He was shaking his head before he knew he was doing it. ‘No. You don’t sound surprised.’
She was quiet to start with. ‘You told him you’ve had memory problems.’
‘Oh,’ said Joe. There was something frightening about being told things he’d said but of which he had no recollection. His body had been up to all sorts of things without him.
Mrs Castlereagh looked terse. No doubt she was wishing she wasn’t medically responsible for a chronic amnesiac.
A light came on in his head. She wasn’t familiar because of an aura, she was familiar because she really was. She had Kite’s fine manners and the same shape to her eyes too, and when she saw him studying her and lifted her eyebrows to ask why, the similarity was even more pronounced.
‘He’s your brother, isn’t he?’ Joe said. ‘Kite, I mean.’
She gave him a curious, disconcerted look. ‘Yes.’
‘Is he going to kill me?’ Joe said. His voice had turned small.
‘Not if you don’t piss about.’
He nodded.
‘Go easy for the rest of the evening,’ she said seriously. She frowned, like she had no real faith he was made of the stuff that weathered well on warships. It didn’t show in her voice any more than Kite’s expressions did in his.
Joe moved the ball and the tortoise scuffled after it. He didn’t want to get up again yet. It wasn’t that he was tired, and still nothing hurt as much as it should have; it was that he didn’t know where to go, and even if he had done, he would have staked a lot on its being wet and cold. And here was safe.
‘I’ve been seeing a lot of tortoises.’
‘Yes.’ She brightened. ‘We need to test whether you’ll vanish if we change too much and your ancestors are killed. We’ve got four Galapagos tortoises aboard. They live upwards of two hundred years, so that’s easily long enough for the time difference. We have the juveniles here. Missouri means to go to the mainland today to pay a man to look after them for a hundred years and bring them to the pillars at six o’clock today, your time. Our theory is that an intention here should be spooling out already on your side of the gate.’
Joe straightened. ‘It is. There’s a man with four tortoises at the … I don’t understand, though, what can tortoises tell you?’
‘Well, if we kill a little one, we’ll see if the older one disappears. Better than doing it with people.’
‘Oh.’
A girl in a heavy blacksmith’s apron leaned in. ‘Ma’am? Captain says it’s time to go out to the pillars.’
‘Right. Let’s see how it goes off, shall we?’ Mrs Castlereagh said to Joe. ‘Bring the tortoise.’
14
Eilean Mòr, 1807
There were four tortoises in all, and four people: Kite, Mrs Castlereagh, Joe, and a limping Scottish sailor of unclear purpose. The weather was still misty and the land was invisible now, but the gate in the sea was still there, just, infernal in the red danger light from the lighthouse. Standing not far away on the other side was the man from the inn. On a sleigh, in crates, were four boulder-sized things under blankets.
Beyond the lighthouse, the town was a clear run away over the ice.
Kite came up on that side of him by way of showing that he had noticed. Joe looked down.
Together, they all walked towards the gate and the waiting man. He came forward a short way too. When they were close enough to see his face, he looked awed. He put his hand out and Kite shook it. Joe had the alien thought that people here must never have touched each other otherwise. There was no kiss, no hug, nothing. They were all oysters sealed in their stiff manners.
‘You’re Captain Kite?’
‘Yes. You must be related to Thomas McCullough.’
‘Jesus, Dad was telling the truth, but I thought, why not go and see. Anyway, I’m Guillaume.’
Kite looked as unsettled as McCullough looked fascinated. ‘Yes. I hope you’re not too fond of these things.’
‘They’re not brilliant company, I have to say,’ McCullough said. ‘But … why?’
‘Because I’m going to shoot them.’
‘What! You can’t do that!’
Kite ignored him and looked back at the Scottish sailor, who brought out the box with the tortoise marked ‘1’. Beside Kite, his sister was watching the middle distance, wary. Everything about her said she wasn’t sure any of this was a good idea. Joe tried to follow her eye line. There was nobody else coming.
She saw him looking. ‘If even one person in ninety