Lie of the Land (3 page)

On the hill's shoulder he looked down on the village. Inverlair was definitely a rosier prospect from here than seeing it up close. He felt his mind wander, growing less focused. Up here on the hillside there was nothing but wind and open sky to bother him. Even in the middle of Glasgow he hadn't felt so suffocated, even with CivCon snoopers breathing down his neck 24/7. It was good to get out, to get better, good to walk out of the hotel and away from the village. He was stronger now; a week of generous portions had fattened him.

He walked.

There was only one destination that mattered. No point in pretending otherwise. Now that he was well enough he could get there easy enough, following the sheep track through Ben Bronach's gullies, along the hill's northern ridge.

He made the edge of the inland moors in less than an hour,
through heather and rushes and bracken, past wind-shivering pools; a bird, some kind of raptor, vigilant, gliding away over the village and the arms of the bay. He walked on, heading downhill off the ridge this time, to where the River Lair rose, oozing from the blanket bog through numberless pores and streams and capillaries.

Dr Morgan had told him not to overdo things for at least two weeks. A stroll around the village was okay, she said, until he got his strength back. Perhaps she would take a dim view of a nine-mile hike up into the squelching hills on a chilly October day. But he was stronger now, and anyway, he had to go to a certain place. There was unfinished business to finish. And he had to walk. If he stopped he would go crazy.

Skirting an outlying house at the head of the bay, he started climbing the southern hills, moving away from the sea all the time, but still able to make out the river, sunk deep into the fathoms of peat, before it plunged through Inverlair at the head of the bay. Further on and he crested the hill's swelling moorland summit, where he could no longer see the sea or the bay.

Here he was.

Below him, in a deep glen, was the same farmhouse, the door still wide open, the Range Rover still with one wheel in a stream, and the driver, or what was left of him, scattered between the vehicle and his idyllic downsized cottage-industry-cum-bolthole. The recording in Carl's head raced to its screaming climax.

This is the edge of the Inverlair notspot. This is the end. This is where it happened.

Heart pounding, Carl spun from what he saw and remembered, and half-ran back towards the village. After a while he stopped, turned around.

No point in running away. Better to let it in, to face it. That was the way it had to be done.

A while later he was sitting on the ground, looking down at the
farmhouse and Range Rover, waterproof trousers keeping out the wet but not the cold on his arse. He took Howard's deltameter out of his pocket; there were spikes right across the waveform. This was almost as far as he could go before the redzone started to bite. He coughed, pain in his chest. Perhaps he'd pushed himself too hard.

This pilgrimage, this penance, hadn't turned out the way he thought it would. Here was the place where the knife had been twisted, where Howard had died. There should be a reckoning, or at least a revelation of some sort. But, after the shock of remembering that day had subsided, there was nothing, just the impassive context of land and sky.

From his pocket he took out a bottle of water and a plastic bag containing four slices of venison and two waxy cubes of polycarb. Without taking his eyes from the farmhouse, he ate and drank. It might rain; in borrowed clothing he'd be safe and dry.

He just wouldn't mention it. That was the way to handle things with Simone. Keep ignoring it and it'll go away. It: growing inside her, not yet a bump. A lump? Embryo or foetus? There was no accelerated hormonal flood to swell her like a balloon, give her all sorts of cravings and mood swings. She would be an invalid in a few months' time. Isn't that what happened? He would end up doing everything for her. She would expect that, and so would everyone else.

He shook his head. It was hard to believe. The more he thought about it, the more unjust and unfair it seemed. It was almost funny. By next spring, it would come along, and the non-stop crying and shitting would start. Isn't that what happens? And what would Isaac think — the kid who already thought the Grim Reaper stayed upstairs?

Man appears. Granny vanishes. Everyone gets sad and starts crying. Now man reappears, and Mum's talking about a baby. Man is the baby's daddy, but he is not my daddy. The man from upstairs was the angel of life and death. But maybe kids didn't think like
that, didn't mull over all the ins and outs of a situation. He didn't know how they thought.

It couldn't be ignored, though. Not a hope in hell. Younger guys might carry on as before until reality kicked them in their dog-blind bollocks. But he couldn't push it away, could he? There was no bump yet. Nothing obvious. But it was coming. He could wriggle and struggle and ignore it all he liked. She could miscarry. There was still time.

From the north a gunshot cracked, breaking Carl's febrile cascade of thoughts. The sound bounced around the bay, fading into a scatter of echoes. He cocked an ear, looked towards Ben Bronach and the ridge, but the gun was not fired again.

Must be the stalker.

Should really go and say thanks to the guy. But Carl didn't even know what he looked like. He'd get round to it. Soon.

It was no small thing what the man had done.

A crescent moon came out from behind the clouds. Birds flew towards the forest for the night, and the wind picked up.

Better get used to it. Better forget about what once had been out there, including himself. Everything is here. There's no point trying to deny the truth of that. But it wasn't easy, and just thinking about it made him want to tear his hair out, hurt himself, do something crazy. How could the world just cease to exist? How could it all be unreachable, a shadowy realm of the past? What kind of arrangement was that to come smacking out of clear blue nothing? The whole thing was deranged. Rotten. But the world had been pretty deranged and rotten before the redzone threw a curtain of delta wave sleep around Inverlair. It was no change of state, really, just an end to all the familiar derangement he had known.

Carl pulled his hat down over his ears and shivered. It was getting dark, and the first nameless stars had come out. At the far end of the glen, pools of still water, like spilt mercury, reflected the half-light in the soundless, windless evening.

People were watching him, judging him.

From somewhere below – in the farmhouse glen, but from precisely where he couldn't say – an animal noise boomed, a deep bellowing that rolled around the slopes. He stood still, listened.

A cow? It certainly wasn't a sheep or a dog; hell of a racket whatever it was, as if someone was retching into a toilet bowl. A deer?

He strained to hear.

Not a sound came from the glen, its electricity pylons carrying their dead wires to the silent south.

Wind gusted from the east.

In an instant it started blowing, with force, picking up bits of dry grass. A few seconds later and the first crackle of electricity fizzed across the upper atmosphere, then another flash, and another, until the ionosphere blazed with a tracery of angry voltage.

It was just like Howard had said.

The electrical storm crackled across the eastern sky, lighting up the dark hills. He felt small and exposed under the storm.

Carl hurried down the rocky slope to the main road, the Atlantic horizon still aglow, sky flashing and sparking behind him in the east. For a split second, he was relieved to be going back to the hotel. He almost formed the word home. There were four walls, a bed and a regular supply of calories given to him by other people. But there was nothing and no one he had known from the life before. Now there was just hunger and the redzone and the consequences of action and inaction.

As the wind dropped a little, the animal noise came again from the glen below, a roar that rang around the regimented forest. From deep in its throat the cow-dog-bear called, a moaning bass note that swelled and echoed.

Carl quickened his pace down the gloomy track, between the gorse, and into the dark trees that loomed along the back of isolated houses, stumbling in the fading light. The old fear was
behind him, on the hunt. After every few strides he cast a wild glance back through the wind-tossed trees, as if he were being followed, as if he were being watched and there was no escape, and nowhere to find rest.

July

4

The 11 p.m. surveillance drone, tail-light blinking red, banked at 600 metres over the city centre, heading north towards Bishopbriggs. There was something comforting in the regularity of the machine's routine, beyond his window, as it flew past, on the hour every hour, by day and by night. No matter what was going on in the rest of the world, the CivCon drone turned at the scheduled time, banking left over Glasgow, scanning for ID defaulters and clocking up their zonal debits for the council. Everything was as it had become.

Carl sat at the window of his third-floor flat. He wasn't really paying much attention to the drone's tail-light as he thought about the following day. Pollokshaws Road was dry and quiet.

Reports and photos and witness testimony covered his desk. It all added up to a great story, and one his boss would undoubtedly spike. It wasn't really Eric's fault though; he didn't make the rules; he just knew what would happen if they weren't followed. The newspaper had run out of last-chance saloons. It had called the Emergency Authority's bluff once too often.

Carl got up from his desk and made himself a fruit tea. As he flopped onto the sofa, the wall screen bleeped again, for the third time that day.

He let it ring until his ansa clicked on, watched Sarah's moon-face in the inset as she left her message. She was still playful, sarcastic, even though it was her fourth unreturned call of the day. Her blonde hair was more ruffled than earlier, her lipstick smudged.

‘Hello, my darling,' she crooned. He reckoned she was stoned; her voice was hoarse. ‘Are you there?' She waited. ‘Are you trying to tell me you've really and truly had enough?' She smiled, seemed to look right into him. Even though she couldn't see him, Carl turned away towards the window as she left her message. ‘Sorry I'm making a show of myself,' Sarah continued. ‘Sorry I over-stepped the mark the other day. I mean, this is as good as it gets, right? Me here and you there, but that's okay because . . .'

Carl sighed. ‘Mute ansa,' he ordered, and Sarah was left to plead with her mascara-lined blue eyes alone. After a minute or so she hung up. Call and message logged.

He couldn't figure her out. First of all she seemed not to care about anything expect having fun and sharing her new lenses with him. It was a turn-on; the lenses she'd sent him were amazing. An imitation of life, every pore and hair, reproduced in high-res perfection and beamed right onto his retinas. Like she was actually in the room with him. But it was still just self-stimulation, for all the cleverness embedded in the biogel lenses. With spraysuits they could have crossed over into the promised land of personalised virtual togetherness. Without them, it was literally wanking 500 miles apart. The company promised a secure connection, but Carl had his doubts about that. There was always a chance that CivCon were listening in, although they had more to worry about than a largely neutered journalist at a failing newspaper.

It had been Sarah's plan, her idea, to try out the lenses. Now she was getting heavy, and the fun was over. When he'd suggested spraysuits, he thought she'd jump at the chance, but she had resisted the idea, before suggesting a meeting, somehow, of the meatspace sort. Transit endorsements and endless biosecurity bureaucracy would make the 500 miles to Bristol unbridgeable; CivCon could make the separation permanent, and probably would, given Carl's probable status on one of their watch lists. Surely Sarah knew all that, but still she banged on about meeting up.
If only she'd shown some sign of this honest yearning before he'd become too involved.

No. All things considered it would have been better to keep their relationship a netspace one. Women always want more from you, thought Carl; they're never content with being content. And when you become the kind of person they want you to be, they crap on you from a great height, from out of the blue. Well, he wasn't going there again. No chance. He hoped Sarah would leave him alone and not become one of those saddos who couldn't let go, who keep trying to wheedle their way back in. No point in doing that. Once it's finished it's finished: pleading and emotional blackmail just pushes the other person further away, makes them more convinced that they were right to chuck you. It was like some kind of Newtonian law: for every action there is an equal and opposite repulsion. Life would be less complicated without Sarah. It was already complicated enough.

Carl sipped his fruit tea, studying his reflection in the dark window, flicking through the papers and photos that littered his desk. There wasn't much he could do about any of it. All the ingredients were there, but he couldn't do any cooking.

Back at the bay window he caught sight of lights ascending from the helipad on top of the Hilton. The spires of the uni were black shards against the western sky.

The wall screen resumed its scan of his crowdmap, drip-feeding the chatter from 457 individuals and organisations, picking out key words and logging the information. Some of it mattered, but Carl wasn't sure if he could be bothered processing what his wall had to tell him any more. It was like some mythic jug he could never empty, no matter how deeply he drank from it.

•

The following morning, sunlight and birdsong awakened the notion of actually going in to the office. He could sit in the flat
tweaking press releases and fluffing official announcements. He could lose himself in lensed-up exploration masquerading as research. Or he could leave the flat, walk through the hot dusty streets, and join the bedside vigil for a dying newspaper.