An Inch of Ashes (22 page)

She turned, staring at her uncle, then, staggering, she ran across to him and let him help her down. For a moment he held her to him, trembling against her, his arms gripping her tightly. Then, bending down, he picked up the gown he’d brought and wrapped it about her shoulders.

‘You’re soaked,’ he said, his voice pained. ‘Gods, Jelka, what do you think you were doing? Didn’t you know how dangerous it was?’

The sight of the burning trees had sobered her. ‘No,’ she said quietly, shivering now, realizing just how cold she was. ‘It was so...’

She fell quiet, letting him lead her down, his pained remonstrances washing over her.

He let her move past him, out into the passageway. The passage light was on. At the far end, at the bottom of the great staircase, stood her aunt, her look of concern mirroring her husband’s.

‘It’s all right,’ Jelka said. ‘I couldn’t sleep. The storm. I wanted to see.’

Jon nodded, a look passing between him and his wife. Then he placed his arm about Jelka’s shoulder.

‘I can see that, my love, but it really wasn’t safe. What if you’d fallen?’

But Jelka could think only of the power of the storm; of the way it had seemed a part of her, each sudden, brilliant flash, each brutal detonation bringing her alive, vividly alive. She could see it yet, the sea foaming wildly below, the huge sky spread out like a bruise above, the air alive with voices.

‘There are fresh clothes in the bathroom,’ her uncle said gently, squeezing her shoulder, bringing her back from her reverie. ‘Get changed, then come through into the kitchen. I’ll make some toast and
ch’a
. We can sit and talk.’

He looked up, waving his wife away, then looked back at Jelka, smiling. ‘Go on now. I can see you won’t sleep until this has blown over.’

She did as she was told, then went through, standing by the kitchen window, staring out through the glass at the storm-tossed waters of the harbour while he brewed the
ch’a
.

‘Here,’ he said after a while, handing her an old earthenware mug filled with steaming
ch’a
. He stood beside her, staring outward, then gave a soft laugh.

‘I’ve done this before, you know, when I was much younger than I am now. Your mother was like you, Jelka. Knut could never understand it. If there was a storm he would tuck his head beneath the blankets and try to sleep through it – as if it were all a damned nuisance sent to rob him of his sleep and no more than that. But she was like you. She wanted to see. Wanted to be out there in the thick of it. I think she would have thrown herself in the water if she’d not had the sense to know she’d drown.’

He laughed again and looked down at her. Jelka was staring up at him, fascinated.

‘What was she like? I mean, what was she
really
like?’

He nodded towards the broad pine table. They sat, he in the huge farmhouse chair, she on the bench beside him, a heavy dressing gown draped about her shoulders.

‘That’s better. It gets in my bones, you know. The damp. The changes in pressure.’ He smiled and sipped at his mug. ‘But that’s not what you want to know, is it? You want to know about your mother...’

He shook his head slowly. ‘Where to start, eh? What to say first?’ He looked at her, his eyes grown sad. ‘Oh, she was like you, Jelka. So very much like you.’ He let out a long breath, then leaned forward, folding his big broad hands together on the tabletop. ‘Let me start with the first moment I ever saw her, there on the rocks at the harbour’s mouth...’

She sat there, listening, her mouth open, her breathing shallow. The
ch’a
in her mug grew cold and still she listened, as if gazing through a door into the past.

Through into another world. Into a time before her time. A place at once familiar and utterly alien. That pre-existent world a child can only ever imagine, never be part of. And yet how she ached to see the things he spoke of; how she longed to go back and see what he had seen.

She could
almost
see it. Her mother, turning slowly in the firelight, dancing to a song that was in her head alone, up on her toes, her arms extended, dreaming... Or, later, her mother, heavily pregnant with herself, standing in the doorway of the kitchen where she now sat, smiling...

She turned and looked but there was nothing; nothing but the empty doorway. She closed her eyes and listened, but again there was nothing; nothing but the storm outside. She could not see it – not as it really was. Even with her eyes closed she couldn’t see it.

Ghosts. The past was filled with ghosts. Images from the dark side of vision.

Hours passed. The storm died. And then a faint dawn light showed at the sea’s far edge, beyond the harbour and the hills. She watched it grow, feeling tired now, ready for sleep.

Her uncle stood, gently touching her shoulder. ‘Bed, my child,’ he said softly. ‘Your father will be here tomorrow.’

The deep-level telescope at Heilbronn was more than one hundred and fifty years old. The big satellite observatories at the edge of the Solar System had made it almost an irrelevancy, yet it was still popular with many astronomers, perhaps because the idea of going deep into the earth to see the stars held some curious, paradoxical appeal.

‘It feels strange,’ Kim said, turning to face Hammond as they rode the lift down into the earth. ‘Like going back.’

Hammond nodded. ‘But not uncomfortable, I hope?’

‘No...’ Kim looked away thoughtfully, then smiled. ‘Just odd, that’s all. Like being lowered down a well.’

The lift slowed then juddered to a halt. The safety doors hissed open and they stepped out, two suited guards greeting them.

‘In there,’ said one of the guards, pointing to their right. They went in. It was a decontamination room. Ten minutes later they emerged, their skin tingling, the special clothing clinging uncomfortably to them. An official greeted them and led them along a narrow, brightly lit corridor and into the complex of labs and viewing-rooms.

There were four telescopes in Heilbronn’s shaft, but only one of them could be used at any one time, a vast roundabout, set into the rock, holding the four huge lenses. One of the research scientists – a young man in his early twenties – acted as their guide, showing them around, talking excitedly of the most recent discoveries. Few of them were made at Heilbronn now – the edge observatories were the pioneers of new research – but Heilbronn did good work nonetheless, checking and amassing detail, verifying what the edge observatories hadn’t time to process.

Hammond listened politely, amused by the young man’s enthusiasm, but for Kim it was different: he shared that sense of excitement. For him the young man’s words were alive, vivid with burgeoning life. Listening, Kim found he wanted to know much more than he already did. Wanted to grasp it whole.

Finally, their guide took them into one of the hemispherical viewing-rooms, settled them into chairs and demonstrated how they could use the enquiry facility.

His explanation over, he bowed, leaving them to it.

Kim looked to Hammond.

‘No, Kim. You’re the one Prince Yuan arranged this for.’

Kim smiled and leaned forward, drawing the control panel into his lap, then dimmed the lights.

It was like being out in the open, floating high above the world, the night sky all about them. But that was only the beginning. Computer graphics transformed the viewing-room into an armchair spaceship. From where they sat they could travel anywhere they liked among the stars: to distant galaxies far across the universe, or to nearer, better-charted stars, circling them, moving among their planetary systems. Here distance was of little consequence and the relativistic laws of physics held no sway. In an instant you had crossed the heavens. It was exhilarating to see the stars rush by at such incredible speeds, flickering in the corners of the eyes like agitated dust particles. For a while they rushed here and there, laughing, enjoying the giddy vistas of the room. Then they came back to Earth – to a night sky that ought to have been familiar to them, but wasn’t.

‘There are losses, living as we do.’

Hammond grunted his assent. ‘It makes me feel... insignificant. I mean, just look at it. It’s so big. There’s so much power there. So many worlds. And all so old. So unimaginably old.’ He laughed awkwardly, his hand falling back to the arm of the chair. ‘It makes me feel so small.’

‘Why? They’re only stars.’

‘Only stars!’ Hammond laughed, amused by the understatement. ‘How can you say that?’

Kim turned in his chair, his face, his tiny figure indistinct in the darkness, only the curved, wet surfaces of his eyes lit by reflected starlight. ‘It’s only matter, reacting in predictable ways. Physical things, bound on all sides by things physical. But look at you, Joel Hammond. You’re a man.
Homo sapiens
. A beast that thinks, that has feelings.’

‘Four pails of water and a bag of salts.’

Kim shook his head. ‘No. We’re more than mere chemicals. Even the meanest of us.’

Hammond looked down. ‘I don’t know, Kim. I don’t really see it like that. I’ve never been able to see myself that way.’

‘But we have to. We’re more than earth, Joel. More than mere clay to be moulded.’

There was a hint of bitterness in the last that made the man look up and meet the boy’s eyes.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. Just the memory of something.’

It was strange. They had not really spoken before now. Oh, there had been the poems – the transfer of matters scientific – but nothing personal. They were like two machines, passing information one to the other. But nothing real.

Hammond hesitated, sensing the boy’s reluctance, then spoke, watching to see how his words were taken. ‘Do you want to talk about it?’

Kim looked back at him. ‘This feels like home.’

‘Home?’

‘Down deep. Under the earth.’

‘Ah... the Clay.’

Kim smiled sadly. ‘You should have seen me, Joel. Eight years back. Such a tiny, skulking thing I was. And thin. So thin. Like something dead.’ He sighed, tilting his head back, remembering. ‘A bony little thing with wide, staring eyes. That’s how T’ai Cho first saw me.’

He laughed; a tighter, smaller sound than before. More like surprise than laughter. ‘I wonder what it was he saw in me. Why he didn’t just gas me and dispose of me. I was just...’ he shrugged, and his eyes came up to meet the older man’s; dark eyes, filled with sudden, half-remembered pain ‘... just a growth. A clod of earth. A scrap of the darkness from beneath.’

Hammond was breathing shallowly, intent on every word.

‘Twice I was lucky. If it wasn’t for T’ai Cho I’d be dead. He saved me. When I reverted he made a bargain for me. Because of what he saw in me. Five years I spent in Socialization. Doing penance. Being retrained, restructured. Taming me.’

Hammond looked up, suddenly understanding. So that was why Kim’s life was forfeit. ‘What did you do?’

Kim looked away. The question went unanswered. Then, after a while, he began to speak again. Slower this time. Hammond’s question had been too close, perhaps, for what Kim said next seemed less personal, as if he were talking of a stranger, describing the days in Socialization, the humiliations and degradations, the death of friends who hadn’t made it. And other, darker things. How had he survived all that? How emerged as he was?

Kim turned away, leaning across to activate the viewer. Slowly the hemisphere of stars revolved about them.

‘We were talking about stars, Joel. About vastness and significance.’ He stood, then walked to the edge, placing his hand against the upward curving wall. ‘They seem so isolated – tiny islands in the great ocean of space, separated by billions of
li
of nothingness. Bright points of heat in all that endless cold. But look at them again.’ He drew a line between two stars, and then another two. ‘See how they’re all connected. Each one linked to a billion billion others. A vast web of light, weaving the galaxy together.’

He came across, standing close to Hammond, looking down at him. ‘That’s what’s significant, Joel. Not the vastness or the power of it all, but how it’s connected.’ He smiled and reached down to take Hammond’s hand, clasping it firmly. ‘Apart or a-part. There are always two ways of seeing it.’

‘A web,’ said Hammond, frowning, then shook his head and laughed, squeezing the hand that held his own. ‘A bloody web. You’re mad, you know that, Kim Ward? Mad!’

‘Not mad, Joel. Touched, perhaps, but not mad.’

It was her last day on the island. She had slept late and had woken hungry. Now she walked the wooded slopes beside the house, Erkki shadowing her. It was a cool, fresh day. The storm had washed the air clean and the sky, glimpsed through the tall, black bars of pine, was a perfect, unblemished blue.

At the edge of the clearing she turned and looked back at the young guard. He was walking along distractedly, looking down at the ground, his gun hung loosely about his left shoulder.

‘Did you hear it?’

He looked up, smiling. ‘Hear what?’

‘The storm...’

He shrugged. ‘I must have slept through it.’

She studied him a moment, then turned back. In front of her the fire had burned a great circle amidst the stand of trees. Charred branches lay all about her. No more than a pace from where she stood, the ground was black. She looked up. The trees on all sides of the blackened circle had been seared by the heat of the blaze, their branches withered. She looked down, then stepped forward, into the circle.

The dark layer of incinerated wood cracked and powdered beneath her tread. She took a second step, feeling the darkness give slightly beneath her weight, then stopped, looking about her. If she closed her eyes she could still see it, the flames leaping up into the darkness, their brightness searing the night sky, steaming, hissing where they met the violent downpour.

Now there was only ash. Ash and the fire-blackened stumps of seven trees, forming a staggered H in the centre of the circle. She went across to the nearest and touched it with the toe of her boot. It crumbled and fell away, leaving nothing.

She turned full circle, looking about her, then shivered, awed by the stillness, the desolation of the place. She had seen the violent flash and roar of the gods’ touch; now she stood in its imprint, reminded of her smallness by the destructive power of the storm. And yet for the briefest moment last night she had seemed part of it, her thinking self lost, consumed by the elemental anger raging all about her.