The Recollection

by Gareth L. Powell

The waitress brought menus. Ed took one and spread it on the table.

  “I’m going to have the mushrooms and prawns,” he announced.

  Verne didn’t even bother to look. His eyes stayed on Alice.

  “I’ll have the spicy meatballs.”

  Alice smiled. “I’ll have the same.”

  A couple of hours later, the two of them took a cab to her flat, leaving a dejected Ed standing outside the restaurant with his hands in his pockets. The lights of Canary Wharf shone through the rain. A train rattled over West India Quay, the light from its windows jangling on the black waters of the dock.

  He walked up to the station platform and took the last train south to Island Gardens. He shared the carriage with a young Chinese kid in a German army surplus shirt. The kid had shaggy hair, and scratched at a fresh tattoo on his forearm. Lightning flickered over the Thames.

  Ed woke slowly. He was lying curled on his side in the centre of the stone circle, head resting in the crook of his arm. Soft grass cushioned his hip and shoulder. The sun kissed his cheek. A playful breeze ran its fingers through his hair.

  “Are you awake?”

  Alice knelt by the gas stove, a chipped tin mug wrapped in her hands. She’d taken out her ponytail, and her rust-coloured hair fell naturally around her face and shoulders. Her camera hung on a strap around her neck.

  “Have you been taking pictures?”

  “A few snaps. There’s tea if you want it.”

  He yawned and stretched. The sun shone white in the blue sky. The air was so crisp and clear it seemed to ring like a bell.

  “How long have I been asleep?”

  “About four hours. You let the pan boil dry and I had to refill it.” She took the water off the stove and poured him a mug of tea. “It’ll have to be black, I’m afraid. I didn’t think to bring any milk.”

  She held it out and he sat up to receive it.

  “Where’s Kristin?”

  Alice jerked a thumb. At the far side of the circle, the American woman chipped away at one of the upright stones with a hand trowel, her chopped white hair bright in the light of the sun. “She’s collecting samples. She’s got a pocketful of zip-lock baggies and she’s been filling them with dirt, grass, everything.”

  Ed put the tin mug to his chin and blew on it. In the fresh air, the smell of the steam sparked teenage memories of fishing trips and pop festivals. The lushness of the grass filled him with the urge to paint. His fingers itched for a brush and a palette full of greens and yellows.

  “Do you think it’s true, what she told us?”

  Alice rocked back on her heels. “Which part?”

  “That we can’t go home.”

  Alice fussed with her hair, wiping a strand of it back behind her ear.

  “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  Ed puffed his cheeks out. He thought of his east London flat, all his stuff, his clothes. His paintings.

  “Shit.” He missed the noise and bustle of the city. He tossed the mug into the grass. “Look at this place, Alice. We shouldn’t be here. We don’t know what we’re doing. We’re not explorers.”

  He stalked over to the Land Rover, slapped his palm against the cool metal frame of the open door. How far had they travelled already—a hundred light years? Two hundred?

  Behind him, Alice cleared her throat. She got to her feet, fetched his thrown mug and shook out the remaining drops of tea.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m here to find my husband.”

  Ed clenched his fists.

  “But look around you, Alice. Look at this place. There must be upwards of fifty arches here. Even if he came this way, how can we possibly know which one he would have taken? We’ve already wasted a decade. What happens if we pick one that takes us a hundred or a thousand years in the wrong direction?”

  “We have to try.”

  “But how do we know he didn’t turn around and come straight back through the arch, like that guy on Mars? He could be back on Earth right now, a couple of hundred years into the future, thinking we’re both long dead.”

  Alice went over to squat by the stove.

  “I don’t think he did. I think he kept moving.”

  She poured the last of the hot tea into the mug and brought it over to him. He took it and climbed into the Land Rover’s cab, his jeans squeaking as he settled into the leather seat.

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “Sure about what?”

  “That he kept moving. Why wouldn’t he turn back? All this time, I assumed he hadn’t. But it’s quite possible he did, and he’s back there now, even as we speak.”

  Alice swept a loose strand of hair behind her ear. She heaved a sigh.

  “I don’t think so. You know him, he’s always been a journalist. Once he gets hooked into a story, he never lets go. He’d want to find out where the other arches led. And besides, he knew about us. It must have hurt him finding out like that. His brother and his wife. Who could blame him for being angry? And with your mother dead, who could blame him if he decided he had no-one left worth coming back for?”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  THE CRYING OF BAY 49

  Feliks Abdulov pulled three of his best maintenance crews from other projects and set them to work on the Ameline. Then he surprised them all by rolling up his sleeves and pitching in. With his help, and working as fast as they dared, they refuelled and recalibrated the engines, gave the internal systems a quick and dirty upgrade and welded new plates over the most worn and damaged sections of hull. As they were finishing up, Toby Drake appeared in the bay. He looked up to where Kat sat, shading his eyes against the overhead lights.

  “How’s it going?”

  Kat slipped her welding goggles down around her neck and used the back of her bare arm to wipe the sweat from her forehead. She was on the edge of the bow’s upper surface, one of her legs folded under her and the other dangling over the side, three metres above the metal floor of the landing bay.

  “See for yourself.”

  The ship was a mess of patches and workarounds. The new hull plates were bright blocks of red and yellow against its faded blue paintwork. Inside, fibre optic cables trailed from open service hatches. New passenger couches had been bolted into the lounge. Scars showed where obsolete instruments had been ripped from the bridge consoles and replaced.

  Easing over the edge of the hull, she hung from her hands, and then dropped to the floor.

  “So, have you come to say goodbye?”

  Toby lowered his eyes.

  “I guess so. I mean, I don’t want to. What we did was great, but—”

  Kat stopped him with a raised hand.

  “Don’t sweat it.” She looked over his shoulder. “Where’s your friend?”

  “Mr Hind? He’s talking to the Quay authorities. He’s trying to arrange a shuttle to ferry us to the Dho Ark.”

  As he talked, Kat watched his mouth. She remembered those lips on her skin, his breath on her neck, those hands pressing down so urgently on her hips as her own nails raked his back...

  With a shiver, she took off her thick welding gauntlets and tucked them into the thigh pocket of her trousers.

  “You don’t need a shuttle, I’ll take you.”

  Drake blinked.

  “You will?”

  “Sure.” Kat used her implant to make a few rough calculations. “We can make a small in-system jump and have you at the Ark in a couple of hours.”

  Drake thought about it for a second or two, and then broke into his lopsided grin.

  “That’s very kind of you.”

  Around them, the maintenance crews were packing away their equipment. Feliks Abdulov appeared at the top of the Ameline’s cargo ramp. Wiping his hands on a rag, he walked down to join them.

  “Okay, Katherine, we’ve done all we can for now. You have thirty minutes until you lift. As soon as we’re out of your hair, I suggest you start running the countdown.”

  Kat gave a nod of gratitude.

 
“Dad, I want you to meet Toby Drake. I brought him here from the Bubble Belt. Toby, this is my father.”

  The two men shook hands.

  Feliks said, “Are you going with her?”

  “Only as far as the Dho Ark.”

  “Really?” He gave his daughter a sideways look. “Do you have time for that?”

  Kat shrugged. By her reckoning it would take two hours to reach a safe Jump Zone, then a few minutes for the jump to the gas giant. After that, it was a case of dropping her passengers at the Ark and jumping out of the system before Victor got his act together. The gas giant didn’t have a designated JZ, so she could fire up the engines as soon as she was clear of the Ark.

  “Victor’s ship won’t leave here for another four hours,” she said. “I’ll be long gone by then.”

  At precisely 1100 hours, the Ameline slipped her moorings. She backed out of her bay using minimal bursts from her manoeuvring thrusters, and rotated around her axis until she faced open space. The bays around her held a hundred ships of different shapes and sizes, from small independent traders like the Ameline to sleek passenger liners and the bloated hulls of corporate freighters.

  On the Ameline’s bridge, Katherine Abdulov looked in vain for Victor’s ship. The Quay’s manifest said it was still in its allotted bay—number 49—but the bay’s heavy pressure doors were closed, blocking her view. She was still craning forward when her own ship broke into her thoughts:

  > Incoming message from the Tristero.

  A window opened in her right eye, revealing the face of Victor Luciano. She saw his right cheek twitch and guessed he was receiving an image of her on his own implant.

  Physically, he looked to be somewhere in his early fifties, with grey hair and wide shoulders, and eyes the colour of a thundercloud. But she knew looks were deceiving, especially amongst traders, and even though he hardly ever spoke about his past, she knew he was a lot older than he appeared.

  “Are you going somewhere, Kat?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  He dropped his chin, as if looking at her over a pair of nonexistent spectacles. “Oh, Kat, you disappoint me. Is that the best you can do?”

  “Your thugs threw me through a door.”

  He rubbed the bridge of his nose with the tip of his index finger, as if trying to push something back into place.

  “Yes. Yes, they did, didn’t they?”

  “Aren’t you going to pretend you care?”

  Victor looked to the side, away from the camera.

  “Those days are over.”

  “They don’t have to be.”

  “Yes, they do. You know they do. If I can’t trust you, Kat, I can’t love you.”

  “But you did love me, Victor. You still do. I know you do.”

  He shook his head. “Not anymore.”

  “Because I made one mistake?”

  “It was more than a mistake, Kat.” His eyes narrowed. “You knew exactly what you were doing.”

  “I was scared. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “That’s not the point. It still happened, and it shouldn’t have.”

  “And so you’re cutting me out of your life?”

  Victor leant forward, jabbing a finger at the screen. “I’m doing more than that. I’m warning you to stay away from me. Give up this stupid race. You can’t beat me to Djatt, and you shouldn’t try.”

  “Are you threatening me?”

  He shook his head. “You’re not up to this, Kat. You don’t have what it takes.”

  “And you do, I suppose?”

  He sat back. “All I’m saying is that we threw you through a door with air on the other side of it. The next crew you piss off mightn’t be so thoughtful.”

  > Incoming call from Feliks Abdulov.

  “Fuck off, Victor.”

  She cut the feed, hands shaking. The screen blanked, and then fired up again, this time showing the head and shoulders of her father.

  She swallowed away the sudden prickle in her eyes, unclenched her fists.

  “Hello, Dad.”

  “Katherine. Are you okay? You look upset.”

  “I’m fine.” She gave her best approximation of a brave smile.

  “Well, you don’t look fine. But then, I guess I’ve had better days myself.”

  She looked into his face, still dirty from working on the Ameline’s hull, trying to memorise every crease and wrinkle.

  “I wish we’d had more time to talk,” she said. There was so much left unresolved. “Just promise me you’ll still be here when I get back.”

  Her father reached out a hand. “Don’t worry about us, Katherine.”

  “Dad, I—”

  “Concentrate on your mission. There’s no need to—”

  The screen flickered and Feliks staggered. He put out an arm to steady himself. The lights above him dimmed to brown, and then came back up to full strength. Alarms sounded.

  “Dad! What’s happening?”

  She checked her implant. Traffic control was offline. People were shouting all over the Quay. The walls of Bay 49 had buckled, rocking the station. They had been sucked inward and the blast doors had cracked, revealing the gaping vacuum left by the ship that had been resting at its heart.

  Kat blinked at the pictures, unwilling to believe what she saw: the Tristero had gone. It had left the station without even bothering to wait for the blast doors to open, activating its engines while still wrapped in its docking cradle.

  “Jesus,” she said, “he jumped?”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  PRIME RADIANT

  “Hey, I found a sign!”

  Kristin came running across the stone circle towards them, waving her arms, boots kicking though the long grass.

  Ed Rico leaned out of the Land Rover.

  “Where?”

  “On one of the uprights.” She stumbled to a halt and bent over, hands on knees. “An arrow.”

  When she’d caught her breath, she led them over to the stone. Sure enough, someone had scratched a crude arrow into its weathered surface. Ed traced the shape with his finger. It pointed to the arch on the right of the stone. The scratches were pale and gritty and rough to the touch.

  “It’s fresh.”

  “Sure is. No more than a week old, I reckon.”

  Alice said, “Do you think your team left it?”

  The American woman rubbed the short white bristles at the back of her neck. “They must have done. It’s standard operating procedure, if you have to leave a man behind.”

  She dropped to one knee and gathered her bagged samples of grass and soil. She stuffed them into the pockets of her cargo pants and stood, brushing the dirt from her hands.

  “Are you ready to move?”

  They waded back through the wind-ruffled grass to the Land Rover. As they walked, Alice reached out to touch Kristin’s elbow.

  “You know, you haven’t told us who you work for.”

  The taller woman stopped.

  “I haven’t?”

  She glanced impatiently back at the marked arch, shifting her weight from one booted foot to the other.

  Ed rubbed his eyes. His skin itched. After sleeping in his clothes, he needed a shower.

  “You’re obviously military but you don’t have any insignia,” he said.

  Kristin glanced down at her khaki hoodie.

  “We’re part of a joint UN recon team,” she said. “I guess all the badges are on my jacket, in my kit bag.”

  Ed stepped forward. He felt the wind tug at his t-shirt. “You told us this was a one-way trip.”

  “It is.”

  “Then how can you be a recon team? How are you going to report back?”

  Kristin folded her arms and puffed out her cheeks.

  “We’re not.”

  “Then what are you doing?”

  Kristin turned and started walking toward the Land Rover, arms still folded. Ed and Alice hurried to keep pace with her.

  “We’re trying to prove a t
heory,” she said. “We’ve mapped part of the network and we’ve used computer extrapolation to sketch in the rest.” She kicked at the long grass. “Our model indicates an overall structure. As far as we can tell, the branches collapse toward a single point. We call it a funnelling effect.”

  Shuffling along beside her, Ed pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “You mean, all the gates lead to the same place?” He felt a sudden stab of wild hope.

  “That’s right. All roads lead to Rome. According to the model, whichever route you take, you eventually spiral in towards the centre of the network. We call it the Prime Radiant.”

  Ed saw Alice’s auburn hair flickering in the wind. He heard her say, “Like the canals in Amsterdam?”

  Kristin raised an eyebrow. “How so?”

  Alice brushed her fringe from her eyes. “In Amsterdam, the canals are arranged in semi-circular arcs. Wherever you are in the city, if you follow one, sooner or later you’ll end up back at the Central Station. You can’t get lost.”

  They reached the Land Rover. Kristin pulled off her hoodie and tossed it onto the back seat.

  “It’s more like a spider’s web,” she said. “Only we don’t know what’s at the centre.”

  “So you’re going to find out?”

  “That’s right. That’s our mission. And all our predictions point to that as the place we’ll find all the people lost in the network.”

  Ed’s breath caught in his throat. He felt Alice slip her hand into his.

  “Like Verne?” she said, eyes shining.

  Kristin nodded.

  “We may be ten years behind him, but if we head for the Prime Radiant, we’ll find him sure enough.”

  For the last three years of her life, Ed’s mother had lived in a gated retirement community on the outskirts of Cardiff, paid for by her eldest son, Verne. When she died of pneumonia at the age of sixty-two, he, Ed and Alice were the only attendants at her funeral.

  After the service, they crunched their way back along the shingle path to the crematorium’s wrought iron gate. Behind them, the last scraps of smoke rose from the brick chimney. It was a bright day in the Valleys. Frost lingered in the gaps and shadows between the grave markers and fir trees. A single vapour trail scratched the high blue sky. Verne and Alice were wrapped in coats and scarves. As they walked, Alice slipped her arm through Ed’s.