Chapter 8


By the time Zach reaches him, Lev has sliced open the seal's belly and removed part of its liver.
'Here,' Lev says, 'your share.'
Zach stares from the glistening piece of meat to Lev's face and back to the blood dripping onto the snow, dripping and freezing near mitts discarded for the heat of the animal's open cavity.
'Where's the polar bear?' Zach asks.
Lev chews, swallows, licks his fingers clean. 'Eat.'
'Seal liver's toxic.'
'Only in large quantities. Go on, it's good for you.'
'I'm not going to touch raw meat.'
'This is the Arctic. Stop obsessing, I've apportioned the right amount.'
The small slab of liver is still steaming. Zach hesitates for another moment, then pulls off a mitt and cautiously takes a bite. It's strong-tasting, but not nearly as slimy as it looks. He discovers that he's hungry, and eats it all, even to licking off his fingers. Lev, however, has consumed a much larger quantity.
A throaty rumble halfway between burp and purr, then Lev plunges his knife into the snow and wipes it on his trousers before sheathing it. With a large bone needle he sews up the cut in the seal's belly. 'To keep the blood and organs inside while we drag her back to the cabin.'
'Inuit fashion,' Zach says.
'Some things even Fulgur's scientists can't improve on.'
'Right, that axes it.' Zach draws on his mitts. 'Who are you? How did you catch the seal? And where the hell is the polar bear?'
'Do you really think they tell you everything?' Lev gives that chuff of his. 'Frozenhell, they don't know everything.'

Zach helps himself to what he hopes is a marmite sandwich and some steaming coffee from the flask on the table. He stirs in several teaspoons of sugar, takes a cautious sip, and grimaces; it tastes of seal liver, heavy as rolled copper on his tongue.
'Ethan's looking much better,' he says.
'Still a bit feverish, but nothing will keep him from a kill,' Chloe says, grinning in a way that makes Zach want to look over his shoulder.
'It's a big animal, Lev will be glad for the help.'
'Who?'
A burning wedge of wood tumbles from the fireplace in a fortuitous shower of sparks, occupying Zach while he considers how not to react. Chloe comes over with her mug, but when she lays her fingers on his arm, he realises that last night hasn't been a bad dream, or a glitch in the program. Only in his program, he reflects grimly-a release of nothing other than a teaspoon of ejaculate. Self-disgust makes him inept.
'You know, Lev. The tall, fair bloke with the scar and the blue eyes. The third member of your party.'
But Chloe regards him with a sympathetic expression, as if he's admitted to an endearing secret like stealing library books or masturbating with his teddy bear.
'Lev,' he insists. 'The hunter. The macho, you called him. He's out in the lean-to butchering the seal.'
'Ethan's by himself. I've just brought him some coffee.'
'There's no way I could have speared a seal on my own.'
'You can't remember? I'm not surprised, the cold does weird stuff to you.'
Her hand on his arm. All he does is remember.
Shivering slightly, he stepped back into the alcove and removed a book from the shelf. It was hard enough to believe that Bach or Mozart or Coltrane weren't simus-and then these books, these magnificent books, all written by monkeys. She crowded in close to read over his arm, their hips touching. Customers were rare: most people bought online, and those who came to the tiny, dusty, draughty shop had eyes only for their own obsessions.
'I'd like to buy this for you,' he said. 'But it's a signed first edition, your mum might ask where it's come from.'
'Then I'll keep it at your flat,' Laura said, laying a hand on his arm, and after a moment's hesitation, standing on tiptoe to kiss the corner of his mouth-so lightly that he might have imagined
her hand on his arm, and all he ever does is try not to remember.
'Don't touch me,' he says.
Chloe snatches away her hand, then mutters angrily, 'You liked it well enough last night.'
No good, he's just making his job more difficult. Though why he should bother about what happens to her . . . shorten her stay, she just gets to cheat on the next bloke a bit sooner. He doesn't need to know her to know what she'll do. They're all alike, those girls who sleep with his kind.
'Look, I'm sorry,' he says. 'It's not you.'
'Who's to know?' she asks, moving closer again.
'I was tired. It was-you know.'
'It gets lonely here. What's wrong with a little companionship? Not everyone thinks like the Purists.'