Seth blows out a breath, trying to reconcile this version of Adil with the one he knew. Before his exile, he was kind, and caring, free-spirited, and entirely without malice. He lived to serve the village. How twisted must he have become to grind their future under the heel of his boot.
‘Why would Adil do something so awful?’ asks Clara, seeing her grandfather’s distress and taking his hand comfortingly.
‘Because the gem would have revealed that Niema committed suicide, and Adil couldn’t have anybody knowing that,’ replies Emory, as the cable car slows down, preparing to enter the station. Every villager is crammed onto the platform, anxiously waiting for them.
‘Adil had spent the night staging Niema’s suicide to look like a badly covered-up murder, hoping the elders would blame each other for it. That’s why he gave me proof of Thea’s involvement, and why he finally led her to Blackheath when I refused to just accept it. He hated the elders, and thought our people would be better without them, but he couldn’t kill any of them without the others taking revenge on his family. After Niema killed herself, suddenly the equation changed. If one of the remaining two murdered the other, he was free to pick off the survivor without any repercussions.’
Emory shakes her head sorrowfully. ‘He truly loved the village. I honestly believe he was trying to be of service.’
‘Niema probably thought the same,’ says Seth, watching the birds swooping around the carriage. ‘They wanted to create a new world for us, but they both thought they had to burn the old one down first.’ He sighs. ‘As a result, we have no idea how to grow any more children, and a lab full of equipment we don’t know how to use. Jack and the other apprentices are still trapped underground. There’s no elders to help us, and Abi’s gone strangely quiet. What are we supposed to do next, Emory?’
The cable car slides to a halt in the station, the villagers on the platform cheering their safe return.
Emory claps her father on the shoulder, reassuringly.
‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she says cheerfully. ‘And then we’re going to start asking a lot of questions.’ She grins at him. ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to love it.’
27 HOURS AFTER HUMANITY’S SURVIVAL
EIGHTY
Ben’s drawing in the dirt with a stick. He’s been out here for hours, filling the rear yard with equations, hundreds of them, one after another. He shows no sign of stopping. He’s frenzied, unable to focus on anything except the knowledge hissing out of his subconscious.
The entire village is watching him in concern. At first they were clustered around him in a tight circle, but as he’s filled the dirt with numbers, they’ve had to step further away, until they’re now standing on the balconies, and the cable-car station steps.
Normally, they’d have called an elder to help, but they don’t have that safety net any more. They’ve tried to ask me, but I’m refusing to answer. I haven’t spoken to any of them since the fog enveloped the island.
Niema entrusted them with this world. She placed the future in their hands. They don’t need a babysitter any more.
‘Ben,’ I say, in the boy’s thoughts. Then again, when he doesn’t respond. ‘Ben!’
‘Abi?’ he blinks, his heart leaping. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been calling your name. I don’t know what’s happening to me.’
The stick drops from his hand, as he stares at the equations surrounding him with mounting fear.
‘Did I do this?’
‘It’s okay,’ I say. ‘Before you were born, Niema filled your head with the knowledge your people will need to survive. It was locked away in your subconscious, kept a secret even from yourself. She didn’t want Thea or Hephaestus to realise what she’d done.’
They used to perform this trick before the world ended, when the children of wealthy families would be born with an understanding of advanced mathematics, sciences and finance. I’m hoping the villagers put such advantages to more noble purpose.
‘I’m about to do something you’re going to find uncomfortable,’ I say.
The world shrinks and shallows as I pick my way through his mind, neurons firing around me, electricity crackling.
Deeper now. The boy’s thoughts wail around me, the cacophony of his fear and confusion almost too much to bear. It’s like experiencing a tornado from inside a cardboard box.
Deeper, deeper, I unlock the neural block holding the knowledge back and flood his brain with serotonin, dopamine, endorphins and oxytocin: the chemicals of happiness. I don’t want him overwhelmed by the rush of information.
He holds his head, grimacing as a lifetime’s education sears itself into his brain.
‘There’s a lot of information in there,’ I say. ‘But the most important task ahead of you is to maintain your people’s gestation pods, perhaps improve them if you can. You have to teach the others. Don’t dawdle. Your survival depends on it.’
‘I won’t thank you, Abi.’
I don’t respond. There’s no need. Niema left me two jobs. This was one of them, and it’s finished now.
Blinking, Ben realises that he’s surrounded by villagers, their arms around him, their faces clustered close in concern.
‘I’m okay,’ he says, smiling up at them. ‘We’re all okay now.’
EPILOGUE
Emory’s sitting on the floor of a Blackheath storeroom marking a pile of homework, while Jack and the other apprentices dig through a wall. The insects are floating gently in the fog. After a couple of days mimicking everything they saw, they seem to have calmed down. They still do it for the children, though. They seem to enjoy their laughter.
‘How long will they live for?’ asks Emory, who’s the only villager I still have any contact with.
‘I don’t know,’ I admit. ‘I only know what Niema, Thea and Hephaestus knew. The insects are nourished by the fog. We know it’s dissipating, but I don’t know how long it will take to vanish completely. You may have to live with them for a while.’
Jack stops his drill, then goes to another part of the wall and fires it up again.
Emory comes down here every day to see her husband, and is surprised by how much better it’s made her feel. She has no idea how to make this stop, but she has faith. Niema went to such lengths to free them from human control. Surely she wouldn’t forget about these last five people, chained by her instructions.
‘Hui’s up and about,’ says Emory, talking to him over the cacophony of tools. ‘She’s in a lot of pain, but she’ll live. Clara hasn’t left her side.’
Emory marks the last sheet of homework and puts it aside, watching the apprentices work. They’ve dug straight through the concrete wall, and are now excavating the soft earth behind.
What are they doing? she wonders.
She knows it’s one last errand for Niema, but she has no idea what it is. She must have asked me a hundred times, but the answer hasn’t changed. I’m still bound by the orders Niema left me.