‘Don’t you want to drive?’ asked Diana, as she backed out of the driveway.
Cairo shook her head. She hadn’t seen her licence for five years. She supposed it was in the safe at Gethsemane.
Diana glanced at her. ‘D’you really have to leave the day after tomorrow?’
‘The children are counting the days, Mum. But I’ll try to come back soon.’
‘I don’t think that’s very likely, do you?’
The radio was on. The presenter was talking to a scientist who thought the human race was headed for extinction within a hundred years. Take Easter Island! he exclaimed exuberantly. Excellent example. The human population outstripped the environment. The result? Extinction.
‘Charming,’ muttered Diana, retuning to a music channel. ‘Remind me not to invite him to dinner.’
‘A hundred years is a lot longer than Justin predicts.’
‘You don’t still believe that stuff, do you? About the end of the world being nigh?’
Cairo looked out at the traffic, at people walking along with phones clapped to their ears and cheerful advertising hoardings. She saw a party of children with their teachers; a man in an anorak, stooping to pat a dog. It all seemed very humdrum. Not remotely apocalyptic. But the darkness of the mercury dream clung to her.
‘There’s not believing,’ she said, ‘and then there’s really not believing. It’s hard to unbelieve things you’ve built your life around.’
‘It must be bloody depressing. I mean, why would you bother to do anything? I think I’d just give up and eat a lot of chocolate.’
•
Cairo arrived on the ward in time to see a gaggle of medical types filing out from behind Mike’s curtain. She pressed herself against the basin as they swept by. It was hard to believe that so many people had somehow jammed themselves around his bed; it reminded her of jokes about elephants and fridges.
Mike’s mood was upbeat.
‘Tomorrow morning! The consultant and his sidekicks just had a pow-wow. They’re sick of me.’
‘Great, Dad!’
‘I’ll feel more human once I’m out.’ He pointed at his bedside cabinet. ‘Grab my phone for me? Better let your mum know.’
He called Diana while Cairo rearranged the Get Well cards. He looked so much better today. Perhaps the prognosis was wrong? Her children might meet their grandfather after all.
‘Think we could go outside?’ he asked. ‘I’ve got cabin fever.’
Cairo asked Hazel, who produced a wheelchair. The nurse dosed her patient up with pain relief and, with the help of Cairo, manoeuvred him into the chair.
‘What a palaver,’ said Mike. ‘I could get used to being treated like royalty.’
It was a palaver, but it was worth it. As soon as he was in the open air, Mike seemed ecstatic.
‘I haven’t been outside since this whole thing began,’ he said. ‘Funny, the things that don’t matter. I was on my way to work, on my phone, bitching about someone’s mismanagement. Stumbled over a kerb, and—snap!—leg’s broken, and I’m sitting on the pavement.’
‘Just like that?’
‘Yep. Ambulance. Faces getting more and more solemn. It dawns on me that we’re not talking about a broken leg any more, we’re talking about what’s caused it to break. A load of tests. Then the news nobody wants to hear. Not a great moment.’ One hand strayed to his ear, and he tugged at the lobe. ‘Anyhoo. Onwards and upwards. I might be one of those miracles who baffle their doctors. And right now I’m out here in the sunshine.’ He tipped his head back, basking. ‘And I’m with Cassy. That makes me glad I’ve got the Big C.’
‘No, Dad. No.’
‘Yes, yes, yes. I’d rather die at the age of fifty-five, knowing you and I are friends, than live to a hundred and think you hate me.’
They’d arrived at a lily pond. It was really just a trough full of water, raised to a wheelchair user’s level. Tiny fish flitted under the algae, like shining copper coins. Cairo parked Mike’s chair and sat on the brick surround of the trough. She and her father didn’t have much time left, and there were things that must be put right.
‘I want you to know I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I just … want to say that.’
‘For leaving us?’
‘For everything. For accusing you.’
‘Ah. Yes, that did hurt a bit.’
‘I honestly believed what I was saying. I thought I was remembering real events. It all seemed so vivid.’
He flicked his fingers, shooing her words away. ‘No more apologies. Life’s too short—literally too short. I’ve been an idiot of a father. I made a God-awful fuss about things that didn’t matter at all.’ He pretended to slap his own face. ‘Stupid.’
A fish came up, its copper snout breaking the surface.
‘Justin says the only measure of success is whether we love one another,’ said Cairo.
‘Does he?’ Mike raised a cynical eyebrow. ‘And how does JC score on that criteria?’
‘I used to think he scored top marks. One hundred percent. But now I wonder whether the only person he really loves is himself. And I’m not even sure of that.’
‘Can I ask … is it true that he thinks he’s Jesus Christ?’
‘An embodiment of the divine spirit of Jesus. Yes.’
‘Ah.’ Mike wasn’t quite suppressing a smirk. ‘What’s the difference?’
‘Well, he teaches that the mysteries of the universe are far beyond human understanding.’
‘How convenient.’
‘Dad!’ She splashed a little pond water over him, and he looked contrite.
‘Sorry. Please tell me, I won’t interrupt again.’
She had to think. The Watchmen didn’t ask these questions. ‘He teaches that when he—the risen Jesus—was taken up to heaven two thousand years ago, he was rejoined, or reabsorbed, into a kind of cloud of power … that’s the Infinite Power, which we also call God. His true state of being is a part of the Infinite Power. See? Then he became human for a second time. And that’s Justin.’
‘Really? Wow.’
‘Wow, Dad?’ Cairo mimed astonishment. ‘Is that all you’ve got to say?’
‘It’s all I’m allowed to say. Your mother’s forbidden me—on pain of death, though that’s not much of a threat—to use expressions like whack job or psycho or string the bastard up. She’s afraid I’ll drive you back into that whack job’s arms.’
Cairo could see that he was tiring, but she didn’t want this time with him to end. This might be their last chance to sit and talk, alone in a sunny garden. Every second was priceless.
‘Tell me more about Gethsemane,’ he begged. ‘I won’t scoff any more. I’d like to understand where you’ve been. Those lost years! I want to live them with you.’
Cairo held back at least half of the story. There were things she never wanted her family to know. Her life in Gethsemane was deeply personal. She couldn’t explain the euphoria of meditation, or her sense of soaring into the presence of God, or the fear of being expelled, or the way Justin seemed to bend the very air around him. She was ashamed to admit that she’d been out recruiting; that she’d helped to play people like fish. She was embarrassed to have welcomed hunger and sleep deprivation, and public confession, and being told when to have children and how many she was allowed, or what she should think and feel, or how she should spend every second of every day.
Instead she talked about picnics, rope swings and hot springs; gardens, goats and swimming in the lake on summer nights. She talked about community and friendship. Mike was especially interested in her teaching.
‘I bet you’re good at it,’ he said.
‘Well, I do get a buzz. I’d like to be properly trained.’
He’d been smiling as he listened to her.
‘I’m starting to understand why you stayed,’ he said. ‘I think I’m finally getting it.’
She dipped her hand into the pond, and a water boatman skittered away. That little creature really could walk on water. Simple, when you knew how.
‘I was looking for answers,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d found them.’
‘We’re all looking for answers.’
‘You too, huh?’
He was watching the fish as they darted around their micro-world. ‘I lie at night in my bed by the window, and I look out at this fascinating, mysterious, mind-blowingly vast universe—or at where it would be, if it wasn’t for the light pollution—and I wonder if there’s any chance of finding an omnipotent being out there, who created the whole shebang. And I wonder what kind of omnipotent being would just lounge about, watching the mess we’re making down here, and let it happen anyway. I mean, what a bastard. It all seems pretty unlikely to me.’
‘Are you scared?’
‘Of dying? Yes. But not so much of death. I’ve seen a fair bit of it, one way and another. It’s just the last stop on the line. My brain will shut down, and my atoms will break down, and go off and re-form themselves into new structures, and that will be that for me. Finito.’
His view seemed impossibly bleak. She wanted to save him from it. ‘Millions of people think you’re wrong, Dad.’
‘I do hope not! Oblivion’s a much better option than eternity.’
‘You don’t believe that.’
‘Bloody well do. The very idea of eternity gives me vertigo. I’d rather be non-existent than sitting on a cloud making eternal small talk with a whole load of Christians. Or Buddhists, or Jews, or Muslims, or Hindus, or Jehovah’s Witnesses, or Zoroastrians … or whichever bunch turns out to have backed the right horse. Think how smug they’ll be!’
Cairo laughed, despite everything. She took her hand from the water and shook it dry. An elderly couple were approaching the pond; he was leaning on a Zimmer frame while she guided him.
‘Might be time to move along,’ said Mike. ‘We mustn’t hog the ornamental lake.’
Cairo struggled to turn his chair around and ended up driving over the edge of a flowerbed.
‘Women drivers,’ jeered Mike.
‘You haven’t changed, Dad. You’re still a wanker.’
She pushed him slowly, sensing that neither of them was quite ready for this time to end. She’d never felt so close to her father. She’d never quite seen him as human.
‘I suppose your man Calvin thinks I’m going directly to hell, not passing Go, not collecting two hundred pounds?’ he asked.
‘Ah! That’s where you’re wrong! Justin says hell is a figment of mankind’s imagination.’
‘Does he?’
‘Mm. He says most doctrines, from all the world’s religions, are a figment of mankind’s imagination. He says science is much closer to understanding God than religion. He insists on Gethsemane children learning about evolution, lots of history, and proper science.’
‘I’m starting to like this guy!’
They were back on smooth tarmac, and soon she was pushing the wheelchair up a ramp towards a set of doors. Mike had closed his eyes.
‘Is the pain relief working, Dad?’
‘Well enough. But they’ll be doing the tea round soon, and we don’t want to miss that.’
‘No, we mustn’t miss that.’
‘I think I’ve become institutionalised. Good thing I’m getting out tomorrow. You know you’re in trouble when you look forward to a witch’s brew with cardboard biscuits.’
For the rest of the slow and clumsy journey—corridor, lift, corridor—they earnestly debated the dunking of biscuits. It was a much more cheerful subject than oblivion. Or, for that matter, eternity.
•
The internet was pretty miraculous. Cairo had forgotten what could be done with it. Tara needed less than a minute to find the phone number for Kit and Meg’s hostel in Rotorua. Three minutes after that, Cairo was talking to Rome.
‘Cairo!’ He sounded overwhelmed. ‘This is … it’s great to hear your voice. Oh wow, I’m happy to hear your voice.’
They talked about life Outside, swapping notes and agreeing that it was lonely and frightening and confusing and—above all—noisy. But Rome was doing well. His first day as a hospital porter had been a success.
‘It’s just so exhausting, being out here,’ he said. ‘I’ve never had to meet so many new people before. I sometimes find myself …’
‘Sliding back?’
‘Sliding back. Yes.’ There was hesitation before he asked, ‘Is the Last Day coming, do you think?’
‘No,’ she said firmly. ‘I really don’t.’
‘I’m worried about what’s happening at Gethsemane. People have started leaving.’
‘People have left? Who?’
‘Kiev and Tunis, for a start.’
Cairo was surprised. Kiev and Tunis were the couple she’d helped to recruit in Hamilton, years ago. They’d seemed like perfect Watchmen.
‘They’ve ended up in this hostel,’ said Rome. ‘Kiev is so scared, she won’t leave her room. Her brother’s flying up from Christchurch to collect them.’
‘What made them leave?’
‘Well, this is the thing … according to them, the atmosphere’s got much worse since I was expelled. All five flax weavers have gone! They walked out along the top path, same as you. Justin keeps having those thunderclap headaches. He keeps shouting at Messenger, all night long. He says the Last Day is imminent. Like … imminent. He’s doubled the numbers at every Vigil. Nobody’s allowed to leave the valley, for any reason. Matariki and Ikaroa can’t be used any more. Tunis and Kiev only just managed to get out on a kayak.’
‘Justin’s closing the gates.’
‘That’s right. He’s got everyone sleeping with their shoes on, ready for a journey. Tunis said the valley feels dark. Dark. I don’t like the sound of it, do you?’
No, Cairo didn’t like the sound of it. Her mind began to work fast: weighing choices, making decisions. She had woken up at last.
Take the flight on Friday, as planned. I wouldn’t be able to get one before then … save a lot of time if I take a domestic flight down to Rotorua. I’ll have to borrow the money from Mum for that. Find Rome. Get myself back into Gethsemane. Quickly.
She had to hurry. The gates were closing, and her family was inside.