Страница 5 из 68
Shaking, staring down at the tinted water draining away,Madeleine's attention was caught by her feet, narrow in strappy sandals. There was a crescent of carmine beneath thenail of her right big toe and for a moment she could only stare at it blankly,but then she was curling down, hitting her shoulder on the tap in her haste,scrabbling for soap, a nail brush, needing to erase a thing far more immediatethan suspicious powder.
By the time no hint of blood remained, her toe was scouredred and her breath came in short, sharp pants. And then she coughed and spat glittering flecks, and laughed, andsobbed. Lucky! She was so lucky! She was not lying broken, was not a wet,shapeless bundle, a leaking horror to be crawled across and left behind in thedark. She had received a gift of life, amayfly fortune, precious however temporary.
She would not waste it.
Chapter Three
On non-dusty daysTyler's three-bedroom corner apartment commanded a spectacular view of water,park and city skyline, though the headland blocked any glimpse of the OperaHouse or Harbour Bridge. The previousweekend, when Madeleine's father had driven her in to drop off her supplies,she hadn't dared do more than tuck easel, canvas stretchers and paints againstthe near wall of the su
Now, hair wrappedin a towel, she took his cordless phone and dialled and redialled whileglancing around the open lounge and dining area, then checking out the twospare bedrooms, one utilitarian and the other converted into a shelf-linedoffice. The master bedroom was spare andtidy and looked like something out of a designer's catalogue. It was only in the massive walk-in wardrobethat she found any sign of personality, and there it overflowed.
One of her earliestmemories was of Tyler in a sunhat, face hidden by the broad brim. He obviously still favoured them, had a dozenvariations on hooks high around the room. Below were a profusion of jewel-tone scarves, glimmering gowns, andplenty of the ski
Her own clothesdrip-drying in the shower, Madeleine fingered a flower-spatteredshirtdress. She was shorter and narrowerof shoulder than Tyler, but had the same curvelessfigure, so likely some of his clothes would fit. A pattern in black and gold caught her eyeand she lifted out a silken dressing-gown. Koi carp in an irezumi style: brilliantgolds and iridescent green against black. She slipped it on, and hit redial once again.
"Give it up,Michael," sighed a warm, throaty voice. "There's nothing you can do about it."
"Tyler."
"Leina?" Tylerlaughed, that infamous burble capped with a soft intake of breath, a tiny,shiver-worthy ah! "I thinkI'm going to be a little late, kiddo. Are you at my place?"
Only Tyler hadtaken seriously her five year-old self's insistence not to be called Maddie. She'd longago given up that fight, but enjoyed the fact that he remembered.
"Yes. Are you–?"
"Still on theplane. We were just coming in toland. And now, well, there's been aninformative lecture on something called bleed air, which apparently requiresru
"You have adirty picture collection?"
"A mostgraphic one: best you don't look. Nowtell me."
"I –almost." There was a wobblethreatening her voice, and she knew if she tried to explain St James she'd fallto pieces, so she hurried on. "Myparents think I'm at the Art Gallery. Ididn't want them to try calling here till I arrived. I...well, I guess I'll know sooner than mostwhat the dust does."
"Anysymptoms?"
She hadn't heardher cousin so grave since her broken arm. And what could she tell him? Thatshe was tired, and her back hurt, though the shower had helped herheadache. That the dust surely had to besome kind of attack?
"Tyler, Iwanted you to do something."
She could almosthear the smile. "If it involvesa
"Get someoneto take a photograph of you, just as you are now, and email it to me."
"Leina..."
"I came hereto paint you Tyler. I wantto–" Her voice had risen, and sheswallowed the rest of the sentence, staring out of the window at an onlyfaintly hazy sky, and a talcum-dusted world. Sydney's familiar skyline was made unreal not just because of its powdercoating, but by a black lance dwarfing skyscrapers and Sydney Tower. At least double the height of its nearestrival, it thi
"I want to bepainting right now."
"...I'll seewhat I can do." Tyler paused tomurmur to someone off the phone, then added: "I'll call you back ifthere's any developments here. Take careof yourself, Leina."
There'd been alarge laptop in the office, which Madeleine fetched out and was glad to findrequired no passwords to access the net. She put down her drop-cloth and set up the easel, then went and dugthrough Tyler's wardrobe until she unearthed an old tracksuit, since it wouldbe a crime to get paint on that dressing-gown. No new email had arrived so she tried to ring her parents and, finally,with a certain level of reluctance, figured out how to make a large screen riseout of a cabinet, and settled down to watch the apocalypse.
"...tooearly to call this any kind of catastrophe. We are facing something new and unknown, butone thing that leaps out is the placement of these towers: Hyde Park in Londonand Sydney, Melbourne Park, Central Park, New York, Shinjuku Gyoen, Tokyo. Inevery city, no matter how densely crowded, the Spire has been placed so as tominimise damage–"
"Still atthe expense of dozens, if not hundreds of lives around the world. If this isn't an attack, then it's negligenceof–"
The terse,combative words reawakened Madeleine's headache, and she flipped cha
The picturechanged, showing the park without the tower, with a couple of joggers poundingacross it. And then a blink-and-you-missit moment, an almost instantaneous arrival which was then played again, sloweddown to demonstrate that the Spire had risen, not landed, and with farless damage than anyone would expect from such an event.
Aliens fromunderground?
"...clearfrom viewing the Tokyo, Manila, and Sydney Spires that they are notidentical. A comparison to nearbybuildings shows the Sydney Spire to be some six hundred metres in height. The Manila spire is more than three timesthis size, rising over a kilometre and a half above VillamorGolf Course. The narrow base of theSpires compared to their height – in some cases not more than a hundred metresacross – suggests that they extend deep underground. At least one hundred – closer to one hundredand fifty cities..."
The Spire currentlyon-screen – Madeleine had no idea what city it belonged to – began to vanishbehind a haze, a vagueness which thickened, extended, became a plume, a cloud,an immensity which grew so quickly that Madeleine wondered how the entireunderground of St James Station had not been packed solid. It was clear, though, that the majority ofthe dust was coming through at the top.