The Bone Clocks

The Stability officer unzipped a folder he’d had tucked inside his jacket all along. “I have children too,” he stated.

“AND LAST BUT by no measure least,” mumbles the radio, “to Jer and Maggs Tubridy of Ballintober, Roscommon, a boy, Hector Ryan, weighing in at a whopping eight pounds and ten ounces! Top job, Maggs, and congratulations to all three of you.” Rafiq gives me a look to say he’s sorry he went a bit morbid on me, and I give my adopted grandson a look to say there’s nothing to be sorry about, and get back to cutting the wild whorl of hair about his crown. What little evidence we have suggests Rafiq’s parents are dead, and if they’re not, I don’t know how they’ll ever discover their son’s fate—both the African Net and the Moroccan state had pretty much ceased to exist by the time Rafiq arrived at Dooneen Cottage. But now he’s here, Rafiq’s a part of my family. While I’m alive I’ll look after him the best I can.

The RTЙ news theme comes on, and I turn it up a little.

“Good morning, this is Ruth O’Mally with the RTЙ News at ten o’clock, Saturday, the twenty-eighth of October, 2043.” The familiar news fanfare jingle fades. “At a news conference at Leinster House this morning, the Stability Taoiseach Йamon Kingston confirmed that the Pearl Occident Company has unilaterally withdrawn from the Lease Lands Agreement of 2028, which granted the Chinese consortium trading rights with Cork City and West Cork Enterprise Zone, known as the Lease Lands.”

I’ve dropped the scissors, but all I can do is stare at the radio.

“A Stability spokesman in Cork confirms that control of the Ringaskiddy Concession was returned to Irish authorities at oh four hundred hours this morning, when a POC container vessel embarked with a People’s Liberation Navy frigate escort. The Taoiseach told the assembled journalists that the POC’s withdrawal had been kept secret to ensure a smooth handover of authority, and stated that the POC’s decision has been brought about by questions of profitability. Taoiseach Йamon Kingston added that in no way can the POC’s withdrawal be linked to the security situation, which remains stable in all thirty-four counties. Nor is the decision of the Chinese linked to radiation leaks from the Hinkley Point site in north Devon.”

There’s more news, but I’m no longer listening.

Hens cluck, croon, and crongle in their enclosure.

“Holly?” Rafiq’s scared. “What’s ‘unilaterally withdrawn’?”

Consequences spin off, but one thumps me: Rafiq’s insulin.

“DA’S SAYING IT’LL be okay,” Izzy O’Daly tells us, “and that Stability’ll just keep the Cordon intact, where it is now.” Izzy and Lorelei came ru

“Your dad’s a very wise man,” I tell Izzy.

Izzy nods. “Da ’n’ Max’ve gone into town to check on my aunt.”

“Fair play to Declan now,” says Mo. “Kids, if you’d give Zimbra a run in the garden, I’ll make pancakes. Maybe I’ve a dusting of cocoa powder left somewhere. Go on, give Holly and me a little space, hey?”

Once they’re out, a grim and anxious Mo tries to thread friends in Bantry, where the Cordon’s westernmost garrison is stationed. Calls to Bantry normally get threaded without trouble, but today there isn’t even an error message. “I’ve got this nasty feeling,” Mo stares at the blank screen, “that we’ve kept our Net access as long as we have because our threads were routed via the server at Ringaskiddy, and now the Chinese have gone … it’s over.”

I feel as if someone’s died. “No more Net? Ever?”

Mo says, “I might be wrong,” but her face says, No, never.

For most of my life, the world shrank and technology progressed; this was the natural order of things. Few of us clocked on that “the natural order of things” is entirely man-made, and that a world that kept expanding as technology regressed was not only possible but waiting in the wings. Outside, the kids’re playing with a frisbee older than any of them—look closely, you’ll see the phantom outline of the London 2012 Olympics logo. Aoife spent her pocket money on it. It was a hot day on the beach at Broadstairs. Izzy’s showing Rafiq how you step forward and release the frisbee in one fluid motion. I wonder if they’re all putting on a brave face about the end of the Lease Lands, and that really they’re as scared as we are by the threat of gangs, militiamen, land pirates, Jackdaws and God knows what streaming through the Cordon. Zimbra retrieves the frisbee and Rafiq does a better throw, lifted by the wind. Lorelei has to spring up high to catch it, revealing a glimpse of shapely midriff. “Medicine for the chronically ill is one worry,” I speak my thoughts aloud, “but what kind of life will women have, if things carry on the way they are? What if Dуnal Boyce isthe best future the girls in Lol’s class can hope for? Men are always men, I know, but at least during our lives, women have gathered a sort of arsenal of legal rights. But only because, law by law, shifting attitude by shifting attitude, our society became more civilized. Now I’m scared the Endarkenment’ll sweep all that away. I’m scared that Lol’ll just be some bonehead’s slave, stuck in some wintry, hungry, bleak, lawless, Gaelic-flavored Saudi Arabia.”

Lorelei throws the frisbee, but the east wind biffs it off course into Mo’s wall of camellias.

“Pancakes,” says Mo. “I’ll measure the flour and you crack a few eggs. Six should be enough for the five of us?”

·   ·   ·

“WHAT’S THAT SOUND?” asks Izzy O’Daly, half an hour later. Mo’s kitchen table is strewn with the wreckage of lunch. Mo, of course, did unearth a small tub of cocoa powder from one of her bottomless hidden nooks. It must be a year since the last square of waxy Russian chocolate appeared in the ration boxes. Neither me nor Mo had any ourselves, but watching the kids as they ate their chocolate-laced lunch was a sight more delicious than the taste. “There,” says Izzy, “that … crackly noise. Didn’t you hear it?” She looks anxious.

“Raf’s stomach, probably,” says Lorelei.

“Sure I only had one more than you,” objects Rafiq. “And—”

“Yeah, yeah, you’re a growing boy, we know,” says his sister. “Growing into a total pancake monster.”

“There,” says Izzy, making a shushgesture. “Hear it?”

We listen. Like the old woman I am, I say, “I can’t hear—”

Zimbra leaps up, whining, at the door. Rafiq tells him, “Shush, Zimbra!”

The dog shushes, and—there. A spiky, sickening sequence of bangs. I look at Mo and Mo nods back: “Gunfire.”

We rush out onto Mo’s scrubby, dandelion-dotted lawn. The wind’s still from the east and it buffets our ears but now another burst of automatic fire is quite distinct and not far away. Its echo reaches us a couple of seconds later from Mizen Head across the water.

“Isn’t it coming from Kilcra

Izzy’s voice is shaky. “Dad went into the village.”

“The Cordon can’t have fallen al ready,” I blurt, wishing I could stuff the words back in, ’cause by saying it, I feel I’ve helped to make it real. Zimbra is snarling towards the town.

“I’d better get back to the farm,” says Izzy.

Mo and I exchange a look. “Maybe, Izzy,” Mo says, “until we know what we’re dealing with, your parents’d prefer you to lie low.”