by Ken MacLeod
He thought, for a moment, about the car at the foot of the drive, and then dismissed it. The vehicle was relevant to the social-services scenario, not to this. If the police were looking for him and Hope, there was nowhere to drive to. Four roads led out of the village. Two were dead ends, on different sides of the same small peninsula. The other two – the Stornoway road over the bridge, and the Timsgarry road up the glen – offered more possibilities but for the same reason would be the first to be blocked. And the car would in any case be tracked automatically.
His mind was made up.
‘We’re going for a walk up the hill,’ he said. ‘Let’s turn off our phones. Nick, do you want to see how people could find their way, before GPS?’
‘Yes,’ said Nick, doubtfully.
Hugh switched off his phone. Hope took out her glasses, looked at them almost helplessly for a moment, then dashed back into the house and came out without them.
‘Let’s go,’ she said, clutching Nick’s hand.
Hugh led them around the back of the house and up the slope to the fence. He lifted Nick over, pushed the top wire down for Hope, then vaulted the fence himself. He looked at the roads, saw no police cars, and set off up the steep, rocky, heather-covered slope. At this point he didn’t need the map; he remembered the route just fine, partly because it was the only sensible way to go. He watched Nick go a few steps ahead, and let Hope set the pace as she walked beside him.
‘Do you have a plan?’ Hope asked.
He had, but he wasn’t telling her.
‘To hide out in the hills. Shelter in that tunnel I told you about. At least until we know what’s going on.’
‘Hours? Days?’
‘Not days,’ Hugh said. ‘Maybe overnight.’
‘We won’t find out what’s going on without you turning your phone on. And then we’ll be located in minutes.’
Hugh slapped his hip. ‘I have a radio. If the police are looking for us, it’ll be on the local news.’
‘Why did they raid our flat? I mean, they must know we’re here anyway.’
‘Looking for evidence.’
‘Evidence of what?’
‘That terrorism nonsense.’
‘Oh, I know. I’m not kidding myself. I’ve been so worried about that. Ever since that call yesterday.’
‘What call yesterday?’
‘It was that woman who spoke to you before. Geena. She was using a friend’s phone, to get around the block. Same old thing about the magic gene. Her friend claimed he’d run a sim that showed you could see tachyons, or something. I just told her the same answer as I gave you. Not interested.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Hugh tried not to sound as surprised and indignant as he felt.
‘I didn’t think it was worth bothering you about,’ Hope said. ‘But now…’
‘Oh yes, but now!’ said Hugh. ‘Fuck!’
He didn’t need to spell it out. Something about that call had tipped Hope’s personal profile over the edge into something of active interest. The raid on their flat would be only one part of the response: the police in Stornoway would no doubt have been alerted before the raid even took place, and were almost certainly already on their way.
‘Sorry,’ said Hope.
‘Can’t be helped.’ He smiled sidelong at her, put an arm around her shoulders. For a moment she leaned against him, then they walked on.
How long would it be, Hugh wondered, before she realised that hiding in the hills would be impossible for more than a few hours, that running away was not going to help their case at all, that the plan he’d told her made no sense whatsoever and that his secret plan would sound delusional even to him, were he to speak it aloud?
He looked back again. Still no sign of pursuit.
They reached the top of the hill after about half an hour’s climbing. The smirr of drizzle had drifted inland. Out to the north and west, the sky had cleared. Hugh didn’t welcome the blue.
They all paused, taking a breath. Hugh took out the binoculars and scanned the roads. Nothing, nothing… wait. There. A police car came around the shoulder of the far hill, on the Stornoway road. No flashing light, no siren. No rush. No need, Hugh thought bitterly. He nudged Hope, and pointed. She suppressed a gasp.
Hugh stepped back from the skyline and walked a few yards on to the plateau.
‘Now,’ he said to Nick, ‘let me show you how we find our way with just a compass and a map.’
He didn’t really need the map, nor the waste of the minute or two spent taking the compass bearing and explaining the process to Nick. He could see the lochs, way ahead across the wilderness of boulder and outcrop, bog and bracken, heather and moss. But somehow it had seemed important to include the boy in it, to show him at least the rudiments of a skill that he might not otherwise come to know about, one small element of independence from the satellite-surveillance world. And more urgently, to make him feel part of this, involved and not just dragged along.
Hope passed Nick a water bottle, then a chocolate bar. She offered one to Hugh. He shook his head. On they went. Hugh took to swinging Nick across dips and holes in the peat and clefts in the rock. The sun was out now, the shadows short. Hugh opened his jacket, and took his hat off, then put it back on again.
From above, he heard a faint, persistent buzz. He looked up, and back. The drone was climbing in an ascending, widening spiral above the village and its surrounding hills. Its next turn would take it almost overhead. There was nothing to be done about it. Nick looked delighted at the sight.
‘What are they looking for?’ he asked.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Hugh. ‘Maybe someone’s got lost on the hills.’
Now Nick looked worried.
‘Or maybe they’re just practising,’ said Hope.
They reached the loch. Hugh stopped, checked the map and the compass, confirming his memory.
‘That way,’ he said.
They hurried around the shore of the small loch, and on across the rough, rocky ground.
The buzz of the drone became louder. They all looked back. The drone swooped towards them like some predatory pterodactyl. Nick cried out, his arm shielding his face. The drone passed a few metres overhead, a small unmanned microlight about a metre and a half in wingspan, then soared to circle high above.
‘Are they looking for us?’ Nick asked.
‘We’re not lost,’ said Hope. ‘So they must be practising.’
Hugh looked behind him again, and saw five figures just reaching the top of the hill, skylined. They weren’t even running. They were that confident. Hope saw them too.
‘This is useless,’ she said. Nick was as usual a few paces ahead, unaware of the pursuit, out of earshot of her low voice. ‘We can’t hide.’
‘We can,’ said Hugh. ‘There is a place.’
‘I knew this,’ said Hope. ‘I knew that’s where you’re taking us. Your bright land.’
‘You do realise,’ he said, ‘that this is completely insane?’
‘No, I don’t,’ she told him, fiercely. ‘I believe you more than you believe yourself.’
Hugh grinned at her. Together they ran a few steps forward, to where Nick hesitated at a hollow in the heather, and caught a hand on each side and swung and jumped at the same time.
‘Nearly there,’ said Hugh.
‘Nearly there,’ Hope echoed.
She didn’t believe him at all, Hugh thought. It would have alarmed him if she had. He wouldn’t have wanted her caught up in it, turning his forlorn hope – hah! – into a folie à deux. She was coming along, she was going along with this, because she needed to know, to see for herself whatever it was that had so shaped his life, and indirectly her own.
She couldn’t, surely, expect to escape, into that past or future or parallel world from which his visions came? At some level he, he knew, didn’t expect to either. He just wanted to give them a run for it.
He looked behind. Five police officers, now about half a kilometre away.<
br />
Up ahead, Nick stopped and looked back, and then pointed.
‘Dad! Mum! There’s policemen behind us!’
Hope and Hugh hurried up.
‘It’s all right,’ said Hope. ‘They must be looking for someone. Maybe we can help them.’
Hugh looked down. Nick had stopped because he’d reached the edge of a hollow far too wide for him to jump over, and almost two metres deep.
It was the place.
22. The Light at the End of the Tunnel
‘It’s a game,’ Hugh said. ‘The police are practising finding people on the moor. And here’s how we can help them. We’ll hide, and make it more interesting.’
‘Where can we hide?’ Nick asked.
‘Right here,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ll show you.’
He sat down on the edge, then pushed himself off, landing with a lurch. He turned and lifted Nick down, then caught Hope under the shoulders as she slithered over the bank. To the pursuers they must have simply disappeared into the ground. Even the drone was, at that moment, below their skyline. Hugh looked quickly to left and right. The dark rectangular opening was still there.
‘Let’s hide in here.’
Hope and Nick followed him as he ducked into the culvert’s entrance. Nick hung back, just inside.
‘Don’t like it,’ he said. ‘Dark.’
‘It’s all right,’ Hugh said. ‘I came here when I was a boy, and it’s all right. There’s something really exciting inside. Have you got your torch?’
Nick reached into a coat pocket and pulled out a yellow plastic torch and switched it on. Hugh turned away, blinking at the after-image, and switched on his own torch. Hope’s beam joined it, wavering around the floor and walls.
The floor was damp, and the smells were stronger than he remembered. Old concrete, mould, rotted vegetation, droppings that had dried and then got wet again. He had to bend almost double to walk forward. He looked behind, at Hope and Nick huddled together. Hope looked excited, surprised, Nick a little scared.
‘I’ll go in front,’ he said. ‘Nick behind me, OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Hope, easing Nick forward.
They’d taken only a step or two when the drone’s buzz came out of nowhere behind them, loud in the tunnel, a waft of air disturbing the floor litter. Hugh could imagine the drone banking to angle its camera, skimming the lip of the gully, and the cops running. He hastened forward, torch beam probing ahead. The downward slope and rightward curve were just as he recalled, his progress more uncomfortable with his adult height, but quicker.
He saw the light ahead, and stopped, switching off his torch. Nick bumped against the back of his legs.
‘Do you see it?’ Hugh said, looking back. ‘The light.’
‘Yes,’ said Nick.
Hope was peering forward, over Nick’s head, and had just opened her mouth to say something when a much brighter light shone behind her. An amplified voice boomed down the tunnel, echoing against the sides, distorted but plain enough:
‘Armed police! Come out at once! Throw out your weapon!’
‘What bloody weapon?’ said Hope.
Hugh gave her a feral grin, and slapped his jacket pocket.
‘Oh God,’ said Hope. ‘What use is that?’
‘It’s not for them,’ Hugh said. ‘Come on!’
And with that he lowered his head and shoulders and almost ran, knees partly bent, in an ape-like shamble. The light ahead became brighter than the light behind. He felt the fresh air on his face again. He guessed Hope felt it too; he heard her gasp.
Another shout echoed down the tunnel.
Hugh ignored it. The light was now plainly a rectangular opening a few metres ahead.
‘Hugh,’ Hope said, ‘they’re coming after us!’
He looked backward. Were those shadows, moving, on the sides of the tunnel, not far behind?
‘Nearly there!’ he said.
He flashed an encouraging grin at Nick. The boy didn’t look back at him. His gaze was fixed on the light ahead. Behind Nick, Hope was stumbling along, in the same half-crouch, torch swaying in front of her, head down. Hugh couldn’t see her face.
He looked ahead and found himself a step or two from the door in the hill. He reached back, catching Nick’s hand, and drew forward, squeezing to one side so that Nick could press in alongside him and look too. Side by side they took the final few steps, and gazed out.
Hugh saw the same landscape as he’d seen before, but this time in summer, the steep hillside covered not with snow but with heather and gorse and patches of grass speckled with daisies and buttercups. Woodsmoke drifted above the small houses and huts in the middle distance, and some way beyond them, the sea-loch shone blue.
For a moment, woodsmoke apart, it could have been static scenery. Then the bat-like shape of a hang-glider rushed into the view, as if it had just been launched from a little farther uphill on the slope behind and above their heads. Hugh saw the pilot’s legs swing to the side as the glider banked and passed out of view.
‘Wow!’ said Nick. ‘It’s real!’ He shaded his eyes, leaning forward, peering out.
Hope had come to a halt right behind. She reached forward and gripped Nick’s shoulders.
‘Hugh!’ she groaned. ‘Please! Don’t do this to us!’
Her voice didn’t echo. The heavy footsteps not far behind her did. Over his shoulder, over her shoulder, Hugh saw the swaying lights, the shadowed figures moving slowly forward. As he looked back, they came to a halt. They might have been twenty metres away.
‘Don’t do what?’ Hugh asked.
‘Don’t wade into that pool.’
‘Pool? There’s no pool.’ He turned back to the light, waving a hand at the opening. ‘It’s – it’s what I told you I saw long ago. It’s open! We can go through!’
‘There’s nothing there, Hugh.’ She was still clutching Nick’s shoulders, but she looked as if she wanted to grab Hugh’s and shake him. ‘It’s just water, and the torchlight shining off it. It’s deep, it must be, the slope goes sharp down and the roof comes down to the top of the water. You’ll drown, and you’ll drown Nick.’
‘No, Mummy!’ Nick cried. ‘It’s real! It’s not a picture! It’s a nice place! Why can’t you see it?’
‘I can’t see it because it’s not real,’ Hope said, to Hugh rather than to Nick.
Hugh looked from her beseeching, angry, tearful face to the hills and the blue sky outside. He felt dismayed and defeated.
From behind him a voice boomed:
‘Throw down your weapon! Raise your hands and turn around!’
‘Oh, fuck this!’ Hugh snarled. He reached into his pocket, pushing his hand down hard in the squeeze between him and Nick, and pulled out the air pistol. He passed it to his other hand and groped for the ammo box. It might have seemed to Hope he was trying to turn around, to bring the futile weapon to bear.
‘No!’ Hope cried. ‘Hugh, no!’
She let go of one of Nick’s shoulders and lunged to grab Hugh’s wrist. He evaded her, and threw pistol and carton as far away as he could in front of him. He thought he heard a clink as the pistol hit the ground outside; a skitter of metal on rock. Then he lifted both hands above his head, stepped forward and turned around, blocking Nick between him and Hope. The light from the torches shone straight in his face. He couldn’t see who was holding them.
‘It’s all right!’ he shouted. ‘We’re not armed! We’re coming out!’
‘Stay where you are! Throw your bags and torches forward!’
‘It’s my torch,’ Nick protested, as Hope took it from him.
‘It’s all right,’ Hope whispered. ‘We’ll get them back.’
She slipped the small rucksack from Nick’s shoulders, and unslung her own.
‘We’re doing that now,’ she called out, and tossed the bags forward, then the torches, still shining. Some kind of pole or probe waved above the bags, poked them, then withdrew.
‘Walk forward slowly with your hands in front
of you and away from your sides.’
Then:
‘The child first.’
‘No, Mummy.’
‘He’s afraid,’ Hope shouted back.
‘All right,’ the voice boomed.
They walked forward, Nick upright and straight with his hands up, as if playing soldiers; Hugh and Hope knock-kneed, bowed, arms outspread as wide as the cramped space would permit. In front of them, the shadowed figures and the lights backed away. Hugh took a last look over his shoulder. The light was still there, the door to the bright land.
He turned his head away from it and walked forward, into the different light, the light at the far end of the tunnel.
23. Hope Abandon
Hope emerged from the culvert into the gully, daylight, sunlight, and arrest. Her arms were grabbed the moment she stepped out, and the two policemen rushed her up the gravel slope to the end of the gully in seconds. They cuffed her hands behind her back and ran a scanner up and down her body. She was just able to turn her head enough to see Nick being scooped up by a policewoman and carried, yelling, thrashing and lashing out with all four limbs, to the other end of the gully. Good boy, she thought. Get in a bite while you’re at it. A moment later, Hugh stumbled out and was grabbed too.
Then, to her utter surprise and indignation, she was shoved down on to her knees.
‘Hope Morrison,’ said one of the cops, ‘I am arresting you on suspicion of offences under the Children and Young Persons Protection (Scotland) Act.’
‘What?’ Hope yelped.
‘You do not have to say anything, but anything you do say will be taken down and recorded and may be used in evidence…’
He was a big man with a Lewis accent and the correlated ruddy, freckled features and sandy hair, and looked slightly embarrassed as he recited the formula. Hope turned her head around and looked up at him.
‘Look, this is about the fix! I know it is! I’ll take the bloody fix! It’s in my pocket! Just give me it and some water, you can put it in my mouth yourself if you like.’
