Doctor Who_ Cat's Cradle_ Warhead - Andrew Cartmel [59]
Ace thumbed the control switch on the helmet and twisted the broken face plate. A hairline of red laser light crept along the dirt inner wall of the ditch. Ace adjusted the eyepiece, directing the beam at Massoud.
The second blow to the helmet had caused a loose circuit board to settle back into place. The control chip for limiting the intensity of the laser was still dislodged, but the sighting mechanism was functioning again. As the thread of laser light scorched Massoud’s cheek the resettled chip recognized the contours of a human face. It analysed the curve of a cheek bone and error‐corrected, locking in on where it expected to find the user’s eye.
It found Massoud’s eye, overshot slightly, swung back and directed its beam straight through his iris.
The uncontrolled laser beam needled out silently, barely visible in the dusty air of the summer night. It went in through the front of Massoud’s eye and into his brain, through the frontal lobe and sweeping into the motor and sensory areas.
Massoud saw a brilliant light. It filled his vision. It was the sun over the shoulder of his sister. She was standing on a mound of drought‐cracked mud in the resettlement camp, looking down at him with the sun behind her. Massoud hated her. He hated her for letting them put her in the truck that went east while they put him in the truck that went west. Darkness in the truck and the smell of fuel. Hot smell of the plastic seats. When his mother had the fever, Massoud fetched water for her. He carried it in a Coca‐Cola bottle, filling it from the tap in the courtyard. His small bare feet slapped on the concrete. His mother stirred with the fever. Her lips were cracked and dry, like the mud his sister stood upon. He picked up the Coca‐Cola bottle and ran down the corridor towards the courtyard. The doorway glowed brightly at the end of the corridor. The corridor was long and dark. Massoud ran along, weightless, his feet flying. But the small bright light at the end grew smaller. The corridor grew darker. Massoud ran more quickly.
Ace got out of the ditch, moving awkwardly, favouring her shoulder. Her mouth was dry. Massoud lay by the side of the road, dead. Ace found she was still clutching the helmet. She let it drop back into the ditch. She left the rucksack and everything that had spilled out of it. Now the pain in the shoulder was spreading down to her fingers. Ace couldn’t move her arm. She walked back across the bare ground with the abandoned construction equipment, retracing her route towards the lights of the marina and the shopping streets.
She caught a shuttle coach from the centre of town, riding back with drunken tourists and teenage Turkish boys. Ace sat staring blankly, hugging her arms around herself. She stank of fear. When she got out of the coach at her hotel one of the boys shouted at her. Ace flinched and the boys all laughed.
* * *
10
Ace slept until the middle of the afternoon, curled into a foetal bundle, lying on her uninjured side. She slept deeply and without dreams, oblivious to the sound of the prayers and hotel construction going on outside. When she woke she went into the bathroom and stripped off the T-shirt she’d slept in. She stared at herself in the mirror. Her shoulder had a wide bruise that extended down her left arm and up the side of her neck. It looked like the map of a new continent. Her tanned skin was pale in contrast to the deep red and purple. It hurt too much to move her arm more than slightly, but nothing seemed to be broken.
Ace ran water into the sink and didn’t think about Massoud. She dropped a cake of soap into the sink and watched the water turn a blind milky white, the surface trembling as the taps kept filling. She didn’t think about Massoud. She soaked a sponge in the warm soapy water and wiped her body clean, using only her right hand, not thinking about