Six Days (18 page)

Dad pulls out his money bag and places it in Irene’s lap.

She shakes her head. “It ain’t a question of money. If estuary people thought they could help you out, they’d do it for free, but no one’s gonna risk their boat chasing up north. Not without a good reason anyway.”

We all look at each other, unwilling to break the silence.

“I ain’t probing,” sighs Irene. “Your business is your business, but people round here ain’t gonna go out on a limb ‘less they know what’s at stake.”

Peyto speaks out then. “We don’t even have a way of repaying you for the kindness you’ve already shown us, but you are our only hope.”

Dad steps in. “That’s enough, lad. She’s said she can’t help us, plain and simple.”

“But Wilbur and the others …”

“We’ll make our own way to the north.”

“There’s no time!” Peyto cries. “They’ll be dead!”

“Who’s Wilbur?” murmurs Irene.

“My son, but –”

“Well, then, you should’ve said so in the first place. I have a boat, the
Lodestar
; she’s a pot hauler. Not the fastest – maybe ten knots top whack, and her winching gear don’t work, but her engine and hull are sound.”

Dad drops his head, powerless to argue back. “Let me at least give you what I have.”

“You’ll need that for supplies and fuel – I can help you get what you need from the chandlers downriver. My
mind is set – that old boat’s been tied up too long anyhow.”

I’m so gobsmacked at her generosity that I just hug her.

“Goodness, child! Wait till you see the old tub first – you might not be so free with your love then!”

“Thank you,” goes Peyto. “This boat – I swear I’ll bring it back to you.”

“Oh, so serious, young man! No promises. Not when it comes to voyages on the sea. People come back by the grace of God, and if you do, all well and good.”

She bustles us all out of the black-house and down to the pier, chatting all the while about the boat and what kind of shape she’s in.

It has to be said, the
Lodestar
looks pretty rough-and-ready, but what do I know about boats? She’s about forty feet long – blotched with red paint and littered with junk. The wheelhouse has a cracked window and the winch on the back is fused together with rust. Still, Dad seems highly delighted. He inspects everything from the engine under the deck to the bunks beneath the wheelhouse. It ain’t long before we untie the moorings and chug the half mile or so to the chandlers. From there we load up with drums of fuel, tinned food, and a barrel of water. Irene stands out on the pier to see us off.

“Don’t dally now! I hate good-byes, ’specially long ones! The Lord’s speed and kind weathers to you.”

She gives us each a hug and, without another word, turns away, as if she’s expecting us to be gone no more
than a day. I can hear her gabbling on to the chandler before we’ve even untied. And maybe that’s the best way to do good-byes.

Dad holds the wheel and sets a course for Allhallows. It’s a short journey, less than half an hour, and when we reach the headland, Maleeva’s waiting there for us, gazing out to sea, while all around her seagulls swoop and cry.

T
hat first stretch of the voyage, there’s a kind of lull in us all. We’ve spent so much time figuring and fretting and running that maybe we’re all just done in. Under the calm, though, it’s murder, cos I feel every freckle on the countdown cuff give a nip as it disappears. And as them time bands whittle away, I can’t even bear to look at them no more. Cos we can only go as fast as the engine will take us. Inside, I chivy the
Lodestar
along every climb and dip, almost dragging it along, chalking off the miles as we inch northward. The journey is dead time, but I tell myself I need it, to get strong, to get ready, for the last push.

Me and Peyto spend the first few hours dozing in the berths under the wheelhouse, feeling the chug of the engine and the sway of the waves. I wake up to find him watching me. I’m dribbling a bit, so I make a joke out of it but there’s a look about him that stirs me, so that the
kidding about turns into a scrap of wills and we end up checking each other across the tiny space, locked in a kind of spell. Only the grim sound of retching snaps us both out of it.

It’s Erin. The tipping of the deck sends her guts up so bad she’s walloping over the side till there ain’t a morsel left inside her. She stays at the back of the
Lodestar
with her head in a bucket, jibbing away from the very sight of the ocean. Peyto tries comforting her, but she ain’t in the mood to speak and she shoos him away.

It’s funny how things kick off. I reckon it’s being on the boat that don’t help matters. Cos when you’re huddled on this lump of wood in the sea, your tempers and beefs ain’t got no place to go.

It starts with Peyto, though it ain’t his fault. I figure he’s just eager to know stuff about the boat, but I don’t know squat cos it’s the first time I been on a proper one. So he corners Dad instead, who’s only too happy to yabber on about how the engine works, and the winch, and fishing, and currents, and God knows what else. And after a lifetime of having Wilbur not taking an interest in anything that ain’t in a book, Dad warms to him.

At one point, I see Erin watching Peyto over the top of her bucket, and if looks could strike a tree in half … At last Dad goes to take over steering from Maleeva.

“Getting ready to colonize, Peyto?” goes Erin. And there’s an edge in her voice I ain’t heard before.

“Why not? We’re down here now, aren’t we?”

“I just wouldn’t want you to forget there’s forty-seven who aren’t down here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? I’m going back to the ship to get the others – the same as you are.”

“It looks as though you’d rather stay here if you had the choice.”

He walks closer to where she’s huddled round her bucket. “Well, I don’t have the choice, Erin.”

“I just need to know you’ll do what you have to. When the time comes.”

“Take my place as a sleeper? Even though I might end up staying asleep for a million years?”

“Or forever,” I add.

“Stay out of this, Cass. We already know what you think,” goes Erin.

“There’s no other way to repair the ship,” mutters Peyto. “If I don’t do it, then who’ll take my place? Not that anyone’s bothered to realize I’m gambling my life to do it.”

“I’d do it for you if it was your family.”

“It’s just that you didn’t even ask me. You just
expect
it.”

“The ship said we would have our time –”

“Halina said never to trust it!” I blurt out.

Erin slings her bucket across the deck and stands up. “Halina didn’t have the same problem!” she cries. “The
Aeolus
wasn’t three days from burning up when she decided to bail out!”

Peyto’s voice is quiet with fury. “She was trying to save us all when she fought the ship.”

Erin throws up her hands. “I know that, but things are different now. Whether you trust the
Aeolus
or not, we have to be sleepers. It’s our only chance for life.”

“Some chance,” I go. “If you lay down in your pods, that crazy ship ain’t never gonna wake you up! You’d be better off going up in flames – at least then you’d know what was happening!”

“Better to have certain death than a chance of life?” cries Erin. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Yeah, you got all the answers, Erin!” The rage rises inside me. “It’s simple for you, innit? You ain’t exactly grasping hold of a life down here, cos your whole life’s in storage.”

She gapes at me, but her answer don’t come.

“Ain’t that right? But you ain’t so good at seeing everyone else’s choice, are you? What happens if the ship don’t trade Maleeva for Wilbur? Then I ain’t never gonna see him again, am I? And if he wakes up at the end of the world, he ain’t never gonna see me, or Dad! You never thought about that, did you?”

By now, Maleeva’s watching and Dad’s glancing over his shoulder at our raised voices.

“If you’d never showed up in the first place, Wilbur
wouldn’t be stuck up there! We helped you cos you was desperate!” I’m so riled I can’t even look at no one no more. So I turn tail and head for the winch at the far end of the boat, which ain’t far enough.

I wedge myself between old lobster pots to shelter from the wind, and for ages I just stare at the sea. Slowly, slowly, I cool down. It’s crazy how we all got so much to lose now – different things. Erin ain’t to blame – if I was in her place, I’d feel the same. But still, I can’t even think about being split up from Wilbur. He’s a dippy spod, but I don’t know what I’d do without him. And it kills me to think that I can’t bring him back, with us, where he belongs. If only there was a way. But every angle I look at it, the
Aeolus
will crash if it don’t get repaired in time. And it ain’t gonna get repaired without forty-nine flinders.
For every flinder, a sleeper
. And if that happens, it’s game over. Cos I don’t trust the ship – I just know it won’t wake anyone up. It keeps coming round to the same problem. Sleeping’s the same as dying …

And then it smacks me between the eyes. I’m staring at the same patch of waves, but suddenly everything I’m looking at is different. My heart nearly clatters to a halt. Cos the idea that’s just sprung out of nowhere is so killer that it scares me that I’ve even come up with it. It’s desperate. A gamble that hangs on what the ship
won’t
do, what it
can’t
do, even if it wanted. It’s all or nothing. And that’s why it’s gonna work. I been looking at it the wrong way – we
all have. It ain’t got nothing to do with repairing the ship, cos that won’t cut it. But what I need to figure out is the details – that’s where the devil is, as Gramps used to say. The spell of the sea draws me in then – I can’t tear myself away from it. The endless pitching of tips and troughs, one wave sliding into another, like a landscape of distant mountains changing in seconds. And as the hours slip by, I play out a battle in my head, over and over again. A battle of wills.

Me against the ship.

It’s bleak under the darkening sky. Peeping out under a line of cloud come the last red streaks of the setting sun, and all the shattered gold on the water. I think so hard about the plan that it seems real, like something I could see out there on the broken waves – a thing, like a blade I’ve polished and polished.

I’m dozing off when I hear footsteps approach. And even before I see him, I know it’s Peyto.

“Friend or foe?” I challenge.

“Friend.”

He wedges himself in beside me.

“Make yourself at home, why don’t you?”

“I will.”

His body next to me is warm, wriggling for space,
half fighting, half cozying, but tense, too, like he’s plain terrified. And it’s uncomfortable now with him squirming about in this nest I think of as my own. But I don’t want him gone.

“I never meant to say that,” I go. “About wishing you’d never turned up.”

“Yes, you did. It’s true – if we hadn’t come, then Wilbur would be safe now.”

“Maybe. Except without you being there at Big Ben, Wilbur would’ve fallen. I couldn’t’ve saved him.”

I don’t look at him. I can’t.

“We need each other maybe?” he says softly. “The scavs and the sleepers.”

We sit like that for a bit, listening to each other’s breathing. And there ain’t nothing else to say. Being like that is so strange, a game of dare and double-dare, bluff and push and nerve. And all the time, all the heat swims up to my face, and I try to batten it all down, or hide it away, or lose it in the dark. I want to reach out to him, but I stop myself – how many times? I lose count.

Thing is – I can’t see nothing now, unless it’s through the plan. And I done my sums all right. If we play it the ship’s way, chances are Peyto’s going on the same long sleep as Wilbur … In just a few days I’ll never see him again. And that makes me even more sure about what I’ve got to do. Except it’s never that easy, is it? Cos I can’t tell him. He’d argue against it. So it has to be my secret. Which
hurts so bad that the only thing I can think of doing is kissing him.

The waves keep slopping about the same as ever – the dumb stuff of the world, looking on, not even taking any notice. I can feel absolutely everything – the cold, hard floor of the deck, my hair being ruffled about by the wind, the creak of the lobster pots. And just when I figure the moment’s gone … he takes my face in his hands and kisses me on the mouth. We’re lost – locked at the lips, feeling the shape of each other’s teeth and grabbing breaths. And kissing is so far from
normal
that we pull apart quickly. And that makes me laugh a bit, which sets him off, too. And after, we kiss each other again, but softer this time, to hide our faces and feelings, and to wonder at it alone. We lie there for ages, and all the world goes back to being the way it was – the wind is still there, and the waves, and the moon, the same as before. Except it ain’t.

My eyes droop, but I fight it cos I want to carry on feeling Peyto against me. But you can’t fight sleep when it comes. And I don’t dream. I just come to later in a dizzy flood of daylight.

The sea is rougher, sending up streamers of spray. And my heart jumps when I remember Peyto, except he ain’t here beside me no more.

I
can’t tell Peyto, or Erin, or Dad about the plan. But I’ve got to tell Maleeva, cos I need her help if it’s gonna work.

As the hours drag by, I can see we’re heading closer to the coast. The land is flat and low mostly – home to the Ferals and Blue-faces, tribes I’ve only heard about in scav tales. I wait most of the afternoon till Maleeva is on her own, taking a turn at the wheel, and everyone else is taking a nap. She’s got her back to me, hunched over something that flares with light, as I step up to the back of the wheelhouse. And as I draw nearer, I twig that she’s speaking to someone. She’s holding what looks like a scroll of paper, except it’s a screen, and on it is the face of Commander Serov.

First up I’m ready to believe she’s sold us out. But then wouldn’t the troops be chasing us down by now? Serov snaps something out in Russian, and she ain’t so much angry as cut up.

“I will not,” goes Maleeva.

Serov looks stung. “Your own Russia not good for you now?”

“What is there for me in Moscow? What’s the point of going back?”

Serov snorts. “You choose to stay here – this dead island?”

“It’s only dead because of war. Chasing for the artifact is what killed this place, its people.”

“You know nothing of the artifact.”

“I know what it did to the Okhotniks.”

Serov shakes her head and it’s weird to see her face soften, just for a moment. “You do not understand. This thing has many secrets, maybe a cure for you …”

“There is no cure, you know that.”

“You are angry at me, always angry.”

“I’m not. I couldn’t be angry if I tried now. I’m too tired of talking it over and over. You don’t listen. Just stop searching for us.”

“How can I do that?”

“It’s easy. Call off the hunt. Take your troops away from this island.”

“And then you come back to me?”

A shudder takes hold of Maleeva then. “This cage I’m in, did you ask me if I wanted to live inside it? Did you ask me? Ever?”

Serov’s face crumples – all that hard control suddenly gone. “I need you to be alive!”

“You
need
me? And so I
must
be alive?”

“Come back to me! Just tell me where you are!”

I come nearer. I know I should call out or make a noise, but I can’t help myself. I’m so close I can see the moment Serov gives up, when the words lock in her throat. Maleeva touches her fingers to her lips and passes the kiss onto her mother’s face. It’s final and Serov knows it, cos a gasp takes her, and then Maleeva carefully folds up the scroll from the edges in, till just the pale eyes are left, burning out of the paper, straining for a last glimpse.

I’m standing there, caught in the act, when Maleeva turns to me. She tosses the folded-up scroll through the side window, watching as the wind snatches it away.

“How long were you listening?”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I just came to find you.”

Her face is just as slack as ever, but her eyes are raw, blinking away tears, and I reach out to comfort her, but she holds up her hand, warning me away.

“You can go back to her,” I urge. “When this is all over …”

“And do what, Cass? And become what? You know what I want to do now? I want to run. I want to go where the chase takes me. That’s all.”

I know that feeling – when it’s just one stride into the next that matters, not caring where and not caring why. I try to picture what she must’ve been like when she’d been well and strong, a young girl, smiling.

She turns from me to gaze out at the waves ahead.

“Anyway,” she says at last. “I’m ready to become a sleeper if I must. For Wilbur.”

I wonder at her then – she really is ready to die for us. And my blood runs quick, cos I know then she’s got the guts for the plan.

“You ain’t got to be a sleeper. I know a different way to win.”

She don’t move. I look at her calm face, fixed like a mask in the pitch and fall of shadows. How can I be sure of her? There ain’t nothing to read in her eyes, but still I’ve got no choice. Cos without Maleeva on board, there ain’t no plan. It’s as simple as that.

“Just listen first, then make your mind up, OK?”

She just looks back at my reflection in the wheelhouse window and nods. So I tell her my plan to rescue Wilbur and all the sleepers. She don’t make a sound, she just soaks it right up, every last detail.

For some time she stays silent, and I think maybe she’s gonna wake the others up and spill the beans. I couldn’t have stood in her way.

“It’s risking everything,” she says at last.

“That’s the only way to make the ship sit up and take notice.”

“But it’s ancient and clever. How can you know what it will do?”

“Cos I know how bad it wants them flinders. It’ll do
anything to keep them safe. That’s what matters.”

“You don’t know enough – the struggle will be on its territory.”

“I know the lie of the land. I been up there twice already. Where the air is, where the breach is, the way the ship’s busted, how there’s only one shuttle left – it’s all in my favor. It
has
to listen to me. It ain’t got no choice. So then it’s about whose will is stronger. That’s what it comes down to. And I ain’t gonna back down.”

“You are brave. But to win, you must be ready to lose everything.”

“I’ve figured it all through. I ain’t never been so sure about something my whole life.”

“But what if you’re wrong?”

“Look, Maleeva, it’s up to you now. Make your mind up. Either you’re in or you ain’t. If you go and shout your mouth off now, everything’s scuppered.”

I let it all sink in. I can’t see if she’s tipping one way or the other, but I guess she’s stewing about it, trying to pick out the mistakes.

“It is so powerful. What if it can know right now what you’re thinking?”

“So what? Bring it on. Look, I just can’t leave Wilbur up there. So there it is. If the ship’s listening in right now, it can strike me down for all I care. If it’s smart, then it won’t, cos each step we take toward Arbor Low, we’re
one step closer to giving it what it wants – the forty-nine flinders.”

“You’ve really thought all this through, haven’t you?”

“Look, it’s simple. It’s all about the numbers. If I get there
first
, then I can burn the ship’s bridges. Don’t you see? It won’t just be tough for the ship to win, it’ll be impossible. It’ll have to give me what
I
want.”

“But it won’t just be the ship’s bridges you’ll be burning. They’re your bridges, too. They’re everyone’s.”

“That’s why the plan’s gonna work. Look, are you with me or not? Cos I’ve got to know now. When I give you the shout, you’d better be there for me or it all goes down the pan.”

She nods slowly. “All right. I’m with you.”

“No backing out.”

I hold out my hand to her and she clasps it, the cold armor of her fingers pressing firm. And so things are set in motion. It feels right then, like me and the ship are hurtling toward each other, like nothing can stop us. And maybe it could swat me out of the way, turn the others against me, crush me from above. But what else can I do? I’m locked into the charge now.

As I back out of the wheelhouse, I see Erin on the deck, staring at me. And I feel bad for shouting at her, but she’s the one to come over to me.

“You ain’t sick no more?” I go.

She shrugs. “There’s nothing left.”

“Figured you’d be the one to find their sea legs quickest.”

“Why’s that?”

“You’re the one most at home floating around in space.”

“It’s different. Here, I just feel … trapped between the sky and the sea, on this tiny boat. We can’t go up or down. The two places just keep fighting over us.”

She gazes out at the waves. “I want to belong to this world, too, you know. Peyto says we can’t live here and not change the way we are. He says it’s not like Homefleet, where we just watched the stars go by. But Homefleet wasn’t like that for me. This place, it’s just bigger. That’s the only difference I see. And pretending it’s endless, like nothing you do matters, that’s what makes people cruel.”

She takes her earmuffs off and studies them for a moment, then she just tosses them overboard.

She turns to me. “I try not to think about my family too much. It’s better for me to keep them just in my heart, in silence.”

I’m so sure that my plan is the only way to save her family that I ache to tell her. But I can’t. Not yet.

Instead I say, “You’re gonna be the one that wakes them up, Erin.”

“I’ve thought about that so many times I’ve lost count.”

“And then what? What happens when you wake them?”

“Don’t say that.”

“Why not?”

“Because we might not make it in time. We’ve been traveling for countless millions of years and the saddest thing is, we might be too late, by what – a few hours?”

“Hey, we’re gonna make it, OK?”

“What makes you so sure?”

A silence hangs between us then – just the slap of the hull and the wind.

She stares at me coldly. “You’re not going to tell me, are you?”

“Tell you what?”

“What you’re planning.”

“What makes you think I got a plan?”

“Because you’re so calm now.”

I stare back. I ain’t gonna lie no more, but I ain’t gonna tell her neither.

“You can trust me, Erin.”

“No, I can’t,” she says quietly, and then she turns away.

The coastline inches by. For the next few hours, we take turns at the wheel and, under Dad’s direction, round the coast into the Wash. The farther west we chug, the calmer the water gets, till by late afternoon it’s near flat, though you can make out furious currents as the tide sweeps in from the open sea, lifting us onward in mini-surges.

I stay with Dad in the wheelhouse as he plots a way
through new islands that ain’t on our map. For a while, we both fuss over the charts and the compass, not saying the one thing that matters.

At last I go, “Dad, you know you can’t come with us – on dry land, I mean. With your leg … You’d be too slow.”

He don’t look at me. “I know. Anyway, someone has to stay with the
Lodestar
, make sure it’s safe, eh?”

We fall silent for a bit.

“Cass?”

“What’s up?”

“When it comes to it, don’t leave your brother alone up there.”

“That’s the whole idea, Dad …”

“I mean it now. Promise me.”

“Promise you what?”

“That you won’t leave Wilbur.”

“I promise.”

He smiles then, but his eyes are sad, gazing at the waves ahead.

For a heady few seconds, I let myself picture the future. “Do you reckon we’ll get away with it – you know, get back to Gravesend with Irene’s boat, start all over?”

My voice trails off as the situation really hits me. If things go pear-shaped for us, he’ll never see me or Wilbur again. I block the thought out of my head. I hug him then, trying to hold it together. And when I pull back, his face is wet with tears.

“Hey, none of that! We’re gonna be gone three days max. I got it all worked out, Dad. It’s all over, bar the shouting – just you wait.”

He wipes his face, angry at himself. “Just take care of each other now. All four of you have to stick together.”

I think about my plan, and I feel cold to the bone, but there ain’t no point in dwelling on it now. It’s set, like nothing can knock it off course.

Outside, the light is failing again. Flat windswept islands dotted with bushes and dead trees clutter the way ahead. The channels run fast and smooth, churned brown with sand and mud. And out of the setting sun these old town ruins appear – half-bridges, roads and walls submerged into the water, bent lampposts and the craggy spike of a church tower. The sea and the land at loggerheads.