“Goodnight, Colonel,” he mutters as he walks through the mid-section. “I hope we see no activity out there.” He moves on quickly. If there’s a reply, he doesn’t hear it.
He shuts himself in the engine room again and waits there in an agony of anticipation. Has he misjudged? He thought he knew McQueen well enough to be sure he wouldn’t sit still for such a high-handed intervention, but they are all so beaten down in the wake of the attack that for once it might pass without comment.
There is a knock on the door. A single, peremptory thud. Then it opens and McQueen is standing in the gap. “I’m going to need those cards,” he says. His tone is grim, his face set in a warning scowl.
“Of course,” Fournier says quickly. “But come in, and close the door.”
McQueen has come prepared to argue. He is not expecting instant surrender and he doesn’t seem enthused by it. He beckons impatiently for the cards.
“Please,” Fournier says. “This is a really important matter … Lieutenant.”
His deliberate pause loads the last word with emphasis. And it does the job. McQueen steps inside, kicking the door shut with his heel. He tries for indifference, but with indifferent success.
“What?” he says truculently.
Fournier holds up the radio. “Brigadier Fry,” he says, omitting what would have to be a lengthy and complicated explanation. “She’s calling from Beacon. She wants to talk to you.”
Surprise makes McQueen’s normally forbidding face, for a moment or two, a perfect blank. He takes the radio, but stares at it as though he is not certain what to do with it. When he puts it to his ear, he does so warily, with visible mistrust.
“McQueen,” he says. “Over.”
He listens in silence for a long time. Fournier listens too, but though he strains to hear he gets no hint of what Brigadier Fry is saying. He is physically trembling with frustration and impatience when McQueen finally turns to him, covering the tiny radio with his big hand as though it’s the mouthpiece of a phone.
“She says to tell you this is private,” he says, shrugging with his eyebrows as if to convey a shared exasperation with the vagaries of high-ranking officers. “Sorry. You’ll have to step out.”
45
Stephen Greaves dreams about the scarred girl.
In the dream she can talk, and she tells him about the life she lives with the other children. It’s really nice, she says. We don’t remember our mums and dads at all, ever, and we don’t need them. We’ve got each other.
This sounds good to Greaves, but he is disconcerted to be having the conversation in the kitchen of the old house, where he lived with his mother and father until the day the hungries came. It reminds him of what he has lost, when the girl is denying the reality of loss.
Conflicting symbolism, some part of his mind comments. You want to believe, but you’re telling yourself not to. Greaves leaves the thought parked in a storage bay somewhere behind or below the level of the dream. He thinks: behind? And then: below. He needs to be clear about spatial relationships even in dreams, where space is purely abstract and notional.
The kitchen is very fully realised, not abstract at all. His school bag stands on the table with Captain Power guarding it. His mother’s last ever THINGS TO DO list is pinned to the fridge with magnet Homer and magnet Marge. It says:
EVACUATION 12.00 NOON LIBRARY!!!
I think you’re all second generation, Greaves tells the scarred girl. Children of the infected. So your mother had the pathogen in her system before you were born. You would never have known her as a human being.
A human being is a very hard thing to be, the girl says gravely.
Greaves agrees.
But seriously, she tells him. Come and live with us. Bring Dr. Khan.
I can’t do that. Greaves is sad to have to say it, but he knows it’s true. I can’t be like you, and neither can Rina. I’m absolutely sure you need to be exposed to the infection in utero in order to form the symbiotic attachment to the Cordyceps fungus that you and the other children have.
You’re very clever, Stephen, the scarred girl says admiringly.
Thank you.
But then, what’s going to happen to Dr. Khan?
As she says it, she points. Behind him. Greaves is meant to turn, and see what she is pointing at. That’s the way the dream is meant to work. When he resists it, when he refuses to move his head, something clamps down on his shoulder. A hand.
Rina’s hand.
She is there, at his back. Already changed. Already gone from herself for ever, sequestrated or erased by the infection.
I don’t want to see, he pleads.
The girl nods. She understands. She gives him dispensation. You don’t have to look if you don’t want to. But you have to decide. You have to know what you’re going to do.
Rina’s grip tightens on his shoulder. She can’t think any more, but clearly she agrees just the same.
And then it comes to him that it’s not Rina’s hand that’s gripping him; it’s Rina’s teeth. In an access of pure panic, he tries to pull away. If she infects him, if he becomes a hungry, there won’t be anybody who can save her. Losing him, she will lose herself.
As his muscle tears between her tightening jaws, he wakes. His face is drenched with tears, and his body with rank sweat. He is noxious and appalling to himself. If he went outside now, hungries would flock to him like bees to a flower. Like crows to the newly dead.
He sits up. The crew quarters are absolutely silent. Without even opening his curtain, Greaves slides out and down. His bare feet touch the metal of the floor and he almost gasps at the shocking cold. He hates that he doesn’t have any shoes on but he is not prepared to take the risk of opening his locker. The less noise he makes, the less chance there is that he will be challenged, and pressed with questions that he can’t answer.
By the light that filters in from the mid-section platform, he retrieves the sampling kit from his bag. Then he moves on tiptoe to the door, clutching the plastic vials protectively against his chest.
The platform seems to be empty, but as he moves across it he sees the colonel sitting against the airlock door, his head bowed onto his chest. Greaves is about to say hello when someone hails him from above with an urgent, repeated click of the tongue. He looks up. It’s Sixsmith, manning the turret. Foss’s watch is over, evidently, and she has taken the next stint.
She points to the colonel. “Let him sleep,” she whispers. “He was on his feet for forty hours straight.”
Greaves nods to show that he understands.
“What’s going on in there that couldn’t wait until morning?” Sixsmith demands in the same sotto voce. “Never mind, don’t tell me. But keep your voices down, and close the bulkhead door. We’re meant to be going dark.”