by Nicholas Lim
“I'm not coming. She's spoilt everything.”
“Look Jess, people have gone to a lot of trouble. Forget her. Just enjoy yourself. For once! Christ, life is short.”
The businessman began to cough, over and over, deep retches from his stomach. When he took his handkerchief away from his mouth it was spotted with blood.
“Hey fella – you okay there?”
“I'm fine. Thanks.”
A few hundred droplets escaped the businessman’s mouth with each word. He began coughing again, five thousand droplets a cough.
“You don't sound it.”
“I’m okay.” He buttoned up his jacket. It didn't stop the shivers. Or the knifing pain in his head. His breath came and went in shallow pants. When the train stopped and the couple got out he followed.
He couldn't understand the signs on the walls. The colours were confusing; and the letters wouldn't join up. Tunnels and stairs led him round and round in an underground maze without exits. When the sliding doors of another train opened in front of him he got on. The carriage was half full. He stayed standing, holding his briefcase with his right hand.
A group of smartly-dressed young people sat around him in a group.
“It's not religious extremism per se that’s dangerous. The more fanatical a Jain is, the less an insect has to worry about.”
“Here we go.”
“It's the born-agains that make me nervous. Look at Bush after he swapped Jack Daniels for Methodism – he went on a Crusade.”
“That’s America for you. You know what a Texas governor once said about lessons in Spanish? ‘If English is good enough for Jesus it's good enough for us.’”
The businessman twisted on his strap. The voices were coming from all directions. He wanted to move away but the carriage was now full. He stared at an advert for a dating site. He wondered if it was worth trying. Just the thought of meeting someone new was exhausting.
“Apparently Spain translates more books from English in one year than the entire Arab world has since the ninth century – in a millennium.”
“Is that true?”
The businessman closed his eyes; he had read the dating site advert twenty times. The chatter continued. It was impossible to block out completely.
“Faith prefers respect; it’s a confidence thing. You know that joke from the Irish Troubles. When a journalist at a checkpoint says he’s an atheist, he’s asked, ‘Is that a Catholic atheist or Protestant atheist?’”
“Maybe it's not a joke.”
The conversation continued to rise and fall around him. The fever was getting worse. He thought about letting go of the strap. His right hand squeezed the handle of his briefcase tighter as he tried to control his coughing. An aerosol of inhalable droplets hovered around him, a personal cloud spreading through the sealed metal carriage of fifty passengers. Shrouded in a smog of each other’s fluids, they shared more than conversation. Air in the human nose and trachea moves at about a hundred centimetres a second. Large particles stick to the mucosal lining; smaller – less than five micrometres – are sucked into the lower branches of the lungs and settle out by sedimentation when the air is calm between breaths.
The businessman remained on the tube network for an hour. When the fever subsided his mind cleared enough for him to find a taxi back to his bedsit in Maida Vale. The cab driver wanted to take him to a hospital. He refused. Back home he took aspirin and sat himself in front of the television. He wondered if he was up to working. The fever returned.
Throughout the final seizures his right hand maintained its grip on the handle of his briefcase.
Chapter 6
Garrett pushed her estate through the bends and straights of the single carriageway as it climbed up from the Sussex coast to the Salisbury plain. On the passenger seat beside her was a cool bag, large enough for two six packs, labelled ‘UN 3373’. It contained racks of tissues and blood from her three most recent autopsies.
“In one hundred yards, bear right onto the A413.”
The car sat-nav’s voice was canned like laughter and just as fake. As it ended, another recorded voice faded up in the car’s interior. Garrett fast-forwarded past an intro to a new WHO podcast. She was aware she was behind in her listening. In a normal week, she would catch at least a dozen briefings.
“With international air travel, an infected person can carry a disease from any point of the globe to any other in less than thirty-six hours, a time shorter than most incubation periods. So travellers can depart, arrive, and begin infecting without even knowing that they are sick. The number of international migrants is estimated at over three hundred million a year: nearly a million a day.”
Garrett turned the podcast off. It was too general. She knew the stats already. And she couldn’t concentrate. She switched lanes, turned onto the A road and picked up speed. Smooth tarmac snaked ahead of her. Simon Kirkpatrick at CDSC had finally assigned a lab – Porton Down – and arranged a meeting. She suspected that without the support of Jenkins he wouldn’t have bothered. She thought about her destination. Although a military base, Porton handled a lot of referred civilian cases. She had never visited before but had often worked with their researchers, recently on a cholera case. For a tropical disease like malaria, it was probably the leading research centre in the UK so she was not surprised they had been given the work.
“Approaching junction 8. At the roundabout, take the third exit onto the B342. Estimated arrival time nine minutes.”
Humped, bordering fields stretched ahead to either side. A memory unspooled on the unwinding, grey ribbon of road; another drive, to a holiday cottage in Cornwall. The images that survived – jumbled, fragmentary – puzzled her sometimes. Their tent shivering with laughter; outside sheep bleating like children; cold feet leaving black prints on wet grass. Garrett leaned over the steering wheel and overrode the automatic gearbox to shift a while with and without the clutch. It was calming.
“Warning. No map data available. Please return to previous junction. Warning...”
Garrett started. She slowed late to pull into an unmarked lay-by. All buttons on the sat-nav unit were unresponsive. Something had given it a fit. She pressed Restart.
“Warning. No map data available. Please return to previous junction. Warning...”
“Okay, I heard you the first time.” She switched the unit off, pulled out a road map and looked up her location. The area was covered by what looked like a national park, a large greyed-out box marked “MoD land”.
Garrett reversed, shifting gears with the slightest whine of synchromesh. Fifty yards back a large sign marked a left-hand turning. Garrett stared. ‘dstl. Porton Down.’ Somehow she had missed it.
Garrett drove the new road more slowly. After some minutes she came to a stop at a road barrier.
MINISTRY OF DEFENCE
dstl. Porton Down.
South entrance.
Restricted land: keep out.
This is a Crown road. MoD regulations apply.
Unauthorised persons entering this area may be arrested and prosecuted.
A guardhouse stood directly ahead. To either side, as far as Garrett could see, an endless chain-link fence divided rolling grassland.
A uniformed man approached. She opened her window. Birdsong and the day’s close heat poured into the air-conditioned interior of the car.
“Af’noon ma’am. Can I help you?”
Garrett passed over an email printout. “I'm here to see a Major Skinner.”
She followed the soldier over to the guardhouse. She was asked to fill in an id form. Then a vehicle form. Then a visitor’s form. Army bureaucracy appeared to rival the health service.
Along one wall a bank of six monitors faced inward, each full of small windows displaying text and blinking lights like a workstation on a city trading floor. “That's a lot of screens to watch,” Garrett commented. A soldier swung round on a swivel chair.
“Can't even get cable.” He shook his head.
“What are they for?”
“We're a monitoring station.” The soldier turned to the screens and proceeded to name them, like naughty children, with wags of a finger. “HQ. Squadron. Fence. Land sensors. Gates. Bio labs. Anything happens on the base, we see it here.”
Garrett thought of her satnav system. “Does it work?”
“Sure.”
Garrett looked out of the guardhouse door to the chain-link fence. She had a childish flashback to crayon pictures of moats, portcullises and crenulated walls.
“Dr Garrett. Please wear this at all times while you are here.” Garrett accepted a plastic laminated ID card, blank white, with a copper chip embedded in its centre.
Her phone began to ring.
“Excuse me–”
“Go ahead.”
“Christine Garrett?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Dr Prenderville here.”
Garrett turned her back on the monitors.
“Do you still wish to meet with someone who has left Asari?”
“Yes.”
“I had a call this morning from a client of mine, Michael Boorman. Says he knows your son. He’s willing to see you.”
Garrett found Prenderville’s card and scribbled an address and phone number on the back.
“Let me know if I can be of further help.”
Garrett stared at the name she had written down. Jason would see any contact as a violation of their agreement, a trespass. Was that fair? Fair? To want to see him? It was natural, for God's sake.
Another soldier approached. “My apologies Dr Garrett. It appears there may have been a mix-up over times. Major Skinner’s giving a talk at the NOTAF conference. He’s expecting you, but I’m afraid he won’t be done for an hour or so.”
The soldier at the screens pivoted on his chair, a slow back and forth rocking, as if on a porch. She became aware she was being studied with a confident, straying glance, all over, as though for risks. She forced eye contact. The soldier smiled.
“Sarge, no point the lady waiting here – she’s been cleared. And my shift’s up.” The officer gave a single nod. Garrett heard unspoken words pass between the men, brief as a blink. Fair play. She controlled a flash of disdain.
The soldier stood. “Come on, I’ll take you up there.”
Chapter 7
“Chrissy! Chrissy! Can you hear me?”
Christmas sat cross-legged on a mat in a shrinking slice of shade where the beach sloped up to meet the black-tarred deck under the Palace Pier. Behind him, at the highest point under the eaves, a purple sleeping bag wiggled on the pebbles. One end shifted slightly and long brown hair spilled out like a hank of seaweed.
“Chrissy, I've got the sweats again.”
Christmas bent towards a Tilley stove, lit it and balanced on top a Billy can.
“Did you hear me? I think my temperature’s back. I feel really bad again. What about you?”
Christmas turned the stove’s flame up to maximum then returned to his shaded mat. He coughed once and spat. Rusty phlegm hit a well-used target rock. Further down the pebbles a man in a pinstripe suit rolled out from under an overcoat, looked up and gave a wave.
“Everyone's got the sweats today Jade.” Christmas rubbed his forehead, smudging beads of moisture into a shiny smear. He stared at the back of his hand. Water covered the skin.
“You’re not even in the sun! Look at you!”
Jade zipped the sleeping bag open to her waist and sat up. Black-wet strands stuck to her forehead. She waved at the man in the suit.
“Hey Jimmy!”
The suited man was folding his coat with the precision of a butler.
“Chrissy, I feel like I’m burning up, like my head is going to explode.”
“I told you: do a Sit. Do the Awakening.”
Jade pushed up onto her elbows. Her body was wet with sweat. The sleeping bag beneath her was drenched. She stared down from her spot under the eaves of the pier, huddled in the last thinning slice of shade. She twisted fingers through her hair, knotting up stray strands into tight plaits.
“No Chrissy that isn’t right.”
“We already talked about this.”
“But I’m dead sick. And I think you are too. If you’re ill you can’t think yourself well. Not if you’re really ill.”
“So you don’t believe Arshu?”
Jade sighed. “I’m saying let’s get help.”
“Right thoughts. Right prayer. Right belief, Jade.”
“Christ.”
“You don’t try. You have the help you need. It’s called faith.”
Jade stared at Christmas for a long time then shook her head. “You can have too much faith.”
Christmas closed his eyes.
“I tried calling the Valley yesterday.” Jade flopped onto her back. “Still couldn't get through.”
Christmas said nothing.
“Why doesn't someone answer? You know don’t you? Why can’t you tell me? Zoo Crew haven’t seen anyone neither. I was up there last night, spoke to Cherry.”
“Last week, Lizzie said–”
“Lizzie! Lizzie this, Lizzie that, I’m fed up of Lizzie! What does that woman have, hey? Where is she? Did you see her last night?”
“I haven’t seen her in days.”
“Since you were all over her like a rash.”
“Your jealously is wrong. People are not possessions. Remember what Arshu says: Love is not owning. You get me?” Jade didn’t answer. He smiled. “Good. Because you and me, that’s how it has to be.” As he rhymed, his head jutted back and forward, rap-style.
Silence.
“I'm off tomorrow,” he said.
“Where you going?”
“Glastonbury.”
“I'll come.”
Silence.
“No wellies this year! And the extra Monday. They were smart to move it, hey?”
Silence.
“You wanna be careful Chris. They're tough on dealing there now.”
“That's not why I'm going.”
“Chrissy, no one’s interested you know. No one is listening.”
“You know what your problem is, Jade? Maybe you took Sanyas, years ago, but now you believe in nothing.”
Christmas crossed his legs and rocked from side to side to find the balancing point. He gazed above Jade’s head, his eyes focussed at a distance. “Something extraordinary is happening. Something you can’t imagine.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. The world is about to change. Forever.”
Jade yawned. “Here we go.”
“You understand nothing. Nothing. About the truth, about what is holy, about what is happening,” Christmas bowed his head, “and the price that must be paid.”
“Guess I must have just missed it.”
“You don’t know what’s going on because you chose not to listen. Others will.”
Jade sat up. “No they won't. You know why? Cos it's boring. Your ideas are boring. You're boring. Arshu’s boring. That’s why I left. Don't you get it? No one gives a fuck.”
At the mention of Arshu Christmas closed his eyes. He said, “No. You don't give a fuck.”
“And you don't give a fuck about me. Same thing.”
The can on the stove gargled like a baby. Steam curled cloud-white in the sunshine.
“Don't you see? I can't make you like me. I can't make you want me, listen to me.”
Jade’s mouth folded in at the lips and she began to cry, softly, into her hair. After a while she stopped. She could feel sweat starting out all over her body. She squinted. Christmas was coming in and out of focus.
“Arshu isn’t a saint you know. He’s not God. Not like you all want to make him! Arshu is just a man!”
“Jade.”
“He’s just a man. He goes for a crap like the rest of us.”
“Shut up.”
“He does! He’s probably going for a crap right now.”
Christmas watched the water begin
to bubble in the can. His tattooed skin glistened as though oiled. Flies, high up on an arm, trembled in annoyance.
“Arshu’s going for a crap!”
“I said shut it!” Steam poured into the air in a steady stream. “You don’t talk about him that way!”
There was a sudden puttering rumble, then fizzing like a poured drink. Christmas cursed and moved towards the stove. Jade began to shout.
“I’ll talk any way I want! You can’t stop me!” Jade began to sing in a terrace chant. “Arshu’s going for a crap! Arshu’s going for a crap! La laa laa la! La laa laa la! Arshu’s going–”
Christmas changed direction. He crawled over the pebbles, tin mug in hand, moving three-legged like a monkey up into the narrow roof space.
Jade drew her sleeping bag up to her nose. “Chrissy–”
Christmas shook his head.
“Chrissy, I was only messing.”
He balanced the mug between stones by Jade’s head then reached out his right hand, burying it in her hair. She closed her eyes. His fingers combed softly. “I know you feel bad baby, but you can’t speak like that. It’s,” he hesitated, “Disrespectful.”
“My temperature’s all over the place, Chrissy. I’m burning up!”
Christmas’s hand closed. He twisted and pulled.
“AhHHH!”
Christmas tightened his fingers further and drew his fist towards his face, rotating the girl’s head to put an ear close to his mouth. Imprisoned in its sleeping bag cocoon, her body jerked spasmodically.
“AhHHH! CHRISSY!!”
Below them, the man in the suit and hat called out a question.
The flies shivered again on a bicep. “Shhhhh.”
Jade’s body went rigid. Her mouth opened in a silent plea.
“You listening to me Jade?” He did not relax his grip or raise his voice. Jade nodded. “Look at me!” He turned her to look at him. “No more disrespect to what is holy.” She nodded again, tiny easing jerks of her head. “No. More. Disrespect.” His hand remained bunched in her hair.
Below them, the suited man approached with a rattle of pebbles.
