Neptune's Tears (6 page)

Zee didn’t need her empath skills to make the diagnosis. The girl was ashen and had the peculiar, sinking look of someone who was bleeding internally. She looked around the room. There
were no available hospital trolleys but she was able to grab one of the doctors, who found a wheelchair and took her to surgery himself. When she turned to David, his eyes were pleading.

‘There are more,’ he said, motioning to the human pool beyond the A&E doors. ‘A whole bus of children. The driver died at the wheel and they crashed.’

‘All injured?’

‘I can’t tell for certain but I’d say most of them.’

‘Bend down a little.’ Zee drew a swift green line on his forehead with the glow pen, then unpinned her own Emergency Worker Priority One badge and clipped it to his shirt.
‘That will get you in and out. Find anyone you can to help you get them in here as fast as possible.’

She found the head A&E nurse and explained the situation to her, and by the time David and the volunteers he’d found started bringing them in, Zee had a special station set up in one
of the exam rooms. Someone had miraculously found a trolley and two A&E nurses stood by ready to administer first aid.

Over the next two hours, they got all thirty-three children off the bus and referred for treatment or release. David slid easily into step beside her, and seemed to anticipate what she needed
without being told. The smoothness of the way they worked together in the cramped space, gave Zee a sense of calm wellbeing. In a way she couldn’t have explained, she felt stronger standing
beside David.

By the time they sent the last child off to have a broken arm set and gave up their space in the exam room, it was almost ten at night. A&E was still crowded, but there was no longer a crowd
waiting outside and most of the outdoor triage stations had been dismantled. For the first time, there seemed to be enough staff to handle the flow, and Zee noticed that most of the volunteers had
been sent home.

‘I guess I should be going too,’ David said.

After the closeness she’d felt working beside him, Zee felt suddenly awkward. She reminded herself that he could have asked for her handheld number or her email address after their
breakfast, or even mentioned getting together again, but he hadn’t. And now he was going to go again. Chance had brought them together twice, but it was only chance she reminded herself.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘You were great with those kids.’ She wanted to touch him, to reach up and smooth the twist of hair that sprang away from his forehead like a
question mark, to lean forward and rest her forehead against the pulse at the base of his throat. He was beautiful. How could it be that she would never see him again? ‘Really, I feel like
you should get a special commendation or something.’ She tried to smile. ‘I mean, it isn’t even your planet and —’

‘Stop it.’

‘What?’

He was looking at her intently now, staring straight into her eyes. ‘Is there somewhere we can go for a minute? Somewhere without all these people?’

Something had changed. As discreetly as possible, she pulled the two small sensors from the nape of her neck and slid them into her pocket. Then, without a word, she led him to the only place
she could think of: a tiny supply cupboard. There was barely enough room for them both.

‘Anyone would have helped with those kids,’ he said. ‘And . . . they weren’t even the real reason I came.’ He paused. ‘It was you. I had to make sure you were
okay.’

Tentatively, as if he weren’t sure it was what she wanted, he gathered her to him. Zee felt his arms go around her and felt the warmth of his back and shoulders under her own palms. For a
long, delicious moment she let herself lean into him. Then she pulled back.

‘Why did you just vanish yesterday?’

‘Because this isn’t so good for you – being seen with an alien. I know what people say about us. Especially now, after the attack. It’s only a matter of time before
someone blames us for the shock bombs.’

‘But you were here helping us.’

‘Maybe I was here watching, looking for weak spots in human response and defences.’

‘That’s not possible. You would never do something like that.’

‘But that’s what some people will believe.’

Zee felt a shiver go up her spine. She had believed that too, but not any more.

They stood for a long time, wrapped in each other’s arms, listening to each other’s heartbeat. After a while, Zee realised their hearts had found each other’s rhythm and were
beating in unison.

‘What happens next?’ David finally asked. ‘With the anarchists?’

‘More shock bombs,’ Zee said. ‘That’s the usual pattern. They want to make sure we know it’s not over. Each time they wait just long enough, until we start to feel
safe again, until people start to shop, ride the tube, visit museums, all the things they used to do. Then there’ll be another bomb.’

‘How many?’

‘Last time there were five.’

He was quiet for a long time. Eventually he murmured, ‘I should go now. Really.’ But he kept holding her.

‘I want to see you again, David.’

She felt his chest expand, then contract with a slow sigh. ‘I want to see you again, Zee. But it’s too dangerous for you.’

She surprised them both by laughing.

‘What’s so funny?’ he asked.

‘We just worked a shock bomb clean-up together. We live in a city that’s in for months of threats and alerts and more bombings. How many people died today? Are going to die because
of today? And you think
you
are the big
Be Afraid
in my life?’ She laid her cheek against his chest. ‘What if one of us dies in the next blast? What if both of us die, and
we never got to be together at all?’

Zee lingered by the A&E doors as he left. Day had settled into night and there were still small clusters of people in the ambulance bay. Just before he disappeared into the
darkness beyond, he turned back and saw her standing by the doors. He raised his hand and she raised hers.

This time she knew he wouldn’t vanish.

Zee had forgotten all the things that came in the wake of a shock bomb – the worried calls from her parents and emails from Jasmine asking if she and Rani were all right,
the empty streets that took twice as long to navigate because of all the security checkpoints, the slow work of matching unidentified victims with missing persons reports.

London was all but cut off as anti-anarchist forces searched for anyone who might be connected to the attack. Only a few tube lines were running and the vactrains – the trains that flew
through vacuum tunnels beneath the old BritRail tracks – had been shut down, along with the airports. There was no public transport in or out of London, and making it past the checkpoints in
a private car required a pass. People kept showing up at the hospital, convinced they’d been in the blast range when mostly they were just lonely and frightened. They all needed to be
screened and diagnosed, and over the next few days Zee worked until she swayed on her feet with exhaustion. Other than a few hours snatched here and there, she didn’t get another real day off
for almost two weeks, and the week after that, when the vactrains were running again, she and David had their first date.

They hadn’t had much time to talk since the shock bomb, and the thread of magic they’d found in the supply cupboard began to seem a bit unreal. After all, David was older than she
was, and had just turned nineteen. For all she knew, she might be just one of many girls in his world. Worlds, to be accurate. He might have someone waiting for him on his planet, Omura. To him,
Zee might be like the sweets you ate on holiday, something that didn’t really count.

Even so, she was looking forward to seeing him again. ‘I want to do something fun,’ he’d told her. ‘Not productive or useful or educational. Just fun.’

Fun was in short supply on results-oriented Omura, he’d explained. People stayed fit by completing two short, highly effective workouts a day. They ate food manufactured for nutrition and
all their music was educational, featuring lyrics that helped people remember things like the bones of the body or maths formulas. In their free time, they formed teams and held contests to see who
could pick up the most litter or submit the best solution for a traffic-flow problem.

‘You mean you don’t do anything just for fun?’ asked Zee. ‘You don’t go barefoot in wet grass? Or do things that make you feel like the world is bigger and more
interesting than you thought it was? Like travel?’

‘There’s no reason to travel any more,’ David explained. ‘The CGA, our Central Governing Authority, stabilised the planet several hundred years ago. The climate is
pleasant and uniform from pole to pole. Everyone speaks the same language and has the same goals. There’s nothing you can get in one place on Omura that you can’t get everywhere else.
This frees us to carry forward our technology and our research. It’s why we’re so far ahead of you, even though intelligent life began in both places about the same time.’

‘Then why —’

‘Why are we here studying your arts and music? Even Nancy Drew and nail polish colours? Because in some way we can’t understand, all this inefficiency seems to make you more
efficient at the one thing that truly matters.’

‘What’s that?’

‘Surviving. Our population is shrinking. No one’s interested in having children. Or in anything, really. By eliminating inefficiency, we’ve made true equality possible.
Everyone on the planet has the same resources and options. No one goes without. We’re freer than ever to carry our research and technology forward, but no one seems to care. The more
inefficiency we eliminate, the fewer new ideas we get. And when setbacks occur, instead of solving the problem, teams scrap the project and refuse to work on it again. Somehow, all your
inefficiencies make you want to live, and wanting to live gives you new ideas.’

‘But you’re not like that,’ Zee protested.

‘No, that’s why I’m here. Hundreds of thousands of years ago, Omura took the wrong evolutionary turn. And now, rather than die out, we’re trying to learn. So help me with
the experiment. Let’s do something that’s just for fun.’

Zee thought for a moment, then smiled. ‘I know just the thing.’

‘What is it?’

‘Oh no, I’m not telling – you have to learn to be surprised and take things as they come,’ she’d told him. ‘That’s part of the deal. Meet me at Victoria
station Saturday morning at ten by the Southern line ticket booth.’

What Zee hadn’t anticipated was the crowds. After being trapped in London for a few weeks, people were eager to get away. The vactrain to Brighton took less than fifteen
minutes, but the queue was the longest she’d ever seen. Zee had begun to wonder how she and David would find each other, when she saw him in the crowd. He seemed to be talking to a tall girl
with a waterfall of shining black hair, but as Zee approached, she was relieved to see the girl nudge the young man beside her and then disappear into the crowd. Zee felt a surge of relief. Even
without seeing the girl’s face, Zee knew she was beautiful.

‘Is this what you meant by taking things as they come?’ David asked lightly. ‘A lesson in crowd tolerance?’

‘Sorry about that. Let’s hope the queue moves fast, and they’ve put extra trains on.’

‘It’s okay.’ He smiled. ‘I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be in line with.’ He put his hand lightly on her back to draw her closer to him and she knew
that any fears about awkward moments were unfounded.

It was Zee who came up with the idea of imagining how every couple in line had met, but David who said they should also predict their future. Zee did the first three couples, coming up with
meetings that made David laugh. He got into the spirit and told her the wealthy-looking retired couple had met years ago when the husband was a burglar and the wife, a police officer, arrested him
and inspired him to go straight. He said she’d been on the lookout for a good-looking thief to reform for some time.

Zee used the story of how her parents had met, which David found fascinating. ‘Love at first sight – is that something that runs in families?’ He looked at her intently,
suddenly serious. ‘Are you an early decider too?’

Zee felt the warmth of a blush creep into her cheeks. ‘I don’t know,’ she said at last. ‘I’ve never decided before.’

David took her hand. ‘Me neither,’ he said, and Zee felt a little throb of happiness.

Zee didn’t notice how they’d moved up in the queue until she realised the crowd in front of them was so small they were sure to get on the next train. Then she noticed the girl with
ink-black hair, the one she’d thought David had spoken to earlier, was just ahead of them, with a young man. Now that the girl’s face was visible, Zee realised she’d been right in
thinking she was beautiful. The girl was tall, with high, broad cheekbones that made her face almost round. Yet there was something willowy and delicate about her.

David followed her gaze and Zee was sure she saw a look of recognition when he saw the girl. He brought his attention swiftly back to Zee.