“Some of the technical issues might be resolved by engineering a purpose-specific particle — there’s a team in the US working on something like that right now, one of the lead researchers, he’s young, from Sri Lanka, a cloud physicist as well as a nanoengineer, which seems like an enticing combination. I’m planning to contact him. I certainly never thought I’d be spending this much time and energy thinking about clouds and particulates when I began a career in paleoclimatology.”
The old man covered his phone with his hand, peering at the photographs he’d taken. “Even something small-scale would need to be implemented over a decadal span, or centuries,” he continued. “Years and years. We need a technology that stable. Which is hard to imagine, isn’t it? Sudden termination could be disastrous. So one needs to have an exit strategy — and simultaneous technologies for carbon sequestration and plans for massively reducing carbon use. There’s a lot of cognitive dissonance running around, I’ll be the first to admit. And magical thinking, okay, yes. So I’ve been doing a lot of pondering, Anna. Here’s the thing, what if we reconfigure the nature of the experiment?”
“Reconfigure it?” Anna looked up in bewilderment. “What do you mean?”
“Make this more of a conceptual project.”
“Conceptual how, Alan?” Anna seemed genuinely taken aback.
“We still need this field experiment, or this prototype of a prototype of a field experiment, or conceptual field experiment. But we reframe things. Reframe them to focus on altering the human instead of the atmospheric. There might be less of an issue of oversight, which I know is a big concern of yours. Intention changes everything. Let’s see what happens if our intention changes. What we require is evidence of an experiment, to capture someone’s attention. Documentation that we’re up to something, that’s the main thing.”
The old man sent Caleb to check on the winch while he and Anna spoke quietly and fiercely. Him? Really? Was what Caleb overheard Anna say when he drew close again. Then the two of them broke off as if the argument engrossing them had been settled.
It seemed they were about to leave. How was that possible? Surely they were going to do something with the balloon — let it rise into the sky, pump something up through the length of tubing into the snowblower suspended high in the air so that it spritzed out of the nozzles, pushed by the small, spinning propeller wings? The old man spoke about the wind dropping off as the sun set, which, given that a soft northwesterly was blowing, it would, Caleb knew. The evening would be clear and calm with a full moon.
At Cape House, the old man told Anna she could pull the van around to his side of the cove, park in his yard, or else he’d simply meet her back at the site in a couple of hours. He made no mention of bringing Caleb along. Pointedly, he told Caleb he was free for the rest of the day, and though it was perplexing to feel disappointed, Caleb did, despite the fact that his mother needed him at home.
Later, much later, he would take a break from massaging bawling Lola as his mother tugged two blood- and mucus-covered doelings into the world, and make a dash up the path beyond the goat barn to the top of Lighthouse Hill. There, squinting into the duckish light, the western sky fading to juniper blue, he’d glimpse the far-off, unmistakable silhouette of the balloon rising, though there was no one nearby other than his mother, stripped to her undershirt in the goat barn, blood all over her arms, who might have confirmed the sight. Was that the mist of a small cloud or did he imagine it? By the time Caleb made it back out to Sheep’s Cove, after Fern had given birth to a buckling and a doeling, a day had passed, and there was no sign, other than trampled grass, that anything unusual had happened out there at all.
Outside Cape House, after the old man had roared off, Anna asked Caleb playfully if he would give her a tour. It’s still a wreck, Caleb protested, pleased nevertheless. Two weeks before, he and the girl had been shovelling out sheep shit. There was no running water. Anna said she didn’t care, she was used to living rough for months at a time, out on the ice — she broke off, as if she shouldn’t have mentioned this.
They rappelled up the broken staircase to the second floor, where Anna peered into the biggest room, and announced that if she were a guest, this was where she’d want to stay. With a smile she lay down on the filthy floor, as if there were indeed a bed beneath her, and a glimpse of the longed-for future unfurled itself in front of Caleb.
He had opened his mouth to ask her about the balloon when Anna broke in on his thoughts. “Will you live out here by yourself?”
Shaking his head, he blushed because, her gaze burrowing into him, it was as if Anna had guessed his innermost secret.
At moments, a fog rolled over her, as if someone close to her were dying. They were downstairs, in the parlour, about to leave, when Anna hesitated. “Can I give you a hug?”
A hug? Imaginary nippers crawled all over his skin. Mutely Caleb nodded, and Anna gathered him close, so close the pores of her pale skin were visible, the sharp line of her chin. The next moment, she kissed him on the forehead, a kiss that Caleb would never have the courage to mention to the girl.
“May it all work out as you wish,” she whispered. “Whatever happens, you’ll need to be brave.”
Outside Cape House, at dusk, Caleb vomited into the grass, the two men crashing about inside like the intruders they really were. The sea’s strong rote was in him, waves heaving and booming. From the bushes a fox scented him, raised her lips and bared her teeth, before slinking off in disgust. What had Tony McIntosh just said? They would be in charge of spraying a haze into the sky. These men. Roy, more obsessed with his son than the rest of the world, manic to get back into the air, Len, who seemed as swayable as grass in the wind, which left Tony, licking his lips, hands on the puppet strings. The old man had said, Conceptual experiment. He’d said, Weather monitoring. He’d said all kinds of things, but he’d never suggested the weather would end up in the hands of men like these. Jets, an endless fleet of them, altering the sky. Those field experiments, which Tony seemed so keen to find out more about, surely they were the ones Caleb himself had been involved in, out in Sheep’s Cove with Anna and the old man, on the boat with Arun. The old man had made him part of this.
Once more Caleb’s stomach heaved. He had to get up. Go back inside the place he’d believed would never betray him, yet the new weather was battering it, traces of his encounter with the girl lay all over the house, and now these men were stomping through it, threatening to leave destruction in their wake. The clouds, the constantly shifting clouds looked the same as they always had. Who knew what they really were? Maybe there was already an invisible haze up there somewhere. He was a cloud, dissolving, looking down on all that was. Across the cove, a huge yellow moon rose, a gull screamed, insects rustled, the fox scented rabbit, and though these men might not know it, everything, everything was alive.
From upstairs, where Caleb had told the men not to go, came a shriek from Tony and the sound of splintering. He must have fallen through one of the broken floorboards. Taller than ever, mud on his trouser legs, spruce needles in his hair, Len reared over Caleb in the kitchen.
“Have you been leading us on the whole time?” Len’s face was white and any trace of sympathy had drained from it.
Tony appeared in front of Caleb, pushing him up against the wall, hands at his throat, crying, “Where are the particulates? Forget your boss. Take us to the lab. There’s gotta be a lab. They manufacture them here, right? So we can get our hands on them ourselves.”
The whump of the back door made them all jump.
It wasn’t the old man who emerged from the shadows but Anna in black boots and jeans and white trench coat, an actual flashlight, not her phone, held in one hand. Her teeth glittered and she did not look happy as she shone the flashlight beam right into Caleb’s eyes. “So this is where you are.” She might have walked all the way from Tom’s Neck, spotted the parked car, followed their footsteps. She, too, had betrayed him, playing along at the old man’s game.
. . .
From the punt, halfway across the cove, Miranda pushed into each stroke, Frank rowing with her, both of them facing where they’d come from, backs to what lay ahead. On their way over, as they’d heaved the oars in their tole pins, she had watched her father’s quad roar down the lane. His sharp-eyed stare had followed them but Miranda wasn’t able to lift a hand to wave, and anyway waving wasn’t what she felt like doing. Where would he think they were going?
From inside the house, through the salt-smeared windows, he’d have been able to see them pull at last around the lip of land that led into Seal Cove where he and she used to go ashore. If he kept watching, he’d have glimpsed them on the shore path, approaching Cape House and Caleb — as he’d expressly forbidden Miranda from doing.
Yet why did her father have the right to determine who she spoke to and when? The idea now seemed outlandish. All Miranda had told Frank as they rowed, uncertain where her loyalties lay, was that there were difficulties between the two families, which made her nervous about talking to Caleb. It seemed hard to imagine telling Frank that her father had forbidden her from speaking to him, because Frank might reasonably ask why she had given in to her father’s orders for so long without resistance. Then, when she broke her father’s rule and approached Caleb outside Cape House, Caleb had yelled at her, and run away, which made her desire to move beyond the break feel like the wrong one.
Once they were on the far side of the cove, Frank had wanted to keep going. Could they reach the road beyond the washout and walk to the next village, what was it called, it had a funny name. Miranda yearned to return home. The pull felt like it was exerted by her father and she didn’t know how to resist it. At last, with Frank’s agreement, they set off back across the water, fighting tide and wind, and staggered ashore, their legs like jelly.
At the house, her father greeted them, a host welcoming long-lost guests, and didn’t ask Miranda what she’d been up to, which surprised her, but at least his silence didn’t force her to lie.
As she entered the kitchen, arms and hands aching from the row, everything felt altered — who her father was, who Frank was, who she was. Was it really the same room? The same life? A plume of steam rose from the kettle. It was as if she needed to re-encounter her father in the light of Frank’s words, reassess him, assure herself that he was still her father. To be in the same room with him was instantly like being touched. He was dropping tea bags into the pot. Was he truly planning something in collusion with Frank’s father? Had he really brought Frank’s father to the island?
“Hard lop out there,” Alan said as Ella lapped from her water bowl. “Still a following sea —” which meant the sea still had the force of the storm in it. “You must have got some exercise. Seen any accidentals, Frank?”
Did he think this was why they’d crossed the cove? Possibly. Yes. Of course. Miranda had forgotten about the birds.
“Not yet, but I’m not giving up.” Frank examined his palms, which had blisters on them, and the sight sent Miranda speeding upstairs to scrabble for blister bandages in the bathroom cabinet.
From below she heard her father say, “You’ll have a few scars by the time you leave this place,” to which Frank replied something about being wounded for a good cause.
They were both at the table, nursing mugs of tea, when she returned, and her father was asking Frank, “So what has Miranda taught you?”
“Some things about the wind,” Frank said, his black hair tufted and his cheeks wind-chapped, looking up at her with a sly grin.
She couldn’t keep her eyes off Frank or her father. Nothing was what it seemed. Frank, a billionaire’s son, sat in her kitchen, in a wool sweater knit by Mary Green, pressing a blister bandage to his palm, hiding the true reason for his arrival. Her father, rumpled and bearded, who kept an eye on the weather always, had likely conducted a few weather-related experiments, but was he actually looking for a way to cover the entire planet in a haze of tiny particles in order to cool the air? Everything felt incredible, indescribable. Even when her father handed her a steaming mug of tea, Miranda was too restless to sit. Yet with every step she took, she bumped into another secret.
Somehow she had to find a way to speak to her father about all this, ask him questions. But not in front of Frank. It was like knowing things without knowing what she knew, knowing without thinking. She’d overheard snippets over the years. Her father must intuit this. What did he think she understood? Did he believe he’d truly wrapped her in a haze that kept out so much, so much about the weather that surrounded them and pressed on every element of their lives? How deeply was the world in trouble? Did her father, pulling back the tea towel to check on the rising bread dough he’d somehow whipped up in their absence, have any idea who Frank really was? Someone had sent Frank a letter. Her father had sent other people mysterious letters. Did this mean he’d sent Frank a letter — Miranda couldn’t decide, though the thought was dizzying.
Her father asked Frank, “So what do you think of our set-up out here?”
“Awesome. Your self-sufficiency’s amazing. And your food security. Miranda was showing me her vegetable garden. I hope I have a chance to taste some of its bounty.” Nevertheless Frank cast a glance over his shoulder at the rifle in its rack above the kitchen door.
“Can you imagine living such a life in a place like this?”
“Can I?” Frank faltered. “I don’t know. I’ve —”
Her father interrupted Frank by rising to his feet. “Frank, I’ve a yen to show you something. Stay where you are and close your eyes. Wait, I have a better idea. Stay there. Keep your eyes closed. Miranda?”
He whispered in her ear. Her father was often asking people to do things. Giving orders. Asking her to do things. This struck Miranda with sudden force. Only that morning she’d run his errand into Pummelly without question, delivered his message to Caleb. Why did her father need a scarf? She could refuse him, but she went into the mud room, pulled from a hook a mauve scarf she’d knitted and brought it obediently back to the kitchen, ashamed of herself.
When Alan attempted to wrap the scarf around Frank’s eyes, Frank jumped to his feet, head hurtling towards the rafters. “What are you doing?”
“Indulge my whimsy here, Frank. I want to give you a particular sensory experience, compel you to focus on something other than sight, and since I barely know you, I’m not convinced, when I ask you to close your eyes, that I can trust you not to peek. How trustworthy are you really, Frank?”
“No blindfold,” said Frank. “No bondage in the middle of the afternoon, thanks very much. I’ll keep my eyes closed, I promise.”
Frank’s eyelids flickered as, from the utility room, came the suction of the freezer door opening and shutting, the metallic clang of hammer against chisel, the knock of chisel against ice. With her father out of the room, Frank could have opened his eyes and offered Miranda a querying look, but he didn’t. The next moment her father returned, bearing a saucer full of ice chips, like a magician, calling attention one place while something more crucial was no doubt happening somewhere else.
When he asked Frank to open his mouth, again Frank started to his feet, eyes wide open.
“Come on, Frank. Why so paranoid? You’d think I was trying to poison you.”
Maybe it was in Frank’s nature to question any figure of authority, Miranda thought.
“It’s ice,” her father said. “I’ll take a chip, Miranda here will take one. We’ll each put an ice chip on our tongue.”
Her father was someone who liked exercising authority. Had he always been this way or had it become more pronounced since they’d come to the island or was it simply that Miranda was noticing this aspect of him with new acuteness, a sudden pressure against her sternum?
“It really is
just ice, I promise,” she said, placing an ice chip on her own tongue where it fizzed and softly popped. Open eyes fixed on her now, as if to say, I’m trusting you, which felt like both gift and burden, Frank did as she did.
“All I want you to do, Frank, is tell me where the ice comes from.” Alan set the saucer on the table.
“Where it comes from.”
“That’s right.”
“I’m assuming water is not the answer.”
“Let’s just say it’s not the answer I’m looking for.”
“Okay, you want somewhere spatial, like geographic, like a place?”
“Partly geographic and partly material, I’d say.”
“That’s oblique, and the answer is probably not out of your freezer or your tap, so, like, your yard in the middle of winter?”
“In the general direction yet not correct, I’m afraid. Feel it in your mouth. Let yourself pay attention to it.”
“It tastes a bit salty,” Frank said after a minute, the ice giving him a lisp. Every so often his gaze checked in with Miranda, as if seeking guidance or reassurance, which hollowed out a new space inside her. “Does it come from the sea?”
“Warmer,” Alan said with a catch in his voice that Miranda heard clearly. She understood in part what her father was up to, even if his methods seemed bizarre.
The first iceberg she’d seen, her first summer in the cove, had been a huge blue slab, like a broken-off piece of a giant’s wall that gained turquoise glints and a bright glaze as it melted in the sunlight, floating slowly past and vanishing southerly into the misty air. She’d been awestruck at the sight. Then, as the years passed, she’d grown used to seeing them. No, it was impossible ever to grow truly used to the icebergs even when it became commonplace to step out the door on an early summer day, look towards the ocean, and there one was, tugged along by the current, slowly twisting, dense white, then porous aquamarine as the light shifted. Some years there were so many, a steady stream for weeks and weeks, far out or closer, craggy, sepulchral, growing shiny in the sun as they melted. Never more icebergs than the summer before last, when she and Caleb had taken the speedboat out to look at all those marooned in the bay. This year there’d been almost none, the icebergs melting farther north or far offshore. Suddenly, unable to bear any longer her father’s game, if that was what it was, or Frank’s befuddlement, Miranda burst out, “It’s iceberg ice, from off the Greenland ice sheet, that floats south and washes into the cove.”
Blaze Island Page 24
