Unless the two halves of a whole, by chance, met up and joined. Once joined, they were complete, and would never part again.

With Jane, it felt like that.

He hardly knew her, he realized. But he felt comfortable in her silence.

Later, lying beside her, he found himself thinking about the liquefaction patch.

He’d been up there, to the Seat, two or three times a week since they first found that puddle. And every time he’d found it had grown.

It was hard to be precise — much of the spread was subsurface — and he was only measuring with shoe leather anyhow. But he was pretty sure the growth was exponential. Doubling every few days.

He recalled Jane’s question about telling somebody.

What the hell was this? And how, indeed, could it be stopped?

Because if it couldn’t—

He started to worry.

He leaned over in bed, and picked up the phone. “Can you tell me how to get an outside line?”

He got out of bed, and padded to the cupboard where he’d hung up his jacket. In his wallet he had a card with the number of VDAP, the Volcano Disaster Assistance Program at the US Geological Survey.

He dialled the number, and tapped the card on his teeth. “Never leave home without it… Hey.” He checked his watch. “Sorry to disturb you so early. Could you put me through to Blue Ishiguro?”

11

Henry emerged from the lab’s fluorescent harshness into bright afternoon daylight. In his rental car he drove the short distance to Holyrood Park, and, pulling on his rad-proof poncho, walked up the Seat, leaving the traffic noises behind. He drank in the warm, fresh air of this mid-April day. He was coming to like Scotland, he thought; there was something refreshing about the air here, the very light. Something northern.

He had now got into the habit of doing this, walking out to monitor the disfigurement of the Seat, every day.

Today he found the biggest dust pools had been cordoned off by plastic police tape fixed to metal posts. Not far from the site where St Anthony’s Chapel used to stand — now just an anonymous patch in the glass-smooth surface of a dust pit — a young policewoman was standing. She wasn’t like the cops back home. She wore a blue sweater and tie, and the heavy equipment that dangled from her belt was just a radio. No gun. She didn’t look like she needed it.

Henry walked up to her, introduced himself, and told her he was here to study the site. He offered to show her some credentials, but she waved him away.