“Can’t believe you, Jago. If you’re talking of dying?”
“Dying’s got to be faced. So’s living, for that matter. They’re part of each other. And they’re meant to be natural.”
Selevan felt a margin of relief when he heard this. He didn’t like to think of Jago pondering the idea of dying because he didn’t like to think what this suggested about his friend’s intentions. He said, “Glad to hear that, at least. The natural bit.”
“Because…?” Jago smiled slowly as comprehension dawned. He shook his head in the way a fond grandparent might react to a beloved child’s mischief. “Oh. That. Well, I could end it easy enough, couldn’t I, since I’ve finished up here and there’s not much point in carrying on. There’s lots of places to do it in these parts cause it’d look like an accident and no one’d know the difference, eh. But if I did that, might end it for him as well and we can’t have that. No. There’s no end to something like this, mate. Not if I can help it.”
CADAN HAD JUST ARRIVED at LiquidEarth when the phone call came. He could hear that his father was in the shaping room and Jago was nowhere to be found, so he answered it himself. A bloke said, “That Lewis Angarrack?” and when Cadan said no, he said, “Fetch him, eh. Got to talk to him.”
Cadan knew better than to bother Lew in the middle of shaping a board. But the bloke insisted that this couldn’t wait and no, he didn’t want to leave a message.
So Cadan went to fetch his father, not opening the door but pounding on it to be heard over the tools. The power planer switched off. Lew himself appeared, his mask lowered and his eye gear around his neck.
When Cadan told him there was a phone call for him, Lew looked into the glassing area and said, “Jago not back?”
“Didn’t see his car outside.”
“What’re you doing here, then?”
Cadan felt that old plummeting of his spirits. He stifled a sigh. “Phone,” he reminded Lew.
Lew took off the latex gloves he wore for work, and he strode to the reception area. Cadan followed for want of anything better to do, although he peeked into the spraying room and considered the lineup of shaped boards to be painted as well as the kaleidoscope of bright colours that had been tested against the walls. In reception he could hear his father saying, “What’s that you say?…No, of course not…Where the hell is he? C’n you put him on the phone?”
Cadan wandered back out. Lew was behind the counter where the phone sat amid the mounds of paperwork on the card table that served as his desk. He glanced at Cadan and then away.
“No,” Lew said to the bloke on the other end of the line. “I didn’t know…I damn well would have appreciated it if he’d told me…I know he’s not well. But all I can tell you is what he told me. Had to step out to speak to a mate in a bit of bother up at the Salthouse…You? Then you know more than I do…”