The Girl With All the Gifts(87)

She was in a theatre. She’d never seen one before, but she knew that was what it had to be. There were rows and rows of seats all facing the same way–and where they were facing there was a wide flat place with a wooden floor. A stage. There were more seats on a balcony on top of the first lot of seats, and that was where Melanie was–at one end of the balcony, standing at the edge where it looked down into the main auditorium below.

And she was right about there being more than one person down there. There were at least a dozen.

They weren’t playing a game, though. What they were doing was quite different.

Melanie watched them in silence for a long time–perhaps as long as she’d listened to them, or a little more. Her eyes were wide, and her hands gripped very tight on to the balcony rail as though she were afraid of falling down.

She watched until the noises and the movement died away. Then she slipped out, as quietly as she could, through the swing doors and down the stairs.

Out on the street, where it was raining harder than ever, she walked a few faltering steps and came to a halt in the shadow of a wall whose ancient graffiti had faded to ghost patterns of black and grey.

Something was happening to her face. Her eyes were burning, her throat convulsing. It was almost like the first breath you take in the shower room after the showers have been turned on and the air fills with bitter spray.

But there was no spray here. She was just crying.

The part of her mind that had stayed detached and watched her eat the cat watched this performance too, and mourned a little that–because of the rain–it was impossible to determine whether her weeping involved actual tears.





58


The night crawls past arthritically and aimlessly after a supper that–despite its perilously high salt and sugar content–nobody seems able to taste.

Justineau sits in the crew quarters, twisted round in the seat so she can look through one of the slit windows at the street outside. Behind her she can hear Gallagher’s fitful snoring from the sleeping recess. He chose one of the top bunks, and stole blankets from most of the others to make himself a nest. He’s completely invisible up there, barricaded away from the world behind ramparts of dreams and polycotton.

He’s the only one who sleeps at all. Parks is still stripping the generator, and he doesn’t seem inclined to stop. Intermittent clattering from back there tells Justineau that he’s making progress. Intermittent swearing announces his temporary setbacks.

In between them is the lab, where Caldwell works in silence, putting slide after slide under a Zeiss LSM 510 confocal microscope with its own built-in battery (the scanning electron microscope still awaits the quickening touch of electric current from Rosie’s generator), writing annotations for each in a leather-backed notebook, then racking it in a plastic box whose compartments she carefully numbers.

When the sun comes up, Justineau is silently amazed. It seemed entirely plausible that this ontological impasse would go on for ever.

Through the red dawn a tiny figure walks out of a side street and crosses to Rosie’s door.

Justineau gives an involuntary cry and runs to open it. Parks is there ahead of her, and he doesn’t move out of her way. There’s a thin, muffled sound: bare knuckles, knocking politely on the armour plating.

“You’re going to have to let me handle this,” Parks tells her. He’s got shadows under his eyes and oil smudges on his forehead and cheeks. He looks like he just murdered someone who bled India ink. There’s a weary, defeated set to his shoulders.

“What does ‘handle it’ mean?” Justineau demands.

“It just means I talk to her first.”

“With a gun in your hand?”

“No,” he grunts irritably. “With these.”

He shows her his left hand, in which he holds the leash and the handcuffs.

Justineau hesitates for a second. “I know how handcuffs work,” she says. “Why can’t I be the one to go out to her?”

Parks wipes his dirty brow on his dirty sleeve. “Jesus wept,” he mutters under his breath. “Because that’s what she asked for before she left, Helen. You’re the one she’s concerned about hurting, not me. I’m nearly certain she’s okay, because she just knocked on the door instead of clawing at it and bashing her head against it. But whatever kind of mood she’s in, the one thing she won’t want to see when it opens is you standing there. Especially if she’s got blood on her mouth or her clothes from feeding. You understand that, right? After she’s cleaned herself up, and after she’s got the cuffs back on, then you can talk to her. Okay?”

Justineau swallows. Her throat is dry. The truth is that she’s afraid. Mostly she’s afraid of what the last twelve hours might have done to Melanie. Afraid that when she looks into the girl’s eyes, she might see something new and alien there. For that very reason, she doesn’t want to put the moment off. And she doesn’t want Parks to look first.

But she does understand, whether she wants to or not, and she can’t go against what Melanie specifically asked for. She has to step back, and around the bulkhead wall, while he opens the door.

She hears the bolt slide back, the smooth sigh of hydraulically assisted hinges.

And then she flees, through the aft weapons stations to the lab space. Dr Caldwell looks up at her, indifferent at first. Until she realises what Justineau’s agitation must mean.