Cold Fusion (11 page)

Watching me get fucked. Suddenly that became unbearably exciting, and I snapped my head back, burying my face in the blanket. Had Alan seen him? No—he’d have stopped, pulled out. This was Viv’s secret and mine. He’d seen me seeing him, I knew. I shoved up onto my elbows and knees to take Alan’s final strokes. My cries broke up into mortifying cut-off wails, and I muffled them in my sleeve, gritting my teeth as a grinding spasm of climax coiled out of my balls and my marrow and swallowed me whole. Was Viv seeing this, feeling it somehow, sharing with me in the pulsing hot space behind my eyes? Alan bore down on me, grunting. His weight landed hard on my back. The crates creaked and shifted but held up under his pounding.

When next I could look, the doorway was empty. Had I imagined him? The silver birch recalled him closely, slim and tough, flexing in the buffets of the wind.

Alan hauled out of me, making me groan, and he gave me a clap on the hip, as if I were a horse who’d done rather well underneath him in battle. “Christ, that was good,” he said breathlessly. “There’s no one like you, Mal. Now, I know what you need.”

I chuckled. “I think I just got it.”

“Stay here and have a kip with me. I know you want to.”

He was right. I hated my childish need to crash into sleep after coming. It seemed unsophisticated. In my dreams, I’d be propped up on fine linen pillows with a copy of the
Independent
, sipping a martini and discussing current affairs. Instead I was about to pass out like a puppy on my crates. Viv’s skinny mattress felt like a rich velvet cloud. I yawned helplessly. “Oh, God. Isn’t there anything I should be doing?”

“Plenty, but it’ll keep for half an hour.”

“Will you stay with me?”

“Of course.” He stroked my hair, an unfamiliar gesture from him, but my question had been uncharacteristic too, a half-scared plea to be watched over. Unease was tugging at me, formless shapes swimming near me in the shallow presleep waters. “Of course I’ll stay.”

Chapter Seven

Of course when I woke up, the bastard was gone. That was so fucking typical that I almost laughed, sitting up stiffly among the blankets. At least his rucksack was still there. Well, I was far too big a lad to need mollycoddling after sex, nice though that might have been. I was certainly more used to this version. My few previous boyfriends had all been like me, uneasy souls stuck in their parents’ homes for lack of funds to move out, and our love nests had been locker rooms in the boatyard, single beds in narrow bedrooms, listening nervily for a click of a front door. Alan had said we should ship out, and was no doubt off somewhere organising Viv or helping him to pack.

I folded up the blankets. I was a bit ashamed of the mess we’d made of the chalet’s pure space, or disturbed by it—this was the place I’d come to as an escape from chaos, from fish guts and shouting men. Even when all I’d done was sit here with a notebook for a hour, I’d been sure to sweep out any sand I’d tracked in with me so that the sunlight would fall as peacefully on the floorboards as it had before I’d arrived. Alan had dropped the tube of KY in a corner. Wow, add a couple of empty beer tins and a used condom and we’d have been a right pair of teenage thugs. Blushing, wincing as I bent over, I picked the tube up and shoved it into my ruckie.

I wouldn’t have much cause to come back here again. Maybe Viv’s discovery would change the world, or maybe things would stay as they were and the NorthEx oil crew would knock Spindrift down and build towers of steel in its place. Either way, I’d be elsewhere. I’d have followed Alan back to sea, wouldn’t I? That was what he’d promised, the future I’d wanted more than anything else. Nevertheless my heart sank as I closed the chalet door behind me. The last few days here with Viv had been a time out of time. His disengagement from reality had rubbed off on me. I’d liked it—come to like him—more than I could explain.

Still, this was for the best. I wondered what Alan would do with him once we were in Edinburgh. Viv wouldn’t stay with me, not once his discovery had been made known. Probably my last sight of him would be his elegant back as a group of overjoyed scientist fanboys bore him away.

“Mal! Come on, you dozy sod. We’ve got to get cracking.”

I whipped round, startled. Alan was striding down the track, carrying a box full of glass jars and cables. I wanted to point out that he’d practically ordered me to have a nap, but he had on his look of fierce determination, and it was easier to go with his tide. “Okay. Where’s Viv?”

“Up at the car, packing stuff in. I told him we could provide gear like this for him in Edinburgh, but he insisted on having his own. There’d better not be any funny stuff going on with it, or the first set of scientific assessors will tear him apart.”

“There isn’t. He just likes his own things.” I remembered what he’d said about putting his shampoo back where I’d found it, exactly in the right place. “Isn’t it worth it, if it makes him happy?”

“God, I suppose so. But we’ve got to get out of here now.”

“Are you that worried about the weather?”

“Yeah. It’s gonna be bad. Get your arse in gear and meet us at the car.”

“Can’t I carry anything?”

“No, you’re too late. Bring up my rucksack and yours, and we should be good to go.”

I followed him slowly up the track. The two rucksacks were heavy, and I wasn’t in any rush to get back to his side, not when he was terse and grim like this. I didn’t understand his mood. He’d come here and got exactly what he wanted—with a cherry on top, I reflected, shifting uncomfortably in my jeans and wishing I’d had time for a shower—and as for the weather, he’d driven the Peace Warrior truck cheerfully through the worst of a Norwegian winter. He could cope with a little bit of Highland snow.

So could his vehicle. I repressed a whistle as I crested the last dune and got a good look at it. This beast hadn’t come out of PW funds. It was a brand-new Hyundai four-by-four, sitting squarely on the track as if it couldn’t wait to munch up a few more hundred miles of turf and dirt. Well, Alan had said his family was rich. I couldn’t help reaching out to stroke its flawless silver bonnet as I passed on my way to the open boot. Petrolhead ambitions seemed out of keeping with poetry and concerns for the environment, but I did like nice machines, and this big girl definitely qualified.

For Viv, she could have been a horse and cart. I sensed his indifference as soon as I came to stand beside him. He was leaning into the boot, turning crates and boxes this way and that, trying to find the best fit.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “With this kind of suspension, your gear won’t even know it’s on the road.”

“I’m sorry?”

“The car,” I clarified. “It’s a good one.”

“Is it? I’m not too well informed about such things.”

“I can imagine. Do you even drive?”

“I was taught. Alfred gave me lessons on the lanes through the grounds. Once I was out in traffic, though, I became distracted.” He flickered me a smile. “There were consequences.”

He was very nervous. He was hiding it well, but I’d seen it like a distress flare in our quick, shared glance. Alan was busy arranging things on the back seat, so I reached out and took Viv’s hand. He went still, not closing his grip on mine but allowing the touch. I supposed if there was ever going to be a moment to ask him why he’d stood outside the chalet door, this was it—but now I wasn’t certain he’d been there, and it didn’t seem important.

“Listen,” I said. “You don’t have to be scared about this trip. Alan will take care of you, and I’ll stick around too, if you want me.”

“Mallory, I… It isn’t a good idea for us to go. We—”

“What’s taking so long back here?”

Alan appeared at my side, and Viv snatched his hand away as if he’d been burned. “Nothing. I can’t get these boxes to fit.”

“What? They’re all in, aren’t they? They fit fine.”

“They’re not symmetrical.”

“Why the bloody hell do they need to be that?” Alan pushed him aside—not roughly, or I wasn’t sure what I might have done—and heaved one last open crate into the boot. “Gonna disarray your arrangements even more now, I’m afraid. Will this one fit in?”

“Yes, but…” Viv peered into the crate. “You’ve brought the wrong conductor rack. This is for the junction box, not the cathodes.”

“Oh, excuse
me
.” Alan shoved back his sleeve to check his watch. “Hell’s teeth, it’s getting late. Right—I’ll run down and grab the other rack.”

“No. It needs careful decoupling. I’ll do it.”

He was gone before Alan or I could move to stop him, a lithe shape darting back down the flank of the dune. Alan released an odd little sigh and slammed the boot closed. He looked at his watch again. “Right,” he said distractedly. “That’s it, then.”

His words met my feelings so well that for a moment I didn’t question them. This was it for my time at Spindrift, for this latest strange phase of my life. Then I frowned and glanced at him. “What’s what?”

“Nothing. Just thinking aloud. Come on, Mal—get into the car. I’ll drive first.”

“Okay.” I opened the rear door. I’d let Viv ride up front, I decided, and I’d look after his precious bits of kit in the back. Alan hadn’t packed them very well, I could see. Definitely lacking in symmetry. Down by the chalets, Viv was nothing but a moving patch of darkness. I hesitated by the door, trying to distinguish him from the wind-whipped birches as he ran down the track towards the main building. The silver flowers flickered as he passed them, and the glass doors gleamed dully as they opened and closed. I hoped he’d be all right down there. I hoped he wouldn’t look around at the little world he’d created and think better of leaving it behind. I turned to Alan, about to voice these fears to him, and then I shut up.

Alan had climbed into the Hyundai and was sitting behind the wheel. He was glancing at his watch for the third time. I saw a tremor run through his hands.

“Al,” I said, aborting my own move to climb aboard. “What the bloody hell is wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I want to get going, that’s all.”

No. It was much more than that. I didn’t have the least idea what fear it was that made me close the door and back away across the turf, but when Alan got out too, I recoiled. “I’m going back down. I want to see he’s all right.”

“Mal, no.”

“Why not?”

“There’s no need. He’s fine. Get back in the car.”

No. Not a chance. Terror came coiling up out of the earth at me, reached me in the pitch of seagulls’ cries and the inchoate language of the wind. Alan was striding towards me, one hand outstretched as if he meant to haul me back by force. The instant before he could reach me, I turned and ran.

He chased me down the side of the dune. I knew the path better than he did or he’d have caught me easily, and once we were on the flat, his great loping strides closed the gap between us in seconds. Then something happened—he tripped and fell, or decided I wasn’t worth the expenditure of energy—and his repeated shouts of my name dropped into silence behind me.

I couldn’t stop to look. Chemical alarm bells were screaming in my veins. I’d never been the intuitive sort, but signals had come flying in from Alan, from Viv, from the way the very air smelled, like the ozone surge before lightning hit. I tore open the doors into the main building, ran down the echoing corridor. “Viv, are you in here? Viv!”

He was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t remember what he’d come back down to collect and looked frantically around the lab to see if anything I recognised was decoupled or gone, meaning he’d done as he said and was safely outside somewhere, not hanging from an overhead beam or lost in the fathomless depths of the sea chambers. My throat clenched in relief as his long shadow fell across the entrance to the café.

“Viv,” I gasped. “Thank God. We’ve got to get out of here. I dunno why, but I feel like something’s—”

The air exploded in my face—a punch from nowhere, a blow from a boxing ring ghost. It heaved me off my feet and flung me all the way across the lab, where the wall stopped me dead, slamming the air out of my lungs and dropping me cold to the floor. I couldn’t breathe or see. Time stretched. A fiery roar filled my ears as I curled up, shielding my head from slow incoming missiles of glass and steel. Then something monstrous and black sailed in from the far side of nowhere. It detonated inside and outside of my skull at once, and all the lights snapped out.

* * * * *

“Mallory! Mallory!”

Someone was calling to me across an enormous distance. I cracked open my eyes to have a look. I was lying in a silver-grey world, and it was very peaceful, very beautiful. Jagged silver towers with crimson streaks flickering out of their rooftops like windblown silken flags. Crimson, orange, gold. They gave off a heat that would have hurt me if I hadn’t been floating in protective silver mist. The summoning voice rose again, closer this time. Still it was like listening to a voice underwater, and it didn’t seem important to respond.

“Mallory! I’m coming. Hold on.”

A figure was moving towards me through the towers and flags. Time was still elastic for me, and he seemed to be advancing with a swimmer’s movements, or a spaceman with magnetic boots in a 1950s sci-fi B-movie. Or maybe I was thinking of the Japanese monster films, because he was destroying some of my silver-grey city as he came, grabbing the high-rise blocks I could now see were overturned tables and hurling them aside.

It was Viv. I’d been so worried about him. I sat up to greet him, and pain and sound and heat rushed in at me from all directions. I tried to call out to him. My voice left me in a panicked yell, and I began to struggle against the deathtrap of burning rubble around me.

“All right! I’ve got you.”

I’d massively underestimated his strength. He might have dragged me indoors like a bag of coals the other night, but now he bent down, got hold of me beneath my shoulders and around the backs of my knees, and hoisted me effortlessly out of hell. His cradling grip was so powerful and sweet that I could have died of it, but I instantly started to fight. “Alan. Where’s Alan?”

“Keep still. The roof’s about to fall in.”

Clouds of smoke and dust engulfed us. I turned my face to Vivian’s shoulder and hung on. Anything else would have been like arguing with a forklift. This was the most efficient way of getting us both out of here, and he was going for it with unstoppable focus. He ducked, clutching me harder, and glass fell in a musical shower—he must have shouldered out a shattered pane from the main doors—and suddenly I was breathing clean air. He bore me down the steps and a few strides across the turf that bordered the track, and then he stopped and dumped me. A catastrophic rumble was rising behind us. He crouched and tried to shield me, and I couldn’t have that, so I struggled onto my knees and tried in my turn to shield him.

Pulverised concrete rushed past us in a wave. Shards of glass rained down, but we’d got far enough and they pattered harmlessly on our coats and bowed heads.

“Viv,” I choked when I could speak past the dust in my throat. “What the fuck happened?”

“The lab blew up.”

He really was the master of the obvious. “Let me go. Got to find Alan.”

“He isn’t in there.”

“Yeah, he is. He was following me. He was…”

“He isn’t there.” Viv pushed me back a little way—grabbed my lower jaw and jerked my face up so I had to look at him. “He’s gone.”

Christ, was this Viv’s hapless way of telling me he’d found his body in the ruins? I extricated myself from his grasp and lurched upright. “He was following me,” I said again, trying to match the tail ends of my memory to the present. “I don’t know why. He didn’t want me to come back for you. He…”

“Mallory, he took the car and left.”

I swung away. The westward wind had borne sparks from the shattered main block, and the chalets were taking fire, one after another in a roaring, blazing line. I shielded my eyes and tried to see the Hyundai parked up in its place on the crest of the dune. It had to be there. But all I could see was heat-rippled seagrass and grey sky.

I took off. My first few strides were a stumbling disaster, my head still ringing with the blast. I found a bit of balance after that, but then I had to run the gauntlet of the burning cabins. My eyes stung, and smoke ripped my lungs. I was coughing and retching by the time I got clear. I had to see, though. I had to see for myself that the patch of grass where the truck had been parked was empty. I hauled myself up, clutching at handfuls of turf and sand. I had to have proof.