gratefully. It was almost ten o’clock. He took another drag and, holding the
smoke inside, reached into the car and flipped on the radio. Through the soles
of his shoes, he could feel the day’s heat oozing from the dusty tarmac. He
thought back to the night his mother had telephoned to tell him of the divorce.
Had she known then that her husband was dying, that he had less than six
months to live? It was all such a ragged, shitty mess, and he couldn’t see a way
to fix it. His parent’s relationship had always been something of a mystery to
him. They had never been given to public displays of affection and tended to
converse at the breakfast table like academic colleagues rather than lovers. And
23
now, not only had that fragile domestic charade been taken from him, so had
all hope of a reconciliation. The doors were finally and irrevocably closing on
his childhood. The set had been struck, the props were being taken down and
put away, and one of the actors was about to be swept offstage for good.
Lee swore under his breath. He tipped his head back and blew smoke at
the cold, eternal stars. Nothing about the situation was fair—not to him, not to
his mother, and most especially not to his father—and there wasn’t a damn
thing he could do about it.
He stood there with the smouldering roll-up dangling unheeded from
his fingers, staring blindly at the heavens for some time before he became
aware of the shape looming over him. In fact, he realised his eyes had been
instinctively tracing its outline for a minute or so before his conscious mind
caught up and acknowledged its presence.
“What the hell?” He pushed himself away from the car and frowned.
Something was occluding the stars—something black, silent and unreflective,
roughly the shape of a rugby ball and approximately the size of an ocean liner.
It hung over the road like an unpaid debt.
WHEN LEE ARRIVED home, shortly after midnight, he found the door to the
garden open, and Kerri nursing a glass of wine on the back doorstep. The night
air smelled of rosemary and jasmine, undercut with occasional greasy wafts
from the kebab shop down on the main road. A wine bottle stood on the step
by her feet, and she had balanced a half-smoked pack of cigarettes on her bare
knee. She offered him one, but he shook his head.
“Are you okay?” He could see her eyeliner had been smudged. One of
the chopsticks had gone missing from her hair. A few strands had worked their
way loose and now curled around her neck and shoulders.
She swirled the wine around in her glass.
“I had a fight with Heather.”
“Was it serious?”
“The fight or the relationship?” Kerri took a cigarette and pushed the
filter between her lips. When Lee shrugged, she said, “It doesn’t matter.
They’re both over.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Yeah, so am I.”
Lee joined her on the step.
“Do you want to talk about it?’
“Not really.” Kerri pulled a rusty Zippo from her waistcoat pocket and
flicked it into life. The yellow flame wobbled in the darkness.
“Tell me about your day,” she said, talking out of the side of her mouth
as she lit her cigarette. “How was your father?”
“He’s dying.”
She almost choked on the smoke.
“Shit, I’m sorry.”
Lee reached down and picked up the bottle. There wasn’t much wine
left in it. He looked questioningly at Kerri.
24
“Go ahead,” she said. “There’s another bottle in the fridge.”
BY TWO O’CLOCK, they were sitting on the dry and dusty lawn, backs and elbows
resting against the step, shoulders touching.
“We used to do a lot of this,” Kerri murmured. “Do you remember?”
Lee could feel a headache building. He rubbed his eyes.
“Drinking?”
“No.” She nudged him. “Sitting around. Do you remember the old castle
tower?”
“I try not to think about it.”
Kerri scrunched her toes in the dry yellow grass.
“We were so young.”
Lee finished his wine and put the glass aside. They had gone through
three bottles between them.
“We’re hardly decrepit now, grandma.”
“You know what I mean.” She gave him a gentle shove. “Besides, I’ve
been reliably informed that it’s not the age that counts, it’s the mileage.”
She put her head on his shoulder and they sat in companionable silence
for a few minutes.
“You know,” Lee said, looking down at his shoes, “something happened
to me tonight.”
“What, baby?” Kerri’s head stayed where it was. She sounded tired.
He inhaled through his nose, savouring the smell of the night, the
lingering whiff of tobacco from her hair and clothes.
“I saw something.”
“At your dad’s house?”
“On the road.” He looked up at the sky, half-expecting to see movement
among the gathering clouds. “It was a-”
“I want to get pregnant.”
Lee opened and closed his mouth a few times, his train of thought
hopelessly derailed.
“I’m sorry, what?”
Kerri’s face wrinkled. She looked as if she was trying not to cry. “That’s
what Heather and I were arguing about. I want one, but she doesn’t.”
“And that’s why you split up?”
“Yes.” Her eyes brimmed, glittering in the light from the kitchen. She
fumbled for a cigarette. Somewhere, at the back of his throat, Lee felt his own
tears gathering. Too much had happened. Without thinking, he reached an arm
around her shoulders. It was an instinctive gesture born of the need to feel
someone in his arms, to comfort his friend and draw solace in return; the simple
necessity of physical human contact. Much to his surprise, instead of flinching
away, Kerri wriggled in closer, working her shoulder into his armpit. She
sniffed loudly and wiped her face against his shirt. Her hair brushed his neck.
“What time is it?” Her voice came out muffled and sniffly.
Lee glanced at his watch.
“Two-fifteen.”
25
“We should go to bed.”
“I think you’re right.” He took his arm from her shoulders and she
straightened. He helped her up and they stood facing each other on the
doorstep. Kerri tugged at the hem of her waistcoat and brushed dust from the
seat of her denim shorts. Beyond the garden wall, at the bottom of the hill, the
orange streetlights of Bristol filled the night like the campfires of a sleeping
army.
“Can I sleep with you?” Her eyes were wide in the darkness, and Lee
was sure he’d misheard.
“I beg your pardon?”
She bit her lip and took his hand in hers. “I don’t think either of us
should be alone tonight.”
“You mean you want to sleep in my bed?”
“I mean, shut up.” She pulled him into the house and kicked the door
closed with her heel. Standing in the kitchen, lit only by the glowing green
numbers on the microwave’s digital clock, she unbuttoned her waistcoat. Lee
felt h
is mouth go dry. His stomach growled.
“Is this a good idea?’
Kerri shrugged the waistcoat from her shoulders and let it slide down
her arms, onto the floor. She stepped forward, grabbed the front of shirt, and
kissed him. Her lips were dry and rough and urgent. Her breath felt hot and
smoky in his mouth.
“I told you to shut up.”
26
4.
WHEN THE CALL came, Lee and Frankie were hiking in the French Alps, under
the watchful gaze of two experienced guides. It was their fifth wedding
anniversary. For the last hour they had been following a narrow path above a
plantation of snow-topped conifers. When the phone shivered against his hip,
Lee swapped both his spike-tipped walking poles into his left hand, pulled off
his right glove with his teeth, and answered it.
“Hello?”
“Lee, it’s Joaquin. Can you talk?” Joaquin Bullock was Francesca’s
brother-in-law, and a project manager at Lone Tower, the software and
technology company Lee had built on the back of his success with the Solar
System Simulator.
“Joaquin?” Lee’s breath steamed in the frozen air. His fingers tingled.
He made an apologetic face to Frankie as she pushed her mirrored goggles
impatiently to the top of her head. “Jesus,” he said, “what time is it over there?”
A year after their wedding, Frankie had convinced him to move back to
Pasadena with her, so he could start his company in L.A. rather than Bristol or
Cardiff. Now, six months later, he employed over a hundred people. He had
an air-conditioned office at the top of the company building with his name
stencilled on the glass: Lee Doyle, Founder and CEO.
“A quarter to five.”
“What’s the problem?”
“It’s the Net.”
“What about it?” Four years ago, Lone Tower had successfully bid to
refurbish the Interplanetary Network, a series of interlinked satellites and relay
stations left over from the days when NASA still had budget and ambition.
Placed strategically throughout the Solar System, the network had been
designed to make it easier for individual probes and expeditions to report back
to Earth, allowing them to hook into an existing web rather than carry bulky
communications gear of their own.
“It’s become unresponsive. There’s still traffic on it, but we can’t access
any signals. It’s like we’ve been locked out.”
“Have we been hacked?”
Bullock’s fingers pecked at a keyboard. “I’ve got guys running that
scenario at the moment. Initial results indicate not.”
“Then it’s some kind of fault?”
“I think it’s more than that.”
Lee huffed into the clear mountain air. His lungs felt like crystal.
“Could you be more specific?”
He heard Bullock swallow and clear his throat.
“I think the network’s started redesigning itself.”
“What? How could it even begin to do that?”
There was a pause.
27
“It’s using the self-repair packages,” Joaquin Bullock said. Thanks to
Lone Tower, each node in the network now had its own cache of nano-scale
assembly robots, capable of patching damage caused by radiation,
micrometeorite impact or component failure. “It’s upgrading itself.” The man
sounded on the slippery edge of panic.
“Hey, calm down.” Lee spoke through a sudden hurricane of static.
“I can’t calm down!” Bullock’s voice dipped and echoed through the
fuzz, like a transmission from another world. “I’m getting emails now from the
big dish at Arecibo. They’re locked out too, but they say something’s using their
telesco-.”
The line hissed and crackled.
“Joaquin!”
The phone went dead. Lee cursed and checked the display. No
reception.
Standing in the snow, Frankie raised an eyebrow.
“Everything okay?”
Lee held the phone for a moment, hoping the signal would return. When
it didn’t, he slipped the device back into his pocket and pulled on his glove.
“I’m not sure. It’s Joaquin. I think he’s having some kind of meltdown.”
Ahead, their two guides waited at the start of the next downhill stretch,
of the pine trees to the lower slopes, and the chimney smoke and warm yellow
lights of the village.
“Honestly, I don't know why you employ him.”
“Because he’s married to your sister.”
“Ugh.” Her face, framed by her hair and the fur edge of her hood,
wrinkled in disgust. “Don’t remind me.”
She dug her poles into the path’s crisp, compacted snow. Her boots
crunched. Lee hurried to catch up with her.
“You’re annoyed?’
“I’m fine.”
“It was just Joaquin, having one of his flaps.”
“I know.” She gave him a rueful look. “That’s not the point. You
promised, no work calls.”
“But-”
The ground shook. A rumble came from above. Lee looked up, stupidly
expecting to see a freight train bearing down on them. Instead, all he saw was
white. He didn’t have time to move or cry out. The cresting wave of snow hit
him impossibly fast, snatching him away like so much windblown laundry. He
couldn’t breathe. He didn’t know which way was up. The torrent roared like
the stampeding herds of God. He got flashes of daylight. He heard, rather than
felt, his shinbone snap. And then, as suddenly as it had come upon him, it was
over. The snow slowed and settled around him. He felt its weight piling up
onto his chest and stomach, pinioning his arms and legs. It covered his face,
cold and rough against his nose and cheeks, and he found himself gasping for
breath. From somewhere, he remembered that most avalanche-related fatalities
28
occurred after the avalanche had stopped moving. The snow compressed as it
slithered to a halt, packing tighter and harder. Trapped beneath it, your
prospects for escape were slight. If you weren’t rescued quickly, you were
likely to succumb to hypothermia, suffocation or the effects of your injuries.
He blinked flakes from his lashes. He knew his leg was broken, although
the pain seemed remote and far away. He was more conscious of a penetrating
chill, where a ragged spear of splintered bone had ripped through the skin at
the front of his shin and buried itself in the surrounding snow.
He shrugged his shoulders, trying to work his arms loose, but succeeded
only in dislodging some of the whiteness above him. It fell across his face and
he had to shake his head and snort to clear it from his mouth and nose.
“Frankie!” His voice was a hoarse croak. Each exhalation of breath made
space for more snow to topple in on top of him, thereby making the next
inhalation all the more laborious.
“Frankie, where are you?”
She’d been standing right beside him when the wave hit. Had she
survived? Was she buried as well? He struggled against his confinement,
cursing. More powder rained down into his eyes and mouth; little crystals of
ice fell like showers of diamond dust. At any moment, the drift’s entire weight
could fall and smother him. Yet he wouldn’t—he couldn’t—lie still. He had to
find his wife. Like a drowning man, every instinct in his body screamed at him
to fight and thrash. He didn’t care if his efforts brought freedom or hastened
his demise; either would be preferable to lying passively, waiting for a cold,
lingering death.
29
5.
RAIN FELL ON London from a sky the colour of bruised fruit. Lee abandoned his
car outside the British Museum, telling the driver to wait there for him rather
than risk becoming any more ensnared in the confusion surrounding the site of
the latest outbreak. The magazine for which Kerri worked had its offices in a
narrow street behind Russell Square. With the traffic this bad, he reckoned he’d
be better off on foot. Not even the emergency vehicles were getting through.
Up ahead, he could see the blue flashing lights of an ambulance trying to push
its way through the gridlock, its nearside wheels up on the pavements, siren
wailing. The staccato thrum of helicopter rotors echoed between the buildings.