‘It’s very dangerous,’ Nevers said. ‘I saw what it can do. We caught up with Fahad and his little sister at one point, and the thing reared up…’
The man had a stricken, haunted look.
‘Eidolons can definitely fuck with your head,’ Vic said, thinking of the man who’d killed his partner in that Junktown bar.
‘I’m certain that it influenced Fahad and the others. That it made them want to come here,’ Alan Nevers said. ‘Why, I don’t know. But not for anything good. And right now the boy is heading downriver with Drury and his crew. Heading towards that site to do God knows what.’
The man was clearly anxious to prevent that happening. Genuinely believed that this artefact, the eidolon it contained, was dangerous and had warped the minds of everyone who had come into contact with it.
Now, up in the office, Vic told Karl, ‘Everyone thinks there’s something valuable to be found at this site, but it all comes down to this eidolon. It got inside this kid’s head, and maybe it did a number on his friends, and on Nevers. I don’t think he chased these stowaways here just because they broke a couple of laws back on Earth.’
Karl agreed. ‘I have some experience of prospectors deranged by their finds. They believe that they have found the secret at the heart of the universe, or that they have acquired superpowers, and so on. Most of them are harmless, but a few can be actively dangerous. One woman, over at Hwyel’s Crossing, was possessed by an eidolon from a tomb she uncovered on her farm. She kidnapped people and sewed machinery into their living bodies. To make them like the creatures she saw in dreams. Nevers is not that crazy, of course, but it is quite possible that what he and the others are chasing is nothing but a fever dream.’
‘Drury and McBride clearly have inside information,’ Vic said. ‘That part of Nevers’s story definitely rings true. Three years ago, Cal McBride’s company took out a licence to excavate a site south of here. Then McBride went to jail, and Drury took over. And when Skip and I interviewed Drury about the murder of Nevers’s partner, he had a ton of camping gear in his house.’
‘So he was getting ready to come here.’
‘His people back on Earth tell him about this haunted bead Sahar Chauhan sent his kids. They tell him the son is coming here. So he snatches the kid and this bead, and heads off to the site. Cal McBride wants that bead too, and gives chase. If Nevers was telling the truth, that’s what the shootout was about.’
‘And McBride lost.’
‘We don’t know yet that he was killed. He might still be in the game,’ Vic said, ‘but Drury is definitely on his way to the prize.’
‘If you are thinking of going after him, I cannot go with you,’ Karl said. ‘I have too many responsibilities here.’
‘I understand. This one is on me,’ Vic said.
There was a brief silence as Skip’s death hung between them.
Karl said, ‘You could wait here. Whatever happens downriver, Drury has to come back this way.’
‘And he could head on past this town to some place further upriver. And when I catch up with him he’ll have an explanation about why he couldn’t possibly have been here, backed up with alibis and a swarm of lawyers. No, I have to catch him in the one place I know he’ll be.’
‘You will walk into the middle of his camp and ask him and his man to give themselves up?’
‘Only in my dreams. I’m going to lay back with a camera and a humungous telescopic lens I happen to have brought along. I have a little drone, too.’
‘You came prepared.’
‘Well, I was a Boy Scout, even if it was a long time ago on another planet. Drury killed Skip and kidnapped these stowaways. I’m going to put him square in the frame, get probable cause to go through all his shit. And if McBride is still after the artefact too, I want to see what happens. So if you know someone who has a boat I can hire, or even buy…’
Karl said, ‘Chris and I go fishing, on occasion. Strange fish you cannot eat, but Chris mounts them as trophies or sells them to agents for bioscience companies. I could perhaps lend you our skiff, small though it is. But even better, I know someone who might be able to fly you out there. Get you close enough to walk in, and pick you up again afterwards.’
Vic felt a wire twist in his stomach. Shit was becoming real. He said, ‘That sounds dangerously like a plan.’
‘Also, you will need camping equipment, in case the dust storm arrives early and you have to wait it out. I will give Able Ngomi a call. He owns the local dry-goods store. He can sort out what you need, and I will make sure he doesn’t charge you too much.’
‘Karl, my man, I’ll be paying you back for the rest of my life.’
‘I hope you will.’
‘I came up on the second shuttle. I was here for the Big Blow. Planet hasn’t killed me yet, and some little dust storm won’t do the job either. And I have no intention of getting in a spot where Drury or anyone else can take a pop at me. This is strictly a reconnaissance mission,’ Vic said, knowing it wasn’t, knowing that if it came down to it he was going to have to step up to Danny Drury. Man kills your partner, you don’t walk away from that.
Karl said, ‘What about Nevers?’
‘If you want to formally charge him, it’s fine by me. But before you do, I’d like to talk to him again. Man’s sitting there so quietly, it’s like my grandmother used to say, dog don’t howl if he has a bone. He knows more than he’s told us. I want to find out what that is.’
43. Gone
Mangala | 25 July
‘I really thought it was Nevers in that 4x4,’ Chloe said, ‘but now…’
‘Now you’re trying to rationalise it away,’ Henry said. ‘Me, I can’t think of any reason why not. Anyone with enough money can buy a ticket on a shuttle these days — and think of all the publicity the Met would get for the first interplanetary arrest. If he did follow us, though, it means someone must have leaked our travel plans. Maybe I should phone home, ask them to look into that.’
They were cruising the area on the far side of the construction site where Fahad had been snatched — blocks of warehouses and factories, silos and empty lots — looking for white vans while they tried to work out what had just happened. The nature and extent of the disaster.
‘If he knew we were coming here,’ Chloe said slowly, thinking it through, ‘then it’s possible that the McBride family knew too.’
‘It’s possible that everyone knows more than we do,’ Henry said.
‘So it’s possible that they snatched Fahad. They were following us, they saw him break away…’
‘The kid played us,’ Henry said. ‘Strung us along with bullshit about ancient ruins while all the time he was working on his own agenda, waiting for the moment when he could make a run for it. It was very nicely done. The only problem is that when he broke away to go looking for the people who killed his father, they found him instead.’
‘The ruins are real,’ Chloe said.
‘But are they really what he says they are? Let’s hope the people who snatched him think so. Otherwise he’s going to be in real trouble. Turn here,’ Henry told Hanna Babbel. ‘We’ll do one more block.’
Hanna made the turn. She’d hardly said a word since Chloe had come running back to the car park of the McDonald’s. Distancing herself from this monumental fuck-up.
A long road between two chemical plants. Rows of squat tanks. Pipes lagged in dirty white insulation. A chimney feathered brown fumes into the clean sky: a human stain on the clean breast of this new world. Hanna slowed when Henry pointed to two men unloading a white van behind a chain-link fence, but it was the wrong kind of white van, smaller than the one Chloe had seen.