‘You mean, without risk of a boating accident?’ Bradd nodded to confirm this. ‘But what about the security?’
‘Where I found the map I sent you – that file also has a lot of information about the way the island is patrolled. In theory it’s as tightly protected as the Seigniory Palace, but in reality security along the coast is lax. If we make the crossing at night, we wouldn’t run into anything.’
‘It’s far too dangerous!’
‘I don’t think so. How closely did you look at the chart of the coastal waters?’
‘Hardly at all. I only had the graphic on the screen for a few seconds. I couldn’t leave it there.’
‘The water is shallow, usually calm. The tidal surge is moderate. There are some rocks, but they’re all at the western end of the bay. The bay itself has a wide beach where I could simply run the boat ashore. The only danger would be if the weather was bad, but we wouldn’t even set out if that was the case.’
‘Why are you doing this, Bradd?’
‘All sorts of reasons.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, for one thing, I feel guilty about what happened last year. We both feel bad about it, but you were on the rebound. I took advantage of you. I want to make amends. I hated what you said at the time but I realize now what Tomak means to you. In some ways I regret nothing because I was genuinely attracted to you. What happened shouldn’t have happened.’
‘Bradd, I told you I was sorry.’
A shadow of a memory was passing overhead, though, breathing a quiet menace. She had heard this from him once before, a different context, not in this room, another. Then it had come with unstated threats – his obsession that she could not cope without him, his repeated claims that she needed him. He built her up and knocked her down, undermining her confidence in herself, in her job, in her belief in Tomak, sometimes even in her own sanity. It had terrified her then, helped make up her mind about him. She had refused to go near him for several weeks. But that was then. A safer distance had grown in the months that passed since.
She said quietly, ‘You said there were several reasons.’
‘There was all that. What happened between us, and trying to make amends. That’s the main reason. The only other one is more complex. It’s because we’re told we shouldn’t go to Tremm, that no one is allowed there. That feels like a challenge to me. We’re both cartographers, Lorna, we’ve been trained to believe that a map should be something of objective fact. If a place is there, if an island exists, then we should be free to chart it. The only reason Tremm is not on our maps is political. Some government somewhere has decided its national interest lies in putting Tremm under its domain, and suddenly the island ceases to exist. But it’s not our government and it’s not our war. It’s one of the countries in the north that must have made some kind of deal with the Seigniory. These things go on. Anyway, the result is ludicrous. We can see the island with our own eyes, every day, every night. Everyone who lives on Meequa knows Tremm is there, so do thousands of other people. So why can’t we put it on a map? To me that’s the challenge. I just want to go there, walk around on it for a while.’
‘And then you would come back here?’ Lorna said. He shrugged his shoulders. ‘What about me, if I went with you? Are you planning to leave me there?’
‘What do you want to do if I can get you across?’
‘I need to find out what’s happened to Tomak. I know that sounds desperate, but I haven’t heard from him since he left. Anything could have happened to him: illness, accident. Or maybe he was the victim of some kind of crime. I don’t even know if he’s still alive. I assume he is, but all I can do is assume that. I’ve no other way of knowing. But until you sent me the map a few minutes ago it never occurred to me I could go to the island. I haven’t already worked out a plan, a list of things I must complete.’
‘Then why don’t we sail across one night, when the tide is right? We’ll land there, walk around for a bit. That’ll satisfy me, and it’ll give you a feel for the place. We needn’t stay long and if it’s as easy as I think we can return some other time.’
‘I don’t know,’ Lorna said. ‘I need time to think about it.’
She was standing with the tabulator and her binoculars still slung over her shoulder. She wanted to put them down, but an instinct warned her that Bradd would see that as some kind of relaxation of her guard. He was rushing her, seeming to want a decision immediately. What would be the point of sailing across to Tremm? How would that help her find Tomak?
‘I’m going to be in the bar for a while,’ Bradd said. ‘If you want to think things over, or know anything more, that’s where you’ll find me.’
He left then, and she followed him out. She waited until he had walked down the corridor and she could hear the swing doors close behind him, before she returned to her room. She closed the door firmly behind her, kicking it, just as Bradd had done. Only then did she ease the heavy tabulator and the binoculars from her shoulder.
* * *
She made herself a light meal in the kitchen, drank some tea. Patta would be home soon, so when she returned to her room Lorna made sure the door was closed and locked. Only then did she switch on her computer and put up the graphic map of Tremm. She regarded it at first with professional interest, noting the scale, the density of the contours, the level of mapping detail. But her eye kept being drawn by the undescribed installations. She knew that if Tomak was somewhere on the island, that must be where he was.
Poring over the details she noticed again the dots marked with a ‘Y’. There seemed to be no logical pattern to them: just a cluster of them here, more elsewhere, several more scattered across the face of one of the central mountains. There were dozens of them in all, perhaps as many as a hundred.
When she heard Patta opening and closing the outer door, Lorna quietly shut down the computer, made sure the encrypted data stick was safely concealed in the computer case, then went to find her roommate. She discovered Patta had been involved in an argument with her boyfriend and was crying quietly in her room. Lorna stayed to talk to her for a while.
* * *
Afterwards she went to the bar in search of Bradd. It was late, and she was expecting him to have left, but to her surprise he was still there. He was sitting by himself at a corner table, working on his laptop. As she went across to him he swung the screen to shut down the computer and waved to her to sit with him. The bar was about to close – only a handful of people remained, and they were in a group on the far side of the room. The shutter had already been lowered over the counter by the bar staff.
‘Have you decided?’ Bradd said.
‘Decided what?’
‘Do you want to sail across to Tremm one night? I thought you realized what I was suggesting.’
There was a clatter of glasses from the bar area, and one of the staff started music through the speaker system. After a few moments it was switched off again, and someone behind the bar laughed loudly. No one was interested in what Bradd and Lorna were doing.
‘I still don’t see what would be gained by just visiting the island,’ Lorna said. ‘If it’s night-time we wouldn’t see anything, we wouldn’t be able to travel inland and the chances are we’d be spotted and arrested.’
‘So that’s a no.’
‘It’s a maybe. But for now I’d like to find out if you know anything more than you’ve already told me. You said there were some files with the graphics.’
‘I’ll forward them to you.’
‘Is there anything in them that will help me locate Tomak?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘There are those unmarked installations on the map. What do you know about them?’
‘The same as you. You must have come to the same conclusion. They are the buildings used by the military. I ran a comparative scan. There’s an old map in the archives, more than a hundred years old, and at that time there was just the port and a few houses along the coast. Those huts are more or
less the only new development since. I don’t see that they have any special interest, as buildings. People have to live and sleep somewhere. But living quarters aside, what the other buildings are being used for is a different matter. There’s something on the island they want to keep secret, so I imagine what goes on in those buildings is part of it.’
Lights in the room suddenly dimmed – the familiar signal from the bar staff that they wanted to close for the night.
Lorna said, ‘There’s something else about the map I don’t understand. Those dots marked with a “Y”.’
‘Well, I can tell you what they are because I looked them up. But I don’t think they’re going to help you find Tomak.’
‘Go on.’
‘Did you ever hear of the artist called Yo? The installation artist, who built underground cavities?’
‘Jordenn Yo. Of course! We studied her work at school. And there was a module on her work at university.’
‘She came from your part of the world, the area you’re trying to map. An island called Annadac, in the Swirl. You probably knew that? All right. She had to leave Annadac under something of a cloud. I’m not sure what happened there, but it was not before she had obtained a massive Lotterie-Collago grant. She used the money to take out a long lease on Tremm. She was working on the island for about five years. She later called it her apprenticeship period. She used the island’s mountains to practise tunnelling and caving techniques. She drilled many tunnels – different diameters, different shapes and depths. Some were simply drilled into the rock, but others penetrated the mountain from one side to the other. It was a huge operation. For a while she had more than a hundred people assisting her. Many of them went across to work for her from here, from Meequa.’
Lorna was feeling a sudden excitement. Art history had been a secondary or optional course for her, but she always considered Yo to be an inspirational figure as a woman who had built and continued her career in spite of endless antagonism and philistinism. There were many islands in different parts of the Archipelago where the intricate and sometimes terrifying tunnels drilled by Yo and her artisans were now recognized as major pieces of modern installation art.
She had achieved her work under a lifelong barrage of criticism and prejudice, sometimes also physical attack, with many of the more conservative islands passing laws that banned her from landing there. She had spent at least two years of her life in one prison or another. But anyone who saw her work today could not fail to be moved by the grandeur of her vision, the sheer scale of her achievement. Her memory was cherished for the great drilled mountains, the artificial valleys and passes, where tides and winds played the harmonics of the sea, the sky and the earth.
‘I had no idea,’ Lorna said. ‘Jordenn Yo, working on Tremm! That’s simply astonishing.’
‘Yo said that she did not want anything she left behind on Tremm to be considered as an example of her real work. She described Tremm as her schoolroom, a test laboratory. She was experimenting with techniques, discovering how rock strata had to be worked with, learning how to turn or reverse tunnels deep inside the mountains, or to tune the passages so that they reacted to the wind. She left Tremm while the lease was still in her name. As far as I know the tunnels are still more or less as she left them.’
Lorna said, ‘Where did you find this information? Have you known it all along?’
Bradd tapped the top of his computer. ‘I looked it up this evening while I was waiting for you. Tremm itself is never mentioned. It’s just like the maps. The censorship has been thorough. But Yo is documented in detail and although Tremm isn’t named it’s possible to work out her connection with the island. How many offshore islands does Meequa have, for instance? Only one, of course. That’s the sort of detail that often slips past censors.’
‘So did she ever return to Tremm after she was famous?’
‘There’s no record of it. But she kept the lease going until she died. After that the title to the island reverted to the Seigniory, and it was then taken over by the people who have it now.’
Suddenly, all the lights in the bar room went out, with just the bar area itself illuminated. The other group of customers had already dispersed. Lorna and Bradd made their way out.
In the corridor Bradd said, dawdling, ‘Well, then.’
‘Thanks for everything you’ve done, Bradd. See you tomorrow at work?’
‘Lorna –?’
‘What?’ But she knew what he wanted. ‘No, Bradd.’
‘No harm would come of it. Just tonight.’
‘No. It’s not what I want. Nor do you, if you think about it.’
She turned away from him and walked towards the part of the building where the living quarters were situated. Without looking back she waved a hand as she turned on to the staircase. She half expected he would be following her, but there was no sign of him when she reached her door. She went inside quickly.
As she made herself ready for bed she could hear Patta in the other bedroom, moving around, playing music. Lorna went to see her. Patta was feeling better, but she was angry about her boyfriend now, not tearful over him. They brewed some tea and sat together companionably. After that Lorna went back and they closed the doors that lay between their rooms. It was silent in her bedroom, and soon Lorna was asleep.
* * *
She awoke suddenly, with a dread feeling that she was no longer alone. The air had moved, and something under the floorboards had creaked, a noise she recognized from whenever she moved in that part of the room.
There was a dim, residual light showing from beyond the curtained window, and Lorna saw the dark silhouette of a man standing there close to her bed. In terror she sucked in her breath, tried to make a noise, but she felt paralysed by fear. Her instinct was to sit up, but she always slept naked, so instead she threw an arm across her head, pulling up the covers from the bed, trying to hide everything of herself.
‘Lorna?’
It was Bradd – she knew instantly it was Bradd.
She managed to speak. ‘No, go away!’
‘Lorna, it’s me. Tomak. I still have a key. I didn’t want to frighten you.’
‘Tomak! No!’ She disbelieved him. But the voice was not Bradd’s. She knew it was Tomak, but the way he had come silently in the dark was still terrifying her. She could not throw that off. And for a few seconds everything was unreal. She was still half in the dream she had been in before she awoke, she was unable to move, and her breath was rasping.
She groped towards the bedside lamp, got it on. In the sudden glare of light she saw it was Tomak, or looked like him. He had thrown his arms up to cover his face.
‘No! Don’t put on the light!’ His voice was urgent with fright.
He moved quickly, bending forward with one arm still clamped over his face, the other hand fumbling for the switch. For a few moments he was within touching distance of her, but something made her shrink away from him. His hand found the lamp and he switched it off almost as swiftly as she had turned it on.
Her eyes were dazzled by the after-images from the glare.
‘Lorna – you mustn’t see me.’
‘Tomak, it really is you, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then hold me! Come here! Let me see you. Put the light on again.’ A sense of relief was sweeping over her, and she moved quickly so that she was sitting up. She felt one of her pillows slide away to the floor. ‘I’ve missed you so much! Why haven’t you –?’
‘Lorna, you have to trust me. I can only stay for a few minutes and I don’t want you to look at me. There was an accident last year. I was all right, not badly injured.’
‘What sort of accident? Are you hurt now? Why didn’t anyone tell me?’
‘The whole place is – we aren’t allowed to communicate off the island. I shouldn’t even be here now. If they catch me I’m in deep trouble. I can’t tell you what happened in the accident but I want you to know I’m over it. I’m all right now. I was close to an e
xplosion, didn’t get away in time, and there was a fire. It’s healed up at last.’
‘This is terrible! Are you burned? Tomak… come and sit here with me!’
‘I can’t. But I wanted to tell you this myself. I had to come to see you. I know a lot of what’s been going on. On Tremm we have access to almost everything. I know what happened last year, when you were involved with that other guy, the one who works here. I understand all that. It doesn’t matter. You must be free to do what you want.’
‘Of course it matters! Where have you been and why haven’t you at least written to me?’
‘I can’t tell you. We communicate as passive receptors – you know what that means. We aren’t allowed to send. None of that is important, though.’ His voice was coming out of the dark, so familiar, but sounding sonorous, stilted, alien to her. This was Tomak, whom she had loved so long? As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she could again make out his shape. He was still standing a short distance from the bed. There was never much light from outside at night, but there was enough to reveal the shape of him against the thinly curtained window. ‘I know you think I’ve run out on you,’ he added. ‘There was nothing I could do, there is nothing I can do about that. But I also know you’re planning to visit Tremm, and I’ve come to say you must not go there. Not under any circumstances. If you’ve made plans, don’t carry them out. It’s a dangerous place.’
‘Please, Tomak. Just sit with me for a while. I want to hold you.’
‘No.’ They were both silent for a moment, Lorna shocked by the absolute refusal. Then he said, ‘I shouldn’t even be here now.’
‘What’s going on over there? On the island? What is it that has taken you away from me?’
‘The danger. The importance of what’s being built there.’
‘Can’t you even tell me what it is?’
‘Officially, it’s a communications network. That’s all I can say.’
‘Is it something to do with the tunnels?’
‘What makes you think that?’ Tomak’s tone of voice had changed, confirming something.
‘Or the drones. You used to talk about the drones, how useful they are, the potential they have. You always used to call them passive communications devices, passive receptors.’
The Islanders Page 18
