Graft (34 page)

“Call you the Wizard, don't they?”

Brian rubs his head. Grains of abraded skin float free.

“And there's someone with you in there, in Emerald City. The Reverend.”

Brian switches off his engine. His mouth's constricted. “What about him?”

“He buys people.” How unreal it sounds. “Wives. He buys wives.”

Brian goes to speak but falters. “People can be difficult,” he says. “It's a big world. A big, cloudy world. You've got to live and let live.”

“Against their will,” Sol says. “And I think–”

Brian cuts him off with a groan, the façade fully gone. “You know something I bloody don't, do you? You with the council?”

“What? Me?”

Brian exhales. Then, more angrily: “I knew she was nervy about you. I knew it. And you feigning indifference – the Reverend, that silly shit's why we just had a whole bloody lev squadron blowing holes in our front door. Grassed on by one of his regular gophers, he was. Taken a few others down with him, and all – some bigwig from London. Havelake, Haveland… Havelock? False imprisonment, people smuggling.”

Sol reels. Brian's words boom at him. Tipped off? Regular gopher?
Roy?
His vision falters.
Roy grassed on the Reverend?
And then a logical stride: Roy knew more about the Reverend than he ever let on. And Roy knew more about the Reverend's client.

Sol's nervous system goes haywire.

But when?
Sol had been with him since…

In the car. With Sandy.

What else had Sandy told him?

That arrogant walk to the portable toilet. That thumbs-up. Roy knew. He
knew
.

Brian restarts his car. “This is why I stay behind the curtain,” he says. “Like a bloody soap opera.” Then he pulls away – the smell of seaside in his wake.

Sol looks at his hands. His veins. His coordination failing.

“Manners,” Yasmin says. She's trying not to laugh at something, and in the Mondial's cabin he sees how well her scabbed lips are improving. “He was incomplete,” she adds, nodding firmly. “The Wizard. A semi-man.”

Plenty happens on this backwards island we'll never understand
.

“Small world, though,” Sol says. “You might've been right about Roy.”

He opens the tablet lid. A message reads: LINK IN 52 SECONDS, and the timer ticks down. Together they watch the screen, its glow flooding the car with weld-spark blue.

T
hey say
your muscles can remember. Sol finds it amazing what aging lets you forget. After so long, typing on a touchscreen feels like experimenting with some exotic hobby – there's a resignation that years of mastery lie ahead. For most people that's probably part of the fun, but for Sol, pecking at the screen with a single wavering forefinger, it's a perfect definition of frustrating. Without office experience, he was never great to begin with – preferring to write with that solid all-caps scrawl of the trader – but this precious time beneath the hijacked satellite make his efforts all the more desperate.

The tablet browser runs slowly, wheel chugging away in its centre. The connection is fleeting, in and out. He's already searched for his own name and related keywords – fire, business, flat, warrant, council. No meaningful results: just random stitched-together stories from disparate paragraphs, and an archived picture of his father on an old business directory, standing in front of his Bentley.

He turns to Yasmin and asks: “What first?” as if he hasn't already sat there looking for anything that might incriminate him.

“Tower,” she says. “The tower first.”

Sol grimaces.

“Go,” she says, more insistent.

So Sol types
COOLING TOWER SEL
then backspaces to
COOLING TOWER
alone. Search. The page loads, white, to grey, rendering frames of content. A gallery of over-familiar shapes streams in. Seeing them, Yasmin releases an almost orgasmic noise. “Our crossing,” she says. “He is there.”

“Right,” Sol says. Then he types SELLAFIELD.

The pictures load. Black and white, many of them – artistic shots, too. He'd be the last person to deny the anonymous allure of Sellafield, or of facilities like it. How was this tangle of process line and cables and scaffolding so crucial to the running of a country, yet so foreign, forbidding, to everyone but its workers? With its stark perimeter, barbed wire, sharpline fortifications, it carried an obvious foreboding: a concrete temple erected to commemorate man's triumph over physics, then bulwarked against the world.

The thought of getting inside excites Sol in the same way the Ferrari does.

It also excites Yasmin. “The tower,” she says, pointing to the second in a run of four. Then to its base. “Entry here.”

Sol scrolls down. At least a dozen of the images would make – would've made – a fine addition to his Polaroid collage. A centrepiece, even. But while there are four cooling towers in most of the images, there are no cooling towers evident in any newer shots – even in photographs taken from comparable angles. In most of these, even the two fearsome Windscale piles reactors have gone. And when he sorts the results by date, it's clear only the massive golf ball structure of the gas-cooled reactor still stands. Sol swears, confused, and refines his search to text on SELLAFIELD COOLING TOWERS. Fresh results strain through.

At random, he taps for a page whose description tag sounds relevant. Poorly formatted, almost illegible, the text loads up – describes the demolition of all four Calder Hall cooling towers in 2007.

His heart sinks.

“Yasmin,” he says. “There aren't… They aren't there anymore. Your tower can't have been here.”

“No,” she urges. “I
passaged
.”

“But towers like the one you drew don't exist at Sellafield, not anymore. They haven't for years.” He's devastated. He thinks of Roy, the rumours he shared at Winnie's, and what happened at Knutsford Services. A hopelessness rises to engulf him.

“Go,” she says. “Continue.”

He flips the tablet. “There's nothing there, Yasmin. They pulled them down. I'm sorry – they're all gone. Says it plain as day: those towers were demolished nearly twenty years ago.”

“No!” Yasmin shrieks. “You have to keep!” Her breathing has quickened; sounds like an angry creature rattling around in her chest cavity. She grabs the tablet and thrusts it in his face. “I see this and I know inside.” She taps her breast. “You trust it. You trust me. He is still there. Watching.”

“Yasmin… we can't just–”

She slaps the dashboard with all three hands. “Yes! We will!”

Sol bows his head and tabs back. Maybe another will dig something out, prove it wrong. With terms like what, though? His mind wheels. Sandy's car? The Lexus' registration number – RA,
Carlisle
. The boot and the organs crate.

Inspired, he tries SELLAFIELD ORGANS. Even the words together look outlandish. He feels Yasmin's breath on his forearm, fast and gentle.

The buffering wheel spins and results begin to filter through. Not just any results, either. Dozens of articles and book extracts and opinion pieces, masted below the old names of long-deceased publishers and newspapers. Sol flicks and engages: gaping at the scraps in silence. The tablet in his hands reveals a jumble of missing body parts scandals, unlawful tests on workers, radiation experimentation, disaster reportage. All of these things at one site. All these things at Sellafield.

He reads what he can of the first articles, heart racing. And this is only the front page – only the surface. What he consumes joins a widening slurry: while there's nothing that explicitly mentions the transportation of people, there's plenty to suggest their exploitation. And it's been an open secret for what must be years.

He drops the tablet between his legs.

“Yasmin.”

“Trust,” she says.

He picks up the tablet, reopens the browser. Some decisions can't be unmade. And there, broiling in his peacoat, Sol taps out one final search term.

SELLAFIELD MAP.

Y
woke
on her side in a cramped space. An onyx chamber, polished and vast. There were green waveforms in the pitch.

Her face was hot and slimy, and she couldn't open or breathe through her mouth. She strained. No telling which way was up, which way was down. A rotten sum brought a distressing answer: something was tight around her head.

Escape mechanics fired. But quickly she remembered her arms were trussed up behind her back, and her legs were bound and stinging at the knees. When she tried to scream, wincing, eyes stinging, there was only the taste of a soft, bitter material in her mouth. And the pain of the staples cut in with a tearing sensation. Her jaw, too, was secured, the muscles in her chin allowing mere fractions of give before cramping up. She wrenched every ragged breath through her nose, retching on the moisture this pulled into her body. Her chest heaved – a purity to the terror she was drowning slowly.

Y kicked out. The pain in her knees was disgusting. She wriggled and rolled, found herself maggoting over and over, blind and flailing, before she wedged herself across the space at an oblique angle. Again she was deluged with abstract pain. But now there was something cold, a curved panel, pressed up against her face, and its physicality gave her purchase.

Y turned over. She needed to calm down. Struggling made things worse – experience told her that. And she was starting to trust that voice. The air would last longer if she regulated her breathing…

Y exhaled and tensed all her muscles. Every sinew stressed. Y released, let it out until there was only her mind, a mess of foam on the wavecrest, and the pain ebbed.

She remembered this: a tooth lodged in her palm. An angry man with his fist held high. Deep stinging behind her knees. And the woman – Sandy, Sandy like her, chosen just like her – screaming beside them. A loud shot. The first bite of the stapler against her teeth. And then, emptiness. Nothing else before this.

She kept still until she was satisfied with her recollection of events. She understood, weakly, that she had been taken from Sandy's care. All the while, her ears were full of the sea. Her pulse. And there was another noise, ambient, further out. She recognized it as road drone.

Y was in transit again.

Eventually the vehicle came to rest. The sound from the tyres had changed from a soft burr to a noisy rattle – something granular kicked up and speckling the insides of the arch she'd stiffened herself against. A door slammed.

The boot opened. The quality of light didn't change. Y was lifted out and carried across a loud surface, where another door was unlatched. Y found herself seated in a chair, deprived of all but the sensation of its fabric. Her knees were so tender.

“Do you know where you are?” a man asked. It was the driver's escort. The one Sandy called Keating. The one who'd closed her up. “Nod for me.”

Y shook her head.

“Do you want to see?”

Y shook her head.

“Oh, you do. You'll have to promise you'll behave. I know what you things are capable of.”

Y shook her head.

“We'll be happy here,” Keating said. “You and me. We can keep each other company. I'll even take you fishing.”

Y shook her head.

“Do you mean to keep saying no? You've learned what happens when you disobey me.”

Y nodded.

He breathed deeply through his nose. Then he said, “That's no good. Look where you are.”

Keating unwrapped Y's head. It was like popping a blister. A warmth settled over her face. Her chin was wet with fluids, and her lips felt peeled.

Y looked out of a window. A seafront and the ocean; a beach of shingle and white sand mixed. Closer, tufts of overgrown turf. It was like a picture. It brought a nostalgia so alive she winced.

Out there, on the rim, she made out the outline of cargo liners against the night, lumbering sea-castles four or five in number. They swung spotlights round their bow and aft sections to deter would-be pirates or activists in dinghies.

“Shoot to kill,” Keating said behind her. “But they still have a go. Got to admire that, haven't you? To go out there and try anyway.”

He came to Y's side. “Always wanted to live by the sea, I did.” Round to her front. “I think I did, anyway.” Y straightened – she already knew it was the man who'd stapled her, but confirmation made her stomach turn. He lit a camping stove that illuminated four walls of unpainted brick. He brought it to her feet.

“Do you like it?” Keating asked. He yawned innocently and pointed out to sea. “Old friend's place. He bought here because it wasn't the south coast. Died in the last troubles, bless him, but I'd been taken over to the mansion by then. When I returned I could only evoke that single place, burning there, a singular flame in me. And I found it, eventually. Took out his old rib and placed a wreath out there on the water, and watched it as my memories came back. I could be wrong – I could well be – but as I rowed to shore I thought I saw dolphins leaping over it.”

Y didn't move or speak or twitch. Her feet were secured so she couldn't put them on the floor.

Keating tapped her on the temple. “Your memories will come back, too. Eventually. Little buds of a life before, which sprout and pierce the cortex. Don't you think that's wonderful?”

Y shook her head.

“I think you'll learn your place quickly,” Keating said. “What with all your gifts. They wanted you all to themselves, but when those drones arrived… I only want to look after you. In time we might even take out those fastenings.”

Y turned to him and burbled.

Keating pulled a sympathetic smile. “You don't believe me. Fine. That's why we'll keep you like this – who's to say what you'll try? Eventually we'll compromise. You'll call me Keating, and I'll call you Jane. There's a place here for people like us. Because I've been waiting for someone like you. Someone like me.”

The sun was sinking into the sea, and the ocean liners were increasingly toy-like. She wondered if she could fit them all in one hand.

“I was made like you,” Keating told her. “That's why it makes sense us being together, away from them. But did you ever work out why? Why they took us there at all? I did.”

The horizon was so even.

“The slips don't just go across. They go forward – a fixed link. And when the first settlers went through, they found new technology, new materials, new ways. No wonder they colonized it. It only needed a visionary to civilize it.” Keating came close and lifted the pendant from Y's neck. “He'll miss you, won't he? He'll be jealous of me.”

A phone rang in another room.

“Excuse me,” Keating said.

The man went away. The ringing stopped. Y listened.

“Had no choice, did I?” Keating said. “No, it's not like – no. What do you mean, paid for? I've paid enough with my service…” And then quiet, the hiss of the stove, the lapping sea. Suddenly there was a thump, as if Keating had struck something. Dust drifted across the room. “Tell him to fuck himself, then,” he said. He was irate. “You and them sideways. You won't find us in a million years.”

Keating paced back into the room, still talking. Caught in the window's reflection. With the evening approaching, Y's ocular implants had kicked in, but it was a challenge to catch the words without seeing his lips move.

“It's not like you don't have any more of them to hand,” he told the caller. And he sat down on a chair behind Y. The voice coming down the phone was quiet, measured.

When Keating next went to speak, his voice broke. “Please. If I'd known that, I'd never have…”

Y knew he was looking at the back of her head now. His eyes coruscating.

Keating had started to grovel. “I get it,” he said. “And if I arrange this, there'll be no repercussions? I can wrap her for you… I can prepare her for delivery. Let's call it a… transgression.”

Something outside caught Y's attention. She blinked. The sunset was a wedge of red, and the liners had crossed the horizon.

There – another movement.

Again. A blur this time.

Keating's conversation faded out. Y focused with a surge of hope. Her arms riffled with goosebumps.

She knew it. Someone was in the garden. A person moving across the lawn between the house and the beach. In and out of visibility, using the bushes for cover as they approached the window.

Y swivelled to Keating and back to the garden. The figure vanished one last time –

Y jumped in her binds. Her vision fizzed with grain. The figure was right there, right outside. Bushy eyebrows. A woman. A medical swatch plastered on her belly. She spoke into a black strip on her cheek, then snapped back out of sight.

It was Sandy.

Still Keating bleated on, pleading down the phone with a pathetic whine.

Twitching, Y waited. She was wide-eyed, rattling involuntarily.

Keating dropped the phone. The line had died.

And Y heard the faintest noise: a sinewave song.

Keating came round her. Y looked at him. Keating sneered.

And the whole window came in. Glass showered Y – all of its turning edges lit up.

Keating darted away from the cloaked hunter. By Y's feet, the camping stove tipped over, redirecting the heat, then went through the room in a crescent. The gas ring puttered and the stove connected, spat flames to the ceiling. Keating went for the door, but it slammed closed. Keating came back to Y as if to ask for help, and his arm was twisted up behind his body. The force put him on tiptoes. He yelped, lashed out with his other hand. He was fighting himself – tumbled about the room in some deranged dance.

Sandy phased in, coated with an oily substance. “Did you think you'd topped me with your peashooter?” she said. Her hand went once, twice, against Keating's neck, palm magnesium-bright, and Keating didn't have a chance to reply.

Sandy was at Y's side before Keating collapsed. She spoke breathlessly: “Never trust anyone with the eyes – they're only after one thing.” She cackled a little. “Shame their firmware doesn't handle cloak-suits.”

Y bowed her head.

“What a detour,” Sandy went on. She severed Y's restraints, took Y off the chair. Y's knees wouldn't support her, and she fell to the floor.

“I told him,” Sandy said. “I did tell him.”

Y massaged her knees, staring vacantly. Keating's body seemed awkward, and his leg was twitching. She wanted to be glad. She wanted to be grateful. But she wasn't. He wasn't the Manor Lord.

Y swallowed and reached for Sandy's sleeve. Sandy didn't resist. Y opened Sandy's hand and took the blade out of it.

“Now don't you get any ideas,” Sandy said.

Y shook her head. She weighed the blade. She brought its chrome edge to her neck and started sawing at the pendant chain.

“Don't you want that?” Sandy asked. “Aren't you proud?”

It was difficult to cut, but Keating's silence spurred Y on.

“Oh, little stray. It's a necklace. And the staples – they can be taken care of. You'll heal so quickly.”

The chain broke with a chime. Y dropped the blade and took the tooth and severed chain and dragged herself towards Keating's body. There, on him, using his limbs like rungs, she took his bloody nose and forced his head back to widen the slit in his neck. Inside, she learned, Keating was mostly human. Only the length of visible tongue was foreign: a titanium snake.

“It won't free you,” Sandy said. She sounded impatient. “It won't change this.”

Y didn't care. She pushed the tooth and chain into the gaping meat and pulled it closed again.

Sandy tutted. “That's revolting.”

As Y slid away, she realized Sandy was over her, pulling a bunch of thick plastic ties from a pouch on her hip. Along with these, she produced a pair of telescoping tubes that hung flaccid from her fingers. “Don't make that face,” Sandy said. “I'd obviously prefer not to.”

Y crabbed backwards.

“You might forgive me eventually,” Sandy went on. “It's not like I'm a sadist. It's just time for work. My retirement's riding on you.”

Y met the wall, slithered up it.

Sandy had a roll of clingfilm, a roll of tape. A number of cable ties. She held them all out. “You'll understand when you have to do this,” she said. “Because eventually you will.” She gestured at Keating's body. “They can't know about these complications. The supply chain stays intact. The process stays the same. That attention to detail is how our father prevails. And obsolescence – well, it's part of the cycle.”

Y thrashed as Sandy came to secure her limbs. Her hands tore at Sandy's hair, her cloak-suit, but to no avail. Sandy was stronger.

“Don't,” Sandy said calmly, as she then brought the tubes to Y's nose and pushed them too far in. Choking, struggling to breathe – or refusing completely – Y closed her watering eyes and heard Sandy say, “Suppose you ordered an ornate vase only for it to arrive without protection. Would you be pleased?”

Y tried to expel the tubes. Tried and tried and failed.

Sandy held up the masking tape, its end fluttering. “This is the last of it. Don't fight me, little rebel.” And she began to wrap Y's head. “Mr Havelock has his preferences. It'd be a shame to need a refund, to return the goods, given how much he's already invested in you… never mind how much he's keen to see me get some rest when you're ready.”

Over Sandy's shoulder, naked but for her sheath of clingfilm, Y was carried outside. She had no way to see the smart silver car waiting on the shale by Keating's off-roader. Its registration plate that started RA. Its badging that read LEXUS.

“You'll be happy in the end,” Sandy told her. And she popped the boot.