Lie of the Land (20 page)

George cocked his head at the sound of his son's fishing boat returning, engine throbbing. It was too soon. The other day they'd reached four miles out. He stood up, blew his nose and wiped his eyes, and headed down to the pier to meet the
Aurora
.

Carl shouted something from the deck of the boat but George couldn't hear him above the engines. Adam eased back on the throttle, and guided the boat alongside, nudging the rubber casing. It was low tide and the
Aurora
was well below the top of the pier.

‘There might be a gap, a way out,' Carl repeated. He scrambled up the metal ladder to join George on dry land.

Brindley doused some of their excitement. ‘It can't be more than a few hundred metres wide,' he said. ‘Hard to tell if it opens into the Atlantic. And if there is any kind of fluctuation in the field strength the gap could close in around you before you know it. There are refraction effects to consider as the tide rises and falls. You'd never turn around and get out in time.'

Carl stiffened. ‘You said it was possible.'

‘Possible, but extremely risky. A channel that narrow. In a boat.'
Howard shook his head. ‘And there's no way of telling how far it extends.'

‘There might be a way out,' urged Carl. ‘That's what you said.'

‘Sounds like a death sentence to me,' said George. ‘And where would you go?'

Carl glared at him. ‘Anywhere. West coast of Ireland – Howard's friends went there. Or Spain.'

George considered the horizon. ‘I wouldn't like to sail to Spain in a tiny boat like that – especially if I have to head north to start with to get into the Atlantic. And don't they have that white rust fungus pretty bad down there?' He glanced at Howard. The guy was talking sense. ‘In any case, there are over a hundred people in Inverlair and only three small boats.' George shrugged.

‘So we just sit here for maybe five years, is that it?' said Carl, unable to believe what he'd heard. ‘Shouldn't we, er, actually try to get out of here? There isn't much food, in case you hadn't noticed.'

Brindley guessed that George was thinking the same simple question. ‘We can cope with the food we have, so I'm told. But why should we try to get out of here?'

Carl was flabbergasted. ‘Why?' He shook his head. There were so many reasons to leave this place. Or at least Carl felt there must be. But when he needed just one of them, to slap down on the table as a trump card, he found himself unable to summon anything that sounded convincing. The places SCOPE hadn't blanked out weren't likely to be any better off than Inverlair. Further away, say north-west Africa, there might be a good life waiting – if a ten-metre fishing boat could make the 2,500-mile trip; if it could find a way out of the delta field and through the mountainous Atlantic.

‘I don't know,' he said quietly. ‘I just thought . . .' He looked at George. ‘Don't you want to try and get to Edinburgh, to your wife?'

For a second, emotion charted a charmed route in George's heart, around Cape Wrath and the Pentland Firth.

‘You won't be able to get anywhere near Edinburgh, or any other big town, for maybe ten years – I told you that,' Howard said to Carl. ‘That much I can say with virtual certainty because of how SCOPE is configured in urban areas. I told you all this.'

Carl repeated the phrase, making the point. ‘Virtual certainty. Virtual. But not absolute.'

His eyes wide, Howard waved him away. ‘Oh don't be so bloody stupid.' He strode away. ‘Go on then. Go. Take the boat and see how far you get.'

‘Oh no, he fucking won't,' said Adam, climbing up onto the pier. ‘No one's taking my boat anywhere.' He looped a thick rope from the
Aurora
's bow around a metal cleat on the quayside. His father tied the stern line.

‘There's a spot of lunch waiting,' George said to Carl. ‘Not much, but it'll fill a hole. Brindley's right, you know. If it goes wrong, it's a death sentence.'

The boat nuzzled against the side of the pier, plastic squeaking on rubber, wet ropes taking the strain. A big seagull, snow-white chest, settled on a railing beside the men.

‘It would be a quick death, at least,' said Carl. ‘And that's better than the alternative.'

Saying nothing, George strode back to the hotel.

In the kitchen, they ate in silence. There was so much to say, and so many questions to ask. But instead of risking conversation, which might begin painlessly enough, saying nothing was obviously the safer option. Conversation could expose feelings, and feelings were hard to control, so the unresolved pressure of not talking swelled within the room. Isaac watched all the adults distill their private pain.

Eventually, Brindley spoke. ‘It's still early,' he said to Carl. ‘So I thought we could take some more signal readings in the hills, if you want to.'

It was unbelievable. Carl resisted the temptation to hurl his
plate of food against the kitchen wall. Here they were, sitting nice and cosy around the table. Simone was being civil to him. But she was a door that had been closed and locked. He felt like saying: it was only a shag, and not a very good one at that. And that wee Isaac was giving him the evil eye as well. Little shite.

He nodded at Howard's suggestion. ‘Shall we make a move then?'

Carl took his plate to the sink and rinsed it under the tap. The water was warm, the kitchen uncomfortably so because the fire was lit. From the window, Carl looked towards the summit of Ben Bronach. They would follow the line of the fence to the burn, then meet the forest track. From there it was up past the old stones and onto the shoulder of the hill, following the ridge, heading inland across the headwater streams that fed the river. He knew the way by now.

•

‘I don't know if I'm imagining it, but is there something between you and Simone?'

It was another warm day, and plump lambs dozed by their chewing mothers. Carl figured there was no point in denying it. ‘We had sex.'

Howard didn't know what to say. ‘Oh.'

‘She gave me a hug – that's how it started.' Carl's voice cracked. ‘It was just comfort – closeness, y'know?' He felt tears in his eyes and his face reddening. ‘But it doesn't matter.' He shook his head, annoyed with himself reacting this way. He was all over the place. ‘Embarrassment is a pretty pointless emotion to feel, given what's happened, wouldn't you say?'

The slope was getting steeper now, grass giving way to heather. Howard stopped for a breather, taking out a hankie to wipe the sweat from his face and head. ‘Your guess is as good as mine,' he said. ‘I could never work women out.'

•

Five hours later Howard was flat out on the bed in Room 22, his legs and back aching, his neck sunburnt. Thank Christ he'd taken a baseball cap with him, otherwise his scalp would be toast. He felt good, though; physically tired, but relaxed with it. It was their longest stint yet, and they were well on with the second sweep of readings. He lay for a while, fully clothed, staring at the ceiling. Maybe he'd ask Adam Cutler if they could venture out in the fishing boat again, test the gap in the redzone to the north. Staying active made people forget – and that was good. If people did useful stuff, then so much the better. That was the only thing to do now: work. Survive.

There was a soft knock at the door.

‘Come in.'

The door creaked open. ‘Hello,' said George, peering into the room.

‘Hello there.' Howard smiled. ‘I can't seem to move.'

The smile was returned, weakly.

‘I thought you might appreciate a dram,' said George, his voice low. ‘If you feel up to it.'

Howard heaved himself up against the bedhead. ‘Whisky doesn't really agree with me, but I'll make an exception, on the grounds that it may have some curative effect. I'll have a wash first. Freshen myself up.'

Ten minutes later Howard appeared in the residents' lounge, just as George cracked the seal on a bottle. An oil-lamp burned on the mahogany coffee table. George handed Howard his drink and gestured to an armchair. ‘Carl said he would join us in a while. I prefer it in here to the annexe, although that didn't used to be the case.'

Gingerly, Howard lowered himself into the chair. He raised his glass of single malt. ‘Cheers.'

Without any real enthusiasm, George returned the toast.

After a mouthful of whisky, Howard smacked his lips and held the glass up to the lamplight. ‘Liquid gold,' he said.

George took another gulp of his drink. ‘You guys must be nearly finished the second sweep of the . . .' He gestured towards vaguely towards the window.

‘Redzone,' said Howard.

‘Is that what you've called it?'

‘We've marked it on the map in the community centre in red pen. I suppose we can't keep calling it “out there”.'

‘No,' said George. ‘I suppose we can't.'

They fell silent. It was quiet enough to hear the wick burning in the oil-lamp. George swirled his whisky round the glass, felt the fire in his cheeks. ‘Do you mind if I ask you a question?'

Howard stretched his tired legs in front of him. ‘No,' he said, taking a sip of whisky. ‘I don't mind.'

George let go a breath. His words, so carefully rehearsed, were jostling for position. ‘People . . . some people . . . are wondering how you ended up in Inverlair. Why you didn't leave the country altogether if you knew this was coming – that kinda thing.' He waited for a reaction.

Howard smiled. ‘People are suspicious of me,' he said. ‘A stranger arrives and a terrible thing happens. The stranger was connected to the terrible thing. It makes sense.'

George poured another round of drinks and took a mouthful. ‘You know how people are.'

‘And what do
you
think?'

‘Well, you worked on this system, you didn't like what you found out, and you tried to do something about it. But I do wonder why you didn't leave the country – go somewhere safe, I mean.'

Howard sat back in his chair, glass resting on his belly, stockinged feet on a footstool. ‘We were working on SCOPE – this is about seven years ago – and my company was hired.'

‘You owned a company?'

With a wave of his hand, Howard dismissed fifteen years of his life as ‘nothing major'. He told George most of what he'd told Carl. The whisky worked its magic, and he kept talking.

‘Some people, a few, were well connected enough to buy their way out of the country. People who knew what might happen. But I didn't have enough money for the traffickers. Even if I had, I was probably pretty high on CivCon's watchlist at that stage, so exit-point biometrics would have been primed with every move I'd ever made and an image of every pimple on my fucking face.'

He glared, briefly, at George, a gulp of whisky souring his expression, his voice rough. ‘That's what gave them the initial idea for SCOPE. You can change the way you walk, your eyeballs, your whole face, even your fingerprints.' He tapped his temple. ‘But you can't change this.'

George looked puzzled.

‘Brainwaves. The active Beta range, to be exact.'

A bit clearer: but George was still missing the bigger picture.

Whisky storming round his head, Howard spoon-fed him the ABC.

‘If you took an EEG of your brainwaves just now it would record a waveform which is unique to you. Between twelve and thirty-eight hertz is the beta phase of brain activity when the brain is alert.' Howard tilted his glass. ‘Though we're getting less alert with every drop of this. Everyone has their own exact frequency.' He tapped his temple again. ‘In here. Each emotion – fear, anger, even anxiety – has its own signature.'

Smiling was not something George felt like doing. He looked at his glass, a regular poisoned chalice; every mouthful of anaesthetic was bringing his pain into sharper focus. Only oblivion cancelled it out.

He became aware of another presence in the room.

‘Hi,' said Carl. ‘I feel more human after a shower.'

‘The man himself,' called Howard, twisting round in his chair. ‘The man who sniffed it all out.'

George poured another three-finger measure of whisky, handing it to Carl.

‘Howard was telling me more about SCOPE.'

‘So I gather,' said Carl. Something they had both agreed not to talk about was now being talked about. He accepted the whisky and sat down. Howard grinned as he finished his second generous measure.

‘So SCOPE was designed to track people,' stated George, puffing at the reflux in his gut. ‘Is that right?'

Howard helped himself to another drink. He was dog-tired and well on the road to being plastered. ‘To begin with, that was the idea, but it became much more than that, Georgie boy.'

‘We agreed, Howard,' said Carl firmly, staring grimly at his drink. ‘We agreed. Certain things, yes?'

‘Is that a fact?'

Before Carl could answer, Howard stood up, his index finger raised. He tottered, steadied himself. ‘The questions we have to ask ourselves are: how do you control chaos? How do you manage the slow-motion train-wreck of civilisation? Fear and surveillance – that's how you do it. Fear makes people accept what you're doing, and surveillance keeps the money circulating – European research grants and Security Ministry contracts for everything from behaviour-prediction software to non-lethal weaponry for our militarised police forces. Not as much money as there was before, but enough to keep some important wheels going round.'

Tired now, and drunk, George sagged into his armchair.

She got on a bus. Got on a bus and didn't come back.

Howard lurched forward, waving an arm at Carl. ‘There were no people anymore, no individuals, at the end of it – only data to be mined, targets on a screen. Our digital trails were actionable intelligence for certain interests. We weren't users of technology
any more – we were its subjects. Finally, the right kit came along, advertising total control.' He wagged a bony finger at Carl, grinning.