October 28

MY OLD CURTAIN FILTERS the early rose-orange sun, but it’s cold rose-orange, not warm rose-orange. The wind and waves sound busy this morning, rather than relentless, like last night. I hear Zimbra coming up the stairs, and here he is, nosing his way into my room and wagging his tail to say good morning. Strange how he always knows when I’m awake. I’m aware I’ve forgotten something, something deeply unpleasant. What was it? Brendan. I wonder how he is this morning. I hope he’s being looked after. Only five years ago I could have booked myself a seat on an airplane, driven to the airport, flown over to Bristol, and within the hour been at Tintagel Gated Village. Now it’s like a trip to the moon …

What can’t be helped can’t be helped. I’ve jobs to be doing. I get out of bed like an old lady, carefully, open the curtains and open my window. Dunmanus Bay’s still a bit choppy, but I see a sailboat—probably Aileen Jones, out checking her lobster pots. The sea holly and myrtle at the end of the garden are being buffeted; back they bend towards the cottage, then spring up, then bend back towards the cottage. This means something. Something I’m missing, even though it’s there in front of me, as plain as day.

It’s an east wind, blowing from England; from Hinkley Point.

RADIO POC ISN’T broadcasting this morning; there’s just a looped message saying the station is off the air today for operational reasons. So I switch to JKFM and leave it playing the Modern Jazz Quartet as I quarter an apple for my breakfast and heat up a couple of potato cakes for Rafiq. Soon he smells the garlic and clops down the stairs in his makeshift dressing gown and he tells me about a zipwire some of the older village boys are planning up in Five Acre Wood. After we’ve eaten I feed the chickens, water the pumpkins in the polytunnel, make a few days’ worth of dog biscuits from oats, husk, and mutton fat, and sharpen the hair scissors while Rafiq cleans our drinking-water tub, refills it by taking the long hosepipe up to the spring, then goes down to the pier with his fishing rod. Zimbra joins him. Later he comes back with a pollack and a mackerel. Rafiq has bits of memories of fishing in sunny blue water before he came to Ireland, he says, and Declan O’Daly says the boy’s a natural angler—luckily for his and Lorelei’s diet, as they only eat meat once a month, at most. I’ll bake the fish for dinner tonight, and serve them up with mashed swede. I make a pot of mint tea and start cutting Rafiq’s hair. He’s long overdue a trim and it’ll be headlice season at school soon. “I saw Aileen Jones through my telescope earlier,” he says. “Out on the bay in the Lookfar, checking her lobster pot.”

“That’s great,” I say, “but I hope you were careful—”

“—not to point it at the sun,” he says. “ ’Course I didn’t, Holly. I’m not a total doofus, y’know?”

“Nobody’s saying you’re even a partial doofus,” I tell him mildly. “It’s just once you’re a parent, a sort of … accident detector switches on, and never switches off. You’ll see, one day, if you’re ever a father.”

“Euuuyyyuckh” is what Rafiq thinks of that prospect.

“Hold still. Lol should be doing this. She’s the better stylist.”

“No way! Lol’d make me look like a boy in Five-star Chongqing.”

“Like a boy in what?”

“Five-star Chongqing. They’re Chinese. All the girls fancy them.”

And dream dreams of lives of plenty in Shanghai, I don’t doubt. They say there are only two women to every three men in China ’cause of selective feticide, and when the Lease Lands were new and buses still ran to Cork, my relatives there told me about local girls being recruited as “China brides” and sailing away to full stomachs, 24/7 electricity, and Happy Ever After. I was old enough to have my doubts about the recruiting agencies’ testimonials. I switch the radio from JKFM to RTÉ in case there’s a report about Hinkley, which went unmentioned on the eight A.M. news. Zimbra comes and puts his head on Rafiq’s lap and looks up at the boy. Rafiq musses his head. The RTÉ announcer reads the birth notices, where people thread the program the names of new babies, birthweights, the parents’ names, parishes, and counties. I like hearing them. Christ knows these kids’ lives won’t be easy, especially for the majority who are born beyond the Pale or the Cork Cordon, but each name feels like a tiny light held up against the Endarkenment.

I snip a bit more around Rafiq’s right ear to match his left.

I snip off too much, so now have to snip around his left.

“I wish all this never had to change,” says Rafiq, unexpectedly.

I’m pleased he’s content and sad that a kid so young knows that nothing lasts. “Change is sort of hardwired into the world.”

The boy asks, “What does ‘hardwired’ mean?”

“A computer phrase from the old days. I just mean … what’s real changes. If life didn’t change, it wouldn’t be life, it’d be a photograph.” I snip the hairs up his neck. “Even photos change, mind. They fade.”

We say nothing for a bit. I accidentally spike the bit between the tendons on Rafiq’s neck and he goes, “Ouch,” and I say, “Sorry,” and he says, “No bother,” like an Irishman. Crunchie, a semiwild tomcat I named after a long-ago chocolate bar, strolls across the kitchen windowsill. Zimbra notices, but can’t be bothered to make a fuss. Rafiq asks, “Holly, d’you think Cork University’ll be open again by the time I’m eighteen?”

I love him too much to puncture his dreams. “Possibly. Why?”

“ ’Cause I want to be an engineer when I grow up.”

“Good. Civilization needs more engineers.”

“Mr. Murnane said we need to fix stuff, build stuff, move stuff, like oil states do, but do it all without oil.”

And start forty years ago, I think. “He’s right.” I pull up a chair in front of Rafiq. “Lower your head, I’ll do your fringe.”

I lift up his fringe with a comb and snip off the hair that shows through its teeth, leaving a centimeter. I’m getting better at this. Then I see Rafiq’s got this strange intense look on his face; it makes me stop. I turn the radio down to a mumble. “What is it, Raf love?”

He looks like he’s trying to catch a far-off sound. Then he looks at the window. Crunchie’s gone. “I remember someone cutting my hair. A woman. I can’t see her face, but she’s talking Arabic.”

I lean back and lower the scissors. “One of your sisters, perhaps? Someone must’ve cut your hair before you were five.”

“Was my hair short when I got here?”

“I don’t remember it being long. You were half starved, half drowned, then you nearly died of hypothermia. The state of your hair didn’t register. But this woman, Raf—can you see her face?” Rafiq scrunches up his face. “It’s like, if I don’t look, I see her, but if I look at her, her face melts away. When I dream, I sometimes see her, but when I wake up, the faces’ve gone again, leaving just the name, like. One was Assia, I think she’s my aunt … or maybe a sister. Maybe it’s her with the scissors. Hamza and Ismail, they were my brothers, on the boat.” I’ve heard this a few times, but I don’t interrupt Rafiq when he’s in the mood to study the surviving fragments of his life before Ireland. “Hamza was funny, and Ismail wasn’t. There were so many men on the boat—we were all jammed up with each other. There were no women, and only one other boy, but he was a Berber and I didn’t understand his Arabic very well. Most of the passengers were seasick, but I was okay. We all went to the toilet over the side. Ismail said we were going to Norway. I said, ‘What’s Norway?’ and Ismail said it’s a safe place where we could earn money, where they didn’t have Ebola and nobody tried to shoot you … That sounded good, but the days and nights on the boat were bad.” Rafiq’s frown deepens. “Then we saw lights across the water, down a long bay, it was night, and there was a big fight. Hamza was saying to the captain in Arabic, ‘It can’t be Norway,’ and the captain was saying, ‘Why would I lie to you?’ and Hamza had a sort of compass in his hand, saying, ‘Look, we’re not north enough,’ and the captain threw it over the side of the boat and Hamza told the others, ‘He’s lying to us to save fuel. Those lights aren’t Norway, it’s somewhere else!’ Then all the shouting began, and then the guns were going off, and …” Rafiq’s eyes and voice are hollow. “That’s where I am for most of my nightmares. We’re all jammed in too tight …”

I remember how the Horologists could redact bad memories, and wish I could grant Rafiq the same mercy. Or not, I dunno.

“… and most times it’s like it was, with Hamza throwing a ring into the water, telling me, ‘We’ll swim together,’ and he throws me into the water first, but then he never follows. And that’s all I have.” Rafiq dabs his eyes on the back of his hand. “I’ve forgotten everything else. My own family. Their faces.”

“Owain and Yvette Richie of Lifford, up in County Donegal,” says the radio guy, “announce the birth of their daughter Keziah—a dainty but perfect six pounds … Welcome aboard, Keziah.”

“You were five or six, Raf. When you washed up on the rocks below you were in shock, you had hypothermia, you’d seen slaughter at close quarters, you’d drifted for heaven only knows how long in the cold Atlantic, you were alone. You’re not a forgetter, you’re a survivor. I think it’s a miracle you remember anything at all.”

Rafiq takes a clipping of his own hair, fallen onto his thigh, and rubs it moodily between his finger and thumb. I think back to that spring night. It was calm and warm for April, which probably saved Rafiq’s life. Aoife and Örvar had only died the autumn before, and Lorelei was a mess. So was I, but I had to pretend not to be, for Lorelei’s sake. I was speaking with my friend Gwyn on my tab in my chair when this face appeared at the door, staring in like a drowned ghost. I didn’t have Zimbra yet, so no dog scared him off. Once I’d recovered, I opened the door and got him inside. Where he puked up a liter of seawater. The boy was soaked and shivering and didn’t understand English, or seemed not to. We still had fuel for our boiler at that time, just about, but I understood enough about hypothermia to know a hot bath can trigger arrhythmia and possibly a cardiac arrest, so I got him out of his wet clothes and sat him by the fire wrapped in blankets. He was still shivering, which was another hopeful sign.

Lorelei had woken up by this point, and was making a cup of warm ginger drink for the boy from the sea. I threaded Dr. Kumar but she was busy at Bantry helping with an outbreak of Ratflu, so we were on our own for a couple more days. Our young visitor was feverish, malnourished, and suffered from terrible dreams, but after about a week we, with Mo’s and Branna O’Daly’s help, had nursed him back to relative health. We’d worked out his name was Rafiq by that stage, but where had he come from? Maps didn’t work so Mo Netsourced “Hello” in all the dialects a dark-skinned Asylumite might speak: Moroccan Arabic rang the bell. With Mo’s help, Lorelei studied the language from Net tutorials and became Rafiq’s first English teacher, pulling herself out of mourning for the first time. When an unsmiling Stability officer arrived with Martin, our mayor, to inspect the illegal immigrant about a month later, Rafiq was capable of stringing together basic English sentences.

“The law says he has to be deported,” stated the Stability officer.

Feeling sick, I asked where he’d be deported to, and how.

“Not your problem, Miss Sykes,” stated the Stability officer.

So I asked if Rafiq’d be driven outside the Cordon and dumped like an unwanted dog, ’cause that’s the impression I was getting.

“Not your problem, Miss Sykes,” said the Stability officer.

I asked how Rafiq could legally stay on Sheep’s Head.

“Formal adoption by an Irish citizen,” stated the Stability officer.

Thanking my younger self for acquiring Irish citizenship, I heard myself say that I hereby wished to adopt Rafiq.

“It’s another ration box for your village to fill,” stated the Stability officer. “You’ll need permission from your local mayor.”

Martin read my face and said, “Aye, she has it.”

“And you’d need authorization from a Stability officer of levelfive status or above. Like me, for example.” He ran his tongue along between his front teeth and his closed lips. We all looked at Rafiq, who somehow sensed that his future—his life—was hanging in the balance. All I could think of to say to the Stability officer was “Please.”

The Stability officer unzipped a folder he’d had tucked inside his jacket all along. “I have children too,” he stated.

“AND LAST BUT by no measure least,” mumbles the radio, “to Jer and Maggs Tubridy of Ballintober, Roscommon, a boy, Hector Ryan, weighing in at a whopping eight pounds and ten ounces! Top job, Maggs, and congratulations to all three of you.” Rafiq gives me a look to say he’s sorry he went a bit morbid on me, and I give my adopted grandson a look to say there’s nothing to be sorry about, and get back to cutting the wild whorl of hair about his crown. What little evidence we have suggests Rafiq’s parents are dead, and if they’re not, I don’t know how they’ll ever discover their son’s fate—both the African Net and the Moroccan state had pretty much ceased to exist by the time Rafiq arrived at Dooneen Cottage. But now he’s here, Rafiq’s a part of my family. While I’m alive I’ll look after him the best I can.

The RTÉ news theme comes on, and I turn it up a little.

“Good morning, this is Ruth O’Mally with the RTÉ News at ten o’clock, Saturday, the twenty-eighth of October, 2043.” The familiar news fanfare jingle fades. “At a news conference at Leinster House this morning, the Stability Taoiseach Éamon Kingston confirmed that the Pearl Occident Company has unilaterally withdrawn from the Lease Lands Agreement of 2028, which granted the Chinese consortium trading rights with Cork City and West Cork Enterprise Zone, known as the Lease Lands.”

I’ve dropped the scissors, but all I can do is stare at the radio.

“A Stability spokesman in Cork confirms that control of the Ringaskiddy Concession was returned to Irish authorities at oh four hundred hours this morning, when a POC container vessel embarked with a People’s Liberation Navy frigate escort. The Taoiseach told the assembled journalists that the POC’s withdrawal had been kept secret to ensure a smooth handover of authority, and stated that the POC’s decision has been brought about by questions of profitability. Taoiseach Éamon Kingston added that in no way can the POC’s withdrawal be linked to the security situation, which remains stable in all thirty-four counties. Nor is the decision of the Chinese linked to radiation leaks from the Hinkley Point site in north Devon.”

There’s more news, but I’m no longer listening.

Hens cluck, croon, and crongle in their enclosure.

“Holly?” Rafiq’s scared. “What’s ‘unilaterally withdrawn’?”

Consequences spin off, but one thumps me: Rafiq’s insulin.

“DA’S SAYING IT’LL be okay,” Izzy O’Daly tells us, “and that Stability’ll just keep the Cordon intact, where it is now.” Izzy and Lorelei came running back across the fields from Knockroe Farm and found Rafiq, Zimbra, and me up in Mo’s tidy kitchen. Mo’d heard the same RTÉ report as us, and we’ve been telling Rafiq that not much’ll change, only Chinese imported goods’ll be a little trickier to get hold of than before. The ration boxes will still be delivered by Stability every week, and provision will still be made for special medicines. Rafiq’s reassured, or pretends to be. Declan O’Daly gave Izzy and Lorelei an equally upbeat assessment. “Da says,” Izzy goes on, “that the Cordon was a fifteen-foot razor-wire fence before ten o’clock and it still is after ten o’clock, and there’s no reason for the Stability troops to abandon their posts.”

“Your dad’s a very wise man,” I tell Izzy.

Izzy nods. “Da ’n’ Max’ve gone into town to check on my aunt.”

“Fair play to Declan now,” says Mo. “Kids, if you’d give Zimbra a run in the garden, I’ll make pancakes. Maybe I’ve a dusting of cocoa powder left somewhere. Go on, give Holly and me a little space, hey?”

Once they’re out, a grim and anxious Mo tries to thread friends in Bantry, where the Cordon’s westernmost garrison is stationed. Calls to Bantry normally get threaded without trouble, but today there isn’t even an error message. “I’ve got this nasty feeling,” Mo stares at the blank screen, “that we’ve kept our Net access as long as we have because our threads were routed via the server at Ringaskiddy, and now the Chinese have gone … it’s over.”

I feel as if someone’s died. “No more Net? Ever?”

Mo says, “I might be wrong,” but her face says, No, never.

For most of my life, the world shrank and technology progressed; this was the natural order of things. Few of us clocked on that “the natural order of things” is entirely man-made, and that a world that kept expanding as technology regressed was not only possible but waiting in the wings. Outside, the kids’re playing with a frisbee older than any of them—look closely, you’ll see the phantom outline of the London 2012 Olympics logo. Aoife spent her pocket money on it. It was a hot day on the beach at Broadstairs. Izzy’s showing Rafiq how you step forward and release the frisbee in one fluid motion. I wonder if they’re all putting on a brave face about the end of the Lease Lands, and that really they’re as scared as we are by the threat of gangs, militiamen, land pirates, Jackdaws and God knows what streaming through the Cordon. Zimbra retrieves the frisbee and Rafiq does a better throw, lifted by the wind. Lorelei has to spring up high to catch it, revealing a glimpse of shapely midriff. “Medicine for the chronically ill is one worry,” I speak my thoughts aloud, “but what kind of life will women have, if things carry on the way they are? What if Dónal Boyce is the best future the girls in Lol’s class can hope for? Men are always men, I know, but at least during our lives, women have gathered a sort of arsenal of legal rights. But only because, law by law, shifting attitude by shifting attitude, our society became more civilized. Now I’m scared the Endarkenment’ll sweep all that away. I’m scared that Lol’ll just be some bonehead’s slave, stuck in some wintry, hungry, bleak, lawless, Gaelic-flavored Saudi Arabia.”

Lorelei throws the frisbee, but the east wind biffs it off course into Mo’s wall of camellias.

“Pancakes,” says Mo. “I’ll measure the flour and you crack a few eggs. Six should be enough for the five of us?”

• • •

“WHAT’S THAT SOUND?” asks Izzy O’Daly, half an hour later. Mo’s kitchen table is strewn with the wreckage of lunch. Mo, of course, did unearth a small tub of cocoa powder from one of her bottomless hidden nooks. It must be a year since the last square of waxy Russian chocolate appeared in the ration boxes. Neither me nor Mo had any ourselves, but watching the kids as they ate their chocolate-laced lunch was a sight more delicious than the taste. “There,” says Izzy, “that … crackly noise. Didn’t you hear it?” She looks anxious.

“Raf’s stomach, probably,” says Lorelei.

“Sure I only had one more than you,” objects Rafiq. “And—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a growing boy, we know,” says his sister. “Growing into a total pancake monster.”

“There,” says Izzy, making a shush gesture. “Hear it?”

We listen. Like the old woman I am, I say, “I can’t hear—”

Zimbra leaps up, whining, at the door. Rafiq tells him, “Shush, Zimbra!”

The dog shushes, and—there. A spiky, sickening sequence of bangs. I look at Mo and Mo nods back: “Gunfire.”

We rush out onto Mo’s scrubby, dandelion-dotted lawn. The wind’s still from the east and it buffets our ears but now another burst of automatic fire is quite distinct and not far away. Its echo reaches us a couple of seconds later from Mizen Head across the water.

“Isn’t it coming from Kilcrannog?” asks Lorelei.

Izzy’s voice is shaky. “Dad went into the village.”

“The Cordon can’t have fallen already,” I blurt, wishing I could stuff the words back in, ’cause by saying it, I feel I’ve helped to make it real. Zimbra is snarling towards the town.

“I’d better get back to the farm,” says Izzy.

Mo and I exchange a look. “Maybe, Izzy,” Mo says, “until we know what we’re dealing with, your parents’d prefer you to lie low.”

Then we hear the noise of jeeps, this side of town, driving along the main lane. More than one or two, by the sound of it.

“Must be Stability,” says Rafiq. “Only they have diesel. Right?”

“Speaking as a mum,” I say to Izzy, “I really think you ought—”

“I—I—I’ll stay hidden, I’ll be careful, I promise.” Izzy swallows, and then she’s gone, vanished through a gap in the tall wall of fuchsia.

I hardly have time to dismiss the unpleasant feeling that I’ve just seen Izzy O’Daly for the final time before we notice the timbre of the jeeps has changed, from fast and furious to cautious and growly.

“I think one of the jeeps is coming down our track,” says Lorelei.

Vaguely, I wonder if this blustery autumn day is going to be my last. But not the kids. Not the kids. Mo’s had the same thought: “Lorelei, Rafiq, listen. Just on the off chance this is a militia unit and not Stability, we need you to get Zimbra to safety.”

Rafiq, who still has some cocoa powder in the corner of his lips, is appalled. “But Zim and me are the bodyguards!”

I see Mo’s logic: “If it’s militiamen, they’ll shoot Zim on sight before they even start talking to us. It’s how they work.”

Lorelei’s scared, which she should be. “But what’ll you do, Gran?”

“Mo and I’ll talk to them. We’re tough old birds. But please”—we hear a jeep engine roar in a low gear, sickeningly near—“both of you, go. It’s what your parents would be saying. Go!”

Rafiq’s eyes are still wide, but he nods. We hear brambles scraping against metal sides and small branches being snapped off. Lorelei feels disloyal going, but I mouth “Please” and she nods. “C’mon, Raf, Gran’s counting on us. We can hide him at the sheep bothy above the White Strand. C’mon, Zim. Zimbra. Come on!”

Our spooked, wise dog looks at me, puzzled.

“Go!” I shoo him. “Look after Lol and Raf! Go!”

Reluctantly, Zimbra allows himself to be pulled off and the three are clear of Mo’s garden and over the garden wall behind the polytunnel. We have a wait of about ten seconds before a Stability jeep barges its way through the overgrown track and up onto Mo’s drive, spitting stones. A second jeep appears a few seconds later. The word Stability is stenciled along the side. The forces of law and order. So why do I feel like an injured bird found by a cat?

• • •

YOUNG MEN CLIMB out, four from each vehicle. Even I can tell they’re not Stability; their uniforms are improvised, they carry mismatched handguns, automatic weapons, crossbows, grenades, and knives, and they move like raiders, not trained soldiers. Mo and I stand side by side, but they walk past us as if we’re invisible. One, perhaps the leader, holds back and watches the bungalow as the others approach it, guns out and ready. He’s scrawny, tattooed, maybe thirty, wears a green beret of military origin, a flak jacket, like Ed used to wear in Iraq, and the winged figure off a Rolls-Royce around his neck. “Anyone else at home, old lady?”

Mo asks him, “What’s the story here, young man?”

“If anyone’s hiding in there, they’ll not be coming out alive. That’s the story here.”

“There’s nobody else here,” I tell him. “Put those guns away before somebody gets hurt, f’Chrissakes.”

He reads me. “Old lady says it’s all clear,” he calls to the others. “If she’s lying, shoot to kill. Any blood’s on her hands now.”

Five militiamen go inside, while two others walk around the outside of the bungalow. Lorelei, Rafiq, and Zimbra should be across the neighboring field by now. The strip of hawthorn should hide them from then on. The leader takes a few steps back and examines Mo’s roof. He jumps onto the patio wall to get a better view.

“Will you please tell us,” says Mo, “what you want?”

Inside Mo’s bungalow, a door slams. Below, in their coop, my surviving chickens cluck. Over in O’Daly’s pasture, a cow lows. From the road to the end of Sheep’s Head, more jeeps roar. A militiaman emerges from Mo’s shed, calling out, “Found a ladder in here, Hood. Shall I bring it out?”

“Yep,” says the apparent leader. “It’ll save unloading ours.”

The five men now reemerge from Mo’s bungalow. “All clear inside, Hood,” says a bearded giant. “Blankets and food, but there’s better in the village store.”

I look at Mo: Does this mean they killed people in Kilcrannog?

Militiamen kill. It’s how they carry on being militiamen.

“We’ll just take the panels, then,” says Hood, telling us, “Your lucky day, old ladies. Wyatt, Moog, the honor is yours.”

Panels? Two of the men, one badly scarred by Ratflu, prop the ladder against the end gable of the bungalow. Up they climb, and we see what they want. “No,” says Mo. “You can’t take my solar panels!”

“Easier’n you’d think, old lady,” says the bearded giant, holding the ladder steady. “One pair o’ bolt cutters, lower her down gently, job’s done. We’ve done it a hundred times, like.”

“I need my panels for light,” protests Mo, “and for my tab!”

“Seven days from now,” Hood predicts, “you’ll be praying for darkness. It’ll be your only protection ’gainst the Jackdaws. Look on it as a favor we’re doing you. And you won’t be needing your tabs anymore, neither. No more Net for the Lease Lands. The good old days are good and gone, old lady. Winter’s coming.”

“You call yourself ‘Hood,’ ” Mo tells him, “but it’s ‘Robbing Hood,’ not Robin Hood, from where I’m standing. Would you treat your elderly relatives like this?”

“Number one is to survive,” answers Hood, watching the men on the roof. “They’re all dead, like my parents. They had a better life than I did, mind. So did you. Your power stations, your cars, your creature comforts. Well, you lived too long. The bill’s due. Today,” up on the roof the bolt is cut on the first panel, “you start to pay. Think of us as the bailiffs.”

“But it wasn’t us, personally, who trashed the world,” says Mo. “It was the system. We couldn’t change it.”

“Then it’s not us, personally, taking your panels,” says Hood. “It’s the system. We can’t change it.”

I hear the O’Dalys’ dog barking, three fields away. I pray Izzy’s okay, and that these men with guns don’t molest the girls. “What’ll you do with the panels?” I ask.

“The mayor of Kenmare,” says Hood, as a couple of his men carry the first of Mo’s panels over to the jeep, “he’s building himself quite a fastness. Big walls. A little Cordon of his own, with surveillance cameras, lights. Pays food and diesel for solar panels.” A bolt affixing Mo’s second solar panel is cut. “These and the ones from the house below”—he nods at my cottage—“are going to him.”

Mo’s quicker than me: “My neighbor has no solar panels.”

“Someone’s telling porkies,” singsongs the bearded giant. “Mr. Drone says they do, and Mr. Drone never lies.”

“That drone yesterday was yours?” I ask, as if it’ll help.

“Stability finds the booty,” says the giant, “we go ’n’ get it. Don’t look so gobboed, old lady. Stability’s just another clan o’ militia, nowadays. Specially now the Chinks’ve gone.”

I imagine my mother saying, It’s “Chinese,” not “Chinks.”

Mo asks, “What gives you the right to take our property?”

“Guns gives us the right,” says Hood. “Plain ’n’ simple.”

“So you’re reinstating the law of the jungle?” asks Mo.

“You were bringing it back, every time you filled your tank.”

Mo stabs the ground with her stick. “A thief, a thug, and a killer!”

He considers this, stroking his eyebrow ring. “Killer: When it’s kill or be killed, yeah, I am. Thug: We all have our moments, old lady. Thief: Actually, I’m a trader, too, like. You give me your solar panels—I’ll give you glad tidings.” He reaches into his pocket and brings out two short white tubes. I’m so relieved it’s not a gun I extend my hand when he holds them out. I stare at the pill canisters, at their skull and crossbones, their Russian writing. Hood’s voice is less mocking now. “They’re a way out. If the Jackdaws come, or Ratflu breaks out, or whatever, and there’s no doctor. Instant antiemetic,” he says, “and enough pentobarbital for a dignified ending in thirty minutes. We call ’em huckleberries. You drift away painless, like. Childproof container, too.”

“Mine’s going into the cesshole,” says Mo.

“Give it back, then,” Hood says. “There’s plenty who’ll want one.” Mo’s second solar panel’s off the roof and is being carried past us to the jeep. I slip both canisters into my pocket: Hood notices and gives me a conspiratorial look I ignore. “Anyone in the house down below,” he nods at the cottage, “the lads need to know about?”

With acute retrospective envy, I remember how Marinus could “suasion” people into doing his bidding. All I have is language. “Mr. Hood. My grandson’s got diabetes. He controls it with an insulin pump that needs recharging every few days. If you take the solar panels, you’ll be killing him. Please.”

Up the hill, sheep bleat, oblivious to human empires rising and falling. “That’s bad luck, old lady, but your grandson’s born into the Age of Bad Luck. He was killed by a bossman in Shanghai who figured, ‘The West Cork Lease Lands ain’t paying their way.’ Even if we left your panels on your roof, they’d be Jackdawed off in seven days.”

Civilization’s like the economy, or Tinkerbell: If people stop believing it’s real, it dies. Mo asks, “How do you sleep at night?”

“Number one is to survive,” Hood repeats.

“That’s no answer,” snorts my neighbor. “That’s a huckleberry you force-feed to what’s left of your conscience.”

Hood ignores Mo and, with a gentleness I’d not have guessed at, he cups my hand under his larger one and presses a third canister into the hollow of my palm. Hope seeps through holes in the soles of my feet. “There’s no one in the house below. Don’t hurt my hens. Please.”

“We’ll not touch a feather, old lady,” promises Hood.

The bearded giant’s already carrying the ladder down the track to Dooneen Cottage when an explosion punches a hole through the tight quiet of the afternoon. Everyone crouches, tense—even Mo and me.

From Kilcrannog? There’s an echo, and an echo’s echo.

Someone calls out, “What the holy feck was that?”

The Ratflu-scarred kid points and says, “Over there …”

Rising into view above the fuchsia thicket we see a fat genie of orange-tinged oil-black smoke fly upwards, before the wind sucks it away over Caher Mountain. A raspy voice says, “The feckin’ oil depot!”

Hood slaps his earset and flips up a mike piece. “Mothership, this is Rolls-Royce, our location’s Dooneen, one mile west of Kilcrannog. What’s with that big bang? Over.”

Across the fields we hear the sickening percussion of gunfire.

“Mothership, this is Rolls-Royce—d’you need help? Over.”

Through Hood’s helmet we hear a smear of frantic speech, panicky static, and nothing more.

“Mothership? This is Rolls-Royce. Respond, please. Over.” Hood waits, staring at the smoke still streaming up from the town. He slaps his headset again: “Audi? This is Rolls-Royce. Are you in contact with Mothership? And what’s happening in town? Over.” He waits. We all do, watching him. More silence. “Lads, either the peasants are revolting or we’ve got company from across the Cordon sooner than we thought. Either way, we’re needed back at the town. Fall back.”

The eight militiamen return to the jeeps without a glance at Mo or me. The jeeps reverse down Mo’s short drive, and thump their way back up the track towards the main road.

Towards Kilcrannog, the gunfire grows more intense.

We can still recharge Rafiq’s insulin pump, I realize.

For now, at least: Hood said the Jackdaws are coming.

“Didn’t even put my bloody ladder back,” mutters Mo.

FIRST I GO and get the kids from White Strand. The waves in Dunmanus Bay never look sure which way to run when the wind’s from the east. Zimbra runs out of the old corrugated-iron shelter, followed by a nervy, relieved Lorelei and Rafiq. I tell them about the militiamen and the solar panels, and we walk back to Dooneen Cottage. Gunshots still dot-and-dash the afternoon, and as we turn back we see a drone circle over the village at one point. After a sustained burst of gunfire, Rafiq’s keen eyes see it shot down. A jeep roars along the road up above. We find a giant puffball at the edge of the meadow, and although food’s the last thing on my mind we pick it and Lorelei carries it home like a football. Fried in butter, its sliced white flesh will make the bones of a meal for the four of us—Christ knows when, or if, we’ll be seeing a ration box again. Probably I have about five weeks’ food in my parlor and the polytunnel, if we’re careful. Assuming no gang of armed men steals it.

Back at the cottage I find Mo feeding the hens. She tried to patch friends in the village, in Ahakista, Durrus, and Bantry, but the Net’s well and truly dead. As is the radio, even the RTÉ station. “All across the bandwidths,” she says, “it’s the silence of the tomb.”

What now? I have no idea what to do: Barricade us in, send the kids to some remoter spot, like the lighthouse, go to the O’Dalys at Knockroe Farm to see what happened to Izzy and her family, or what? We’ve got no weapons, though given the number of rounds being fired on the Sheep’s Head this afternoon, a gun’s likelier to get you killed than save your life. All I know is that unless danger is careering down the Dooneen track in a jeep, I’m less fretful if Lorelei and Rafiq are right by me. Of course, if we’re all absorbing high levels of radioactive isotopes it’s all pretty academic, but let’s take it one apocalypse at a time.

The commodity we’re most in need of is news. The gunfire’s stopped in the village, but until we know the lie of the land, we should steer clear. The O’Dalys’ll probably know more, if Declan’s got back okay. Their farm feels a long way off on such a violent afternoon, but Lorelei and I set out. I ask Rafiq to stay at the cottage with Zimbra to guard Mo, but tell him that, whatever happens, his first duty is to stay alive. That’s what his family in Morocco would want; that’s why they tried to get him to Norway. Which maybe wasn’t the best thing to say, but if there was a book called The Right Things to Do and Say as Civilization Dies, I’ve never read it.

WE FOLLOW THE shore to Knockroe Farm, past the rocks where I harvest carrageen sea moss and kelp, and across the O’Dalys’ lower grazing pasture. Their small herd of Jerseys approaches us, wanting to be milked; not a good sign. The farmyard’s ominously quiet too, and Lorelei points out that the solar panels on the old stables are gone. Izzy said earlier that Declan and the eldest son, Max, went into the village this morning, but Tom or Izzy or their mum, Branna, should be around. No sign of the farm sheepdog, Schull, either, or English Phil the shepherd. The kitchen door’s banging in the wind and I find Lorelei’s hand in mine. The door was kicked in. We pass the manure pile, cross the yard, and my voice is trembling as I call into the kitchen, “Hello? Anyone home?”

No reply. The wind trundles a can along.

Branna’s wind chime’s chiming by the half-open window.

Lorelei shouts as loud as she dares: “IZZY! IT’S US!”

I’m afraid to go farther into the house.

The breakfast plates are still in the sink.

“Gran?” Lorelei’s as scared as me. “Do you think …”

“I don’t know, love,” I tell her. “You wait outside, I’ll—”

“Lol? Lol!” It’s Izzy, with Branna and Tom following, crossing the yard behind us. Tom and Izzy look unhurt but shaken, but Branna O’Daly, a black-haired no-nonsense woman of fifty, has blood all over her overalls. I almost shriek, “Branna! Are you hurt?” Branna’s as puzzled as I am horrified, then realizes: “Oh, Mother of Jesus, Holly, no no no, it’s not a gunshot wound, it’s one of our cows, calving. The Connollys’ bull got into the paddock last spring, and she went into labor earlier. Timing, eh? She didn’t know that the Cordon’d fallen and gangs of outlaws were roaming the countryside taking solar panels at gunpoint. A messy breech birth, too. Still, she gave birth to a female, so one more milker.”

“They took your panels, Branna,” says Lorelei.

“I know, pet. Nothing I could do to stop them. Did they pay a courtesy call down Dooneen track, I wonder?”

“They stole Mo’s panels off her roof too,” I say, “but when they heard the explosion they left, before they took mine.”

“Yes, our crew cleared off at the same time.”

I ask Branna, “What about Declan and Max?” and she shrugs and shakes her head.

“They’re not back from the village,” says Tom, adding disgustedly, “Mam won’t let me go and find them.”

“Two out of three O’Daly males in a war zone is enough.” Branna’s worried sick. “Da told you to defend the home front.”

“You made me hide,” Tom’s sixteen-year-old voice cracks, “in the fecking hay loft with Izzy! That’s not defending.”

“I made you hide in the what?” says Branna, icily.

Tom scowls, just as icily. “In the loft with Izzy. But why—”

“Eight bandits with the latest Chinese automatics,” Izzy tells him, “versus one teenager with a thirty-year-old rifle. Guess the score, Tom. Anyway: I believe I hear a bicycle. Speak of the devil?”

Tom has only just time to say, “What?” before Schull starts barking at the farm gate, wagging his tail, and round the corner—on a mountain bike—comes Tom’s brother Max.

He skids to a halt a few yards away. He’s got a nasty gash across one cheekbone and wild eyes. Something terrible’s happened.

“Max!” Branna looks appalled. “Where’s Da? What’s happened?”

“Dad’s—Dad’s,” Max’s voice wobbles, “alive. Are you all all right?”

“Yes, thanks be to God—but your eye, boy!”

“It’s fine, Ma, just a bit of stone from a … The fuel depot got blown to feckereens and—”

His mum’s hugging Max too tight for him to speak. “What’s with all the cussing in this house?” says Branna, over his shoulder. “Your father and I didn’t raise you to speak like a gang o’ feckin’ gurriers, did we? Now tell us what happened.”

WHILE I CLEAN Max’s gashed cheek in the O’Dalys’ kitchen, he drinks a glass of his father’s muddy home brew to steady himself and a mug of mint tea to muffle the taste of the home brew. He finds it hard to begin until he begins. Then he hardly pauses for breath. “Da and me’d just got to Auntie Suke’s when Mary de Búrka’s eldest, Sam, calls round, saying there’s an emergency village meeting at the Big Hall. That was noon, I think. Pretty much the whole village was there. Martin stood up first, saying he’d called the meeting because of the Cordon falling and that. He said we should put together Sheep’s Head Irregular Regiment—armed with whatever shotguns we had at home—to man roadblocks on the Durrus road and the Raferigeen road, so if or when Jackdaws break through the Cordon, we’d not just be sat around like turkeys waiting for Christmas, like. Most of the boys thought it was a sound enough idea, like. Father Brady spoke next, saying that God would let the Cordon fall because we’d put our faith in false idols, a barbedwire fence, and the Chinese, and the first thing to do was choose a new mayor who’d have God’s support. Pat Joe and a few o’ the lads were like, ‘F’feck’s sake, this is no time for electioneering!’ so Muriel Boyce was shrieking at them that they’d burn, burn, burn because whoever thought a pack o’ sheep farmers with rusty rifles could stop the Book of Revelation coming true was a damned eejit who’d soon be a dead damned eejit. Then Mary de Búrka nnhgggffftchtchtch …” Max grimaces as I extract a small flake of stone from his cut with a pair of tweezers.

“Sorry,” I say. “That was the last bit of grit.”

“Thanks, Holly. Mary de Búrka was saying it’d do us no harm to follow the principle that the Lord helps those who help themselves, when we heard engines, lots of them, roaring our way. Like the Friday Convoy but much, much louder. The hall emptied, and into the square drove twenty Stability jeeps, plus a tanker, too. Four, five, six men got out of each. Big bastards, Ma. Big mean bastards. Stability guys and militiamen obviously from outside the Cordon. We were about matched man to man, but there’d not be much of a fight. They were armed to the teeth and trained to kill, like. This big Dub, he climbed on a jeep roof and spoke through a megaphone. Said his name was General Drogheda, and the former West Cork Lease Lands were now under martial law following the collapse o’ the Cordon. He’d been sent by Cork Stability to requisition all the solar panels on Sheep’s Head for government use, and to commandeer in Stability’s name the diesel that’d been delivered yesterday. Well, we looked at each other, like, ‘Not feckin’ likely.’ But then yer man Drogheda said that any opposition would be treated as treason. And treason, under Clause Whatever of the Stability Law Act of Whenever, would be dealt with by a bullet through the head. Martin Walsh walked up to this General Drogheda’s jeep and introduced himself as mayor of Kilcrannog and asked for a closer look at the requisition orders from Cork HQ, like. Your man got out his revolver and shot the road between Martin’s shoes. Martin jumped six foot in the air and six foot back. Drogheda, if that’s his real name, said, ‘Is that a close enough look, Mr. Mayor?’ Then he said if any hero tried to stop them they’d empty the food depot, too, and we’d be eating stones all winter.”

“Stability’d not behave like that,” says Branna. “Would they?”

Max drinks the brew, winces, and shudders. “Nobody’s sure about anything now. After Drogheda’d said his piece, about ten of the jeeps left the village along the main road heading Dooneen way, another ten drove to the edges of the town to get to work, while the rest stayed put. Then out came ladders from the back o’ the jeeps, and up went men from each crew onto every roof with a panel. A pair stayed below fingering their weapons, like, to discourage any argument. Meanwhile the tanker was emptying the fuel depot. We were all muttering and furious, like—these robbers’re robbing our feckin’ diesel!—but if we’d tried to stop them they’d have mown us down, cold, like, and taken the panels anyway. We knew that and there was feck all we could do. By and by the tanker was full, the roofs stripped of panels, and jeeps were coming back into the square, waiting for the ones that’d gone down the Knockroe road to come back, I guess. Then … it happened. I didn’t see it kick off, but I was with Da and Sean O’Dwyer when I heard a godalmighty ruckus from by General Drogheda’s jeep …”

Sparingly, I dab Max’s cut with antiseptic cream and he winces.

“Drogheda was yelling at a militiaman. He had an Audi symbol round his head, saying he was head of operations, and if yer man din’t like it, then he could … Well, it was to do with his mother’s … Doesn’t matter. The wind had dropped, the shouting echoed round the square, and I watched another o’ the scruffier militiamen stroll up behind Drogheda and, uh …” Max frowns, swallows, tries to stop himself crying, can’t, and the wheels come off his voice. “Shot his brains out. Point blank. Right feckin’ … there.”

“Oh, God, no,” whispers Izzy.

“Oh, my poor boy,” says Branna. “You saw that?”

Max hides his face in his hands and steadies himself for a few seconds, breathing deeply. “Oh, that was just for starters, Mam. The Stability men and the militias went at each other like dogs, dogs with guns. It was a hailstorm but with bullets, like, not hail.” He’s angry with himself for blubbing. “Like an old war film, with stuntmen falling off roofs, men crawling on the pavement …” Max looks away and shuts his eyes hard to keep out the picture but he can’t. “Us villagers scrambled clear, as best we could, but … Mam … Seamus Coogan got a bullet.”

I can’t help it: “Seamus Coogan’s hurt?”

Max starts shaking and he shakes his head.

Tom asks, wide-eyed, “Seamus Coogan’s dead?”

Max just nods. Izzy, Branna, Lorelei, Tom, and me look at one another and feel the cold wind of the near future. I was talking to Seamus Coogan only yesterday. Max drinks up the rest of the homebrew and carries on as if his sanity depends on telling us what saw, and maybe it does. “I—I tried to … but … it was all instant, like.” Max shuts his eyes, shakes his head, and sort of wipes the air with his hand. “Da pulled me off, shouting there was nothing we could do for him. We legged it round the back o’ the Fitzgeralds’ and hid in their garage. Just in time. The tanker in the square got hit and—you heard that, right?”

“They must’ve heard it up in Tipperary,” says Branna.

“Time went by,” says Max, “I dunno how long. We heard guns, saw a guy get shot on the Fitzgeralds’ drive … An hour? Dunno. Can’t’ve been, but suddenly the jeeps were driving off, up the mountain road to Finn MacCool’s seat, and … And then it was all quiet again. Birds singing, like. We all appeared from our hiding places … stunned, like, like … had that really happened? Here? In Kilcrannog?” Max’s eyes well up again. “Yes. There were the bodies and the wounded to prove it. Bernie Aitken tried to defend his panels with his rifle, and he got shot. He’s in a bad way. I think he’s going to die, Mam. The village square’s a—a—it’s—it’s … Don’t go and see it,” he tells Tom, Izzy, and Lorelei, “just don’t. Not till it’s been cleaned up and rained on. I—I—I wish to feck I’d not seen it. There’s twenty, thirty graves to dig, like. Several injured militiamen, too, who can’t walk, like. Some o’ the lads said we should just dump them in the sea, that’s what they’d do to us”—anger ignites in Max’s face, driving away his shock for a few seconds—“but Dr. Kumar’s doing what she can for them. They’ll probably die anyway. There’s a crater where the depot was and all the windows blasted out around the square. Josey Malone’s house has had the front ripped off it. Oh, and the pub’s a right feckin’ mess now.”

Dimly, I worry about Brendan; these pitched battles for dwindling reserves must be happening all over Europe, with only small variations in uniforms and scenery. I wonder where Hood and the bearded giant are now: dead, running, dying in Dr. Kumar’s clinic. Swallowing a huckleberry.

Branna asks softly, “What’s Da doing now, Max?”

“Helping Mary de Búrka direct the cleanup. Martin Walsh and a couple of others have cycled up to Ahakista to discuss roadblocks. It’s more urgent now, not less. Make a short Cordon of our own, maybe; from Durrus cross-country to Coomkeen, then down the road to Boolteenagh on the Bantry side. Sure until we can get it fenced and dug it’d just be a few of the lads with guns in tents, but there’s automatic weapons going begging, and Martin’s cousin’s at the Derrycahoon garrison. Was, anyway. Stability men’ll need a safe place for their families, too. Anyway, I ought to get back, with a couple o’ shovels.”

“No, Max,” says Branna. “You’re in shock. Lie down. There’ll be plenty of work tomorrow.”

“Mam,” says Max, “if we don’t get some sort of roadblocks in place there mightn’t be a tomorrow. There’s work to do.”

“Then I’m coming with you,” states Tom.

“No,” say Branna and Max together.

“I am so. I’m sixteen. Ma, you can handle the milking?”

Branna rubs her face. All the rules are changing.

• • •

LORELEI HELPS WITH the milking while I feed the Knockroe chickens. Then we walk home along the shore, gathering a bag of sea spinach. Sandhoppers ping off my exposed shin, and oystercatchers pick their way between stones and bladderwrack, stabbing the mud for lugworms. A gray heron fishes off a rock twenty feet out and the sun emerges. The wind’s swinging around to the south, brushing up stragglier clouds, like sheep’s wool caught on barbed wire. We find a big bough of bleached driftwood that should keep the stove fed for a couple of days in winter. Below the cottage we find Rafiq fishing off the pier, a favorite sedative of his. We give him the edited gist of Max O’Daly’s story—he’ll hear it sooner or later anyway—as he helps us lug the driftwood up to the cottage. Mo is snoozing in Eilísh’s old chair, with Zimbra lying on her feet and a biography of Wittgenstein on her lap. Perhaps she’ll move into our granny flat now her own bungalow has no electricity at all. I had it built when I learned Aoife was pregnant so that she, Örvar, and the baby could have a bit of privacy when they visited, but over the years it’s become a storeroom.

Zimbra gets up when we walk in, Mo wakes, and Lorelei makes us a pot of green tea with leaves she fetches from Mo’s polytunnel. I begin by telling her about Seamus Coogan’s death, then the rest of Max’s report on the massacre. Mo listens without interruption. Then she sighs and rubs her eyes. “Martin Walsh is right, unfortunately. If we want a quality of life higher than that of the Middle Ages ten years from now, we need to act like soldiers. The barbarians won’t turn on each other twice.”

My clock says five. Rafiq stands up. “I’d like to catch another couple of fish before it gets dark. Is Mo staying for tea, Holly?”

“I hope so. We ate her out of house and home at lunch.”

Mo thinks of her unlit stove and the useless lightbulbs in her bungalow. “I’d be honored. Thank you. All three of you.”

When Rafiq’s left, I say, “I’ll go into town tomorrow.”

“I’m not sure how wise that’d be now,” says Mo.

“I need to speak with Dr. Kumar about insulin.”

Mo sips her tea. “How much do you have?”

“Six weeks’ worth.” Lorelei keeps her voice down. “One more insulin pump, and three packets of catheter nozzles.”

Mo asks, “How much does Dr. Kumar have?”

“That’s what I want to ask.” I scratch an insect bite on my hand. “Yesterday’s convoy brought nothing, and after today … I don’t think there’ll be anymore. We have water, maybe we’ll be okay for food and security if we can act like a socialist Utopia, but you can’t synthesize insulin without a well-equipped laboratory.”

Mo asks, “Has Rafiq raised the subject?”

“No, but he’s a bright kid. He knows.”

Through the side window, a screen of late afternoon sunlight is projected onto the wall. Shadows of birds flit across it.

Some shadows are sharp, some shadows are blurry.

I’ve seen them before in another time and place.

“Gran?” Lorelei’s waiting for my answer to a question.

“Sorry, love. I was just … What were you saying?”

THE RADIO’S STILL dead. Mo asks Lorelei if she’s up to playing a tune on the fiddle after a day like that. My granddaughter chooses “She Moved Through the Fair.” I wash the sea spinach while Mo guts the fish. We’ll fry the puffball in butter at the last minute. If I was younger I’d be in town helping with the grisly business, but I wouldn’t be much use there at my age, digging graves for makeshift coffins. Father Brady’ll be busy. Probably he’s claiming the salvation of Kilcrannog was a case of divine intervention. Lorelei plays the ghostly refrain beautifully. She inherited her dad’s musical flair as well as his fiddle, and if she’d belonged to my or Aoife’s generation she might’ve thought about a musical career, but I’m afraid music will be one more nonsurvival pursuit that the Endarkenment snuffs out.

Rafiq makes us all jump as he barges open the door; something’s wrong. “Rafiq,” says Mo, “what on earth’s the matter?”

He’s panting for breath. My first thought is diabetes, but he’s pointing back down to the bay. “There!”

Lorelei stops playing. “Deep breaths, Raf—what is it?”

“A ship,” Rafiq gasps, “a boat, and men, and they’ve got guns, and were coming closer, and they spoke to me through a big cone thing. But I didn’t know what to say. ’Cause of—of what happened today.”

Mo, Lorelei, and me look at each other, confused.

“You’re not making a whole lot of sense,” I say. “Ship?”

“That!” He points out at the bay. I can’t see, but Lorelei goes over, looks out, and says, “Jesus.” At her astonishment I hurry over, and Mo hobbles behind. At first I see only the bluish, grayish waters of the bay, but then see dots of yellow light, maybe three hundred meters out. “A patrol boat,” says Mo, at my side. “Can anyone see a flag on it?”

“No,” says Rafiq, “but they launched a littler boat and it moved dead fast, straight towards the pier. There’s men in it. When it was near one of the men spoke through this cone thing that made his voice louder, like this.” Rafiq mimes a megaphone.

“In English?” asks Mo, just as Lorelei asks, “What did he say?”

“Yeah,” replies Rafiq. “He asked, ‘Does Holly Sykes live here?’ ”

Mo and Lorelei look at me; I look at Rafiq. “Are you sure?”

Rafiq nods. “I thought I’d heard it wrong, but he said it again. I just sort of froze, and then,” Rafiq looks at Lorelei, “he asked if you live here. He knew your full name. Lorelei Örvarsdottir.”

Lorelei sort of clutches at herself and looks at me.

Mo asks, “Could you see if they were foreign?”

“No, they had combat goggles. But he didn’t sound very Irish.”

The patrol boat sits there. It’s big, with a tower and globes and big twin guns at each end. Can’t remember when I last saw a steel hull in the bay. “Might it be British?” suggests Mo.

I don’t know. “I heard the last six Royal Navy vessels were rusting in the Medway, waiting for fuel that never arrived. Anyway, don’t British ships always fly the Union Jack?”

“The Chinese or Russians would have the fuel,” says Lorelei.

“But what would the Chinese or Russians want with us?”

“More raiders,” Lorelei wonders, “after our solar panels?”

“Look at the size of the ship,” says Mo. “She must be displacing three, four thousand tons? Think of the diesel it cost to get here. This isn’t about swiping a few secondhand solar panels.”

“Can you see the launch?” I ask the kids. “The motorboat?”

After a moment, Lorelei says, “No sign of it.”

“It could be behind the pier,” says Rafiq, edgily. At this point Zimbra pushes through between my calf and the door frame and growls at the lumpy denseness in the hawthorn by our gate. The wind brushes the long grass, gulls cry, and the shadows are sharp and long.

They’re here. I know. “Raf, Lol,” I murmur, “up to the attic.”

Both of them start to object, but I cut them off: “Please.”

“Don’t be alarmed,” says a soldier at the gate, and all four of us jump. His camo armor, an ergohelmet, and an augvisor conceal his face and age and give him an insectoid look. My heartbeat’s gone walloping off. “We’re friendlier than your earlier visitors today.”

It’s Mo who collects her wits first. “Who are you?”

“Commander Aronsson of the Icelandic Marines, that ship is the ICGV Sjálfstæði.” The officer’s voice has a military crispness, and when he turns to his left, the bulletproof visor reflects the low sun. “This is Lieutenant Eriksdottir.” He indicates a slighter figure, a woman, also watching us through an augvisor. She nods by way of hello. “Last, we have ‘Mr.’ Harry Veracruz, a presidential adviser who is joining us on our mission.”

A third man steps into view, dressed like a pre-Endarkenment birdwatcher in a fisherman’s sweater and an all-weather jacket, unzipped. He’s young, hardly into his twenties, and has somewhat African lips, sort of East Asian eyes, Caucasianish skin, and sleek black hair, like a Native American in an old film. “Afternoon,” he tells me, in a soft anywhere-voice. “Or have we crossed the boundary to evening?”

I’m flustered. “I … uh, don’t know. It’s, um …”

“I’m Professor Mo Muntervary, formerly of MIT,” says my neighbor, crisply. “How can we help you, Commander Aronsson?”

The commander flips up his augvisor so we can see his classically Nordic, square-jawed chin. He’s thirtyish, squinting now in the direct light. Zimbra gives a couple of gruff barks. “First, please calm down your dog. I do not want him to hurt his teeth on our body armor.”

“Zimbra,” I tell him. “Inside. Zimbra!” Like a sulky teenager, he obeys, though once inside he peers out between my shins.

Lieutenant Eriksdottir pushes back her augvisor too. She’s midtwenties and intensely freckled; her Scandinavian accent is stronger and ess-ier. “You are Holly Sykes, I think?”

I’d rather find out what they want before telling them that, but Mr. Harry Veracruz says, with an odd smile, “She certainly is.”

“Then you are the legal guardian,” continues Lieutenant Eriksdottir, “of Lorelei Örvarsdottir, an Icelandic citizen.”

“That’s me,” says Lorelei. “My dad was from Akureyri.”

“Akureyri is my hometown also,” says Commander Aronsson. “It’s a small place, so I know Örvar Benediktsson’s people. Your father was also”—he glances Mo’s way—“a famous scientist in his field.”

I feel defensive. “What do you want with Lorelei?”

“Our president,” says the commander, “has ordered us to locate and offer to repatriate Miss Örvarsdottir. So, we are here.”

A bat tumbles through the dark and bright bands of the garden.

My first thought is, Thank Christ, she’s saved.

My second thought is, I can’t lose my granddaughter.

My third thought is, Thank Christ, she’s saved.

The hens peck, cluck, and goggle around their coop, and the brittle, muddy garden swishes in the evening wind. “Magno,” declares Rafiq. “Lol, that massive ship sailed here from Iceland just for you!”

“But what about my family?” I hear Lorelei saying.

“Permission to immigrate is for Miss Örvarsdottir,” Aronsson addresses me, “only. That is not negotiable. Quotas are strict.”

“How can I leave my family behind?” Lorelei’s saying.

“It is difficult,” Lieutenant Eriksdottir tells her. “But please consider it, Lorelei. The Lease Lands have been safe, but those days are over, as you learned today. There is a broken nuclear reactor not far enough away, if the wind blows wrongly. Iceland is safe. This is why the immigration quota is so strict. We have geothermal electricity and your uncle Halgrid’s family will care for you.”

I remember Örvar’s older brother from my summer in Reykjavik. “Halgrid’s still alive?”

“Of course. Our isolation saves us from the worst”—Commander Aronsson searches for the word—“hardships of the Endarkenment.”

“There must be a lot of Icelandic nationals around the globe,” says Mo, “praying for a deus ex machina to sail up to the bottom of the garden. Why Lorelei? And why such a timely arrival?”

“Ten days ago we learned that the Pearl Occident Company was planning to withdraw from Ireland,” says the commander. “At that point, one of the president’s advisers,” Aronsson looks sideways at Harry Veracruz with something like a scowl, “persuaded our president that your granddaughter’s repatriation is a matter of national importance.”

So we look at Harry Veracruz, who must be more influential than he appears. He’s leaning on the gate like a neighbor who’s dropped by for a chat, making a what-can-I-say face. He tells me in his young voice: “Normally I’d try to prepare the ground better, Holly, but this time I lacked the opportunity. To cut a long story short, I’m Marinus.”

I’m sort of floating up, as if lifted by waves; my hands grasp the nearest things, which are the door frame and Lorelei’s elbow. I hear a sound, like the pages of a very thick book being flicked, but it’s only the wind in the shrubberies. The doctor in Gravesend; the psychiatrist in Manhattan; the voice in my head in the labyrinth that couldn’t exist, but did; and this young man watching me, from ten paces away.

Wait. How do I know? Sure Harry Veracruz looks honest, but so do all successful liars. Then I hear his voice in my head: Jacko’s labyrinth, the domed chamber, the bird shadows, the golden apple. His gaze is level and knowing. I look at the others. Nobody else heard. It’s me, Holly. Truly. Sorry for this extra shock. I know you’re having a hell of day here.

“Gran?” Lorelei sounds panicky. “You want to sit down?”

A mistlethrush is singing on my spade in the kale patch.

With effort, I shake my head. “No, I …” Then I ask him, in a croak, “Where have you been? I thought you were dead.”

Marinus—I remember the verb—“subspeaks.” Long story. The golden apple was a one-soul escape pod, so I had to find another route and another host. It proved to be circuitous. Eight years passed here before I was resurrected in an eight-year-old in an orphanage in Cuba, neatly coinciding with the 2031 quarantine. It was 2035 before I could get off the island, when this self was ten. When finally I reached Manhattan the place was half feralized, 119A was deserted, and it took three more years to connect with the remnants of Horology. Then the Net crashes happened and tracing you became nigh-on impossible.

“What about the War?” I ask. “Did you—did we—win?”

The young man’s smile is ambivalent. Yes. One could say we won. The Anchorites no longer exist. Hugo Lamb helped me escape the Dusk, in fact, though what fate befell him I do not know. His psychodecanting days are over and his body will be middle-aged, if indeed he has survived this long.

“Holly?” Mo’s got an is-she-losing-her-marbles face. “What war?”

“This is an old friend,” I reply, “from … my, uh, author days.”

For some reason, Mo looks more worried, not less.

“The son of an old friend, Holly means, of course,” says Marinus. “My mother was a psychiatrist colleague of Holly’s, back in the day.”

Commander Aronsson receives a luckily timed message and turns away, speaking Icelandic into his headset. He checks his watch, signs off, then turns back to us: “The captain of the Sjálfstæði wants to depart in forty-five minutes. Not long for a big decision, Lorelei, but we do not wish to attract attention. Please. Discuss matters with your family. We”—he glances at Lieutenant Eriksdottir—“will check you are not disturbed.”

Voles, hens, sparrows, a dog. A garden’s full of eyes.

“You’d better come in,” I tell Harry Marinus Veracruz.

The gate squeaks as he opens it. He crosses the yard. How do you greet a resurrected Atemporal you’ve not seen for twenty years? Hug? A double-sided cheek kiss? Harry Veracruz smiles and the Marinus within subsays, Weird, I know. Welcome to my world. Or welcome back to it, albeit briefly. I stand aside to let him into the cottage, and something occurs to me. “Commander Aronsson? I have one question for you.”

“Ask it,” says Commander Aronsson.

“D’you still have insulin in Iceland?”

The man frowns, but Marinus calls over his shoulder: “It’s the same in Icelandic, Commander. Insúlín. The drug for diabetes.”

“Ah.” The officer nods. “Yes, we manufacture this drug at a new unit, near the airbase at Keflavík. Two or three thousand of our citizens require it, including our minister of defen

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1203