre player knows the value of safeguarding his rooks. He sets it back down and turns to Lev. 'Are you telling me that you're also looking for Laura?' Zach asks. Lev joins him at the shelf, where he plucks an irregular piece of dull red stone from beside the chessmen. He weighs it in his hand for a few minutes. 'Funny, but I sometimes prefer the raw stone, unprepossessing as it seems.' He replaces the stone with the air of a small boy who's been showing off his treasures. Proud, yet not quite sure someone else will appreciate their worth. 'How about something to eat? I don't know about you, but I'm famished.' At Lev's words Zach's stomach grumbles, | 29 10 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Eleven | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Ping. A sound like ice cracking underfoot. Laura drew the duvet up over her head but Max kept jumping onto frozen puddles in the potholed l... | 22 10 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Ten | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF ‘Laura,’ Zach whispers. For a moment he can still see her and lifts his head, only to gasp as his belly tears apart, deep-gutted. He dro... | 15 10 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Nine | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Laura crouched at the child's side. Up close she could see the cracks in his lips, traces of blood and spit caked at the corners of his mouth. Cheeks rouged by fever. Bruises—livid, horrifying bruises. And from the stench and the state of his pants, it was clear that he'd been left trussed like an animal for a very long time. Laura glanced back at Owen. 'Have you got a pocket knife?' As Owen advanced into the room, the boy seemed to shrink further inside the loose husk of his skin, while his shudders became more pronounced. Soon Laura could detect a new smell, though she wondered how his body managed to spare enough moisture to sweat. At least I've still got some of my apple juice left for him, she thought. Usually she drank all of it right after swimming. 'I don't own a knife,' Owen said, dropping a hand to her shoulder. 'Come away, this is none of our business.' Laura twitched aside. 'He's scared of you. Go and try to find something sharp. A piece of metal, some broken glass, whatever.' 'What for?' 'For godsake, isn't that obvious?' 'What's obvious is that you're set on getting into more trouble.' With the same hair-trigger response that made her racing starts so effective, Laura sprang up and rounded on Owen. 'You can't be serious. What if he was your little brother?' Owen tried to make a joke of it. 'An auger?' The boy's whimpering prevented Laura from slapping Owen. But she came close. Owen retreated a step or two from the fierce expression on her face before capitulating. 'OK. Have it your way. I'll have a look.' He turned to go. 'Wait,' said Laura, rummaging in her backpack for her mobile. 'Maybe we ought to phone for an ambulance.' She didn't like the sound of the boy's breathing. How long had he gone without that serum? Zach's words came back to her. *Worse*. 'You can't do that. You'll get your dad fired.' 'For ringing emergency services?' 'All calls are recorded.' 'Then use your mobie.' Owen slowly shook his head. 'They know we go out together.' There was a misunderstanding here, but Laura wasn't about to tackle that now. She pulled out her bottle, dropped to a squat, and addressed the boy in as soothing a voice as she could muster. 'We're not going to hurt you. I want to turn you over and give you a little apple juice, then my friend's going for a doctor. Don't be afraid. You're safe now.' In certain parts of the world simu eyes are prized for their putative occult properties, and it's rumoured that a single one on the black market will yield enough for a luxury flat in your metropolis of choice, housekeeper included; and an undamaged matched pair, a lifetime of leisure. However, to be of prime value they must be harvested from a living 'donor'. The boy stared at Laura with eyes so occluded that she couldn't tell if he understood her. But he let her roll him onto his back with only a faint cry of distress, or pain. Striving to hide her disgust—she'd never seen anyone quite so filthy—she raised his head and moistened his lips from the bottle, then allowed him to take a few sips. 'Not too much at once,' she said when he gulped and rooted for more. 'I'll be right back,' she added, and pulled Owen out of the room. 'Look, he's not OK,' she said. 'We're going to need help.' But what if the EMTs had no idea about the serum? Or even the doctors at the hospital? Isn't that what Zach had implied? 'There's bound to be a phone box somewhere. We can make an anonymous call.' 'And leave him on his own?' Contempt, she remembered too late, tended to make meek people like her dad meekly obstinate. 'He's not in any condition to notice. And he must've endured far worse.' *Worse*. 'Give me your mobie! I'm going to ring Zach.' 'Bad idea. Anyway, I don't know his number.' 'I do.' An angry rash mottled Owen's cheeks. 'You're not still—' | 8 10 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Eight | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF By the time Zach reaches him, Lev has sliced open the seal's belly and removed part of its liver. 'Here,' Lev says, 'your share.' Zac... | 1 10 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Seven | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Her eyes stinging from staring at the screen, Laura blinked back tears. She would never understand this stupid useless stuff no matter how many hours she sat here. What did anyone *do* with stochastics? She tossed down her pencil, slid open her bottom desk drawer, and removed the book she was reading. No one, not even brainy Olivia, bothered with poetry. Except, it seemed, for Zach. Laura had been surprised to find out how much she liked the poems. This woman's desperation could make you gasp as though you'd fallen into an icy sea and were struggling to keep your head above water, struggling to swim for shore, unable to see its outline for the frost smoke. Up close, Zach's hair had smelled faintly of burnt matches as he'd handed her the book. She wondered where he'd been. Her door opened. Quickly she thrust the book under her scratch sheets, but it was only Max. 'When are you going to learn to knock?' she asked. 'I might have been in my underwear. Or naked.' Max shut the door behind him. One eye was dark and puffy, his bottom lip split. Skin scraped from his cheek and jaw. 'Max! Have you been fighting?' 'Ssh. Mum will hear.' 'You're going to need a mask to hide those bruises. Better yet, a hangman's hood.' 'Yeah, I know.' He sighed. 'I was hoping you'd think of a good story.' 'What happened?' 'Here.' He took something from his pocket and gave it to her. Laura unfolded the small white envelope, small and white and *blank*. She looked up at her brother. 'Who's it from?' 'You know.' Laura hoped that Max couldn't hear her sudden inrush of breath. 'You've seen him? He's OK?' 'Better than me.' He blinked rapidly, and Laura was touched by his vulnerability. Still a little boy, though she'd never say so. But then he straightened his shoulders in a manner copied from a zillion films. The sensitive yet brave hero facing adversity. Soon he'd not allow himself even a single sniff in her presence. She curbed her impulse to put an arm round him. 'Where did you see him? What did he say?' she asked. 'At the pitch. All he said was to give the envelope to you. He left pretty fast, but not fast enough.' 'What did they do to him?' She couldn't keep the fear from her voice. 'Not to him. To me.' 'S**t.' 'Yeah, well.' Then he grinned. 'Broke Tommy Atwell's nose, I think.' 'Double s**t. More trouble.' 'Na. They won't cozz.' 'You reckon?' 'They didn't see him pass me the note. In a fair dust-up you don't grass on your mates.' 'Then why the fight?' Max dropped his eyes. 'Max?' 'Stupid auger, he should've known better than to come near me when anybody else was around.' 'Don't call him that!' 'It was dumb of him. Real dumb.' But he didn't repeat the word. Laura regarded her brother for a moment. 'I get it. They said stuff about me.' 'Is it true?' Max burst out. 'That you—that you have sex with him?' 'No, of course not.' 'But you've been thinking . . . I mean . . .' 'Little brother, you've got no idea what I'm thinking!' 'I only meant, you went to his place.' 'With some schoolwork. He'd been absent a lot. Then I saw he was ill, needed help.' 'That was just a lie for Mum and Dad. And the plods.' 'Not exactly.' Laura smoothed her fingers over the envelope. She could almost feel his voice whispering to her from the paper. If only her skin could hear a little better . . . 'You like him?' Max asked. Max would get punished no matter what story they fixed between them. Because of her. 'Yeah, I like him. Not the way you mean, but I like him.' 'They said he sleeps with *everyone*. Even'—a whisper now— 'even boys.' 'Max, he's just somebody from school, but he's nice. Don't believe all the rubbish you hear.' 'But what if—' Their mother's voice went off suddenly like a smoke alarm, only louder. 'Max, | 24 9 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Six | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF On a ridge surmounting the sea ice, Zach and Lev are stretched out on a caribou skin over deep snow compacted by their feet. It's taken a long, painstaking trek across uneven terrain to locate the breathing hole directly below them. There are fresh polar bear tracks out on the ice, clearly visible after the new fall of snow. 'He's hunting,' Lev says. 'Ringed seal's his favourite snack.' He offers no explanation other than a lame joke for the second set of footprints, the ones which resemble their own but circle the aglu without an inbound or outbound trail. 'Some winged angels with a taste for hi-tech expedition boots, maybe.' 'Better than armoured ice bears equipped with subtle knives,' Zach says dryly. 'Listen, seal meat makes good eating. Lots of calories in the blubber.' 'Without a harpoon? Anyway, a seal is no challenge. But it depends on how long you can take the cold.' Zach edges closer to his companion. For now, their layered clothing, lightweight but well insulated, defies the wind. Though they've avoided overtaxing themselves—sweat, like any moisture, has sinister consequences in the far north—the cold always wins in the end. Zach is grateful for the mitts Lev insisted on, better than his own, and the bubble-fleece face mask. Refusing a pair of ski goggles— 'they'll only interfere with my vision'—may have been a mistake. He remembers the feel of Lev's lips, their restorative warmth. And with a sharp twist of pain, Laura's. 'Are you OK?' Lev asks. 'Polar bears are supposed to be curious,' Zach says. 'Wouldn't it be easier to show ourselves? Attract attention?' 'The only way I can hope to take him is when he's distracted, concentrating on his prey.' Lev nods towards the breathing hole, the nearest of several. 'That's the other reason for the caribou pelt. A seal won't surface if it hears the scrunch and squeak we'd make on loose snow, even just shifting in place.' 'How long have we got to wait?' 'No idea. Could be a while. Don't worry, I'm not that stubborn—or rash. Seal stew is preferable to hypothermia.' 'There's black, open water in most of the agluit,' Zach says. 'They've been used recently.' 'You've done your homework. Now be quiet.' 'Look here—' Zach says, but Lev puts up a warning hand and points towards the expanse of shorefast ice. The moonlight enables them to see four, maybe five kilometres out. It's hard to tell, for there are no landmarks which signify anything to Zach, no real means of gauging scale and depth, and the entire vista is so vast, so eerie, so ethereal that he might be gazing upon a poem rendered in light rather than words. Yet the ice isn't featureless. Not only are there small domes over some of the breathing holes, but fissures and cracks where the snow shades to lilac and cyan, to a bruised violet like veins under the skin of a newborn; dunes and snowdrifts blown into ridged formations and hollows reminiscent of the open desert; low piles of rubbled ice, grey and barely frosted with white; in places, drifting hoar mist; and even some meandering leads of open water, black as the lead in the great cathedral windows. At first he thinks of a lunar landscape, then realises that the comparison is inadequate—that, in fact, the very attempt to impose a foreign grammar on such a place would prevent him from communicating with it. If it has a language, he needs above all to *listen*. Not like the monkeys, who in their discontent and greed redefine everything with their paltry nomenclature, make and remake and make again in their own stunted image. Little backwater gods, scared shitless that they've been shunted onto a sidespur of evolution. A flicker of movement, barely discrete—more a warping of the light, as though passing through a prism—there, near the edge of a lead. Something is moving across the ice. Zach touches Lev on the shoulder, | 18 9 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Five | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF For a week Laura was determined not to watch for Zach. Once she saw his distinctive hair skimming above the roil in the corridor outside the gym, but by the time she elbowed through the mass of kids, he was gone. Another time she was standing with Owen and Olivia in the canteen and could feel someone's eyes on her, but when she glanced round there was nobody of interest. Owen asked one or two questions, which Laura dealt with effortlessly in her best offhand tone, breezy enough to power a small wind turbine. Olivia wouldn't have been fooled—or dishevelled—for a moment. As follow-up, Laura gave Owen exactly ten minutes in the infamous (and fetid) 'broom room' which was used by everybody for that purpose. Some kids even claimed the teaching staff knew all about it and were prone to retire there themselves on occasion, when they needed to blow steam after a stressy couple of lessons. Lots of the younger girls racketed on about sightings, about possible pairings, but except for a six-week period when she'd done a bit of dozy daydreaming over the new bearded DT head—half the school pitched up at auditions for *Midsummer* that term—she'd never been particularly keen on the secret lives of bees, or narwhals, or teachers. Lads her age were so pathetic. There must be one token male in her year who didn't walk around with a permanent s****y, but she'd yet to meet him. At least Owen played within the foul lines. She and Olivia spent a lot of time thrashing it over, but Livs had been going with older lads for ages, she was bound to see it differently. She'd come round Thursday after swimming club, bringing an extra-large packet of Laura's favourite crisps. They turned up the music loud, then louder. 'Pissed at your mum?' Olivia asked. Laura turned the music up even louder and ate a fistful of crisps, and another. 'Save some for me,' Olivia said. 'Thought you wanted to lose two, three kilos?' 'Damien says he likes my womanly curves.' 'Your big t*ts, you mean.' 'You're just jealous,' Olivia said, hefting them in her hands. They both giggled, nearly spilling a can of diet fizz, then crunched companionably together on the floor cushions—handsewn. They'd known each other since primary, and even Olivia, who'd never liked Laura's mum, was a bit envious of their tidy house and tins full of home-baking and T-shirts that were always ironed. Her own parents were divorced, and nobody much bothered in either of the flats. During a brief lull between tracks they could hear Laura's mum shouting something from the downstairs hallway. 'Better turn it down,' Olivia said, 'not the right time to wind her up, is it?' 'What do you mean?' Olivia licked some salt off her lips before answering. 'You know. The auger.' 'Don't call them that!' 'Hey. This is Olivia, remember.' 'Just don't use that word.' Olivia picked up the remote and adjusted the volume on the system. 'OK, what's going on?' '*Nothing's* going on. I just don't like that Purist crap.' 'It's not crap. My dad says—' 'F**k your dad! Since when have you begun to quote him?' 'Listen girl, you'd better watch it, and not just your mouth neither. I don't have to tell you what's going to happen if you start going round with augers.' 'And I told you that I don't want to hear that sort of language. It's narrow-minded and ignorant and *stupid*.' 'You're calling me stupid now? You, who can barely pass a course at school?' Laura rose to her feet, snatching up the unfinished packet of crisps, which she thrust at her best friend. 'Here, take them with you. You might get hungry on the way home.' They stared at each other for a short while, then Olivia too stood up. 'OK, I'm going,' she said. 'But you're making a big mistake, and we've been mates too long for me not to warn you. Zach's poison. I mean it. Poison. | 10 9 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Four | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Next morning Ethan is feverish, shaking with chills, and so dizzy when he stumbles into the living room that Zach sends him straight back to bed. Though conditions are meant to be as realistic as possible, Zach is disgruntled by the delay and can't help wondering about this unexpected development, the second in two days. Illness isn't unheard of in Fulgur's little cyber realm, but never during the acclimation phase, which is stressful enough on its own. In the kitchen he finds a stock of herbal remedies and brews a pot of lemon balm, yarrow, and ginger tea, well sweetened with honey. Ethan drinks only a few sips before knocking the mug aside, rambling on about harpoons of acid blue light and batmen and a shapeshifting ice cave, but soon falls into a doze while Zach mops up. Despite official assurances, Andy has warned him to be on the watch for anomalies, particularly cognitive dysfunction, which might indicate a programming glitch. There's always the backfeed for reporting minor problems, but persistent hallucinations could necessitate a premature shut-down. Any simu who aborts a run without good reason assumes its entire cost. You'd be in debt to Fulgur till too old to notice. There are no aborts. If it weren't for Laura, Zach would have stuck to his resolve never to do another run again. And once they find out what he's up to, there'll be no other. Let them banish him to custodial duty; he'll scrub their toilets with savage glee. They wouldn't dare to assassinate him outright—not now, not with so much unrest. A martyr's death would suit him just fine. At breakfast Chloe appears in a cherry-red tracksuit whose thick fleece might as well be diaphanous silk, or nothing at all, the way she turns sleepy eyes and moist pout and an aura of torpid conquest on Zach. He finds himself colouring, at which she laughs complacently. The run is fast becoming a disaster. Lev rescues him by suggesting Chloe stay indoors with Ethan while the two of them try to bring down a polar bear. 'What for?' Zach asks bluntly. 'We ought to take advantage of the good weather. It's stopped snowing.' 'You know that's not what I mean.' 'Practice. Teamwork and bonding in the face of a tough obstacle. Survival skills.' Lev says. 'Isn't that what you're here to teach?' There it is again—that brief glint in Lev's eyes, like a flash of metal through the trees. The scar makes it difficult to tell whether his half-smile is sardonic, or merely the result of reduced muscular control. 'Fresh meat.' 'A full-grown male can weigh as much as 700 kilos, occasionally more.' Zach falls back on a practical concern. 'You and I can barely drag a quarter of that between us.' 'We'll take whatever we can. Isn't that what humans always do?' Chloe is becoming restive. 'I'm going to have a good wash'—her lower lip is a touch overripe for her smirk to be tasty—'and check on Ethan while you two machos work out your kill.' She saunters off in the direction of the bath, then stops on the threshold to say, 'I forgot, the bath is filled with Earl Grey, I'll have to use the teapot.' Lev gives Zach an indulgent shrug as she heads for the kitchen; there's no accounting for sense of humour. 'Killing a polar bear takes exceptional skill. How long have you been here anyway?' Zach asks once they're alone. 'Why don't you wait and see what I can do?' 'That's quite a lot to take on faith.' 'We're expected to trust you.' 'Not exactly the same thing, is it?' 'Have you forgotten that I could have left you in the snowstorm to freeze? Perhaps you ought to remember one of the cardinal principles of wilderness training—*mutual* trust.' A test of some sort? Zach meets, measures, matches the daredevil in Lev's eyes. 'There are no firearms. So what will you use instead? A magical incantation?' Lev gives the first laugh Zach has heard from him, | 4 9 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Three | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Owen's breath was warm against her neck, and Laura could hardly mistake what was happening as he pressed himself against her. She wanted to laugh at the phrases he was whispering in her ear—did lads ever read girly blogs?—but the music was soaking through her pores and she didn't care to humiliate him openly and there was something rather sweet about his fumbling, not that she wanted to encourage him, but the air was thick and heavy hard to breathe no it was her body that was so light and smoky and insubstantial and she could smell his sandalwood cologne a scent she'd always liked and they were floating on the languid chords hardly moving swaying really and she would stop just now the music would stop he would stop he would he Laura glanced up to see Zach staring at her with his sardonic grin. Owen disappeared. The club disappeared. There was only Zach, leaning against a wall in his black jeans, his arms crossed and his mouth uptilted. Unlike his eyes. The music stopped. Laura heard Owen mutter something behind her, but she'd already moved away from him. Heads were turning towards Zach now, and for some reason the band hadn't pitched into another number, which left a silence to fill, a silence which was being stretched and pulled and shaped into a receptacle for their spit, their dirty wads of gum. 'What's he doing here?' 'It's bad enough we've got to put up with his sort at school.' 'Dirty mulac pervert.' 'Somebody better get rid of the freak.' 'My sister told me they can f**k for hours.' 'They ought to be kept in pens.' 'Do you see those eyes?' 'Thinks he can muck around with one of our girls, does he?' 'Teach him a lesson.' 'Auger c**t.' '*I* wouldn't mind, not if he uses a nice thick cocksock.' Close up, Zach smelled fresh, like newly fallen snow. He didn't take his eyes off her nor did he smile, but he had a way of listening that she'd never encountered before. He paid attention. Everybody else was busy with their own thoughts/reactions/arguments, or impatient for you to finish so that they could get a chance to centre-stage, or simply in a rush to be somewhere else. But Zach focused on your words as if they were nourishment, or even the oxygen without which his cells would soon starve. Were they all like him? 'It was just a dance,' Laura said. Zach said nothing. 'Were you looking for me?' His eyes flicked past her—temperature dropping, the first gusts, visibility impaired, icy track ahead. She turned her head. Owen and some of his mates. Zach uncrossed his arms and stood taller, away from the wall. His legs were incredibly long, she thought. Dark-clad limbs that might bend but not snap in the wind. 'Is there a problem, Laura?' Owen asked. Nice, she thought. It's *nice* to protect your date. 'Of course not,' she said. Tim and Derek closed ranks. 'You'd better be going,' Derek said. Zach regarded him with the same mild interest he might afford a household pet which had begun to speak, but not quite mastered the intricacies of English grammar. 'Did you hear what he said, mate?' Tim added after a short silence. Zach spoke for the first time. 'I'm not your mate.' 'Listen, transfuck, do we have spell it out for you? Like in the toilet?' Tim said. Owen raised a hand. 'This is a private club, Zach,' he said, his voice conciliatory. 'There are lots of places where augers can go. Don't make trouble.' Laura winced at Owen's casual use of the word. In school he wouldn't have got away with it, at least not if there'd been a teacher nearby. And the worst was, he wasn't being deliberatively provocative or nasty. It's just what they all said. 'What do you think, Laura?' Zach was watching her with the same intensity with which he'd listened to her talk about her family. The narrow path was slippery with ice, | 27 8 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter Two | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF In the 90s physicist Wu Li took a sharp left turn along the ratiocinative superhighway into the metasphere, his theories at once controversial and groundbreaking. The Fulgur Corporation saw their commercial potential early on, and as soon as Zhou and Groening came on board, jettisoned the air-surfing division after the Aconcagua fiasco, poached some of the best minds from research institutes and universities worldwide, including Charles Litchfield, with the lure of putting science—and scientists—rather than profit first, and broadened its core focus from immersive entertainment to encompass neuroscience and the new metapsychology, then, in a strategic and farsighted move which would ensure its rapid rise to market dominance, augmented cognition. Homo cognoscens. The augers. *Simus*, they like to call themselves. Zhou first referred to them as simulacrums, but the tag only really stuck after the Zimbabwean neurogeneticist on the pioneering team told them that his own name *Simu*, short for *Simudzai*, meant *forward* in his native tongue. The interface prototype was mostly Groening's work, with his engineering skills, though it was Zhou who developed the algorithms from Wu's theorems. None of this would have been possible, however, without the self-replicating viruses which Litchfield’s mentor at university, then Litchfield himself, synthesised in order to activate what would, in certain cases, become momentous germline mutations. 'Get up, lad. You'll freeze to death like this.' Zach raises his head. His skin and lips are already numb, his nostrils packed with ice crystals. The splint and dressing after they'd broken his nose had not felt much different—a foreign body, one which he'd welcomed as a constant reminder. He'd flushed the painkillers down the clinic loo. And six months later, one of the kids needed an implant for the two front teeth he'd lost; a few weeks afterwards, the second one spent ten days in intensive care; and the third would likely never father a child. With gloved fists, Zach digs at his eyes like a small child but the lids are iced shut and it frightens him, that feeling of resistance, as if someone has used catgut to stitch away the evidence of his genetic code. The man helps Zach to a sitting position, and crouching before him, places a hand on either side of his head. Without any sign of disgust he blows on first one, then the other eye, again and again, until Zach's sight is restored. The man is a smoker, Zach can smell tobacco on his breath. 'Who are you?' Zach asks, blinking against the brightness. It's stopped snowing, and the tundra glitters in the moonlight. Those who are unfamiliar with the far north imagine months of winter darkness, but ice and snow have a spectral fierceness as beautiful as a dreamscape, as implacable as hatred. His training required a certain amount of reading, which in fascination he soon broadened to include numerous accounts, many first-hand, of expeditions to the high Arctic—of explorers and whalers, of scientists and entrepreneurs, of madmen and dreamers. 'Here they call me Lev.' Lev draws Zach to his feet, then reaches into a deep flapped pocket and brings out a small flask, which once uncapped, steams and gives off the rich smell of coffee. Lev holds it to Zach's lips. 'Slowly now, don't burn your tongue.' The coffee is black and very sweet, laced with what may be cardamom in the Saudi style. Though a fine programmer, Mishaal is something of a jokester who leaves his version of a calling card wherever most eccentric; a wink between fellow Janus. A few sips, and heat blossoms in Zach's stomach like a spurt of blood from a reopened wound, and his shivering subsides. 'OK?' Lev asks. Zach nods. Lev points towards what, under the circumstances, couldn't possibly be a flock of sheep clustered near an open pond. | 21 8 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
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ExplicitChapter One | (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-print-icon.gif)Print (http://cdn.printfriendly.com/pf-pdf-icon.gif) PDF Bracing himself against the wind, Zach gets to his feet without a thought for direction or destination. In the white forever of this place,... | 25 7 09 | Free | View In iTunes |
| Total: 48 Episodes |
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- Category: Literature
- Language: English
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