The Rapture (24 page)

'So you've specialised in these clathrates?' I ask eventually.

'No. But I modelled a lot of scenarios at the NOAA. Methane catastrophes among them. Since the energy companies started trying to exploit the sub-oceanic hydrates, the drilling's increased the threat. Dramatically. Post-peak oil, everyone's after it. China, the US, India. Hundreds of experimental rigs, planted off coastlines all round the world.'

'How do they access the gas?'

He makes a contemptuous noise. 'By playing Russian roulette. You can inject hot water beneath the seabed to destabilise the hydrates. Which will force a pressure change and release methane. The gas moves along the cracks and works its way up. Then you can liquidise the hydrate on the ocean floor and pipe it up like oil and gas. Or release frozen chunks of it from the sea floor and trap them at the surface of the ocean in giant tarpaulins. Exploit the hydrate fields safely, and there's no such thing as an energy problem. Methane's cleaner than oil or coal, if you handle it right. You can power anything with it, and it's there in quantities you can't even imagine. But it's highly volatile. Which means it may cost more than anyone's ever paid for anything. Ever.'

'But with the climate protocols -?

Ned Rappaport gives a bleak grunt. 'They were being flouted before they were even established. Never underestimate the hypocrisy of governments, or the selfishness of a tribe.' He swats at another insect. He seems to attract them. 'And the human capacity to think wishfully. And in the short term. Politicians will say one thing and do another. Or do things that cancel one another out. Don't look for logic.'

'So if something happens -'

'Then, to put it brutally, Gabrielle, we're fucked.'

I drive on in silence.

Having headed north from Thornhill we cross the M25 and travel up to Norfolk. Somewhere between Ely and King's Lynn, there's a sprawl of retail parks and housing estates and processing plants which fall away, leaving the flat countryside gaping at us again: furrowed fields that meld into a horizon pricked with pylons and vanilla-coloured sheep grazing under a low sky. We're on a straight road flanked by unseasonal primroses and a brackish, putrescent canal, black as dye. The sun is lurking behind a slur of congealed grey cloud. There's a smell of silage and burnt vegetation with a chemical undercurrent. After fifteen kilometres, we turn down a rough track fringed with nettles, briar studded with rosehips, and random patches of mustard. I wind down the window and catch a whiff of diesel and oilseed rape. We round a bend and the landscape opens up again to reveal the shallow slope of a hill and a grey stone house, its garden enclosed by a scrape of herringbone wall. Beyond is a small glistening lake surrounded by clusters of silver birch, a deserted greenhouse and a huge wind turbine rotating with mournful grandeur.

'It's secluded, but we can't base ourselves here for long,' says Ned. Now that we have arrived, he seems tense, as though this morning's visit to Thornhill for our rendezvous was a relaxing interlude in the midst of something prolonged and unbearable. 'We'll need to move out again soon. You can park round the back.'

I catch my breath as we skirt the turbine.

She is there.

Her back is turned, but I recognise her immediately. Her hair is brighter than in the photo. And finer. Like pale, spun honey. She is talking on the phone. I don't know how I will handle meeting her.

'That's Kristin,' says Ned. I try to look interested instead of appalled. 'I'm hoping that the person she's talking to is Harish Modak.'

Modak: the Planetarian with the hooded eyes. The eco-movement's é
minence grise
. 'The connection being?' Hearing the engine, Kristin Jons dottir turns and smiles and points at the phone, indicating she will join us when she has finished her call. Ned waves back.

'His wife Meera was Kristin's supervisor and mentor. And a mother-figure too, I gather. After Meera died, Kristin stayed in touch with Harish Modak.' She is wearing a long sweater but you can see the shape of breasts and hips beneath it. 'Modak is our biggest hope at the moment. If we can get him on board, we'll get the attention we need.'

'And if we can't?' I can see why the physicist would want her in his arms. What sane man wouldn't?

'I'd like to say we'll find another way. But I can't.'

I think: I shouldn't even blame him.

'So what if Harish Modak can't be convinced?' I ask, to distract myself.

'He has to be,' says Ned, pointing ahead. 'Just pull up here. That's why Frazer's been in Paris. He took Bethany's drawings with him, and just about everything else he could lay his hands on. But Modak's a difficult old bugger. He wants more evidence.'

I stop and turn off the engine. 'Would he be willing to speak out publicly if he had it?'

Ned stifles another sneeze and opens his door. 'There's no telling with Modak. He's seventy-eight. He doesn't have kids. And he has no great affection for the species. He thinks we've been hard-wired to self-destruct as part of some Gaiac cycle. To him we're just a species like any other. And species come and go. So if he ends up believing us, he may still decide to do nothing. Just shrug his shoulders, say we're getting what we deserve, and enjoy the fireworks.'

'How would you propose to change his mind?'

'You're the psychologist,' he says, undoing his seat belt.

'Is that the other reason I'm here?'

He flashes me a boyish, winning smile. Even in a foul mood, with my worm wreaking havoc, I can't dislike him.

He opens the car door. 'I'll get your chair.'

The interior of the house exudes the nostalgic, grandmotherly smell of wood-polish. Low ceilings. Darkness, after the blaze of the sun, giving way slowly to a dull ivory gloom as the eyes recalibrate. Thick ceiling beams. From upstairs, the sound of a running shower which abruptly stops.

'That'll be Bethany,' says Ned. 'Glad to say she's discovered hygiene. She'll be down in a minute. This way.'

I follow him along a corridor past an impressive if haphazard collection of art: dark woodcuts, limpid watercolour landscapes, heavier oils, and lavishly detailed diagrams of insects, fish and molluscs. Sometimes you don't realise how hungry your eyes have been. Perhaps it's a displacement urge. But I want to gorge.

Ned Rappaport pushes open a dark door to reveal a cavernous living-room-cum-study fetid with age. The blinds are drawn, but through the gloom I can make out a clutter of old sofas and armchairs, a coffee table, a computer desk and a collection of glass cabinets packed with specimens of dried fish, fossils, pickled worms and seashells, all carefully labelled according to genus and era. Someone methodical has been at work in this fusty space, diligently categorising. On two of the walls are shelves full of jars which glow with a pale, ectoplasmic light. Entering the room and drawing closer, I see they're filled with small green-blue shrimp-like crustaceans with delicate claws, trapped in a liquid suspension.

'What are they?' I ask, pulled towards their luminosity like a moth.

With an enormous hand, Ned pulls down a jar and passes it to me. It's heavy and cool. Clasping it between my palms, I peer in at the pickled, tentacled shape. Around it, small light-filled fragments rise from the bottom and swirl in the cloudy light that emanates from the centre of its body, fading at the delicate extremities.

'Myodocopia. Ostracod. They're chemi-luminescent. They release a dye as a mating signal. It can go on emitting light-waves even after the animal has died. Collective name, Luxifer gigans. Japanese soldiers used them in World War Two. They'd collect them on the beaches, then crush them up and smear the stuff on their hands. As an instant light source.' He takes the jar back and replaces it on the shelf. 'Now, according to my research, you won't co-operate fully with anything until you've had coffee. I'll get some in the works.' He tosses the Haribos on to an overstuffed green sofa, its upholstery burst at one end, and heads for the door.

'Ned. Wait.'

But it has closed behind him.

After driving for so long I'm aware of the need to shift the weight off my pelvis, so I wheel further into the room, negotiating my way around the cabinets. Near a fireplace stuffed with pine cones and dried birch branches, there's a tattered, red-striped chaise-longue on whose padded upholstery I can imagine myself getting comfortable. Next to it, a walnut coffee table studded with cup-rings, and opposite, the green sofa and a couple of sagging leather armchairs of the kind favoured by old men's clubs. I manoeuvre out of my wheelchair and on to the chaise-longue, take off my shoes, heave my legs up, and settle lengthways. Thin stripes of light filter through the slats of the blinds, dancing with dust-motes. My eyes are still adjusting, so I don't see her come in.

Or hear her. Until -

'BOO!'

I jump, and stifle a scream.

'Scared you there, Wheels.'

Wet from the shower, her T-shirt blotched with damp, her scalp speckled with a thin growth of stubble, Bethany Krall resembles a manic voodoo doll. The thermal burn-marks streaking her arms are a virulent purple leached with yellow, her hands a mess of tattered, blistered skin. Spreading her arms wide, she waggles them at me in a vaudeville gesture. They look like terrible, ravaged starfish.

'Bethany. I'm glad to see you.'

'Watch out, we'll be lesbian lovers next.'

She comes towards me, too fast, her arms held aloft, as though wielding huge mechanical pincers. Stranded without my chair, I shift to an upright position.

'How have you been?' I ask. I need more space between us. But within seconds, I have it: catching sight of the Haribo packet on the sofa, she leaps over, snatches it up and starts tearing it open with her teeth. I curse myself for not hiding it.

'How d'you think I've been?' She closes the space again by leaping on to the coffee table where she stands barefoot, like a vicious elf, her green leggings stained with patches of damp where she failed to dry off, a sickly chemical smell seeping out of the sweet-packet in her hand. Fishing inside, she finds a spiral of liquorice, unrolls it clumsily, and dangles the end into her mouth, face tipped back. 'This place is like a five-star hotel. Want one?' She is on the cusp of something. Glad to be free. And free to -

'No thanks. And go easy on the sugar.' She rolls her eyes.

I shift again. I feel vulnerable without my chair, and regret abandoning it. She's still standing right over me, flexing her ruined hands.

'Hey, I've got this weird electric feeling in my fingers.'

'It's called pain. It's something normal. Why don't you take a seat?'

'Have you felt how close we are to the sea?' she asks, jumping off the table and moving across to the window. She can't seem to stay still. 'It's breathing at us. Can you feel it? Can you smell it? If you want to survive, you've got to go inland.' She flicks the blinds further open and daylight streams in. Outside, the road, the bright landscape, the greenhouse, the wheeling white blades of the wind turbine. 'Cabins in the mountains, that's what we need. I'd go there, except I'd miss the grand finale. I need some volts, Wheels. Can you get me some in this place?'

As she is speaking, a grey car comes into view. With a thudding, forlorn dread, I consider who might be inside it, on his way. Then, from behind the greenhouse, Kristin Jons dottir appears, pocketing her phone and heading for the front door. She is looking worried. Or perhaps simply thoughtful. I wonder how she feels about meeting me. On the doorstep, she stops and turns. She must have heard the car.

'Here comes loverboy,' murmurs Bethany, following my gaze. I want to look away. But I can't. He pulls up, parks and gets out. Kristin Jons dottir runs towards him. There is no mistaking the look on her face. My face used to light up like that once. And my heart used to -

I blink and swallow as they embrace.

'They've been fucking like rabbits,' comments Bethany matter-of-factly. They have pulled apart and Kristin Jons dottir is speaking to Frazer Melville excitedly, gesturing towards the house. He looks pleased, then anxious. 'Look at them. He can't get enough of her.' Tipping her head back again, she feeds herself another string of liquorice, eyeing me sidelong. 'She's a real moaner. She has these orgasms that go on and on.' Bethany stops and assesses my face. 'And he's noisy too. When he comes, he roars. Right, Wheels?' She grins. 'He roars like a lion.'

I tear my eyes from the window and shut then, trying not to remember. I am in freefall, hurtling through nothingness.

Not just naked, but skinned.

'Coffee,' announces Ned, entering with a small tray. 'Colombian. Frazer told me it was your favourite so I got some in. And I see you found the Haribos, Bethany. Hey, is everything OK?'

No, I want to tell him. Please, get me out of here before I die.

'We were just talking about sex,' says Bethany with enthusiasm. 'Who's doing what with who.' Ned looks at me blankly and I muster a small non-committal shrug. But Bethany is on a roll. 'You wank a lot, don't you, Ned?' His face tightens and a muscle starts working beneath his stubble. She grins. 'I guess you miss your boyfriend. Or should I say your ex-boyfriend. You might not guess to look at him, Wheels, but Ned here likes cock.' She throws him a triumphant, jackpot look.

I flush. Of course. Ned's jaw moves, as though he's chewing on something, and his Adam's apple strains. I feel a grievous rush of pity for him. He sets the tray down on the table and begins pouring the coffee.

'I don't remember discussing my private life with you, Bethany,' he says.

'You didn't,' she says. 'But I picked up the vibe. I do that, don't I, Wheels? It's one of my irritating skills.'

Ned looks at me with a question on his face. I shake my head. The only surprise is that she left it this long.

Just outside, beyond the window, I can hear Frazer Melville and Kristin Jons dottir talking in low, urgent voices. I must get away or this will kill me. But Bethany, with her feeling for turbulence, intercepts: with a quick movement, she has re-angled my empty wheelchair and given it a shove. Silently, it rolls across the room and settles by the door, far out of reach.