Sanctus. Simon Toyne

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Sanctus - Simon  Toyne


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– it was her first child. Children, actually; she was expecting twins.

      No – she didn’t know what sex they were; they wanted it to be a surprise.

      Yes – Myron did have some reservations, working in the scientific field and all, and yes – she had considered the usual obstetric route, but as women had been giving birth for generations without modern medicine she strongly felt it was better for the babies to let things take their natural course.

      She’s having the baby, Myron added in his gentle, boyish way as he stroked her hair and smiled lovingly down at her. She doesn’t need me to tell her what’s best.

      Something about the touching intimacy and selflessness of this moment pierced the armour of Liv’s good cheer and she was shocked to feel tears coursing down her cheeks. She heard herself apologizing as Bonnie and Myron both rushed to comfort her and managed to pull herself together long enough to finish the interview, feeling guilty that she had brought the dark cloud of her unhappiness into the bright sanctuary of their simple life.

      She drove straight home and fell fully clothed into her unmade bed, listening to the drip of the irrigation system watering the plants that filled her flat and ensured, in the loosest sense, that she shared her life with other living things. She picked through the events of the day and wrapped herself tightly in her duvet, shivering with cold as if the solid ice of her loneliness could never be melted, and the warmth of a life like Bonnie and Myron’s would never be hers.

      12

      Kathryn Mann swung the minibus into a small yard behind a large town house and brought it to a standstill amid a cloud of dust. This segment of the eastern part of the city was still known as the Garden District, though the green fields that gave it that name were long gone. Even from the back, the house had an aura of faded grandeur; the same flawless, honey-coloured stone that had built the public church and much of the old town peeped through in patches from beneath blackened layers of pollution.

      Kathryn slipped out of the driver’s seat and headed past an empty cycle-rack built on the site of the well that had once provided them with fresh water. She fumbled with her jingling key ring, heart still hammering from the stress of the several near misses she’d had while driving distractedly through the thickening morning traffic, found the right key, jabbed it into the lock and twisted the back door open.

      Inside, the house was cool and dark after the glare of the early spring sunshine. The door swung shut behind her as she punched in the code to silence the alarm. She hurried down the dim hallway and into the bright reception area at the front of the building.

      A bank of clocks on the wall behind the reception desk told her the time in Rio, New York, London, Delhi, Jakarta – everywhere the charity had offices. It was a quarter to eight in Ruin, still too early for most people to have started their working day. The silence that drifted down the elegant wooden staircase confirmed she was alone. She bounded up it, two steps at a time.

      The five-storey house was narrow, in the style of most medieval terraces, and the stairs creaked as she swept up past the half-glazed office doors that filled the four lower floors of the building. At the top of the stairwell another reinforced door with thick steel panels hung heavily on its hinges. She heaved it open and stepped into her own private quarters. Crossing the threshold was like stepping back in time. The walls were wood-panelled and painted a soft grey, and the living room was filled with exquisite pieces of antique furniture. The only hint of the current century was offered by a small flat-screen TV perched on a low Chinese table in one corner.

      Kathryn grabbed a remote from the ottoman and fired it in the direction of the TV as she headed towards a bookcase built into the far wall. The shelves stretched from floor to ceiling and were filled with the finest literature the nineteenth century had to offer. She pressed the spine of a black calfskin-bound copy of Jane Eyre and with a soft click the lower quarter sprang open to reveal a deep cupboard. Inside was a safe, a fax machine, a printer – all the paraphernalia of modern life. On the lowest shelf, resting on top of a pile of interior-design magazines, was the pair of binoculars her father had given her on her thirteenth birthday when he’d first taken her to Africa. She grabbed them and hurried back across the painted floorboards towards a skylight in the sloping ceiling. A roost of pigeons exploded into flight as she twisted it open and poked out her head. A blur of red roof tiles and blue sky smeared across her vision as she raised the binoculars then settled on the black monolith half a mile away to the west. The TV flickered into life behind her and started broadcasting the end of a story about global warming to the empty room. Kathryn leaned against the window frame to steady her hand and carefully traced a line up the side of the Citadel towards the summit.

      Then she saw him.

      Arms outstretched. Head tilted down.

      It was an image she’d been familiar with all her life, only carved in stone and standing on top of a different mountain halfway across the world. She had been schooled in what it meant from childhood. Now, after generations of collective, proactive struggle attempting to kick-start the chain of events that would change mankind’s destiny, here it was, unfolding right in front of her, the result of one man acting alone. As she tried to steady her shaking hand she heard the newsreader running through the headlines.

      ‘In the next half-hour we’ll have more from the world summit on climate change; the latest round-up of the world money markets; and we reveal how the ancient fortress in the city of Ruin has finally been conquered this morning – after these messages …’

      Kathryn took one last look at the extraordinary vision then dipped back through the skylight to find out what the rest of the world was going to make of it.

      13

      A slick car commercial was playing as Kathryn settled into an ancient sofa and glanced at the time signal on the TV screen. Eight twenty-eight; four twenty-eight in the morning in Rio. She pressed a speed-dial button and listened to the rapid beeps racing through a number with many digits, watching the commercial play out until, somewhere in the dark on the other side of the world, someone picked up.

      ‘¿Ola?’ A woman’s voice answered, quiet but alert. It was not, she noted with relief, the voice of someone who had just been woken up.

      ‘Mariella, it’s Kathryn. Sorry for calling so late … or early. I thought he might be awake.’

      She knew that her father kept increasingly strange hours.

      ‘Sim, Senhora,’ Mariella replied. ‘He has been for a while. I lit a fire in the study. There is a chill tonight. I left him reading.’

      ‘Could I talk to him please?’

      ‘Certamente,’ Mariella said.

      The swishing of a skirt and the sounds of soft footsteps filtered down the line and Kathryn pictured her father’s housekeeper walking down the dark, parquet-floored hallway towards the soft glow of firelight spilling from the study at the far end of the modest house. The footsteps stopped and she heard a short muffled conversation in Portuguese before the phone was handed over.

      ‘Kathryn …’ Her father’s warm voice drifted across the continents, calming her instantly. She could tell by his tone that he was smiling.

      ‘Daddy …’ She smiled too, despite the weight of the news she carried.

      ‘And how is the weather in Ruin this morning?’

      ‘Sunny.’

      ‘It’s cold here,’ he said. ‘Got a fire going.’

      ‘I know, Daddy, Mariella told me. Listen, something’s happening here. Turn on your TV and tune it to CNN.’

      She heard him ask Mariella to turn on the small television in the corner of his study and her eyes flicked over to her own. The shiny station graphic spun across the screen then cut back to the newsreader. She nudged


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