They have stayed close to the Charles Darwin’s course throughout, and they have succeeded in retrieving all but one of the specimen caches. The one they missed was on the Cairngorm plateau, close to the summit of the mountain Ben Macdhui, and it was Dr. Fournier who made the decision to leave it where it was. He claimed he was unwilling to risk Rosie on the steep slopes, but everyone translated Rosie in that sentence into my own arse. It’s a sign, either way, of imminent surrender.
The civilian and military commanders are simply not fit for purpose. They hate each other and they avoid the crew—the alternative being to force them to take sides. It falls to Lieutenant McQueen, most days, to organise the escort roster, and to Dr. Khan or Dr. Sealey to assign tasks for the sampling runs.
Khan is showing. There was a time when her pregnancy was ambiguous and deniable, should anyone have pressed her. That time is over now, and she will be pressed very soon.
And then there’s Greaves, though people wonder why. Who thought bringing a kid along on a mission like this was a good idea? When will Dr. Fournier formally remove him from the roster instead of working around his inadequacies?
When will they give up, and turn around?
When will this ever end?
That rhetorical question is still hanging in the air when their comms fail. The radio still seems to be operational but Beacon, their home and source, rationale and reference point, stops answering.
They’re on their own.
PART TWO
GESTATION
4
They deploy in three waves.
The grunts go first. That’s Lieutenant McQueen’s term, nobody else’s, a heavy-handed joke. The three privates pretend to think it’s funny but Dr. Khan is offended on their behalf. Lutes is the best engineer in Beacon. Sixsmith was a commercial pilot before the Breakdown and is as comfortable with wings as she is with wheels. Phillips has the perfect physique of a classical statue and can perform card tricks that still dazzle you after he explains how they’re done. There is nothing grunt-like about any of them.
They trot over the brow of the hill in a quick, broken stride. Fifty metres down, they dig in behind some gorse, which offers no protection at all but might diffuse their outlines a little from a distance. Something as small as that could make the difference between life and death.
“Clear,” Private Phillips says quietly. Sound carries a long way out here. There’s no need to shout and a lot of good reasons not to.
In the absence of Colonel Carlisle, McQueen is in command. He gestures—a circular wave of his arm, which is bent at the elbow, the hand pointing upwards. To Khan, maybe because Dr. Fournier’s three-wise-men analogy lodged deeper in her brain than she would have liked, it looks as though he’s bearing witness to heaven.
But in fact the gesture is for the science team, and they go over next. Or rather two thirds of them do, comprising Dr. Khan, Elaine Penny, Lucien Akimwe and John Sealey. The remaining two members of the team are absent, recused from this day’s work: Alan Fournier, as the leader of the science team and the mission’s civilian commander, is above it. And he has left Stephen Greaves out of the day’s roster, not trusting him to play his part in a coordinated group action and knowing that the rest of the team (apart from Khan) don’t trust him either.
Khan feels that insult to Stephen more deeply than he feels it himself, but for the most part she is grateful for his absence. He’s still her boy, if not by blood then by something just as thick and just as binding. A part of her has never been able to relinquish the self-imposed responsibility of looking out for him. Also, although she wouldn’t admit it even to John Sealey, she’s keen to keep Stephen away from these culls because they’re such degrading and brutalising spectacles. The hungries may not be human any more but they still look like real people. To see them being mown like wheat turns her stomach, no matter what her brain asserts.
She tops the hill and scuffles down it on feet, hands and bum (leaving her dignity way behind her, but she’s not going to risk a fall at this point). Her passenger kicks a couple of times anyway, maybe to register a protest. Just before she gets in among the bushes she catches sight—out of the corner of her eye—of a cluster of hungries standing further down the slope. Sidelong is how you’re supposed to see them. The safest way. If you meet their gaze, they attack. If you move too fast, they attack. If you sweat through your e-blocker or God forbid break a fart while you’re out in the field, they follow the chemical gradient and attack.
But she’s safe at home plate now, with Phillips to one side of her and Sixsmith on the other, their rifles promising a refuge. Akimwe slides down right behind her, barely in control of his speed. His leg bumps her side and he is instantly appalled. “I’m sorry, Rina,” he mutters. “Please forgive me.”
Khan shakes her head to show it’s fine, she’s not bone china after all. But she wishes he would remember to take it more slowly. That descent might easily have been fast enough to register on the hungries’ perceptions, and if they start moving they won’t stop. They could be heading up here right now, heads down and arms dangling in the ugly swallow-dive run that puts their gaping jaws front and centre. But she tells herself that’s just her hind-brain talking. If there were any sign of a massed charge, Phillips and Sixsmith and Lutes would be firing and the whole team would be retreating back up the slope and all hell would be breaking loose.
It’s fine. It has to be fine.
Because here come the snipers, walking with no particular haste, their muscular grace making Khan feel ashamed to be so dusty and dishevelled and afraid. They come over the hill side by side as though they’re on a country ramble, just the two of them, their over-long M407s slung casually across their shoulders. The three privates always carry their rifles at the ready, but Lieutenant McQueen and Lance-Bombardier Foss flaunt their unreadiness, make a show of empty hands. And Kat Foss is almost as tall as the lieutenant, an elegant, long-limbed predator with cropped white hair like exhaled smoke—the only woman who has ever made Khan feel that her five feet and two inches might be less than adequate.
Once he’s level with them, McQueen whips them on to the task with a single word. “Targets.” The members of the science team, well conditioned, stick up their heads above the gorse flowers’ yellow exuberance. They must look like so many rabbits.
Triage. This is where they get to weigh souls against feathers, assuming there are any souls left in this valley besides their own. That’s a burning question, not a philosophical exercise: it keeps Khan awake at night.