by Peter Høeg
I edge my way to the instrument panel. Kronholm is directly underneath us. The wind farm to the north. The cabin is filled with the ponderous whisper of the enormous blades of the turbines as they rotate.
I remember Jason’s silence on the phone. The sound in the background. Turbine wings. He and the twins are somewhere right below.
I locate the elevator and push it forward. A subtle rush of air issues from the expansion tank. The craft dips and begins to drop. Slowly at first, then faster, the landing strip suddenly looming large.
My father leaps to his feet.
‘Dad,’ I say, ‘what about me and Harald? Why did we almost get killed?’
We pass over the perimeter fence of the landing strip. I aim for a rectangular three-storey structure next to the hangar.
‘We hadn’t got you identified, dear. And Jason—’
I pull back the elevator and a whine of air comes from the tank above. I crawl onto the instrument panel. I wriggle through the opening where the windscreen should be and lower myself carefully until my feet find the running board that goes all the way around the cabin.
The eyes of the three men inside widen. Only now do they realise where I am.
‘It’s her fault,’ says my father. ‘It’s the Effect.’
I point, and their heads turn upwards towards a very small, yet conspicuous rectangular plastic box attached to the ceiling.
‘It’s all rather straightforward,’ I say. ‘A small digital camera, a microphone, two lithium cells and an aerial. The radius is a few kilometres. Hegn’s people installed it in our house on Evighedsvej. I made a minor adjustment. I calibrated the transmitter and hooked it up to my smartphone. Which Laban is holding in his hand. Everything that’s taken place here, from the moment we took off, has gone out directly to those hundred journalists on the roof. It’ll be all over the Internet by now. Laban’s got the list, too. With the four thousand names on it. You’re going to be television stars. In about twenty minutes, I’d say.’
Emerging from the Effect always takes time, as if it were happening in slow motion. Full comprehension of the situation’s gravity will not occur for some minutes, perhaps even hours.
The one who for now comes closest to that realisation is my father. He steps towards me and leans across the instrument panel. My eyes watch his hands.
‘Susan, when I left … when I was forced to leave. I gave you a piece of advice. Make your bite …’
‘… as hard as my bark.’
‘Well, you heeded my words, Susan. This is going to be a tough one, I see.’
I look down. I’m two metres off the roof of what looks like a hangar. I lean inside the cabin and thrust the elevator control back, suddenly, unexpectedly. This time I hear no sound. But above us the balloon expands. The cabin rises instantly. I let go and land on the sloping roof, rolling into the fall, finding purchase and coming to a halt. Above me the craft ascends rapidly into the sky. I stay where I am, flat out on the roof. The wind exerts its force on the wingsail, and soon the craft appears to be drifting towards the north-west, as if abandoned.
I clamber to my feet, and stand for a moment looking out in the direction of the city.
There’s a trapdoor. I descend into darkness.
11
THE STAIRS LEAD me down to a metal door, on the other side of which music is playing. The voice is Edith Piaf’s. Various tracks are begun and abandoned. Eventually, the listener plumps for ‘Non, je ne regrette rien’. I open the door.
The space into which I emerge is big enough to have contained a handball court, though square in shape, illuminated by windows in the roof. Through the windows I catch a final glimpse of the balloon.
The place is crammed with thousands of boxes, folded tarps, small excavators and other machinery, new and largely encased in packing. There are pallets on which garden tractors stand. There are pumps. At the far end of the hall, timber and building materials are stacked to the ceiling.
In the middle of it all sits Jason Alter in a wicker chair. To his left is a low, glass-topped table on which a television set has been placed. Next to the TV is a sub-machine gun with a curving magazine.
I walk towards him. He turns the screen to face me. They’re broadcasting live from the roof of the Radiohuset. A man in a suit is being interviewed. The right-hand corner shows a separate split-screen view of the balloon floating above the Øresund.
‘Where are the twins, Jason?’
He turns off the TV.
‘You won’t have heard of the caracal, Susan. The desert lynx of southern Africa, practically unheard of in Europe. There isn’t even a name for it here. It was what they called your father: Caracal. Do you know why? Because no one ever sees the caracal. You know it’s there. It lives on the red rocks of the savannah, where it will leap three and a half metres into the air to pluck a passing pigeon from flight. You might see the feathers, find the carcass, some traces. But you will never see the beast itself. And now you, Susan, have brought him to confession on live television!’
He shakes his head.
‘Your father has sentenced me to death. On national TV.’
‘There’s a hundred policemen waiting for him when he lands.’
He clicks his teeth.
‘You don’t understand, Susan. The organisation is intact and will remain so. He’ll carry it on from his cell. He could run a country from any prison. An empire. I’ve outlived my usefulness. But for the moment it’s you and me, Susan. I want you to strip for me.’
He’s actually serious.
‘You’ve already bought your way back to life once, as it were, from your own prison. Now you can do so again by being nice to me. Your life, and your children’s.’
His eyes scrutinise me, looking for signs of fear.
‘The twins, Jason.’
He gets to his feet and goes over to a container. He opens its doors. Inside is what looks like a cross between a garden shed and a chamber for curing meat. He opens it and the light inside goes on automatically. The space is lined with smooth, high-fibre bricks and in the middle is a rectangular steel pan. On the pan sits Harald. His eyes are vacant with terror.
‘This is a furnace, for cremating bodies. Brand new. We’re shipping two out to the island. No one lives for ever, not even there.’
The walls are perforated. Through the holes, the gas flames will burst.
He moves on to the next container and opens both sets of doors. Thit is seated with her back against the wall. Both twins are alive.
‘From the first time I saw you, Susan, I’ve wanted to see you naked.’
‘Close the doors so the kids won’t see,’ I tell him.
He thinks about it. Then does as I say.
‘I only get off on independent, mature women. I’ve already chosen the music. Edith Piaf. She does for me what Janis Joplin does. And Billie Holiday. I wish I could have known them. Knowing me would have changed their lives.’
‘Curtailed is the word.’
He laughs.
‘You may be right. They might not have lived as long, but their lives would have been all the more exciting. More intense.’
He unzips his trousers. His erection throbs visibly.
‘Start now. I’m horny.’
A very few times in my life, I’ve found myself confronted with a person impervious to the Effect. Such people are out of reach.
I unbutton my cardigan and step out of my skirt, into a space within myself where I am wholly focused on survival.
He puts Edith Piaf on again. I begin to writhe, though stiffly and with one thing only in my thoughts: how to move closer to him.
My means is my body. The man in front of me may be a ruthless, dispassionate murderer, but I sense very strongly the singular temptation of the female form. The might that resides in the woman’s flesh.
He’s about to explode as I take off my bra.
‘Come here,’ he says. ‘Straddle me.’
I look into his eyes. And in spite of every
thing – the presence of the twins, the proximity of our deaths – I feel desire. Most of what we do in life we do tamely and half-heartedly, indifferent to it all. But the physical lust between the two of us here is pure and electric.
I step out of my knickers. All I have left, in the crook of my arm, is my bag.
‘You’re going to kill us whatever we do.’
I hear myself utter the words. He hears his own reply in the same way. As if the words came not from within us, but from without. The Effect is at work after all.
‘It won’t hurt, Susan. A little jab, that’s all. Like at the doctor’s.’
He tosses his head back:
‘Why am I saying this?’
He leans forward quite as abruptly, and peers at his reflection in the TV screen, as if trying to return himself to reality. He straightens up again and looks at me. His erection has subsided.
‘Hegn said something. About you being able to …’
He laughs, and his member begins to swell again.
‘It’s a turn-on. Like a kind of voodoo.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘And there’s a trance dance to go with it.’
Slowly, I begin to spin, to gyrate. All physicists are fascinated by rotation. Belly dancers. The Whirling Dervish dance of the Mevlevi. The pirouettes of classical ballet. It’s the gyroscopic self-stabilisation of motion.
What I see in my mind’s eye are the rotations of Magrethe Spliid in throwing the discus. And the reason I’ve kept hold of my bag until now is because the crowbar is still inside it.
I’m very close to him now. I move my free hand to the opening of the bag. Halfway through my final rotation I drop to my knees. And strike.
There is little sound. Perhaps it’s because of his hair, the tight, peppery curls at his temples.
And yet I know his skull is smashed. Even if for a moment there is nothing to see.
His eyes are closed. He opens them and looks into mine. What I see in his face is gratitude. At that moment I understand how tight the connection is between contempt for others and contempt for the self.
He gets up from his chair. He picks up the gun from the glass-topped table.
He ought to have fallen. Physically, he ought to have fallen. I can tell that from his eyes. But those who are motivated by something from without, be it from above or from below, will always be capable of going another round.
I grip the crowbar and step towards him.
And then I stop. Part of the left side of his chest is gone. I stare into the thoracic cavity and see a pulsating lung. The diaphragm’s thin sheet of muscle. The abdominal wall.
Then comes a crack of sound, sudden as a gust of wind. His body is hurled three metres to the side, yet deposited upright.
He stands there, turns his head and looks down at himself. A stubby length of artery has affixed itself to the once-white of his shirt.
He removes it meticulously with the thumb and index finger of his left hand, as if it were a wayward piece of pasta dropped from his fork. And then he falls, flat on his face, like a tree felled.
Oskar appears from the left, in an electric wheelchair, so pale and transparent it’s almost as if the wheelchair is visible through his flesh. In his lap he holds a weapon.
I open the doors of the containers. I hear myself mumbling sounds without meaning as my hands investigate my children, feeling to make sure they are whole. I look into their faces, oddly expressionless. Slowly, they rise to their feet.
I put on my clothes. We walk, with Oskar in the wheelchair. Outside, the soldier from the Meteorological Institute is waiting in a golf buggy. He lowers a ramp and Oskar wheels inside. We get in.
A gate in the fence is open. We drive through it and onto the road that runs around the island. There are no people to be seen, the whole area looks abandoned. I stare at the weapon in Oskar’s hands. Its blue coating. The bazooka from Kirsten Klaussen’s wall.
A green boat takes us onboard.
Halfway across the Øresund, Thit and I look at each other. She answers the question I haven’t the courage to ask.
‘He got started,’ she says. ‘But I told him I’d picked up a resistant strain of gonorrhoea from Nagaland. “You’re welcome to stick it inside me,” I said. “As long as you realise it’s going to fall off before you even get to the emergency room at the Department of Tropical Medicine.” He decided against it.’
I look away.
‘Mum. That must be what’s meant by evolution of consciousness. Parents need drill drivers and deck screws. The next generation can get by on intelligence.’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘That must be it.’
The pale-faced young girl in the glass-fronted kiosk is watching TV. The moment she lays eyes on me, she grows paler still. The TV screen shows the prime minister speaking through a barrage of cameras and microphones.
The twins and I walk home. I wouldn’t be able to breathe in a car. The jeep follows on slowly behind. There’s hardly any traffic on Strandvejen. The city is paralysed. The cafés are full of people clustered around TV sets. I pull my scarf around my face. No one sees me, no one recognises me.
We don’t bother ringing the bell at Dorthea’s, we walk straight in. She’s on the sofa in front of the television. We remain standing.
‘It’s spreading like wildfire,’ she says. ‘They say other European countries, and some Asian ones too, have done the same thing. Bought islands in the Pacific and fitted them out so a chosen few can survive. They say the Danish government’s stepping down tomorrow. The oldest plans go back fifty years, apparently. A little group of politicians across the various parties knew all along. The chance to be among the survivors nullified all political differences. A few business leaders and scientists were informed. Some people in the arts. A number of officials. The first heads have already rolled. Two have committed suicide.’
I go through the gap in the hedge. Our house seems unchanged. At least, on the outside it does. Inside, it’s traumatised. Beyond repair.
I go in. Oskar wheels into the living room and pulls up.
‘I took the list of names from Falck-Hansen’s office,’ I say. ‘You’re on it. You were to head up the security forces. You were keeping an eye on Hegn, for the military.’
‘They never trusted him.’
He flicks the little joystick and the electric wheelchair glides towards the front door with a whirr.
‘When are they coming to get us?’
‘They might not.’
For some reason, someone’s left a printout of our Time front cover on the table. The colours have already faded.
‘You never really had any significant role in this, Susan. An individual, a single family, means nothing. It may turn out to your advantage. The winds that are blowing now will mainly batter those at the top.’
I walk up to him.
‘You squandered your chances,’ I say.
I realise why he was able to play the homeless alcoholic so well. That, too, is a part of his truth.
I stroke my hand across his cheek. It feels like parched soil, dry and cracked.
I close my eyes. When I open them again he’s gone.
I sit down at the table. Thit and Harald come in and put a pizza box in front of me. They set the table.
We eat, though the food tastes of nothing. After ten minutes an ambulance pulls up. Two men help Laban into the house. He’s walking with a crutch and has stitches in his face, twenty at least.
‘Hegn’s people tried to stop me,’ he says. ‘They didn’t succeed.’
We give him pizza and Coke. He gives up on both, the wounds in his cheeks too painful. I fetch him some water to sip.
‘Oskar was here,’ I say. ‘He thinks we might have a chance.’
I pick up the car keys. Laban and the twins ask no questions.
The streets are still empty. On the road between Charlottenlund and Valby I see perhaps a dozen cars in all.
I park on Gamle Carlsberg Vej and walk the last bit of the way. For the fir
st time in twenty years, I see no security. A strange atmosphere pervades the quiet residential streets, as if a state of emergency had been declared. Perhaps it has.
I take the key from the hollow tree stub and unlock the gate in the fence. I walk along the tree-lined driveway, up the steps and through the front door, and enter the room.
A TV set is on in one corner. A French minister is being interviewed.
I stand quietly inside the door. Andrea Fink lifts a remote control and the screen goes black. She must have heard or sensed me. I walk forward to the bed.
The white nights are close now. Although it’s late, the light has not entirely yielded, but clings instead to the world.
‘I thought you’d given everything away,’ I say. ‘But you hadn’t. You packed it all up. So you could take it with you to the Pacific. Your name’s on the list.’
She reaches out a hand towards me. I take it.
‘Laboratory equipment, Susan. The rest has been given away. We would have set up a magnificent laboratory, you and I. Even the collider was going with us. I’d drawn up plans for a small electricity station. Fifty megawatts of hydraulic power.’
‘The idea must have come to you a long time ago.’
‘To Magrethe and me. Before all the others. We tried to convince Bohr, but he couldn’t see it.’
I sit down on the edge of the bed. I feel very tired.
Her hand is as cold as ice. I pull the duvet aside and climb in next to her. I draw her frail, bony frame into mine, to see if I might transfer some of my body’s warmth to her.
‘We could have lived there, Susan. With our families, Laban and the twins. We could have done big science together.’
A slight shiver passes through her body. At the end of the day, no one wants to die, not even Andrea Fink. I stroke my hand across her skin. I can’t make the cold go away, it’s as if it has reached into her very bones.
‘All that business about questioning Magrethe Spliid was a pretext,’ I say. ‘You wanted us home from India because you wanted me with you. You wanted us all to go to Spray Island and be safe.’
She doesn’t reply. She doesn’t have to.
