Cold Fusion (22 page)

“I didn’t know it would start so soon. My father was fifty-seven when he died.”

“Your father died of this?”

“No. He took his own life when his symptoms became intolerable.”

“But when I saw him…he was an old man.”

“He was about forty.”

Thin, worn out, leaning on a stick. Watching the children rampage in his garden with wistful indulgence. Forty? That was fucking ridiculous. Everything about this was insane. Viv was insane. He had to be. “You bastard.”

“I’m sorry?”

“You can’t do this.” My voice was tight with fury. “You think having Asperger’s as well as…Dresden disease or whatever…you think that gives you the right to say whatever comes off the top of your head, bombshell people with—with bollocks like this, and—”

“Mallory!”

“Don’t you
Mallory
me. You can’t just say those things.”

He stared at me. Generations of his ancestors must have gazed at generations of mine with that exact cold incomprehension. Little people, splashing about in the mud of their uncontrolled feelings and desires. I couldn’t let it make a difference to me that his eyes were full of tears.

“You told me,” he whispered, then stopped as if I’d seized his throat. “You told me to say whatever I wanted. Whenever I felt like saying it.”

You told me you loved me. If that was true, you couldn’t be doing this to me now.
I turned away from him. My clothes were in a tangle with his on the floor. I bent and scooped up a random handful—trousers, sweater, coat. That would have to do. Beyond this room lay a starlit world, a whole universe where I’d walked about two days ago in sweet, holy ignorance of what I’d just heard. Out there in the snow I would un-hear it, unlearn it, follow my footsteps and his back up to the larch tree where he’d fucked me and find both of us again, sane and clear and well. I got dressed, shivering, in the freezing hall. I shoved my feet into unlaced boots and stumbled out into the night.

* * * * *

A light was glimmering on the far side of the valley. It came from the same place where I’d seen movement in that other, vanished world. The setting moon cast an uneasy copper glow from the west. Maybe a window was intact in the ruined shepherd’s croft, enough glass left to catch a gleam.

I’d climbed far up onto the Glencathadh hillside to see it. I’d left the larch and Aunt Lil’s resting place far behind. I couldn’t remember fighting my way through the pines to this open space above the tree line. My hands were scratched, my face stinging. Already I was ankle deep in snow. The drifts would soon stop my progress entirely. Baffled, my escape routes cut off, I came to a halt.

I couldn’t get back to the place before Viv had told me he was dying. If I walked all night, somehow slogged my way out to a clear road and hitched a ride to the far side of forever, I’d still know. The shocky block of denial filling my head began to fracture at the edges, to allow for memory and thought. He had a genetic disease with a name that reminded me of World War II, Kristallnacht and limitless destruction. That’s what he’d said to me, and I’d knee-jerk replied in accordance with the images the name had called up.
You can’t bombshell people like that
, as if the only thing that mattered was the way he’d chosen to break the news.

How else would he have told me? I dropped to my knees in the snow. Right up until half an hour ago, he’d been in pretty vigorous denial himself. I remembered him bounding about in the larch grove, telling some unseen presence that it was wrong, that he was fine. If we’d spent the last days screwing like there was no tomorrow, still there had opened up in my head a vista of thousands of them, a long-shared lifetime of dawns and dusks. I was sure he’d seen it too. Then his symptoms had overwhelmed him, bringing reality crashing in. He was Viv. He wasn’t going to sit me down with a brandy, put his arm around me and tell me to be a brave lad because he had some bad news. He’d say what he needed to say when he needed to say it, because I’d taught him that was okay.

I’d called him names, walked out and left him alone with his dreadful new truth. My terrified rage died away and left me with crystalline recall. “Oh God, Viv,” I said, as if he could hear me, struggling onto my feet, skidding and thudding back down again. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Finally I found my balance. A light had appeared outside Aunt Lil’s back door, and either it was the old lady’s spirit come back to kick my worthless arse for me, or Viv was setting off outside with a torch. I couldn’t allow myself to believe he was coming to search for me. To dig the car out, more likely, drive off and find someone who wouldn’t meet his awkward outreach with a display of what real inhumanity looked like. The torch beam strafed the trees. Very faintly in the distance, I heard him call my name.

I barrelled back down the hill like a wild boar. Branches whipped my face. Where they obstructed my route, I went under or over and in one last case straight through, with a resounding crack that shattered wood and nearly broke my ribs. The torch beam steadied ahead of me, giving me a target. I hoped Viv hadn’t brought Lil’s hunting rifle out with him too—he was a dead shot, and God knew I had it coming.

“Viv,” I yelled, and kept on doing it whenever I could snatch a breath, my heart jolting painfully whenever his shout came in response. I burst out of the trees in a cloud of flying snow. There he was, looking like a medieval dream, a figure cut out of silver and ebony in the moonlight, a lost Round Table knight in a coat and thermal undies. “Viv,” I gasped, as soon as I was close enough to see detail. “Where the hell are your boots?”

“I forgot them. I thought you were leaving me.”

I slithered down the last few yards of the slope and stopped dead in front of him. “I’ll never leave you.”

“I can’t be human, Mallory. I tried.”

A sob rose in my throat. “You’re the most human thing I ever saw.” He was barefoot in the snow. He dropped the torch and started to run to me. I opened my arms and met him halfway.

The impact knocked breath from us, almost knocked us down. His arms closed round me, and I gave him grip for grip, throwing one arm round his neck and clutching his rib cage with the other, clinging, bruising. “Viv! Oh, shit—forgive me!”

“Forgive
me
. I’ve got so used to thinking about it. I can’t get inside people’s heads…” His hand closed on the back of my skull as if he were about to try. “So I just dropped it on you. I’m sorry.”

“What should I do? How long do you…?” I couldn’t ask the question—banged my brow off his shoulder in frustration and pain. “How long?”

“I don’t know. With symptoms coming on this hard, not long. Weeks, maybe.”

I almost threw up with terror. “No. You’re not gonna go away out of the world and leave me like that. There’s got to be something. I’ll take you to hospital.”

“How do you plan to do that?”

“I’ll find a way. I’ll call a helicopter.” I shuddered, unbearable grief and denial laying hold of me again. “I’ll
build
a fucking helicopter. Vivian, love, this can’t be. This can’t be.”

He rocked me. Where he’d learned the gesture or found out that it would help, I couldn’t know. His instincts were deep mysteries—we should have had a lifetime for finding them, unfolding them, watching their strange ebb and flow. Mine were much closer to the surface. I understood my loss and his, and I broke into tears.

“I don’t want a helicopter or a hospital,” he said after a while, warm as silk against my ear. His face was wet too. “I’ll tell you why in a minute. Just for now, though, I’d like to go inside.”

“Yes. Anything. Why?”

“My feet are cold.”

“Oh, Jesus Christ.” I’d forgotten. I disentangled. I wanted to scoop him up into my arms, get his poor bare soles off the snow and carry him indoors like a child. I made the first move, and he stopped me, laughing raggedly. I had to be content with putting an arm around his waist and taking as much of his weight as I could. Together we stumbled back down the gleaming white passage he’d cut into the snow, still visible after the new fall, its edges only muted to moonlit curves.

He’d left the back door open in his haste, and I could see the kitchen’s amber glow. I couldn’t run away or wind back time. All I could do was take him indoors and, in the warmth of our firelit cave, try to face with him this new future. I still wanted to howl with rage at its shortness.
Not weeks, Viv, for God’s sake not just weeks.
I felt as if I’d walked in by accident on the last act of the most beautiful and brilliant play ever written. The last night. I bundled him inside and closed the door behind us.

* * * * *

“I don’t want to go to hospital because I don’t want palliative care. I understand that I could be kept alive almost indefinitely on life support.”

He was sitting on the sofa, rose-gold lights sending fugitive shades of colour across his face. I was cross-legged on the floor in front of him, his bare feet in my lap. With an effort I stopped myself from jumping at his words.
Life support. At least you’d still be here. At least I could sit by your bedside and feel the ongoing beat of your life.

He shook his head as if he’d heard me. “I wouldn’t be with you, Mallory, not in any real sense. I wouldn’t be
present
.”

I wrapped my hands around his chilly heels, ran my thumbs along his arches. “What does it do, then?” I asked gruffly. “This disease?”

“It’s a neurological disorder akin to ALS, but much faster acting in the late stages. It causes progressive degeneration of the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord.”

“That doesn’t really answer my question.”

“No. I’m sorry. It means that I’ve lived with sporadic episodes of weakness and fatigue all my life. That’s the latent phase. It might never have become any worse.”

“But it did.”

“Yes. Just before my father died. It grieved him deeply and took away much of the peace from his last hours. We discussed the possibility of our dying together when he made his arrangements, but we agreed I should try to complete my work.”

I was almost past shock. Had the two of them sat down at a long oak table in the Calder Castle dining hall, one at each end, and arranged their demise over a glass of old port? If they had, I knew better than to mistake a calm discussion for a cold one. I was only now beginning to sense the depths of affection between Viv and his father. A little warmth was stealing into the skin under my hands, and I rubbed his soles, trying to nurture it. “What happens next?”

“Telling you will involve things that will distress you.” He smiled. “I don’t think I’d ever have become tactful, no matter how long I lived. Maybe I’d have learned to hold up a red flag and warn you in advance.”

I could see the flag waving now, bloodstained tatters. “Thanks. Just say it.”

“The attacks of muscular weakness will grow worse. They’ll result in a paralysis which is already affecting my lungs, causing fluid to collect in them. I’m still strong enough to fight it off now, but eventually I’ll suffocate.”

I let go of his feet and sat beside him on the sofa. I put my arms around him. “I won’t let you. I won’t let any horrible thing happen to you.”

“Please don’t take me into hospital to try and prevent it. I have a do-not-resuscitate order on my medical records, but doctors are often afraid to implement it. My body will stop working altogether. I’ll be placed in a chemical coma to keep me alive. I won’t be able to breathe on my own. I’ll be dependent on tubes to drain my lungs, a catheter, drips to feed me. Please. You have to promise.”

“I do.” It sounded to my own ears like a distraught wedding vow, and perhaps he heard it that way too, because he laid his head on my shoulder and returned my embrace fiercely. “I will, okay? I’ll find a way to make it so none of that ever happens to you.”

“I love you.”

“Oh, God.” My heart clenched like a fist. “I love you too.”

“Will you help me contact my scientific colleagues about the cold fusion technique?”

“Oh, bugger the cold fusion!”

“We can’t. You were right when you told me I had a duty to share this if I could.”

“I’ve changed my mind.”

“No, you haven’t. You’re a good man, Mallory.” He tightened his grip. “You’re my good man, and I know you’ll do this for me.”

“All right. Anything. What does it involve?”

“Getting out of here and finding a place with a secure Internet connection. There are people I can contact, but I can’t ask them outright. Their lives may have changed. They may have family to protect, or… Anyway, that’s the first step.”

“It’s a big one. We’re snowed up.”

“A snowfall this early in the year shouldn’t last long, though, should it?”

“No. We ought to be able to get out in a few days.”

“A few days.” He sat up, cupping my face between his hands. “You’re all scratched. You’re swollen up from crying, and that shiner you got from your aunt Lil’s hatstand is coming along. At least your split lip is healing.” I listened helplessly to this inventory of my damage. I closed my eyes as he leaned in to kiss the fresh tears from my cheeks. “Can we stay here for that time?”

“I don’t think we have a lot of choice. But what about you? You were really ill tonight. What if—?”

“Hush.” He pressed his mouth briefly to mine to shut me up. “There are no guarantees. This could progress swiftly or stabilise for a few weeks. I only have the moment to live in, just like anyone else.”

“I’ll take care of you. No more snow-digging for you. No more carrying logs. No more…”

“Please don’t say no more sex. Because all I can think about now is how much I want you to fuck me.”

My jaw dropped. Did he mean it figuratively—another cock-to-cock wrestle by the hearth? He’d be lucky. I was drained beyond even the thought of an erection, battered down so far by the events of the night that I could barely sit upright. “You want…”

“Exactly what I’m saying. I’m not afraid now, and I’m damned if I’m going to die without knowing what it feels like.”

“Oh, God. Viv, please—there has to be something. Nothing’s incurable these days. Surely…”

“Stop trying to fix things. I know it’s against your nature, love, but not everything can be saved.”