The Forcing: The visionary, emotive, breathtaking MUST-READ climate-emergency thriller E-Book

Paul E. Hardisty

• Herausgeber: Orenda Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 529

Beschreibung

In a near future, where civilisation has collapsed, a government of youth has taken power in North America. All older people deemed responsible for the cataclysmic climate emergency are relocated, but a breakaway group escapes exile to seek freedom … at devastating cost…'The dystopian future landscape of The Forcing comes with a heightened realism that grips and shakes you … provocative and insightful, visceral and terrifying' SciFi Now Book of the Month'A superbly handled tale of struggle and survival in a maimed world' The Times'Smart, gripping, and all too plausible … announces Paul E. Hardisty as the true heir to John Christopher' Tim GlisterThe jaw-dropping, passionate and provocative climate-emergency thriller from one of the world's leading environmental scientists.___________Civilisation is collapsing…Frustrated and angry after years of denial and inaction, in a last-ditch attempt to stave off disaster, a government of youth has taken power in North America, and a policy of institutionalised ageism has been introduced. All those older than the prescribed age are deemed responsible for the current state of the world, and are to be 'relocated', their property and assets confiscated.David Ashworth, known by his friends and students as Teacher, and his wife May, find themselves among the thousands being moved to 'new accommodation' in the abandoned southern deserts – thrown together with a wealthy industrialist and his wife, a high court lawyer, two recent immigrants to America, and a hospital worker. Together, they must come to terms with their new lives in a land rendered unrecognisable.As the terrible truth of their situation is revealed, lured by rumours of a tropical sanctuary where they can live in peace, they plan a perilous escape. But the world outside is more dangerous than they could ever have imagined. And for those who survive, nothing will ever be the same again…_________'A compelling, moving story of survival in a dying world … a novel that might have actually predicted our future' Ewan Morrison'A bold, beautifully written and imagined novel about an all-too plausible future – Paul Hardisty is a visionary' Luke McCallin'Hardisty is a fine writer' Lee Child'An excellent blend of deep suspense, thriller and – to be honest – horror. The message within it is all too plausible, the solution to the problem distinctly chilling' James Oswald'Fierce, thoughtful, deeply humane and always compelling … the tension builds from page one and never relents' David Whish-Wilson'Outstanding! Thrilling and thought provoking. If there's any justice, this book will be HUGE!!!' Michael J Malone'A clear-eyed reckoning with social and political currents we don't like to examine … tough, suspenseful and action-packed' Jock Serong'The book I've been waiting and hoping for…' Paul WatersWhat readers are saying…'Stark, gripping, often poignant''Riveting and suspenseful''A twist I didn't see coming''Dark and disturbing''I got a real Atwood vibe''A masterpiece''Powerfully told''Full of pace''An author at the very top of his craft''The biting intensity of a thriller and the majestic world-building of a classic dystopian tale'

Leseprobe

PRAISE FOR THE FORCING

‘A compelling, moving story of survival in a dying world … a novel that might have actually predicted our future’ Ewan Morrison

‘Fierce, thoughtful, deeply humane and always compelling. Tightly plotted, the tension builds from page one and never relents’ David Whish-Wilson

‘Smart, gripping, and all too plausible, The Forcing asks the big questions that we’re running out of time to answer, and announces Paul E. Hardisty as the true heir to John Christopher’ Tim Glister

‘The book I’ve been waiting and hoping for’ Paul Waters

‘With the biting intensity of a thriller and the majestic world-building of a classic dystopian tale, this story is perfectly paced with peaks and valleys, never spending too much time in one place and blending the moments together like some strange dream … This is a cataclysmic call to arms – a powerful warning about a world that could be’ B. S. Casey

‘An emotional, all-too prescient climate thriller, it kept me riveted to the very end. Beautifully written, in turns moving and terrifying, this is a book of our time’ Eve Smith

‘A riveting and suspenseful dystopian thriller/drama … both a reality check and completely absorbing fiction, speaking of cold, harsh facts but also of love, endurance and hope. Paul E. Hardisty has a way with words that never fails to blow me away, spot-on and occasionally rather poetic, yet never even remotely close to purple prose’ From Belgium with Booklove

‘Not just a novel about a world that is changed by climate breakdown … but one written by someone who knows what he’s talking about’ Live Many Lives

‘A stark, gripping, often poignant, but undeniably thought-provoking read and another absolute winner. Loved it’ Jen Med’s Book Reviews

PRAISE FOR PAUL E. HARDISTY

‘Beautifully written’ Tim Marshall

‘Vividly written, utterly tropical, totally gripping’ Peter James

‘This is a remarkably well-written, sophisticated novel in which the people and places … all come alive on the page’ Literary Review

‘Laces the thrills and spills with enough moral indignation to give the book heft … excellent’ Telegraph

‘Topical and fiercely intelligent. And it’s not often you can say the latter of a thriller!’ The Times

‘The quality of Hardisty’s writing and the underlying truth of his plots sets this above many other thrillers’ West Australian

‘Searing … at times achieves the level of genuine poetry’ Publishers Weekly

‘A trenchant and engaging thriller that unravels this mysterious land in cool, precise sentences’ Catholic Herald

‘What spoke to me more strongly than anything was the courage, integrity and passion with which this novel is written’ Cheltenham Standard

‘A gripping, page-turning thriller that is overflowing with substance to go along with Hardisty’s atmospheric prose and strong narrative style’ Mystery Magazine

‘The sense of place, and the way that the climate, the landscape and the people all combine within a location very foreign to that which many of us live in is evocative’ Australian Crime

‘A solid, meaty thriller – Hardisty is a fine writer and Straker is a great lead character’ Lee Child

‘A page-turning adventure that grabs you from the first page and won’t let go’ Edward Wilson The Forcing.qxp_The Forcing 24/01/2023 16:04 Page iii

‘An exceptional and innovative novel. And an important one. Hardisty appears to know his territory intimately … I can’t praise it highly enough’ Susan Moody

‘Beautifully written, blisteringly authentic, heart-stoppingly tense and unusually moving’ Paul Johnston

‘Smart, gripping, superbly crafted’ Helen Giltrow Crime Review

‘A big, bold character-driven story so emotionally literate that it doesn’t ring with authenticity, it clamours. Superb and highly recommended’ Eve Seymour

‘Wow. Just wow. The sense of place is conjured beautifully … think John Le Carré’s A Constant Gardener … A thriller with heart and a conscience’ Michael J. Malone

The Forcing

PAUL E HARDISTY

To my dad

Murray Edward Hardisty 1932–2020

Forcing

Radiative forcing (RF) is the difference between the planet’s incoming and outgoing radiation, measured in Watts per metre squared (W/m2). If RF is positive, all other factors remaining equal, the planet will warm. Compared to 1750, RF had increased 0.57 W/m2 by 1950, 1.25 W/m2 by 1980, 2.29 W/m2 by 2011, and 2.72 W/m2 by 2019. Sometimes referred to simply as climate forcing, or just forcing, it continues to increase. Natural climate forcings include changes in the sun’s energy output, regular variations in the Earth’s orbital cycle, and large volcanic eruptions that throw light-reflecting particles into the atmosphere. Human induced forcings, which now dominate the Earth-atmosphere system and are responsible for the large increases over the last several decades, include emissions of heat-trapping gases such as methane and carbon dioxide, and changes to land use which make the Earth’s surface reflect more or less sunlight.

[From Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report 6, Working Group 1]

‘I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the Earth.’

Genesis 6:5

PART I

Angels

A Journey into the Past

In the beginning, God created man.

And it was pretty much downhill from there.

Of course, the descent took time, and there were many points along the way at which it could have been slowed or reversed. We all watched, fascinated, unable to look away, as day by day an unwanted future became an unchangeable past.

I am not an historian. The bigger picture I will leave to others. This is the story of how I came to be here, so far from what I used to call home, and of those who shared my journey. I have tried to record it faithfully, as truly as memory allows. Some moments remain as indelible scars, despite my best attempts to forget. Others are fading even now. And parts of the story, I fear, will never be revealed.

I have attempted to see some of what happened through the eyes of my companions, out of respect for some, and in an attempt to understand others. I hope I have done them justice and apologise if I have not.

I admit to having started this tale several times over the years and having given up every attempt. Each failure has its own story, too. But now it is time. Perhaps it was watching my own children grow up in this new and changed world, that has finally brought me to the task, ending years of procrastination. Maybe it was the birth of my first grandson.

At first, and for a long time, I simply needed to heal, to forget. Years passed, a decade and another again. Slowly, with the turn of seasons, the pain began to recede. I lost myself in the task of remaking our lives, bending to the work of feeding my family, building this stone and jarrah-plank house by the sea. Now I know that I will only ever find peace in the places I least want to go.

For it is no exaggeration to say that I have crawled to the very edge of the abyss and gazed down into the depths of Hell. I do not offer this lightly. I am a scientist, a teacher. Even now, in my old age, I remain a rationalist, a determinist. But I know now that human reality lies not in the physical, the solid stuff of the world, the bones and tumours of our mortal bodies, but in the warped fabric of time where our hopes and tortured dreams live.

In truth, I am running out of time. What once obeyed without complaint now rebels. Joints ache, and old wounds throb with the coming of the rains. Fatigue, once a stranger, is now a constant and unwanted companion. Even simple tasks have become difficult, and in my two grown sons I can see glimpses of the man I was, the same man who carried and lifted and placed each of the stones in these walls, whose hands cut and shaped the sturdy beams above me, cleared the ground and planted the crops that feed us.

And so I must make this journey into the past, now, while I still can. I hope this record will help my children understand the truth of what happened and why things are the way they are, and why we decided to bring them into such a world in the first place. Because it was truth, or to be more precise a deficit of truth, that set us on this path. A truth that remained hidden for far too long, ignored by some, avoided by many, and actively concealed by a powerful few.

I will start back when we had finally begun to try to fix the problem, after it was too late, and before we really knew what was wrong.

I still remember the letter that started it all.

1

I rose early, an old habit, crept downstairs to make coffee, correct the exam papers I hadn’t got to the night before. It was back when people still got up and made coffee and went to work, led what they tried to imagine were normal lives. I guess we were all doing our best to maintain the illusion of a past we couldn’t quite bring ourselves to let go of.

By the time I left the house, dawn was hinting pale against the autumn trees. My wife Maybelline – May – was still in bed. I’d gone upstairs to kiss her goodbye, but when I whispered her name, she hadn’t moved. The morning was cold. Dark clouds massed in the west, obscuring the mountains. Out of the gate and left towards the river, my usual route, past ragged picket-fence gardens and modest wooden houses, lights coming on in kitchen windows. It was that kind of neighbourhood. The last vestiges of the middle class, still hanging on to that dream, still pretending.

I taught my morning class, chemistry 11, and had begun physics 12 – just another Thursday among fifteen years of Thursdays. I was standing at the blackboard describing the radiative forcing effect of carbon dioxide and methane on Earth’s climate when the letters arrived, placed ceremoniously on my desk by Radley, the breathless deputy principal, a short, recently-appointed administrator whose sole joy in life seemed to be the delivery of bad news. No calamity was too small to send him into paroxysms of excitement: whispered news of a recent divorce, the latest teen pregnancy, the now-ritual distribution of draft cards at the senior assembly. The kids, predictably, called him Ratley.

I knew what my letter would say, had anticipated it for months. I finished the class, left the letters unopened on my desk, acted as if nothing had changed. At lunch I sat with a few colleagues, talked about the usual stuff – the war, the shortages, the chronic lack of mobile-phone and internet service.

Later that afternoon, after the kids had settled into the physics 12 exam, I opened my letter. It was no surprise. Except the date. What I had initially thought must be a mistake, a typo of some sort, right there in ragged black ink: the last digit of the year exactly one lower than it was supposed to be, than had been repeatedly communicated by the government over the radio and the TV for the last six months.

It made no difference to me. I had always been well within the cut-off. I was clearly one of the responsibles, as they were being called – the old ones, those the viruses hadn’t managed to kill off. I’d accepted it long ago. But for May, it made all the difference in the world.

I looked up at the kids, heads bent to their exam papers. Kazinsky with his newly razed skull of stubble, Smith with the tip of one of her long braids in her mouth, concentrating. Good kids. No, not kids anymore. Young men and women, now. Women and men, young, with a future even more uncertain than mine.

I looked at my watch, gave them all a few extra minutes. Then I stood and cleared my throat. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, time is up.’

Groans from the usual suspects, eyes looking up at me, refocusing, the afternoon sunlight in each of those uniquely patterned, uniquely troubled pairs. A few smiles – Smith, inevitably, beaming at me with that beautiful mouth, those unnaturally enhanced eyes, the Cantor dust of freckles across the bridge of her nose, that haunting intermittency. I scanned the rest of the faces, raised the letter in my right hand. ‘I have some good news, for some of you at least.’

Quiet, now. Thirty-two faces directed toward me.

‘This will be the last class we will have together,’ I said.

Even the new kids in the back row were paying attention now.

‘I am being relocated.’

A guffaw from the back, Hernandez and Richards high-fiving.

‘South.’

Then silence, blank stares, information being processed. All the new kids, the ones who themselves had just been relocated, knew immediately. You’re going where we just came from.

I considered saying more, offering some sort of defence perhaps. Instead, I said: ‘I hope you’ve learned something during our time together. Even you, Richards, Hernandez…’

Nervous laughter from a few.

‘Remember, wherever your lives take you, that science and rational thought have always been a beacon for humanity. In reason and truth lie hope.’ As I said it, I realised how old-fashioned it sounded. I hoped one day they would understand.

More sniggering from the back.

‘Now, if you will please turn in your exam papers. I wish you all good luck.’

Students began shuffling to the front, placing papers on the corner of my desk. Krusch, Robertson, Ravindran. DeVilliers silent, hoisting his bag onto his shoulder; a grunt from Rouse that could have been goodbye; a clear ‘good luck, Teach’ from the intelligent Blewett; a tended hand and a good, firm shake from Glass, captain of the school football team. A few thankyous. Most walked out without a word.

Soon it was only Smith and Kazinsky, the two who’d been with me the longest. Smith in her trademark short skirt and black Doc Martens, fiddling with a braid, Kazinsky hovering near the back window. Smith put her paper on the pile, looked at me. She was crying.

‘I don’t think I did very well,’ she sniffled. ‘I…’ She stalled, stood looking down at her feet.

‘You always say that, Maddy. And you always do well. Don’t worry.’

She looked up at me. The tears in her eyes refracted the low-angle light from the windows, prismed out through the yellow part of the spectrum from those cat’s-eye contacts she had been wearing for a few months now, 4.7x1014 cycles per second, that beguiling, prescient frequency.

‘Yes, but…’ She stopped herself, let the end of her braid fall to her side. ‘What if our new teacher is, like, a troll?’

‘Don’t worry, Maddy. Miss Fenyman will take over for the rest of the term. She’s a lot younger than I am. I’m sure she’ll be fine.’

She stood there a moment, head bowed. ‘But I want you, Teach,’ she said, fiddling with her braid again. ‘I want to do physics at MIT. You know that. I need you.’

That’s what everyone calls me. Teacher. Everyone who knows me. The kids just call me Teach.

I picked Maddy’s paper from the pile, scanned the first answer, her invariably neat script moving across the page, building from first principles, the unit analysis helpfully displayed and balanced, the answer perfect. ‘You’re ready, Maddy. You’ll get in. Believe me. You don’t need me anymore.’

She stood there with her legs crossed above the knees the way she did. ‘You’re just saying that,’ she said, wiping her eyes. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter. I don’t want you to go.’

‘I’m sorry, Maddy,’ I said, struggling for words.

She straightened, glanced at Kazinsky and picked up her bag. ‘Thanks, Teach. I’ll never forget you.’

And then she was gone and it was only Kazinsky, half a foot taller than he’d been at the start of term, standing by the window, looking out across the mud-scarred playing fields. I stood and walked a few unsteady paces towards him, the room suddenly empty now that Smith was gone, as if all the air had been sucked from the place. The late-afternoon sky burned that bewildering shade of alder that still made me dizzy, as if the gravity of the world had been inverted, transducing earth into sky, atmosphere into ocean. Which in a way, of course, it had.

For several minutes we stood there by the window in the empty classroom, saying nothing, each looking out at whatever we could see.

After a while, Kazinsky spoke. His voice was deep, resonant. ‘I’ve been called up for the army.’

I said nothing. The latest draft of seventeen-year-old males had just been announced to replace the catastrophic losses in Africa. There had been the earlier experiments with females, of course, but those had been an unmitigated disaster, and now, with the population plummeting, it was ridiculous to send healthy young women to be slaughtered on the battlefield.

A long silence stretched out, pierced only by the occasional shout from the hallway. ‘I don’t agree with what we’re doing over there,’ Kazinsky said. ‘I don’t want to kill people.’

I put my hand on the boy’s shoulder, held it there a moment.

Kazinsky glanced back towards the hallway. ‘I’m thinking of running away.’

‘It would be dangerous, Matthew. You know what they’re doing to draft evaders.’ My words sounded fake, an insincere apology.

‘There’s no way I’m going to go over there and kill a bunch of people I don’t know, have nothing against. We’re only there for the food. We’re stealing.’

I had been against the war from the beginning, demonstrated against it, back when that was still possible, before the Repudiation, but I continued with my fakery nonetheless. ‘The new government is trying to get out, bring the troops home. But it’s going to take time, Matthew, after the mess they inherited.’

‘I’m scared, Teach.’

‘So am I, Matthew.’ It was the truth.

Kazinsky turned to face me. Tears wicked his dark lashes. ‘No. That’s not what I mean,’ he said. ‘I’m not scared for me. I’m scared for us. All of us.’ He wiped his eyes with the back of his sleeve, glanced out towards the hallway. ‘I was just a kid when the first virus hit. I thought that was bad. But it was nothing compared to this.’

I gripped the boy’s shoulder, held it tight. ‘The world is a fine place, Matthew, and well worth fighting for. Do you know who said that?’

He shook his head.

‘I guess they don’t teach you Hemingway in lit anymore.’

‘My dad read The Old Man and the Sea to me once, when we were on holiday.’

‘Did you like it?’

‘It’s from another time, but yeah.’

I waited for him to continue.

‘You know. When everything was still pure. Not like now.’

‘I know what you mean,’ I said, guilt welling up inside me.

‘I like the way the old man never gave up, even when the sharks came and took the fish away from him. The way the young boy loved the old man no matter what.’

‘So, in the end, he won.’ I hoped he couldn’t hear the lack of conviction in my voice.

‘Yeah, I guess he did. If you can call it winning.’

‘He just went out too far.’

‘I guess.’

‘So,’ I said, looking into the boy’s eyes, ‘the decision each of us has to make is: which fight? As long as you’re fighting for what you know is right, and keep doing your best, there’s hope. It’s when you give up that you’ve lost. Not a minute before.’

Now this I meant. Big difference between trying and winning. I’ve always been quick to give advice. It is one of my many failings.

Kazinsky looked up and to the right for a moment, that thing he did when he was working something through. ‘Maybe I could head to the mountains. You know, hide in the wilderness.’

‘It’s still pretty cold up there.’

He stared out of the window. After a while he said: ‘My dad would have known what to do. He was good in the bush. Could get a fire going anywhere. He used to take me camping all the time when I was a kid.’

You still are a kid. I didn’t say it. Matthew’s father had died in the second pandemic. Young and fit, he defied the statistics and succumbed to what later became known as the old-people’s disease. In truth no one had been safe. With so many succumbing, the tails of the distribution accounted for millions. It had been a giant crapshoot.

‘You’re smart, Matthew. With your marks, you could apply for engineering at university. It would keep you out of the army.’

We’d been having this conversation for a couple of years now, on and off, me trying to get him to acknowledge his obvious talent for maths and physics, him steadfastly resisting. It’s not me, Teach, he’d say. I want to get out of school, not back into it. I want to live. Get out there and see some of the world before it’s all gone.

His words saddened me in a way I still cannot describe. I couldn’t blame him one bit.

‘It’s not right, what they’re doing,’ he said. ‘You don’t look that old.’

The truth of it was that we hadn’t tried hard enough to change things, back when it mattered, when there was still time. We could have. But we didn’t.

‘It won’t be good, Teach. You should run away, hide.’ Kazinsky paused, looked into my eyes, then lowered his voice. ‘Maybe we can go together?’

‘It will be okay. They’ll look after us.’

‘Please.’

‘It will be fine, Matthew. Thanks.’

And that was it.

After he left, I stood a long while and watched the sky go dark. Then I put the exam papers and the letters into my briefcase and walked out of the classroom, along the scuffed linoleum corridor and down the front steps of Churchill High School for the last time, my throat aching from holding it all back, the fear growing inside me like a tumour, the pity I felt for these unwilling inheritors I was leaving behind.

Each Windblown Mile

I stand and stretch my legs. The ache in my left hip grows worse every winter. My father had both hips replaced, back when such things were common. I remember him telling me what a difference it made. He was back walking only a few weeks after the surgery, without pain, or so he said. Less than two years later those titanium joints and a small pile of ashes were all that was left of him.

It’s been a long time since I’ve thought about my dad, those kids too. Kazinsky and Smith. I suppose they just got erased along with everything else, all of that other, vanished world. They were about the same age then as my sons are now, a little younger. For the thousandth time I wonder if they are alive, and if so, where they are and if they are happy.

Eight hours it took me to write that first chapter.

I clump my way to the kitchen, avoid the squeaky floorboard, the one I have been meaning to replace for months. My wife is there, sitting at the table, a mug of tea between her hands. She smiles at me, each windblown mile of the past etched in her face, her eyes a timeless miracle. I pour myself a mug from the kettle simmering on the stove, sit opposite her. She reaches out across the plank-board table and takes my hand in hers. These two sets of fingers intertwine, this bone and brittle skin, these hands that together have wielded a thousand tools, and have thus conquered distance and healed the injured, cared for the helpless and buried the dead, carried and cut and killed.

Now that I have begun, I feel as if I have no choice but to continue. But starting is easy. Finishing is what’s hard.

2

I walked home the long way, down to the river and then along the footpath on the south bank though Fort Calgary, past the tarpaulin-and-plywood shanty town and then across the bridge over the Elbow River, running full and ice-free now even in January, the letters heavy in my pocket. I thought of the years we’d spent here since moving from Revelstoke after getting married, both of us so young, so oblivious. We’d done our best, raised a son here, built a life. A lot of it had been good. Some of it had been bliss.

It was getting late, and I knew that May would be home from her exhibition. I hoped it had gone well, fought off the thought that it hadn’t, replaced it with visions of happy art buyers leaving the studio with paintings tucked under well-fed arms. Then I realised that it wasn’t going to make any difference at all.

A cold drizzle started falling. Off to my left, on the island, the zoo was quiet and dark, the animals long since gone. One day they had just shut the place up. Cost savings, they had said. By the time I reached the end of our street, the rain was coming harder. It drummed on roofs and pelted the deleveled concrete sidewalk, cracking against my jacket and through the bare capillaries of bushes and trees, washing in through the charred shell of the Walker place – the whole family killed in Africa a few years earlier, caught there when the war started, the house taken over by squatters. I remember the night of the fire, the snow falling as the fire truck arrived, standing there with May, watching the flames fork from the windows, the jets of water pouring in through the collapsed roof, the embers spinning skywards through the orange billows of steam, her face lit up and how she looked so young still, so beautiful.

Walking on, feet soaked, cold, numb. Cold, soaked feet. On. Walking.

When I reached our house, I didn’t go in. I stood on the sidewalk in front of the house for a long time, watching the woodsmoke wisping from the chimney limb, smooth and laminar at first, then shuddering and separating in the wind. The mullioned windows glowed yellow, and inside I could see May moving from the kitchen to the dining room. Her hair was up, the way she wore it when she wanted to look her best. She was wearing the green dress that accentuated her figure. I knew she was happy. Standing there in the rain watching her, I had that feeling I had sometimes of being on the cusp of something, crossing over into a place you can’t get back from. That feeling that things can only ever move in one direction.

I pulled back the cuff of my jacket, tilted my wristwatch to the window light, watched the second-hand journey around the dial. Water streamed from the downspout. May moved back to the kitchen. I knew I should go in. But I didn’t. I just stood there, listening to the dirge in the sky and the rain in the bare trees and the sound of the river churning up its banks.

It was late by the time I summoned the courage to go inside.

‘You’re late,’ May said. She was sitting at the kitchen table drinking a glass of wine. The table was set, the stove was lit. A tray of roasted vegetables steamed on the oven top. The smell filled the room. We ate in silence. After dinner I got up and turned on the little TV we kept in the kitchen. There wasn’t much on anymore since the commercial stations had closed – government-controlled news mostly. A story came on, one they’d been playing for the last several days about the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, the drone shots showing oil platforms on fire, pillars of black smoke bisecting a green sky. The announcer was talking about the impacts on the coastline and what remained of the economy, blaming previous governments, the historical inaction of the voting populace. It had happened before, of course, but we had learned nothing.

Faster, cheaper. Disaster. Cheaper, faster.

Always the same. Over and over. Again and again. Over and over. The present a mirror of the past, replicating, learning nothing. Was it simply a colossal lack of imagination, or something worse, some deeper failing?

‘Turn that shit off,’ said May. ‘I bet that footage is all computer-generated.’

I didn’t want to start in on it. I turned it off.

‘I’m not going to be manipulated,’ she continued.

I said nothing.

After I had cleaned away the plates, she said: ‘Don’t you want to know about my day?’

‘Of course. Sorry, yes,’ I blurted. ‘How did the show go?’

She smiled. ‘I sold four paintings.’

‘That’s great, May. Great.’

‘Two older ones that I painted that year we camped in the Rockies, you remember?’

I smiled at the memory. So did she. We stood a moment, smiling together, and then it was over.

‘And I sold three newer ones, too. Got a good price for them. People always have money for beautiful things, no matter how bad things get.’ She refilled her glass, watched me watching her. ‘I’m celebrating.’

‘Congratulations.’

She drank. ‘I hear that people have started getting letters. Quite a few on our street.’

I nodded.

‘They’re calling you the grey locusts.’

‘Apt.’

She frowned. ‘Did you get yours?’

I reached into my pocket and pulled out the envelopes, set them on the table together, one atop the other.

‘When do you leave?’

I fanned out the letters so she could see.

‘What’s that?’

‘I’m sorry, May,’ I said. ‘I truly am.’ I was. I still am.

I remembered the day we first heard the news, about half a year earlier, maybe a bit less. We were sitting together in the living room, reading, the radio on in the background. The official announcement followed the evening news. Over the next six to twelve months, it said, those born before the cut-off date would be relocated south to make room for the millions of younger citizens streaming north. There were other details about asset confiscation to help pay for the mounting costs of the war and the efforts to adapt society to all the changes. Building resilience, they called it.

The cut-off date meant May was safe, and I wasn’t. I would have to go, and she could stay. After the announcement, she turned off the radio and looked me long in the eyes. What she had been looking for I’m still not sure. Was it envy, maybe? Anger, perhaps, or fear? The fact is I can’t remember feeling any of those things, and I still don’t. All I felt then, and still feel now, was a profound sense of sadness. I’m going to miss you, May, was all I said. I didn’t ask her to come with me. I knew that she wanted me to go, that she wanted to live her own life. So, I decided to say nothing, to leave it all unsaid. And that was the way it had stayed. Until now.

‘What is it?’ she said.

‘Our notices. They came this morning.’

‘You mean your notice,’ she said, turning away.

‘I’m sorry, May.’

‘You keep saying that. Stop saying that.’

I pushed her letter across the table towards her.

‘What the fuck are you talking about?’ She snatched the letter up, opened it.

I watched her eyes move as she read, wide at first, then gradually narrowing into a compressed horizon of disbelief.

She looked up at me. ‘No,’ she said. ‘This is wrong.’ She stood, took a few steps and let the letter fall to the floor.

I reached out for her, but she batted me away.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No. You’ve changed it. You’re jealous. You want to stay and you can’t.’

‘May, I’m…’

I could see her trying to steady herself. She was breathing hard. ‘It’s a mistake,’ she said, her voice quavering. ‘A typo. One number, that’s all it is.’ She trod on the letter and ground it into the tile with a twist of her foot. ‘They make mistakes all the time.’

‘I checked, May. I called them today from school. It’s not a mistake.’

‘One number,’ she whispered. I could see panic taking hold now, the blood rising to her face, the vein just below her left eye twitching the way it did when she was stressed. She reached for the wine glass, gulped it dry, tottered, reached for the edge of the table. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s a mistake. They told us last year, and again just a few weeks ago. Ninety, they said. Ninety.’

I reached to steady her. She pushed me away, stumbled back towards the kitchen counter.

‘There were others at the school, May. Others like you. It’s not a mistake. Please, May, you have to calm down. Why don’t you sit for a moment?’

‘Get away from me,’ she screamed. ‘This is your fault. What did you say to them?’

‘What do you mean, my fault? How could I—’

‘Asshole. You just said it. You called them. You told them I was older.’ She was screaming now, at the top of her voice, the way she’d done during the worst of her episodes, back before we figured out what was wrong and got her treatment. ‘You don’t want to go alone. That’s it, isn’t it? You’re such a coward.’

I pushed through it. ‘Did you skip your meds, May?’

‘What if I did? What fucking difference does that make? I won’t be able to get them soon anyway, the way things are going.’

‘Please, May. Sit down. I’ll fetch your lithium.’

She leaned back against the edge of the counter, arching away from me, reaching back. Dishes clattered to the floor.

‘No,’ she screamed. ‘Get away from me.’

‘It’s okay,’ I whispered.

‘This is what you’ve always wanted. To punish me. For everything.’

I reached for her hand. She screamed as she swung the knife.

That Territory of Madness

Memory is an untrustworthy thing. I am sure May would have recalled these events completely differently. It’s hard to be objective. And the further away they get, the less certain I am about anything.

The scar is still there, though, a clean cut on my left deltoid. I can still remember the flash of the blade, the surprise I felt as I stared at the knife sticking out of my shoulder, May’s scream as she ran from the kitchen and out into the night. It is a memory that is very clear, very clean, seemingly unblurred, and now unearthed, troublingly closer than many, more recent, events.

Dawn lights the eastern sky. Shoals of cloud hang low over the sound, wend through the dark hills that rise from the sea. A light rain is falling, has been falling all night. I stand under the covered balcony – a later addition – and watch the boys prepare the skiff. They load fishing lines and net, bait, oars, food and water. Lewis, the taller and slimmer of the two, guides the bow into the water, tresses of sun-bleached hair falling across his face. Kweku, stockier, darker, leans low and pushes the stern through the shingle. The skiff’s keel rib leaves a dark channel in the shingle behind him. Soon they are in and powering their way out towards the abandoned lighthouse. I stand and watch them go, follow the swing and drop of their oars and the silver wake spooling out behind them until they reach the headland and are gone. I wish them luck, and safe return. I say this out loud, as I do each time they go, my prayer to the ocean and the sky and the ancient granite under my feet.

I turn away and go back inside. My wife has put a mug of tea on my desk. It steams in the lamplight. I whisper thanks to her, sit down. Every time they go it is this way. Every time. I lower my eyes to the page, try to calm my fear. Yesterday’s words stare up at me, crying out to be banished, back to that territory of madness from whence they came.

3

I stood there for a moment not quite believing what had just happened. Then the pain came. My vision collapsed. I braced myself against the counter, let the turbulence roil through me. I remember the wind whipping in the Manitoba maple outside the back window, the blood pulsing out around the blade, the way it beaded on the stainless steel.

I staggered to the bathroom, found the first-aid kit. The knife hadn’t gone in far. I knew that I should leave it in, bind around it, go to hospital. But May was out there somewhere, scared and angry and alone. It was then that I noticed it – May’s prescription dispenser, the little white pills there in their slots. She had missed taking her medication for three days running.

I grabbed the handle, held it there a moment … and pulled. It came out easily, more easily than I would have thought, with a slight sucking sound. And then the blood came, and with it another wave of pain. I pulled a towel from the rack, soaked it in hot water, pressed it to the wound. One of May’s white bath towels. Shit. It would never come clean. She’d be furious. I remember thinking that.

Soon I had a bandage in place, tightened down hard, reddening already, but holding. I had to find May. The car keys were still on the hook by the back door. Her purse and raincoat were on the chair in the front hall. Twenty minutes since she’d left. I grabbed the phone, hit the speed dial – Maureen, her closest friend in Calgary, mid-forties, divorced, a couple of joint-custody kids who were ‘doing fantastic’, as she told me every time we met, which wasn’t often. The line crackled, the weather spiking in packets of interference. A voice answered. A child.

‘Is your mother there, please?’

No answer, just a yell: ‘Mu-um. Phone.’

Banging, a muffled ‘shit’. Then: ‘Hello?’

‘Maureen, it’s David.’

Nothing.

‘David Armstrong.’ That’s my name.

‘Sorry?’

‘David Armstrong.’

Nothing.

‘Maureen, it’s Teacher.’

‘Oh, Teacher. Yes, of course. Sorry.’

‘Is May there, Maureen?’

‘May? No, why? Is something wrong?’

‘No, I … Well, yes. I … I need to find her.’

‘What happened, Teacher?’

‘It’s nothing. If she shows up, can you please let me know? If I’m not here, just leave a message. OK?’

‘Did she get a letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’m so sorry. Really I am.’

‘Sure.’

‘If I hear from her, I’ll let you know, okay?’

‘Thanks.’

I tried everyone I could think of. Each conversation was similar: stilted, awkward, the same negatives in reply. I put the phone down, reached up and touched the bandage. The bleeding had stopped. It wasn’t that bad. I ran up upstairs to the bedroom, pulled on a sweatshirt, came back downstairs, drank a glass of water, grabbed the solar-powered windup torch from its cradle on the side counter and my rain shell and cap from the hook at the front door. I whistled for Panda. He came, tail wagging. He was old, but he was willing, and he loved May. I made sure the spare key was under the mat in case she came back while I was away and stepped out into the storm.

We started towards the river, the dog pulling on his lead. Did he sense the urgency? I knew that when she wanted to be alone, she would walk along the river pathway, often with the dog. She’d go for miles sometimes, most often to the east, away from the city, following the Bow River as it curved south and broadened into gravel-strewn braids that cut through old stands of poplar and alder growing in the shelter of the valley. But the trees were mostly gone now, burned during the terrible wildfires of last summer and then hacked away by refugees who came to cut the trees for firewood.

Sometimes I would follow her. Invariably she’d stop at her favourite places: the lookout beyond the weir, the little gravel beach cut into the bank further downstream, where in summer you used to be able to wade out and let the water run cool and strong against your legs, the bench set on the point where you could look back across the river and on clear days see the Rocky Mountains rising behind the city. Early in our marriage we’d walked together, hands clasped through woollen mittens in winter, baby fingers hooked and linked in summer, stopped at these places, watched the ice crack in spring, the water flow cold and pure from the mountains in autumn. But then one day she announced that she was going alone. She returned hours later, quiet, distant, as if she’d been on a long voyage and seen things she could not describe in words. I know how that feels.

After a while, I had started to follow. I’d keep well back, lurking in the trees at the side of the path, careful not to get too close. I watched her wanderings, wondered what had gone wrong, pondered the genesis of this distance. As soon as I’d see her turn and start home, I would hurry back along the railway tracks to the house so that when she returned, I was there, busy in the garden or marking papers at the kitchen table.

And every time I did it, I felt ashamed.

But I didn’t stop. I got better and better at the following, closer so I could see her clearly, watch her stop sometimes to sketch in her pocket notebook, hear fragments of a phone conversation, see the steam coming from her mouth on a winter afternoon. I got better at the rationalisation, too. I was making sure she was safe – the city had been getting steadily more dangerous as the economy slumped and food prices rose and refugees flooded in. These days, a woman walking alone was a target, no matter how much she asserted that she should not be, that she deserved better, deserved respect. I was watching over her, ready to spring at any would-be assailant, and I was trying to understand what she was doing so I could save our marriage, stop her from making a mistake that we would both regret. But underneath, the shame lurked, bruise hot and impossible to ignore.

But now, as far as I could tell, she was barefoot, wearing only her green dress. She was distressed, not thinking straight, manic. She had no money. Her phone was still in her purse. It was cold. Not cold enough for snow, but almost. Close to enough. Soon, maybe. If she was balanced, she’d head to Ninth Avenue. Most of the shops would be closed now, but there was a convenience store there, at the far end towards the city, that would still be open. But she wasn’t anything close to balanced. If she didn’t find shelter soon, she’d die of exposure. I had to find her.

It’s all a blur now, looking back. I remember running through the rain, the dog trotting beside me, the torchlight beam scattering among the charred trunks, the supercooled droplets hanging in the light as if ignoring the gravity pulling them groundward. Then, like now, none of it seemed real, this place, the pain in my shoulder, the letter crumpled on the kitchen floor, the war in Africa, Kazinsky crying in class, all that had happened over the last day and decade, the changes that had come so much more quickly than I or anyone else had predicted, that non-linearity in complex systems that shocks an apparently stable, predictable system into a new dis-equilibrium. I ran on through the darkness, calling her name out into the night as the rain turned to snow, into this new strange attractor that was drawing us all in. It was so dark.

Rain turned to sleet, cold on my face, streaking through the flashlight’s dimming beam. I breathed. My heart beat. Heat diffused from my body. Minutes of my life shed into nothing. Rain fell, cooled, turned to ice. Somewhere close by a tree limb crashed to the ground. All around me, entropy doing its work.

I kept going, calling out her name, my voice disappearing into the storm. And then the bluffs across the river where the valley widened out, lights flickering along the crest, blurred and starred through the sleet, and the old Ninth Avenue bridge. The dog was pulling hard on the leash now, tail flicking back and forth, his thick black-and-white fur soaked. As we got closer, I could see the bridge abutments blistering the water. Under the main span, out of the snow, it was dry. Empty liquor bottles, plastic bags, a pile of shit with a few sheets of toilet paper scattered about, the collapsed halves of a cardboard box, a used condom. And then something exquisitely pale, a cherished limb, a green dress.

I dropped to my knees.

That Divine Welcoming

Sometime later – after the exodus but before our escape, she opened up to me in a way she hadn’t since were first married. She tried to explain to me what she’d done and why she’d done it and what she’d seen there, under that bridge, as she slipped into unconsciousness.

Every colour of cold, she’d said. Those exact words. I’ll never forget them. Whites and blues and the steel grey of the I-beams under the bridge. Fractured slabs and crystal flakes, the spider-web of concentric fractures there in the frozen puddle at her hand. All these patterns demanding capture. But she was too tired, too numb, too everything. It really was too bad, she told me. Too bad about all of it. She’d always thought there was going to be so much more. More love, more happiness, more of everything. It was hard to hear.

She closed her eyes, felt herself dissolving away, as if her constituent atoms were somehow disaggregating, and she told me that part of her knew that she was dying, that this was what the last moments felt like, balancing there at the edge of oblivion, so close she could feel its cold breath on her neck, its gentle voice calling to her, telling her that it was going to be alright, taking hold of her hand, picking her up to carry her across the threshold into nothingness, and that sensation of drifting, untethered to any terrestrial point, and the terror of it, the sparking fear in her bones and the raging darkness in her head because this was not what she believed it would be like, The End.

Where were the angels, she said, the bright lights of heaven? Where was God’s divine welcoming, the warm, everlasting peace? She’d always believed, always prayed. But there was only this. This cold. This frozen scattering. Sweet Lord, no. Did you lie to me? Did I lie to myself?

And in that moment, that infinity contained within a fraction of a second, she knew that she’d never heard back. She’d prayed and strived and directed her soul heavenward and envied those who claimed they’d spoken directly to God, heard the word of the saviour, one to one, a private conversation. But she never had. Not once. The communication had only ever been one way. Had she been faking it the whole time, searching for someone, something that didn’t exist? Terror flooded her soul, black and deep like an ocean. This was not how it was supposed to be. Now, most of all, a lifetime’s devotion was supposed to be rewarded with final certainty, that divine welcoming she’d always been promised, realisation at the final breath. Darkness opened up before her, infinite and empty. She tried to speak. No. And then she was gone.

It made me shiver. It still does.

4

I sat by the bed and watched the early-morning light play over her face, ran the fingertip of my gaze over the upturned tip of her nose and down the long curve of her neck. Once, a single touch had been enough to push me off the cliff-edge of bliss. It seems like so long ago now. But then again, a lot of things seem so long ago. The time when the world had seemed to be making slow, grudging progress. A time of optimism, before the Repudiation, a time of progress despite the setbacks, the losses irretrievable and not. And then the darkness had come, the victory of denial and cowardice over truth. Surely it can’t be that long ago, that far away?

I closed my eyes, listened to the sound of her breathing. If I hadn’t found her, she would surely have died. It was only because I’d followed her so many times that I’d been able to guess which way she’d go. That’s what I told myself. Rationalisation. The last refuge of the guilty. More likely it was the dog who’d led me to her.

It had taken me the best part of twenty minutes to get her back to the house. I’d put my jacket over her, pulled my hat over her head, lifted her and carried her back. She was heavier than I remembered, and I was certainly not as strong as I once was. I shifted her up over my shoulder, fireman style, and then back to a bridal carry every hundred metres or so, walking as quickly as I could, the dog trotting happily beside me. I could the feel the cold inside her through the layers, but she was still breathing. By the time we arrived back at the house I was sweating hard. I stripped off her dress and underwear, dried her, laid her on the bed and covered her over with as many extra blankets as I could find. Then I took off my clothes, towelled myself down, slipped in next to her, pushed myself up against her and felt the cold move from her body into mine. I stayed that way for a long time, running my hands over the familiar topography of her. Slowly, she warmed.

Sometime later, deep in the night, she woke and turned to look at me. Her eyes were wide, the pupils dilated so that there was only black. She put her arms around my neck and drew me close. I could feel her breath on my neck. She whispered something I could not make out, and for the briefest eternity it was if nothing had changed, and we were again as we had once been.

I kissed her, ran downstairs, made her a mug of hot chocolate, grabbed one of her pills, but by the time I got back she was asleep again.

In the letters, we’d been given two days to prepare. And as I sat by her bedside, I considered that despite everything, I deserved this. I could come to no other conclusion. I suppose I could say – did say back then – that I had done all I could. I’d marched, back when it was still allowed. Written everyone I could think of: ministers, representatives, mayors, business leaders – so many letters I couldn’t count them all. I’d phoned into radio talk shows and posted stuff on social media, suffered the predictable ridicule. I had even done it the old-fashioned way, standing on the roadside waving signs at uninterested motorists, occasionally receiving a horn blast in what I interpreted as support, more often a shouted insult or a mute middle finger. Everything mattered, everything was part of the fight. That’s what I told myself back then, told my students, even after the Repudiation and the new laws curtailing what I could teach. I’d fought on every front I could, as tirelessly as I was able, long after I’d lost hope of even partial victory. But it wasn’t enough. Not nearly. It’s hard to do what’s required when you’ve convinced yourself you have too much to lose.

And now, two days was all we had. Less. I decided then, watching the predawn sky lighten, that I would prepare. I would change focus. Narrow it down. If the world was beyond saving, I’d save myself. Myself, and the woman I loved. Two standard cases. That’s what we were allowed. I’d seen it coming for years. I was not unprepared. Over the last few years, despite the shortages, I’d collected every implement, tool and instrument of survival I could get my hands on. Two sturdy backpacks, military grade. Two high-quality sleeping bags good to minus fifteen that zipped together. A two-man tent with lightweight fly. Fifty metres of military-grade paracord. An all-purpose stove that could run on anything. Compass, long-blade hunting knife, Leatherman multi-tool, wire, fishing line and hooks, torch, solar PV recharger, firestarter, medical supplies, vitamins, emergency rations, water filter.

I was laying out everything in my head when there was a knock at the door. I slid out of bed, threw on trousers and a sweatshirt, and went downstairs. Through the front windows I could see snow falling in thick sheets. I pulled open the door, peered out into the weather. At first, I didn’t recognise the man standing before me, an old Toyota Land Cruiser pulled up and idling at the curb, the exhaust steaming in the cold.

‘Teach, it’s me. Can I come in?’ The man threw back the hood of his parka. It was Kazinsky.

‘Matthew,’ I stumbled. ‘Yes of course. Come in.’ I looked past him to the car. ‘Who’s in the car?’

‘It’s Maddy. Maddy Smith.’

‘I didn’t know you two were…’

He flashed that big-eyed, long-lashed smile of his. ‘Yeah. For over a year now.’

‘That’s great, Matthew. Great.’

‘Gotta talk to you, Teach.’ The smile was gone now. ‘We need your help.’

I stood back, looked towards the car. ‘OK, Matthew. Tell her to come inside.’

Kazinsky turned to the car, waved a mittened hand. The engine shut down and Maddy Smith trudged up the path in Sorrels and a parka that looked two sizes too big for her.

‘Hi, Teach,’ she said, taking Matthew’s hand. Her smile was even more beautiful than the boy’s, just as fleeting.

‘Hi, Maddy.’ It came out as a croak.

They stepped inside and I closed the door. They stood looking at me, cheeks blushed with cold, eyelashes sprinkled with snowflakes, steam rising from wet hair.

‘Have you heard?’ said Kazinsky, sharing a glance with Smith.

‘Heard what? I’ve been … busy. Getting ready to leave.’

‘Shit,’ said Kazinsky. Smith reached out and took his other hand in hers.

‘What is it?’ I could see the fear in them both.

‘Nairobi,’ said Smith, tears in her eyes.

‘They nuked Nairobi,’ Kazinsky said. ‘We heard it on the news just now.’

I felt the peripheries of my vision compress. ‘Jesus.’

‘Me and Maddy, we’ve decided we’re not going to be part of it. You’ve taught us that. We have to stand up, any way we can.’

I stood there not saying anything, the implications of this spinning up in my mind.

‘We’re running away,’ said Smith. ‘Today.’

‘We need you to cover for us at school tomorrow,’ said Kazinsky. ‘And we need gear. Anything you’ve got. Food, supplies. You told me once you collect that kind of stuff. You know, survival gear.’

I leaned back against the wall, tried to find in the hundred-year-old wood frame a stability that was not there. I looked at the two of them, so young still, and despite everything, so innocent.

‘What about MIT, Maddy?’ I said, choking back everything. ‘You, too, Matthew. Engineering will keep you out.’

‘Engineering so we can do what?’ said Maddy. ‘More of the same?’

‘We’ve been through it,’ said Kazinsky. ‘We’re out. We are going to get as far from all of it as we can. Get to the mountains, go north. Live.’

‘They’ll chase you,’ I said, a strong feeling of admiration growing inside me now.

‘Better things to do, I reckon,’ said Kazinsky. ‘Especially now.’

‘Will you help us?’ said Maddy, eyes wide. The contacts were gone.

I gave them everything I could spare. A good compass. My best knife. Waterproof matches. I rummaged through my bookshelf, found an old, weathered copy of Bushcraft 101 by Dave Canterbury, the one I’d bought in a bookshop in Toronto, back when you could still get on a plane and travel to another city without government permission.

Kazinsky flipped through the book, a thin smile growing on his face. ‘It’s been a while,’ he said. ‘My dad could’ve written this, easy.’

I didn’t try to talk them around to a different future. I helped them fill two duffel bags with food, gave them an axe, a good flashlight with extra batteries, and my old topographic maps of the Rocky Mountains, the border up to Jasper.

‘Come with us,’ Kazinsky tried again. ‘You and your wife.’

‘I can’t do that, Matthew,’ I said. ‘We’ll be okay.’ We had been assured by the government that the relocation would be swift and dignified, that we would have comparative, though more southerly, accommodation, that we would be well looked after, continue to be employed in meaningful work. This message had been bludgeoned home over the past ten months over the radio, the TV and across what still passed for an internet, as if it had come from an Ayn Rand novel: with a numbing repetitiveness and doctrinal purity that left absolutely no room for misinterpretation. We were guilty, yes, but we would be fairly treated. After all, we were still citizens.

Smith was crying. Kazinsky looked down at the floor.

‘You had better go,’ I said. My throat ached. ‘The sooner you get going the better. I’ll cover for you as long as I can.’