“But if Mom’s in one of her moods, surely she’s better off being with us?” Adam said. He cleared his throat and stuffed a forkful of food into his mouth, but the pleading in his voice was obvious enough.
Laura placed her hand on his and Adam blushed. “Of course she is,” Laura said. “And she will be. But, you know, she’s only just been told about some of this new DNA stuff … who you are, who she is. It’s a big deal and it’s come as a bit of a shock to her, and it’s going to take a while to sink in. Also, we really need to keep you apart while we do some preliminary tests on you guys…”
“Tests?” Rachel looked worried suddenly. “What kind of—?”
Laura jumped in quickly to reassure her. “No, no, nothing to worry about… You remember when I took DNA samples from you? Swabs and a bit of hair. Just stuff like that, and a few mental tests to see where your heads are at. You see, your mum, being your closest relative, is of great interest to us. Basic tests have shown that, although a lot of her genetic make-up is the same as yours and Adam’s, she doesn’t carry the … different gene.”
“You mean the alien gene?” Rachel asked bluntly. Laura flinched slightly at the word.
“We don’t know that,” she said. “But what we do know is that this different gene is probably what we call a recessive gene; something that has lain dormant for many years and only surfaced again when two other sets of genes – those of your grandparents – came together. It’s like a family of dark-haired people suddenly producing a redhead, or a white couple producing a black child.
“Or twins?” Adam said.
“Precisely,” Laura continued. “And although the gene seems to have skipped your mum, we still need to see what similarities you share with her – thought patterns, emotional responses and so on – so we can see where the real differences lie. And to do that we need to run the same tests on her. But until we know how far your mental powers stretch, we can’t let the three of you too close together, or it might interfere with our results. Does that make sense?”
Rachel shrugged. It didn’t make any less sense than anything else. “So how long will these tests take?” she asked.
“Probably just a few days,” Laura said. “We’ll start tomorrow and see how we go. Then you can see your mum, I promise.”
Rachel nodded slowly, but she was instinctively worried by the idea of tests, no matter how harmless Laura said they might be. She tried to project these thoughts on to her brother, to see if he shared any of them but, as hard as she tried, she could make no contact. He didn’t even raise his head from his breakfast. He suddenly looked sleepy.
The lines of communication between her and Adam were down. Rachel wondered if there had been something in his food … in her food?
She was about to take the last mouthful of yoghurt, then stopped herself. She looked across at the worktop where Mr Cheung had been cooking.
There, apparently lapping at a spilt drop of maple syrup, was a large bee. As Rachel stared, she saw the insect’s antennae twitch, watched as it moved round to face her…
Suddenly, Mr Cheung reappeared from the larder, and hurrying across the kitchen, he brought the spatula down with a “splat” on the stainless steel worktop before Rachel or Adam could stop him.
He grinned at the twins as he wiped the bee away with a cloth and flicked the crushed body into the steel bin.
“Dead!” he announced.
The car is driving through the dark. Diagonal droplets of rain rush through the beam of the headlights and explode on the windscreen. The man at the wheel leans forward, trying to see better as the car tears round the tight bends of the hillside road. The woman next to him wipes in vain at the misty screen with a tissue. In the back seat the twins hold on tight to each other for comfort.
There are lights behind them, milky and blurred, fractured in the rear-view mirror. They are being followed. The man at the wheel is certain now – now that they have taken this remote road that climbs higher and higher, narrower and narrower, going nowhere.
The lights come closer and the man drives faster, then swerves. There are rocks on the road, suddenly vivid and jagged in the headlights. The car skids and, as if in slow motion, careers over the edge and down the bank towards the dark lake.
The woman cranes her neck round to look at her terrified children for the last time, her mouth fixed in a horrified “O”. The twins’ mouths mimic their mother’s, but opening and shutting like those of baby birds about to be torn from their nest; their howls drowned out by the scream of rock on metal and the shattering of glass.
The car turns on its side, then on to its roof, the front wing hitting a huge boulder, and the vehicle flips nose to tail into the blackness of the water, making barely a splash. Beneath the surface, the mother’s screams fall silent; her voice no more than bubbles. In the darkness, lit only by the car’s headlamps, strands of hair swirl across her face like seaweed. Blood streams from the man’s head: mushrooming red clouds in the water. Four small fists pummel silently against the back windows, desperate to live.
Flying high above, Rachel sees the silver shape of the car as it slips into the depths like a slow and heavy fish. Two bubbles burst through the water like globes of mercury, and she sees two small bodies kicking and thrashing, floating to the surface, spotlit by the headlights of the black car that waits on the road above.
Rachel sat bolt upright.
She was soaking wet and shaking as she ran her fingers through her hair, which was thick and sweaty. She must have drifted off. She had felt so sleepy after that bellyful of food, and the room was so warm.
Laura had told her she must rest, that it would take her a few days to get back to normal. Normal? Rachel wondered if she would ever feel normal again. She looked round the familiar bedroom with its unfamiliar feeling, searching in vain for something that might control the temperature. She realized that, although she still couldn’t hear her brother’s thoughts, she had started dreaming again.
It was nothing to be grateful for.
The dream, with its nightmarish images of drowning in dark water, had left her with a cold, sickening feeling of panic.
Who were the twins in the car?
They certainly hadn’t been her and Adam; they had never been in a crash, and the man and woman in the car hadn’t been their parents. Maybe the twins represented her and Adam? Rachel thought. Maybe it was just a nightmare about being torn from your parents? She screwed her eyes shut and strained to recall the images from the dream. She had felt as though she’d been in the car and high above it, watching each terrible moment like the slow-motion replay of a film. She recalled the faces, the inside of the car, with its scuffed leather seats and the green lights on the dashboard. She could smell the damp. She could see purple flowers sprouting among the rocks.
Then she remembered a curious detail. The little girl on the back seat had been wrapped in a plaid blanket, held together by a large, gold brooch.
A brooch in the shape of a Triskellion.
* * *
Laura Sullivan sat in her office, staring at the screen of her laptop and wrestling with her conscience.
She had never questioned her own motives before, but it was becoming increasingly difficult not to. Surely she had done the right thing in bringing the kids here? They wouldn’t have been safe in Triskellion after all, and going back to the States would certainly have been dangerous for them. Laura instinctively felt that something was wrong in the US. Van der Zee was certainly under pressure from his bosses to send Rachel and Adam over for more “invasive” testing, but so far he had backed Laura by keeping the twins in the UK. Laura had argued that they needed to be observed at close quarters, to be allowed to relax and develop in this safe environment with their mother near by. But was it right to be medicating them?
Laura shook her head, annoyed that she was not being honest with herself. They may not have run surgical tests on the twins, as she was sure was the intention of the Flight Trust hawks in the States, but they
were drugging them. It couldn’t be right.
She had bonded with Rachel and Adam and was sure that they felt the same way. She wanted to protect them, but there was no denying that they were the most important scientific find of the century. Maybe the most important scientific find ever. The project needed to keep the kids under control, she accepted that, but they had insisted on keeping them sedated for four days already while they did the scans. Today had been the twins’ first day awake, and Laura could see that Rachel and Adam were disorientated and not quite up to speed. Laura had protested but the project was still tranquilizing their food. At least they had agreed to reduce the dose.
She slammed the lid of her laptop closed and stared at the wall. This wasn’t archaeology; this was a violation of the kids’ rights. Their childhoods had been hijacked, and she knew that she was one of the hijackers.
She’d thought her life would be very different…
She remembered the sun-bleached days of her own childhood in Perth. While her sister had played with dolls, Laura had walked around the yard in Subiaco, giving the rocks names and memorizing every dinosaur from the Triassic Period to the Cretaceous.
Even then, she had known that her future would revolve around her obsession with the past.
She remembered hunting for fossils, and how that had got her interested in the Aboriginal sites, the Songlines and the Dreaming stories. Invisible maps of the ancient landscape that the tribesmen kept alive in their heads or in songs and stories. They held the past, the present and the future in their minds. In time she had become intrigued by sacred sites in other parts of the world: in caves and long-forgotten tombs, in Bronze Age burial-grounds.
And one day, some odd pieces of information had started to add up.
That had been when the American guy at the University of Western Australia had approached her to work for the Hope Project. He’d read a few of her papers and had said that they were working along the same lines. In return for open access to her work, the Hope Project had offered Laura complete freedom to continue her research wherever she chose, saying it would open doors for her where necessary.
As someone who hated the red tape involved in gaining permission to dig foreign sites, Laura had welcomed the access-all-areas ticket that the Hope Project had seemed to offer. And while it had never been a priority, it had to be said that the large sums of money which appeared in her bank account overnight had made a big difference to someone who had lived on educational grants for ten years. Looking back, it had seemed like a golden opportunity.
And now she was complicit in the drugging of children.
Laura opened her computer again. She checked her email and then clicked on to her webcam. She was glad to see Rachel up and about and pacing her room, rather than lying dormant as she had been for the past six hours.
Laura watched for a few minutes. She slurped at the coffee she’d made earlier, but it was stone cold.
Rachel appeared to be looking for something, waving her hand in front of light bulbs and the air-conditioning vent. She looked as if she was searching for a bug … or a camera. No sooner had Laura thought it, than Rachel spun round and looked up to the corner of the room and stared straight into the hidden lens of Laura’s webcam.
Laura Sullivan felt herself flush hot, exposed, as Rachel climbed on a chair, then, waving a single finger in front of the camera lens as if to say “caught you,” plugged up the spy hole with a wad of chewing gum.
Laura let out a sigh of annoyance as the picture on her screen went black; at the same time, she felt a sneaking admiration for Rachel that was stronger than the irritation. There was no keeping a good girl down, she thought. Maybe she did need sedating a little longer.
Like the others had.
Rachel slammed the door behind her, furious at having discovered the spy camera, and angry at herself for not having discovered it sooner. She had felt for a while that she was being watched. It was no less than she had expected really, but still, to have it confirmed enraged her beyond belief. Could she trust no one? She was surprised to find that her room hadn’t been locked.
She stormed down the corridor, rapped on her brother’s door and threw it open without waiting for an answer.
“They’re spying on us, Adam!” she shouted, knowing full well that Adam’s room would be wired too. “Adam…?” She stepped into the room, but her brother was missing – his messy bed the only evidence that he had ever been there at all. Rachel slammed the door closed again and stamped off along the hallway that Laura had taken them down when they’d gone for breakfast.
Turning right towards the older part of the building, Rachel suddenly found herself face to face with a woman in a white lab coat. The woman, who was no taller than Rachel, looked shocked and backed against the wall, fumbling in her pockets for a set of small earphones and trying to avoid eye contact.
Rachel glanced at the double doors that led through to the kitchen and which could only be opened with a passkey.
Her anger made her bold.
“Open that door for me, please,” she said to the woman. The woman looked frightened. She tried to avoid Rachel and slip round her, but Rachel cut off her escape with her own body. “I said, open the door! I’m not a prisoner; I’m a free person!”
The woman looked up briefly, her eyes darting left and right, trying frantically to avoid Rachel’s gaze. “We’re not… We’re not meant to talk to you.”
She tried again to escape, but Rachel dropped her shoulder and barged the woman back against the wall.
“Where’s Adam? Where’s my brother?” Rachel grabbed the back of the woman’s short, bobbed hair, pulled her head back and glared straight into her face.
“Please! We’re not even meant to look at you,” the woman said.
Rachel gave the short hair a good yank. “Open it. Now!” She pulled the hair again for good measure, talking close; looking hard into the woman’s eyes. Suddenly the resistance went from the woman’s body. She ceased struggling and turned calmly back towards the door, swiping her passkey in the slot on the wall.
“There you go,” she said, pushing open one of the doors, before smiling weakly at Rachel and continuing on her original path as if nothing had happened.
Rachel stood in the open doorway and watched her go. She was astonished at the sudden capitulation and felt guilty for the violence she’d used to make it happen.
“Sorry!” she shouted. But the woman didn’t look back.
Rachel walked on down the corridor and into the empty kitchen. Mr Cheung’s head appeared from behind the plastic curtains of the walk-in larder.
“Hi, Rachel. Hungry?”
“No, thank you,” Rachel said briskly. “I’m looking for my brother.” She continued past the breakfast bar and headed for the swing doors that led out of the kitchen on the other side.
Mr Cheung tensed, and stepped towards her. “Rachel, I’m sorry … I don’t think…”
Rachel held up her hand imperiously, silencing the chef, then pushed through the double doors.
They led through to another part of the building, clearly older, with a thickly carpeted floor and pictures on the wall. Rachel could smell woodsmoke and hear faint classical music coming from somewhere at the end of the passage.
She followed the sound to an open doorway. Inside, the room was large and comfortable, with a roaring log fire and huge, over-stuffed armchairs and sofas. On the mantlepiece over the fire sat several antique-looking clocks, their workings exposed beneath glass domes. Glancing around the room, Rachel could see contraptions and mechanical figures of varying shapes and sizes perched on shelves in alcoves on either side of the fireplace. Sitting in one of the big chairs, behind a coffee table in front of the fire, was a middle-aged black man. He raised his head to look at her and smiled.
“Hello, Rachel,” he said. His voice was a comforting, low rumble: a reassuring voice, an American voice. The man stood up and gestured for her to join him at the fireside. “Shut the door, would you?”
Rachel did as she was asked and stepped forward tentatively.
“Hi, Rachel,” her brother said, his head popping over the back of the chair that had been concealing him.
“Come and sit down,” the man said. “I’ve just been getting to know Adam a little. I’m Dr Clay Van der Zee.” He held out his hand. “I guess I’m what you would call Head of Research here at Hope. Welcome.”
Rachel shook his hand, noticing that it was smooth and dry and that his fingernails were very clean.
He ushered her into a richly upholstered chair next to Adam. “Well, your brother’s got me well and truly beat,” he said. He pointed to a board game set out on the table in front of him.
Adam grinned.
“It usually takes smart people at least eight attempts to figure this game out,” Van der Zee said. He shook his head in mock amazement. “Adam’s getting it in two.”
Rachel recognized the game, or at least the type of game. There had been a version of it at the holiday house they used to stay in at Cape Cod. The board had had ten rows of four small holes. In one row, a player would set up a code of four colours using pegs concealed behind a small shield. Then his opponent would try to guess the hidden combination by placing coloured pegs into the remaining holes on the board. The colour code could be worked out logically, by a process of elimination. But this game looked more difficult. There were six colours to choose from, which meant that there were virtually endless permutations. To get it in two would be sheer luck … or something else.
“Adam’s always been good at that kind of thing,” Rachel said. Adam nodded, not about to contradict evidence of his own genius.
“How about you, Rachel?” Van der Zee said. “Fancy a game?” He turned the board towards her. “Hide your eyes, I’ll set one for you.”
Rachel felt childish covering her eyes while the man shielded the coloured pegs with his hand. When he was ready, he tapped her on the knee enthusiastically and nodded. Rachel looked up into Van der Zee’s dark eyes. He reminded her of a spaniel: a little sadness dragging at the corners of his eyelids, but warm, friendly and eager to please.
The Burning Page 3
