by Ian Whates
They were lighting the fire; brushing bits of bark from her hands, Fift found a place on a rock, not too far and not too near, and settled onto it. The expedition director, a fussy 200-year-old middleborn Staid, was anxiously directing the two Bails holding the lighted torch. Kimi rushed up the path, walking just slower than a run, eyes wide with expectation.
Alone on the path with Shria, Fift was at a loss. Were people watching them? There was a way to check audience numbers on the feed, they’d had it once in interface class – after a moment, she found it. No one saw them where they stood in the forest; no one at all. Not even Grobbard.
Grobbard raised an eyebrow. As if waiting for Fift to answer a question.
“Oh,” Fift said. “Yes, I –” She switched to sending, rather than speak aloud about the Long Conversation, there in the kitchen where her Bail Fathers might hear and get annoyed. {Yes, Father Grobbard, I would be interested in studying the sixth and seventh odes of the first additional corpus. Thank you.}
Fift’s arms were getting tired from holding the bundle of sticks. She took a step up the path, and Shria matched it. They headed back towards the campsite.
Shria watched the darkening sky, sunk in his own thoughts. At the edge of the circle of firelight – red shadows dancing on the trunks, every body wreathed in a streamer of exhaled cloud as the children began to sing – he looked at her once, and sent: {Thanks.}
They dumped their kindling in the pile, and Shria went off somewhere. Fift sat down with herself, body against body, huddled up against the cold.
THE HOWL
IAN R MACLEOD AND MARTIN SKETCHLEY
Ian R MacLeod has been a writer in and around the genre for more than twenty years. His work has been frequently anthologised, translated into many languages and adapted for TV. He has won the World Fantasy Award twice, the Sidewise Award for Alternate Fiction three times, and also the Arthur C. Clarke and John W. Campbell Memorial Awards. He lives in the riverside town of Bewdley with his one wife and two dogs.
Martin Sketchley is the author of three novels to date, and his short fiction has appeared in several anthologies, including Conflicts, Celebration and Solaris Rising 2. He also appeared on the DVD bundled with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds’ reissued album Abattoir Blues/Lyre of Orpheus. “The Howl” is his first collaborative work. Tweet him @MartinSketchley.
IT WAS ONE of those things you think about doing but know you never will. As the engines started to roar and the runway began to roll, Grace still couldn’t believe it was happening. Strange food at twenty thousand feet and films she couldn’t follow, change at Singapore and then again at Dubai. Where, with hours to kill, she took out the photo she’d found amid her mother’s belongings. She studied each of the five black and white faces. All of them in their flight suits, yet looking far too young and happy for the terrible responsibilities of the gigantic machine hunched behind them.
Then finally, London. She queued with the bickering families and the women in saris to present her passport, and her phone began beeping with anxious messages from her family the moment she turned it on. She ignored them. A big screen was showing a news channel as she waited at the carousel. One of those anonymously pretty blondes they must clone somewhere was standing on a windy expanse of marshland, gesturing behind her to where a huge crane was being hauled onto some kind of pontoon. The image switched to a graphic in which the crane became a toy, and another toy – an aeroplane which Grace now knew was called an Avro Vulcan – lay in the impossibly clear depths beneath it. Then back to the freezing blonde, and clearly nothing much else was happening yet. Grace grabbed her case as it went by a second time and headed in search of a taxi.
THE DRIVER WAS Indian like half the ones you got in Perth, and accepted the address, which she knew wasn’t far from Heathrow, without question. She’d never visited Britain before. It was a place her mother had always seemed more than happy to leave behind. She’d been expecting – what? Pearly kings? Highland cattle? Glimpses of the royal family riding around on tall red buses? – but the landscape she travelled through was bleak. Chain hotels, blank warehouses and endless car parks finally gave way to almost equally bleak rows of houses. The block of flats the driver drew up beside had a grey, defeated air. As did the few tattered trees that surrounded it. She flinched when something huge roared overhead as she fiddled with the strange money, but it was just another aircraft like the one which had brought her here.
Inside, she peered into the lift, wrinkled her nose and bumped her case up the concrete stairs. Found the button beside a barred and prison-looking door, pressed it, and waited.
“I thought I’d told you not to come?” He was already walking away from her. But at least he hadn’t slammed the door in her face. “You’re worse than the bloody journalists...”
“They’ve been bothering you?”
She stepped into a room where an old television with an aerial on top was murmuring daytime inanities. Bits of wood leaned in one corner – apparently some incomplete desk construction project. Stacked piles of newspapers and TV guides. A great many calendars clung to the walls. On the Formica coffee table the remains of a meal; an empty mug; something electronic disembowelled. Through the glass door at the far end of the room a white plastic deckchair and table stood on the small balcony, a sagging yellow washing line, the grey battleship of London beyond.
“What do you expect? The kids and neighbours must be starting to think I’m one of those paedophile celebrities. Or perhaps you don’t have those in Australia?”
Grace had no idea what he was talking about. “But how did you –?”
“Know who you are? You look far too much like Ann. Then there’s the suntan and the accent. I’m not stupid, you know.”
Grace perched on edge of the settee.
“Make yourself at home, why don’t you?” He went into the kitchen. “I suppose now you’re here I might as well do the British thing and fix you some tea...” His hand, as he filled the electric kettle, was shaking. “I’m guessing from the suitcase that you’ve only just arrived?”
“There didn’t seem any point in hanging around. Not after coming this far.” She peered at the piles of newspapers. Saw little paper flags, scrawled notes, protruding. Then there were those calendars, most of which looked old. Some kind of hobby? The final months of lost years.
“I, ah, found a photo of you and Charlie and the rest of the crew amongst Mum’s things...” Another jet passed overhead as the kettle started screaming. “And it was obvious from the things she said that... Well, that you were fond of each other.”
“Fond...?” The fridge door banged. “So you don’t even bother to tell me that she’s died?”
“I’m so very sorry that you didn’t find out more quickly. But...” All those calendars. All decorated with symbols, exclamation marks. Dates circled, underlined or scrubbed out. Here was one, even, from 1961. “Well, it hardly seemed right for me to start poking into the past. But Mum did remember you, Bill, if that means anything at all. Spoke about you far more than the rest of the crew, in fact... Apart, of course, from Charlie. But then I got this message via the British Consulate back in Perth that they’d found the old Vulcan and were planning to raise it. And I am technically next of kin, and there’s every reason to think my father’s remains are still down there inside it.”
“So now you’re here, with the tan and the accent and everything, dragging things up like those bloody fools in Yorkshire? Those busybody plane spotters and halfwit academics with their fancy equipment...” He stepped in front of her from the kitchen. Even frowning in those thick glasses, wearing a stained and holed cardigan, and now well past seventy, still recognisably the third man from the left in that photo. “It’s Grace, right? Did I mention you look a lot like Ann?”
“People always used to comment on it. Which Mum didn’t like, by the way, because then she always seemed to have to end up explaining that she’d been married to someone else before she came over from England. Mum wanted a ne
w life. She destroyed so many things. Including most of her memories.”
He held out the mug of tea. “But that isn’t how it works, is it?”
YOU GET USED to these things, no matter what it is you do. Fifteen minute readiness, playing pool or darts or cards and already in flight suits. Waiting for the end of the world. The planes loaded, ready, fuelled. Otherwise the Ruskies’ mushroom clouds would be rising over Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool, not to mention this bloody airbase, before you’d even got airborne, and then what would be the point?
The sort of thing you dreamed of as a kid. Didn’t care if the teachers smiled or the adults laughed. Hoarded the magazines when the other kids were talking about football. Tried to get to the air shows even if the buses went nowhere near. Just hitched and walked. A big ask, that was what the careers master called it, with armed forces cutting back and the Empire fading and conscription gone and Britain not what it was, and the guy in the proper uniform in the recruiting office up past Woolies on the high street wasn’t much more encouraging. There was always ground crew, or the Navy, or the catering corps, or the poor bloody infantry, or just the Territorials. But you gave it your best. Strained to get the maths, the physics. Hoped to God that your eyes and all the rest of you were A1 and not shit B2.
Even then, even when you arrived on that first day in windy Yorkshire with your mum’s old suitcase, there were other lads, hundreds of them – you’d never thought – all of whom wanted to be crew, fly one of those big machines. The navigation and the physics and the spit and polish and the trick cyclists asking how angry you were and running until you were sick all over the moors. But you didn’t give up. More exams and exercises and then Jet Provosts and one day you’re up there alone. God of the sky. Breathing rubber, kerosene and stars. Then the wing commander calls you in. And you stand to attention and wait for the worst. Can’t believe what he’s saying. Can’t believe you’re not crying. Can’t believe it’s true.
But you get used to anything. Even a dream. Even these big machines. The payload? Well, it’s orders, physics, if the worst came to the worst. Yellow Sun with a Red Beard warhead. Fusion. A fucking H-bomb. Two thousand pounds. Nothing that the Ruskies wouldn’t do to us. It’s a job and it’s everything you prayed for. And, even if your family and no one off the airbase knows the whole truth, you’re damn proud of who you are and what you do. Last bastion and bulwark and all that. The vee-winged Atlas that holds up the free world. That feeling in your guts just looking at them like giant pterodactyls straining for the sky as you head out from the briefing shed. Then you climb in and go through the checks and the lights come on, the dials flicker, the wheels rumble, the runway unravels, and the four big Olympus engines howl.
BILL SAT IN the armchair facing the television, thumbing the remote control.
“How are things for you here anyway?” said Grace, sipping tea.
“What does it matter to you? Nothing – nothing – for over fifty years, then you ignore what I told you over the phone, turn up out of the blue and expect me to be all pally. Well you can bloody well forget it.”
There was an awkward silence. But she hadn’t come halfway around the world on a wild goose chase. Grace took a deep breath. “Bill,” she said. “I wanted to ask you something. About Mum.” He just gazed at the television. “I couldn’t help wondering what there was between the two of you. I mean, feel free to tell me if it’s none of my business, but...”
“It’s none of your business.”
Bill turned up the sound on the television – perhaps a little too loud – and kept jabbing at the remote until he reached News 24, where they were confronted by an image of the marsh and the same bubbly young reporter whose enthusiasm refused to be dampened by drizzle, behind her the same pontoon and men in orange rubber suits.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” said Grace. “That’s where they’ve found the Vulcan.”
The young woman was talking about the Cold War, Britain’s V-bomber force, its role in the Cuban Missile Crisis, World War Three, Macmillan, Kennedy, Khrushchev... And tomorrow, she said, when the weather improved, XL 438 would see the sky for the first time in over fifty years.
Bill snorted. “Well, she’s got that all wrong. Bloody journalists. They’re almost as bad as the politicians.”
Grace sat forward a little on the settee. “I have a suggestion, Bill. I know you’ve been trying to put this to one side, but sometimes... Well, sometimes it’s better to face up to things. And I’ve come a long way, and my family all think I’m mad, and I honestly hadn’t realised how strange and different a place England is. And Charlie, my Dad, isn’t even a ghost to me. So why don’t we drive up there together and watch them bring her up?”
He looked at her for the first time since she had entered the flat. “Why would I want to do that?”
“I don’t know, I just thought...”
“You didn’t bloody well think, though, did you? That’s the trouble. No one ever does.”
THE REAL FAMILY, the family you become part of, isn’t the squadron or the RAF. It’s your crew. After all, you could die together so might as well live that way. Equals in everything but never questioning an order because that’s the only way to survive and get through. Close in any case, stuffed cheek by jowl into that tiny pressure cabin, two of you above with some view of the sky and the other three guys below. Sam down there on navigation and Irish ballads and Frankie to complain and steer in the payload and Grin in charge of wisecracks and electrics. Pilot and co-pilot – that’s you – up top. A tight ship in every sense. A beautiful machine. Reckon the competition, the Victors and Valiants, have drawn the short straw. No matter that the main Vulcan test pilot died and the very first machine to be delivered crashed on landing at Heathrow following a glorious global promo tour. Other accidents since, lives lost, and that alarming tendency, which you’ve been trained to expect and the boffins have made all sorts of accommodations for, to enter into an uncontrollable dive as you approach Mach one. You’ve heard all the stories. The jokes. The humour can get pretty grisly, in fact, but if there’s one thing you don’t talk about – apart, anyway, from exactly what you’d be flying back to after a completed mission – it’s this: the pilot and the co-pilot have ejector seats and the other three crew, down there with their charts and their Thermos flasks, don’t. The idea is they scramble out, jump free-fall and parachute. In the accidents, in the training runs, that often hasn’t worked out. But there you go.
Amid all the equals, Charlie’s the lead pilot and he’s in command. He looks, acts, is, the part. Joins in with the jokes and complains about the farts but only so far. You’d thought you’d wanted everything, back when you were an Airfix kid, but you’re happy to be Charlie’s co. You trust him. You admire him like hell. It’s as if he’s soaring through the air even when he’s on the ground. He seems older, even though he’s the same age as everyone else. He’s married, settled, while the rest of you are still wanking to film star posters. He has a beautiful wife. Blonde hair. A smile that melts your knees. She’s what you’re fighting for. She’s why you’d fly all the way across Europe and through the Iron Curtain. She’s why you’d press the button. Her name is Ann.
GRACE LAY IN the slightly lumpy Holiday Inn bed gazing into the darkness, serenaded by sirens and airliners. She needed sleep, wanted sleep, but her body clearly had other ideas, stuck in the whirring mechanisms of a time she’d temporarily left behind.
Although she’d persuaded Bill to take the trip up north to witness the Vulcan’s retrieval first-hand, with perhaps a stop-off at the old bomber base where he and Charlie and the rest of the crew were stationed, there were so many unanswered questions. Was Bill her real dad, for instance? And, if so, what did that make Charlie? Not to mention her mother. How did you raise something like that with someone who was really a complete stranger? What were you supposed to do – stand side-by-side and look in the mirror and see a revelatory family likeness? A mole on the chin? A distinctive nose? The letters, the bits an
d pieces between the lines and the things that Mum had and hadn’t said over the years – what did it all mean? And then there were all those old calendars and maps on Bill’s wall, covered in little stickers and scribblings. Unfamiliar countries and cities linked by lengths of coloured string. Concentric circles and shaded areas with little symbols and figures. What on Earth was going on in his head?
As doors banged and someone laughed in the corridor outside her room, Grace rolled onto her side and pulled the duvet tight around her. Perhaps tomorrow she would find out more, but she couldn’t help wonder whether everyone back in Perth had been right, with all their warnings of sleeping dogs, skeletons and closets.
SHE COMES TO you one evening. Out of the blue. Out of the airfield dark. You’re not proud of the dream, the thought, but there you are. You’re working late. It’s another exam. Navigation across enemy territory without countermeasures or armaments. Just you, the Vulcan, the mission, and nothing else. The decision made. The order irrevocable. She sits on the edge of your desk. There’s no one else around. The light fills her blonde hair. Her dress pulls tight across her thigh. She and Charlie, they’re the perfect couple. You know they are. He carves the roast and she leans over you to serve the potatoes at Sunday lunch. She’s leaning over you now. But there you go.
“I’m worried,” she tells you, “about Charlie.” And you nod, impossible though that sounds. “He’s always, he’s too much, in control.”
But that’s what Charlie’s for. That’s what he’s lived his life to become. You want to say. But don’t. She’s half-smiling, half-worried. Fiddling with her wedding ring. She smells delicious. You don’t know if it’s perfume or her. Or both. A gap has somehow appeared. A potentiality. A weakness in the enemy radar. You swallow. You lean on the throttle. You push through.
