‘And the atmospheric phenomena we’re seeing? What about that?’
‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. ‘But I don’t think Tesla’s got much to do with it.’
‘I’m still glad we came here, you know,’ she said. ‘Somehow seeing it like this – actually being here – makes all the difference.’
‘You think we’re getting what we deserve by being here?’
She looked at him. ‘Don’t you?’
He shook his head. ‘I think we were just unlucky. Curiosity defines us. It’s what makes us human. There’s no way you could explore something like the Founder Network and not expect to get your fingers burned.’ He pulled her closer and nodded up at the sky. ‘Out there, quo;re seeuo;ll survive . . . or other people will, at any rate.’
A message was broadcast over the ferry’s tannoy system before Amanda could form a reply. The captain proposed taking a vote on whether to sail the ferry to within a kilometre of the growth’s base, and the result of the vote would be announced the following morning.
Fowler felt overcome by a mixture of excitement and terror as he listened. That single glimpse, in a fragmentary video, of Amanda standing on the deck of this very same ferry, had given him the sense of fulfilling some kind of personal destiny just by being here. The end was close, but at least it was an end they had chosen together, and of their own free will. From this point on, there could be no surprises.
Quite soon they retired once more for the night, waking frequently to the sounds of shattering glass or loud music emanating from the deck, then later to screams and moans coming from the cabins adjacent to their own. They both woke early, to find the sun still boiling its way up over the horizon, and stepping over snoring bodies and the remains of smashed wine bottles as they made their way to the restaurant deck. It proved to be deserted, except for the man called Nick, who stood by the railing, looking out to sea. He turned and nodded to them as they approached, almost as if he’d been waiting for them.
‘Mr Fowler,’ he said. ‘I’ve been up all night thinking about you.’
Fowler managed to hide his shock. They’d used false identities this far, after all. He glanced sideways at Amanda and saw the look of silent fury on her face. But, instead of feeling angry or afraid, he himself felt only a sense of calm inevitability.
‘I wondered if you recognized me,’ he said, stepping outside again to join him.
The man called Nick leaned once more against the railing, this time with his back to the sea. He shrugged. ‘At first I wasn’t sure, but then I did a little research in the feed archives, to be certain. So . . . are you here with us to save the day? Or is that just too much to hope for?’
‘Would that I were. Do the rest of your friends know who I am?’
‘Why?’ The scientist laughed. ‘Are you afraid of what they might think of you?’
‘I wasn’t aware I had committed any crime,’ Fowler replied levelly.
‘Merely a crime of hubris, perhaps,’ said Nick. ‘I know about the Founder Network, Mr Fowler. I even have a good idea how all of this came about.’
Amanda caught Thomas’s eye as she stepped up beside him, glancing pointedly first at the rail against which the scientist leaned, and then at the empty restaurant behind them. He guessed what she was thinking: there would be no witnesses if they could manage to tip the man over the railing.
He squeezed her hand and shook his head fractionally. What was the point of killing this , when their own lives were now numbered merely in days, if not hours?
‘We don’t know who you are,’ she then said to the scientist, her voice low and almost menacing. ‘Did you follow us here? Is that why you’re on this ferry?’
He shook his head. ‘Not at all; serendipity, nothing more. This trip was my one chance to see direct evidence of the things that took my brother away from me. After I recognized you at the airfield in Guam, I managed to persuade my colleagues that we should board this same ferry. I needed to be sure, you see.’
Fowler frowned. ‘Your brother?’
‘My name is Nicolas Rodriguez,’ he said. ‘My brother’s name was David.’
Fowler saw Amanda’s eyes widen, her complexion turning even paler than usual.
‘You know that name, David Rodriguez?’ Fowler asked her. There was something familiar about it.
She nodded. ‘One of the early casualties from Site 17. He got caught in a . . . in a temporal anomaly, I guess you’d call it.’
Fowler nodded, something cold and indigestible settling into the pit of his stomach as he finally remembered the unpleasant details of the incident.
‘I’m sorry about your brother,’ he told Nick. ‘I wish there was something we could have done for him.’
Nicolas Rodriguez shook his head like he was disappointed. ‘It took a long time, and a fortune in bribes, to learn the truth. I envy him for the things he must have seen. But you told us lies about him, and our mother died believing he was killed in some routine laboratory accident. Imagine how I felt when I discovered he was caught up in some miserable form of limbo between life and death. I clung to the hope that my informants were wrong, and I had been fed just some ridiculous fantasy.’
He glanced over his shoulder towards the growth, which was now towering overhead. ‘Then I began to understand that I had not, after all, wasted my family’s fortune on bribes. I kept digging for more information. I learned that you were one of those responsible for the research programme of which my brother was part. Now, it seems, we are all to be exterminated like cockroaches scuttling in a drain.’
‘So now you know who we are,’ said Fowler, ‘but there’s no reason to blame us for what happened to your brother.’
‘On the contrary,’ Rodriguez replied, staring directly at Amanda. ‘What happened to him was no accident, was it? And I recognized you in particular, Miss Boruzov.’
Fowler glanced between them in puzzlement. ‘What are you talking about?’ he demanded.
‘I suppose it doesn’t matter now,’ said Amanda, her eyes fixed firmly on Rodriguez. ‘His brother was smuggling high-security data back home. We . . . decided to arrange an accident to neutralize him.’
‘And is that how you choose to deal with your brightest and best?’ demanded Rodriguez. ‘Better that you’d simply put a bullet in his brain than allow him to suffer this . . . this living death.’
‘He has no idea that he’s caught in a temporal field,’ Amanda insisted. ‘His subjective experience of time ensures he isn’t even aware that anything’s wrong. You could hardly call it a “living death”.’
‘Perhaps,’ Rodriguez replied grimly, ‘that is something we should leave for others to decide.’
‘Others?’ echoed Amanda.
‘My colleagues,’ Rodriguez explained. ‘I eventually told them of my suspicions last night. Then we went to the captain, who will give you more of a chance than you allowed my brother. We will select a jury, and let them decide what should be done with you.’
Amanda burst out laughing. ‘That’s absolutely ridiculous! We’re all going to be dead in a few days anyway. What difference can it possibly make?’
‘So it’s true?’ Rodriguez countered. ‘Those things sprouting everywhere from our planet will destroy us?’
Amanda opened and closed her mouth, then turned away to stare fixedly out to sea.
Rodriguez eyed her for a moment, then turned back to Fowler with a look of satisfaction. ‘We seek closure, you see. I, for one, desire closure. I want to see you made an example of – in front of God, if no one else.’
Amanda swung back round, her face twisted in fury. ‘This is insane,’ she spat. ‘We’re not responsible for that . . . thing out there. We did everything we could to stop it.’