Darren gave us coordinates and sent us on our way; as little as I trusted him, residual loyalty to the woman who had been my friend made me accept the directions. He also gave us the wren — or at least had not prevented us from taking it, which was possibly more accurate. “You probably think it’s proof,” he said. “And it is. But it’s a reminder as well. Of what the future could be.”
“Just who is it you’re reminding?” George asked him, eyes narrowed. If my invitation had come in the form of letters, his had been more conventional. His could also have been a proxy. We were still married, after all.
Darren smirked at him, an expression undercut by wistfulness. The desire, perhaps, to connect. “Who do you think I’m reminding? Even if you’re the means to an end, your wife seems to think you can learn. I’d like to think she was right. A jellyfish should know a survivor when she sees one.”
George stared at him, narrow eyed and supremely unimpressed. I knew that expression. It said “Fucking charming,” or would have if he thought Darren was worth the effort of comment. Instead he said, “Come on, Ruby,” and took my arm to escort me back to the car, making sure to keep his body between me and his former friend.
“The next time you are kidnapped by a crazy wolf woman, I am leaving your arse to whatever shallow grave has been assigned to you,” he said, as we drove away. He always took that snippy tone, that pretense of formality, when he was upset.
I couldn’t blame him. He’d put the thermos in the boot and then thought better of it. He had no doubt pictured the lid coming off as we took the twisty turns down the mountain, and he now held it between his knees, with the lid clamped down under fingers.
The resulting conversation was a familiar one.
“I’d go to the cops,” said George, “but what the hell could I say? There’s a mad artist up in the mountains, and his museum pieces are programmed for murder, and they fly. They only look like birds, so don’t let them stab you with their little beaks because you might be a rat.”
We shared a glance. His was colored with mechanized wings, and mine with needle-sharp teeth.
“Thing is,” I said, trying to think it through, to apply logic to madness, “they’re probably not programed for murder. At least not wholesale. Look at all the publicity around this project.” There’d been photographers and journalists at the museum exhibit; it had made the evening news. “You saw how popular they were. People are going to come looking for the real ones. Well, the fakes that behave like real ones. You know what I mean. And when they find them, if they’re not behaving as they should behave, someone’s going to notice.”
“You can’t miss the rats,” George agreed.
“Let’s say we’re not completely paranoid. Let’s say the new improved rock wren can kill all sorts of intruders. The moment a family drops dead there’ll be attention. The exhibit would close down and the birds would be destroyed.”
“Yeah, but you’re arguing like a rational person,” said George. “He’s not rational. He thinks he is, and granted, he couldn’t have done so well putting those things together if there wasn’t some reason left in him, but it’s all twisted. Who’s to say that one dead family isn’t the point? The revenge of the rock wren is justice of a sort — the indifferent extinction of a family line, because the survivors don’t care.”
It made a horrible sort of sense, and I swallowed bile in order to concentrate on the driving. Typical of New Zealand, there were no barriers on the winding road, and I didn’t want to steer us off the mountain. “That’s … all right, you make it sound plausible. I can’t help but think he cares more about the rock wrens than what they’d kill.”
“Risking a lot on that assumption, Ruby.”
Risking other people, too, and that was worse. People who’d have no idea what they were walking into, but George was right. Any attempt to publicize this, or to call in law enforcement, would likely end in hospitalization for the both of us, a diagnosis of Grief that would be quickly given and then easily ignored. Even the broken bird we could hear shifting in the thermos wasn’t sufficient. Not without proof of poison, and I couldn’t help but think that, if it were me trying to recruit, I’d have arranged a demonstration that held only a single dose … and neither of us had thought to bring the dead rat with us.
“Yeah. I know.” The thought of that risk made me feel sick.
Can you watch something die and let it die?
How much danger was there to other people? How much responsibility would be ours if rock wrens started picking them off? How much was Darren willing to sacrifice — how much mortality was he prepared to give his perfect little replicas? He’d worked too hard to bring them back from the dead, and was too obsessed — too enamoured — to let his replicas follow the original to extinction. I didn’t think he’d let them all be destroyed. Not even for vengeance.
Grief wouldn’t allow any different. It was mourning down to the marrow, the inability to let go of what had been cut away. I couldn’t imagine that anyone in the grip of it would ever let go again. The roots of loss were buried too deep.
You’ll have to go elsewhere if you want to play Snow White, he’d said. I’d thought it was an offhand comment, yet here in the landscape of old glaciers, I’d come across a body of water
