Free By Light Alone by Adam Roberts Page A

sufferings a vanished child could be enduring is so vast, so much larger than interstellar, that it is quite literally inconceivable. It would collapse the mind to own the knowledge. The shadows of dread, rolled across the white landscape of George’s inner world by vast clouds in stately motion. Even to think of the possibility of it made his ribs all clench together around his heart.
    In practice, though, mostly he was able not to think about it. Sometimes, when talking with Marie in New York via Fwn, the unavoidable unmentionable would insert itself into what they said. But it was so sharply painful to them both, separated now by the whole globe, that they would hurriedly spin a floss of unrelated words around it, bundle it away. Every time somebody in authority mentioned ‘the bosses’, George felt a racing thrill of horror in his breast, sickeningly akin to excitement. To be boss; to have another human absolutely in your power. It made him nauseous.
    At some point, he began the process of considering that he would never see Leah again. He couldn’t say when this bleak possibility first consciously occurred to him. It insinuated itself into his thoughts, until before he was fully aware of it, it had become an old dread. It was almost as if this was a dread that predated the abduction itself – but how could that be? That made no sense at all. Let us stick with the rational, at all costs.
    At the beginning he spent a period of each day watching images of his daughter at play in the snow, on their first day; or else mooning about her room playing her various games. The latter he could watch easily enough, but there were moments that made the former too painful: moments when Leah would look up at the lens and smile, breath steaming from her mouth, her teeth flashing in the sun. After a few days he stopped this belated voyeurism altogether.
    One week became two. George sensed that he was, in small increments, being deprioritized by the hotel. Although he still had his daily briefings with Captain Afkhami, they became more and more perfunctory. There was nothing for her to say, and nothing for him to ask. The other demands of running a hotel intruded on the security staff.
    This is what he now thought: there is something grim in the rhythm of ordinary existence. This is because the alterations from day to night, from moment to moment, are not the actual idiom of things. The idiom of things is a vast monotony. Existence belongs to the unyielding, not the yielding; and the most unyielding thing of all is the eternal changelessness of being. There are no stories to tell about it. Everything is always and everywhere boring. It must be, or we wouldn’t need so many distractions.
    George sank into it. The torpor possessed his soul.
    Then, from nowhere, came news of a breakthrough. A breakthrough! It made the heart like a fish pulled out of the water and cast upon the dry pier timbers. George realized, if he hadn’t already known it, that things happening is a more painful and less bearable state of affairs than nothing happening .
    It was a fortnight into George’s solitary stay, when the captain met him over breakfast. Something had come up. It was a breakthrough. They had broken through. He was flittered to a town east of Ararat, and once there he was told they must transfer to a groundcar. Commissioner Sahim attended in person. ‘We are going to a town called Khoduz,’ he said. ‘We must go within a car, on the ground. It is a drive of half hour from here.’
    ‘Why can’t we go by flitter?’ George asked. His heart was thundering.
    ‘It is not so safe, where we are going, to fly’ said Captain Afkhani.
    ‘Have you found her? Are you taking me to her?’
    ‘It is more safe to go within a car,’ said the commissioner. ‘We have this iCar Armoured, it is plated, it is very safe.’
    ‘Flitters are more vulnerable to small weapon fire,’ said Afkhami, smilingly, as she walked briskly alongside him. ‘They