“Two years ago, I was happy,” she said. She could see Paul in the corner of her eye: a peroxide ghost in a white coat and loud shirt, sitting with its head in its hands.
“Two years ago, I had a job. I had a husband. I had my own hair and I could write.” Faces turned in her direction. She ignored them. “Now what have I got?”
She picked up her glass. Bubbles clung to the underside of the lime slice floating at the top. What had she got? She’d let the lease expire on the Parisian apartment she’d shared with Paul. Now all she had was a crumpled wig; the clothes she stood up in; the loan of a small cabin on the Tereshkova; and Paul.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m talking to you.”
Paul raised his eyes to her. He hadn’t spoken since the Smiling Man fell from the lip of the cargo hold.
“I know, I’m choosing not to listen.”
Victoria swilled the drink around in her glass.
“Oh, really?”
“Yeah.” He clambered to his feet. “Because some of us have real problems, what with being dead and everything.”
She slammed the glass down on its coaster.
“That’s hardly my fault, is it? If you’d come clean in the first place, if you’d told someone about that night with the King, maybe all of this could have been avoided. Maybe you’d still be—”
She stopped herself, and let out a long, tired breath. Paul scowled.
“Hey, I’m the one who got his brains scooped out.”
“Yeah, and I just killed a man. Because of you. So shut the fuck up, okay?”
She drained the gin and tonic, and pushed the glass across the counter.
“Another one,” she said.
The steward came over.
“Madam, I have to ask you to keep your voice—”
“Just fill it up.”
In her eye, she saw Paul shaking his head.
“I’d never have thought you were capable of something like that.”
“Well then, I guess we really didn’t know each other as well as we thought.”
The steward placed a glass of gin and a small bottle of tonic on the bar, and turned away without a word. He knew she was the Commodore’s goddaughter. If she wanted to sit at the bar and talk to herself, it was no business of his.
Victoria emptied the tonic into the glass until the bubbles ran over the rim and down, into a fizzing puddle on the copper counter.
“Besides, he deserved it, and I will not let you make me feel guilty.”
Paul put his arms out.
“I’m not trying to. I know you, Vicky. I know you’re guilty enough already. I can hear it in your voice.”
“Get lost.”
She picked up the wet glass and took a mouthful. The tonic fizzled on her tongue. The ice cubes dabbed her upper lip.
Cassius Berg had been a hired assassin. He’d murdered Paul, and all those others. He was a killer and, given the slightest chance, he would have killed her as well. He’d already tried to once, and only failed by the slimmest of margins. Why should she feel guilty for his death? Her actions had been entirely logical.
In her eye, Paul had his arms crossed, each fist clenched in the opposite armpit.
“You really want me to ‘get lost’?”
“Right now? Yes.”
He dropped his arms. “Well, if that’s how you feel, maybe you should turn me off?”
“What?”
“You heard me.” He turned away from her, shoulders hunched.
Victoria opened her mouth to snap back at him, but the words wouldn’t come. Anger turned to sadness. She put her elbows on the bar and rubbed her temples.
“Ah, merde.”
All of a sudden, all she wanted was to make her way back down the narrow gangway to her little cupboard of a cabin, to close the door and shut out the world. Instead, she took a swallow from her glass, wiped her lips on the back of her hand, and drew herself up in her seat.
“I’m sorry,” she said. Paul’s white-clad shoulders twitched. He looked around.
“Are you serious? In all the years I’ve known you, you’ve never once said—”
“It’s an apology, Paul. Take it or leave it.” She drained the glass and pushed it across the counter for a refill.
Still sitting, Paul twisted around to face her. From her point of view, he seemed to be cross-legged on the shelf behind the bar, his back against the row of optics hanging from the wall.
“Okay.” He scratched his beard. “Okay, I’m sorry too. I didn’t mean to be an asshole about it. I’m just kind of shocked, you know?”
The steward came forward and refilled Victoria’s glass. This time, he poured the tonic himself, avoiding spillages.
“You’re shocked? Imagine how I feel.” She turned in her seat to find the lounge behind her empty, the other passengers having decided to take their evenings elsewhere. Paul’s image moved with her, so that he now seemed to float above the tables. Beyond the portholes, she caught sight of blue sky and white cloud.
“I did it for you, you know.” She reached back and grabbed her newly-filled glass. “Because of what he did to you.”
Paul gave a slow nod.
“I know. It’s just I can’t get over how you can think you know someone, even be married to them, and still they surprise you.”
Victoria found herself shaking her head. She leaned back, her elbows against the cold metal of the bar.
“You don’t need to tell me. I thought we were in love, remember?”
Paul squirmed. “We were. At least, I loved you. I still do. It’s just—”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” He bit his lower lip. “We had some good times, though, didn’t we?”
“Yes, yes we did.” Victoria sipped her drink. “And for what it’s worth, I still love you, too. I’d be dead if it hadn’t been for you. If you hadn’t got me onto that Céleste programme after the crash...”
Paul waved a modest hand. “What else was I going to do? Besides, Nguyen thought you’d make an ideal test subject.”
“Oh he did, did he?”
“Of course. It was a chance for him to try out some of the techniques we were going to use on the Prince. And, because you were travelling with Merovech when the crash happened, it was excellent publicity.”
“And you just let them do it?”
A pained expression crossed his face.
“I couldn’t let you die.”
“So, you really did care?” In darker moments, she’d wondered why he’d tried so hard to save her life, only to separate from her six months later.
Paul pulled off his glasses and wiped them on the hem of his white coat.
“Of course I did. Our sexualities may not have been compatible, but I loved you as much as I’ve ever loved anyone. You were my wife, and it would have killed me to let you die without exploring every option, even if it meant turning you over to Nguyen.”
Victoria looked down at her drink. “So,” she said. “What now? You saved my life; I avenged your death. I guess that makes us even.”
“I guess so.” Paul slipped the spectacles back onto his nose. “There’s just one thing.”
“What?”
“I really don’t want to go.”
Victoria felt herself sag. She put a hand to her head.
“Oh, Paul.”
He leant towards her. “Seriously. I know we agreed that you’d keep me running until you solved my murder. And, well, we’ve done that. But still, I don’t want to be turned off. Not now, not yet.”
Victoria slid down from the stool and walked over to the portholes on the starboard wall. She bent slightly, one arm on the wall for support, and looked out at the countryside passing below. She saw fields and hedges laid out like a patchwork picnic blanket. Roads like seams.
Paul was quiet for a long time. Then he asked:
“Do you believe in God, Vicky? I mean, really?”
Her lips pursed. Her fingernails tippy-tapped the metal wall. She hadn’t reall
y thought about it in years.
“I guess there might be a higher power, somewhere out there. But if there is, it’s going to be stranger than anything we can imagine.” She took a sip from her glass. “Why do you ask?”
“Because I don’t believe in anything. I don’t think there’s anything waiting for us when we die. This is it. This is all we get, and it’s not enough.”
Below, the serried ranks of a conifer plantation. Wide, straight firebreaks like grassy highways. A stream glinting like a vein of bronze.
“You know what happens to back-ups,” Victoria said quietly. “You better than anyone.”
Paul raised his index finger.
“There was that old guy in Edinburgh. You interviewed him for your paper. He lasted six months.”
The Tereshkova passed into cloud.
“But he still fell apart, in the end.”
“We all fall apart in the end.”
Victoria straightened up and turned back to the empty lounge.
“Then what do you suggest? I can’t have you in my head for the next six months. We’ll drive each other nuts.”
“You could transfer my file into a different processor. Another gelware brain. Then all we’d have to do is find a way to grow a body to put it in.”
Victoria gaped.
“You’re crazy.”
Paul held up his hand, fending off her accusation.
“No, I’m sure it can be done.”
Victoria moved back to the bar. The steward regarded her with palpable weariness, but she didn’t care. She’d had enough for one night.
“Really? And what makes you think it’s even possible?”
Paul reached up and scratched his ear.
“Because that’s what we were working on at Céleste.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LA MANCHE
THEY REACHED THE outskirts of Saint-Malo a little after dawn. Merovech’s friend’s parents had an apartment in one of the new, upscale arcologies overlooking the sea, far along the coast from the walls of the old, partially-flooded port city; and out of sight of the container ships anchored at the mouth of the Rance River.
There were around thirty ships in all, all retrofitted to provide emergency housing for ecological refugees from the low lying countries further up the coast. Anchored in the shelter of the estuary, they formed a floating shantytown for those displaced by rising sea levels and seasonal floods. Some of the ships were lashed together, linked by gangways and laundry lines; while others stood alone, each a separate neighbourhood in its own right, with its own customs and hierarchies.
Geoffrey Renfrew hadn’t really been a friend, of course; he’d just been someone who’d hung around on the edge of Merovech’s social circle at school, trying to ingratiate himself. Merovech remembered him as a pale, greasy boy with watery eyes and a laugh that sounded like a cat sneezing.
He parked the old Citroën van on a concrete service road leading to the arcology. Weeds poked through cracks in the road, but the buildings themselves looked immaculate.
Built like a vast step pyramid, with terrace gardens along each step, and a vast light well running down the centre, the arcology was a self-contained, secure community. Fortified against crime, social unrest and terrorist attack, it provided an expensive, aspirational refuge for the upper middle class. Wind turbines turned their carbon fibre blades on either side of the building’s private marina.
“There’s no way we’re going to get in there,” K8 said. “Those places have everything: electric fences, face and gait recognition, biometric scanners, the works.”
Merovech pulled out his SincPhone.
“I’ll call them. They can meet us somewhere and take us to the yacht.”
K8 looked him up and down.
“What are we going to do about the skipper here? I’m assuming the harbour will have some sort of security. Even if it’s just CCTV, they’re going to spot a monkey, no matter what we dress him in.”
Merovech smiled. On the way here, they’d passed a pet supply store in an out-of-town retail development, and it had given him an idea.
“You leave that to me,” he said.
THREE HOURS LATER, Merovech, Julie and K8 were ensconced in the cramped but comfortable galley of Geoffrey’s parents’ yacht: a thirty-foot catamaran by the name of Peggy Sue.
Geoffrey’s parents were pleased to see him, and anxious to be hospitable; but they couldn’t hide their puzzlement at the suddenness and secrecy of his arrival. They seated their guests around a small plastic table and poured them drinks.
Geoffrey’s father, Jerry, was a former meat magnate from Cambridgeshire. He wore blue denim jeans and a bootlace tie with a silver steer’s head. He’d made his fortune selling vat-grown beef, cloned from the finest available livestock, to restaurants and fast food chains. A pioneer in his field, his most controversial scheme involved a range of hamburgers that he claimed contained meat cloned directly from the skin cells of pop stars and celebrities. Fans could now eat their heroes, he said. The resulting media frenzy made him rich—but when the patties in the buns turned out to be ordinary pork instead of vat-grown human flesh, he’d been forced to take early retirement.
Standing by the yacht’s hatch with a mug of coffee in his hand, he had a wide smile and easygoing manner, which instantly put them all at their ease.
Geoffrey’s mother, Patricia, turned out to be fond of a glass of Chardonnay and, after half an hour, had begun to slur her words. She wore a tight dress, pearls, and pink polyurethane heels that matched her nails and lipstick.
She adored Julie’s purple hair.
“Of course we’ll take you across to England, your royal highness.” She patted Merovech on the knee. “Anything for a friend of Geoffrey’s.”
“Thank you.” Merovech gave his sincerest, paparazzi-friendly smile. “I really am grateful.”
Mrs Renfrew eyed his tatty jeans and old red hoodie.
“But can’t you tell us what all this is about? Are you in some kind of trouble? They’re saying on the news that you had a collapse.”
“Now Patricia,” Jerry warned. “Don’t pry,”
Merovech let his smile broaden.
“That’s quite all right, Mister Renfrew.” He slid his arm around Julie’s shoulders. “The truth is, we’re eloping. The stuff on TV’s just a cover story. We’re trying to get to Gretna Green without the news channels getting wind of it. Do you think you can help us?”
Mrs Renfrew clapped a hand to her mouth.
“A wedding? Oh, my lord!” She fanned herself with both hands.
Julie leaned forward conspiratorially, touching the older woman’s wrist.
“It’s a secret, Mrs Renfrew. You must promise not to tell. At least, for now. Afterwards, if you want to, you can tell all your friends how you helped us elope.”
Patricia Renfrew’s eyes were wide and glittering with the prospect of a royal wedding.
“Can we trust you?” Merovech asked.
“Of course, my loves, of course. We’ll do anything we can, won’t we Jerry?”
“Yes, dear.” Mister Renfrew thumbed tobacco into a well-worn pipe. “We’ll cast off at high tide. Should have you across in a couple of hours, eh? Where do you want to go, Southampton or Portsmouth?”
“Either, as long as we can avoid any official entanglements.”
Jerry smiled a slow and easy smile.
“You just leave that to me, my boy. Now, the three of you had better stay down here until we’re clear of land. We don’t want anyone catching sight of you before we’re even underway, now do we?”
He stepped through the hatch and climbed up the wooden steps to the deck. Patricia tottered after him, wineglass in hand.
“Make yourselves at home,” she called from the hatchway. “Are you sure your doggie will be all right in there?”
Merovech glanced at the pet carrier, which was an enclosed plastic basket made to transport Alsatians and Great Danes. It was the largest he’d been able to f
ind at the out-of-town pet store and, with K8’s help, he’d been able to stuff Ack-Ack Macaque into it.
“He’ll be fine.”
“What kind of dog is he?”
“A big one.”
Patricia frowned. She took a couple of clacking steps back into the cabin, towards the box.
“Look,” said Julie, trying to distract her, “I’ll level with you, okay? We stole the dog.”
Patricia Renfrew’s plucked and painted brows drew closer together, like indignant caterpillars.
“You stole it?”
“From a laboratory.” Julie’s voice dropped to a whisper. “You wouldn’t believe the experiments they were doing to the poor creature. Shampoo in the eyes. Electrodes on the head. By the end, they had him on forty cigarettes a day.”
Patricia’s eyes narrowed. She took another sip of chardonnay, and then looked from Julie to the pet carrier. She burst into peals of cackling laughter.
“Oh, that’s priceless!” she gasped, slapping Julie on the shoulder. “You really had me going there, for a second.”
WHEN THEY WERE a mile out into the Channel, Jerry judged it safe for them to come up on deck. Merovech followed K8 and Julie up the wooden stairs from the galley, and the three of them emerged blinking in the afternoon sunlight, clutching at rails to support themselves as the boat rocked.
Jerry stood at the wheel. “If you have a moment, your highness, I’d like to show you something.”
He crouched down and opened a metal locker, to reveal a pair of matt-black automatic pistols.
“One for me and one for the wife,” he said proudly. “We picked them up last year, when we were sailing around the Gold Coast, in case we got hit by pirates.” He took hold of the catamaran’s wheel. “And besides, if it all kicks off with China, it won’t hurt to have some additional protection, eh?”
Merovech looked up at the flapping sails.
“I’ve been out of touch for a couple of days. How’s it going in China?”
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