CHAPTER TEN

CLAP OF SILENCE

 

PAUL’S HOLOGRAM STOOD at the edge of the wooden verandah. He’d changed out of his military fatigues, back into his Hawaiian shirt and white lab coat. His head was down, looking out through the Sun Wukong’s nose at the island of Kishkindha, and his hands were in the pockets of his jeans. The sun slanting in from the glass panels above rendered his peroxide blond hair a dazzling white.

“Are you okay?” Victoria walked over to stand beside him.

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

She gripped the bamboo rail. “Look, I’m really sorry. I expected him to give up much sooner than that.”

“Stubborn old git.” Paul looked ready to spit. “I think he was hoping I’d get sick of it before he did.”

Victoria wanted to hug him. “Is there anything I can do? I mean, I can’t offer you a stiff drink or anything, but if there’s something...”

“I’ll be all right.” His fingers worried at the gold stud in his ear. “I just need some time. I just need to forget.”

“It was worth it, you know.”

“Was it?” Paul kicked the toe of one trainer against the back of the other.

“He told us how to find Ack-Ack.”

A shrug. “Yes, I suppose.”

“Come on.” Victoria tried to sound cheerful. “The monkey would have done the same for you.”

“Would he?” Paul’s shoulders slumped even further.

“Yes, of course he would.” Victoria smiled. “Only more so.”

They stood side by side, looking down at the steep, tree-covered slopes of the volcano and the clustered huts of the monkey village. After a few minutes, Paul said, “I want to go home.”

Victoria looked at him. He sounded like a lost child, and she wanted desperately to take him in her arms.

“I’m serious,” he continued, as if she’d spoken. “As soon as we’ve got the monkey back, I want to go home, to our world, to our London. I want to see my flat again.”

Victoria bit her lip, all attempts at forced jollity abandoned.

“Pourquoi?”

Paul looked up at the sky and clicked his tongue behind his teeth.

“I don’t think I have much time left, and I’d rather be somewhere familiar, somewhere I remember, when it runs out. I don’t want to die in a strange place.”

Victoria felt her eyes prickle. Her vision swam.

“Okay,” she said.

“You promise?”

“Whatever you want, whatever I can do.”

Paul walked over to the edge of the potted jungle. A blue butterfly flapped between the trees.

“And I want you to promise me something else,” he said.

“Anything.”

He stopped beside a vine, and tried to cup his hand beneath the bloom of a large white flower, but his hologram fingers passed through its petals without disturbing them.

“When I’m gone, I want you to go back to the world where we left Cole and his daughter.”

“The one we’ve just come from?” Victoria shook her head. “After all the chaos we’ve just caused, I don’t think I’d be very welcome.”

“Nevertheless, you have to go back,” Paul maintained. “Sneak in, go in disguise, anything.”

Arms folded, Victoria walked over to him.

“But why?”

Paul’s hand dropped from the flower.

“Nguyen said that the Paul on his world still lived.” He gave her a sad, sly look. “And we already know Berg killed the Victoria that was there.”

“What are you saying?”

“Do I have to spell it out? You’ll be a Victoria without a Paul; he’ll be a Paul without a Victoria. You’ll need each other. You’ll need to be together.”

Victoria’s cheeks burned. A tear ran down her face.

“No,” she said.

Paul looked crestfallen. “I think you should do it, for me.”

Victoria shook her head again. “No, it wouldn’t be the same. He wouldn’t be you.”

Paul pursed his lips. “He’d be close. Maybe too close to tell apart. Cole managed to find another version of his dead wife. Why can’t you do the same with me?”

Victoria felt her cheeks flush. “I don’t want another version, you idiot. I want you.”

“I’m just a recording.”

“You’re more than that!” She paused, letting the anger subside. “You’ve changed, you’ve grown.” He was now, she thought with a twinge of guilt, a far more caring and considerate person than he’d ever been while alive. Dreadful as it was to admit to herself, his death had, in some ways, improved their relationship beyond all recognition and, after everything they’d been through over the past three years, she couldn’t imagine starting again with a stranger—even a stranger with his face and mannerisms.

“No.” She wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeve and sniffed. She hadn’t cried properly in years, and she wasn’t about to start now. “No, that’s not going to happen. You’re my Paul, and I don’t want anybody else.” She swallowed down the lump in her throat. “I’m not going to lose you.”

He watched her as she straightened the collar of her tunic, brushed the medals into place, and gripped the pommel of her sword.

“Now, pull yourself together,” she said, straightening her back, unsure if she was talking to him or herself. “We’ve got a monkey to rescue.” She walked back to the edge of the verandah and looked out at the island. “Are the crew all aboard?”

Paul joined her.

“The Founder recalled them as soon as we had the coordinates.”

“She’s still here?” After the monkey’s long detention, Victoria had expected her to be down on the ground, enjoying the daylight and open space.

“She’s as interested in finding Ack-Ack as we are.”

“Very well. Sound the alarm. We jump in thirty seconds.”

“Thirty seconds?”

“There’s no telling what sort of trouble he’s in,” Victoria said. “The sooner we find him, the better.”

Paul gave a nod. He clicked his fingers and alarms wailed in the corridors and open spaces beyond the indoor jungle.

“I’m going to bring the engines online,” he said. He became very still, like a figure in a paused video, and Victoria knew his attention had moved elsewhere, focused on the Sun Wukong’s navigation systems. She looked down, over the bamboo rail, to where dark machines bulked in the verandah’s shadow. As the power rose, she felt the vibration through her hands and feet.

“Five,” Paul’s voice said over the ship-wide address system. “Four.”

Blue static danced over the machines.

“Three.”

A rising whine came from below, building rapidly, like the sound of an approaching train. Victoria braced herself.

“Two.”

The airship’s skin crackled with a green aurora.

“One.”

Victoria’s ears pulsed with a noise beyond hearing: a silent detonation. She felt her stomach turn itself inside out.

And they were gone.