The Sons of Scarlatti

by John McNally

  Finn took the white flare out. He looked down at Delta. Pain was etched on her face. Memories flooded back. By the time he got another couple of macro-metres up the shaft the gas would surely reach her. Death.

  “Give it to me and go, Noob,” she said, reaching up. “It’s just a game.”

  They were still lashed together by the line.

  “Not the kind that good boys play.”

  He aimed down the shaft.

  “FINN! NO!” called Delta.

  He pulled the tab.

  The flare lit and the shaft flashed white as it shot down into the column of gas below.

  WHOOOOOOOOOF!

  My bad, thought Finn as –

  Up – a fireball raced and twisted towards them, beaten to it by a shockwave.

  Up – hitting them like thunder and sending them up the shaft like bullets from an upturned gun.

  Up – with dust and dirt and ancient soot.

  Up – till they began to slow and the energy pushing was spent and gravity began to claim them and their stomachs turned a top-of-the-rollercoaster turn and they began to fall again.

  Down.

  Blind.

  Finn tried to reach out in the sooty blackness, but grasped at nothing, and then – with a terrible jolt – the line bit, like a crocodile’s bite, into his guts and stopped him dead.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  DAY THREE 05:58 (BST). Langmere, Bucks

  Christabel Coles, vicar of the Church of St James and St John, Langmere, hated packing.

  It wasn’t just about getting the suitcases down from the attic or having to find the right number of pants. No, Christabel – an intelligent Englishwoman in the prime of her life – suffered from Wearing the Wrong Thing. It was why she had chosen a job with a uniform.

  Wearing the Wrong Thing was born of physical embarrassment and social confusion. She would always end up wearing a ballgown to a football match, or a boiler suit to a garden party.

  What would happen if the Queen wanted to meet some refugees? was her current concern.

  They were bound to pick her: she was a vicar, as well as acting transport steward for three elderly parishioners (a minibus was due any minute to collect the ancient evacuees, which is why she was up so early). All she had that was remotely suitable was a floral print skirt that according to her sister made her “bum look like a sofa”. She had just tried it on. It was true.

  She’d buy something new, but she only had £17 in her bank account and was always poor. She would have to be made a bishop before she’d be given a clothing allowance – which would of course only mean more blessed outings to see the Queen.

  “Stop!” she told herself out loud.

  She sat on the edge of her bed and took deep breaths. Why was everything in her life much more difficult than her relationship with God?

  YAP! she heard outside.

  Then there was the blessed dog, of course. What on earth was she going to say to her sister? She had promised only to bring one suitcase. Perhaps she could claim it was a stray?

  YAP YAP YAP YAP!

  The majestic roar of an Italian sports car joined the barking, before screeching to a halt.

  Christabel realised who it was and hurried out.

  “Get in the back of the car!” Al yelled.

  Goodness, how masterful! thought Christabel.

  But Yo-yo got there first, leaping a metre in the air to hit the rear seat with another delighted YAP!, turning cartwheels, looking for Finn, tail drumming the upholstery.

  Oh glory! He meant the dog…

  “Christabel…”

  He seemed stunned by her skirt and sudden appearance; she had to distract him.

  “What have you done with Finn?”

  “Oh… he’s…” said Al, leaving the rest to a circular arm movement, and her imagination.

  “Having a good… evacuation?”

  “Ah… Tiring,” Al said.

  “Great that you’re taking the dog though. You’re just in time, I was about to leave for my sister’s. Let me get his food and basket for you,” Christabel said, backing inside so as not to present her floral rear end.

  “No! I can’t keep him!” said Al. “I just need him to try something. I’ll bring him back after.”

  “But we’ve got to evacuate or we’ll all be gassed, haven’t you heard?”

  “Trust me, it’s much worse than that, but please don’t leave till I get back,” Al begged her.

  Had the man lost his mind?

  “I’m sorry, but I really can’t, I have to…”

  “Please, Christabel… I’ll buy you some new clothes…”

  * * *

  DAY THREE 06:00 (BST). Oceania Express, Felixstowe, Suffolk

  As the sun rolled up the sky in the east, fresh from Siberia and the great eastern steppe, two shipping containers carrying the four sections of Al’s Fat Doughnut Accelerator had made their way – slung beneath twin Chinook1 transport helicopters – across Suffolk to the port of Felixstowe.

  The container ship Oceania Express had been fuelled and readied for embarkation.

  The dockyard was almost empty, but in the CFAC, and all around the world, eyes watched intently. Every conceivable electronic tagging, tracking and intelligence-gathering bug would be crawling over the ship and its precious payload. Submarines full of Special Forces were streaming under the North Sea to track it from below, and far above similar units circled at high altitude in stealth aircraft ready to strike.

  The Chinooks gently deposited the two Fat Doughnut containers on to the deck of the Oceania Express and withdrew.

  As soon as they did so, the Danish Captain of the Express reported the ship’s computer system had gone rogue. A pre-recorded announcement ordered all crew to disembark or face death. An electromagnetic pulse knocked out most of the tracking and surveillance gizmos while all-spectrum signal jammers drowned out the rest.

  Within ten minutes, entirely crewless, the Oceania Express was steaming east into open sea.

  * * *

  DAY THREE 06:02 (BST). Hook Hall, Surrey

  “Well. Where is he?”

  “I’m afraid I can’t say.”

  “Don’t be so ridiculous. You either know or you don’t know,” said Violet Allenby.

  Commander King, struck by her logic, didn’t quite know how to respond.

  Grandma had reached Hook Hall by getting her airport taxi driver (Alan, thirty-nine, recently divorced but coping) to track down the centre of operations through rumours circulating on something called The Twitter. She had then used Al’s name and that of the Crown Prince of Japan to badger, hector and harangue her way through various levels of security until, finally, she’d managed to get three minutes in an anteroom with the gentleman in the lovely coat, the so-called ‘Commander’: a slippery customer doing everything he could to avoid a straight answer. She was getting nowhere. She needed specific information. She needed hard facts. It was time for the gloves to come off.

  She narrowed her steel-blue eyes, pursed her lips and gave him her hardest lie-detector stare.

  King felt she was peeling away his flesh to look deep into his soul. He had negotiated with hardened killers, global terrorists and genocidal maniacs in his time. This was worse.

  “Do. You. Know. Where. He. Is?”

  “Not… in the building.”

  “And my grandson?” she asked.

  “Once again, I’m afraid I—”

  “Are they at least together?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Rubbish!”

  King broke the stare and held up his hands.

  “All I can say is your son is engaged in vital work of global importance and—”

  “My son is Up To No Good and I intend to get to the bottom of it!”

  “Believe me, Mrs Allenby, I know your son well and I appreciate your frustration,” he tried.

  “You have no idea!”

  She shot up. King stood in turn (impeccable manners).

  T
here was a brief stand-off (what a woman).

  Then she tried to go. He tried to stop her.

  “Mrs Allenby! There is one thing I wanted to ask you,” King said. “Before Al left, he was adamant that he would not ‘lose another one’. Do you have any idea what he might have meant?”

  Grandma’s heart skipped a beat and her mind went back to much darker days and a sudden call to Cambridge because her daughter had collapsed. In grief.

  “I think… I think Al’s referring to my son-in-law. Al was working as one of Ethan’s lab assistants when Ethan had his accident and disappeared. I’m afraid Al was very young and rather blames himself.”

  “I’m sorry,” said King.

  “And that, sir, is a straight answer. Good morning.”

  As she left, King couldn’t help but blurt out, “We’re tracking his car! He’s going round in circles between here and Wellington. Stopping and starting. Should be back mid-morning.”

  She turned in the doorway and gave him the approval of those same steel-blue eyes, now containing the love of the world.

  “Now doesn’t that feel better?” Grandma said.

  It did, King wanted to say. Yes it did. Then the eyes narrowed again and skewered him.

  “Be warned. If anything has happened to my grandson, I will be back.”

  She walked. He let her.

  Bloody hell.

  * * *

  Arriving in Langmere a short time later, Grandma found the village totally deserted and thought it quite pathetic.

  Sanctuary was only to be found in the church where Christabel was loading parishioners on to a minibus, and she at least was able to fill Grandma in on Al’s repossession of Yo-yo.

  Getting home, Grandma dumped her bag in the hall, and put on her walking shoes and waxed jacket. She pocketed a baked doggy snack of her own invention and around her neck she hung a dog whistle and a ziplock cellophane pocket containing an Ordnance Survey map of the Surrey/Berkshire borders.

  Then she went out to the garage and climbed aboard her 50cc moped (an old Honda abandoned as impractical by her daughter in 1990). She depressed the starter button, turned the throttle and set off.

  At seventeen miles per hour.

  Where exactly she was setting off to, she didn’t know. She only had a vague search area west of Wellington and could easily have waited at Hook Hall, but the thought of doing nothing when she hadn’t heard from either Al or Finn for more than eighteen hours was simply too much to bear.

  She put the whistle in her mouth and blew.

  WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Finn coughed and choked and spat. The convulsions didn’t help the pain of where the titanium line had tried to cut him in two.

  He could hear Delta coughing close by and through the black fog could make out the beam of her headlamp. As the soot began to clear, he saw above him the line that they dangled from – hooked over a nail on the side of a giant wooden platform. Pipework ran all the way up the chimney shaft where it connected up to what looked like a petrochemical plant at this scale, but what was in fact the back of a hot-water cylinder.

  He realised they’d been blown right to the top of the open shaft and were in the roof space.

  Still unable to speak, he grabbed the nearest handholds and began to climb the last few nano-metres to the nail. Delta, coughing, hobbled up the shaft behind him.

  They scrambled on to the platform and unhooked themselves. They were in the attic, out of the shaft.

  “If your cabin in the woods is going to be this much fun, I’m definitely coming to America,” said Finn.

  Delta grabbed him. “That was my call down there,” she said, turning on him. “You need to learn how to be a little kid! You could have been killed.”

  “So could you,” said Finn. “I’ve watched someone die. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “Shall I tell you something kids never realise about grown-ups? They care about you ten thousand times more than they care about themselves.”

  “Can you smell smoke?” said Finn.

  They looked down.

  Smoke was rising up the chimney shaft.

  The blast had ripped off Kane’s hood and blown him flat on his back, covering him in flames. He had slapped and rolled wildly. By the time he’d put himself out, part of the kitchen was already on fire.

  He blinked burnt, lashless eyes that stung with rage and every kind of injury and he wanted only one thing.

  The furniture banked up against the old fireplace was really beginning to catch now.

  Flames reflected in Kane’s battered good eye. If the gas blast had not already destroyed the nano-warriors then the fire surely would. The wooden units were beginning to burn. He kicked them, urging them on. The fiercer the fire, the quicker the death.

  The Master would not be pleased. It was not clean, but at least it was done.

  “The eaves!” said Delta.

  In the darkness of the attic, a thin strip of dawn light emerged where the edge of the roof timbers met the top of the walls – the eave gap that allowed the roof and the whole building to breathe.

  Behind them, out of the shaft, the smoke began to pour.

  “We have to climb down or find some way to lower ourselves,” said Finn, trying not to choke.

  They jumped off the platform and made their way across the accumulated junk in the attic, Finn trying not to think about how vulnerable they would be once outside again – out of weapons, ammo, food and water.

  Delta winced at the pain in her ankle, then bent down to pick something up. It was a strip of polystyrene, broken pieces of which lay scattered around the platform. Some kind of packaging.

  “Got it.”

  “What?” said Finn, turning round, “A piece of polystyrene?”

  Delta studied its long curved edge.

  “No. It’s an aerofoil – and when you move it through air it produces an aerodynamic force perpendicular to the direction of motion. The basis of all flight.”

  She started breaking it up, shaping it.

  “A wing?” said Finn.

  * * *

  “Sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… nineteen… OK! That’s twenty!” Kelly called from the combustion end of the jet engine.

  “Er… Move to position two then!” Stubbs instructed from the cab, glasses askew, scraps of paper everywhere, old mind on a million things at once as he fiddled with the controls.

  Kelly jumped down. In ‘position one’ he had pumped air into the Apache engine mounted on the back of the toy jeep. In ‘position two’ he was to grab the line wound round the jet’s turbine shaft and – on command – pull it like hell.

  In the cab with Stubbs were the innards of the toy jeep’s remote-control unit, remodelled into a power lever and steering wheel. It was all the wrong scale, plus there were no proper brakes (just a crude friction system that involved hauling on a stick) but he had created, not just a mammoth, foreshortened, jet-powered dragster, but a masterpiece.

  The fuel in the ignition chamber was under pressure. It had to be lit as the turbines spun to create the mutually efficient cycle of ‘burn and turn’ on which all such devices rely.

  There was only one way to see if it worked, and that was to utter the three most exciting words in the Stubbs lexicon.

  “Ready… Steady… GO!”

  Nothing happened.

  “Go…?” Stubbs repeated. Still nothing. What was Kelly doing?

  “Go, goddamn and blast you, Kelly!” Stubbs shouted.

  Eventually he leant out of the cab to see what was going on. Kelly was staring up the garden towards the house.

  “Fire…” he said, pointing.

  Kelly grabbed the line and began to pull like hell.

  “Hey! Not yet, wai—”

  Stubbs jumped back to the controls as the turbines began to spin. He heard the line run out – whacking clear of the jeep – and pressed the ignition.

  BANG!

  With a jolt and a spout of fla
mes, the fuel in the compression chamber ignited, and slowly, falteringly, as Stubbs adjusted the throttle, the jet came screaming to life.

  Kelly leapt into the cab.

  “GO!”

  Stubbs was flabbergasted. They couldn’t possibly move to ‘forward motion’ until at least the first page of testing was over. But Kelly was looking at the black smoke now billowing from the house.

  “Stubbs, we have to go… NOW!” and he grabbed the power level and pulled it back.

  With a scream, the jet produced 6,000 nano-lbs of thrust and shot the jeep out of the shed and up the garden – achieving the equivalent of 0 to 60mph in 1.22 seconds.

  * * *

  Out in the countryside, as the breeze pushed through the taller grasses and the sun kissed all it surveyed, Al stood at the top of a field and did his best impression of Dr Dolittle.

  “Where is he, boy? Where’s Finn?”

  Yo-yo’s super-advanced canine olfactory senses were Al’s last desperate hope – if Yo-yo couldn’t pick out some pheromone, some tiny spark, some subatomic resonance of Finn out of the air then nothing could.

  Yo-yo barked. Yes. He liked Finn. Yes. Bark. Wait. So? Nothing.

  Al sighed and dragged him back to the car.

  Yo-yo whimpered. Why weren’t they going for a walk? This wasn’t walking. This was a whole morning full of stopping and driving and stopping and driving. What was there for Al to misunderstand? You walk along, you occasionally throw things, you pick up crap and put it in a bag. What was it with all the talking?

  Yo-yo had a point. Al had driven to six different locations in a loose five-mile arc southwest of the centre of the original release area, clinging desperately to the ‘loamy soil’ theory put forward by one of his teams earlier following examination of the nest site clip. It was not science. It was emotional. And it wasn’t working.

  Al would take the dog into the middle of a field, wait to see if it would pick up some tiny marker of Finn out of the infinite air, get disappointed when he didn’t, then drag him back to the car.