Salvage, p.1
Salvage, page 1
Salvage
ROBERT EDRIC
Contents
Cover
Title
Copyright
Dedication
Also by Robert Edric
Part I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Part II
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Part III
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Part IV
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
About the Author
This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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First published in Great Britain
in 2010 by Doubleday
an imprint of Transworld Publishers
Copyright © Robert Edric 2010
Robert Edric has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9780385617628
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2 4 6 8 10 9 7 5 3 1
For Kate Samano
Also by Robert Edric
WINTER GARDEN
A NEW ICE AGE
A LUNAR ECLIPSE
IN THE DAYS OF THE AMERICAN MUSEUM
THE BROKEN LANDS
HALLOWED GROUND
THE EARTH MADE OF GLASS
ELYSIUM
IN DESOLATE HEAVEN
THE SWORD CABINET
THE BOOK OF THE HEATHEN
PEACETIME
GATHERING THE WATER
THE KINGDOM OF ASHES
IN ZODIAC LIGHT
CRADLE SONG
SIREN SONG
SWAN SONG
What the wind blows away
The wind blows back again.
Cloud on Black Combe, Norman Nicholson
Part I
1
It was mid afternoon, and already the light was fading. Quinn traced the line of the narrow road as it rose ahead of him, following an excavated and straightened contour along the hillside. As he drove, he looked to the west, to where the last of the winter sun had already dropped beneath the cloud, where it shone in solid-looking columns, and where smaller, drifting clouds cast late shadows over the empty land below like the outlines of slow-moving fish beneath the opaque surface of a lake. Perhaps there was water in the direction he was looking – a new incursion of the sea perhaps; or an extended estuary not yet plotted on the Land Agency maps or fed into his own temperamental and outdated navigator.
He was distracted from these thoughts by the warning of a bend directly ahead of him and he slowed down. He had hoped for a more precise idea of his location, but the sign did nothing more than inform him of the approaching curve in the steep road. He slowed further and then pulled to the side of the carriageway.
Two days earlier, upon collecting the car, he had been told by the mechanic who had transferred the vehicle’s codes and then added fuel credits to Quinn’s account that the navigation system was faulty. ‘Not working?’ Quinn had asked him. The mechanic had glanced at the handset he held. ‘Faulty. That’s all it says,’ he’d said, unconcerned, adding, ‘If it had been deleted or taken out for re-programming, then it would say that.’ He had then gone to the boot and taken out the ringbound road atlas, which he’d thrown on to the seat beside Quinn. ‘Most of the roads are in that,’ he’d said, grinning at the old joke. ‘And some of the on-board indicators don’t work. Doesn’t mean those functions aren’t available, just that the indicators are faulty. Electronics. Not my department.’ He’d held out his handset for Quinn to enter his own codes. Quinn had known better than to insist on a properly serviced vehicle; he’d already been waiting an hour for the car he was being given.
Now, sitting beside the road in what seemed to him to be the middle of nowhere, he studied the map using a torch – roads and other networks laid out in a colourful and simplified format like a giant wiring system.
A rising wind buffeted the car. It had rained earlier as he’d followed the motorway north, after which the sun had returned and the road was dry again.
The small circle of yellow light showed him where he was, or at least where he thought he was.
He had anticipated following the motorway closer to his destination, but as he’d continued north it had narrowed from eight lanes to four, and then, following a diversion around a closure, to only two lanes. As usual, the priority lane remained intact, meaning that all other traffic was restricted to singlefile. In parts, the road was denied him by bollards; elsewhere by railings driven crudely into its surface. Warning signs flashed above him at his approach: some told him of further diversions and delays ahead; others tried to compensate for these uncertainties by predicting how long his journey to the various upcoming junctions might now last. But these, he knew from long experience, were equally inaccurate and frustrating, all too often replaced with yet further warnings of additional delays.
There had been little other traffic on his day-long journey: congestion before the late dawn as he’d moved away from the capital, but then a rapid decrease in traffic as the distances between the recently reconfigured exits and connector roads had lengthened. He’d been caught in queues in the Midlands and then again as he’d come to the Mid North, but after that the roads had almost emptied.
He’d been stopped an hour earlier by a workman who had signalled him off the road and into a parking bay. Sixty or seventy other motorists were already gathered there. A second man then directed him to a specific point in the otherwise vast and empty space, but could not tell him why he’d been stopped, saying simply and authoritatively that he and his co-workers had been instructed to clear the road ahead for the following hour. If Quinn wanted to find out what was happening, there was – as ever – a number to call, and the man recited this before Quinn could answer him.
Another of the drivers told Quinn that these things happened all the time in that part of the world. ‘Military convoys,’ he said. ‘They like the road to themselves. You’d be going nowhere fast if you got stuck behind one.’ It was forbidden to drive within 200 metres of the convoys – outriders saw to that; and to drive among the slow-moving vehicles, even by accident, was a considerably more serious offence. ‘Got caught behind one three miles long last week,’ the man said almost proudly.
The delay had lasted ninety minutes, during which the day had started to die. Quinn had asked others how far he was from his destination; some had little idea; some were prepared to guess; and yet others said they knew exactly where it was, but their estimates concerning the length of his remaining journey then varied from one to three hours.
He showed them the place in his atlas. Some left him to check their own navigation systems, returning with strips of map outlining his route and its timings in the smallest detail. But these too, Quinn knew, were misleading reassurances, straightening the road, offering no scale, and removing all true sense of distance and direction, and destroying completely any idea of the nature of the landscape through which the roads ahead passed. One man even suggested to Quinn that he might want to break his journey and resume the followi ng morning. ‘In the light,’ he had said. The sun was falling rapidly and most of the route ahead would not be illuminated. It was as Quinn considered the wisdom of this that an announcement was made telling them they were all free to continue their journeys. They were exhorted to drive safely and then warned of the new speed limits ahead.
That had been two hours ago, and now Quinn sat by the side of the narrow, unlit road, uncertain of his way ahead, and again watching the rain as it blew against the windscreen in sudden squalls.
His destination was clearly marked on the map. Roads led in and out of it from all directions – three major routes and twice that number of lesser connections. The motorway, though still marked, had effectively ended two pages previously, and Quinn could not now accurately locate himself on the intervening pages. He told himself he had a good idea of where he was, but that was all – an idea, a notion; wishful thinking, perhaps – something he could neither be certain of nor confirm against the other marked places. It was a rare and unsettling experience for him to be lost like this.
By now the light in the west had almost gone, reduced to a vivid orange glow along the horizon, a dividing line, soon also to be lost to him, between the land below and the sky above. There was no lake, no estuary – simply an undifferentiated expanse of terrain much the same as that which surrounded him now on the rising hillside.
In the far distance – a distance that appeared to Quinn to be beyond the divide of the briefly lit horizon – there were a few widely scattered and intermittent lights: towns perhaps; and perhaps if he looked closely enough, the lighted courses of other roads. But nothing of these clusters or their connections seemed permanent to him, flickering and dying, brightening and then fading as the greater light above them also failed.
Quinn switched off the engine and waited for several minutes in the ensuing silence. He had blankets – from long experience of countless other journeys to these distant places – and he had food and drink. He checked the car’s power levels and then searched on the radio for a local news station. The autoscan ran from one end of the waveband to the other. Nothing. A few half-heard voices, whispers in the dark, the same few repeated phrases from unfixed transmitters. He took out a torch.
He switched from news to music and the screen told him that none of the usual sound-sleeves were currently available to him. Another technical error. Meaning that the department responsible for re-licensing the sleeves had either omitted to do this or was saving money by cancelling something most employees might now provide at their own expense. Quinn pushed his card into the slot and it was immediately returned to him. His choice – though not yet made – was unavailable. No charge had been debited.
He slid his seat back and lowered the headrest. An indicator warned him that the doors were not yet locked nor the alarm set. He pressed the single button which provided these functions, cancelled the alarm and then cast what few onboard lights remained into darkness.
It was not yet five in the afternoon, but already it felt to Quinn like the middle of the night. The middle of the night in the middle of nowhere, and he was lost in both. He pointed his torch outside, watching through his own vague yellow reflection as its beam ran back and forth over the wild grass. There was now no definition whatsoever to the land around him – a falling slope below and a rising slope above; a road which curved behind him into the darkness and the day that had just passed; and the same road somewhere ahead of him, another curve, and another lost perspective and unguessable miles.
He watched the swaying grass for a moment and then lowered the torch. Twisting in his seat, he directed the light into the rear of the car, to the cases of files stacked there, facing him like a row of mute children. A dozen rolled charts lay where they had fallen from the seat to the floor.
After a while the rain eased, and only the soughing of the wind remained. In places above him, again towards the west, where all light had finally been extinguished, there were clearing patches of night sky and the stars in their scatter of constellations were already showing through. He was able to identify those outlines he knew – had known since he was a boy – and in the absence of any other identifiable features closer to him, he felt strangely reassured by this.
2
He was woken by a sudden loud banging close to his face. He had slumped in his seat and lay with his arm folded awkwardly beneath him, his shoulder hard against the door. The banging continued and he pushed himself upright. Two faces were pressed to the window, their foreheads and noses flattened by the glass. A film of condensation made them hazy. Quinn looked ahead of him and saw others standing in front of the car. He held up his hand to the men at the glass and they withdrew. He switched on the pre-ignition and lowered the window. The two men took several further paces back at this. The cold morning air stung Quinn’s eyes.
He opened the door and eased out his legs, rubbing the cramp from his thighs and calves.
‘We just arrived,’ one of the men told him, as though Quinn might understand this, as though he might even form some part of their reason for being there.
‘I was lost,’ he said. He looked around him and noticed others on the hillside above.
The two men exchanged a glance. They wore fluorescent jackets and were evidently there to undertake some kind of work.
‘Then you probably still are,’ one of them said. He gestured for the men on the road to join those on the higher slope.
‘Lost where?’ the second man asked Quinn.
Again, Quinn searched around him. He told them his destination, and upon hearing this, the two men relaxed and then laughed.
‘Not as lost as you think,’ the first said. ‘Round that next bend and you’re as high as the road goes. You can see the place beneath you. If you’d kept going, you’d have been there in two minutes.’
Quinn looked in the direction the man indicated, but saw nothing, only the same barren hillside and its incised road.
‘You can’t see it from here,’ the man said. He seemed offended now, as though Quinn didn’t believe him.
‘He’s right,’ the other said. ‘Two minutes.’
Quinn looked again to where he imagined he’d seen the lights of other towns and roads the previous evening, but there was nothing, only a vast expanse of near-level land surrounded by other hills, and the equally vague lines of other roads and paths.
‘What’s over there?’ he asked the men.
Both of them looked.
‘Not much.’
‘What you can see.’
‘I thought perhaps the town was in that direction,’ Quinn said.
‘Already told you – round the next bend.’ The man looked past Quinn into the car, nudging his companion upon seeing the cases and charts in the rear.
‘I thought I saw lights,’ Quinn said, unaware of the men’s new interest.
‘Once, perhaps,’ one of them told him. ‘One or two isolated places at the bottom of the hill. They went fast enough.’
‘And beyond?’
‘The flooding, mostly. Or just enough of it to make life that little bit too uncomfortable to stay. Fifty years ago, you’d have seen nothing but lights.’
Up on the slope, others left the small group and came forward. Several of the men nodded at Quinn but no one else spoke to him. In addition to their jackets, most of these men wore chest-high waders; some of them wore helmets with Perspex visors. A stack of shovels and pick-axes lay at the roadside.
A burst of static interrupted Quinn’s thoughts and one of the men beside him fished inside his jacket for the radio attached there. He silenced the static and shouted into the mouthpiece. Then he pushed the receiver to his ear, screwing up his face at what he was clearly having difficulty hearing, ducking his head out of the wind and pressing a palm to his other ear. After a minute of this he switched the radio off and refastened his jacket. The others watched him without speaking, waiting for whatever he might be about to reveal to them.
But the man said nothing.
‘What?’ his companion asked him eventually.
