The Abrupt Physics of Dying Read Free Page B

all so clearly. It was a Friday, he remembered. He had decided to take the afternoon off to look around old Aden. Thierry Champard, one of the engineers who ran the oil-processing facility, had offered him a ride into town, had been on his way home after an eight-week stint. He was off to the airport, happy,he told Clay, because he missed his two young daughters, happy because his wife would be waiting for him at the airport in Paris. He was planning on spending Christmas at the family’s country cottage in Brittany. He’d shown Clay photos: a beautiful blonde in a bikini posing holiday-style in a summer rose garden, one hand behind her head, the other on an out-thrust hip, her mouth partially open, as if caught in mid-sentence, mid-sigh, at the start of a whispered kiss; two smiling children on the beach, their doll-like faces peering out from under nests of thick sun-bleached curls, the sky-blue eyes, the pouty red-plum lips, the dimpled high-boned cheeks, girlish copies of the woman in the roses. Champard dropped Clay in the centre of town, near the
qat
market. The streets were packed after morning prayers. They shook hands, agreed to meet up for a beer the next time they were both in country. Clay closed the car door, walked about twenty steps, turned, made eye contact, and smiled. Thierry waved. Clay was halfway through mouthing the words thanks and good luck when the silver Land Rover disappeared in a nova of orange flame.
    That was six months ago.
    The day after Thierry’s death, Clay had been ordered home, as had many other contractors and non-essential personnel. The rest was a story he had heard only in fragments, mostly as rumour, third and fourth hand, since he’d returned to Yemen. The Yemen government had quickly blamed the murder on a group of suspected militants led by a shadowy figure calling himself ‘The Sun’. A manhunt was launched by the Army and the PSO, but Al Shams and his men had vanished. Not hard, in this part of the world. As time went by, things calmed down, and soon Clay was back in the country helping Petro-Tex with environmental permitting for the new Kamar oilfield, one of the biggest discoveries ever made in Southern Yemen.
    The Arab continued speaking, the tone harder now. Again he paused, allowing Abdulkader to translate. ‘He says this oil is a curse. The people of Hadramawt see nothing. There is no money, no jobs, only soldiers, deep wounds in the land, and death.’ Abdulkader scooped up a handful of sand from the ground and let it fall awaybetween his fingers. ‘Did you hear of the ambush at Katima last year? That was this man. They killed six government soldiers and took many weapons.’
    He remembered reading about it. They had caught the soldiers in a pass in the mountains. They wouldn’t have had a chance. Thierry Champard hadn’t either. It was only luck – whatever luck was, the random collision of events, the probabilities of place and time and a thousand other variables – that had spared Clay that day.
    ‘He says they will kill more, until the government gives them what they want, or they close the oilfields.’
    ‘Retrieved, Mister Claymore?’ said Al Shams in English. ‘That time has long since passed. Too many have died. Still more, I am afraid, are destined to perish.’
    Clay looked down into the cold pitch of Al Shams’ dead eye. He could feel the turbulence close by, that incipient buffeting at the margin of chaos, a fall coming. He stood, tried to push away from the edge. ‘I cannot answer for the government,’ he said. ‘I am a hydrologist, an engineer. My job is to talk to the people and to listen to them. I study the land and the water. I report my findings to the company so that it can protect the people and the environment. The company wants to help the people, even if the government does not.’
    Before Abdulkader could start to translate, the man spoke in rapid terse English, looking straight at Clay. ‘If this is so,’ he said, ‘why does