Voices in Stone - Emily Diamand Page 0,57

the woman you mentioned, who showed you round the quarry?”

“Dr Harcourt,” I said, through a mouthful of cake.

Stu tapped into the computer.

“Aren’t you going to look in the Database?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Google, then darknet, then Database.” He glanced at me. “Hasn’t your dad taught you the basics?”

I shrugged. He probably had, but I don’t much listen to his how-to-conspiracy lessons. I ate the cake while Stu scanned and clicked through page after page after page.

We stayed like that, just the sound of Stu huffing and tapping on his keyboard, and the buzzing of a fly, this really fat one, which was droning around the room in circles. It started to get on my nerves, the way it buzzed a circuit from the ceiling to the lamp, then for the computer screen. The next time it came near, I made a grab for it, but it dodged me easily, so I picked up a piece of paper and crept towards it. It was sitting on Stu’s desk, cleaning its legs. I lifted up the paper, swiped as hard and fast as I could. Whack!

Stu jumped nearly out of his chair, but the fly buzzed up to the ceiling and started circling again.

“What are you doing? Now I’ve lost my train of thought!”

“That fly’s really annoying me.”

“Well you won’t catch it that way! It’s a matter of time perception.”

He waited for me to ask what he meant, and when I didn’t he leaned back in his chair and told me anyway. “You think time is something fixed and steady. Seconds, minutes, hours. But that’s just your perception: Gray time. Eighty-odd years of it, a hundred thousand heartbeats, and then you die. Now that fly, he only lives a few weeks, so you probably think he feels his life is short.”

“How do you know it’s male?” I asked.

Stu shrugged. “All right, she feels her life is short. But she doesn’t!” He smiled, proud of himself. “Because her perception of time is different to yours, so she thinks her life lasts as long as yours does. She perceives a second as an hour, an hour as a month. Her weeks of life are like eighty years to her.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with me being able to swat the fly.” I couldn’t help arguing back. Stu makes you like that.

“A second for you is like an hour for a fly. So she’s got plenty of time to see your big slow hand coming and get out of the way. A fly doesn’t even have to rush; for them it’s like avoiding a tortoise.”

He went back to his typing, and I let the fly buzz. But I’ve thought about it since, especially after what happened. How we’re all travelling along our own piece of time, every living thing on earth, each at our own speed.

An interesting observation, but organisms from this planet perceive time in a similar manner, even if they do so at different speeds.

And what if they’re not from this planet?

That is another matter entirely.

Chapter Twenty-two

Gray

I watched Stu clicking on a couple of the web pages for ages.

“Have you found anything?” I asked eventually.

Stu clicked another page, then stopped. “No. Time to go into the darknet.”

That was kind of exciting, because Dad talks about the darknet a lot, how it’s this underworld of the internet, where everything’s secret and nothing’s traceable. How you can’t get in unless you know the special routes and passwords.

“What’s your access point?” I asked Stu, trying to sound like I knew what I was talking about.

“Well, there’s a website—” He stopped, and looked at me with narrowed eyes. “Nice try, but I know your dad wouldn’t want me telling you that.” He waved his hand, shooing me back.

“Oh come on!”

Stu folded his arms, refusing to do anything until I was right across the other side of the room. “I’m sorry, Gray, but the darknet isn’t for mucking about in. It’s not funny cats in there. In the darknet, everything’s for sale, even humans.” He looked at me. “And the people aren’t nice; they won’t care that you’re a kid.” He paused. “Or they might care too much.”

“So why are you going in then?” I muttered. “If it’s so bad and full of psychos?”

Stu grinned. “Because the main thing on sale in the darknet is information. Stolen credit card details, stuff hacked from mobile phones or scavenged out of people’s bins. Identities, bank accounts, government secrets. You name it, you can buy it,