The Other Tree Page 11

  Luke reached across and unwrapped Chris’s moist towelette, proceeding to wipe his face down before plucking the remnants of leaves and twigs from his hair. Chris watched as Luke casually groomed himself, as though they weren’t sitting in a run-down Romanian hospital, chasing arcane texts with missing pages, as though she hadn’t almost died and things weren’t almost certainly about to get worse.

  “It was your mother, wasn’t it?” said Luke, removing a small, confused beetle from his lapel.

  Chris looked down at the rumpled green sheet, her hands webbed with dark veins.

  “I think so. But it sounds so unlike her, to do something like that.”

  But obsession changes people, thought Chris. As did grief. It was the kind of combination that made people amass mutant armies and build doomsday devices.

  “Then she must have had a good reason,” said Luke.

  “Or she found that the SinaCorp way of doing business got better results,” said Chris bitterly.

  A wave of hushed voices suddenly rippled down the corridor, following the sound of footsteps clacking down the hallway. Several nurses and visitors rushed past the doorway, suddenly finding other places to be. A slightly embarrassed Almovar entered the room, wheeling Chris and Luke’s bags from the castle, and holding a small, irregularly shaped package wrapped in brown paper.

  “Mr. Almovar.” Luke’s smile was wan but sincere. “I’m glad you’re alright.”

  Luke offered Almovar his chair as curious onlookers exchanged glances.

  “I’m glad to see the young lady is recovering,” said Almovar, sitting down awkwardly.

  “Thank you for all your help,” said Chris. “I’m so sorry for everything that’s happened.”

  She looked over at Luke, then back at Almovar, her expression steeped in guilt.

  “We owe you an apology and a full explanation,” said Chris.

  “I’m not sure if I’m ready to hear it,” said Almovar with a rueful smile.

  He looked down at the brown package, wound with a piece of undyed string.

  “All I ask is that you answer one question for me, wholly and honestly,” said Almovar.

  Chris and Luke exchanged a cautious glance.

  “Okay,” said Chris.

  “All those years ago, when she stole the page from the Book of June,” said Almovar. “There was one odd thing. She left this behind, on top of the book. No note.”

  Almovar unwrapped the crinkled brown paper and gently lifted out a rough, grey rock the size of a large fist. One side had been sheared cleanly off, revealing in startling detail the fossil of something resembling an armour-plated sardine, with a dozen crab-like legs and a wispy, floating tail, preserved as though in mid-swish. The creature also appeared to have a single, barbed horn on its forehead.

  “I had it examined,” said Almovar. “And it’s authentic Burgess Shale—a very rare specimen.”

  “Is that a fish with legs?” asked Luke.

  “It wasn’t as strange as you might think, several hundred million years ago,” said Almovar. “I’ve been searching for a specimen of the flying snail, myself, for decades.”

  Almovar gazed at the light-grey ghost of the animal in the rock, the detail so finely etched that the individual scales were visible.

  “I was never sure if she meant it as an apology.” Almovar cupped it in his hands and held it out before Chris. “Does it mean anything to you?”

  Chris’s hands trembled as she traced a finger along the rough grey shale, and she blinked quickly.

  Stout adult legs in the living room.

  “Chris, don’t throw that around. Marcus, you could buy a small country with—”

  The smell of tweed and formaldehyde.

  “It’s fine, Rana. Kids have to play, and learn, and get excited about things. I used to dig up fossils at Bayheart Cliff and carry home rattling buckets of them. No concept of how much you could sell ’em for, just how wonderfully fascinating they were. Children shouldn’t think about things as crude as money.”

  A rough, warm rock, big enough to fill two hands, with a shadowbox of life imprinted on its surface.

  Almovar watched Chris’s expression carefully.

  “It was my mother’s,” said Chris, slightly hoarse. “It used to sit on her desk at home. I don’t think we even wondered where it had gone, after she…”

  Almovar caught the “was.” All through life, tiny pieces of you broke away and disintegrated, taking with them small hopes and memories and pleasures, leaving only a sense of loss. This was one such moment.

  “She didn’t mean to hurt you,” said Chris. “I think she was too caught up in her own pain to realise.”

  Chris closed Almovar’s hands around the fossil.

  “I’m sure she meant for you to keep it,” said Chris.

  Almovar nodded, blinking back an old man’s memories. As he folded the brown paper back around the fossil, Chris leaned out of the bed and wrapped her arms around Almovar in a tight hug. There were mutters from the corridor, and several people made the sign of the cross.

  “I’m sorry for everything,” said Chris. “And thank you for showing me this.”

  Almovar rose to his feet, giving her a small smile.

  “Perhaps you’ll think of me if you know anyone who is actually getting married.”

  And with a small bow, he left the hospital room.

  Wincing, Chris swung her legs stiffly from the bed and tentatively rested her feet on the cold floor.

  “What are you doing?” asked Luke.

  “I’m going to the airport,” said Chris. “What are you doing?”

  “Watching to see how many steps you take before you pass out.”

  Chris swayed and grabbed onto something which unfortunately wasn’t there.

  “Why did SinaCorp need the book now?” asked Chris as she pulled herself unsteadily to her feet. “If my mother was working with SinaCorp, why didn’t they have her notes?”

  “Maybe they thought she missed something.”

  “Maybe she didn’t trust them. Maybe she hid some of the information.”

  Chris pulled on her jacket as Luke picked up both their packs.

  “Where are my shoes?” asked Chris.

  “Where are we going?”

  Chris pulled an extra sock over her swollen ankle and started to hobble down the corridor.

  “To visit an old friend,” said Chris.

  * * *

  The small Romanian airport was exceptionally crowded that morning, and the main departure hall bustled with sticky children and tired tourists. Indecipherable announcements crackled through the loudspeakers, blaring like calls to arms.

  “There’s some kind of problem with the refuelling pump,” said Luke, squeezing through the crowd back to Chris, who was hopping up and down trying to read the departure boards. “Nothing’s been able to take off since last night.”

  “Great,” said Chris. “We’re already a day behind SinaCorp.”

  “On the bright side, you’re alive.”

  “There’s got to be another way out of here,” said Chris, weaving through the departure hall and squeezing her way along the wall towards the air field. “Maybe we can hitch a ride on a private plane, or catch a blimp—”

  “You want to stand on the airstrip with your thumb out?”

  “No, but I bet I—”

  Chris stopped abruptly, frozen in front of a glass wall partitioning the VIP Crimson Lounge from the main hall. Plush suede couches the colour of merlot were spaced around designer coffee tables, while classy beverages were dispensed from a classy bar by a very classy bartender. A separately partitioned section of the lounge was furnished with antique leather armchairs and writing desks, while a glass wall overlooked the air field. Gathered, or posed, in a cluster of lounge chairs was the SinaCorp team.

  They looked like a photo shoot for couture fashion. Or designer sunglasses. Or salon hair products. Stace leaned back in an armchair, drinking something on the rocks, while Bale
leaned forward, flicking through a small book. Emir stood facing the airfield, arms crossed, a grim expression on his face. Docker stood with his hip leaning against the couch, watching over Roman’s shoulder as she sat working on a touchscreen tablet.

  The hair bristled on the back of Chris’s neck—if she had been a porcupine it would have been quite a fearsome effect. She hadn’t noticed Luke’s reaction to the SinaCorp team, which was why she was surprised when she turned around and found him gone. She was even more surprised, however, to see Luke marching into the Crimson Lounge, pushing past a startled doorman to bear down on the SinaCorp team.

  Luke stopped right in front of Emir, not noticing that both Bale and Stace had reached quietly into their jackets.

  “Well, if it isn’t ‘looters-sans-frontières,’” said Luke.

  Emir didn’t move, except to raise a hand mildly to dismiss the apprehensive doorman.

  “Do I know you?” asked Emir.

  “I’m Luke. The guy who cleaned up your mess last night. Were you trying to kill her, or did you just not care?”

  Emir glanced at Docker, whose expression was one of faint amusement.

  “We’re not trying to hurt anyone,” said Emir.

  Luke took an angry step towards Emir, his voice low and vehement.

  “You’re the one she trusted,” said Luke. “She said you would do the right thing, but you just went along with it. The breaking and entering, the broken portcullis, the attempted murder. She almost died in the emergency ward last night.”

  Emir’s glance slid sharply to Docker.

  “What are you—” Emir began.

  It was at this point that Chris hobbled into the lounge like a wounded thundercloud, and even Roman looked up from her computer. Chris marched up to Docker, who watched with the shadow of a smile.

  “Almovar wants his book back,” growled Chris.

  “He’s been more than adequately compensated,” said Docker. “His castle needs fixing, his bird needs a respirator. It’s a successful transaction, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “‘Transaction?’” snarled Chris. “You think you can just terrorise someone and then toss money at them, and call it a transaction?”

  Chris shook with rage, colour flushing her sickly pallor.

  “You know,” said Docker. “It’s going to be hours before you can get a flight out of here.”

  He leaned forward in mock conspiracy, tilting his head towards the airfield.

  “Our jet is going to be ready in about ten minutes. Need a ride?”

  On the tarmac directly outside the window, a sleek private jet had just finished refuelling. The compact carrier had a hint of surveillance craft in the design, but something about it also suggested it was equipped not only with missiles, but also a Jacuzzi. The tail was emblazoned with the SinaCorp logo, and the engines were just roaring into gear.

  Docker leaned back, watching as Chris groped for either a snappy comeback or a heavy projectile.

  “Let’s go!” barked Docker, winking at Chris as the SinaCorp team fell into step behind him, headed for the airfield.

  Except Emir.

  Emir glanced at his colleagues as they left, and then stepped towards Chris.

  “Don’t,” said Chris, stopping him with a glare.

  She looked terrible, worse than when her rare Miniature Flamboyant Coconut Palm had died. Worse than the time she’d said the five-day-old laksa was still okay to eat. Worse than… Almost worse than how he felt now, with her looking at him like that.

  “What happened?” asked Emir.

  “You tell me,” said Chris. “Stealing, harassing, lying, hurting people. Is this what you do now?”

  “No, we— There was no one— We didn’t…” Emir struggled for words.

  No wonder he had never finished uni. He couldn’t even finish a sentence when it mattered.

  “Your luxury jet is waiting,” said Chris bitterly.

  Emir could feel the words flapping around in his chest, unable to make the transition to coherent speech. He exhaled, and it felt as though the world were deflating slowly.

  “Take care,” was all he could say as he left.

  Chris couldn’t watch as the futuristic aircraft taxied and launched noiselessly, shimmering into the horizon. She felt like a wingless beetle, sitting in a particularly unhappy puddle of glue.

  “You okay?” said Luke.

  “Sure,” said Chris, grabbing a bowl of herbed macadamias from a side table and emptying it into her pack. “We’ve got a plane to catch.”

  * * *

  The presentation room was illuminated by a large projector screen, currently displaying crisp slides of some rather disturbing cellular mitosis. Marrick sat at the end of an empty conference table, watching as a tense woman in a lab coat clicked the slides forward, describing in graphic detail how exactly they had managed to extend the life of adult cells by twofold.

  “Could you please go over the part about the brains exploding again?” asked Marrick, her expression inscrutable.

  “That only happened twice,” said the woman, gripping the slide controller a little tighter.

  “Thank you,” said Marrick. “That will be all.”

  The researcher gave a tight nod and left the room hurriedly, leaving Marrick to scroll carefully through the slides again. The door hushed open.

  “Sir,” said Hoyle.

  “Yes, Hoyle.”

  “We’ve lost contact with Fountain Forty-Seven. No audio, and the tracking has stopped responding. Should I send an extraction team?”

  Marrick didn’t take her eyes from the slide. Hoyle made the mistake of following her gaze and his stomach clenched. He looked away from the projector screen.

  “How soon until Fountain Forty-Eight are ready?” said Marrick.

  “They’re still five weeks away from completing their training.”

  “Send them as soon as they’re ready.”

  “Straight to the shrine?” asked Hoyle.

  “Start them from scratch. Team Forty-Seven must have missed something.”

  “Yes sir,” said Hoyle, his fingers sliding gracefully over his computer pad.

  “Did they have any children?”

  “Karim had two daughters, eleven and six. Arker had one son, aged three.”

  “Put all three under surveillance level four,” said Marrick. “Update me when they reach sixteen.”

  “Sir,” nodded Hoyle.

  “Was there anything else?” asked Marrick, clicking forward to a slide which appeared to be a mushroom with eyes. It looked angry.

  “Eden Two are headed for Dubai,” said Hoyle. “I believe this is where we had the problem with the last one.”

  “Did they get the book?”

  Hoyle paused.

  “The last page was missing.”

  There was the faintest trace of amusement in Marrick’s expression.

  “Thank you; that will be all.”

  Marrick turned back to the slides as the door hushed closed. Some people tried to achieve immortality by having children. However, from her own observations, having children often reduced your longevity, especially if you had a large bequest that you had not had the foresight to leave to an extremely benign charity.

  Marrick did not believe immortality was a genetic legacy or a symbolic perpetuation of your memory. Immortality was not some tastelessly large statue in a public place, or a priceless painting ogled by people who secretly thought it was smaller than they expected.

  Immortality was not dying.

  Very few people complained about antibiotics, or heart surgery, or curing cancer. Marrick saw nothing different about trying to fix that last, stubborn kink of existence. The thing that common people didn’t understand was that King Canute could have stopped the tide. Rome could have been built in a day. All they needed were enough engineers, architects, labourers and money.

  Marrick did not believe in agonising over whether something was or was not possible—that was the difference between
middle managers and CEOs.

  CEOs made it happen.

  8

  Luke staggered off the tram into a grey, gusty day. The sky was bright and colourless, mottled with distant rain clouds. The wide city street was lined with scraggly elms, their wide branches feathering over shady boulevards.

  “Tell me again why we had to fly thirty-four hours to Australia, rather than taking advantage of this wondrous invention called the internet?” said Luke, his head still slowly re-pressurising.

  “He must have changed his email address,” said Chris, trying to unfold a map which was already fully unfolded.

  Luke looked around morosely as people wandered about in T-shirts and shorts, oblivious to the blustery weather.

  “Why is it you can get a map of the world for a dollar, but seven bucks only gets you three blocks in Melbourne?” muttered Chris.

  “Maybe he moved to the Maldives,” said Luke. “Can we go there?”

  “I hope it’s still here…” Chris studied the map as she walked past an eco-office block, with potted plants sprouting from complicated networks of window boxes.

  As they continued away from the main strip, the streets grew quieter, and fewer pedestrians roamed about. Empty shopfronts sported “For Lease” signs, squeezed between dollar-shops cluttered with merchandise that had probably been moved less often than the heart of a jaded film critic. At the edge of the cracked sidewalk, a bottle-brush sapling strove in slow motion to dislodge an entire block of paving.

  “I think this is it,” said Chris, looking up from her map.

  They stood before a large, square building of eggplant-coloured brick, erected in the late 1800s, but not heritage enough to warrant repairs. Loose guttering hung like a falling crown, framing clay roof tiles encrusted with lichen. Above the entrance, a tarnished brass plaque read “Stewart Burns Museum of Natural History.”

  “Is that an unfortunate name or a permanent headline?” said Chris.

  Luke leaned in to read the laminated sign stuck to the front door.

  Open Mondays and Thursdays.

  “When you say you know this guy, do you mean you know him, you know of him, or you plan on getting to know him if he exists?” asked Luke.

  Chris was already standing on the front lawn, cupping her hands around her mouth.