Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [109]
O’Hara reached down and picked his wife’s glass off the lawn. A dozen small ants were floating in it, all dead. ‘If you had been just a little more patient, a little more willing to listen, I could have offered it to you as well.’
He got up holding the glass. He closed his wife’s eyes and he touched her cold hand. Then he went into the house.
* * *
The playroom was full of toys.
It was brightly lit, with a floor made of clean blond wood. You would never have guessed it was inside the smallest of the prefab huts, at the rear of the group that made up Stephanie’s suite of offices. The windows were sealed with blackout material so that you couldn’t see the mud walls and raw construction of the tunnel outside.
Now a five‐year‐old boy entered the room. Patrick O’Hara came in slowly, looking around. He ignored the toys.
Instead he looked at the large vents in the floor.
Then he came directly over to the mirror and looked at it.
He stared into the big square of reflective glass above the sink. It was as if he expected it to be a window into another room, rather than just a mirror.
Smart kid, thought Stephanie, sitting in the darkness of the adjacent room. She moved her chair a little to the left. Now Patrick was staring right at her through the two‐way glass. He wasn’t looking away, even though he must be able to hear the gas by now. Stephanie had expected him to go over to the floor vents and look at them. But instead the small boy just stood there, watching the mirror above the sink. Staring into the next room at Stephanie, his little face looking somehow sad and knowing.
Stephanie thought it was a fascinating expression. She wished she’d thought to record it. Record the whole procedure, in fact. But on second thoughts the gas was coming into the playroom pretty quickly, filling it with thick white mist, and pretty soon a camera would be unable to pick up any image.
There was already a thin mist between Patrick’s face and hers, the boy’s face softening in the white vapour, losing details of its expression, becoming a blank slate. Now you could imagine any expression on it.
Stephanie imagined the face smiling at her, with that heart‐catching smile kids sometimes have. Then any suggestion of a face was blurred away, lost like a pattern you had imagined in a cloud, staring up into the sky on a hot summer’s day.
Mulwray was sitting in a chair just behind Stephanie’s. She’d made sure that he had a clear view of what was happening in the playroom. Stephanie would have liked to stay in the observation suite a little longer, even though there wasn’t much to see, but this whole visit was something of a luxury. O’Hara was promoting her to the position of project organizer and soon she’d be on site permanently, moving into his house. There would be plenty of room now.
But before she transferred from New York Stephanie had to clear her desk. That meant flying back in an hour and paying a final visit to the office and doing one last sweep of the police cells. She would take Mulwray with her. Stephanie liked having him around.
When the lights came on Stephanie stood up and went to the door, wasting no time. Mulwray blundered to his feet and came stumbling hastily after her, as if he was afraid to be left alone in the small room.
They emerged into the bright flat lighting of the tunnel and she had a good look at Mulwray’s face. He was looking very old indeed.
As they left, the surgical teams were entering the playroom their faces concealed behind breathing apparatus.