Against Gravity (7 page)

“Marco?” he said at last. “I know you: Frederic Marco, the writer. You wrote
The Contortionist
.” It was a book he’d read over one long, languid summer in his
teens.

“Listen,” said Marco impatiently. “You didn’t hear what happened in LA?”

“Los Angeles? What’s happened to it?”

“What’s happened is that it isn’t there any more,” hissed Marco, his grin not faltering for a second. “Can you imagine that? No more Sunset Boulevard, no more
Beverly Hills, no more Venice Beach . . . I liked Venice Beach, but now it’s all gone.” He nodded his head wonderingly. “Imagine that.”

“But what
happened
?” asked Kendrick, a sick feeling spreading through his stomach.

“Got nuked,” said Marco, and his smile faltered briefly. “Probably by film critics.” The grin resurfaced.

“Nuked?” It was such an outrageous-sounding piece of news, but somehow Kendrick believed it. All it needed was for him to cast his mind back over what had happened to him over the
past few hours to see how serious things might be. No more Los Angeles? Feeling like he was performing a part in some movie, as if this were all play-acting, he asked, “Who?”

Marco shrugged. “Beats me. Take your pick of suspects. It won’t be the Chinese, not after the way they fell apart. That leaves pretty much any political or religious group with a
grudge, or perhaps terrorists, or any other random bunch of crazies you care to pick. But to get back to my original point,
we
were right – people like you and I – about what was
going to happen to this country once the shit really hit the fan.”

All the while more people were being escorted into the shed, and more led away. Marco continued. “This country’s been going to hell for such a long time, nothing’s going to
change that now. People starving in this country, diseases we thought long gone being reintroduced ten times stronger, the climate all changed and the Gulf Stream fucked, four localized nuclear
wars in Asia – just count ’em.” He held up one fist and, pushing up four fingers, pointed at them in turn. “Four!
And
the environmental disasters leaving millions
dead in the Midwest. We’re sailing down the river towards the sharp rocks, but still acting like everything’s going to be fine. Wilber being elected President is the icing on the cake
– or the death stroke, maybe.”

Marco leaned in a little closer. “Frankly, Kendrick, we’re fucked, and somebody just hammered the last nail into the coffin. Ain’t none of us here going to get out of
this
mess alive.”

Kendrick bristled. “That’s just paranoia.”

“Look, listen to me,” said Marco, placing a hand on his shoulder. Kendrick felt uncomfortable at the unexpected intimacy of the gesture. “You’re a journalist, and people
with jobs like yours are only secure so long as what you’re doing isn’t seen to be against the national interest. President Wilber gets to decide what the national interest is. That
means right
now
the national interest is rounding up everybody who could have any kind of connection, however vague, with anyone whom Wilber deems an enemy of the state, whether real or
imagined. You and me, that might make a twisted kind of sense, but look at some of these other people.” Marco gestured around him with a swivel of his neck. “Ordinary people, not
terrorists. But maybe they were in the wrong place at the wrong time, or voted for the wrong people, or had the bad luck just to be related to the wrong person.” Marco’s voice had taken
on a certain urgency.

“I don’t understand what you’re saying.”

“What I’m saying, Kendrick, is I’m seventy-six years old. I’ve had a long life, and I’ve been very good at making enemies. In some way or other, all of us here,
without even knowing it, have made ourselves somebody’s enemy. I always said life in this country was a losing battle, because it’s always the guys with the guns who win. That’s
why I’m doing what I’m about to do. It’s important that you understand. That you remember, for
me
, if you ever get out of this.”

Kendrick felt sudden heat rising in his face. He watched as Marco stood up, drawing the attention of the several guards observing them all keenly.

“Marco, for Christ’s sake—” Kendrick grabbed at the old man’s sleeve as he abruptly stood also. But Marco shook him off with surprising energy and started moving
away between the rows of chairs. The others around them watched this sudden development with interest, astonishment or, more frequently, fear.

Cursing under his breath, Kendrick stood and stepped quickly after the old man, grabbing his sleeve again before he had gone more than a few steps. One of the soldiers headed towards them.

“What the hell are you trying to prove?” Kendrick hissed.

Marco turned his calm grey-eyed stare on him. “I am taking decisive action, which is a phrase President Wilber likes to use a lot. We both know men like him only get elected under the most
extreme circumstances, and this country is currently under some very extreme circumstances indeed.”

The soldier stepped forward and placed a hand on Marco’s chest. Kendrick wouldn’t have put him at more than seventeen or eighteen. A thin fuzz coating his cheeks made him appear even
younger.

“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to take your seat again.” The words were directed also at Kendrick.

“Fuck you,” Marco replied loudly and decisively, the words reverberating in the confines of the shed. The uniformed boy faltered. “I’ve not been charged. I haven’t
done
anything. Neither has anyone else here. So,
fuck you
.”

Another soldier stepped over, this one older, his uniform decorated with a sergeant’s stripes. He dismissed the first soldier with a nod of his head.

“I’m going to ask both of you to return to your seats and wait for your interviews.” He pointed one meaty hand at the chairs they had just vacated. “You’re under
military jurisdiction as long as you’re here. That means
now
.”

Something remarkable happened then. Marco raised his hands to shoulder height, putting a grin on his face, a parody of surrender. The sergeant’s face relaxed a little. Kendrick was looking
at the sergeant, which was why he didn’t see Marco suddenly pull one of his arms back and throw it forward, punching the sergeant hard in the face.

The soldier reeled back, looking more surprised than hurt. Marco sprinted past them both with remarkable agility, clearly heading for the nearest exit. Kendrick started forward again, not sure
exactly what he intended to do but nonetheless feeling driven to do
something
, when he felt a hand grab him roughly.

He spun round, just in time to see another soldier swing his hand around in an arc, his pistol held grip outwards in a motion that connected with the side of Kendrick’s head. Kendrick spun
round, crumpling to the ground, flecks of darkness dancing across his vision.

He retched, staring through a forest of chair legs. Somewhere very close a woman screamed. As he pulled himself up onto his knees, he saw the sergeant whom Marco had punched standing with legs
planted firmly apart, his pistol gripped firmly between two fists and pointed directly at Kendrick’s head.

This was how Kendrick remembered what happened next.

Marco, framed by sunlight, visible beyond the island of chairs . . . the soldier who had pistol-whipped Kendrick yelling incoherently . . . Marco, far more agile than Kendrick might ever have
suspected, now just a few metres from the exit. And then a deafening explosion that, in Kendrick’s memory, went on and on for ever.

He had stood up on trembling legs to see Marco lying in a crumpled silent heap, one arm stretched out so that the slanting light from beyond the exit was touching it. People around Kendrick
stared on in unbelieving horror, like lambs who were catching their first glimpse of the slaughterhouse.

A few months later, Kendrick could only wish that he’d had as much sense and courage as Marco.

14 October 2096
Edinburgh

Kendrick woke to bright morning light. He mumbled a word to the windowscreen and a series of numerals appeared as grey shadows superimposed on the opaque glass.

He should leave before Caroline woke, he thought. He hauled himself up from the thin sheets she’d given him and padded barefoot into the kitchen before he became aware that she’d
already left.

The door to her bedroom lay open and he peeked inside.
Very
gone. One dream in particular had been astonishingly vivid and, strangely uncertain how much of it actually had been a dream,
he re-entered the living room.

He’d dreamed that he had opened his eyes to see Caroline standing just beyond the couch he lay on. In the dream, the windowscreen was no longer opaque: pale moonlight outlined her naked
form, and her head tilted back to stare beyond the slate rooftops of the city.

Wreathed in shadows, she had looked like some half-imagined goddess yearning for a way back home into the sky. And then she had turned and looked at him, and he had tumbled into the deep abyss
of her eyes, as if falling through eternity . . .

He shook his head. Just a dream.

A little over half an hour later, Kendrick stepped outside into bright sunshine. A bitterly chill wind rattled through the sparse trees that broke through cobblestones up and
down the street. His taxi rolled up right on time and he slid into its warm, driverless interior, making it to the Clinic a few minutes early.

The building was located in the Morningside area, a three-storey pile of nineteenth-century granite set behind black-painted iron railings. The plaque on the wall next to the front door
identified it as home to a data-archaeology firm – all an elaborate cover story.

As Kendrick climbed the half-dozen steps to the front entrance, his enhanced senses warned him that his retinas were being scanned. A few seconds later the door clicked open with a solid
thunk
.

As he stepped inside, the building felt as curiously empty as on every other occasion he’d visited here. There were no pictures adorning the walls, and the hallway floor consisted only of
bare, unvarnished floorboards. A winding staircase situated at the far end led both up and down. Apart from the hallway itself, Kendrick had only ever seen the basement. He reined in his curiosity,
knowing that in the circles in which men like Hardenbrooke moved the less anyone else knew of their activities, the better. Such caution was wise, since the treatments and drugs that Hardenbrooke
dealt in were stunningly illegal.

Kendrick found his way downstairs, keeping one hand on the black varnished banister as he descended into the basement. He spotted Hardenbrooke at the far end of a long, wide room, crouched over
a crumpled eepsheet monitor tacked onto a slant-top desk. Other eepsheets were pinned up on the bare, whitewashed walls, all showing variations on the same X-ray-like image of a human body, a
variety of clearly non-biological components highlighted in primary shades of red and blue. As he got closer, Kendrick realized that the images were of his own internal organs.

Hardenbrooke turned and stepped towards him, smiling. “Sure no one followed you here?” he asked, taking Kendrick by the arm and gently guiding him to an adjustable leather couch in
the centre of the big room. Hardenbrooke’s badly scarred face twisted up in a parody of a smile; from just above the right ear and extending below the neck of his shirt, one side of his
features had the look of melted plastic. Around the ear itself the flesh was hairless and smooth.

Kendrick climbed onto the leather couch and waited while Hardenbrooke hovered over a wheeled aluminium trolley loaded with a variety of medical instruments, all neatly laid out on antiseptic
paper. “No,” Kendrick finally responded, after running his journey to Morningside from Caroline’s flat through his head. “Is there some problem?”

“Just professional paranoia. A black-market clinic in Glasgow got raided last week – didn’t you hear about it?”

“Maybe.” A snatch of news footage flickered across Kendrick’s mind’s eye. “You’re worried about that happening here?”

“Sometimes I reckon it’s more a case of ‘when’ than ‘if’. I’m not casting any aspersions on your good character, of course,” Hardenbrooke assured
him with a flicker of a smile. “It’s just—”

“Sure, I understand. But there wasn’t anyone following me.” Kendrick made sure to catch the man’s eye as he said this. “Listen, I’m not just here for the
regular treatments. Last night I suffered two seizures in a row, plus . . .” He shook his head and sighed. “Look, I need you to check out my heart.”

Hardenbrooke raised one and a half eyebrows. Something about the man’s scars made it hard to determine his age. What little Kendrick knew about him extended only as far as
Hardenbrooke’s claim to be a survivor of the LA Nuke. Beyond that, the professional nature of their relationship precluded any personal knowledge about each other. Yet they were partners in
crime as much as they were doctor and patient, and Kendrick had been paying Hardenbrooke a lot of money for a series of treatments that had so far proved surprisingly effective.

Nonetheless, over recent months some other details of the medic’s history had filtered through, giving Kendrick an opportunity to fill in some of the blanks.

“Two seizures? Last night?” Hardenbrooke echoed. “You should have contacted me immediately.” His tone was admonishing.

“I know I should. But I’m here
now
.”

The medic went over to a metal desk and pulled a drawer open, rummaging around inside, then stepped back holding an old-fashioned stethoscope in his hands as he fitted the earpieces into his
melted-plastic ears. Motioning Kendrick to pull his T-shirt up, Hardenbrooke pressed the icy-cold metal disc against his chest and listened. Kendrick watched a look of consternation spread across
that part of Hardenbrooke’s face still capable of registering emotion.

Then Hardenbrooke stood up straight. “Let’s come to an agreement,” he said. “When I say call me if something happens, then call me instantly. Anything that looks like a
setback, just call me. Otherwise you’re making it a lot harder for me to help you. Is that clear?”