The Raft: A Novel (52 page)

He drew the curtains and fell back on his bed. That sound—that dull
thump.
Where precisely had he felt it? Had it even been near the station? He didn’t know. No, no. He didn’t think so.

An hour later he was on the phone with the man from Huang. They were in, he told the man. All of them. They’d board the ship and find that island. They’d overthrow the geneticist and take it for themselves—go drifting around the world, far from their many sins.

Their Huang connection sent back the details and Jack forwarded the details to Charles. Then he switched off his ear node and went to the motel bar. He sat at the bar and ordered one drink, and then another and another. The alcohol went down easily. After Jack Turning had added an appreciable amount to his running tab, he went back to the room and passed out on his thin and uncomfortable mattress.

Jack Turning didn’t leave the Blue Caribou. He knew he was hiding out, but the longer he stayed, the easier it was to convince himself he was existing within the impenetrable fortress of his own isolation. If he put just one foot out of that place, he felt, the world would swallow him up. Charles called several times but Jack did not answer. He made no more contact with Huang Enterprises. Instead, he swam in the pool, drank at the bar, and sat on a white deckchair outside, staring for hours at nothing at all.

Two weeks passed and Jack knew the rest of them would be making their way onto the ship, bound for the island. He told the elderly couple that if anyone came looking for him, he’d prefer if they didn’t mention he was there. Not unless it was the boys in blue, of course. He couldn’t expect them to lie to the police—but anyone else …

Jack thought about his friends making their way onto that ship and starting their lives anew. He couldn’t say why he no longer wanted to join; perhaps it was because a part of him knew that running would solve nothing. Perhaps he was hoping someone would come knocking on the door and end his misery—call him out on every terrible thing he’d done and mete out the appropriate punishment.

Until then, he’d stay put, right where he was, in the Blue Caribou.

Months passed and nobody had come looking for him. He hadn’t received any more calls either, and assumed Charles, Jane and Anubis were now enjoying their time on their floating island, sailing around the world. He no longer thought about that little girl, that small
thump …
Besides, he was pretty sure it hadn’t been him in the first place. If it had been, someone would have come, he thought. By now,
surely.

One morning, however many weeks later, he woke up and had his breakfast as usual. The old man had since died and the old woman was taking care of the place. The motel was no busier than it had ever been and she seemed to manage everything just fine. Jack did his best to demand as little from her as possible, and even assisted with the odd job around the motel.

Jack finished his breakfast but didn’t watch the news. He had never again watched the morning news after Kayle and Sarah’s story.

The old woman mentioned she’d be stepping out to get a few things from the store, and asked Jack to keep an eye for walk-ins. She left and Jack changed into his shorts to go for a swim.

The pool had recently been cleaned and he stood on the edge of it, soaking up the harsh morning heat. He plunged underwater and the cold water shot through his flesh, waking him instantly. He sat at the bottom of the pool and stared up through the silvery surface, into the blue sky. He closed his eyes and held the breath in his lungs for as long as he could. Maybe, he thought, he’d black out.

And then, suddenly, a screech. A deep, penetrating screech that slashed through his mind and forced the air from his lungs. He paddled to the surface and threw himself out of the pool. Holding on to the hot bricks at the edge of the pool, he clenched his teeth against the screech. There was heaviness—a throbbing heaviness that brewed and thickened and consumed his mind. The light of the sun was brighter and harsher, piercing through the closed lids of his eyes.

And then, everything in Jack Turning’s world went black.

Jack Turning was gone.

Now there was only a man in a motel, by himself, with no idea of who he was and how he had got there. He wandered the corridors, took what he wanted, slept wherever he wanted and gradually emptied the bar and the walk-in freezer. Every so often, a memory came back to him. Each new one arrived without warning—the memory of a son, or a wife. A dead daughter. Sometimes the man would be woken by the recollection of some new thing. Memories struck him like bolts of lightning, jolting him from his mindless inertia. Sarah. Andy. Maggie. Two horses. A wooden house. A hill. He remembered things people had said to him once, things he’d once said back.

More memories arrived and soon he had enough to paste together—a collage of who he had once been and where he had once lived.

One day he woke up, and there was a man standing over his bed. A man he had never seen. Tall and old, wearing round-framed spectacles and a long brown coat. The man told him to shower and he did as he was told. After that, the man asked him to get dressed and meet him at the pool. The visitor claimed to be from a group called the New Past—his group had the answers, he said.

The man asked how long he had been staying at the Blue Caribou and the man said he didn’t know. The stranger then asked his name and the man once named Jack, aided by his new memories, replied: “Kayle Jenner.”

The beginning

I
opened my eyes. Spears of sunlight and blue skies. Ocean. Wind.

I was on the raft.

And my son …

My son.

I didn’t have a son.

I didn’t
have
a son.

The water washed over my burned arms and legs—icy ocean water—but the true chill came from inside. The chill of the truth. My raft bobbed over the unsettled waters and I could do nothing but move with it, fixed at the limbs and exposed to the universe. I closed my lids against the glare of the mighty sun, the overhanging face of a god I could never look at directly, never negotiate my passage with.

I had been in Chang’e 11 alongside Gideon and Andy. I had watched as a father I’d never known reunited with a son I’d never had, and then there were the memories—new memories of old experiences like crumpled letters finally surfacing from beneath the dust and clutter of a dark attic. These memories had entered my mind as swiftly as they had once been taken, though they were now paired alongside the memories of who I
thought
I had been.

But Andy.

My
Andy.

He was gone again. Gone forever.

The cold chill of truth could not change that I loved him, though he had never been mine to love. My hope that we’d be reunited had also been my hope of having some worth in this world, but it was a reunion that hadn’t been mine to expect. As much as I still remembered him as my own, I had never been his father and he had never been my son.

The water ran over my face, splashing over my nose and down my throat. I didn’t have the energy to tug on any of my straps. I moved with the water, as far as the rope would allow, but then there was a sudden bump; somebody was pulling my raft in, guiding me back to shore. It could all be another dream, I told myself. It didn’t matter how real it seemed. I had been burned by the sun and cooled by the sea before.

I strained my neck to the side to identify the person pulling on my raft but I could only see a thin, pale arm.

I played through all the memories of my time in the Blue Caribou. A little girl standing in the road at night. A speeding car. A gutless plan to steal an island from an old man.

I was not a good man. I thought that Day Zero had erased the memories of a man with a life worth living, but that had not been the case. No. I was murderer. A coward. A waste.

I looked to my side again. The man beside the raft came into view. It was Daniel.

“Daniel,” I murmured. “What’s happening?”

“It’s over,” Daniel said. “All over.”

“What’s over? How long have I been out here?”

“Dunno. Maybe three days?” He was walking alongside my raft. “No one really knows.”

I groaned and winced in the light. If I had received those new memories, I went on to think, it must have meant that Quon had finally picked up the knife Gideon had left on the floor, incapable of tolerating the truth of his own. The memories must have returned after he died, but if that had all happened, as I still believed it had, how was it possible for me to now be on the raft?

“Where’s Gideon?” I asked, forgetting for a moment it was not his true name.

“He’s being pulled out as we speak.” Daniel turned to look at me. “You’ve been through quite an ordeal. Take it easy, Kayle. Everything will be explained in a bit.”

“It’s Jack.”

“What?”

“The name,” I said. “It’s Jack.”

I was unstrapped from the raft and slowly got to my feet. My arms and legs were numb. Stinging red rings of broken skin circled my wrists and ankles. I barely had the energy to stand, but I pulled myself up and twisted my neck to the side, clicking it into place. There were people on the beach, most of whom I recognised, but there was something different about them. There was a commotion. People whom I had never heard utter a word were now talking freely to each other.

I stood and stared at them, amazed. I had never seen them behave in such a way. I rubbed my wrists and wiped my burning eyes with the back of my arm, but my salt-encrusted arm made them sting even more. I stepped clumsily on the sand and felt the grains slide between my toes. I closed my hands into swollen fists, pumping the blood up my arms. I scanned the beach for Gideon (who was really Kayle), but couldn’t see him anywhere. Daniel was crouched beside me, rolling up the leash the raft had been attached to.

“Daniel.”

“Mm,” he said, preoccupied.

“What’s going on?”

I looked from face to face. The communers conversed animatedly with each other. Some were laughing, some were crying, but most stood clumped in small huddles, talking. Simply talking, nothing more.

“Like I said,” Daniel said. “It’s over.”

“What’s over?”

“Everyone remembers,” Daniel said. “Everyone remembers. One moment we were going about our business and the next … it all came flooding back.”

I studied Daniel’s expression to determine whether or not he was joking, in on some elegant hoax, but he seemed to believe what he was saying.

“Where’s Angerona?” I asked anxiously. “And Theunis?”

“Angerona’s around here somewhere, but Theunis …” Daniel paused, and then added mournfully, “His raft broke loose in a storm, we think. We lost him at sea. We don’t know when it happened but it was some time in the night, we imagine. There was nothing we could do, man.”

I ambled away from Daniel and up the sandy shore. I trudged through the soft sand and made my way to the top of the beach, through the lively crowds, and onto the path that led to the white house on the hill. I caught a familiar smell, the faintest whiff of beachside greenery. The trees that lined the edge of the sand wavered in the wind. Clumps of white cloud floated across the sky like man-made islands on a perfectly still ocean.

I looked through the muddy windows of the white house. There was nobody inside. The back door stood open, unattended. I thought about all the times I’d been made to bear witness in there, to recite the lines of the script, plugged to a useless machine.

I walked back down to the beach, passed through the crowds of known faces and went to the water’s edge to study the outlying horizon. The silvery ocean moved as it always had, rolling eternally, without memory.

The foamy water swirled around my feet. I stared as countless bubbles grew and burst on my skin. I looked again for my tall friend, the one who’d covered the world with me. I couldn’t see him anywhere in the crowd. I wasn’t even sure I could still call him my friend. His daughter had lost her life at my hands.

I wasn’t a friend. I had ruined his life.

And then, from the depths came a painful reminder. Andy. My misplaced son. I had loved Andy, and still did, but there was nothing I could do about it. The universe had deliberately torn him from my clutches. Someone had raced around a dark corner in a speeding car and struck him in front of my eyes.

The sense of surprise at my return to the beach was subsiding.

Now there was only pain.

Deep, irreparable pain.

As I stood looking out at nothing, I suddenly knew: we do not own our memories; our memories own us. It didn’t matter what I remembered or how I felt. Memories are their own strange creatures, flitting between the tall trees of our experiences, inviting us to enter the dark and uncharted woods of our lives, promising nothing.

I sat on the beach by myself and watched the sun set over the edge of the world, layering the sky in yellows, purples and reds. I thought about the strange journey. If our memories had returned, then so had the memories of everyone else. Jai-Li had left the beach with her child to find the Silver Whisper, but now her purpose must have changed. I imagined her walking back into her parents’ farmhouse beside the muddy pig troughs—the parents she had forgotten and denied—not as Jai-Li, but as their daughter Jun. The dream of another girl had given her the courage to set forth, but the truth of who she was had brought her home, where she now belonged. Home. Where we all hoped to belong.