Chapters (45)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Contents
- Prologue
- 2046
- One
- Two
- Three
- Four
- Five
- Six
- Seven
- Eight
- Nine
- Ten
- Eleven
- Twelve
- Thirteen
- Fourteen
- Fifteen
- Sixteen
- Seventeen
- Eighteen
- Nineteen
- Twenty
- Twenty-One
- Twenty-Two
- Twenty-Three
- Twenty-Four
- Twenty-Five
- Twenty-Six
- Twenty-Seven
- Twenty-Eight
- Twenty-Nine
- Thirty
- Thirty-One
- Thirty-Two
- Thirty-Three
- Thirty-Four
- Thirty-Five
- Thirty-Six
- Thirty-Seven
- Thirty-Eight
- Thirty-Nine
- About the Author
In nineteen ninety-three a song came out that Ben loved and used to play over and over. ‘Insane in the Brain’ by Cypress Hill. The words stuck in his mind, as did the distinctive name of the group. Years later he was investigating an insurance claim of a fire to a garden shed that also damaged a cypress tree. He didn’t know it was a cypress tree but read it on the claim form. He connected the tree to the words from the song he loved and now, standing here, he can tell that the big tree growing from the side of the hill is a cypress. The trunk is growing sideways out of the hill before forming a right angle and shooting up to the helicopter landing pad foliage at the top, and the branches up the trunk are short and weak, giving it an almost barren look. He looks round and sees more of them growing out in patches from the hillside as it sweeps down to the valley floor, which looks dangerously far below.
The hillside is staggered with ledges and varying gradients of rocky outcrops with trees, ferns and wild flowers growing here and there. Ben turns round slowly, staring in wonder. It looks so normal yet slightly off-centre. Like trying to read classical literature when you’re half-drunk. You can see the words but by fuck they don’t make any sense. Not that he has ever read classical literature, but he can imagine that’s what it would be like.
The valley floor is beyond big. It’s enormous and given scale by the forests they can see within it. Thick wooded glades stand distinct and separate from the others with wide open, barren-looking plains between them. Lakes too. Huge glittering lakes of blue water that seems to shimmer and ripple. Trees grow from the lakes and again Ben spots the distinctive swamp cypress trunks so huge at the bottom with striations of roots bulging out that sweep up to a narrow, long trunk. They grow in water and thrive in marshy conditions of high humidity and warm air. At least that’s what the owner of the garden shed that burnt down told Ben when he asked him about the cypress on the claim form.