Lie of the Land (21 page)

‘But they weren't as clever as they thought. Oh no. Hidden imperfection got the better of them. Carl there, he knew all about that. He knew what was going on with SCOPE – but he was too shit-scared to tell the rest of us.'

Carl drained his whisky. ‘Fuck off. Don't give me the you-didas-much-as-you-could crap. You worked on SCOPE for years. You were part of the whole fucking anti-terror show. SCOPE was originally a tracking system long before it was mood manipulation.' He stopped, glanced at Howard, went for a refill.

‘The perils of dual-use technology,' declared Howard. ‘Scientists could believe that everything military also had a civilian use – for the benefit of society. That's how we could do what we did with a clear conscience, more or less. But we couldn't see the bigger picture, not on this one.'

Howard was talking to George, but George wasn't really listening. He was too busy remembering.

‘That's what we could tell ourselves.' Howard glared at Carl. He jabbed a finger towards Carl. ‘You knew.'

Carl stood up. ‘Look, you prick, what was I supposed to say to my editor? There's this new government communications system that's really an attempt at mass fucking mind control . . .'

George looked up, aware of the fuss, but unsure of what he'd heard.

Howard was swaying with whisky and fatigue. ‘I'll let our roving reporter tell you all about that little secret, George. It's time for my voluntary grave.' He aimed for the lounge door. ‘A government contract is a substitute for intellectual curiosity,' he intoned as he tottered from the room.

Nonplussed, George looked to Carl. ‘What was that?'

Whisky downed in two, Carl poured another. He started pacing the room, silently cursing Howard, slurping from his glass.

He could tell George the truth. He could tell him all about brainwave entrainment through pulsed magnetic induction. He could tell him about extremely low-frequency psychotronics, charting its history all the way back to the Russians in the 1960s and the CIA's MK-Ultra programme.

He stood at the bookcase, the shabby edition of
Highland Animals
at his fingertips. Where was
Vipera berus
now?

‘Fear and money, George, just like old Ike said,' Carl said at last. ‘And one hell of a ghost in the machine.'

23

It was 5.50 a.m. and a pale September morning was leaching into Inverlair Bay and into the hotel. Being awake at night was the worst; there was nothing but silence and uncontrollable thoughts darting in and out of existence. That was when sadness and terror stood tall by the bed and kept her awake. So there was nothing to do but get up. She could grab an hour's sleep in the afternoon. There was always something that needed doing, and doing something, anything, was better than lying awake in the dark.

Her mother. That journalist. The baby she was going to have.

Simone pulled her dressing gown tight around herself, more afraid than cold.

From the window of the residents' lounge, she watched dawn break over the village, heard the birds in full voice, light spilling into the bay, the tops of the far headland ablaze in the early beams. There was nothing unusual about any of it: day beginning and day ending, on a spool that replayed over and over and carried her along with it. She was now moving through days filled with other people and the things that always needed doing. People still had their needs, and their appetites. She tried to rationalise, to absolve, and she wondered if Carl was doing the same.

‘Mum,' she whispered at the windowpane, cold glass under her fingertips.

She heard a noise behind her in the corridor and turned from the window.

Howard stood in the doorway wearing a grey tracksuit, a glass
of water in his hand. ‘Oh,' he said groggily. ‘I'm sorry, I didn't realise there would be anyone else up.'

Simone caught sight of a coin-sized stain near Howard's crotch. For some reason, this put her at ease.

‘It's beautiful – but very bright,' he said, gesturing to the window, squinting at the daylight.

‘Yeah,' said Simone, turning back to the dawn. ‘It used to attract a lot of artists. The quality of the light, and the colours.'

Groaning, Howard slumped into the chair he'd occupied the previous evening. Christ, what an arse he'd been.

‘Too much of your dad's whisky last night. It's never agreed with me. Think I was a bit of an arse.'

‘You're not the first person to turn into an idiot after a drink.'

‘I suppose not,' said Howard. ‘I'm stiff as a bloody board as well. All that walking in the hills.' He winced. ‘Sunburnt too.'

They were silent for a spell, the only sounds the seagulls and the clock on the mantelpiece. Stirring from the window, Simone said, ‘Where did you live, before you found out about SCOPE?'

Howard didn't really feel up to a conversation. He drank most of the water in three gulps. ‘Near Reading. Private estate. Part of a science park.'

‘Did you have anyone, a family, or . . .'

He groaned again. ‘A father with Alzheimer's and a sister in New York.'

Simone nodded. ‘Sorry.'

‘Yeah.' Howard looked pained for a moment. He didn't really feel like elaborating. ‘Haven't seen my sister for years. We lost touch.'

‘Sorry, I don't mean to be nosey,' said Simone. ‘It's just that you sit at our table every day, but I don't know the first thing about you, apart from your job . . .'

‘You've got other things on your mind,' said Howard. ‘I'm sorry about your mother.'

Simone chewed her lip.

‘I've heard your father mention Hannah. Is that your sister?'

‘Yeah,' she said. ‘She's in Norway working as a translator. Maybe she still is.'

‘Maybe,' said Howard. ‘They didn't have SCOPE there. It was installed across Sweden though . . .'

Simone frowned, tightened her dressing gown around her. ‘There's some tea. Would you like a cup?'

‘Oh, yes please,' breathed Howard. ‘That would be fantastic.'

When Simone went through to the kitchen, Howard picked up the empty whisky bottle and sniffed the smoky fumes. What an arse. What a loose-tongued vicious pain in the arse.

•

Carl waited on the pavement outside the hotel.

Okay, Brindley had said sorry and, yes, whisky brings out the demon in some guys, but he was a complete wanker for telling George about SCOPE, no two ways about that. With a bit of luck, George had been too pissed to realise what he was being told. Then again, maybe it was no bad thing if he did remember the previous evening, just so long as he didn't blame the obvious targets for not being heroic enough to stop it all. That's what they would've been if they'd blown the whistle on SCOPE: heroes. And not everyone can step out of the crowd like that, saying what no one else will say. Carl wondered if George would understand any of that. The risk and ridicule involved.

The hotel's front door squeaked open.

‘You're keen to get started,' said Howard, without meeting Carl's eye.

Carl set off down the path towards the main road.

After a few moments, Howard caught up with him. ‘I knew you knew what SCOPE was. I knew it. Listen, maybe it's no bad thing we told George.'

Carl snorted. ‘No bad thing.' He shook his head. ‘Do you realise
that people are still wary of us? Do you actually get that? Some of them still think we had something to do with all this. And now George might be wondering why we waited three fucking weeks before telling him about the secret SCOPE upgrade. Do you want to get us lynched? These people are strangers.'

Howard shrugged. ‘It won't come to that.'

A pick-up truck, piled high with logs, rumbled past them and turned into the boatyard. The driver was a heavy-set red-faced man in an orange boiler suit. He and his passenger jumped out, clattered open the truck's side-flap, and let sections of tree-trunk roll off, thudding onto the concrete forecourt. The driver eyed Carl and Howard with suspicion.

They passed the schoolhouse and skirted round the stalker's farm, leaving the bay behind.

Almost two hours later they reached the spot where the stream that fed the River Lair soaked away into the boggy uplands: fathoms of water-engorged peat that spilled and sprung their loads.

Howard consulted his deltameter. ‘Twelve days ago, the delta signal dropped by 200 microtesla for a few hours. The signature was still there in the H-band, but a much weaker primary harmonic. Six days ago the same thing happened. And now again today. Some kind of pattern by the looks of it, every six days. I'll do a spectrum analysis later on my tablet, but I think we should wait here for a while, see what the main waveform does; there was marked attenuation for about four hours the last time it happened.'

Carl took out his palmpod and consulted the readings. As graphs, the signal behaviour was clear: there were dips in the primary signal every six days. But though each dip lasted four hours, their start times were unequal. First dip: 11.27 a.m. Second dip: 1.42 p.m. Third dip: 11.24 a.m.

‘So the time now is eleven-thirty and the signal is going down. We could have almost four hours, or we could have two, or less or more.' Howard squinted at the sun. ‘Not enough datasets to be
sure.' There were clouds massing out at sea. Definitely a hint of autumn in the air. He looked across the bay to the fissured summit of Ben Bronach. ‘We could perhaps try to get to that farmhouse today,' he said. ‘It can't be more than four hundred metres into the redzone.'

Carl gestured across the bay. ‘The farmhouse – behind Ben Bronach?'

‘Yes.'

‘It will take us well over an hour to get up there,' said Carl. ‘If we wait another six days we'll know for sure.'

Howard shook his head. ‘You said six days ago that some of the chickens at the farmhouse were dead. The automatic feeder must have broken or run out, and there isn't enough in the coop to feed them much longer. They might all be dead by next week.' He looked at Carl. ‘Just think of it – we could probably carry half a dozen each, maybe more. Tie their legs together. More eggs. More flesh.'

‘Yeah,' whispered Carl. He drank some water and stood up. Man brings food from hill. People would appreciate that.

‘Okay,' he said. ‘Let's do it.'

An hour and a half later, they were high on the ridge. Through binoculars, Howard studied the farmhouse in the glen. A few of the chickens looked very dead, and a few more looked close to it, scrawny and inert. He could see one, a hump of wind-ruffled feathers, pressed against the coop's wire fence, unmoving. The Land Rover had a flat tyre now and there was a ewe standing in the open doorway of the house, a former hunting lodge. The owner, or what was left of him or her, was probably lying in the house. Howard checked his deltameter, and they set off down the steep rocky slope.

As they descended into the glen the terrain gave way from rock to knee-high heather that made walking difficult. Hidden burns gurgled under hags of peat. It was hard going and they
worked up a sweat. By the time they got to the farmhouse it was half past one.

‘Jesus, Howard,' panted Carl. ‘We're cutting it too fine, man.'

But Howard was already inside the hen-coop. ‘Come on,' he shouted, chasing after a chicken that flapped clear of him. ‘Give me a hand.'

After a few minutes they had grabbed and tied three birds each. And then the noise started, pricking in their skulls. They looked at each other, Howard with a panicky smile.

‘Whoops.'

They bolted from the coop.

•

They were only 500 metres or so from the red marker stone that Carl had painted on their first sweep of the redzone. That was the distance to safety. But the ground was uneven, with hidden hollows and holes, sloping upwards to the mouth of the glen, and they had to hurdle through heather.

They ran with their feathery bundles of protein. After about 300 metres pain skewered Carl's temples, and his lungs were burning with the effort.

Fuck the hens.

He ran away from death, with every ounce of the strength he didn't know he had, and fell, semi-conscious, just metres from the marker stone, blood streaming from his nose.

•

Cold splashes on his face. Hard. Harder. Rain. Dark. Pain.

Carl sat up. It was pelting with rain and he couldn't see a solitary object or light, anywhere. Thrashing a hand blindly on the wet grass next to him he shouted for Howard, panic firing him awake.

He stood. His lungs ached from running. He was soaked to the skin, wearing nothing but a T-shirt and jeans. A gust of wind
flung rain into his eyes as he began to run. He tripped and fell, braced himself for the impact, but there was only cold grass under his hands.

‘Howard!' He tried to think. Howard had been behind him, running. They'd both been running.

Okay, okay, a bit of reasoning was required here. No need to lose the plot. Carl tried to visualise the glen in daylight: the red marker stone and the track that led from the farmhouse to the north road. If he walked and felt no pain in his head, he was safe, and if he hit the redzone he could about-turn and walk in the opposite direction. If only he could find the track, that would give him his bearings.

‘Howard!'

There was no response.

‘Jesus, man,' he wailed. ‘Howard!'

He waited and shouted again.

After a few minutes, he knew he had to get under cover, out of the wind and rain. The nights were colder now, and longer. He knew he had to seek shelter. There was no question now of death being a viable alternative: he had to get back to the village. Wanting to stay alive, and the force of this impulse, took him a little by surprise. Dying out here, in the wet dark, was not an option.

Fuck that.

Edging forward in total blackness with his hands outstretched, it was slow going, and he was cold – dripping wet, blinking into the rain and wind, cursing, groping his way forward, afraid to take big steps.