The Other Tree (22 page)

Marrick watched the solitary fish swim slowly through the faintly bubbled water, artificial light sifting through the tank like dust. The fish was almost the size of a man, covered in dull grey scales, with bare patches here and there. Its large, fleshy fins were ragged at the ends, and both eyes were frosted over with white. Its mouth opened and closed in slow motion, as though every breath would last forever.

“Load up SineOne with Scarab and Wasp,” said Marrick. “We’ll head to Massari for this one.”

Hoyle hesitated only a moment, but for Hoyle it was a moment full of many rapid thoughts. One of the main ones being, “They’re not even at the gates yet.” The number of expeditions which never even made it to the final destination, let alone achieved the objective, was astronomical.

However, Hoyle was very much aware of the consequences of repeating the obvious. He had had the misfortune of attending the farewell party of Ted in Accounts, and it was the only time he had ever seen someone attempt to commit hara-kiri with a bread roll. Being dismissed from SinaCorp was not like losing your job. Being dismissed from SinaCorp often had unforseen consequences which nobody spoke about. SinaCorp didn’t make you sign your contract in blood. They made you sign with the blood of your firstborn.

Hoyle had not known his immediate predecessor, but he had been acutely aware of her reputation. She had been a former SinaCorp operative, and as Marrick’s right hand she had enjoyed a level of confidence that Hoyle knew he did not. She had been personally entrusted with classified assignments authorised directly by Marrick and had been feared throughout the corporation and beyond it. The day after her sudden “resignation,” her body was found at the bottom of the elevator shaft. Hoyle had been promoted the following day. But that had been a long time ago.

Hoyle had also heard rumours about an even earlier predecessor who had been inappropriately jovial. He shivered and quickly rearranged his next sentence.

“Will we depart once they arrive at the gates?” asked Hoyle.

Marrick watched the fish swim its lethargic, endless circles of the tank.

“I’m told this fish is two hundred and thirty-four years old,” said Marrick.

Hoyle looked at the large fish and felt slightly unwell.

“We’ll depart tomorrow,” said Marrick. “They’ll be there by the time we arrive.”

“Sir,” nodded Hoyle, leaving Marrick silhouetted against the blue-green water.

Hoyle was a typically loyal senior henchman—SinaCorp’s extensive psychological and genetic profiling had made sure of that. He had also undergone some rather dubious conditioning which had left him with an aversion to quacking noises.

There was no disputing that SinaCorp had excellent employee benefits, and the pension plan, should you survive, was unrivalled. However, career prospects became rather limited the closer you got to the top. For Hoyle, there was no sense of “One day, all this will be yours,” because Marrick’s intention was that, one day, all this would still be hers. Forever, in perpetuity.

While Hoyle was not an overly ambitious man, it did take away a little of the drive. It had forced him to focus less on climbing the ladder, and more on other things. Like staff turnover, or exploding brains, or very large, very old fish.

Like how SinaCorp was being run.

12

The dry heat hit them as soon as they stepped off the plane. While Singapore was hot like a sauna, Massari was like the bright side of Venus. The sun felt massive in the sky, and you could almost feel the sand evaporating off the dunes.

“Hot eno—” started Chris.

“Don’t say it,” said Luke, his hair dripping with sweat before he even hit the tarmac.

Chris grinned. It was hard to imagine that this had once been arable land, lush with ferns and conifers, dangling with fruit and thick with grass. She swept her gaze across the cracked yellow dirt and the stony plains. Ten thousand years of agriculture would do that to you.

The baggage carousel didn’t turn, but it didn’t seem to matter, since only a handful of passengers wandered through the one-room terminal. Luke hauled his battered suitcase from the conveyor belt, the red tartan steeped in dust from countless foreign shores. Chris peered through a scratched terminal window, trying to make out the car rental stand.

“You’ll be happy with this one,” said Chris. “I splurged, since we’re driving all the way to Bihr’el. They said it’s a real road warrior—ditches, rivers, caltrops, dead rhinos. This baby can drive over it.”

Chris and Luke pushed through the doors into the blazing heat, the air hazing as though they were underwater. They turned towards the rental car lot and suddenly found their path blocked by two men in military uniform, one casually holding a shotgun at his side, the other with a pistol openly holstered at his belt. Their uniforms were battered khaki, and their faces were partly obscured by large reflective sunglasses.

Chris and Luke became aware of three more soldiers now standing behind them—a woman with a rifle and two men with pistols.

“Ms. Arlin, Father Estasse. I’m Major Tate; if you could please come with us,” said the man with the shotgun.

“What seems to be the problem?” asked Chris, glancing nervously at the gleaming guns.

“Just come quietly, and there won’t
be
a problem,” said Tate.

Luke tensed as the three soldiers behind them subtly shifted.

“Can we at least pick up our car? We’ve already paid the deposit,” said Chris.

“You can pick it up later,” said Tate, his face half-shadowed beneath his khaki beret. “Come this way.”

Without waiting for a reply, the soldiers firmly escorted Chris and Luke around the side of the terminal, towards a vehicle waiting by the road. Chris and Luke both froze at the sight of the truck. It was a hulking black off-roader, its oversized wheels caked in desert grit. The gleaming silver bullbar was freshly dented from where it had apparently rammed another vehicle.

Chris and Luke both made a break for it at the same time and quickly found themselves being roughly manhandled towards the truck. Chris felt herself being lifted off her feet before she landed, hard, in the covered rear tray. Luke slammed into the back of the cabin before rebounding onto the hot metal floor. Three soldiers quickly joined them in the cage, guns drawn.

“Stay calm and no one gets hurt,” said a muscular brunette toting a rifle.

“Too late,” said Luke, rubbing a bruise rising on his forehead.

“I think you go to hell for that,” said Chris darkly to the soldiers.

“Perhaps you should worry about where you’re going,” said a tanned soldier in his thirties.

“Tomas!” snapped the brunette, glaring sharply at her colleague.

Tomas leaned back with an unfriendly smile, his pistol resting on his thigh. The truck lurched into motion, and the brunette unclipped a two-way radio from her belt.

“Brielle to base camp. We are secure. Over.”

“Where are we going?” asked Chris, assessing the likelihood of an academic and a priest overpowering three armed soldiers.

“No more questions,” said Brielle curtly.

“We didn’t get any answers!” protested Chris. “Are you SinaCorp?”

“Any more questions, and I’ll hit the priest again,” said Brielle.

“Hey!” said Luke, feeling that this was rather unjust, and possibly ineffective as a threat.

Chris glowered at Brielle, Tomas, and the third unidentified soldier, who looked as though he’d had a late night. Chris sat stiffly on the searing floor, her shoulder throbbing from where it had been twisted roughly. Under the heavy black canvas of the caged tray, she felt like she was being slowly baked alive. She tried not to look at the guns the soldiers held with such menacing ease.

Emir had tried to warn her about the dangers ahead, but she hadn’t wanted to listen. She had already decided it would be an adventure, it would be revenge, it would be redemption. The worst she could imagine was losing to SinaCorp, or letting an exciting opportunity pass her by while she pottered about in the library, getting old and tired. She hadn’t seriously considered the possibility of being run off the road, or burned alive, or abducted and executed in the desert. That happened to other people, doing other things.

She could still remember Emir’s face, the hurt in his eyes. His eyes were colder now, less hopeful, perhaps a little less kind, but there was still something in them she recognised. Emir had changed, but perhaps she should have made an effort to understand why. She had been so focused on herself, on her own pain, on her own righteousness, that it hadn’t even occurred to her that maybe he was waiting for her to ask the right question. He had been worried about her, and she had brushed him off like a burr. It was funny how, at times like this, you thought about all the people you wished you could say sorry to.

Luke sat on the floor with his eyes closed, a meditative expression on his face. He was not, however, thinking about people he wanted to apologise to. It would, in any case, have been a very short list. Luke was trying to gauge the speed of the vehicle as it hummed over the broken road, taking note of changes in direction. It felt like a long ride, and he noticed the terrain changing several times, hitting a rough off-road track before finally slowing to a stop.

The soldiers rose to their feet, and Brielle listened for familiar voices before she slipped carefully from the covered tray. Tomas grabbed Chris by the arm and shoved her through the sacking cover, pitching her onto the ground outside. The shock of fresh air felt almost cool against her soaked skin, and Chris staggered to her feet, still groggy from the suffocating heat. She wiped the sweat from her eyes and quickly surveyed the scene.

In the middle of the rocky plain, a dilapidated concrete warehouse stood draped in bleached yellow camouflage awning. Several military pavilions were clustered close by, and half a dozen battered green Jeeps were parked in loose rows.

Luke landed heavily on the ground beside Chris, struggling to stay on his feet as Tomas and Brielle began shoving them towards the warehouse.

“Where—” Chris began.

She stopped quickly as Brielle raised her rifle butt towards Luke.

“Hey, do you hit
her
if
I
ask a question?” said Luke.

Brielle looked at Luke, and something in the intensity of his expression seemed to make her uneasy.

“You’ll get your answers,” said Brielle brusquely.

Chris and Luke were jostled through the steel doors of the warehouse, the green paint deeply scoured by the sand. It was a little cooler inside, and the high ceilings were crisscrossed with metal girders and wooden rafters. The concrete floor was scuffed and stained, and the narrow hallways were dimly illuminated. A low chugging noise rattled in the background, as makeshift solar generators powered the queasily pulsing fluorescent lights. Chris and Luke were marched into a large, bare, concrete room, the ceiling and corners dipped in shadow.

Chris’s stomach flipped at the sight of two empty wooden chairs in the middle of the room. Brielle and Tomas stood with their weapons meaningfully drawn, while two soldiers tied Chris and Luke to the chairs. After a final check of the knots, Brielle left the room, followed by the other soldiers.

“I don’t suppose you have a flick knife up your sleeve?” asked Chris.

“I have a lighter in my coat pocket,” said Luke.

“I’ll keep that in mind if I want to set myself on fire.”

“Do you have a flick knife?”

“They’re illegal back home.”

“Then why would I have one?”

“Who’s going to search a priest?”

“I think you overestimate the amount of respect clergy are afforded,” said Luke.

The current situation is a case in point
, thought Luke.

In fact, there
were
places where displaying a clerical collar was akin to running around telling the locals that you ate babies. Which was often ironic since the priests in those areas were often running around saying the same thing about the locals. Ah, the perils of cultural misunderstandings.

“Can you reach your phone?” asked Chris.

“I’m tied to a chair,” said Luke. “Anything you are incapable of doing, because you’re tied to a chair, I am also incapable of doing, being tied to a chair.”

Chris cast a searching gaze around the dim room and suddenly noticed something rather large near the back of the room.

“Uh, Luke, what do you think that is?”

Luke craned his neck, almost popping a joint as he looked over at the far wall. A long box covered in burlap, the size of two stretch limousines, was wedged against the back wall. At times like this, Luke was inclined to weigh up the seeping ennui of his deadening office existence against the draining horror of what he was currently going through. It was a hard call.

The door to the room suddenly swung open with a clang, and Tate strode in, followed by about a dozen men and women. They were dressed casually in T-shirts and jeans, and Tate had exchanged his military uniform for a black T-shirt and cargo pants. With some surprise, Luke noticed Thena standing beside Brielle and Tomas. She avoided his gaze.

Tate stepped to the front of the group, staring down at Chris and Luke.

“Welcome to the end of your journey.”

* * *

It was silent in the jet. Not silent like a field of bluebells in the Alps was silent. More silent like all the noise in the room was being sucked from your brain kind of silent.

Emir was used to it. It was almost comforting because it meant he was on the move, he was busy, he was useful.

He cleaned his climbing gear again, double-checking every link, every join. Stace had never quite grasped the concept of maintenance, but Emir found it soothing. It allowed his mind to wander, and that had been happening a lot lately.

Emir wasn’t brooding by nature, although he had been told he always struck a particular pose while thinking, as though he were standing on a ruined castle wall, casting his gaze across the desolate moors. At uni, Chris had taken to snapping a photo of him on her mobile every time he lapsed into what she called his “Heathcliff” pose. She had threatened to make a 365-day calendar with them, and earn her fortune selling them alongside the “Kitten-A-Day” desk calendars.