Vessel (21 page)

A pause.

'Ok
ay, I did, but so did all the others. We're fighting powers beyond our reckoning here; you would've done the same thing.'

Another pause.
Sean couldn't think of anything constructive or pleasant to say, so he said nothing.

'Look, Sean, just because we aren't running the story, doesn't mean we can't still work on it. We can build up a case and leak it, just like we did with the Ramirez story. Clean slate, job done.'

It was a compromise. Sean's anger reduced from a bubbling apoplexy to a gentle simmer. 'Okay. But I need you on my side.'

'Of course. What can I get you
? Name it and it's yours.'

'A
plane out of here. No passports.'

'Where to
?'

'Nevada.'

'Jesus Christ, Sean, you don't want much.'

'You said
anything
.'

'
Okay, okay. I'll arrange that for you. Call me early tomorrow for the details.'

'I will. Thank you.'

'And keep this under your hat.'

'I always do.'

Back at Grigory's house, Sean checked the computer in the vain hope that the search had dug something else up, but it hadn't. On the plus side, the group of three had become four, and they sat together enjoying the thick-cut roast venison sandwiches that Grigory had made.

'These are really good,' Novitskiy said, tucking into his
with ravenous appetite. 'I've been eating hospital food for the last few days, and space food for forever before that, so this is a real treat.'

Grigory nodded his thanks for the compliment.

'So you're sure there's nothing else you can do?' Aleks asked, licking his fingers.

'I'm
running out of time,' Sean said. 'I have to go to Nevada. I'll go it alone to avoid rousing suspicion. It's hard not to draw attention to yourself when you've got three Russians following you around — particularly when one is as big as a house.'

The others laughed, except for
Grigory who didn't seem to follow that Sean was talking about him.

'I'll be leaving tomorrow,
' Sean continued. 'It'll be a hard slog, but hopefully I won't be gone for long.'

'We'll stay here and keep searching
online for anything more,' Aleks said.

'Good. Hopefully we ca
n find out who this Ruth Shaw is and work out what the hell's going on. Lets just pray she's not dead.'

The next day
before sunrise, after a call confirming the details, Sean made his way down to a small airfield east of Troitsk, boarded the plane that awaited him and set off towards the land of the free: America. He hadn't expected a private jet, but this was ridiculous. The plane was small, really small, and it bounced along through the air in a way that seemed to defy the laws of physics.

'We're going to be crossing the Pacific,
in this?'
Sean had said when he first saw the plane.

'Oh no,' the pilot, an old boy
called Thomas McBride had said. 'No, no, no. We'll be crossing the
Atlantic
.'

Crossing the Pacific
meant spending a few hundred miles over the Bering Strait between Russia and Alaska, but crossing the Atlantic was a journey of about
two thousand miles
over freezing-cold ocean. It was a more dangerous choice, but it was quicker. According to Thomas, the small plane was fitted with large fuel tanks, which would make the crossing with ease. A happy side-effect, he'd said, was that as the fuel started burning off, the plane would become more stable. His confidence wasn't rubbing off onto Sean, but there was no other option so they flew on in silence, the engine and wind noise — 'She's fast, but she's noisy' — too loud to talk over. They were going to stop off at a small airfield in Chantada, Spain, to brim the tanks before the trans-Atlantic trip, but even that was a good ten hours away.

From up in the sky, the sunrise was the most beautiful thing
Sean had ever seen, a strip of azure blue growing from a ball of burning red. And McBride was right: as the fuel burned off and they climbed to thinner air, the plane stopped buffeting and sailed along without so much as a shimmy. Sean's nerves settled and he began to enjoy the changing scenery below, watching dark greens grow light and then turn to dust as they ventured closer to the equator. It was a long ten hours, but the lack of conversation gave him a chance to think and reflect, so it wasn't as bad as he'd thought. In fact he rather enjoyed it, feeling a small twinge of sadness as McBride pitched the nose down to land in Chantada. The coastline had just been visible through the haze, a strip of pale blue fringing the sky.

They landed in a dusty
airstrip that was more a patch of dirt than an international hub, and Sean stretched himself out while McBride filled the plane with stinking fuel. The ground rippled with midday heat, and even the sweat patches growing around Sean's armpits felt warm against his skin. He wished he'd brought his sunglasses — no duty free to buy them from here. There wasn't even a toilet to piss in.

'Probably
a hundred degrees today,' McBride said. 'And as clear as you like.'

He wasn't wrong:
the sky was spotless. A good omen for the journey ahead, after which he would meet Ruth Shaw and all his questions would be answered. Or she would be dead. He didn't want to think about that.

Plane
ready, they took off and skipped along the Atlantic at a good pace, but with nothing to look at but rolling blue ocean, the trip was long and tiring. Before, Sean had enjoyed the solitude afforded to him by the noise, but he resented it now, forcing himself not to look down at the dashboard clock every few minutes. Or seconds. His joints were beginning to set with ache and his muscles with cramp, and he wished the hours away with desperate prayers. Six hours in, his body begged him for sleep, but it wouldn't come. He felt sick, not from the motion of flying, but from the torturous position he was pinned in. Somehow, McBride seemed to soak it all up in his stride, and so Sean tried to follow his lead and keep a brave face. Day faded to evening, and then to night, and they continued to buzz along in the pitch black, with not a single light on save for the ones illuminating the instruments. Sean was impressed by McBride's piloting abilities, and that was the last thing he remembered before falling, at last, into a fitful state between waking and sleep.

When he awoke, it was still dark, except for a fla
sh of the deepest purple behind them. The sleep wasn't the best — a long way from it — but he didn't feel as bad as he had done. He could just make out McBride from the instrument lights: he looked tired, but focussed. McBride saw he was awake, tapped his watch and held up two fingers: two hours left. It was a blessing. Sean worked out how many blocks of ten-minute segments that was, his tired mind finding it much harder than it should have done, and he chalked them off in his head one by one. By the time the coastline appeared, it twinkled like a string of jewels through the darkness of the early morning.

McBride put the plane down in a place he later told Sean was Walterboro. He re
fuelled, ready for the last hop to Tonopah, which was about two hundred miles from Carson City where Sean would find the Indian Hills Home for the Aged.

'
I'm gonna catch a few winks before we go,' McBride said.

Sean thought he w
asn't tired, but once they'd pitched a tent and climbed in, he fell right to sleep. It seemed like just a blink from his eyes falling shut to him being prodded awake again by McBride's boot.

'Time to get going,'
McBride told him.

The smell of
fried meat drew Sean from the tent, while the heat chased him out of it, and, bleary eyed, he accepted a plate with two of the fattest sausages he'd ever seen.

'Get those in you,' Thomas said. 'That'll give you the energy to see
the day through.'

Back in the air, the
plane jostled the sausages about in Sean's stomach, but he managed to hold them down. He imagined it was the sheer size and weight of the things that was stopping them making a bid for freedom, and he wished Indian Hills closer every second of the flight. It was the shortest stint of the three, but after a few hours of freedom he really had to force himself to climb back on board, where the old aches and cramps came flooding back. Although the flight was over land, the view was as uninspiring as the Atlantic. Sand in every direction, dotted with the occasional lake or town, bored Sean senseless, but every one drew him another mile or so closer to Ruth.

Thoma
s landed the plane at early dusk. The agreement was for Sean to call McBride when he was done, and he would meet him back here in Tonopah. McBride didn't like to hang around, and was buzzing along the strip before Sean had even reached the main road.

There was
a town a few miles' walk away, where Sean caught a bus that took him along route ninety-five into Fallon. From there, he would catch another bus into Carson City along route fifty. Sean had never much liked the bus — they always made him travel sick — but he was so exhausted that he slept right through, waking just in time to make the change. The second bus wound through dusty desert marked by the occasional small town, and by midnight, Carson City appeared on the horizon as a nest of star-like pinpricks shimmering in the haze. He checked into a motel, where the cotton sheets and air conditioning were like a sedative, knocking him out cold. When morning came, he slept through it, and woke as afternoon was knocking on the door.

'Damn it!' he cursed
aloud as he saw the time.

A
fter a quick, cold shower, he found a phone in the hotel lobby. He scanned the business cards thumbtacked to the noticeboard next to it and called one of the taxicab firms.

'I need a taxi fro
m the Best Value Inn to the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, please.'

'Right away, sir.'

The taxi pulled up outside not long after. The driver was pleasant enough, and Sean spent the half-hour journey listening to him talk about how his daughter was going to play cello with the state orchestra. He feigned happiness for the driver, whose name he had already forgotten, while trying to ignore the building tremor in his stomach as they approached Indian Hills. Before he knew it, the taxi stopped. Cash and pleasantries exchanged, Sean got out. It had taken him several days, and he had travelled halfway around the world, but he had made it. He was at the Indian Hills Home for the Aged, which was, fingers crossed, the residence of Ruth Shaw.

Section 4 — Vessel

Chapter 22

'Who
are you?' Sally said, her throat so tight it strangled her voice.

The
naked man unfurled, his stringy muscles tensing under his pale skin. Sally drifted over to him, cautious at first, then stopped, realisation hitting her so hard she clapped a hand over her mouth.

'You're
— you're Mikhail Romanenko …' she said through her fingers. It wasn't possible.
It couldn't be possible
.

Mikhail l
ooked at her, his eyes wide against his gaunt face. 'Where am I?' he whispered.

Sally helped him into the service module, where she found him some clothes and gave him some food. He ate
fast, as though he hadn't eaten in days, and she had to slow him down for fear he would choke. She waited until he finished before she asked him any more questions, her curiosity and concern for him overwhelming any lingering traces of trepidation. He seemed harmless enough, at least for now. The tremor in his hands worried her at first, but it seemed to pass after he'd eaten. Colour also returned to his cheeks and he no longer seemed quite so fragile.

'How did you get here?' she asked him, watching his every move with fascination.

'I don't know,' he said, looking around.

'Do you remember anything before being here?'

'No.' He narrowed his eyes, as if trying to dig up an old memory. 'No, wait, I do. I remember a feeling of — I don't really know how to describe it. Warmth, I suppose. Safety. Like I was being protected. Then I was here.'

'Nothing else?'

'No. Nothing at all.'

'Do you know where you are? Do you recognise any of it?'

Mikhail shook his head. Sally couldn't help but be intrigued by him. This man had Mikhail's looks — his hairstyle, his nose, his stubble, everything — but he remembered nothing. All this time she had been trying to communicate with UV One without success, and now — now it was communicating with
her
. There was no way Mikhail could have got on board without it. The thought made her heart leap, and she had to tell herself to calm down before she spoke again.

'We're in space,'
she told him.

He looked blank.

'Space — in orbit. Not on Earth.'

'I don't know these things.'

'Earth is home.'

At the word
home
, the last of the fear and rigidity in Mikhail's body seemed to melt away. 'Home …' he repeated.

'That's right,' Sally said, smiling. 'Home.'

Mikhail smiled back, a boyish grin that gave his middle-aged features a wash of youth. Sally felt a rush of warmth at the thought of having someone to talk to again.

'I know where you've come from,' she said, watching to see how he reacted.
'Where you've been all this time.' She had always thought that an encounter like this would make her scared, or at least nervous, but she was neither of those things. She was excited.

'Where?'

'Do you remember the vessel? UV One? You could see it through the window where I found you in the MLM.'

Mikhail looked as though he was about to speak, but he didn't. His grin faded, and he stayed silent.

'You do remember, don't you?'

He nodded.
'Home.'

Although Mikhail seemed to know and understand very little
, he caught on fast, and over the next couple of days he and Sally became something of a team. He helped her with her experiments, setting up the equipment and logging the results, as well as assisting with her daily housekeeping chores, which she was now able to do in half the time. He even livened up her exercise regime, which he joined her for. Explaining to him that he needed to exercise to stay healthy and fight off muscle atrophy took some doing, but he got it after a while and they laughed about it together afterwards as they got themselves something to eat.

'It's entirely true, I swear,' Sally said through a mouthful of macaroni cheese. 'I used to be a little fat kid.'

'No way! I don't believe it.'

'All the other kids
in school used to call me Fat Sally. Not a particularly original or creative nickname, granted, but it stuck with me for a long time.'

'How'
d you get slim again?'

'We'll, I'd like to say I joined a gym and got really healthy,' Sally said, ignoring Mikhail's
confused frown at the word
gym
, 'but I actually got so involved in my research that I just damn well forgot to eat. It's amazing how hard it is to stay fat when you eat as little as I do.'

'What do you research?'

'Long-distance communications, mainly. NASA has me working on a little project to develop faster-than-light comms, but I don't think it's possible, at least not with any technology we have today. Made a few breakthroughs along the way, though. But what I really love doing is searching for life.'

Mikhail, whose
pouch was halfway to his mouth, stopped. 'Life?'

'Yeah. Extra-terrestrial life.
Aliens
,' she said, emphasising the last word with a wiggle of her fingers.

'Am I an
— alien?' Mikhail asked, looking apprehensive.

The topic seemed to concern him; Sally could see his body language change almost in an instant. She f
elt a pang of sympathy: he was neither man nor alien. He was more like a confused and frightened boy. 'Don't let it worry you,' she said. 'You're back, you're safe, and that's all that matters.'

He smiled again, and ate the rest of his macaroni
cheese. His good humour soon returned as they tucked into dessert. 'I like this,' he said, squeezing the apple puree and breadcrumb mix into his mouth. 'What is it? It's really good.'

'
Apple pie. You should try the real thing. It's much better.'

'When? Now?' Mikhail said, his eyes bulging at the idea.

Sally laughed. 'No, not now. When they come and get us.'

'They? They who?'

'The RFSA and NASA, I suppose.'

Mikhail looked at his coveralls, at the logo on his chest. He pointed to it.

'That's it,' Sally said, nodding.

'What do they do?'

He was like an eager child, wanting and willing to learn about everything.

'They send people like me and you into space to do research.'

'Me?'

'Yes
— you're a cosmonaut. A spaceman.'

Mikhail
swelled with pride. 'I am,' he said, then squeezed some more apple pie into his mouth.

T
hey cleared the table together. When they were finished, Sally led Mikhail through the station.

'I've got something I'd like to show you,' she said as the
y wormed their way through PMA One and into the American side. Ducking into Node Three, they surfaced in the Cupola, which was bathed in shadow. 'Watch this,' she said, and released the window coverings one by one. They fell away to reveal a view of blue, green and white: Earth.

'It's beautiful …' Mikhail whispered, touching the glass with his fingertips.

'That's home,' Sally said.

They
looked out at it together, watching the clouds change shape and formation as they lazily navigated the globe. Sally hadn't much thought of home since she'd been left up here, and she realised she missed it. She wasn't sure what she missed about it, but whatever it was it left an aching hole in her chest.

* * *

The lobby was hot. Really hot. A wall-mounted fan arced back and fourth, but it did little to disperse the sweltering humidity. Sean approached the reception desk where a woman was sat reading a gossip magazine. 'Hello?' he said, trying to catch her attention.

She held up a finger, scanned through the rest of the page, then turned to Sean.
'Yes?'

Her voice was familiar. Sean realised it must have been her he spoke to on the phone.
'I'm here to see Ruth. Ruth Shaw.' Sweat trickled down his neck, slow and sticky. The moment of truth had arrived.

'And who might you be?' the receptionist said, raising her eyebrows.

'I'm her great-nephew,' Sean lied. 'I just flew in from Europe this morning, and I thought I'd pay her a visit.'

'Is that so?' the receptionist said, folding her arms.
'I ain't never seen you before.'

A
scratch of metal on wood came from a doorway behind the reception desk, where a scrawny, sweaty man with a gleaming bald head now stood. 'I couldn't help but overhear your conversation,' he said, dabbing his brow with a grubby handkerchief. He put it in his pocket, and reached across the counter to shake Sean's hand. 'I'm Todd, I'm the manager here.'

'Hi Todd,' Sean said. 'I'm Pete.'

'Well, Pete — I'm afraid I have some bad news. Do you want to come into my office? We'll get a bit more privacy in there.'

Sean followed Todd around the reception desk and into his office, feeling the receptionist staring a hole into his back. Todd shut the door and the temperature went up
even further.

'Please, have a seat,'
he said, directing Sean to the only chair in the room. Sean sat, and Todd leaned against his desk, which was covered in paper, mostly bills.

'Did you have a pl
easant flight over?'

Small talk before the heavy stuff
, Sean thought, his stomach sinking. 'Yes, thanks. A little cramped, but fine nonetheless.'

'You're telling me.
Those airlines don't mind cramming 'em in.'

The man had no idea just how crammed Sean had been
. 'No, they don't.'

There was an awkward pause before Todd said, 'I'm sorry.
That's not why you're here.' He sighed, folded his arms and looked at the floor, examining his shoes. 'This is against protocol, and I hate to be the one to tell people this sort of thing, I really do, but I don't think there's any harm in it now. Ruthy died a couple of weeks ago.'

Sean was already certain that she had, but hearing
it out loud made him feel sick. The miles travelled was one thing, but Ruth was the only door to an answer left, and it had been slammed in his face.

Todd
mistook his disappointment for him being upset. 'Oh now, there's no need to be sad,' he said. 'Ruthy lived a good life, a long, strong existence and died peacefully in her bed. She was a happy woman if ever I saw one.'

Sean nodded, not really listening.
'How did she die?' he asked.

'Doctor said it was natural causes. She just stopped breathing in her sleep
one night.'

'Was there anything suspicious about her death?
Anything at all? Did anything unusual happen just before she died? Did she say whether she'd met anyone new recently?'

Todd eyed him with caution.
'Who did you say you were, again?' he asked, wariness in his voice.

'Never mind
— I'm being silly.' Sean said, and Todd seemed to settle back to his normal, sweating self. 'I'm a journalist; I always look for the hidden agenda, even if there is none.'

Damn.
He shouldn't have said that. Hopefully it would be a detail that Todd overlooked.

'A jour
nalist? Now that
is
interesting. What publication do you write for?'

Double damn.
'I work freelance. I mostly write for music magazines.'

'You ever get to go to those after parties? With all the girls?'

'No, not really. I'm not that rock and roll.'

Todd nodded.
'Probably for the best.'

Sean
thought hard. There must be something he could find out while he was here. After all he
was
a journalist, and he
did
always look for the hidden agenda. 'Hey,' he said, 'do you mind if I have a look through her things? We were very close when I was a kid, and it would be nice to, you know — catch up with her memory.'

Todd smiled.
'Of course.'

They left the putrid humidity of Todd's office and wandered the halls.

'Ruthy really liked it here,' Todd said. 'She said it was her favourite place. She loved to sit in the lounge and tell stories. She had this one story about a scientist and an alien spacecraft that she used to tell. Boy that woman had a hell of an imagination. She could've made it as one of those science-fiction writers by my reckoning.'

This sounded interesting.
'Could you tell me that story?'

'Ah, well
— I forget most of it …'

'Please try. It's very important to
me.'

Todd
stopped and scrunched his eyes up, thinking. Then he opened them again. 'Gah, I don't know. Tell you what — why don't I show you her room while I think about it, see if I can remember?'