Pynchon’s finger traced over the screen, following what appeared to be a coastline interrupted by a broad inlet. The map was stark in its simplicity, flat colours and thin lines lacking any digits or text. “Well,” he said. “At least we know we’re not on another planet.”
“Did you seriously think we were?” Rhys asked him, receiving a shrug in response.
“I don’t think anything would surprise me any more.”
“So,” Huxley cut in with a measure of forced patience, “what are we looking at?”
“No names as you can see.” Pynchon’s finger tapped the coastline. “But this is definitely the Thames Estuary. And this—” his finger shifted to a pulsing green dot in the centre of the screen “—is our position. My reckoning: we’re about fifty miles off the south-east coast of Britain, approaching the Thames river which leads directly into London.”
“What’s that?” Rhys pointed to another pulsing dot, this one red in colour. It sat at a point where the estuary narrowed to river-like proportions.
“No idea,” Pynchon replied. “But, at the current speed and heading, we’ll find out in about an hour.”
“Does London mean anything to anyone?” Huxley turned to face them all, seeing only the typical confused frustration. “Hometown, maybe?”
“I can tell you that Anne Boleyn had her head chopped off in the Tower of London on the nineteenth of May 1536,” Golding offered. “And that Lloyds of London was first established as a corporate entity in 1686. The original Roman name was Londinium, famously sacked by Boudicca in…”
“Yeah, that’s not remotely fucking useful,” Pynchon told him, turning to Huxley. “We should arm up. Get ready. Something’s waiting for us and we have no way of knowing if it’s good or bad.”
Huxley glanced again at the pulsing dots inching towards each other on the screen. Good, bad, or indifferent? One thing he felt certain of: when they reached that dot at least they would get some answers. “OK, what do we do?”
Pynchon positioned himself and Huxley on the foredeck, standing on either side of the squat, insectoid menace of the chain gun. They both held loaded carbines. Bolts cocked to chamber a round. Stock fully extended and pressed into the shoulder. One hand on the fore stock, the other the pistol grip. Fingers resting on the trigger guard. Thumb on the safety.
Handling the weapon felt easy and familiar, but donning the webbing less so. Huxley slipped it over his shoulders and fastened the various buckles with a precision that bespoke only a modicum of muscle memory. By contrast, Pynchon shrugged on the canvas belt arrangement with all the swiftness of a reflex, checking the fit of the magazines in the pouches before attaching the Velcro-sheathed combat knife to his waist.
Dickinson, Rhys and Plath were on the aft deck, also armed with carbines. Golding had been consigned to the wheelhouse with instructions to report any change in the map display. The boat continued to plough a steady but unhurried course through the water, the engines maintaining the same rhythmic thrum. It was as Huxley began to discern a long, low shadow in the fog that the drone of the engines altered pitch and the boat slowed.
“That a coastline?” Huxley asked Pynchon. They both had their carbines raised. There were no binoculars on board but each carbine had an optical sight offering 3x magnification. Viewing it through the sight made the shadow only marginally less vague, but Huxley discerned the faint white glimmer of breaking waves along its base.
“North bank of the estuary.” Pynchon’s carbine tracked slowly from right to left, eye unblinking on the sight.
“What do you make of this fog?” Huxley lowered his own weapon, squinting at the pink-tinged mist. “I mean, it doesn’t seem natural, right? Fog doesn’t hang around for this long. And the colour…”
“Not a meteorologist.” Pynchon frowned then raised his eye from his sight. “Maybe that was Conrad’s speciality. Who knows?” He returned to his survey. “Whatever it is should be dead ahead…” The barrel of his weapon stopped and he removed his hand from the fore stock to point. “There, twelve o’clock. See it?”
Huxley found it quickly, the sight tracking over clouded waves before coming to rest on a flare of colour among the grey: a bright shade of orange, designed to draw the eye. The colour formed a bulbous cylindrical band around a yellow-and-black-striped cone, bobbing sluggishly in the swell.
“Airdropped beacon,” Pynchon said, and Huxley saw the mess of cords cascading down the cone’s side to the water, where the billowing white shape of a collapsed parachute trailed just below the waves. “Looks like the plane was delivering something after all.”
Huxley kept his sight on the beacon as the boat brought them closer, making out the riveted plates that comprised the sides of the cone. He saw no markings beyond the black and yellow stripes but did discern the curved edges of a rectangular hatch.
The abrupt fade of the boat’s engines and Golding’s shout from the wheelhouse happened simultaneously.
“Message!” The historian’s voice was muted by the thick glass of the windscreen, but his frantic gesticulation was clear enough. “There’s a message!”
The boat became less stable without forward propulsion, Huxley and Pynchon creating a distinct list as they made their way aft. The others were already clustered around the display. The map had disappeared, replaced with a set of words in plain text, white on black:
INVESTIGATE
TWO ONLY
OUTBOARD MOTOR IN THE HOLD
“Short and to the point,” Golding observed.
They all started in alarm when the engines flared to a growl, raising a plume of white and causing the boat’s prow to shift to starboard. A second later the engines died again.
“It’s just keeping position,” Pynchon said, moving to the ladder. “We have an outboard to find.”
They found one of the sealed duckboards in the lower deck raised up an inch, Pynchon hauling it away to reveal the long pole, propeller and control stick of an outboard motor.
“Shouldn’t it be bigger?” Rhys asked, viewing the machine with a doubtful grimace.
“All electric.” Pynchon patted the Kevlar-covered box at the top of the pole. “Battery pack. I think we can assume the range has been limited to make sure we don’t take the inflatable and sail away.”
“This is kinda nuts, isn’t it?” Golding said, face bunched in mystification and voice taking on a shrill edge as he continued. “I mean, it’s clear they can communicate with us. Why drop a buoy in our path and order us to go take a look? Why not just tell us what we’re doing here?”
“It’s a test,” Plath said. “Basic reasoning and cognition. Read the message, find the motor, fix it to the inflatable, make it to the buoy. They’re checking to see if we’re still alive and capable of following instructions.”
“Meaning,” Rhys put in, “they weren’t sure if we would be alive and sane at this point when they stuck us on this boat.” An utterly humourless smile flickered across her lips before she stated the obvious: “Conrad isn’t.”
“Test or not,” Pynchon grunted, taking hold of the outboard and hauling it clear. “I don’t think we’re going anywhere until we check out that beacon.”
There was no discussion about who would go. Pynchon hauled the inflatable’s tarpaulin clear, attached the outboard, pushed a lever to activate the grapple that lowered it into the water, then inclined his head at Huxley. “Shall we?”
“What if… something happens?” Rhys asked.
“Define ‘something’.” Huxley gave a helpless shrug as he settled at the inflatable’s prow, Pynchon taking command of the outboard. “Thinking it’s going to blow up? Turn into a killer robot, maybe?”
He hadn’t seen humour on her face before and felt that the brief, grudging half-smile made her look a good deal younger. “Don’t worry.” She assumed a frown of grave assurance. “We’ll definitely leave you to die if the worst happens.”
Huxley touched his fingers to his forehead in a mock salute. “Where we go one, we go none.”
According to Pynchon’s annoyed estimation, the outboard proved capable of no more than three knots at full throttle. “If that thing does blow up, there’s no way we’re getting clear of the debris in time.”
“If they could airdrop it into our path, they could’ve just dropped a bomb. And why go to all this trouble just to kill us now?”
Pynchon eased the throttle when they were within a few yards of the beacon. Up close it was much larger than Huxley first thought, ten feet tall with a ledge and handholds above the inflated orange doughnut that formed its base. Taking hold of the rope affixed to the rubber ring at the inflatable’s prow, Huxley braced himself then leaped for the beacon. The ledge was wet but formed of a metal grate that prevented him from slipping. He tied the rope to one of the handholds, the knot sturdy and formed with the same slow but precise movements with which he had donned the webbing. More muscle memory.
He held the rope firm while Pynchon killed the outboard and clambered across from the inflatable. They both had their carbines slung crossways on their backs but Pynchon made no move to unlimber his – there was nothing to shoot at.
“It was on this side,” Huxley said, moving from handhold to handhold as he made his way right. The hatch was about twelve inches square and lacked any obvious means of opening it. After a few seconds of ineffectual staring, Huxley pushed it, feeling it give a quarter-inch. A faint, mechanical whirring then the hatch slid aside, revealing a yellow rectangular object in a cradle.
“Sat-phone,” Pynchon said.
“Remember any numbers offhand?” Huxley reached for the sat-phone then stopped when it let out a loud but low-pitched trill. His hand hovered near the device’s thick plastic casing, trembling. He found it notable that Pynchon also made no move to pick it up.
“Somebody wants to talk,” he said, wiping a spatter of seawater from his upper lip that Huxley knew also contained a measure of sweat.
Why? he asked himself, making a fist to banish the tremble. Why does this scare me so much?
Grimacing, he snorted a deep breath and picked up the sat-phone, holding it to his ear, saying nothing. You want to talk. So talk.
The voice that came from the speaker was female and modulated to an uninflected flatness, lacking anything that might be called emotion. “State your name.”
Huxley had to swallow before he could grunt back an answer. “Who is this?”
“State your name.” A bland repetition, just as flat.
He exchanged a glance with Pynchon, receiving a shrug then a nod.
“The name Huxley is tattooed on my arm.”
“State the names of the other members of your party.”
Another nod from Pynchon, leaning close enough to hear, his sweat now obvious in his odour.
“Pynchon,” Huxley said. “Rhys, Dickinson, Plath, and Golding.”
A pause, a very faint click from the speaker before flat-voice returned. “Where is Conrad?”
“Dead.”
“How?”
“Suicide.”
“Describe the body.”
“Unresponsive with big holes in his head resulting from a close-range gunshot wound.”
“No other injuries or signs of illness?”
Huxley’s turn to pause. Beside him, Pynchon worked his lips, breathing slow and heavy. Illness? Something about the word, even though it had been spoken with the same lack of inflection, carried a definite weight.
“We all have recently healed surgical incisions,” Huxley said. “But that’s not what you meant, was it?”
Another pause, this time long enough to provoke him.
“Answer my question.” The sat-phone’s casing creaked in his grip. “What other signs of illness should we have seen?”
“That is not relevant at this time.” Still no emotion, which infuriated him more than if the statement had been made with a taunting laugh.
“Fuck you it’s not. What signs of illness?”
“The boat will remain inactive unless a satisfactory outcome to this exchange is achieved. Following that, further guidance on your course will be provided. Do you understand?”
Huxley bit down on an explosion of anger, taking the phone from his ear, pressing it to his forehead while a tempting but treacherous urge sprang to mind: Throw the fucking thing in the sea.
A nudge from Pynchon dispelled the anger enough for him to return the phone to his ear, the word emerging from between gritted teeth. “Understood.”
“Do any of the others display signs of confused thinking or unwarranted aggression?”
“For a bunch of people who can’t remember who they are, stuck on a boat sailing towards fuck knows what, I’d say they’re about as stable as could be expected.”
“Has anyone remembered anything? Anything personal?”
“No…” He hesitated, brow furrowed as he did a mental fast-forward through his interactions with the others. Aurora borealis. “Wait. Dickinson said something kind’ve personal, but it was just a minor detail.”
“There are no minor details. What did she say?”
“Something she remembered seeing, during a trip north of the Arctic Circle, she thought.”
“Specify.”
“The aurora borealis. She said she felt she’d been with someone when she saw it, someone important to her.” A very short pause, another distant click on the line.
“Is she with you now?”
“No, Pynchon’s here. Dickinson and the others are on the boat.”
“To ensure your survival it is imperative you comply with the following instructions: take this phone and return to the boat. Kill Dickinson.”
A meeting of widened, baffled eyes with Pynchon, the phone almost slipping from his grasp. “What!?”
“Dickinson is now a danger to you all. To ensure your survival you must kill her.”
“She’s a fucking mountain climber, maybe an explorer…”
“Any member of your crew who recalls personal memories must be considered a danger. Return to the boat and kill her.”
“That’s not happening.” Huxley’s grip tightened on the phone, pressing it close to his lips, spittle flying as his rage won out over caution. “Listen, none of us is doing shit until we get answers…”
The sound that echoed from the boat mingled a dry crack with a boom, starkly unmistakable in origin. Gunshot.
“Return to the boat,” the voice told him, just as flat as before. “Kill her.”
Pynchon told him to take charge of the outboard, unslinging his carbine to perch on the prow while Huxley opened the throttle to its meagre maximum. They could hear shouting from the boat as they drew up to the stern, Pynchon jumping clear and disappearing into the wheelhouse, carbine at his shoulder. Huxley scrambled in his wake, remembering to tie the inflatable to the aft railing before following. He unslung his own carbine upon entering the gloom of the wheelhouse, foot slipping on something wet. Looking down he saw a smear of red on the deck.
“Fucking hell!” The grunting shout came from Golding, on his back, blood welling between his fingers as he clutched both hands to his thigh. “She shot me! Fucking bitch shot me!”
Rhys was at his side, unfurling a bandage from one of the med-kits. “Sit still! Pretty sure it’s just a graze.”
“Doesn’t feel like a fucking graze!” Golding let out a whimpering yell as she prised his hands away from the wound, peering at the crimson mess through the rent in his fatigues.
“What happened?” Huxley demanded, scanning the wheelhouse but seeing no one else.
“Dickinson.” Rhys took a canteen and splashed water on Golding’s wound, grunting in satisfaction at what she found. “Took some meat off but no through-and-through or bullet lodgement. You got lucky.”
“Yeah?” Golding’s face paled and throat convulsed in the signature expression of a man about to lose his breakfast. “I feel so lucky right now…”
“Dickinson did this?” Huxley persisted.
“Started talking just when you reached the beacon. Rambling really.” Rhys grimaced as Golding turned his head to throw up, but she stoically continued to apply the dressing to his wound. “Wasn’t making much sense, getting increasingly agitated. We tried to calm her but she started screaming, pointing her gun at the deck as if there was something there. Then she pulled the trigger. This—” Rhys tied off the bandage with a deft twist of her wrists “—was a ricochet.”
“Where is she now?”
“Crew cabin. She dropped that.” Rhys nodded to a fallen carbine on the deck nearby. “Plath’s trying to talk to her. Is that a sat-phone?”
Huxley had the phone tucked into one of the ammo pouches on his webbing. “Yeah.”
“So you spoke to someone, right? What did they say?”
Huxley looked at Pynchon, finding him tense, eyes downcast as if in shame, though there was no sign of a tremble in the hands that held his carbine.
Huxley moved to the ladder. “I need to talk to Dickinson.”
“You heard what it said,” Pynchon muttered. Huxley brushed past him, descending the ladder to the crew cabin where he found Plath crouched beside a huddled Dickinson. The woman’s face was a picture of guilty misery, eyes moist and lips repeatedly drawing back to reveal teeth set in a hissing grimace.
“I saw…” she said, putting a palm to her forehead.
“What?” Plath prompted. “What did you see?”
“You saw it too, you must have.”
“There was nothing there…”
Plath fell silent at the sound of Huxley’s boots on the deck, she and Dickinson both looking up at him with a different kind of fear in their eyes. “She’s calmed down a lot,” Plath said, her tone making him wonder if she saw a decision in his gaze he didn’t know he had reached.
“Is it still up there?” Dickinson asked him, her expression stark in its desperate entreaty. “It’s gone, right? Please tell me it’s gone.”
Huxley knew he was no psychiatrist, but some ingrained instinct told him with complete certainty that he was now looking into the eyes of a woman who had, in the space of a half-hour, slipped into insanity. Dickinson is now a danger to you all.
“It’s gone,” he told her. “Pretty sure you scared it off.”
“Thank you.” She closed her eyes, resting her head against the side of a bunk, words coming in a whispering torrent. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”
Huxley heard Pynchon descend the ladder, boots thumping onto the deck with loud intent. Glancing over his shoulder, Huxley fixed Pynchon with a steady glare, shaking his head.
“Let me talk to her,” he told Plath, touching a hand to her shoulder to ease her aside. She retreated, casting nervous glances at both him and Pynchon.
“Any idea how it got here?” Huxley asked Dickinson, crouching before her and ignoring the soft scrape of Pynchon’s carbine sling as he adjusted his grip.
“No!” Dickinson shook her head, fast and fierce. “I mean, it’s impossible right? Papa killed it. I watched him. He made me watch.”
“But you saw it, here and now.”
“Maybe…” Dickinson’s tongue licked over her lips, throat working and a manic comprehension glinting in her eyes. “Maybe this is part of it, the… experiment. Whatever. Maybe this isn’t actually real.” Her hand slapped at the bunk and then the wall behind her. “A simulation!” Her eyes widened, breath emerging in a gasp of realisation. “Of course! We’re not really here. That’s it. That’s the only way…”
“The bullet wound in Golding’s leg looks pretty real,” Huxley pointed out.
“Well it would, wouldn’t it?” Her expression became peevishly judgemental, exasperated by his failure of insight. “That’s how a simulation works.”
Huxley had the distinct impression she was preventing herself adding the word ‘dumbass’ or ‘dipshit’ to her statement. Softening his tone, he tried a different tack. “You mentioned your father. So you remember him now?”
“Papa? Yes.” She relaxed a little, letting out a short, shrill laugh. As it faded, her expression darkened, mouth twisting in anger, voice growing thick, words emerging in a series of grunts. “I remember Papa. I remember what he did, what he’d still like to do. That’s why he did it. Bought me a puppy just so he could kill it in front of me, because I wouldn’t any more, because I threatened to tell Mama…”
The attack came without warning. No pause or shift in her posture. Just an unhesitant lunge of pure aggression, feral and animal quick. Her muscular frame hit him with the force of a battering ram, bearing him down, impossibly strong hands digging fingers into his shoulders. “Papa!” The word was formed of a growl, flecked in drool leaking from her mouth. She reared above him, teeth bared and head angled like a cat seeking the best place to bite. Before the booming crack of Pynchon’s carbine sent a bullet through her skull, Huxley saw something change in her face, a shift of muscle and bone, twisting it, transforming…
He blinked in the shower of blood and other matter, both hard and soft, ears ringing from the gunshot. He fought a gag reflex as Dickinson’s lifeless body collapsed atop him, warm blood dripping from the ragged hole in her forehead. Pynchon dragged the corpse off to allow him to scramble back, trying to scrape the gore from his face but only smearing it.
Pynchon sniffed, flipping his carbine’s safety catch, eyebrow raised as he surveyed Dickinson’s corpse before nodding to the sat-phone tucked into Huxley’s ammo pouch. “Looks like it wasn’t lying, anyway.”