Rae smiled, picturing the little man climbing down a blanket rope like an escaping prisoner. “What was London like?”
Pargeter thought about that. He thought about it for so long that Rae thought he wasn’t going to answer at all. But he said finally, “Ms Peterson, it was lovely.”
Captain Gottlieb himself had served sandwiches and coffee. Lieutenant Oak had not partaken of the meal; he just sat there at the end of the table, staring at nothing.
“You have no idea how difficult it was to find a car with its keys in the ignition,” Pargeter went on, picking up the plate with the last of the ham sandwiches on it and offering it to Rae and Willem. They both shook their heads, so he put the plate down and took the sandwich for himself. He still hadn’t taken his gloves off. “Eventually I found a bicycle and I cycled into town.” He took a bite of the sandwich, chewed, swallowed. “The whole place was deserted. I went to the office, tried to raise someone, anyone, and there was no answer. So I cycled out to Permanent Joint Headquarters — the big military base at Northwood? I found some people there. Half a dozen of the Fleet Protection Marines detachment, and Lieutenant Oak and his colleagues Lieutenant Birch and Flight Sergeant Holly.”
Rae parsed this part of the story. Pargeter made it sound like an innocent Sunday morning’s jolly, but what he had done was cycle quite a considerable distance across the capital in the first hours after the apocalypse. She glanced over at Lieutenant Oak, sitting impassively at the table holding his stuffed panda.
“Northwood was simply packed with aircraft,” Pargeter went on. “So we borrowed a Puma and we flew off to see what we could see.”
“You just flew off,” Rae said. “And I presume air traffic control was…”
Pargeter waved air traffic control away.
“That could have been a short trip,” Willem said.
Pargeter thought about it and smiled. “Well,” he said.
Rae leaned forward, fascinated. “How far did you go?”
Pargeter scratched his head. “Well, we did a tour of the country, but to be honest there wasn’t very much to see here so we flew over to France and looked around there for a while. Then we did Spain and Portugal. Germany. Poland — Poland was very interesting. Did you know it’s the most populous nation in Europe now?”
Rae nodded. The Poles, the ones who believed in the Rapture at any rate, were not best pleased at having been left behind. They had harnessed this displeasure and invaded Germany, which had been more or less entirely depopulated.
“Anyway, we flew down through the Balkans, into Turkey, the Middle East. Jordan, Israel.”
“Anyone there?” asked Willem.
“Not a soul,” said Pargeter. “All gone. We found some people in Cairo but they shot at us and we had to leave.”
“Mr Pargeter,” said Rae, “how far did you go?”
“Oh, we wound up in Kazakhstan,” Pargeter said brightly. “Lieutenant Oak wanted to visit Baikonur.”
“Jesus.” Rae sat back on her chair. Pargeter and Lieutenant Oak had flown a Puma helicopter all the way into Central Asia and back again. Even before La Silence it would have been a tough trip, involving many permissions and much technical support. These days, it was nothing short of epic.
“Was there anything at Baikonur?” asked Willem, as if he was enquiring about a day-trip to Brighton.
Pargeter shrugged. “Rockets,” he said. “Lots of concrete. Lieutenant Oak was disappointed, weren’t you, Lieutenant Oak?”
Rae watched Lieutenant Oak’s fist close on the panda and then relax. No wonder he was crazy. If he was crazy. She said, “Someone ought to compose a song about that.”
Pargeter said, “What? Oh. No, I don’t think so, somehow. Somebody had to take a look around, get the lay of the land. Just doing one’s job, really.” He looked at the windows. It was dark outside. They’d been talking for almost four hours. First it had been Rae’s story. Then it had been Willem’s. Then it had been Pargeter’s turn. He said to Willem, “I think I need to speak with Ms Peterson in private.”
“We don’t have any secrets,” said Willem.
“That’s true,” said Rae.
Pargeter smiled. “But there may be some personal things we have to talk about.” He looked at Rae and raised his eyebrows, and Rae understood.
“He’s right,” she said. “Go and see how everyone’s doing, would you?”
“Okay,” said Willem, and he got up, picked up his rifle, and left the room.
When Willem had gone, Pargeter said, “Now there’s a useful talent to have.”
Rae nodded at Lieutenant Oak.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Pargeter. “Yes. Why don’t you go with him, Lieutenant? Stop him getting lost.”
Without a word, Lieutenant Oak got up from the table, still carrying his panda, and followed Willem.
“If you don’t mind me saying, he’s rather scary,” said Rae.
Pargeter smiled. “Lieutenant Oak? Wouldn’t hurt a fly. Never trusted anyone more than I’ve trusted Lieutenant Oak.”
“Was he like that before..?” she mimed a swooping helicopter with her hand.
“It was a long journey,” said Pargeter, and Rae wondered what their journey a quarter of the way around the world had done to him. Although he hadn’t been doing the flying, the slightest mechanical failure could have stranded them thousands of miles from home, out in the middle of absolutely nowhere. “We lost Birch and Holly, I’m sorry to say. In Moscow, on the way back.” He shuddered slightly. “There aren’t very many Muscovites, but let’s hope they don’t decide to move West. Anyway.” He smiled at her. “Could I see your hands, please?”
“My hands?”
“Don’t be coy, Ms Peterson.” He took off his gloves and laid them on the table. “You show me yours, and I’ll show you mine.” He performed a brief and rather awkward jazz hands routine, and Rae saw that there were little black dots on his fingertips too.
She shifted her chair over until they were sitting almost knee-to-knee, and held out her hands, palms turned upward. Pargeter leaned forward slightly and looked at them, but didn’t touch them.
“I’ve only seen this once before,” he said. “There was a chap in Kabul. Well, I say chap, he was about twelve years old. He had marks on his hands like this, and he could work miracles. The locals told me he was a god, or a demon; they weren’t sure, so they thought it was safest to worship him.”
“The locals told you?”
“I have some Pashto.”
“I’m sure you do.”
Pargeter inclined his head. “I finally gained an audience with this god, or demon, and he was just a little boy doing magic tricks.” He clicked his fingers and suddenly there was an egg in his palm. Clicked them again and there was a live chick standing there, looking around bemusedly. Clicked them again and his palm was empty. “Do you know what those little dots are?”
“Graphite,” she said. She scribbled a fingertip through the air. “Handy for writing notes when you can’t find a pencil.”
“Graphite radio antennae,” Pargeter said. “That’s how you communicate with the Dust. Have you had a scan?”
She shook her head. She hadn’t dared.
“Well, I have, and if you’re the same as me you have a network of the stuff all through your body. You’re a little radio station, Ms Peterson. While we were asleep, you and I were rewritten.”
“Although not quite as radically as Lieutenant Oak,” Rae said.
Pargeter smiled bashfully. “I wondered whether you’d notice that.”
“What is he?”
“Lieutenant Oak?” Pargeter looked surprised. “I’d have thought the name would give it away. He’s a tree.” He reconsidered for a moment. “Although I suppose the technical term would be golem. An avatar created by rewriting a tree.”