Chris Cleave Ebook Boxed Set (108 page)

Kate understood the consequences immediately. Now that she’d lost the advantage, the only thing to do was to ride hard for the finish. There were no tactics left: they were both down in the well of the track, winding up to top speed around the shortest line, and Zoe was tucked into her wind shadow. If she couldn’t put down some extraordinary power now, Zoe would simply hang there until the last hundred meters and then accelerate out of her slipstream to slingshot past her for the win.

Now that there was nothing to think about, Kate was very calm. She wound herself up to the absolute limit of her power and used the image of Sophie to turn off the messages of agony exploding from her legs and her lungs. As they came into the last curve, sparks were detonating in her retinas from the effort. She flashed out of the curve into the
last straight, sensing the disruption in the airflow and hearing the roar of the wheels as Zoe came out of her shadow and pulled alongside her. For fifty feet they were side by side. Kate pulled every atom of herself inside out and slowly, inchwise, Zoe’s attack began to falter. From being alongside she dropped to an inch back, a wheel-length back, and with a cold, silent flicker of wonder in her heart, Kate realized she was going to win. She crossed the line a bike-length ahead of Zoe and began to wind the pace down, easing her pressure on the cranks and letting the bike pedal her around two laps as the speed slowly came off. As she slowed, she looked across and saw how Zoe rode in defeat, with her shoulders slumped and her head down.

Zoe looked across at her, gasping. “I’ll get the next one,” she said.

Kate shook her head, too breathless to speak, but inside her a small, careful hope was forming.

Sophie came awake with a groan, and Jack’s heart leapt. Her voice was muffled by the mask, and he had to lean in to hear what she was saying.

“Dad?”

“Yes?”

“Can I tell you something?”

“Yes.”

“When you die, it’s just the same except you get a glowing line around you.”

“I know, darling. I’ve seen the films.”

“They’re not just films though. The Force is real.”

Jack looked into her eyes and saw the fear in them. He swallowed. “Yes, darling. It’s real.”

Slowly, Sophie smiled. “Truly?” Her voice was a clockwork doll winding down.

Jack said, “Truly.”

She closed her eyes. “I’ve never felt like this.”

“Yes you have. You’ve been through much worse.”

“How do you know?”

“My job is to remember for you.”

“How do you know you’re remembering right?”

“I know. When you’re a grown-up, you’ll understand. Everything is much clearer to us.”

“Am I going to die, Dad?”

“No, you’re not.”

“Would you tell me if I was?”

“Yes.”

“But would you?”

Jack found the power not to hesitate. “Yes,” he said. “I’d tell you.”

They fell back into silence. The air smelled of urine and bleach. They searched each other’s faces for doubt.

It was a relief when Sophie closed her eyes again, a respite from the grueling work of projecting confidence. Only later came the shock as Jack realized what the closing of eyes might mean now. His mind was slow to adjust to the situation. It was still reacting to ordinary things according to their ordinary context. It saw his child’s eyes closing and it thought
rest
. It didn’t think
rest of your life.

A few minutes later Sophie’s eyes came open again. She looked around her in confusion.

“Why isn’t Mum here?”

Jack squeezed her hand. “She is here, darling. She’s been with us all the time you’ve been asleep. She’s just gone out of the room for a few minutes.”

Sophie looked relieved. Her head sank back into the pillows.

“Dad, it’s so quiet in here.”

“Yes.”

A long pause. “Why aren’t there more doctors?”

“Why do you want more doctors?”

“So they can do more stuff. Make me better.”

“They are making you better. They found you had an infection. They’ve put you on antibiotics.”

“What if they’re not here because there’s nothing else they can do?”

“They’re doing exactly what they should. Right now the best thing to do is to wait and rest.”

“Then why are we here and not at home?”

“We’re just in here as a precaution.”

“How do you know?”

“Because the doctors told me.”

“Would the doctors tell you if I was dying?”

“Yes they would.”

“How do you know they would?”

“I just told you! Grown-ups know things. It’s like we have the special glasses and we can see the whole thing in three-D.”

Sophie opened her mouth to deny this, but then Jack saw the quickest flash of cunning in her eyes. The look vanished and Sophie’s face became childish again and simple.

“When do I get the special glasses, Dad?”

“When you’re twenty-one, Soph.”

“That’s ages.”

“Yeah.”

She waited for exactly six beeps of heartbeat and then her smile blinked off.

“I think the doctors don’t tell you everything.”

“Why would they not tell me everything?”

“Because you might cry.”

She was watching Jack’s face for a reaction and Jack was careful not to show her one. He hugged her instead. “There’s nothing to cry about. You’re going to be fine.”

Later, when she drifted away from consciousness again, Kate called
and Jack jumped up. The ringtone clashed with the rhythm of Sophie’s heart rate and breathing. It shattered the crystal of time that had formed in the room. The fragments scattered, displaced by this new kind of time that arrived in old-fashioned rings, sampled from the bell of a vintage Bakelite receiver and encoded into the software of Jack’s phone.

About to answer, he closed his eyes and listened to the dissonance. Heart, lungs, phone. The ringing went on and on, seeming to increase in volume and discord until there was nothing he could do but step outside the room to take the call out of earshot of the monitoring machines.

“Jack?” said Kate.

Her voice was beautiful in the sudden silence.

“Hey,” he said. “How’s it going?”

He could hear her elation even through the bad connection here in the heart of the hospital, with her voice modulated by the rhythmic ticking of some urgent pulse in the phone mast.

“I won the first race,” she said. “I’m stronger than her today. I think I can beat her.”

“I knew you could do it.”

“I knew it too. We’re on again in five minutes. If I win this next one, that’s it. I’ve got to go now, okay? I’m not meant to have the phone, but Tom forgot to take it back off me. Don’t call it, okay, ’cause it’ll ring in my kit bag.”

He smiled. There was a lightness in his chest as his body responded to her voice, dumbly, as if nothing else was going on. The crystalline time of Sophie’s room was gone now, but here was a new kind of time that shone on them both, that radiated from the warm glow of their voices on the axis of the connection. They could live here, just for a moment, and be happy. These were the moments you lived in, after all, these rococo twists of time. You could make them last forever, or until you told the truth.

He glanced back through the wired safety glass. Sophie seemed completely peaceful. The heart rate monitor still said eighty-eight. The
breathing monitor was still on twenty-two. Who was to say that she wouldn’t simply open her eyes again, and smile, and everything would be okay?

He forced back the urge to blurt out the truth, to tell his wife to come quickly.

“Good luck,” he said. “Go ahead and win it.”

After she clicked off the call, he went back into the room and sat by Sophie’s bed. He closed his eyes and imagined Kate, untroubled by anything except the race ahead. He smiled because he had given her something rarer than gold: an hour outside time.

Zoe lined up on the high side of the track and watched Kate settling in to her left for the start of the second race. She knew Kate’s start line ritual by heart: the redundant checking and rechecking of the zip on the back of the neck of her skinsuit; the regular bilateral twitch of her heels to confirm that her shoes were solidly mated with the pedals; the soundless movements of her lips as she recited whatever calming mantra she used to empty her mind. Zoe watched her as she bowed her head and stared at the likeness of Sophie that stared back at her from the top tube of her bike. She watched Kate’s involuntary smile. She looked for weaknesses—for any telltale asymmetries in the way she sat on the bike that might indicate inflammation in a particular muscle group, or any deviation from her habitual start line behavior that could indicate a concern. There was nothing. If anything there was unusual confidence in the way she sat, a fluidity in the line of her back and shoulders that spoke of straightforward strength.

Zoe sniffed, and settled her gloved hands on the bars. Kate’s confidence didn’t bother her. If anything it gave her a pang of regret that Kate’s disappointment would be the sharper when she lost. Zoe had to win—she was going to win—but it didn’t mean she had to enjoy
ending Kate’s career. It was just that winning was the overwhelmingly likely scenario. Zoe ran through her advantages. She was clearer-headed now than when she’d arrived. In the first race she hadn’t been properly warmed up and her tactics had been all over the place. Now she was back in race mode. As well as being psyched up, she knew she had to be less tired than Kate. In the first race Kate had led at full power for an entire lap while Zoe had hung in her slipstream and only shown her face to the wind in the last few yards. Even though she’d lost the first race, she knew she was fresher for this second round.

The official starter checked that his whistle was in position on the lanyard around his neck. He shifted his weight to the balls of his feet. Zoe knew he would soon begin counting down from ten. As always, she knew that Kate would choose that moment to look across at her for the first time. On impulse, she unclipped her chin strap and raked her helmet back on her head so that her eyes were visible beneath her reflective visor.

“Ten,” said the starter.

When Kate turned to look at her, Zoe was staring straight back. She watched the visible recoil as Kate saw her exposed eyes, then the rapid flick of her head as Kate looked straight ahead once more. Zoe tipped her helmet forward again, secured the strap, and noted the tension that had come into the line of Kate’s shoulders.

“Three,” said the starter.

Zoe flexed her thighs, then her calves, jiggled her legs to loosen them up, then stood up in the pedals.

“Two,” said the starter. “One.” Time built up against a dam as he lifted the whistle to his lips, then flowed again as the sound released it.

Zoe let Kate take the lead and tucked in behind her. For the first lap she focused on unsettling Kate by ducking out of her line of sight whenever Kate turned around to look at her. By using Kate’s own body to block her view, Zoe kept her wondering whether she was about to accelerate through her blind side. The result was that by the time they started the second lap, Kate was hanging deep in the well of the track, hugging
the inner limit so that Zoe couldn’t sneak up the inside channel. She was watching Zoe over her right shoulder, and Zoe began imperceptibly climbing up the gradient of the track and slowly increasing her speed so that she began to draw level with Kate.

Zoe found herself smiling. She loved this. She’d given Kate only two tactical options, and both of them were shitty. Kate could ignore the inexorable way that Zoe was gaining altitude on her, in which case it would eventually be too late and Zoe could simply use gravity to accelerate down the slope and cut in front of her. Or if Kate began inching up the slope to cover against just that move, then she would be leaving the inside channel open and Zoe could dive down behind her and sneak through it.

Kate craned her head back nervously, and Zoe watched as her rival’s indecision mounted. Sooner or later Kate would have to break out of the trap Zoe had set for her in the only possible direction: forwards, by putting down the power and starting the sprint proper. The problem for Kate was that she’d burned out her legs in the first race, so the earlier she launched the sprint, the more advantage she’d be conceding to Zoe.

Three quarters of the way around the second lap, Zoe forced the issue by suddenly powering up and climbing right up to the lip at the apex of the curve. Kate was half a pedal stroke too slow to cover the move. Instead, seeing that Zoe’s height advantage was too great, she dived down into the well of the track and powered up her pedal stroke to maximum. With gravity on her side, Zoe swooped down into Kate’s slipstream and tucked in effortlessly. Kate pushed forward frantically in an attempt to create a gap between them. By the time they took the bell for the start of the final lap, moving at top speed, Kate was still leading out but Zoe knew she would catch her. She could see from the gradual wilting of Kate’s posture on the bike that Kate knew it too. Zoe relaxed into her pedal stroke, conserved her energy around the last two bends as Kate began to slow, then popped out of her wind shadow on the last straight to take the race by a wheel-length.

She dropped down in front of Kate as the pair of them gradually
slowed, making sure that her rival only saw her back wheel. She kept her posture strong on the bike, not allowing her head to drop as she gasped for air. She projected effortless strength until they both came to a halt, then she hopped off the bike as if the pair of them had been for nothing more tiring than a ride to the shops.

Later, warming down on the stationary bike, she looked across at Kate on the opposite side of the isolation zone Tom had set up between them. Kate was watching her back. Kate dropped her eyes and Zoe looked away as the truth of their situation sparked back and forth across the vacuum between them. Zoe’s tactics had controlled the first two races and now, even though they had one victory apiece, Kate would go into the deciding race depleted.