The Apothecary

Chapter 34

The Bomb



For what seemed like a long time, I was alone on deck in the silence. I held my breath, standing at the rail and blinking at the island through the snow, hoping that Benjamin and his father had gone ahead with their plan—that Jin Lo’s net would work, and the Quintessence would absorb the radiation. Imagining them working away on the island helped. They would carry on and succeed, and save themselves and the Samoyeds on the island, and the reindeer and the fish and the Norwegian children—and also me, exposed on the deck of the destroyer. I didn’t want to think about what would happen next, when they would have to leave Nova Zembla. They couldn’t possibly rescue me from the Soviet Navy, and the idea left me feeling hollow and abandoned.

I tried to be selfless and hope only for Benjamin’s safety, since he and his father were trying to save the world. But what I really wanted was for all of us to be safe, and out of this wretched place. I just couldn’t see how that was going to happen.

As I strained my eyes at the horizon, it began to change. Something small grew out of the surface of Nova Zembla, blooming orange and red like a monstrous flower in the failing light. It rose slowly, ominously, into the air. Then there was the sound of the blast, bleeding into a long, diminishing roar, and the ship trembled on the surface of the water.

I thought of Benjamin in the lunchroom, saying, “We’ll be incinerated. We’ll turn to ash.” The idea that all of them were gone, instantly—Jin Lo with her fierce competence and her hidden sorrow, the affable Count Vili, the kind and haunted apothecary, and Benjamin, my Benjamin—was too intolerable for my brain to handle. The fact that radiation would be drifting towards me in toxic waves was nothing compared to my friends vanishing.

The orange cloud was building and roiling in a way that looked agonisingly slow, and I seized the hope that Count Vili was freezing time on Nova Zembla. That would mean he was still alive—that they all were. I ignored the nagging thought that the slow rising was just the nature of the explosion, and allowed a little hope to rise in my heart.

The orange bloom spilled over into a second cloud rising above it, separating until the stacked clouds had only a thread of orange light between them. The two clouds didn’t look intelligent in the way of the Dark Force, but they did look alive. They seethed with smoke and grew, expanding inexorably, unstoppably.

And then, instead of billowing ever upward, they stopped expanding. I thought of Jin Lo casting her shimmering net out over the sea, and hoped she had gotten it around the bomb. If she had, and it worked, then the polymer triggered by the radiation would contract and snare the explosion. I waited, holding my breath.

There was a moment of hesitating stillness, and then the topmost cloud rejoined the one below it with a kiss. They became one glowing shape again, and that shape, in turn, began slowly to contract. It looked like the newsreel of an atomic blast being played backward, in bright colour.

The cloud collapsed in on itself, growing smaller and smaller, and then it was gone, like an orange sun slipping below the horizon. There was a strange hush on the empty deck: no seabirds, no splashing waves.

And then a smell came towards me on a gust of wind. It was the sweetest smell I have ever known, even in the many years since. It was sweeter than orange blossoms, sweeter than night-blooming jasmine. It smelled like life, somehow: like green grass and sunlight and birdsong, and the ache in your heart when you love someone deeply.

I knew it must be the Quintessence, distilled from the blossoms in the garden to absorb the radiation. I saw tiny particles winking in the last of the light, among the drifting snowflakes.

The mushroom cloud had collapsed, and I felt a burst of pride and relief. The blast, even contained as it was, had been enormous, and my friends might not have survived. And if they had, I didn’t know how I was going to get back to them. But they had done it. I strained in vain for any sign of movement on the distant island, and saw nothing.

An hour must have passed before the hush on the destroyer ended. A few men ventured back on deck, speaking in Russian, moving as gingerly as people approaching a land mine that hadn’t gone off. A young sailor wore earphones attached to a box that I recognised from newsreels as a Geiger counter, for measuring radiation. He listened, frowning in confusion, and then handed the earphones off to someone else to see if he was mistaken: There was no radiation.

I tried to look inconspicuous and boyish, in my peacoat and watch cap, like a smallish crew member, but someone grabbed my arm roughly and turned me around.

“What happened out there?” Danby demanded, his face close to mine. “We felt the blast, but then something happened. The photographs don’t make any sense.”

“It was amazing,” I said. “It was beautiful. And you missed it, because you were afraid!”

Fury flashed in Danby’s eyes. “Is the apothecary on the island?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m here, remember?”

Danby dragged me towards the helicopter by the arm. The Scar followed.

“Where’s Sakharov?” Danby demanded. “Where’s that bloody pilot? Bring that Geiger counter. We’re going back!”