Текст книги "Noah's Ark: Encounters"

Автор книги: Harry Dayle

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• • •

Grace Garet had committed a cardinal sin. The thirty-six-year-old detective from Iowa had barged into Max Mooting’s office without warning, catching him dozing on the job. Again.

Max wasn’t embarrassed by this, he was just annoyed. He’d impressed upon his team on many occasions the importance of knocking. He could, he reminded her, have been in the middle of a sensitive interview, or a confidential planning meeting. Grace wasn’t so easily fooled, and neither was she going to let her team leader get away with his lazy ways. As far as she was concerned, Max was one of the least qualified in the security team to be in charge of it. The fact that he was the boss was in her view down to the company-heavy makeup of the committee. It was jobs for the boys. Max got the office because Max had always had the office, not because he merited it in any way. She intended to show him up at every possible opportunity, until he was removed from his post. Naturally she also had very strong ideas about who should replace him, and her own name was, unsurprisingly, at the top of that list. The security team was a shambles, and Grace believed she was the woman to sort it out.

“Miss Garet,” Max sighed. “What can I do for you?”

“That’s Detective Garet, Mr Mooting.”

“There’s no rank of detective on this boat, Miss Garet, as well you know. Were you here for a reason?”

“Actually, yes. I’m fed up with patrolling decks full of cabins. Nothing ever happens. You’ve given me a job that is way beneath my rank—”

Max opened his mouth to challenge her, but she dipped her head and showed him the palm of her hand.

“Way beneath my level of experience,” Grace said, cutting him off and avoiding the argument. “Patrolling should be done by some of the younger guys. I should be down on the main decks. Maybe on seven. There are always groups congregating around the kitchens. You know it’s only a matter of time before someone organises a raid. People are sick of rations. I should be in plain clothes, infiltrating these groups. That would be a far more pertinent use of my skills.”

“Miss Garet, you see malice where there is none. Yes, things turned bad for a bit after the asteroid, but that was a one-off. Not every group of people is out for mutiny. I know the signs, and I’ve seen none.”

“I’m not suggesting they are. But put three thousand people in a confined space with limited food, and things are going to get ugly sooner or later.”

“I know all about what happens when you put three thousand people on a ship. I’ve been doing this job for twenty-five years—”

“Not the same!” Grace protested, shaking her head and sending her long blonde curls flapping about her ears. “Not the same at all. You can’t compare our situation with a regular cruise.”

“I’m in charge. I’ll do what I like.”

“I’m being wasted up there. You could stick a shop dummy in a security uniform and it would do the same job I’m doing.”

“You think I should replace you with a dummy? It’s a tempting prospect.” Max smiled for the first time since Grace had arrived.

“That’s not what I said.” She yanked back the visitor’s chair, causing a notebook to drop to the floor. She picked it up and tossed it onto the desk before sitting down and crossing her legs and arms. “If you don’t find me something more productive to do, I’m going to the committee. I mean it. I’m not spending another shift wasting my time wandering empty corridors. I’ll lodge a formal complaint against you.”

Max smiled wider. “Really? That could be interesting.” He eyed the notebook that had landed in front of him, seeing an opportunity to dispose of two irritating problems in one go. “Okay, Detective Garet. You want to do some proper detecting? How about a missing persons case?”

Three

GRACE HAD BEEN convinced that Max was winding her up at first. How, she asked, could anyone go missing on a ship? She had been surprised to learn that it was quite a common occurrence. Indeed, Max told her, worldwide, on average, a person went missing from a cruise ship every two weeks, never to be seen again. Most went overboard, ending their own lives at sea. Others were never explained, or at least not to the satisfaction of the families left without answers.

Persuaded that the case was genuine, her next question had been why couldn’t they just put out a ship-wide call for Mr Moran to contact the security team. Max had said she was welcome to try that, but it meant getting approval from the committee. Ship-wide announcements were now for urgent situations only. They reasoned that regular calls over the loudspeaker system were fine for train journeys or cruises, but this was their life now. This was a fully functioning community, a town. If they started putting out calls every five minutes it would be like living in a supermarket. Grace had reluctantly agreed that she should make some preliminary enquiries before bothering the committee with what was likely to be just a case of an old man who didn’t want to play bingo anymore. Besides, secretly she relished the prospect of performing an investigation, no matter how banal.

She began by calling on Giles Moran’s cabin. Max had entrusted her with a master key, so when nobody answered her knocks, she let herself in and took a good look around.

Up in the nines the staterooms were large and well appointed. Giles’ suite comprised a lounge room, double bedroom, and a luxury bathroom, all decorated in a light blue-and-yellow scheme. A balcony looked out over Farm Plaza. It wasn’t to Grace’s taste, which pleased her no end. Her pokey room didn’t seem so bad in comparison, she decided.

What was immediately obvious was that Mr Moran wasn’t travelling alone. Three quarters of the wardrobe was filled with evening dresses, skirts, blouses, and a lot of shoes. Unless he was into cross-dressing, there was probably a Mrs Moran. The bathroom confirmed her theory, with two toothbrushes and a lot of makeup.

Grace returned to the lounge room and sank into one of the armchairs. They looked comfortable, but were very small even for her slight figure. No doubt, she thought, in order to make the room look bigger than it really was.

She considered the probable Mrs Moran. If Giles really was missing, it seemed odd that his wife hadn’t been the one to alert the security team. Deflated, she left the cabin to go and report her findings to Max. There was no case to investigate here. Giles Moran had probably just given up playing bingo. What made it worse was that she was sure Max had already worked this out. He’d given her the case to get rid of her.

As Grace was closing the door behind her, she spotted a frail woman walking into the next-door cabin.

“Excuse me!” she shouted after the neighbour. “Hi there, sorry to disturb. I’m det…I’m Grace, from the security team.”

“Hello, dear. Nice to meet you. I’m Agnes. What can I do for you?”

“I was looking for Mr Moran, in the cabin just next to yours. You wouldn’t happen to know where I could find him, would you?”

“Giles? No, dear, I haven’t seen him for…let me think now…it must be about a week. Yes, that would be it. He and Claire were very excited about leaving Scotland. I remember them saying.”

“Is Claire his wife?”

“Speak up, dear. My ears aren’t what they were!”

“I said, is Claire the wife of Mr Moran?”

“Yes. Lovely lady. Lovely couple, actually.”

“Do you know where I might find her?”

“No. I haven’t seen them for a week.”

“Either of them?”

“That’s what I said, dear.”

“You said you hadn’t seen Giles.”

“You asked me if I’d seen Giles, and I haven’t. You didn’t ask about Claire.”

Grace took a deep breath and tried to remain calm. She spoke loudly and clearly. “Okay, just so I’ve got this straight: Giles and Claire Moran are in the cabin next door, and the last time you saw either of them was when we left the Scottish lochs?”

“That’s what I’m saying, yes.”

“I see. Thank you, Agnes. You’ve been very helpful. If you do happen to see either of them, can you give me a call? Security is on 112.”

“I’ll certainly do that, dear, yes.”

Grace set off once again, with a bounce in her step. Her missing persons case now looked far more interesting.

• • •

Jake picked up rations for the bridge crew, as was his habit, and headed up to deck ten to take over from Lucya. Lunch consisted of a small portion of fresh fish, rice, a bread roll (dry), and a glass of orange juice. Jake had never liked fish, but he was learning to have to. Only those who had allergies or other medical reasons for doing so had the privilege of deviating from the fixed menu. Vegetarians were expected to eat the same as everyone else. They could refuse the little meat that had been available, and the fish, but there was no substitute offered. The same went for those who declined to eat certain foods for religious reasons. This was a topic that had been hotly debated by the committee, and was up to be discussed again soon. For now though, the consensus was that religion was not sufficiently solid ground to demand a specific diet. Like the vegetarians, everyone had the right to refuse an ingredient or component of their meal, or even their entire meal. They did not have the right to chop and change. Food was too scarce a resource for that.

Rations remained one of the most contentious subjects in the community. It wasn’t just some of the religious groups who were feeling hard done by. The former passengers came from all over the world, and under normal conditions, the kitchens were able to provide meals familiar to most nationalities. Europeans, Americans and Australians were easy enough to cater for; they tended to borrow from the cuisine of the rest of the world anyway. Some of the Asian cultures were having a harder time adapting to the new regime. Jake had little sympathy. As he saw it, they were lucky to be alive at all. The committee largely agreed, but everyone knew that the situation required careful monitoring. Enough angry and hungry people could cause a lot of trouble very quickly.

“Grub’s up, you lot,” Jake announced as he walked onto the bridge. “Officer Levin, status report?”

Lucya beamed at her man, but kept it professional. “We’re making good progress. Conditions remain favourable and we’re maintaining a steady fifteen knots with the Ambush partially submerged. The submarine’s last contact was half an hour ago: nothing to report. No more rafts after the one from this morning, and the radio remains as dead as a dodo. If anyone’s out there, they’re not trying to make themselves known. I hear you found another body?”

“Yes, Janice is taking a look now. I assume she hasn’t called?”

Lucya shook her head. “Oh, look, fish again. Lovely.”

“Don’t knock it, it’s fresh!” Dave said, joining them at the large steel map table, where Jake had set down the tray of food. Chuck remained on lookout. As the trainee, he got to eat after everyone else.

“I’m not knocking it,” Lucya said. She perched on the edge of a stool and pulled her plate close to her, loading her fork up with a tiny amount of rice and a sliver of fluffy white cod. “I know how hard Stieg and his men are working to get this for us. I wouldn’t say anything against him. He’s out there again, right now. In a raft.”

“What the heck is he doing in a raft?” Jake put down the bread roll he was about to bite into.

“The net got tangled. They were going to bring it back on board, but he seemed to think it would save time to go out and sort it out while it’s trawling. Something to do with the floats on top getting twisted up.”

Jake stood up and went to the rear-facing window on the starboard side. He picked up a nearby pair of binoculars and adjusted them, scanning the miles of sea behind the ship.

“I don’t know if you’ll be able to see him,” Lucya continued. “I think he is almost directly behind us, in the blind spot”

“In a life raft? The wash from the propeller will turn him over!”

“No, he’s a long way out. They worked it all out with Martin. They put a long line on the raft and they spooled it out slowly, keeping him at a safe distance from the wash. Honestly, I think it would have been easier to bring the net back onto the ship, but he is a very determined man. He won’t risk losing another catch.”

Jake’s index finger rolled across the focus control. “I think I see him. Bloody hell, he looks tiny out there. How did you know about this? How come I didn’t know about this?”

“He and Martin made the plan. Martin told me about it earlier.”

“Right,” Jake said, and stared out to sea for a while longer.

“Have you seen him?” Lucya asked cautiously.

“Martin? Sure. At the last committee meeting.”

“You two should go out, spend some time together. A bit of R and R.”

Jake made a noise that sounded like “hmm.”

“He needs you, Jake. He needs all his friends. He’s still very upset about Kiera.”

“We’re all upset about someone, Officer Levin. Martin has to deal with it the same as we all do.”

Lucya shook her head slowly, and returned to her meal. Jake rejoined them, and they ate in silence for a while. When Lucya had polished off the last of her bread, she took another stab at conversation, changing the subject.

“Did you see Erica?”

“Yes. She looked like she was enjoying herself. I think it helps that she’s in the same group as her friend Andrea. She’s a constant in her life. The only constant left really.” Jake’s eyes brightened as he talked.

Lucya breathed a silent sigh of relief. “I’m so glad Andrea’s mum changed her mind about them staying behind at Faslane. I’m not sure Erica would have coped with losing her as well. I heard her crying in the night again. She won’t talk about it though; about her dad.”

“She was asking me about Crozon, on the way down to school this morning. She wanted to know if there would be people there; new people.”

“What did you tell her?”

“That I hoped so, but it would probably be like Scotland. Just another empty submarine base. She was very excited though. Apparently her dad used to take her on camping holidays to France. She thinks it’s going to be just like that. I tried to let her down gently, but, you know…”

Lucya nodded. “Yeah, I know. Hey, Chuck, come and get something to eat. I’ll take the watch for a while.”

While the crew shuffled places, Jake returned to the rear-facing window and took up the binoculars again, trying to pick out the tiny inflatable life raft tethered behind the ship. He leaned forward until the lenses were almost touching the glass. He put the binoculars down, screwed up his eyes and looked out as far as he could, then took up the binoculars again and readjusted them.

“Lucya! Full stop!” he shouted, without moving position, still staring fixedly out to sea.

“What? Why?”

“Stop the ship. That raft is empty. I think we’ve lost Stieg.”

Four

GRACE QUICKLY REALISED that she could have picked a better time to quiz the restaurant supervisor. The middle of the lunchtime sitting was the busiest part of the day for everyone involved in food service. Incredibly, despite the meagre portions on offer, a sizeable percentage of the population skipped breakfast altogether. The evening sitting was spread out over a longer period of time. Lunch though, was where the action was. Nobody missed that meal, and the window for dishing out rations was short. There were more people packed into the restaurants at midday than at any other time.

Grace was in the Colaeus Restaurant, one of the largest on the ship. Her heart had sunk when she’d checked the census data and found that this was the restaurant allocated to the Morans. She’d already had a run-in with the supervisor, and now she was going to have to ask her for a favour.

“I’m looking for Elizabeth Lethbridge,” she announced to the first person she saw behind the counter, a young freckled boy who looked like he was in serious need of a break. Sweat trickled down his reddened face as he spooned out plate after plate of fish, trying to keep up with the endless queue of hungry people. “Elizabeth Lethbridge! It’s important.” The young man looked up, clocked her security uniform, thought for a second, and plonked down the plate he was about to charge.

“Mrs Lethbridge!” he called through an opening behind the counter. “Someone to see you.”

“Oi! You serving, or what?” A disgruntled man spat the words at the overworked server. The young man picked up the plate and carried on where he had left off.

Grace tried to see through the doorway, but there was no sign of anyone coming out. “Can you go and get her please? This is an important security matter.” She tried to sound stern and authoritative. It worked on the boy, but not his customer.

“He’s serving my lunch. You can wait,” the man grunted at her.

Grace looked him up and down. “It looks like you could skip lunch for a week or two and do just fine.”

“Why you cheeky—”

“Move along, sir, or I’ll have you cleaning toilets in the medical suite for the next month.”

“On what grounds?”

“Disrespecting a police officer.”

He laughed, a deep belly laugh. “You ain’t no copper, love. Not on this ship. Security guard, maybe, but not a copper. And you sure ain’t got no jurisdiction over me. Bloody yanks, thinking they’re in charge of the world.” He turned back to the server, but the boy had taken his chance to scarper. “Great, now look what you’ve done you silly bitch!”

Before he could stop her, Grace grabbed the man’s ration voucher from his tray, and read the name. “Joe Keller. Cabin 1024. I’m putting you down for twelve hours a week, toilet cleaning, in addition to whatever duties you currently perform. Fail to comply and you’ll find that this voucher will be refused for any further meals.” She slammed the paper back down on his tray.

“I take it you’re looking for me?” A dour woman with an ill-fitting chef’s hat stepped out of the doorway and addressed Grace in a booming voice that silenced Keller. She stood in a matronly manner, hands on hips, glaring at the security officer.

“Mrs Lethbridge, perhaps we could go somewhere private? I need to ask you some questions.”

“Come back later. We’re too busy now.”

“This won’t take long.”

“I’ve seen you before, haven’t I? You were the one accusing one of my staff of nicking bottles of milk.”

Grace smiled as sweetly as she could manage. “I believe I already apologised for that misunderstanding.”

“I knew it. I never forget a face, me. I knew you were trouble the moment I saw you. Jumped-up police type, and American. Think you’re better than us.”

Grace drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, clenching her fingers into tight fists and stretching them again. “I was investigating a serious allegation—”

“Nonsense. You were poking your nose in where it weren’t warranted. That’s what you were doing. That’s why I complained to Max; got him to sort it out.”

Some of the people in the queue had stopped moving, listening in and gawping at the argument as the decibel level rose. Those behind began jostling and shoving, trying to see what the hold-up was. Grace realised she was in danger of letting things get out of hand.

“Mrs Lethbridge, I need to see the ration records. I’m coming through to the back now. If you don’t open the door, I will return with Max and we’ll see just where this ends up, shall we?”

The supervisor reflected on the ultimatum, before appearing to come to a decision. She jerked her head towards a door off to the left. By the time Grace reached it, it had been opened, allowing her into the rear of the service area. “Through ’ere,” Grace mumbled.

She led them through a huge preparation area, where food from the kitchens was brought down in bulk before being served, then into a tiny windowless office. Like most on the cruiser, it was sparsely furnished. A compact wood-effect desk with a single chair behind it, a filing cabinet, and a framed photo of the Spirit of Arcadia hanging on the wall. Lethbridge opened the filing cabinet.

“Which days?”

“The last week, please.”

The supervisor thumbed through some files, selected one, and dropped it onto the desk. The thick wad of paper inside spilled out, most falling to the floor in a mess. “Oops,” she said. “Well, I’ll leave you to go through that lot then. Like I said, we’re busy. Some of us have real work to do.” She stepped over the bulk of the paperwork and left Grace to begin her search for the Morans’ meal records.

• • •

The sun, which had been making an effort to break through the thick-grey-and black cloud, looked to have given up and gone into hiding once more. The murky sky only served to amplify the sense of foreboding as Stieg’s men slowly winched in the line connecting the tiny raft to the Spirit of Arcadia.

Jake and Martin looked on, standing back a little from the action. Stieg had always impressed upon them the dangers of a potential cable break. They stood as silently as the men working the winch.

The ship was still being carried forward by momentum, despite the power being cut. Its wake was greatly reduced, but as the inflatable drew closer, it bounced and danced across the ripples.

“How did he get out there without the prop-wash being a problem?” Jake asked, breaking the silence, but not the tension that hung thick in the air.

“He steered to the side, obviously,” Martin said, tutting.

“Right, of course. It’s just, I don’t see any oars in the raft. I assumed he hadn’t taken any.”

“Yeah, ’cause that makes sense, doesn’t it? Stieg’s a pro. He’s not going to go out without a way of getting back. If you have to make assumptions, try this one: the oars have gone wherever Stieg has gone.”

The raft was almost back with them. The last few metres were the most delicate. The fishing net was always deployed from the starboard side, as the Ambush was tethered to the port. Stieg had needed to board the raft though, and that meant using the tender platform on the port side. So the fishermen had to carefully manoeuvre the raft back between the two vessels. The Ambush had surfaced since they had cut the power, making the job at least a little easier. The men, dressed in thick wax jackets that they had found at Faslane, called to each other in clipped Swedish sentences. Jake didn’t need to speak the language to understand that the situation didn’t look good. One of them turned to him and shook his head.

The winch ground to a halt. Jake unfolded his arms and strode forwards, Martin following a step behind.

“No,” the fisherman said. “Not here.”

Jake leaned over the railing and stared down into the raft. It was, as he had thought, completely empty.

• • •

They met in a conference room on deck two, the last one that hadn’t been taken over by the school. It was used by the committee for their regular meetings and for their drop-in surgery sessions with the community. Jake was used to outpourings of emotion in that very room, most of it negative. Now he was among those professing shock and incomprehension at what had happened.

Nobody sat at the large oval table that filled most of the space. Instead, Jake, Martin and the two fishermen stood around uselessly, staring out of the windows. The ship was turning. Jake had ordered the manoeuvre, ignoring protocol which said that the committee must approve any change of route. There was no way they were going on without at least trying to find Stieg. They wouldn’t leave a man at sea. Coote could have stopped him, of course. Jake knew that. They were reliant on his nuclear reactor for power. He also knew that Coote would back him fully in front of the committee if they argued with him.

The door opened and ship’s doctor Grau Lister hobbled in, supported by crutches. He nodded solemnly at the men.

“Grau, thank you for coming.” Jake found a chair for him and helped him to sit down. “You should be in a wheelchair, Grau.”

“Nonsense. That is no way to rebuild muscle tissue. I have to walk as much as possible. And before you say another word, I will remind you that it is I who am the doctor. Who else are we waiting for?”

“Coote. He says he may have something important. And Amanda, Ella, and Silvia are all coming down too.”

The captain of the Royal Navy submarine was the next to arrive. Jake was surprised to see that he’d brought ‘Eagle-eyes’ Jason Fletcher with him too.

“Captain Noah, gentlemen,” Coote said, tipping his cap to the gathering. “Terrible business. Losing a man at sea is a special kind of awful, one I have, sadly, experienced too often. One that never gets easier.”

“He’s not lost yet,” Jake said. “You know that, Coote. A man is only lost when he gives up, and those around him give up on him. We have not given up on Stieg.”

“Yes, of course,” Coote said kindly. But there was something in the way he said it that made Jake think that the navy man knew the fisherman was not coming back.

Martin wasn’t so diplomatic. “You’re wasting your time, Jake. You’re wasting the time of everyone aboard. We’ll never find him. We don’t even know how long he was missing.”

“Yes we do.”

“We do?”

“Yes. He was there when the bridge crew sat down for lunch. I saw him. And when I’d finished eating, he was gone. It was twelve thirty-six when I called full stop. I wasn’t eating for more than ten minutes. Let’s widen the margin just in case and say he went missing sometime between twelve twenty and twelve thirty-six. That’s a sixteen-minute window. We were cruising at fifteen knots, as we have been since leaving Scotland. That means we covered about four nautical miles between him falling out of that raft and us cutting power. We’ve gone another mile since. You think we have no chance of finding him in five nautical miles? Seriously?”

“Gentlemen,” Coote said, raising his voice, an occurrence so rare as to make everyone stop and listen. “I think it would be wise to listen to what Jason here has to say. I didn’t bring him here just for his charm and good looks.”

All eyes turned to Jason. Amanda and Ella entered the room as Coote was speaking. They said nothing, waiting for Eagle-eyes to have his say.

Jason cleared his throat. He wasn’t used to an audience. “I believe we spotted something, around the time you think Stieg went missing. The sonar picked up a blip, very close by. It lasted about forty-five seconds.”

“A blip? What’s a blip? Be more specific, man,” Martin said, frowning.

“I’m afraid I can’t. There was no manual lookout at the time. The sonar alerted me to something apparently popping onto the screen, but by the time I’d deployed the full optronics mast array, it had gone again. So whatever it was, I never got eyes on it.”

Jake pulled out a chair and sat down, forehead in his hand, elbow resting on the table. “I assume you tried to find it again?”

“Of course.”

“No sign?”

“Nothing. I ran a full array of checks. Sonar, visual, infrared, the lot. There was nothing there. I was about to call your bridge to see if your lookout had seen anything, when you ordered the full stop.”

“So there we are, old boy. What do you make of that?” Coote said, taking a seat next to Jake.

Jake shook his head. “I don’t know. You’re the experts.”

Martin looked at the two captains, his face creasing into a look of exasperation. “Well it’s obvious, isn’t it? It must have been some kind of malfunction. Or are you suggesting that a Martian UFO materialised out of thin air, kidnapped Stieg – presumably for one of those alien autopsies – then dematerialised just as quickly?”

Nobody appreciated the sarcasm.

“A malfunction is a possibility, but a very remote one. All our systems are twinned. False positives are extremely rare. Both systems have to be in agreement to generate the kind of alert I saw. I will, however, run a full diagnostic.”

Jake nodded. “So, Grau, what are his chances, if he’s in the water?”

“I do not know the man personally, but assuming he is in good shape, he should be able to survive a couple of hours. The water is cold, for sure, but not so bad that it will kill him instantly.”

“Stieg very strong,” one of the fishermen said. “Good swim. Strong.” He repeated the words to his colleague in their own tongue, and the other man nodded vigorously.

“Then I don’t think we need to waste time with a vote, do we, ladies?” Coote looked at Amanda and Ella. “No point gathering the others. We’re already headed in the right direction. Let’s try and find the man.”

• • •

Grace was beginning to regret ever having insisted on doing something other than patrol work. In her determination to get back to solving crime, she had forgotten the arduous leg work involved in most police investigations. Sitting at the tiny desk in the gloomy office, with the continuous noise of the food preparation area outside, and the service counter beyond that, she leafed through page after tedious page from the file.

Back home, in the real world, the world that had gone forever, she would have had uniformed officers to do this sort of thing for her. Here on the ship, she was reduced to the role of foot soldier, taking orders from a company man with no experience of real policing.

Another page. Another name: “Jones”. She banged a fist on the table. “I’m not sorting any more of these into order,” she shouted at the light fitting. Instead of locating the Js and inserting the ration record into its correct position, she threw it to the floor. She picked up the next sheet and checked the name: “Addison”. It fluttered down to join the Jones’. Grace felt immediately better. She should have worked through them this way from the start; she would be done by now. Her conscientious effort to restore the file had been a huge waste of time. Lethbridge had dropped it, she could fix it. Or, more likely, get one of her put-upon and overworked minions to do it for her.

Grace’s renewed optimism was short lived. A bleep and a crackle from her belt wiped the smile from her face.

“Grace Garet, please respond. Grace Garet.”

She looked at the small black radio from the corner of her eye, and decided to ignore it. It was noisy, and so perfectly reasonable to think she hadn’t heard the call. She picked up another wad of forms and worked through them in short order. Wright, Jobson, Patel, O’Halloran, Atton, Paschal, Washington, Gautier; the names tumbled to the floor like autumn leaves.