‘Very clever, Hades.’
‘Please, call me Aornis—I’d like us to be pals.’
She pushed her hair behind her ear and looked at her nails for a moment before asking:
‘I saw a beautiful cashmere sweater just now; it’s available in turquoise or emerald—which do you think would suit me better?’
‘I have no idea.’
‘I’ll get them both,’ she replied after a moment of reflection. ‘It’s on a stolen credit card, after all.’
‘Enjoy your game, Aornis. It won’t last for ever. I defeated your brother—I’ll do the same to you.’
She laughed. ‘And how do you propose to do that? When you can’t recollect anything about our meetings at all? My dear, you won’t even remember this one—until I want you to!’
And she gathered up her bags and walked off.
The lights in the nanotechnology lab flickered again Wilbur and I looked at one another as the second back-up generator failed. He tried the phones again in desperation, but everything was still dead. Death by coincidence. What a way to go. But it was now, with only two minutes to go, that Aornis lifted the final barrier and I clearly remembered the last occasion she and I had faced one another. It had occurred not twenty minutes before at the ConStuff reception. It hadn’t been empty at all; Aornis had been there, waiting for me—ready to deliver the coup de grace.
‘Well!’ she exclaimed as I walked in. ‘Figured this one out, did you?’
‘Damn you, Hades!’ I retorted, reaching for my pistol. She caught my wrist and pulled me into a painful half nelson with surprising speed.
‘Listen to me,’ she whispered in my ear while holding my arm locked tightly behind me. ‘There’s going to be an accident in the nanotechnology lab. Your uncle hoped to feed the world, when in fact he will be the father of its destruction. The irony is so heavy you could cut it with a knife!’
‘Wait’’ I said, but she pulled my arm up harder and I yelped.
‘I’m talking, Next. Never interrupt a Hades when they’re talking. You will die for what you have done to our family, but just to show I’m not a total fiend, I will allow you one last heroic gesture, something your pathetic self-righteous character seems to crave. At precisely six minutes before the accident, you will begin to remember all our little chats together.’
I struggled but she held me tight.
‘You’ll remember this meeting last. So here’s my offer. Take your pistol and turn it upon yourself—and I’ll spare the planet.’
‘And if I don’t?’ I shouted. ‘You’ll die too!’
She laughed again ‘No. I know you’ll do it. Despite the baby. Despite everything. You’re a good person, Next. A fine human being. It will be your downfall. I’m counting on it.’
She leaned forward and whispered in my ear.
‘They’re wrong, you know, Thursday. Revenge is so sweet!’
‘Thursday?’ asked Wilbur. ‘Are you all right?’
‘No, not really,’ I muttered as I saw the clock tick into the final minute. Acheron was nothing compared to Aornis, in either his powers or his sense of humour. I’d messed with the Hades family and now I was paying the price.
I pulled out Cordelia’s gun as the clock ticked into the last half-minute.
‘If Landen ever comes back, tell him I love him.’
Twenty seconds.
‘If who ever comes back?’
‘Landen. You’ll know him when you see him. Tall, one leg, writes daft books and had a wife named Thursday who loved him beyond comprehension.’
Ten seconds.
‘So long, Wilbur.’
I closed my eyes and placed the gun to my temple.
33. The Dawn of Life As We Know It
‘Three billion years ago the atmosphere on earth had stabilised to what scientists referred to as A-II. The relentless hammering of the atmosphere had created the ozone layer, which in turn now stopped new oxygen from being produced. A new and totally different mechanism was needed to kick-start the young planet into the living green ball that we know and enjoy today.’
‘No need for that,’ said my father, gently taking the gun from my hand and laying it on the table. I don’t know whether he purposely arrived late to increase the drama, but there he was. He hadn’t frozen time—I think he was done with that. Whenever he had appeared in the past he had always been smiles and cheeriness, but today he was different. And he looked, for the first time ever, old. Perhaps eighty—maybe more.
He thrust his hand inside the nanodevice container as the final generator failed. The small blob of nanotechnology fell on his hand and the emergency lights flickered on, bathing us all in a dim green glow.
‘It’s cold,’ he said. ‘How long have I got?’
‘It has to warm up first,’ replied Wilbur glumly. ‘Three minutes?’
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Sweetpea, but self-sacrifice is not the answer.’
‘It was all I had left, Dad. Me alone or me and three billion souls.’
‘You don’t get to make that decision, Thursday, but I do. You’ve got a lot of good work to do, and your son, too. Me, I’m just glad that it all ends before I become so enfeebled as to be useless.’
‘Dad!’
I felt the tears start to roll down my cheeks.
‘It all seems so clear to me now!’ he said, smiling as he cupped his hand so none of the all-consuming Dream Topping would fall to the ground. ‘After several million years of existence I finally realised my purpose. Will you tell your mother there was absolutely nothing between me and Emma Hamilton?’
‘Oh, Dad! Don’t, please!’
‘And tell Joffy I forgive him for breaking the windows of the greenhouse.’
I hugged him tightly.
‘I’ll miss you. And your mother, of course, and Escher, Louis Armstrong, the Nolan Sisters—which reminds me, did you get any tickets?’
‘Third row, but… but… I don’t suppose you’ll need them now.’
‘You never know,’ he murmured. ‘Leave my ticket at the box office, will you?’
‘Dad, there must be something we can do for you, surely?’
‘No, my darling, I’m going to be out of here pretty soon. The Great Leap Forward. The thing is, I wonder where to? Was there anything in the Dream Topping that shouldn’t have been there?’
‘Chlorophyll.’
He smiled and sniffed the carnation in his buttonhole. ‘Yes, I thought as much. It’s all very simple, really—and quite ingenious. Chlorophyll is the key… Ow!’
I looked at his hand. His flesh was starting to swirl as the wayward nanodevice thawed enough to start work, devouring, changing and replicating with ever-increasing speed.
I looked at him, wanting to ask a hundred questions but not knowing where to start.
‘I’m going three billion years into the past, Thursday, to a planet with only the possibility of life. A planet waiting for a miraculous event, something that has not happened, as far as we know, anywhere else in the universe. In a word, photosynthesis. An oxidising atmosphere, Sweetpea—the ideal way to start an embryonic biosphere.’
He laughed.
‘It’s funny the way things turn out, isn’t it? All life on earth descended from the organic compounds and proteins contained within Dream Topping.’
‘And the carnation. And you.’
He smiled at me.
‘Me. Yes. I thought this might be the ending, the Big One—but in fact it’s really only just the beginning. And I’m it. Makes me feel all sort of… well, humble.’