At the Edge of the Game Read online

  ‘We don’t know yet if it’s safe, do we?’

  Still nothing.

  I’m not really entirely clear what the precise nature of the problem is. As I ponder this familiar injustice, her breathing slows and deepens. Eventually I judge the time right to get out of bed, leaving her to what I take to be sleep.

  On the table she has left a book of phone numbers that includes her parents’ in Waterford. This puts me in mind to pick up the phone, to check for a dial tone. She’s probably been checking it every twenty minutes herself since we moved in here. Silly - if the radio’s not back yet, the phones are hardly going to be, are they?

  The phone is indeed dead. No dial tone at all. And yet… now that I listen more closely, what’s this I seem to hear? Whistling, oscillations, scratchings, pulses, high-pitched and yet resonant, infinitely far away, as though inside the phone receiver was the infinite void of space itself, and these faraway sounds were the wild whistling wheeps of random cosmic electromagnetism. I press the phone harder against my ear, hold my breath, the better to pick up this singular phenomenon. Crackling now, like a string of distant firecrackers, like sizzling flesh on a pan, like the unfolding membranes of a wakened pteranodon.

  Something breathes warm breath through the receiver into my ear.

  ‘Jesus!’

  The phone hits the floor.

  Helen raises her head.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing. Go back to sleep.’

  You can’t have a haunted phone, can you? I pick it up again.

  Silence. Inert.

  I set it down and look at it. It rings, once. Helen’s head jerks up again, fully awake this time. She swings out of bed.

  ‘Pick it up! Hurry!’

  I don’t want to go near it.

  She grabs it.

  ‘They’re gone. Why didn’t you answer it?’

  The lights suddenly come on. The fridge motor shakes itself into operation. The DVD display starts to blink. Sodium street lights outside wink into reddish life. Something starts tapping and rattling in the attic, something else behind the kitchen walls.

  Helen looks at me and laughs. She goes over and turns on the television. Static on every channel.

  But what a beguiling thought, the idea of a sharp image on a television screen. Suddenly, somehow, a possibility again.

  ‘Turn on the radio,’ she says.

  There are AM broadcasts, indistinct and intermittent. One of them is in the Irish language. Words wash through the interference. Rialtas…laochra…obair. At other frequencies, there are fragments of orchestral music, opera, gibbering in a tongue I can’t identify. Now patterns of beeping, like the robotic beacon of some Atlantic rock.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Still, they’re getting it working again,’ she says. There is a curious contrast of blush and pallor on her cheeks. I feel a sudden impulse to take her in my arms.

  ‘Let’s go outside,’ she says.

  The Main Street is filling. People are arriving from all directions, an impromptu street carnival under the steadily brightening, yellowing lamps. Children, skinny and ragged, but suddenly themselves again after such suffering, chase each other around the legs of adults, use the porches of shopfronts as hiding places. Parents call to them to calm down, wonder to each other where the energy is coming from. People let out whoops, shout jokes and good-humoured jibes at each other.

  ‘Jayz, Clive, you’re uglier in the lamplight than the candlelight.’

  ‘Get up outa that.’

  But it doesn’t take long for thoughts to turn to the various off-licences and pubs on the street. The IRA cleaned out a fair amount of the booze, but there are still supplies to be had. Men and women edge tentatively towards this and that front door, but Heathshade has deployed his cohort, and they show good discipline by judiciously positioning themselves along the footpaths. The crowd is being kept in line. Heathshade himself walks alone, performing a kind of militaristic meet-and-greet. He’s a popular man.

  Now some people come running through the West Gate, pulling a trailer with bottles and cans on board. They are surrounded by dozens of eager citizens. Bottles go flying, cans skitter across pavement. People push and wrestle and throw punches. Heathshade and two of his men row in, but nobody pays any attention. They are lost in the growing mob, until the crack of three gunshots. Parting the Red Sea. Remembrance stirs that these guns were used in anger not so very long ago.

  It was Heathshade, firing into the air. He fires again, shattering a street light in a fizzing shower of sparks and shards. Panicked townspeople dive to cover their children, scramble towards doors and alleyways for cover.

  A shop-front bursts, explodes in a cloud of fire and glass. A suffocating shockwave knocks us, a burst of energy channelled up the narrow street. A bomb? IRA revenge? Where are they? Roof tiles avalanching all around us.

  ‘Helen!’

  ‘I’m okay. Are you?’

  I drag her to our door.

  ‘I smell gas,’she says. ‘That was gas. ‘

  We turn and hurry the other way, pushing past stunned people gaping without comprehension.

  Just as we reach the West Gate, there’s another crunching burst of noise and fire. Domino effect. The next shop along has gone up.

  Around the corner, out of sight. Kick in the door of a chip shop. Fat-smelling back room with a fake-leather sofa.

  I help Helen get into a comfortable position on it. She’s wheezing, heaving. Every time she puts her hand to her stomach I get a lurching sensation.

  ‘You all right?’

  She keeps her eyes shut but squeezes my hand in a gesture of reassurance that does nothing to reassure me. I stand up to go close the door. Must have stood up too fast. Dizzy. Spots in my eyes. Grab the shop counter.

  The door slams, rattling the glass, shaking old plaster from the ceiling. Didn’t mean to do that.

  Totter into the back room. Agitated trembling develops into something more vigorous, taxing on aching neck and back, balling tight fists, making head throb, cramping a belly already hollow.

  Foraging has become necessary on this journey. Berries, roots and nuts, lizards, rabbits and rats have kept us going. Ammatas’ women can eke a palatable broth out of bones and entrails, and nothing is wasted. Roxalana, wife of Ammatas, is a noble woman whose benevolent smile is never far away. Ammatas, I can see, derives his strength from her. He gives orders, and speaks with great certainty on all matters, but she is the heart of the group. The children - those of her weaker sister Anahita as well as her own - run to her for comfort, call her name when they encounter in their wanderings a grove promising for fruit-gathering, a patch of thriving wheat, a clean pool of fresh water.

  Fifty miles east of Carthage I had occasion to use the force weapon to fend off a swarm of Shapes that encircled our firelit camp. I was hailed that night as the family’s saviour. Ammatas saluted me in the manner customary to his tribe. Roxalana took my hands in hers and called me son, called Helen daughter.

  The next day we came upon the Paradise of Grasse, ancient palace complex of the Numidian kings. The local population had descended on the Paradise in desperation. They overpowered the extravagantly uniformed keepers, who had called on them in the name of the Royal House to desist from despoiling that which belonged alone to the monarch and not to the people. They were imprisoned in the palace cellars. The people slept in the great halls each night. By the time we arrived, they had already fished the many lakes and pools to exhaustion. The groves had been stripped of all fruit. Now the starving people were reduced to boiling flowers and tree bark. Factions had emerged whose battles over rights of access to the fountains, now the only source of fresh water, had left many dead and maimed. We paused only a few hours to rest in the shade of some hazel trees. The next day, we passed through deserted, smouldering Carthage without encountering a single soul still living.

  Now we were in hilly country, the forests of which had been reduced to ash. Stars hit the earth with
greater frequency every day, and this region had been more heavily hit than most. We came across a doe on the roadway. It stood with shaking legs as it struggled to give birth to its fawn. Already weakened by starvation, the burden of labour deprived the beast of the strength to flee from us. Ammatas stepped up to it and sliced open its throat. He pulled the weakly struggling fawn free from its mother’s womb and twisted its head until its neck snapped. So it was that we filled our bellies just when it seemed as though we would never see another morsel of real food. The women salted the meat left over after our happy feast and packed it for the journey.

  Now again we are grievously short of food. At least the many streams that flow from the hills still run cold and fresh. We are travelling through forest that has so far been spared. But for all the nuts and roots we gather, our bellies shrink each day.

  We emerge from the forest into a sunken valley of spongy soil covered with thickly growing tall grasses. A herd of okapi grazes along the rocky southern slope. Ammatas orders the family to halt. He beckons me to accompany him forward through the grasses. To within spear-throwing distance of the okapi we crawl. Ammatas awaits the right moment and then, with agility belying his old age, leaps to his feet and in the same movement hurls his spear in the direction of the herd. The point strikes a juvenile male in the flank. The rest of the herd scatters. Ammatas cries to me to follow him. He rushes after the wounded beast and, before I have caught up, grabs it and wrestles it to the ground. I fall upon the animal and keep my weight upon it as Ammatas squeezes the life out of it.

  We return to the family triumphant. We throw the carcass into the back of the cart, and the children gaze upon it with delight. Finding no patch of ground fit to halt and roast the okapi, we climb a steep slope to the open plain. There we behold, far in the distance, the battling stone forms of the great edifices of Augustine and Sidi Bou Merouan. We have reached Hippo Regius.

  It is clear that the city - no more than Carthage was - is no refuge. Smoke rises from within its walls. We can see that it is still peopled. Something about the disorder of the place tells us that the destruction wrought within is the work of man and not any other agency.

  Beyond Hippo’s northern wall the Wadi Seybouse plunges over a system of stepped precipices and collects into a small lake - known to some as Hipponensis Sinus - before finally going over the edge of the African Wall itself. Such is the inordinate distance downward to the Salt Desert that the Seybouse waters disperse into spreading clouds of vapour long before reaching it.

  We judge it best not to approach the city. Though it is only mid-afternoon we set up camp and roast the okapi on a spit. It is good indeed to eat flesh, but I worry that the smell might draw city residents towards us. After the sun has set, stars trail across overhead, always from the east. An impact flashes far to the north, in the Salt Desert, and soon after the ground trembles. Now there is another flash below the western horizon. The night advances, and the bombardment continues. There is a major impact somewhere to the west of us, and this time the ground heaves violently. Crashing sounds and cries in the distance suggest that buildings are collapsing in Hippo. The children clutch their parents, but cannot be comforted. A flame streaks over us, emitting a shrieking sound, and bursts upon the higher Edough slopes. The forest all around the impact is afire.

  Dawn has brought the sunlight back to us, but the terrible bombardment has not stopped. The earth shakes continuously now. Before the sun has even freed itself of the horizon, Hippo is struck directly, vaporised in an enormous explosion. There is no sound, no movement, not even thought. I think to myself that I am flying upon the shockwave, arcing with yaw and pitch. My crash to the ground, when it comes, brings no pain at all.

  The gale is subsiding, the air cooling. The grass crackles and smokes. I can see no one else. The smoke clears to the west and I behold a changed scene. Hippo Regius is gone, replaced by a huge, glowing hole. Hipponensis Sinus is doubled in size, but now contains not water but molten rock that drains over the African Wall and down, solidifying in the air, towards the lifeless desert. Pain begins to emanate from my torn legs and arms. Sound returns to my ears.

  Somewhere to the south, the bright flash of a crashing star, followed by another. I watch the resultant double shockwave cross the sky, spreading ripples propagating through the golden dawn clouds, only to be met by another wave travelling in the opposite direction. The clouds writhe like the skin of a tortured animal as they contort to display the interference pattern born of the mutual wave destruction. The violently perturbed atmosphere lenses the sun momentarily and burns my eyes right out of my head. I am blind, stumbling around, howling for Helen.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Blind! I’m blind!’

  ‘Calm down, for God’s sake. You’re not blind. Open your eyes. See?’

  I see.

  It’s lashing rain outside. Dirty, laden, evil rain that absorbs the daylight, leaves everything in the most dispiriting gloom. This is no smoky African escarpment.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  The chip shop suddenly comes back to mind.

  ‘Jesus. Must be delayed shock.’

  I’m soaked through with cold sweat.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  I look at her, scanning her face and body for signs of trauma.

  ‘Are you okay? I thought in the chip shop that something bad was going to happen… with the baby.’

  ‘Chip shop?’

  ‘The West Gate. How did we get back here anyway?’

  ‘George, you’re not making any sense.’

  ‘The explosions… hey – is it safe to be in here?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  I grapple with the sudden notion that I’m not really awake.

  ‘What day is today?’

  She thinks for a moment. ‘Monday.’

  Okay, at least that seems right. ‘And yesterday the electricity came back on.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So then we shouldn’t be in here, should we? It’s not safe.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘The gas explosions. This house might collapse.’

  ‘You were dreaming, George.’

  ‘The mudslide.’ My voice shakes, which has the effect of unnerving me even more. ‘The executions. Did they happen?’

  ‘Executions? Of who?’

  ‘What about, you know, the sex?’

  She laughs, deciding finally to be amused rather than concerned. ‘With me, you mean? Oh, look. Enough. Lie back and relax. I’ll get you a cup of tea. You’ve obviously had a bad night. A mostly bad night.’ She switches on the radio. ‘And listen to this…’

  A nasally distinct voice comes through loudly.

  ‘…comprising East Waterford, South Tipperary, South Kilkenny and South Wexford. Teams are working throughout the region to restore power and services. Remain in your home and wait for emergency services to reach your area.’

  ‘Is this real?’

  ‘Listen,’ she says. ‘It’s a repeating message.’

  ‘Like the IRA one.’

  ‘Listen.’

  ‘Make contact with the authorities by phone or radio if possible, or display SOS signals that can be seen from the air. Conserve food and fuel, and boil mains water for at least twenty minutes before drinking it. Relief shipments are arriving at Waterford port, and are being made ready for distribution in towns and villages across the region. Tune into this frequency regularly for information updates… This is a recorded message from the military authority in Waterford City, mandated under the terms of the Emergency Powers Act to govern the south-east region, comprising East Waterford, South Tipperary, South Kilkenny and South Wexford…’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘That’s all,’ she says. ‘But we got a call to the door a few minutes ago, while you were still sleeping.’ A jibe? ‘There’s a meeting in the Town Hall in twenty minutes. I presume you want to go.’

  Already people are streaming down the street. She’s ke
en to get a good position there so she hurries me into my clothes.

  The Unquiet Spirit guided itself back into Earth's atmosphere. It glided over the South Pole and dropped to a subsonic velocity a few hundred kilometres away from the harbour where the iceberg was moored. I landed the ship on the beach downhill from where Dexter had set up his habitation. I emerged, shading my eyes with my hands, into the bright daylight. There was no sign of Dexter. I had expected him to appear as soon as he was aware of my approach. I wandered around aimlessly for a while, not sure what to do.

  I found Cat and the alien triped inside the habitat, cowering nervously under the bunk. Cat's legs were tucked underneath his body, his head upright, eyes wide open and alert. The triped sat half hidden behind Cat, huge eyes shining through the darkness under the bunk. I approached them slowly, giving them time to recognise me. Finally sure it was me, Cat crawled out of his hiding place and made a big show of stretching and yawning. The triped followed cautiously some moments later. I brought them back to the ship and gave them both something to eat.

  Dexter still had not shown up. I spotted the flatboat adrift out in the waters of the harbour, halfway between the shore and the edge of the iceberg. I had the computer run an inventory of the vessel’s swarm of probes, half of which I had left with Dexter for his work on the iceberg. It transpired that three were in active mode. I accessed their signals. The first was in one of the tunnels Dexter had cut through the ice. The second probe was somewhere dark, according to its optical signal. I activated the probe’s powerful lamp and saw that it hovered in a chamber whose decrepit metallic walls were covered with pipes, ducts and compartments. On the floor of the chamber were what appeared to be the remains of pieces of wooden furniture. I realised that I was looking at the interior of the seaship trapped inside the ice.

  The optical signal of the third probe also showed darkness. Again, I switched on the probe’s lamp and beheld a much larger compartment inside the ancient ship. There was considerably more debris on the floor, though the dark, shifting shadows cast by the lamp made it difficult to determine what exactly I was looking at. Two points of faint light shone back at the probe from the far wall. I directed the probe forward slowly to investigate. White in the harsh light of the probe, Dexter’s face resolved itself. It was his wide-open eyes that reflected the probe’s beam. He sat on the floor, back against the wall. He did not move. I guided the probe closer to him. It was then that I realised that he was dead.