zero point

four

It was a beautiful day, the sort of day that Jeff's childhood had been liberally salted with. The sky was overwhelming, stretching as far as the eye could see across the wheat bowl of Kansas, sunburned crops colliding with polarised blue all along the up-rushing horizon. And overhead, the fluted tails of stratus were drawn in delicate brush-strokes as ice-crystals formed in the rarefied air.

'Mr Tracy.' It was the Pastor. The same man who had buried Jeff's father. And Jeff's wife. And now here he was again, come to bury Jeff's son.

One more moment, Jeff said to the too-blue sky. I'm not ready yet. His gaze moved out across the late summer day – he could barely see the old house from here, it was lost amongst the patchwork of fields and fences, and the criss-cross straight lines of blacktop with the cars moving along them like beetles glinting iridescent in the sun. The cemetery hill wasn't high, as far as high goes, but it afforded a view that Jeff's 12-year-old self had forever found irresistible – so tempting that he willingly braved the ghosts of the dead just so he could catch hold of the promises contained in that big, wide sky. And in winter, when the sun set early and the Milky Way stretched bright across the cold, clean dark, the stars would settle so close to the ground that young Jeff Tracy could reach out his hand and almost touch them.

'We're ready to begin,' the Pastor prodded gently. He was an old man now, older than he'd been when Jeff had watched his father's coffin sink down into the dry spaded earth. And older than he'd been when Jeff had stood in this same place not long after his father had gone down, with the sky greyer than the pastor's salt-and-pepper hair and the wind cold and damp as it rushed up from the winter fields below. For the briefest, briefest, oh-so-briefest of moments, Jeff had been glad that his wife was nestled safe and dry inside her cocoon of polished mahogany. She hated the winter. She told him she wanted to live by the sea, someplace where the rain came down warm from the sky. Maybe an island, she'd laughed at him when they were young and broke and so very blindsided by love, and he'd laughed back that the only island he could afford was the mudflat in the middle of old man Murphy's creek. They'd planted their flag on that mudflat one warm summer evening, with the creek gurgling gently around them and the fireflies shining softly in the dark, and Jeff had never felt so calm and so at peace as he had that night, with his girl safe in his arms and the stars stretching over them and the water lapping softly against the edges of his universe. He'd kissed her fingers and promised her an island, a real one, with a snow-white beach and slow-rustling trees – hell, he'd promised her the world. But his girl's world had proven too tenuous for him to hold on to, and what Jeff didn't know until it was far too late was that islands had their dangers, too.

There was a rustling at Jeff's back, the bone-dry hands of the Pastor moving amongst the bone-dry pages of the Bible. It had its own sound, the Bible, the crackle of rice-paper ironed thin around the cries of the martyrs as they transformed into sacrificial lambs.

'Yes,' Jeff said, turning around. He wasn't ready, but he was never going to be.

The Pastor smiled with understanding, his lips stretching patiently across a face as desiccated as the dirt that he stood on. His limbs were thin beneath the loose folds of his suit, the kind of bone-thin that age and weariness and getting-ready-to-die brings, and the creases of his face were deepened by the afternoon sun that slanted into his watery blue eyes. He hefted the brick of his Bible, his weapon against the impermanence of the world, and turned to face the mourners.

'Friends,' the Pastor said in his dry, reedy voice, the timbre made thin by its overuse at the pulpit. He cleared his throat as the people gathered closer to the grave, the men stifled in their suits and the women brushing at their skirts when the wind tried to lift them. And when the hems had been settled and the sweat wiped from perspiring brows, the Pastor laid open the book in his hands and commenced to read. Isaiah 57.

'The righteous perish,' the Pastor called into the wind, 'and no one takes it to heart. The devout are taken away, and no one understands that the righteous are taken away to be spared from evil. Those who walk upright enter into peace. They find rest as they lie in death.'

Jeff looked down at the coffin. There was nothing in there, just a photograph of Virgil that his mother had carefully laid down on the satin.

'Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?' The Pastor moved on to Romans. 'Shall trouble?' he asked the watchers pointedly. 'Or hardship?' His papery fingers rested on the leaves of his book. 'Or persecution or famine or danger or sword?'

Jeff looked at his mother. She slumped hollow in her chair with her hands loose on her lap, and her husband's headstone standing sentinel at her back.

'As it is written.' The Pastor looked up from his Bible and surveyed the crowd with his old-man eyes. He didn't need to read the words – they had been long-burned into his memory. 'For your sake we face death all day long. We are considered as sheep to be slaughtered. Neither death,' he said, his voice gaining strength from something Jeff could neither see nor hope to understand, 'nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future nor any powers will be able to separate us from the love of God.'

Jeff looked at his four sons, stiff-backed in their suits, their shoulders square and their faces hard and their souls so utterly, utterly broken, and wondered how his God could love him now.

'It never rains but it pours,' Scott muttered as Tracy One taxied towards the hangar space that Tracycorp leased from Boeing. It was almost dark outside the cockpit, the morning light barely breaking through a low ceiling of dark and tattered cloud and the wind gusting so hard across the open tarmac that the little jet's wings flexed wildly in the gale. It had been a bitch landing in the crosswinds, and the landing gear was still recovering from it. 'I don't know how Penny stands it,' he said as a burst of rain slammed noisily into the windscreen and added punctuation to the drama.

'She never mentions it,' Jeff replied, his eyes picking out the unmarked car parked discreetly to one side of the hangar. 'Besides, it's not that bad.'

'I used to live here, remember?' Scott glanced briefly at the car and then returned his attention to manoeuvring the aircraft into the hangar. 'Believe me. It's that bad.'

Tracy One passed into the confines of the hangar, the overhead lights making diamonds blink yellow in the drops of rain that tracked slowly down the cockpit canopy. It was pretty, in an abstract kind of way, but Jeff was in no mood for abstracts. He needed the concrete certainty of absolutes: wet and dry. Hot and cold. Virgil or not-Virgil… Jeff shuttered that thought away and took refuge in the inanity of their conversation about the weather. 'We've seen worse than this on the island,' he said to his son.

'True,' Scott agreed, remembering the first storm of the season and the palm tree that was slammed half-way through the kitchen window. 'But tropical storms have defined beginnings and endings. This stuff,' he said as he brought the aircraft to a halt and powered the engines down, 'can go on for days.'

'Then,' Jeff said, 'it looks like we're going to get wet.'

Scott nodded towards the hangar doors and the Spectrum officer who had appeared like magic on the threshold, and they watched as the officer stamped water onto the dry cement then took off his cap and shook it free of rain.

'What colour is that?' Jeff asked. 'Is that mustard?'

Scott watched as the officer repositioned his cap and approached the aircraft. 'Looks like tan.'

'Must be the one Gordon referred to as Mr Turd,' Jeff said, deadpan, so that Scott turned his head to look at him.

'The Stool,' Scott corrected, equally deadpan.

'Suits him.'

'Doesn't it.' Scott slid the canopy back on its rails and looked down at the officer.

'Good morning,' The Stool called up to the cockpit. He shifted on his feet, a drop of water falling from his visor and spattering on the cement. 'I'm Captain Ochre,' he told them, 'and I'll be escorting you to Headquarters.'

'There's my girl!'

Cameron caught hold of Grandma Tracy by the waist and spun her away from the kitchen counter, ignoring her girlish protestations as he lifted the mixing spoon smoothly out of her hand and jammed it into his mouth. 'Mmm,' he said around a sticky mouthful of batter. 'What is that? Is that lemon? Are you making your famous lemon cake?' Cameron squeezed her tightly, genuinely pleased at the prospect of having cake. 'Grandma Tracy, are you making that for me?'

'Get away with you,' Grandma said, snatching back the spoon and pushing him affectionately away – no mean feat considering she was half his size. 'This cake isn't for you. It's for my grandson.'

'Which one would that be, then?' Cameron grabbed hold of her again and squeezed so hard that she let loose an unladylike little squeal. 'Go on Gramma, admit it, you like me better than them anyway.' He kissed the top of her grey head, not minding the smear of batter his lips left in her hair. 'Don't worry,' he whispered theatrically, 'I won't tell anybody – '

'Ahem.'

Cameron dropped the Tracy matriarch and spun around to face the youngest of the Tracy brothers, seated archly at the table.

'Alan.' Cameron nodded a greeting, his tongue snaking out to lick the last of the batter from his lips. 'I didn't see you there.'

'Mr West,' Alan returned, one of his eyebrows rising with cool and sarcastic reckoning. 'I've been sitting here the whole time.'

'So I see.' Cameron paced the ten steps to the refrigerator, swung the door on its hinges and poked his head into its cavernous depths. 'When did you get in?'

Alan tried not to watch as Grandma's self-appointed favourite bent down to search the bottom shelf, but he wasn't trying very hard. 'An hour ago,' he said as Cameron emerged from the fridge with a can of beer clutched in each soot-stained hand.

Cameron turned around and caught the narrowed eyes of Alan's gaze. 'Hey! Were you just looking at my ass?' he gasped, and then laughed out loud at the look of horror that passed across the younger man's face. 'Brew?' he grinned, proffering one of the cans.

'No,' Alan replied with the faintest hint of surly in his voice. He glanced furtively at his grandmother and found her observing them both disapprovingly. 'No, thank you,' he corrected as she turned tut-tutting away.

Cameron followed Alan's glance, but Grandma was engrossed again in the lemon cake and Cam guessed she was making it for the grandson that looked the most like he'd just sucked a lemon. Of all the Tracy brothers, the youngest was simultaneously the easiest to read and the most difficult.

Cameron grinned with his usual annoying charm, cracked open a can with one hand and shoved the spare into the pocket of his coveralls. 'For later,' he said, because the Firefly still needed cleaning and in all his time on the island the equipment had never once showed any inclination to be cleaning itself. He chugged back a mouthful from the open can and swallowed loudly, resisting the urge to let loose a heartfelt belch. If there was one thing Grandma Tracy didn't appreciate, it was the overt display of bodily functions.'New shirt?' he said to Alan after the beer had settled cold and foaming in his gut.

'No,' Alan lied.

'Really?' Cameron swallowed more beer. 'I don't think I've seen it before. How was Fuji? Did you place?'

'Fifth,' Alan told him, annoyed because Cameron was insisting on being nice.

'Sorry,' said Cameron, knowing that Alan had wanted to place, but relieved to find that the sour face wasn't all on his own behalf. 'But hey,' Cam brightened up, 'that still means you qualified, right?'

Alan nodded, his cheeks flushing pink to match the colour of his shirt. 'We passed the trials. Not as good as we wanted, but the team's in.' Despite his desire to remain surly, Alan was doing a bad job of keeping his pride off his face.

'Great!' Cameron stepped over the to the table and clapped a congratulatory hand on Alan's shoulder, knowing how much it would annoy him but wanting a reason to get up close and personal. 'Listen,' he said, oblivious to the soot stains he'd smeared on Alan's shirt and leaning in close enough to ensure Grandma Tracy couldn't hear. 'I know you're uncomfortable with this thing we got going on between us, but your Grandma's a woman, Alan. She's got needs.'

They hadn't got too wet in their dash from the hangar to the car, though the wind had caught the tails of their coats and flipped Scott's tie over his shoulder while he was waiting for his father to slide into the back. The door locks clicked loudly into place as they settled into their seats, and Scott shared a glance with his father as they fastened their seatbelts.

Captain Ochre started the car and eased them slowly between the airport's outer buildings. The sky outside the vehicle appeared darker through the tinted grey of the windows, the world made colder by the way the wind was throwing rain against the glass. It was hard to believe it was 9.30 in the morning – it felt like five in the afternoon, the feeling compounded by the fact that it had been bright sunshine when they'd left home, and the fact that it was five in the afternoon, back on Tracy Island.

At least it was warm in the back of the car, and dry, and the smell of new leather and cleaning fluid was winning the war against the odour of wet dog that Scott knew was coming off his hair. There was a hint of berry coming from the upholstery, as though somebody had been eating candy in the car a week ago, or more, or maybe Scott was only imagining it. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a paper bag, un-crumpled it and removed a green-wrapped object. 'Mint?' he said and offered the bag to his father, re-crumpling the paper when his father declined.

Scott unwrapped the candy and placed it in his mouth, staring fixedly at the back of Captain Ochre's head as his tongue curled around the sweet. The officer was seated on the front side of what Scott guessed was a bulletproof partition, as far removed from his passengers as he could get. Ochre's hat was off, and Scott's gaze fixated on the backs of the man's ears – two pale pink rinds of meat standing out in stark contrast against the short dark cut of his hair. Ochre turned his head as he checked the traffic prior to a merge and Scott was treated to a full profile, the officer's cheekbones prominent in the grey light that filtered through the windshield.

The mint rolled across Scott's tongue as he moved his gaze away from the back of the Captain's head and looked at the streets through the rain-spotted windows. His father seemed absorbed in the urban scenery – or maybe he was only looking at the rain as it trickled down the glass. Brains really needed to work on the flavour on these things, Scott thought as he worked at sucking off the candy coating, swallowing only when his teeth hit the metal core.

'Dad,' Scott said when the mint had gone grudgingly down, 'what if they're telling the truth?'

Jeff turned to look at him, his grey eyes reflecting both surprise and irritation in the same intense gaze. 'What?'

'It's a possibility we need to consider,' Scott said, knowing it was the last thing that his father wanted to hear. 'What if it is Virgil? What if, somehow – '

'Scott.' Jeff's lips tightened, his jaw clenching as though he were trying to keep something in. 'I thought this was settled.'

A crease appeared between Scott's eyebrows. 'How could it be settled when we've never had any answers? We still don't have any – '

'You know what I mean,' Jeff snapped. 'You're brother's gone. We buried him. We buried him two goddamned years ago and who the hell are Spectrum to dredge this up all over again?'

'Father – '

'Don't hope for it,' Jeff said, cutting him off. He glanced at the back of Ochre's head and then looked back at Scott. 'If Virgil were alive,' he said, lowering his voice, 'if he'd been anywhere on this planet since the day he – ' Jeff's throat closed around his words and he tried to swallow, only the spit wouldn't come. 'He'd have come home,' he grated at last, his voice gravelled and dry. 'He'd have found a way home.'

'What if he couldn't come home?' Scott persisted, ignoring the way his father's eyes had hardened into shards of cold, grey ice. 'What if there was something preventing him – '

'Scott,' Jeff warned.

'But Dad – '

'Stop!'

Scott flinched. He turned to look at the back of Ochre's head, but if the officer had heard Jeff's outburst there was no sign of it showing on the pink rinds of his ears.

'Scott,' Jeff said. There were only inches separating them on the seat, but it felt as though they'd never been so far apart. 'Son…'

'What happened to us, Dad?'

'What was inevitable since the day I sent my boy to his death.'

'No.' Scott's lips twisted grimly with bitterness and pain. 'No. I did that. I sent him in. And I made him stay in. And there's not one day that doesn't go by that I don't – '

'Son. Don't.'

'I need to, Dad. I want to. I have to lay blame because it's the only way I'm going to get past it. It's like – '

Scott closed his mouth, his hands resting on his thighs and his fingers pressing tight into the flesh. 'It's like we've been sleepwalking since the day we came home without him. Pretending it didn't happen. Pretending nobody was to blame. And you know what? There is somebody to blame. And… shit.' Scott stared down at his hands, at the knuckles showing white beneath the skin. 'There's something inside me that needs to come out, Dad, but I can't let it out.' He turned and looked hard at his father. 'I'm afraid to let it out.'

'Hey baby, I was wondering when you'd show.' Cameron dropped down from the cab of the Firefly, landing sure-footed on the hangar floor and somehow looking graceful despite the size-13 steel-capped workboots laced up to his ankles. Tin-Tin was always surprised by that grace, by the easy way that Cameron lived inside his own skin, and by the way that ease oozed so confidently out of every part of his tight, suntanned body.

'I thought Gordon would be helping with this.' Tin-Tin glanced around the hangar, more to keep her eyes off Cameron's bulging biceps than to look for Gordon – because even after years surrounded by Tracy men in every state of dress and undress, with this one she still had a tendency to stare.

'Nope,' Cam said, reaching a grimy hand out for the tablet Tin-Tin held in her grip. 'Gimme.'

'Cameron,' she said to him, enunciating each syllable carefully because she knew he liked it when she did that. Her accent, he regularly told her, turned him on. 'Where is Gordon?'

Cameron retracted his hand. 'Dunno. But he was in no fit state to be concentrating on clean-up.'

'Why? Did something happen? Did he get hurt on the rescue?'

Cameron shrugged. 'Spooked, more like. He was on the blower to John and – '

'He spoke to John?'

'Yeah. They're brothers. That's what they do.'

Tin-Tin stared up at him with her big, liquid eyes.

'What?' Cam asked when he saw the look on her face. 'Something wrong?'

'I don't know,' she said quietly. 'What did he say?'

'Who? Gordon?' Cameron looked down at her, her face pale and luminous beneath the bright hangar lights. 'Not much.' He wiped absently at his chin and deposited a streak of soot across his light brown stubble. 'John told him something about Spectrum, and something about the boss and Scott taking off, and – '

He stopped, because Tin-Tin wasn't looking at him anymore. She was focused on something far, far away.

'Uh,' Cam said, 'you wouldn't happen to know anything about why Spectrum called, would you?'

She continued to stare past him, the tablet slack in her hand and her teeth pressed so tight into her lip he could see it was going to leave a mark. 'Tin-Tin,' he asked, 'you okay?'

'He didn't want me to say anything.' She looked up at Cam, her eyes coming back into focus. 'Mr Tracy said it was a false alarm. He said it couldn't possibly be… and he's right… it couldn't possibly be…'

'Couldn't possibly be what?'

'Nothing,' she told him, and she smiled a smile that didn't quite reach her eyes. 'Nothing. Just a false alarm. Mr Tracy is right. And he'll be back soon and then we'll… we'll know…' The sentence faltered at the same speed as her smile.

'Okay,' Cam said, not understanding a word she said. 'You do what the boss-man told you and we'll worry about the rest later. Meanwhile,' he changed the subject, 'I need that tablet because I've got a diagnostic to run. Although,' he added somewhat belatedly and wincing as though he were in pain, 'I don't know how I'm going to manage on my own. I'm not feeling too good…' He breathed deep and said 'ouch' and then winced again. 'I must've hurt myself at the danger zone.'

'You're hurt?' she asked, her eyes moving to inspect the broad expanse of his chest. He'd taken off his shirt, the sleeves tied loosely around his waist and his undershirt damp with sweat and clinging to the muscled contours of his body. Soot stains were streaked in Rorschach patterns across the cotton fabric, and Tin-Tin folded the tablet against her chest, an unconscious barrier between herself and the suggestions that were jostling for attention in her head. A lock of hair came loose from behind her ear and drifted in slow motion onto her cheek, and she had to resist the impulse to toss her head to get it off her face.

'You hurt yourself on the rescue?' she asked him. 'Where?'

'Here.' Cameron took hold of her hand and pressed it against the fly of his workpants. 'Does this feel swollen to you?'

'No,' she said, pulling her hand away.

'Check again,' he said.

'Cameron,' she warned, 'I've told you.'

'It's definitely swollen,' he insisted, ignoring her warning and moving so close that she found herself backed up against the Firefly with nothing but the tablet between herself and his hot, soot-stained body. His hands found their way to her hips and he pulled her towards him, pelvis to pelvis, and so close she could smell the sweat that prickled damp across his skin. 'Feel that?' he asked. 'Must've got stung by a bee.'

'Not here,' she told him, turning her face away as he moved in to kiss her.

'Why not,' he breathed into her ear and kissing it instead.

'Because somebody might see...'

'So?' His teeth clamped down on her earlobe, making her wince in irritation and pull her head away.

'Don't,' she said. 'You know what I mean.'

Cameron sighed the sigh of the long-suffering. 'Alan already suspects.'

'But he only suspects. I don't need to rub his face in it.'

'Why not? He did it to you.'

Now it was Tin-Tin's turn to sigh. 'I've told you,' she said, acutely aware of Cameron's bee-sting still pressed firmly against her groin. 'Things were… difficult back then.' She looked up into Cameron's blue-green eyes. 'His brother died. He did a lot of stupid things. We all did…' …because grief had made them crazy... '…he was hurting.'

'You were hurting too.' Cameron kissed her then, his lips warm and his tongue slow and his hands moving from her hips to her ass as he pulled her close and crushed the tablet between them.

Tin-Tin gave up the fight and closed her eyes. Cameron West, she had discovered, wasn't like any of the Tracys – he was no gentleman. Cameron was rough and hard and shameless.

'Is that what this Spectrum stuff is about?' he asked when he let her up for air.

She opened her eyes and looked at him, her eyes big and wide and greener even than his own, and maybe her lips quivered though she tried hard to stop them. 'It's going to be dredged up all over again Cam, and I don't know how any of them are going to survive it.'

Cameron said nothing, his body hot against hers and his lips smeared with her lipstick. 'Okay,' he said at last. 'We won't rub it in.' He shifted suggestively against her. 'Although,' he grinned, 'it couldn't make Alan hate me any worse.'

'He doesn't hate you,' she said, her fingers clasped tight around the tablet that was still trapped between them.

'My god woman, are you blind?' Cameron's head tilted back and he laughed. 'Have you seen the way he looks at me? I was ticklin' his grandma just now and he looked like he was getting ready to tear my nutsack out by going in through the nose!'

Despite herself, Tin-Tin smiled. 'He's jealous of how much Grandma loves you.'

'You can laugh.' Cameron grew sober. 'You don't have to sleep with one eye open at night.'

She grinned indulgently, one hand reaching up to wipe the lipstick from his mouth.

'Oh no,' he said to her seriously, biting at her fingers so that she pulled her hand away. 'You sleep the sleep of the innocent, with your mouth hanging open and teeny-tiny snores coming out of your teeny-tiny nose.'

'I don't sleep with my mouth open.' She slid from his embrace, all trace of her indulgence evaporating at the suggestion.

'Yes,' he grinned. 'You do.'

'I don't!' she snapped, slamming him with the back of the tablet. 'And I don't snore!'

'Damn, girl,' he called out as she huffed away, 'you most definitely do!'

Tin-Tin flipped the bird at him over her shoulder and Cameron grinned ruefully, rubbing at his mouth with the back of his hand. He watched as she flounced across the deck, admiring the way her butt-cheeks seemed the very embodiment of her irritation as she stomped out of the hangar. And then he muttered 'shit,' because she'd stomped away with the tablet and he really needed to run that diagnostic.

Missy was getting too big for this, but somebody had to take the alligator for a swim and nobody else was brave enough to do it when he was away. Alan followed as Missy slid her way towards the swimming pool, the lead stretched taut between them as they wove between pot plants and deck chairs and a half-drunk glass of something sweet that somebody had left beside a lounger maybe a day or so ago, judging from the trail of ants that led from the glass and back into the shrubbery.

Missy moved unblinking between the chair legs, stopping suddenly in her tracks and sniffing at something that the wind was bringing in from the sea. The sun had vanished behind a bank of cumulus that was building over the sea, and in the early twilight Alan thought he saw lightning flash on the horizon and wondered if Missy could smell the ozone in the air, or if maybe alligators could smell anything at all.

'Come on, girl.' Alan jiggled warily on the leash, making sure to keep a respectable distance. Missy wasn't big enough or mean enough to snap off a limb, but he'd learnt the hard way that her teeth were plenty sharp enough to draw blood. 'C'mon,' he said in the sort of high-pitched voice he usually reserved for puppy dogs and pussy cats and the occasional canary. 'Smell the water?'

Missy snuffed on the air, her eyelids blinking in a gesture that Alan could only interpret as mild excitement. 'Attagirl,' he said as the reptile started moving again, her stomach scraping as loud as sandpaper over the cement tile. She was too fat, he knew, but it was a concerted effort on the part of the brothers to keep her that way – if she was never hungry, they had collectively reasoned, she would never be tempted to eat them.

'That thing's not getting in here,' said an unexpected voice from the pool.

'Huh?' Alan jumped just a little bit out of his skin – it was tense work walking a dinosaur. You had to be ready for anything. 'What are you doing out here?'

Gordon kicked his feet to the surface of the water so that he was floating on his back. 'I'm baking,' he said very slowly and deliberately and with more than a hint of sarcasm, 'a cake.'

Alan scowled. 'Don't talk to me about cake.'

'Why the mad face?' Gordon drifted closer to the edge. 'You come last at Fuji?'

'No.' Alan's scowl remained planted across the peaches and cream of his cherubic face and completely ruined the whole 'grandma's little boy' thing he had going on. 'We placed fifth,' he grumped. 'No injuries no accidents no dramas, if you don't count Hideki's foul-up on the eighth lap which nearly cost us the whole season.'

'Jeez. Smile or something,' Gordon said. 'You're making it hard for me to figure out if you're happy or mad. Foul-up aside, this is good, right?'

'Yeah.' Alan's scowl cracked, a smile creeping grudgingly across his face that stopped short of a full-blown beam. 'Yeah, it's good. It's great, actually.' Missy tugged on the lead and forced him to follow as she waddled towards the water's edge. 'Better get out,' he said as he unleashed the alligator, 'because Missy's getting in.'

Gordon heaved himself out of the pool, turning midway through the manoeuvre so that he was sitting on the edge with his feet dangling in the water and drops running in rivulets along the contours of his body. He brushed a hand through the copper of his hair, shorter now and slicked away from his face.

'That thing's revolting,' Gordon said as Missy disappeared bonelessly over the edge of the pool. There was a muted splash, a soft, slimy plunk, and the beast sank to the bottom of the water and lay there, big and brown and ugly against the turquoise blue of the tile.

'I know.' Alan sat down catty-corner to Gordon and dipped his bare feet into the water.

'She better not shit in there.'

'She will.'

Gordon shook his head and a rain of chlorinated water spattered onto the tiles. 'You need to get rid of her.'

'I know.' The alligator had already grown larger than a pygmy version was supposed to, and there was no telling when her reptilian expansion would stop. Probably never, the way they all kept feeding her.

'Kyrano has a recipe,' Gordon suggested helpfully. 'Shish kebab, I think.'

'Gordon, we are not eating her.'

'No, not us. Kyrano!'

Alan laughed. 'Oh god, don't give him ideas. Remember the python story?' Jeff had loved to tell them that one when they were kids – it made sure they always treated Kyrano with an amplified sense of respect. Because, as their father liked to point out at the most inopportune of moments, if Kyrano could eat snakes then he could eat children too, and Jeff had more than enough of those to spare.

'Anyway,' Alan said as he stared at the shish kebab in question, 'you know I can't get rid of her. It would be the nail in the coffin.'

'What coffin?' Gordon kicked water at his brother to make sure he had his attention. 'Al, that relationship is buried already. The ship has sunk. The fat lady has sung. The bridges have been burned – '

'Shuddup,' Alan cut in, wiping water from his face and glaring at Gordon across the corner of the pool.

' – the Titanic,' Gordon continued relentlessly, 'has hit the 'berg and gone down, and Tin-Tin isn't going to give a damn if you get rid of a reptile she gave you ten fucking thousand years ago back when you were in love.' There was an emphasis on the 'love' that suggested Gordon had found the entire escapade entirely nauseating.

'Yeah, well.' Alan swiped water from the blond curls of his hair and turned his attention morosely to the predator lurking at the bottom of the pool. Missy's tail swished lethargically in the depths, her body distorted by the ripples that Gordon was kicking up – all of which only served to emphasise how truly revolting she was. 'I guess I'm not ready yet to let her go.'

'Her who? Missy or Tin-Tin?'

'Tin-Tin, you dick.'

'Then let me help you.' Gordon's feet moved lazily in the pool. 'They're fucking, you know.'

'Christ, Gordon. Do you mind?'

'I said I wanted to help.'

'Rubbing my nose in it is hardly helping.'

'Yes it is.' Gordon grinned crookedly. 'It's called shock therapy. Or anti-avoidance therapy. Or something.'

'You're an asshole, not a psychiatrist.'

Gordon snorted. 'No argument there. But I figure it's time the band-aid came off. Tin-Tin's moved on, Al. You screwed up.'

'I can't expect any sympathy out of you.' Alan kicked at the water. 'You like him.'

'Yeah,' Gordon said. 'I do.'

'Fuck.' Alan's feet stopped moving in the pool. 'Everybody likes him,' he whined with his best pout on. 'Dad likes him, Grandma likes him – '

'Grandma loves him,' Gordon interjected.

' – Tin-Tin likes him – '

'Tin-Tin's fucking him,' Gordon corrected.

'I hate you,' Alan said.

'I know.'

They laughed, and Gordon leaned his hands back against the tile and carefully appraised his youngest brother. 'But seriously,' he said as he kicked his feet out into the water.

'Piss off.'

The scowl had reappeared on Alan's face but Gordon pushed on regardless. 'You need to cut the guy some slack, Al. If Cam wasn't around to take the load you wouldn't be back on the circuit.'

'If that fat-headed moronic muscle-bound lunk wasn't around I wouldn't have to get back on the circuit.'

'You mean that?'

'Yes. No. I don't know.' Alan stared down at the alligator in the pool. 'His big fat head is always in my face. And the way Tin-Tin looks at him…'

'Like he's meat on a hook and she can't wait to baste and barbeque him?'

'Who's side are you on anyway?'

'Who me? Switzerland?' Gordon grinned good-naturedly at his brother across the pool. 'Get over it. Tin-Tin never looked at you like that.'

'Yes she did.'

Alan said it so seriously that Gordon was stunned into silence.

'Changing the subject,' Alan said, ignoring his brother's incredulous stare. 'You never answered my question.'

'What question?'

'What are you doing out here?'

Gordon's feet stopped swirling in the water. As if on cue a rumble of thunder sounded faintly from the gathering clouds, and a gust of wind blew in cool from the ocean, kicking leaves ahead of it and raising goosebumps on the exposed surfaces of his skin. 'Spectrum have been in contact.'

'What?' Alan said, and suddenly things weren't so funny anymore. 'What happened?'

Gordon said nothing. He stared towards the horizon, and lightning flashed faint, and very far away. 'Do you ever get the feeling you're being watched?'

Alan studied his brother's face in the fading light. 'No. Why. Do you?'

'Sometimes.' Gordon turned to meet his brother's gaze and he smiled, a sick sort of smile like he was about to throw up. 'I get this feeling, like we've been on somebody's 'most wanted' list ever since – ' There was another spark of lightning, closer and brighter and Gordon paused, counting the seconds between the flash and the bang. 'Twelve kilometres,' he said when the thunder had rumbled slowly into silence.

'Spectrum haven't been watching us,' Alan said. 'Or you. We made sure.'

'I know.' Gordon got to his feet. 'Forget it. I'm being paranoid. And this phone call has just… just forget it.' He walked to the nearest lounger, grabbed hold of his towel and rubbed briskly at his skin as though he was trying to rub a layer away.

Alan pulled his toes from the water, the movement making Missy shift on the bottom of the pool. She swivelled slowly in the water so that she was facing him, her dark beady eyes staring blankly up through the ripples left in his wake. 'This phone call,' Alan said, getting to his feet and watching as Gordon towelled his anger away, his brother's bones moving beneath the skin and the outline of his ribs visible as the muscles moved smoothly over them. 'It's, maybe it's, you know…' Alan floundered over the words. 'Maybe it's bringing back memories.'

Gordon stopped towelling and turned to look at his brother. 'Is that your asshole way of telling me I have post-traumatic stress? Now who's the psychiatrist?'

'Gordon, c'mon. That's not fair.'

'Life isn't fair.' Gordon stared at him across the patio, with the towel crushed hard in his hand. He was leaner than he'd been since his Olympic years, his muscles tight against his frame and all the scars of his life drawn in silver across the surface of his skin. The worst of them stretched across the skin of his abdomen, where a shard of steel had torn halfway through his body when the WASP hydrofoil had blown apart. To Alan it looked like a star, or like a sun gone supernova, rays of silver skin radiating from a central, twisted core.

'Yeah,' Gordon was saying. 'You're right, Al. You're absolutely right. Maybe there's just no coming back from seeing your brother burned up inside a ball of green fucking light.'

'Gordon…. Shit. I'm sorry. That's not what I – '

'That's not what you meant? Well what did you mean, Al? What?'

Alan stared at him, with the wind kicking up around them and the lightning flickering closer over the sea.

'Forget it.' Gordon turned his back to Alan and attended roughly to his towelling, his posture displaying yet another series of scars. Surgical, this time, lines as straight as railroad tracks cutting through the tanned surface of his skin. They must have hurt, but Alan had been young and dumb when Gordon's world had been torn apart, and he couldn't remember that he'd ever thought to ask.

Gordon dropped the towel and shrugged a t-shirt over his head. 'Listen,' he said, turning around. 'I'm sorry. It's just… this Spectrum thing. Maybe you're right. Maybe I can't let it go.'

'It's okay,' Alan said.

'No, it's not okay. It's making me crazy. Because how can I let it go if they're always there, looking over our shoulders? We thought we were done with them, but turns out they've never been done with us. And this phone call is just the start.'

'The start of what?' Alan asked. It was darker suddenly, the clouds growing thicker and taller and blotting out what was left of the day. 'Have you considered,' he continued cautiously, like a blind man treading over ice, 'that this phone call might be some kind of closure?'

'This isn't closure,' Gordon said, and for a moment Alan thought he saw fear pass across his brother's face. 'This is the start of something new.'