They thought about it.
‘Okay, how about fire alarm first,’ said Arnold. ‘Then when the people are out…’
‘Ooh!’ said Ranjit. ‘I’m fire marshall. I’ll get to wear my hi-vis jacket.’
He grinned happily.
‘I love being fire marshall. At least something good is going to happen today.’
Evelyn glanced at her watch.
‘When?’
Arnold shrugged.
‘Well, it might as well be now. There’s no point going back and, you know, doing some packing. That might make them a little suspicious. And if time is what you want, Luke, then you need to get it. And fast.’
And Luke had nothing to pack, thought Connie.
Luke wrote something on a piece of paper and handed it to Arnold.
‘What’s this?’
‘Memorise it, then eat it or something,’ said Luke. ‘It’s a contact frequency Nigel can use. Give it to them in three days. Pretend I’ve gone on the run because they think I killed the professor, or just to get out of the space project or something, and nothing to do with Kepler-186f. Then pretend you’ve translated it on your own. There’s not a lot more than what I’ve told you: the bulk of it is legal boilerplate.’
‘There’s legal boilerplate in space?’ said Arnold, looking very disappointed.
‘Legal boilerplate is practically a defining characteristic of all species evolved enough for interstellar travel,’ said Luke.
Arnold’s face looked sad.
‘In the tiny possibility that this plan works, what next?’ said Evelyn. They had thrown caution to the wind and were huddled by the cupboard, out of sight of the cameras. ‘If the diversion works and you get away, what about after that?’
Arnold sighed theatrically and ferreted in the pockets of his enormous khaki shorts.
‘Well, I sure hope no dickwad goes to the corner of Church Street and Station Road and steals my fucking white fucking car.’ He threw the keys on the table, then slowly and meaningfully turned his back. Then he turned round again, more quickly this time.
‘Can you drive?’
‘I’m an engineer,’ said Luke.
‘Is that a yes?’
‘I can drive,’ said Connie.
Everyone looked at her.
‘Yes, but obviously you’re not going,’ growled Sé.
Connie took a deep breath.
Her life, her entire life, she had been a good girl – studious, a little precocious, nervous maybe. But she had always coloured inside the lines. She had worked hard at school. She had a good job. She had paid her TV licence, and, aside from occasionally drinking too much at faculty parties, she had always, always behaved herself. All her life.
She swallowed hard.
‘I am going,’ she said.
There was consternation among the boys. Evelyn just nodded her head.
‘It’ll be far harder for the two of you to go.’
‘No, it won’t,’ argued Connie. ‘I’ll dye my hair and I’ll be able to sound less weird than him. And I can see.’
‘But your passport, your bank cards… they’ll find you.’
Connie took out her wallet, took a deep breath, and handed it to Evelyn.
‘I’ll deny ever telling you I was going to do this,’ she said. Evelyn took out all the cash that was in it. Then she opened her own wallet and took out all the cash in that – about fifty pounds – and handed it over. Then Ranjit and Arnold did the same. Arnold also insisted they take a gigantic sandwich. Ranjit’s was mostly in change. Sé just stood there with a cross look on his face. ‘I didn’t bring my wallet.’
‘That’s fine, Sé.’
They all looked at each other.
‘Seriously?’ said Arnold. ‘Seriously, you’re doing this?’
‘Three days,’ said Connie. ‘Three days. Then you can tell them everything you know. Please. Three days. Tell them we panicked and ran. That you knew nothing about it. That we stole your car and planned the entire thing. It’s just a little time. It’s just the tiniest of chances. If we can’t get there in three days, we don’t deserve the chance.’ She shot Luke a very quick glance.
Finally, Arnold looked at her and nodded. Then he opened his arms and gave her a huge bear-hug, and suddenly they were all hugging, except for Sé. Evelyn took off her baker boy cap and wrapped Connie’s hair up and under it.
Connie went up to Sé. The hat made her look like a small boy.
‘Sé,’ she said, ‘I know you don’t approve.’
‘That would be understating the case,’ he said.
‘I know you’re angry with me… with everyone. Please. Please, please, I know you think this is wrong. But please, just don’t… don’t give us up. Please. Please.’
Sé looked at her for a long moment then he sighed loudly.
‘If it had been just him going,’ he said, ‘I would. I think having an alien at large in the world without people knowing is dangerous, unethical and wrong.’
He put out a long hand, with those delicate strong fingers and gently stroked a frond of hair that had fallen loose from her cap.
‘But I could never hurt you again,’ he said in a low voice. ‘I could never hurt you, even when it hurts me more than anything.’
Chapter Fifteen
It had to be Connie and Luke at the lab so they would appear on the CCTV and avoid implicating the others. But they at least let Ranjit break the fire alarm out of the camera’s eye, because he wanted to do it so very much. Evelyn took the opportunity to have one last cigarillo indoors.
‘Okay, everyone,’ said Arnold. ‘Are we ready? Are we good for this? I would have preferred an elaborately-plotted Ocean’s 11-style, super-organised plan with lots of clever alternatives for different eventualities and things that might happen but…’
BBBBBBBBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNG!
Ranjit beamed happily and wished them good luck.
The noise of feet on the stairs hammering downwards gave them pause, but hand in hand, Connie’s heart hammering in her chest, they continued upwards.
‘We’re just going to help the biologists,’ they shouted loudly.
The lab had heavy, strong security doors to stop people breaking in, but it was being propped open as a stream of young people in lab coats came out, trying to look nonchalant about what was almost certainly an alarm, but aware that the fire alarm testing warning hadn’t come round the intranet.
‘Hey, dudes?’ said one tall guy as they tried to take the door off him.
Connie flashed her pass.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘It’s just an drill, and I left my phone up here. And you know how long we’ll be farting about outside till they sort it out.’
The guy nodded and quickly checked his pocket.
‘God, I know.’
‘I think we’re sloping off to the union for a quick pint if you want to join us,’ said Connie, trying her best to smile flirtatiously. ‘Might as well make the most of it.’
The man nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘Great, see you down there,’ said Connie, ducking under his arm.
The huge lab was empty. It had rows and rows of microscopes and an array of cabinets for specimens around the walls that made it look oddly like a kitchen.
‘This is where you’d end up,’ said Connie, startled suddenly. ‘A smear of cells on a slide.’
She glanced up at Luke.
‘If they discovered you.’
‘So let’s move fast,’ said Luke simply.
Towards the end was a large locked door with a keep out warning in bright red. It was thick and soundproofed.
‘Can you get through that door?’ said Connie.
As if in answer, Luke pushed down heavily on the handle, broke it off, reached inside the hole and forced open the heavy lock.
Immediately a second alarm lit up, turning and whooping.
‘I thought I liked you before,’ said Connie, smiling despite herself.
Bu
t Luke wasn’t listening. He was gazing straight ahead at the rows and rows of animals in cages: rabbits, guinea-pigs, lots and lots of mice. Further down the huge room, they could hear the startled yapping of monkeys, and woofing.
Luke turned to Connie, his eyes suddenly furious.
‘If there’s a fire, you leave these creatures behind? To die in a cage?’
He had to shout to make himself heard.
Connie blinked.
‘It’s… it’s a very complicated subject.’
‘It doesn’t look complicated to me,’ said Luke. He moved forward briskly, and with a quick downward motion of his hand, knocked off the first of the locks from the cages. A massive commotion went up. He glanced back at Connie as if he couldn’t believe she could belong to a species that could do something like that. For a moment, neither could she. She swallowed hard.
‘Don’t you… I mean, doesn’t that kind of thing go on where you’re from?’
‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘That’s why I left.’
He efficiently chopped all the locks. At first the animals were too traumatised, couldn’t move out. Then they did the oddest thing: they jumped down and headed past Luke as if he simply wasn’t there. The dogs, the guinea-pigs, the rabbits: they hopped curiously up to Connie, sniffing furiously; interested, frightened, engaging with her. But it was as if Luke was a pillar; they moved around him like a river.
The animals milled at first, confused. Then one followed by another guinea-pig bolted for the door. By the time they got to the dogs and monkeys, they were in absolutely no doubt about what direction they were going, and poured out and down the stairs. The noise was tremendous, and Connie could only stand straight in the current of fur pushing its way past her. One dog stopped and looked at her sideways – its head was shaved; she couldn’t begin to imagine what it had been through; it was trembling. The animal tilted its head. Unable to help herself, she caressed its shorn head, a lump in her throat.
‘Run free, boy,’ she whispered. ‘Run as far as you can.’
The whoop-whoop security noise stepped up a gear, joining to the fire alarm, and redoubled the noise and the animals’ panic.
‘Come on,’ said Connie. ‘Come on – we have to go.’
Out of the lab, they turned right, reaching the main stairwell. Connie glanced down. Someone was already making their way up, in black boots which echoed on the staircase.
‘Not that way.’
They turned, retraced their steps, darted across the lab again back to the fire escape downstairs, where they joined people from the higher floors of the building who were still on their way down, expostulating and pointing at the monkeys and dogs, all screeching and making a hell of a noise. It was pandemonium. Guinea-pigs were darting ahead of them in a waterfall; rats too, everywhere, instinctively making for the exit as Luke and Connie shoved them onwards. People ahead started to move quicker as they felt the array of paws coming behind them; one man screamed – and then they burst through the newly opened fire exit door at the bottom, round the back of the building and the fun really began.
There was running and shouting everywhere as the dogs started to go crazy at being outside again, setting up a huge commotion. The sheer number of rats and small rodents darting around made everyone start jumping up and down in derangement. Waves of screaming and panic manifested; once again Connie heard the sirens and caught sight of the back of the security man’s head around the side of the building. Arnold – God bless Arnold, God BLESS him – was haranguing him about something, shouting at him with wide gesticulatory arms, and the security man was trying to calm him down while also scanning the crowd. It was difficult to do both at once.
‘Church Street and Station Road,’ she said to Luke. ‘Come now. QUICKLY!’
They ran through the pell-mell of the wheeling crowd, besieged by rabbits, and escaped down a small alleyway by the side of the cloisters. They flattened themselves against a wall as a fire engine went wailing past in a flash of red, then crossed over again around the back of the modern library. Connie looked around hopefully down Church Street, as the sirens faded behind them. Luke didn’t really recognise cars as being particularly different entities and would have found it extremely difficult to tell a white car from a washing machine, but Connie saw it right away.
‘Oh no,’ she said, her hand flying to her mouth. ‘Oh no.’
‘What’s wrong?’ said Luke. ‘What is it?’
Connie pressed the key fob she had taken from Arnold, just in case she was wrong – please, she must be wrong – but of course she was not wrong.
The enormous, roll-top, bright white jeep with the number plate arld 42, four huge top lights and, she could tell without even pressing it, a horn playing ‘La Cucaracha’, stood glistening on the street taking up two spaces, at least a foot higher than any other car around. It crossed her mind that it must be Arnold’s pride and joy, and that he had given it to them without a moment’s hesitation. Because, she also thought, had he had a moment’s hesitation he would have realised this was the worst concept of a getaway vehicle in the history of the world; that it would never be forgotten by anyone who saw it.
She swallowed hard.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘Right…’
She looked around.
‘Station Road. Station Road. Station. Quick. Let’s go.’
They walked trying to look casual while going as fast as possible up the street, which was thronged with cheerful-looking tourists pointing out the punts going up and down the river, a possibility Connie considered then instantly discarded.
‘Put your head down,’ she said. ‘These places are full of CCTV, full of it.’
She wondered how long it would take them to figure out what had happened. Half an hour, maybe, before the animals were back – the poor sods who hadn’t had the chance to escape that was – and they realised that they were missing. Well, she would find out. There would be a hand on her shoulder any second… she avoided looking at the guards, with their cheery peaked hats. Who was in on it? Who was looking for them? Soon, she thought, everyone – everyone would be. Whether they thought they were running away from murder, or running away to tell the world about their discoveries, or whether they even made the tiniest guess at the truth – they would be finding them anyway. There was no way they would be smarter or luckier than the manpower Nigel and his ilk could muster. But there was no going back.
Something touched her hand from behind, definitely and firmly. She moved away – and felt it again. She froze, terrified. Luke glanced at her to see what was up. Slowly, so slowly, she turned round, expecting to see Nigel or one of his henchmen.
Instead it was the dog from the lab, the one she had instinctively patted. He completely ignored Luke but instead came up and licked her hand in a hopeful fashion and wagged his tail at her.
‘Oh GOD,’ she said. She bent down and gave the dog a quick hug.
‘Oh God,’ she said again. She glanced around, then knelt on the floor.
‘Look,’ she said to the dog. ‘If we make it back here – if I ever get to come back to this town again, I will come and find you. I promise. I promise.’
And with that, she took out Arnold’s sandwich, let the dog sniff it, then gave it to Luke, who hurled it – with his considerable might – all the way up the street. The dog immediately pelted after it, whereupon they rushed away, heads down, and charged up the stairs to the station.
She bought two tickets to Aylesbury, it being the first alphabetical quick ticket that caught her eye, ran them through the barrier as they jumped onto a random very busy train at the last second, just as it was beeping its doors closed. A busier carriage was better, she thought. She looked at Luke, who was staring at her, his dark eyes luminous as ever. Without breaking their eye contact and – even though the carriage was full of cross, busy-looking people attempting to tap things on phones and read newspapers and shout messages and leaf through briefcases of paper and do all sorts of distracting things which made them
feel less alone in the universe – despite all of this all around them, despite the risk that they would be seen and remembered, Connie moved forwards, very slowly, and put her head against Luke’s chest, smelling again that fresh, airy, sea-salt smell he had. She brought her hand up to it and in return he – clumsily, nervously – put his arms around her, as if he were a coat, and pulled her close to him, tight, so tight she could feel his heart beating through his chest, just above hers. And paradoxically, even though she had never been so at risk, in such grave and real and terrible danger – in spite of all those things, she closed her eyes gently and, to her own surprise, felt herself safe.
Resistance is Futile Page 16
