‘Fumes,’ he said.
They opened another bottle of wine.
8
Every minute I’ve been out of it, Holly thought as she came around. Every minute, every second, it’s getting worse. The scenes that she had seen in the casting room flashed before her again and again, and before she opened her eyes she saw a parade of dead children and bloodied, blank faces.
Drake Slater was sitting beside her as she surfaced. The fainting fit pulled away quickly, her senses returned, and she realised that she’d received a far lower dose of whatever had knocked her out than she had last time.
‘Nice way of greeting a visitor,’ she muttered.
‘Sorry,’ Drake said, not sounding like he meant it. ‘We’ve grown used to looking after each other.’
‘And you drugged me because I was losing my temper?’ Holly sat up on a cot bed. The room around her was sparse and functional She ran a hand through her knotted hair, wishing for a brush, some shampoo. She was beginning to understand why the people here wore their hair short or in tight braids.
‘Moira heard you say “God”.’
‘Oh?’ She’d already clocked their aversion to the G-word.
‘We’re people of science. But that doesn’t mean we don’t fear the Inquisitor.’
Holly remained silent, hoping that he would continue. And he did.
‘I’m as convinced as I’ll ever be that you’re telling the truth, so. . I suppose that now it’s safe to tell you. There are those who believe that because some of us survived, the Inquisitor will return one day.’ He smiled, with little humour in his expression. ‘It’s the opposite of the old Jesus legend.’
‘This Inquisitor — it’s a legend?’
Drake shrugged. He seemed suddenly nervous again, evasive. So Holly tried another tack.
‘You cast God aside so easily?’
‘Easily?’ Drake asked. ‘Not easily at all, as far as I’m aware. When I was a child God was a comfort to many, though not all. Much like in your world, I suspect. My father was a true believer but, since the Furies, God has been down there with them. And any mention now is an offence.’ He shrugged, at the same time trying to smile.
‘Just because this happened doesn’t mean that He doesn’t exist,’ Holly said.
‘Perhaps in your world. But keep it to yourself. There are people here who’d attack you if they heard that, and some who might even kill you.’
‘I don’t understand.’ Holly shivered.
‘We believe the End was God’s fault,’ Drake said. Holly snorted, but he continued. ‘That’s what most of us believe. It’s what the Coldbrook journals tell us — that the Inquisitor was a servant of God, and it came through to ensure that the Fury plague took our whole world. It oversaw our demise, and then took Coldbrook’s chief with it. To another new world. A new Inquisitor to continue spreading the disease.’
‘The Inquisitor sounds like a ghost.’
‘Most people believe in it.’
‘And what do you think?’
‘I think God was as much to blame for the Furies as he was for a hundred wars through history.’
‘But that was forty years ago. You’re maybe forty yourself? I haven’t seen anyone here old enough to remember.’
‘There are a few. But blame is handed down through the generations. And there is proof.’
Holly leaned back against the wall, saddened, and convinced more than ever that Drake was only telling her parts of the story.
‘I’d like to know. .’ Drake said, but he trailed off as if he was unsure.
‘Know what?’
‘Where we parted,’ he said. ‘Where our Earths became different possibilities.’
Holly smiled. ‘You’re talking Jonah’s language now.’
‘We seemed to be far ahead of you,’ Drake mused. ‘Our technology a long way further on than yours. Perhaps that’s why the Furies hit us first.’
‘You don’t seem that far ahead,’ Holly said defensively. But then she thought of the casting room, the incredible technology of the mini-black hole, and wondered just how much Gaia had lost.
‘You’re aware of the many-worlds interpretation?’
‘Jonah’s tried explaining it to me. An infinite number of universes, created at every possible quantum event? Everything that could have happened in our history but didn’t has happened in some other universe. Or something.’
‘Every decision, every event, creates another possible universe,’ Drake said.
‘Much more eloquent than me.’
‘So which decision or event separates our Earths?’
‘How can we ever tell?’ Holly asked.
‘It could be something as small as someone turning left instead of right,’ Drake said. He stared at her, his piercing eyes filled with his sense of wonder. Jonah would love him, Holly thought.
‘You had Beethoven?’ she asked. ‘Mozart? Brahms?’
Drake nodded. ‘Shakespeare, Dickens, Melville.’
‘The First World War?’ she asked. ‘Hitler? Nagasaki?’
‘Churchill, Stalin, Roosevelt and Truman.’
‘The Swinging Sixties?’
‘I’ve read about that,’ Drake said, and Holly could see that he did not understand. How different his forty years must have been here, compared to her thirty-seven years on Earth. So different that she could not count the ways.
‘Kennedy?’ she asked. ‘Led Zeppelin? The Beatles?’
‘“Lucy in the Sky”,’ Drake said. ‘This could take for ever.’ He shook his head, smiling, and his sense of wonder was more visible than ever.
‘Jonah would so love to meet you.’
‘And I him.’ Drake stared at her, more intensely than ever, and for so long that Holly felt the true impact of the distance between them. Then he smiled again, and held her hand.
‘I have more to show you.’
‘I’m not sure that I want to see it.’
‘You have to,’ he said.
‘Why?’
‘Because others here at Coldbrook insist upon it,’ he said. ‘This plague was no accident.’
‘And you have no cure,’ she said. ‘In all these years, has nothing been found?’
‘There have been attempts,’ Drake said. ‘But no cure. I’ve been looking for one all my life. Even Mannan. .’ He trailed off, clenching his hands as if realising his mistake.
‘So many secrets,’ Holly said. ‘What or who is Mannan?’
Drake shook his head slowly. ‘In your world, are there still wars?’
‘Wouldn’t be Earth if that wasn’t the case,’ Holly said.
‘That’s the one thing the furies stopped, at least. There are no more wars, because the whole world’s fragmented and regressed. From here, we sometimes deal with a dozen other communities, some of them quite large. But there is always some risk from the furies. One community gets too close to another, too tied in, and they’ll both go down if the plague catches them out. So isolation is the key to survival.’
‘That excuses secrets?’
‘From you, yes. Of course. You’re not just from another settlement or continent.’
‘Hopeless,’ Holly said.
‘Hope is what keeps some of us alive,’ Drake said, and the sudden passion in his voice was contagious. ‘Much of the world has given up, winding down as much as the furies have. But we still have reason to believe.’
‘In a cure?’ she asked. ‘Something unproven and seemingly beyond your reach? Surely you need proof to believe.’ She didn’t mean to mock him but she was tired and scared, and she didn’t care about Drake’s disquiet. She grasped at her own faith, and it gave her comfort in this strange place, with these strange people.
‘Perhaps,’ Drake said softly. ‘The Inquisitor, have you seen-?’
Someone passed by the open door — a young boy bearing a tray of food and a steaming bowl. Drake glanced over his shoulder, then nudged the door closed.
‘I’m so tired,’ Holly said, leaning back against the wall. She let her eyelids droop and willed her muscles to relax, slumping down, feigning sleepiness when in fact she felt more awake than she had since arriving here through the breach. She wanted to be with Vic and Jonah, she wanted to know that her friends and family were still well, but most of all she wanted to be alone. And then she could decide what to do.