So far so normal. No more audible thoughts. Someone’s always on their way. But, no, it was “
“Oh, ignore me,” I mutter to Zimbra, and carry on up the stairs, the same stairs I once flew up and flew down. “Come on,” I tell Zimbra, “shift your bum.” I stroke the whorl of fur between his ears, one sticky-uppy and one floppy. Zimbra looks up, like he’s reading my mind with those big black eyes. “You’d tell me if there was anything to worry about, wouldn’t you, eh?”
Anything
Worrying times, Holly Sykes.
“I KNEW THAT was going to happen!” says Rafiq, swamped in Aoife’s old red coat that now serves as his dressing gown, hugging his knees at the foot of Lorelei’s bed. “When Marcus found the brooch was missing from his cloak, that was a—a
“It’s almost ten,” says Lorelei, “and school tomorrow,” and if I close my eyes I can almost imagine it’s Aoife at fifteen years old.
“All right. And is the slate recharged?”
“Yes, but there’s still no thread and no Net.”
“Is it
“Do I detect a bedtime postponement tactic, young man?”
He grins. “Must’ve been
“It must’ve been what?”
“Magno. Everyone says it. Y’know: boss, class, epic, good.”
“Oh. Looking back, yes, it was ‘magno,’ but we all took it for granted back then.” I remember Ed’s pleasure at unlimited electricity each time he got back to our little house in Stoke Newington from Baghdad, where he and his colleagues had to power their laptops and satellite phones with car batteries brought by the battery guy. Sheep’s Head could do with a battery guy now, but his truck’d need diesel, and there isn’t any spare, which is why we need him.
“And airplanes used to fly
“Yes, but …” I flounder for a way to change the subject. Lorelei, too, must be thinking dark thoughts about airplanes tonight.
“So where did you go, Holly?” Rafiq never tires of this conversation, no matter how often we do it.
“Everywhere,” says Lorelei, being brave and selfless. “Colombia, Australia, China, Iceland, Old New York. Didn’t you, Gran?”
“I did, yes.” I wonder what life in Cartagena, in Perth, in Shanghai is like now. Ten years ago I could have streetviewed the cities, but the Net’s so torn and ragged now that even when we have reception it runs at prebroadband speed. My tab’s getting old, too, and I only have one more in storage. If any arrive via Ringaskiddy Concession, they never make it out of Cork City. I remember the pictures of seawater flooding Fremantle during the deluge of ’33. Or was it the deluge of ’37? Or am I confusing it with pictures of the sea sluicing into the New York subway, when five thousand people drowned underground? Or was that Athens? Or Mumbai? Footage of catastrophes flowed so thick and fast through the thirties that it was hard to keep track of which coastal region had been devastated this week, or which city had been decimated by Ebola or Ratflu. The news turned into a plotless never-ending disaster movie I could hardly bring myself to watch. But since Netcrash One we’ve had hardly any news at all and, if anything, this is worse.