The Art of War (31 page)

As he spoke he stared away from her at the creek, the surrounding hills, the small, white-painted cottages scattered amongst the trees. Overhead, the sky was a lid of ashen grey.

‘And I
have to
grow. It’s how I am.’ He looked at her fiercely, defiantly. ‘I’ll die if I stay here much longer, Meg. Can’t you see that?’

She shook her head, her voice passionate with disagreement. ‘It’s not so, Ben. You’ve said it yourself. It’s a smaller world in there. You talk of feeling boxed in, here, in the Domain. But you’re wrong.
That’s
where it’s really boxed in. Not here. We’re outside all of that. Free of it.’

He laughed strangely, then turned aside. ‘Maybe. But I have to find that out. For myself.’ He looked back at her. ‘It’s like that business with memory. I thought I knew it all, but I didn’t. I was wrong, Meg. I’d assumed too much. So now I’ve got to find out. Now. While I still can.’

Her eyes had followed every movement in his face, noting the intense restlessness there. Now they looked down, away from his. ‘Then I don’t understand you, Ben. Surely there’s no hurry?’

‘Ah, but there is.’

She looked up in time to see him shrug and turn away, looking out across the mud towards the City.

The City. It was a constant in their lives. Wherever they looked, unless it was to sea, that flat, unfeatured whiteness defined the limits of their world, like a frame about a picture, or the edge of some huge, encroaching glacier. They had schooled themselves not to see it. But today, with the sky pressed low and featureless above them, it was difficult not to see it as Ben saw it – as a box, containing them.

‘Maybe… ’ she said, below her breath. But the very thought of him leaving chilled her to the bone.

He turned, looking back at her. ‘What were you looking for?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Before the wave struck. You were about to tell me something. You’d seen something.’

She felt a sudden coldness on the back of her hand and looked. It was a spot of rain. She brushed at it, then looked back at her brother.

‘It was a shell. One I’d never seen before. It was attached to the rock but I couldn’t free it with my fingers. It was like it was glued there. A strange, ugly-looking shell, hard and ridged, shaped like a nomad’s tent.’

More spots of rain fell, distinct and heavy. Ben looked up at the sky, then back at her. ‘We’d best get back. It’s going to chuck down.’

She went across to him and took his hand.

‘Go,’ she said. ‘But not yet. Not just yet.’

He leaned forward, kissing her brow, then moved back, looking at her, his dark green eyes seeing nothing but her for that brief moment. ‘I love you, Megs. Understand that. But I can’t help what I am. I have to go. If I don’t…’

She gave the smallest nod. ‘I know. Really. I understand.’

‘Good.’ This time his lips touched hers gently, then drew away.

She shivered and leaned forward, wanting to kiss him once again, but just then the clouds burst overhead and the rain began to come down heavily, pocking the mud about their feet, soaking their hair and faces in seconds.

‘Christ!’ he said, raising his voice against the hard, drumming sound of the rain. For a moment neither of them moved, then Meg turned and, pointing to the bank, yelled back at him.

‘There! Under the trees!’

Ben shook his head. ‘No. Come on! There’s half a day of rain up there. Let’s get back!’ He took her hands, tugging at her, then turned and, letting her hands fall from his, began to run back along the shore towards the cottage. She caught up with him and ran beside him, laughing now, sharing his enjoyment of the downpour, knowing – suddenly knowing without doubt – that just as he had to go, so he would be compelled to return. In time. When he had found what he was looking for.

Suddenly he stopped and, laughing, throwing his hands up towards the sky, turned his eyes on her again. ‘It’s beautiful!’ he shouted. ‘It’s bloody beautiful!’

‘I know!’ she answered, looking past him at the bay, the tree-covered hillsides misted by the downpour, the dour-looking cottages on the slope before them.

Yes
, she thought.
You’ll miss this in the City. There it never rains. Never in ten thousand years.

Chapter 48

COMPULSIONS

T
hat night he dreamed.

He was floating above a desert, high up, the jet-black, lavatic sands stretching off to the horizon on every side. Tall spirals of dust moved slowly across the giant plain, like fluted pillars linking Heaven and Earth. A cold wind blew. Over all, a black sun sat like a sunken eye in a sky of bloodied red.

He had come here from dead lands, deserted lands, where temples to forgotten gods lay in ruins, open to the sky; had drifted over vast mountain ranges, their peaks a uniform black, the purest black he’d ever seen, untouched by snow or ice; had glided over plains of dark, fused glass, where the image of his small, compacted self flew like a doppelganger under him, soaring to meet him when he fell, falling as he rose. And now he was here, in this empty land, where colour ended and silence was a wall within the skull.

Time passed. Then, with a huge, almost animal shudder that shook the air about him, the sands beneath him parted, the great dunes rolling back, revealing the perfect smoothness of a lake, its red-tinged waters like a mirror.

He fell. Turning in the air, he made an arrow of himself, splitting the dark, oily surface cleanly. Down he went, the coal black liquid smooth, unresistant, flowing about his body like cold fire.

Deep he went, so deep that his ears popped and bled. His lungs, like flowers, blossomed in the white cage of his chest, bursting, flooding his insides with a fiery hotness. For a moment the blackness was within, seeping into him through every pore; a barrier through which he must pass. Then he was through; freed from his normal, human self. And still he sank, like a spear of iron, down through the blackness, until there, ten miles beneath the surface, the depths were seared with brightness.

The lake’s bed was white, like bone; clean and polished and flat, like something made by men. It glowed softly from beneath, as if another land – miraculous and filled, as bright as this was dark – lay on the far side of its hard, unyielding barrier.

He turned his eyes, drawn to something to his left. He swam towards it.

It was a stone. A dark, perfect circle of stone, larger than his palm. It had a soft, almost dusted surface. He touched it, finding it cool and hard. Then, as he watched, it seemed to melt and flow, the upper surface flattening, the thin edge crinkling. Now it was a shell, an oyster, its circumference split by a thin, uneven line of darkness.

His hand went to his waist and took the scalpel from its tiny sheath, then slipped its edge between the plates. Slowly, reluctantly, they parted, like a moth’s wings opening to the sun.

Inside was a pearl of darkness – a tiny egg so dark, so intensely black, that it seemed to draw all light into itself. He reached out to take it, but even as he closed his left hand about the pearl, he felt its coldness burn into his flesh then fall, like a drop of Heaven’s fire, on to the bed below.

Astonished, he held the hand up before his face and saw the perfect hole the pearl had made. He turned the hand. Right through. The pearl had passed right through.

He shivered. And then the pain came back, like nothing he had ever experienced.

Ben woke and sat upright, beaded in sweat, his left hand held tightly in his right, the pain from it quite real. He stared at it, expecting to see a tiny hole burned through from front to back, but there was no outward sign of what was wrong. It spasmed again, making him cry out, the pain unbelievable – worse than the worst cramp he had ever had.

‘Shit!’ he said beneath his breath, annoyed at himself for his weakness
. Control the pain
, he thought.
Learn from it.
He gritted his teeth and looked at the timer on the wall beside his bed. It was just after five.

He must have damaged the hand, getting Meg out of the water.

When the pain subsided he got up, cradling the hand against his chest, and began to dress. It was more difficult than he had imagined, for the slightest awkward movement of the hand would put it into spasm again, taking his breath. But eventually it was done and, quietly, he made his way out and down the passageway.

The door to Meg’s room was open. Careful not to wake her, he looked inside. Her bed was to the left against the far wall, the window just above her head. She lay on her front, her hair covering her face, her shoulders naked in the shadow, her right arm bent above the covers. The curtains were drawn, the room in partial darkness, but a small gap high up let in a fragment of the early morning sun, a narrow bar of golden light. It traced a contoured line across the covers and up the wall, revealing part of her upper arm. He stared at it a moment, oblivious of the dull pain in his hand, seeing how soft her flesh seemed in this light.

For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he should wake her.

And if he did?

He shivered, remembering how she had come to him in the night, and felt that same strong stirring of desire. Though it disturbed him, he could not lie to himself. He wanted her. More now than before. Wanted to kiss the softness of her neck and see her turn, warm and smiling, and take him in her arms.

The shiver that ran up his spine was like the feeling he had when listening to an exquisite piece of music, or on first viewing a perfect work of art. But how so? he wondered. Or was all art grounded in desire?

The fingers of his damaged hand clenched again. He took a sharp intake of breath against the pain and leaned his shoulder against the doorpost. It was the worst yet and left him feeling cold and weak, his brow beaded with sweat. He would have to have it seen to today. This morning, if possible. But first there was something he must do.

He went down and unlatched the door that led into the garden. Outside the air was sharp, fresh, the sky clear after the rain. Long shadows lay across the glittering, dew-soaked grass, exaggerating every hump and hollow, making the ground seem rutted and uneven. The roses were beaded with dew, the trestle table dark and wet.

He was still a moment, listening to the call of birds in the eaves above him and in the trees down by the water. It was strange how that sound seemed always not to breach but to emphasize the underlying silence.

The pain came again, more bearable this time. He braced himself against it, then, when it was fading, lifted the injured hand to his face. There was the faintest scent of burning. A sweet, quite pleasant scent. He pressed it against his cheek. It was warm. Unnaturally warm.

Cradling the hand against his chest, he stared out across the lawn towards the shadowed bay. The tide was high. Sunlight lay in the trees on the far side of the water, creeping slowly towards the waterline.

He smiled. This much never changed: each day created anew; light flying out from everything, three hundred metres in a millionth of a second, off on its journey to infinity.

He went down, across the lawn and on to the narrow gravel path that led, by way of an old, rickety gate, into the meadows. The grass here was knee high, uncut since his father had left, three months past, the tall stems richly green and tufted. He waded out into that sea of grass, ignoring the path that cut down to the meandering creek, making for the Wall.

There, at the foot of the Wall, he stopped, balanced at the end of a long rib of rock that protruded above the surrounding marshland. The Wall was an overpowering presence here, the featureless whiteness of its two-
li
height making a perfect geometric turn of one hundred and twenty degrees towards the southeast. It was like being in the corner of a giant’s playbox, the shadow of the Wall so deep it seemed almost night. Even so, he could make out the great circle of the Seal quite clearly, there, at the bottom of the Wall, no more than thirty paces distant.

Ben squatted and looked about him. Here memory was dense. Images clustered about him like restless ghosts. He had only to close his eyes to summon them back. There, off to his left, he could see the dead rabbit from five years before, sunk into the grass. And there, just beyond it, his father, less than a year ago, looking back towards him but pointing at the Seal, explaining the new policy the Seven had drawn up for dealing with incursions from the Clay. He turned his head. To his right he could see Meg, a hundred, no, a thousand times, smiling or thoughtful, standing and sitting, facing towards him or away, running through the grass or simply standing by the creek, looking outward at the distant hills. Meg as a child, a girl, a woman. Countless images of her. All stored, hoarded in his mind. And for what? Why such endless duplication of events?

He shuddered, then turned, looking back at the cottage, thinking how ageless it seemed in this early morning light. He looked down, then rubbed the back of his left hand with his right, massaging it. It felt better now, more relaxed, which made him think it was some form of cramp. But did machines get cramp?