‘Pirates.’
Aleksey’s eyebrows rose.
‘Somalia. Fucking pirates came alongside in one of those, up the ladder we had then and nearly had us. I learned my lesson and made us less easy to board.’
‘What happened to the pirates?’
‘Who?’
Aleksey snorted and went to watch the little boat depart. He didn’t want to like Eliam Colter. He might still have to kill him.
* * *
Chapter NINETEEN
Aleksey suspected that if ranked in order of things Benjamin Rider-Mikkelsen liked to do, having sex with him might come below eating and riding his bike, and possibly driving their new Bentley, but now he had to consider that bouncing around in a rigid inflatable boat or RIB as Colter called it, might be top of Ben’s new list. He had to concede it was probably the most fun they’d ever had together on water—or off it occasionally. For that was the most exhilarating aspect of the whole experience—when they hit even the tiniest swell going at full throttle, they took off and flew for a while, until they crashed back down and did it again. They took the craft away from the serious scientific work and skimmed it around to the other side of the headland. Not only did it fly, it turned on a dime, flinging them into each other as they stood at the wheel. He’d never gotten around to buying the jet skis he’d intended to; now he reckoned he never would. They desperately needed one of these for Light Island. At top speed, they were travelling over fifty miles an hour—and that was the best speed to fly, Ben discovered. They took turns, which was something they were more than familiar with in other circumstances, and it became a bit of a competition to see who could come close enough to capsizing the boat on one of their flips.
By the time they’d finished messing around, the tide had covered the causeway, and so they skimmed back across it, marvelling at the purity of the shallow water as it seemed to glow green above the yellow sand. Aleksey circled the old tractor, remembering, then grinned and gunned the throttle back towardsRogue Wave. When Ben took over, he turned and jammed his arms through the rail alongside the wheel and watched the old asylum shrinking behind them. It looked lonely.
That night, they ate together in the galley. They’d all come back starving from their day in the boats, and although Colter explained he usually did have a crew, which included a cook, he’d let them all take a break on Scilly before the main expedition began, an explanation that only cemented in Aleksey’s mind his dawning realisation that this pre-trip was entirely spurious and only concocted for the boy. What Colter produced from the freezer and microwave was edible, however, and they fell on it with relish. Mark told them he was leaving first thing in the morning to return to Cambridge and the new term. The instrument readings had gone well, apparently, but when Colter jokingly asked the young professor,
‘So, did you find the fabled lost city of Atlantis?’ Miles was possibly the only one who missed the subtle tension which suddenly joined them at the table.
Barthrop, cutting up his food and placing it in different coloured piles around his plate, replied, ‘Please don’t try to make jokes at my expense, Eliam. I believe I’ve already outlined the parameters of this study, and I’d like them to be adhered to.’
Mark, who’d polished off his first helping almost as quickly as Ben had done, pursed his lips, perhaps weighing up his reply, which, again, Aleksey could only assume was a professorial necessity. He decided to help him out, being the generous sort of chap he always tried to be, and offered deceptively seriously,
‘Yes, I have been reading extensively since our meeting on the Hoe. Randal Eames’s book was hard to acquire, as it is out of print, but it is a fascinating theory.’ He almost winced at the severe kick he got to his shins.
‘Randal promoted radical Nazi race ideology and pseudoscientific nonsense. He cherry-picked his facts and provided them entirely without context or empirical evidence. I am surprised you could find a copy of his book at all. They should all be burned as dangerous anti-intellectual rhetoric.’
‘Maybe the Nazis burned them? They liked doing that kind of thing too.’
He clenched his teeth at that kick but was saved by Miles, when he asked seriously, ‘What do you mean by pseudoscientific?’
Barthrop cast the boy a sideways glance. ‘It is a belief presented as science with no empirical evidence offered to support it and not consistent with the scientific method.’
‘Oh. Yes, that’s what I thought you meant. But history is full of examples of people the rest of the scientific community thought were totally mad when they were actually entirely right. That’s what they said about Alfred Wegener, isn’t it? He’s one of myabsolutist heroes. Did you know that when he was in Greenland trying to prove his plate tectonics theory—which everyone called pseudoscience—he had to amputate his friend’s toes with a penknife with no anaesthetic? Nikolas said they used them to bait their seal hooks then, because they were starving. I do like that story. We’re going to do that with our toes. Well, only if we have to cut them off, of course.’
Barthrop leaned slightly away from Miles at this.
‘I think you should stop listening to this Nikolas person then and stick to real science.’
Aleksey leaned forward. ‘That’s me, by the way.’ He was picturing the colour his shins would be by the morning so kicked Ben back.
Mark, arms folded, murmured, ‘I love stories about Polar exploration—always have. I’ve just finished the life of Roald Amundsen. Absolutely incredible. Wasn’t that a Danish expedition Wegener was on? I remember something pretty horrible about the dogs. Didn’t they use them to pull their sledges all day but then just ate them as they went? Or used them as food for the other dogs? Something like that.’
Miles nodded sadly. ‘That’s what the Maori used to do with their slaves. They worked them all day and then ate them for dinner. Nikolas told me the others had to sit around and watchthe foodbeing prepared. We’ve got a husky. He’s called PB, which is short for Puffball—but Nikolas says we can’t ever use that word in his presence…’
Aleksey slid his gaze subtly sidewards and observed with great interest that Colter began to rub his bandaged arm at this fascinating piece of information. Then he seemed to recollect himself and reached around to pull a plate with an apple pie on it onto the table. ‘Sorry, only shop-bought, but it looked pretty good. Anyone for a slice?’
Miles eagerly held out his plate. ‘Yes, please. Granny makes her pies with—’
The stop was so abrupt that it hurt the heart to hear it. Only Barthrop seemed unaffected, or possibly just uninformed, for he waved away the dessert and said stiffly, ‘Randal’s proof was as fictional as his theories, Mark. It will never be found. If you want to entirely ruin your students’ careers before they have even begun, then by all means let them question the science.’
Ben took a large slice of pie and put it on Miles’s plate. ‘Do you remember the first time I made one of these for you but didn’t realise I had to peel the apples?’ Miles almost smiled and gave a small nod. He picked up his rucksack which was by his feet and hugged it tightly on his lap. ‘Then I served it with chocolate ice cream? Which was a bit weird, I admit.’
‘Chocolate chuck. Uncle Squeezy calls it—but that’s a bit rude.’
