{"Extracts":[{"author":"Emily St. John Mandel","authorBiography":"Emily St. John Mandel was born in Canada and studied dance at The School of Toronto Dance Theatre. Her novels are Last Night in Montreal<\/i>, The Singer’s Gun<\/i>, The Lola Quartet<\/i>, Station Eleven <\/i>and The Glass Hotel<\/i>. She lives in New York City with her husband and daughter.","bicCodeList":"FF,FIC022080,FRD,FA","bisacCodeList":"FIC019000,FIC031030,FIC027340,FIC027020,FIC055000,FIC044000,FIC012000","estimatedReadingTimeMinutes":29,"extractHtml":"

2<\/h2>

I ALWAYS COME TO YOU<\/strong><\/h2>

1994 and 1999<\/h4>

1<\/strong><\/h4>

At the end of 1999, Paul was studying finance at the University of Toronto, which should have felt like triumph but everything was wrong. When he was younger, he’d assumed he’d major in musical composition, but he’d sold his keyboard during a bad period a couple years back and his mother was unwilling to entertain the idea of an impractical degree, for which after several expensive rounds of rehab he couldn’t really blame her, so he’d enrolled in finance classes on the theory that this represented a practical and impressively adultlike forward direction—Look at me, learning about markets and the movements of money!<\/em>—but the one flaw in this brilliant plan was that he found the topic fatally uninteresting. The century was ending and he had some complaints.<\/p>

He’d expected that at the very least he’d be able to slip into a decent social scene, but the problem with dropping out of the world is that the world moves on without you, and between the time spent on an all-consuming substance and the time spent working soul-crushing retail jobs while he tried not to think about the substance and the time spent in hospitals and rehab facilities, Paul was twenty-three years old and looked older. In the first few weeks of school he went to parties, but he’d never been good at striking up conversations with strangers, and everyone just seemed so young to him. He did poorly on the midterms, so by late October he was spending all his time either in the library—reading, struggling to take an interest in finance, trying to turn it around—or in his room, while the city grew colder around him. The room was a single, because one of the very few things he and his mother had agreed on was that it would be disastrous if Paul had a roommate and the roommate was into opioids, so he was almost always alone. The room was so small that he was claustrophobic unless he sat directly in front of the window. His interactions with other people were few and superficial. There was a dark cloud of exams on the near horizon, but studying was hopeless. He kept trying to focus on probability theory and discrete-time martingales, but his thoughts kept sliding toward a piano composition that he knew he’d never finish, this very straightforward C-major situation except with little flights of destabilizing minor chords.<\/p>

In early December he walked out of the library at the same time as Tim, who was in two of his classes and also preferred the last row of the lecture hall. “You doing anything tonight?” Tim asked. It was the first time anyone had asked him anything in a while.<\/p>

“I was kind of hoping to find some live music somewhere.” Paul hadn’t thought of this before he said it, but it seemed like the right direction for the evening. Tim brightened a little. Their one previous conversation had been about music.<\/p>

“I wanted to check out this group called Baltica,” Tim said, “but I need to study for finals. You heard of them?”<\/p>

“Finals? Yeah, I’m about to go down in flames.”<\/p>

“No. Baltica.” Tim was blinking in a confused way. Paul remembered something he’d noticed before, which was that Tim seemed not to understand humour. It was like talking to an anthropologist from another planet. Paul thought that this should have created some kind of opening for friendship, but he couldn’t imagine how that conversation would begin—I can’t help but notice that you’re as alienated as I am, can we compare notes?<\/em>—and anyway Tim was already walking away into the dark autumn evening. Paul picked up copies of the alternative weeklies from the newspaper boxes by the cafeteria and walked back to his room, where he put on Beethoven’s Fifth for company and then scanned the listings till he found Baltica, which was scheduled for a late gig at some venue he’d never heard of down at Queen and Spadina. When had he last gone out to hear live music? Paul spiked his hair, unspiked it, changed his mind and spiked it again, tried on three shirts, and left the room before he could make any further changes, disgusted by his indecisiveness. The temperature was dropping, but there was something clarifying about the cold air, and exercise was a therapeutic recommendation that he’d been ignoring, so he decided to walk.<\/p>

The club was in a basement under a goth clothing store, down a steep flight of stairs. He hung back on the sidewalk for a few minutes when he saw this, worried that perhaps it would turn out to be a goth club—everyone would laugh at his jeans and polo shirt—but the bouncer barely seemed to notice him and the crowd was only about 50 percent vampires. Baltica was a trio: one guy with a bass guitar, another guy working an array of inscrutable electronics attached to a keyboard, and a girl with an electric violin. Whatever they were doing onstage sounded less like music than like some kind of malfunctioning radio, all weird bursts of static and disconnected notes, the kind of scattered ambient electronica that Paul, as a lifelong Beethoven fanatic, absolutely did not get, but the girl was beautiful so he didn’t mind it at all, if he wasn’t enjoying the music he could at least enjoy watching her. The girl leaned into the microphone and sang, “I always come to you,”<\/em> except there was an echo—the guy with the keyboard had pressed a foot pedal—so it was<\/p>

I always come to you, come to you, come to you<\/em><\/p> <\/blockquote>

—and it was frankly discordant, the voice with the keyboard notes and the bursts of static, but then the girl raised her violin, and this turned out to be the missing element. When she drew her bow, the note was like a bridge between islands of static and Paul could hear how it all fit together, the violin and the static and the shadowy underpinning of the bass guitar; it was briefly thrilling, then the girl lowered her violin and the music fell apart into its disparate components, and Paul found himself wondering once again how anyone listened to this stuff.<\/p>

Later, when the band was drinking at the bar, Paul waited for a moment when the violinist wasn’t talking to anyone and swooped in.<\/p>

“Excuse me,” he said, “hey, I just wanted to tell you, I love your music.”<\/p>

“Thanks,” the violinist said. She smiled, but in the guarded manner of extremely beautiful girls who know what’s coming next.<\/p>

“It was really fantastic,” Paul said to the bass player, in order to confound expectations and keep the girl off balance.<\/p>

“Thanks, man.” The bass player beamed in a way that made Paul think he was probably stoned.<\/p>

“I’m Paul, by the way.”<\/p>

“Theo,” the bass player said. “That’s Charlie and Annika.” Charlie, the keyboardist, nodded and raised his beer, while Annika watched Paul over the rim of her glass.<\/p>

“Can I ask you guys kind of a weird question?” Paul wanted so badly to see Annika again. “I’m kind of new to the city, and I can’t find a place to go out dancing.”<\/p>

“Just head down to Richmond Street and turn left,” Charlie said.<\/p>

“No, I mean, I’ve been to a few places down there, it’s just hard to find anywhere where the music doesn’t suck, and I was wondering if you could maybe recommend ...”<\/p>

“Oh. Yeah.” Theo downed the last of his beer. “Yeah, try System Sound.”<\/p>

“But it’s a hellhole on weekends,” Charlie said.<\/p>

“Yeah, dude, don’t go on the weekends. Tuesday nights are pretty good.”<\/p>

“Tuesday nights are the best,” Charlie said. “Where are you from?”<\/p>

“Deepest suburbia,” Paul said. “Tuesday nights at System, okay, thanks, I’ll check it out.” To Annika, he said, “Maybe I’ll see you there sometime,” and turned away fast so as not to see her disinterest, which he felt like a cold wind on his back all the way to the door.<\/p>

On the Tuesday after exams—three C’s, one C−, academic probation—Paul went down to System Soundbar and danced by himself. He didn’t really like the music, but it was nice to stand in a crowd. The beats were complicated and he wasn’t sure how to dance to them so he just kind of stepped back and forth with a beer in his hand and tried not to think about anything. Wasn’t that the point of clubs? Annihilating your thoughts with alcohol and music? He’d hoped Annika would be here, but he didn’t see her or the other Baltica people in the crowd. He kept looking for them and they kept not being there, until finally he bought a little packet of bright blue pills from a girl with pink hair, because E wasn’t heroin and didn’t count, but there was something wrong with the pills, or something wrong with Paul: he bit one in half and swallowed it, just the half, didn’t feel anything so he swallowed the other half with beer, but then the room swam, he broke out in a sweat, his heart skipped, and just for a second he thought he was going to die. The girl with the pink hair had vanished. Paul found a bench against the wall.<\/p>

“Hey, man, you okay? You okay?” Someone was kneeling in front of him. Some significant amount of time had passed. The crowd was gone. The lights had come up and the brightness was terrible, the brightness had transformed System into a shabby room with little pools of unidentifiable liquid shining on the dance floor. A dead-eyed older guy with multiple piercings was walking around with a garbage bag, collecting bottles and cups, and after the force of all that music the quiet was a roar, a void. The man kneeling in front of Paul was club management, in the regulation jeans\/Radiohead T-shirt\/blazer that club management always wore.<\/p>

“Yeah, I’m okay,” Paul said. “I apologize, I think I drank too much.”<\/p>

“I don’t know what you’re on, man, but it doesn’t suit you,” the management guy said. “We’re closing up, get out of here.” Paul rose unsteadily and left, remembered when he got to the street that he’d left his coat at the coat check, but they’d already locked the door behind him. He felt poisoned. Five empty cabs cruised by before the sixth finally stopped for him. The cabbie was a proselytizing teetotaler who lectured Paul about alcoholism all the way back to campus. Paul wanted desperately to be in bed so he clenched his fists and said nothing until the cab finally pulled up to the curb, when he paid—no tip—and told the cabdriver to stop fucking lecturing him and fuck off back to India.<\/p>

“Listen, I want to be clear that I’m not that person anymore,” Paul told a counsellor at a rehab facility in Utah, twenty years later. “I’m just trying to be honest about who I was back then.”<\/p> <\/blockquote>

“I’m from Bangladesh, you racist moron,” the cabdriver said, and left Paul there on the sidewalk, where he knelt carefully and threw up. Afterward he stumbled back to the dorm building, marvelling at the scale of the disaster. Against all odds he had clawed his way up into an excellent university, and here it was only December of his first year and it was already over. He was already failing, one semester in. “You must gird yourself against disappointment,” a therapist had told him once, but he couldn’t gird himself against anything, that had always been the problem.<\/p>

Fast-forward two weeks, past the non-event of the winter holidays—his mother’s therapist had advised distance from her son, taking time for herself, and giving Paul a chance to be an adult, etc., so she’d gone to Winnipeg to be with her sister for Christmas and hadn’t invited Paul; he spent Christmas Day alone in his room and called his dad for an awkward conversation in which he lied about everything, just like old times—and all the way to December 28, the nadir of that dead week between Christmas and New Year’s, when he dressed up and walked back down to System Soundbar on another Tuesday night, hair slicked back, wearing a button-down shirt that he’d purchased specially. He was wearing the jeans he’d been wearing last time he was here and didn’t remember till he got to the club that the little packet of blue pills was still in a front pocket.<\/p>

He walked into System and there were the Baltica people, Annika and Charlie and Theo, standing together at the bar. They must have just wrapped up a gig nearby. It was like a sign. Had Annika become more beautiful since he’d seen her last? It seemed possible. His university life was almost over, but when he looked at her he could see a new version of reality, another kind of life he might lead. He felt that he was not, objectively speaking, a bad-looking individual. He had some talent in music. Maybe his past made him interesting. There was a version of the world wherein he dated Annika and was in many ways a successful person, even if he wasn’t cut out for school. He could get back into retail, take it more seriously this time and make a decent living.<\/p>

“Look,” he told the counsellor in Utah, twenty years into the future, “obviously I’ve had some time to think about this, and of course I realize that that line of thinking was insane and self-centred, but she was so beautiful, and I thought, She’s my ticket out of this,<\/em> meaning my ticket out of feeling like a failure—”<\/p> <\/blockquote>

It’s now or never,<\/em> Paul thought, and he approached the bar in a blaze of courage.<\/p>

“Hey,” Theo said. “You. You’re that guy.”<\/p>

“I took your advice!” Paul said.<\/p>

“What advice?” Charlie asked.<\/p>

“System Soundbar on Tuesdays.”<\/p>

“Oh right,” Charlie said, “yeah, of course.”<\/p>

“Good to see you, man,” Theo said, and Paul felt a flush of warmth. He smiled at all of them, with particular focus on Annika.<\/p>

“Hi,” she said, not unkindly, but still with that irritating wariness, like she expected everyone who looked at her to ask her out, although of course that was exactly what Paul was planning to do.<\/p>

Charlie was saying something to Theo, who leaned down to hear him. (Brief portrait of Charlie Wu: small guy with glasses and a generic office-appropriate haircut, dressed in a white button-down shirt with jeans, standing there with his hands in his pockets, and the light reflecting off his glasses so that Paul couldn’t see his eyes.)<\/p>

“Listen,” Paul said, to Annika. She looked at him. “I know you don’t know me, but I think you’re really beautiful, and I wondered if you’d let me take you to dinner sometime.”<\/p>

“No thank you,” she said. Theo’s attention had shifted from Charlie to Paul, and he was watching Paul closely, like he was worried that he might have to intercede, and Paul understood: their evening had been fine until Paul came along. Paul was the problem. Charlie was cleaning his glasses, apparently oblivious, nodding his head to the music as he polished the lens.<\/p>

Paul forced himself to smile and shrug. “Okay,” he said, “no problem, no hard feelings, just figured it couldn’t hurt to ask.”<\/p>

“Never hurts to ask,” Annika agreed.<\/p>

“You guys into E?” Paul asked.<\/p>

“—I don’t know,” he told the counsellor, twenty years later, “to tell you the truth I don’t know what I was thinking, in memory my mind is like this terrifying blank, I didn’t know what I was going to say before I said it—”<\/p> <\/blockquote>

“It’s not really my thing,” Paul said, because they were all looking at him now, “I mean, no judgment, I’ve just never been that into it, but my sister gave these to me.” He flashed the little packet in the palm of his hand. “I don’t really want to sell them, that’s not my thing either, but I feel like it’d be kind of a waste to flush them down the toilet, so I just wondered.”<\/p>

Annika smiled. “I think I tried those last week,” she said. “Same exact colour.”<\/p>

“You can see why I’ve never told this story before,” Paul told the counsellor, twenty years after System Soundbar. “But I didn’t know the pills were bad. I thought I’d maybe just had a bad reaction, you know, like maybe my system was kind of messed up from coming off opioids or something, like not a thing where every single person who tried those pills would automatically get sick or whatever, let alone—”<\/p> <\/blockquote>

“Anyway, they’re yours if you want them,” he said, to this group that like all of the other groups he’d ever encountered in his life was going to reject him, and Annika smiled and took the packet from his hand. “I’ll see you around,” he said, to all of them but especially to her, because sometimes no thank you<\/em> means not at the present moment but maybe later,<\/em> although the pills, the pills, the pills—<\/p>

“Thank you,” she said.<\/p>

“Well, just the way she reacted,” Paul told the counsellor. “I can see the way you’re looking at me, but I really thought she’d tried the same pills, the previous week, like she said, and the way she smiled, it made me think she’d had a good trip, she’d obviously really liked them, so what happened to me when I tried them seemed like definitely just a weird reaction, like I said, not something that would necessarily ... look, I know I’m being repetitive but what I need you to understand is that I couldn’t possibly have predicted, I mean I know how it sounds but I seriously had no idea—”<\/p> <\/blockquote>

After Paul walked away, Annika took one pill and gave the other two to Charlie, whose heart stopped a half hour later on the dance floor.<\/p>

2<\/strong><\/h4>

It’s easy to dismiss Y2K hysteria in retrospect—who even remembers it?—but the risk of collapse seemed real at the time. At the stroke of midnight on January 1, 2000, the experts said, nuclear power plants might go into meltdown while malfunctioning computers sent flocks of missiles flying over the oceans, the grid collapsing, planes falling from the sky. But for Paul the world had already collapsed, so three days after Charlie Wu’s death he was standing by a pay phone in the arrivals hall at the Vancouver airport, trying to reach his half sister, Vincent. He’d had enough money to flee Toronto, but there wasn’t enough left over for anything else, so his entire plan was to throw himself on the mercy of his aunt Shauna, who in hazy childhood memory had an enormous house with multiple guest bedrooms. Although he hadn’t seen Vincent in five years, since she was thirteen and he was eighteen and Vincent’s mother had just died, and he hadn’t seen Shauna since he was, what, eleven? He was running through all of this while the phone rang endlessly at his aunt’s house. A couple walked by wearing matching T-shirts that said PARTY LIKE IT’S<\/span> 1999, and only then did he remember that it was actually New Year’s Eve. The last seventy-two hours had had a hallucinatory quality. He hadn’t been sleeping much. His aunt seemed not to have an answering machine. There was a telephone directory on the shelf under the phone, where he found the law firm where she worked.<\/p>

“Paul,” she said, once he’d cleared the hurdle of her secretary. “What a lovely surprise.” Her tone was gentle and cautious. How much had she heard? He assumed he must have come up in conversation over the years. Paul? Oh, well, he’s in rehab again. Yes, for the sixth time.<\/em><\/p>

“I’m sorry to bother you at work.” Paul felt a prickling behind his eyes. He was extremely, infinitely sorry, for everything. (Try not to think of Charlie Wu on the stretcher at System Soundbar, an arm dangling limp over the side.)<\/p>

“Oh, it’s no trouble at all. Were you just calling to say hello, or ...”<\/p>

“I’ve been trying to reach Vincent,” Paul said, “and for some reason she hasn’t been picking up at your home number, so I wondered if she’d maybe gotten her own phone line, or ...”<\/p>

“She moved out a year ago.” A studied neutrality in his aunt’s voice suggested that the parting hadn’t been amicable.<\/p>

“A year ago? When she was sixteen?”<\/p>

“Seventeen,” his aunt said, as if this made all the difference. “She moved in with a friend of hers from Caiette, some girl who’d just moved to the city. It was closer to her job.”<\/p>

“Do you have her number?”<\/p>

She did. “If you see her, say hi to her for me,” she said.<\/p>

“You’re not in touch with her?”<\/p>

“We parted on strained terms, I’m afraid.”<\/p>

“I thought she was supposed to be in your care,” he said. “Aren’t you her legal guardian?”<\/p>

“Paul, she isn’t thirteen anymore. She didn’t like living in my house, she didn’t like going to high school, and if you’d spent more time with her, you’d know that trying to get Vincent to do anything she doesn’t want to do is like arguing with a brick wall. If you’ll excuse me, I have to run to a meeting. Take care.”<\/p>

Paul stood listening to the dial tone, clutching a boarding pass with Vincent’s phone number scrawled on the back. He’d harboured fantasies of being absorbed into an extra guest bedroom, but the ground was shifting rapidly underfoot. His headphones were dangling around his neck, so he put them on, hands shaking a little; pressed play on the CD in his Discman; and let the Brandenburg Concertos settle him. He only listened to Bach when he was desperate for order. This is the music that will get me to Vincent,<\/em> he thought, and set out to find a bus to take him downtown. What kind of apartment would Vincent be living in, and with whom? The only friend of hers he remembered was Melissa, and only because she’d been there when Vincent wrote the graffiti that got her suspended from school:<\/p>

Sweep me up.<\/em> Words scrawled in acid paste on one of the school’s north windows, the acid marker trembling a little in Vincent’s gloved hand. She was thirteen years old and this was Port Hardy, British Columbia, a town on the northernmost tip of Vancouver Island that was somehow less remote than the place where Vincent actually lived. Paul came around the corner of the high school too late to stop her, but in time to see her do it, and now the three of them—Vincent, Paul, Melissa—were silent for a moment, watching thin trails of acid dripping down the glass from several letters. Through the words, the darkened classroom was a mass of shadows, empty rows of desks and chairs. Vincent had been wearing a man’s leather glove that she’d found who knows where. Now she pulled it off and let it drop into the trampled winter grass, where it lay like a dead rat, while Paul stood useless and gaping. Melissa was giggling in a nervous way.<\/p>

“What do you think you’re doing?” Paul wanted to sound stern, but to his own ears his voice sounded high and uncertain.<\/p>

“It’s just a phrase I like,” Vincent said. She was staring at the window in a way that made Paul uneasy. On the other side of the school, the bus driver honked his horn.<\/p>

“We can talk about this on the bus,” Paul said, although they both knew they wouldn’t talk about it at all, because he wasn’t especially convincing as an authority figure.<\/p>

She didn’t move.<\/p>

“I should go,” Melissa said.<\/p>

“Vincent,” Paul said, “if we miss that bus we’re hitchhiking back to Grace Harbour and paying for a water taxi.”<\/p>

“Whatever,” Vincent said, but she followed her brother to the waiting school bus. Melissa was sitting up front by the driver, ostensibly getting a head start on her homework, but she glanced up furtively as they passed her seat. They rode the bus in silence back to Grace Harbour, where the mail boat waited to take them to Caiette. The boat careered around the peninsula and Paul stared at the massive construction site where the new hotel was going up, at the clouds, at the back of Melissa’s head, at the trees on the shore, anything to avoid looking into the depths of the water, nothing he wanted to think about down there. When he glanced at Vincent, he was relieved to see that she wasn’t looking at the water either. She was looking at the darkening sky. On the far side of the peninsula was Caiette, this place that made Port Hardy look like a metropolis in comparison: twenty-one houses pinned between the water and the forest, the total local infrastructure consisting of a road with two dead ends, a small church from the 1850s, a one-room post office, a shuttered one-room elementary school—there hadn’t been enough children here to keep the school open since the mid-eighties—and a single pier. When the boat docked at Caiette, they walked up the hill to the house and found Dad and Grandma waiting at the kitchen table. Normally Grandma lived in Victoria and Paul lived in Toronto, but these were not normal times. Vincent’s mother had disappeared two weeks ago. Someone found her canoe drifting empty in the water.<\/p>

“Melissa’s parents called the school,” Dad said. “The school called me.”<\/p>

Vincent—give her credit for courage—did not flinch. She took a seat at the table, folded her arms, and waited, while Paul leaned awkwardly against the stove and watched them. Should he come to the table too? As the responsible older brother, etc.? As ever and always, he didn’t know what he was supposed to do. In the way Dad and Grandma stared at Vincent, Paul heard everything they were all refraining from mentioning: Vincent’s new blue hair, her plummeting grades and black eyeliner, her staggering loss.<\/p>

“Why would you write that on the window?” Dad asked.<\/p>

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.<\/p>

“Was it Melissa’s idea?”<\/p>

“No.”<\/p>

“What were you thinking?”<\/p>

“I don’t know what I was thinking. They were just some words I liked.” The wind changed direction, and rain rattled against the kitchen window. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know it was stupid.”<\/p>

Dad told Vincent that she’d been suspended for all of next week; it would’ve been a much longer suspension, but the school was making allowances. She accepted this without comment, then rose and went up to her room. They were quiet in the kitchen, Paul and Dad and Grandma, listening to her footsteps on the stairs and her door closing quietly behind her, before Paul joined the other two at the table—the grown-up table, he couldn’t help thinking—and no one pointed out the obvious, which was that he’d ostensibly come back from Toronto to look out for her, which presumably should ideally involve not letting her write indelible graffiti on school windows. But when had he ever been in a position to look out for anyone? Why had he imagined that he could help? No one brought this up either, they just sat quietly listening to rain dripping into a bucket that Dad had placed in a corner of the room, Vincent represented by a ceiling vent that Dad and Grandma seemed not to realize was a conduit into her bedroom.<\/p>

“Well,” Paul said finally, desperate for a change of scene, “I should probably get started on my homework.”<\/p>

“How’s that going?” Grandma asked.<\/p>

“School? Fine,” Paul said, “it’s going fine.” They thought he’d made a noble sacrifice, leaving all his friends behind in Toronto and coming out here to finish high school in order to be there for your sister,<\/em> but if they’d been paying more attention or were on speaking terms with his mother, they’d have known he wasn’t going to be allowed back to his old school anyway, and also that his mother had kicked him out of the house. But does a person have to be either admirable or<\/em> awful? Does life have to be so binary? Two things can be true at the same time, he told himself. Just because you used your stepmother’s presumed death to start over doesn’t mean that you’re not also doing something good, being there for your sister or whatever. Grandma was giving him a flat stare—could she possibly have spoken to his mother?—but Dad was gearing himself up to say something, a gradual process that involved shifting around in his chair, some throat-clearing, lifting his tea halfway to his mouth and putting it down again, so Paul and Grandma broke off their staring contest and waited for him to speak. Grief had lent him a certain gravitas.<\/p>

“I have to go back to work soon,” Dad said. “I can’t take her with me to camp.”<\/p>

“What are you suggesting?” Grandma asked.<\/p>

“I’m thinking about sending her to live with my sister.”<\/p>

“You’ve never gotten along with your sister. I swear you and Shauna started arguing when you were two and she was a baby.”<\/p>

“She drives me crazy sometimes, but she’s a good person.”<\/p>

“She works a hundred hours a week,” Grandma said. “Wouldn’t it be better for Vincent if you got a job nearby?”<\/p>

“There are no jobs nearby,” he said. “Nothing I could live on, anyway.”<\/p>

“What about the new hotel?”<\/p>

“The new hotel will be a construction site for at least another year, and I don’t know anything about construction. But look, it’s not just ...” He went quiet for a moment, staring into his tea. “Financial considerations aside, I’m not sure living here is really the best thing for Vincent. Every time she looks at the water ...” He ended the thought there. And Paul thought it went in the good column that he thought of Vincent first when Dad said that, that his first thought wasn’t of the goddamn haunted inlet that he was trying not to look at through the kitchen window, but of the girl listening upstairs at the vent.<\/p>

“I’m going to go check in on Vincent,” Paul said. He liked the way they looked at him—Look how Paul has matured!<\/em>—and disliked himself for noticing. At the top of the stairs, his nerve almost failed him, but he did it, he knocked softly on Vincent’s bedroom door and let himself in when he heard no answer. He hadn’t been in this room in a long time and was struck by how shabby it was, embarrassed for noticing and embarrassed for Vincent, although did she notice? Unclear. Her bed was older than she was and had paint chipping off the headboard; opening the top drawer of her dresser required pulling on a length of rope; the curtains had previously been sheets. Maybe none of it bothered her. She was sitting cross-legged by the vent, as predicted.<\/p>

“Is it okay if I sit here with you?” he asked. She nodded. This could work out,<\/em> Paul thought. I could be more of a brother to her.<\/em><\/p>

“You shouldn’t be in grade eleven,” she said. “I did the math.” Christ. There was a flash of pain that had to be acknowledged, because his thirteen-year-old half sister had noticed what his own father apparently hadn’t.<\/p>

“I’m repeating a grade.”<\/p>

“You failed grade eleven?”<\/p>

“No, I missed most of it the first time around. I spent some time in rehab last year.”<\/p>

“For what?”<\/p>

“I had a drug problem.” He was pleased with himself for being honest about it.<\/p>

“Do you have a drug problem because your parents split up?” she asked, in tones of genuine curiosity, at which point he wanted desperately to get away from her, so he rose and brushed off his jeans. Her room was dusty.<\/p>

“I don’t have a drug problem, I had<\/em> a drug problem. That’s all behind me now.”<\/p>

“But you smoke pot in your room,” she said.<\/p>

“Pot isn’t heroin. They’re completely different.”<\/p>

“Heroin?”<\/em> Her eyes were very wide.<\/p>

“Anyway, I’ve got a lot of homework.” I don’t hate Vincent,<\/em> he told himself, Vincent has never been the problem, I have never hated Vincent, I have only ever hated the<\/em> idea of Vincent.<\/em> A kind of mantra that he found necessary to repeat to himself at intervals, because when Paul was very young and his parents were still married, Dad fell in love with the young hippie poet down the road, who quickly became pregnant with Vincent, and within a month Paul and Paul’s mother had left Caiette, “fleeing that whole sordid soap opera” was how she put it, and Paul spent the rest of his childhood in the Toronto suburbs, shuttling out to British Columbia for summers and every second Christmas, a childhood of flying alone over prairies and mountains with an UNACCOMPANIED MINOR<\/span> sign around his neck, while Vincent got to live with both of her parents, all the time, until two weeks ago.<\/p>

He left her there in her bedroom and went back to the room where he’d been sleeping—he’d stayed there as a kid, but it had been repurposed for storage in his absence and didn’t feel like his anymore—and his hands were shaking, he was besieged by unhappiness, he rolled a joint and smoked it carefully out the window, but the wind kept blowing the smoke back inside until finally there was a knock on his door. When Paul opened it, Dad was standing there with a look of unbearable disappointment, and by the end of the week Paul was back in Toronto.<\/p>

The next time he saw Vincent was on the last day of 1999, when he took a bus downtown from the airport with the Brandenburg Concertos playing on his Discman and found Vincent’s address in the sketchiest neighbourhood he’d ever seen, a run-down building across the street from a little park where users stumbled around like extras from a zombie movie. While Paul waited for Vincent to answer the door, he tried not to look at them and not to think of the general preferability of being on heroin, not the squalid business of trying to get more of it and getting sick, but the thing itself, the state in which everything in the world was perfectly fine.<\/p>

Melissa answered the door. “Oh,” she said, “hey! You look exactly the same. Come in.” This was somehow reassuring. He felt marked, as if the details of Charlie Wu’s death were tattooed on his skin. Melissa did not look exactly the same. She’d obviously gone deep into the rave scene. She was wearing blue pants made of fun fur and a rainbow sweatshirt, and her hair, which was dyed bright pink, was in the same kind of pigtails he remembered Vincent wearing when she was five or six. Melissa led him down the stairs and into one of the worst apartments he’d ever walked into, a semi-finished basement with water stains on the cinder-block walls. Vincent was making coffee in a tiny kitchenette.<\/p>

“Hey,” she said, “it’s great to see you.”<\/p>

“You too.” The last time he’d seen Vincent she’d had blue hair and was writing graffiti on windows, but she seemed to have pulled back from that particular edge. She didn’t seem to be a raver, or if she was, she saved the costumes for the raves. She was wearing jeans and a grey sweater, and her long dark hair was loose around her shoulders. Melissa was talking a little too fast, but hadn’t she always? He remembered her as a nervous kid. He studied Vincent closely for signs of trouble, but she seemed like a reserved, put-together person, someone who’d conducted herself carefully and avoided the land mines. How did she get to be like that, and Paul like this<\/em>? This question had all the markers of the kind of circular thinking he was supposed to be avoiding—why are you you<\/em>?—but he couldn’t stop the spiral. You’ve never hated Vincent, just remember that. It isn’t her fault she doesn’t have the same problems as you.<\/em> They sat around in a living room with dust bunnies the size of mice, Paul and Vincent on a thirty-year-old couch and Melissa on a grimy plastic lawn chair, trying to come up with topics of conversation, but the conversation kept stalling so they kept drinking instant coffee and not quite meeting one another’s eyes.<\/p>

“Are you hungry?” Vincent asked. “We’re a little low on groceries, but I could make you some toast or a tuna sandwich or something.”<\/p>

“Nah, I’m good. Thanks.”<\/p>

“Thank god,” Melissa said. “This is the last four days before payday and rent’s due tomorrow, so it’s probably literally bread or canned tuna.”<\/p>

“If you need groceries that badly, just dip into your beer money,” Vincent said.<\/p>

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”<\/p>

“Next paycheque, I’m going to remember to buy lightbulbs,” Vincent said. “I keep forgetting when I have money.” The living room was lit by three mismatched floor lamps, and the one in the far corner was flickering. Vincent rose, switched it off, and returned to the couch. Now the room was halfway dark, shadows crowding in around the periphery.<\/p>

“Aunt Shauna says hi,” Paul said after a while.<\/p>

“She’s fine,” Vincent said, answering a question he hadn’t asked, “but probably wasn’t equipped to take in a traumatized thirteen-year-old.”<\/p>

“She made it sound like you’d dropped out of school.”<\/p>

“Yeah, high school was tedious.”<\/p>

“That’s why you left?”<\/p>

“Pretty much,” she said. “It turns out getting straight A’s isn’t the same thing as being motivated enough to drag yourself to school in the mornings.”<\/p>

He didn’t know what to say to this. As ever and always, he wasn’t sure what his role was. Was he supposed to counsel her to go back to school? He was in no position to tell anyone to do anything. Charlie Wu’s funeral was today. Charlie Wu was absolutely not standing in the darkest corner of the room, but there was still no need to look in that direction.<\/p>

“Are you in school?” he asked Melissa.<\/p>

“I’m going to UBC in the fall.”<\/p>

“Good for you. That’s a good school.”<\/p>

Melissa raised her coffee cup. “Here’s to a lifetime of student-loan debt,” she said.<\/p>

“Cheers.” He raised his coffee cup and couldn’t quite meet her eyes. Paul’s mother had paid for his university tuition.<\/p>

“We have to go out dancing tonight,” Melissa said finally. “I’ve got a couple places in mind.”<\/p>

“I know people who are holed up in remote cabins with supplies in case civilization collapses,” Vincent said.<\/p>

“That seems like a lot of trouble to go to,” Paul said.<\/p>

“Do you find yourself sort of secretly hoping that civilization collapses,” Melissa said, “just so that something will happen?”<\/p>

Later that night they got into Melissa’s beat-up car and drove to a club. Vincent wasn’t legal but the doorman chose not to notice, because when you’re eighteen and beautiful all the doors are open to you, or so it seemed to Paul as he watched her flit through ahead of him. The doorman scrutinized Paul’s ID very carefully and gave him a searching look, which made Paul want to say something snappy, but he decided against it. The new century was a new opportunity, he’d decided. If they survived Y2K, if the world didn’t end, he was going to be a better man. Also if they survived Y2K he hoped never to hear the term Y<\/em>2K<\/em> again. At the coat check, Paul saw that Vincent was wearing a sparkly thing that was really only half a shirt, like the front was a normal shirt but the back was missing, just two pieces of string tied in a bow under her naked shoulder blades, making her back seem horribly vulnerable.<\/p>

“I need a drink,” Melissa said, so Paul accompanied her to the bar, where they ordered beer instead of hard liquor, pacing themselves—responsible adults here—and when he looked back at the dance floor, Vincent was already dancing by herself, eyes closed, or maybe she was just looking at the floor, alone in a very fundamental sense: lost in her own little world<\/em> was the phrase Paul remembered Vincent’s mother using, whenever someone was trying to get her attention while she read a book or stared unreachably into space.<\/p>

“She’s so spacey,” Melissa said, actually shouted, because the music was quieter by the bar but still not quiet enough to talk.<\/p>

“She’s always been spacey,” Paul shouted back.<\/p>

“Well, what happened with her mom, that would mess anyone up,” Melissa shouted, possibly mishearing him. “It was just such a tragic—” Paul didn’t hear the last word, but he didn’t have to. They were quiet for a moment, contemplating Vincent and also the Tragedy of Vincent, which was a separate entity. But Vincent didn’t strike him as a tragic figure, she struck him as someone who had her life more or less together, a composed person with a full-time job busing tables at the Hotel Vancouver, and as such he felt somewhat ill at ease around her.<\/p>

After two beers he went to join her on the dance floor and she smiled at him. I’m trying,<\/em> he wanted to tell her, I’m really trying, everything’s gone wrong but the new century’s going to be different.<\/em> He ingested nothing except beer and danced hard for a while under the influence of nothing—almost<\/em> nothing, beers don’t count—until he looked up and saw Charlie Wu in the crowd and the night skipped a beat. Paul froze. Of course it wasn’t Charlie,<\/p>

of course it was just some random kid who looked a little like him, a kid with a similar haircut and glasses that reflected the lights, but the vision was so appalling that he couldn’t stay here for even long enough to tell Vincent and Melissa he was going, so he stumbled out onto the street and that was where they found him a half hour later, shivering under a streetlight. Nothing, he told them, he just didn’t really like the music and suddenly needed a little air, did he mention he got claustrophobic in crowds sometimes, also he was really hungry. Twenty minutes later they were staring at menus in a diner where all the other customers were drunk. The lights were so bright that it was possible to be certain that he hadn’t actually seen a ghost. Everyone looks alike in strobe lighting. There are doppelgängers everywhere.<\/p>

“So why did you come here for New Year’s?” Melissa asked. He’d been a little vague about how long he was staying. “Aren’t the clubs better in Toronto?”<\/p>

“I’m actually moving here,” Paul said.<\/p>

Vincent looked up from the menu. “Why?” she asked.<\/p>

“I just really need a change of scene.”<\/p>

“Are you in trouble or something?” Melissa asked.<\/p>

“Yeah,” he said, “maybe a little.”<\/p>

“Well come on,” Melissa said, “you have to tell us.”<\/p>

“There was some bad E going around. It seemed like I was maybe going to get blamed for it.”<\/p>

“Well, because there was just no reason not to be sort of honest,” he told the counsellor in Utah, in 2019. “Of course I didn’t tell them anything else, but I already knew I was going to get away with it. I was on academic probation, so it wasn’t weird that I’d withdrawn from school. Paul<\/em> must be one of the most common names in the world, and that was the only name the Baltica people knew—”<\/p> <\/blockquote>

“Oh wow,” Melissa said. “That’s awful,” and he thought, You have no idea.<\/em> He couldn’t help but notice how disinterested Vincent seemed. She’d returned to the menu without comment. None of the possibilities here were great: either she didn’t care about Paul at all, or getting in trouble was something that she’d come to expect from him, or she was acquainted with trouble herself. I don’t hate Vincent,<\/em> he told himself silently, I’ve only ever hated Vincent’s incredible good fortune at being Vincent instead of being me, I only hate that Vincent can drop out of high school and move to a terrible neighbourhood and still somehow miraculously be perfectly fine, like the laws of gravity and misfortune don’t apply to her.<\/em> When they’d finished their burgers, Melissa glanced at her watch, a big plastic digital thing that looked like it should belong to a child.<\/p>

“Eleven-fourteen,” Melissa said. “We’ve still got forty-four minutes to kill before the end of the world.”<\/p>

“Forty-six minutes,” Paul said.<\/p>

“I don’t think it’s gonna end,” said Vincent.<\/p>

“It’d be exciting if it did,” Melissa said. “All the lights going out, like poof<\/em>—” She spread her fingers like a magician casting a spell.<\/p>

“Ugh,” Vincent said. “A city with no lights? Thank you, no.”<\/p>

“It’d be kind of creepy,” Paul said.<\/p>

“Dude, you’re<\/em> kind of creepy,” Melissa said, so he threw a French fry at her and then they all got kicked out. They stood shivering and dehydrated on the street for a few minutes, debating where to go, and then Melissa remembered another club where she thought Vincent probably wouldn’t get carded, another club in another basement, not that far from here—so they set out, got lost twice, eventually found themselves in front of an unmarked door through which the bass pulsed faintly from below. It was somehow still 1999. They descended another set of stairs into another permanent night, and Paul heard the lyrics as the door opened,<\/p>

I always come to you, come to you, come to you—<\/em><\/p> <\/blockquote>

—and for a second he couldn’t breathe. The song had been remixed into dance music, Annika’s voice layered over a deep house beat, but he recognized it immediately, he’d have known it anywhere.<\/p>

“You okay?” Melissa shouted in Paul’s ear.<\/p>

“Fine!” he shouted back. “I’m good!”<\/p>

They dispensed with their coats and were absorbed into the dance floor, where the Baltica track was shifting into another song, a song about being blue that was playing on all of the dance floors of 1999, of which only a few minutes remained. Last song of the twentieth century,<\/em> Paul thought, and he was trying to dance but there was something bothering him, a sense of movement in his peripheral vision, a feeling of being watched. He looked around wildly, but there was only a sea of anonymous faces and none of them were looking at him.<\/p>

“You sure you’re okay?” Melissa shouted.<\/p>

The lights began to strobe, and just for a flash Charlie Wu was there in the crowd, hands in his pockets, watching Paul, there and then gone.<\/p>

“Fine!” Paul shouted. “I’m totally fine!” Because that was actually the only option now, to be fine despite the awful certainty that Charlie Wu was somehow here. Paul closed his eyes for a moment and then forced himself to dance again, pretending desperately. The lights didn’t go out when 1999 changed to 2000, the hours rolling forward until sunrise, when they emerged into the cold street and the new century and piled into Melissa’s beat-up wreck of a car, cold with sweat, Paul in the passenger seat and Vincent curled up in the back like a cat.<\/p>

“We got through the end of the world,” she said, but when he looked over his shoulder, she was sleeping and he wondered if he’d imagined it. Melissa was red-eyed and speedy, driving too fast, talking about her new job selling clothes at Le Château while Paul only half listened, and somewhere on the drive back to their apartment he found himself seized by a strange, manic kind of hope. It was a new century. If he could survive the ghost of Charlie Wu, he could survive anything. It had rained at some point in the night and the sidewalks were gleaming, water reflecting the morning’s first light.<\/p>

“No,” Paul told the counsellor, “that was only the first time I saw him.”<\/p> <\/blockquote> <\/body>","format":"DG","formatDescription":"EPUB","formatDetail":"E200","illustrator":"","imprintDisplayName":"Picador","isFeatured":false,"isbn":"9781509882847","isbn10":"1509882847","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/extracts.panmacmillan.com\/site\/extr\/static\/jacketimages\/9781509882847.jpg","keynote":"","nextPageLink":null,"publicationDate":"2021-04-15T00:00:00Z","reader":"","relatedWorks":[{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781509882830","isbn10":"1509882839","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2021-04-29T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BB","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781509882809","isbn10":"1509882804","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1011384&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=80338","publicationDate":"2019-07-24T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529047493","isbn10":"1529047498","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1070755&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=89828","publicationDate":"2019-11-21T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529047509","isbn10":"1529047501","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1070769&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=89829","publicationDate":"2019-11-21T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529047516","isbn10":"152904751X","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1070783&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=89830","publicationDate":"2019-11-21T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529047523","isbn10":"1529047528","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1070797&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=89831","publicationDate":"2019-11-21T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AJ","formatDescription":"Lossless Format Audio, WAV","formatDetail":"A104","isbn":"9781509882823","isbn10":"1509882820","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1077679&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=80353","publicationDate":"2019-12-04T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"Trade Paperback","formatDetail":"B106","isbn":"9781509882816","isbn10":"1509882812","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1019109&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=80339","publicationDate":"2019-08-08T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781529065619","isbn10":"1529065615","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1197241&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=92615","publicationDate":"2020-09-14T00:00:00Z"}],"title":"The Glass Hotel"},{"author":"Johnny Herbert","authorBiography":"Johnny Herbert is one of a small number of British drivers to win a Grand Prix since the 1970s, tasting success with Benetton at Silverstone and Monza in 1995, then delivering a one and only top podium place for Jackie Stewart’s team at the 1999 European Grand Prix at the Nürburgring. He also became the first active Formula 1 driver to win the endurance classic 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Bertrand Gachot and Volker Weidler in 1991, and has been a champion at karting, the Formula Ford Festival, Formula 3, the European Le Mans and the Speedcar Series in his long and varied career. He has also written his autobiography What Doesn't Kill You . . .<\/i>, which was published to acclaim in 2016.","bicCodeList":"BGSA,BIO016000,BM,WSPC1,WH","bisacCodeList":"BIO026000,SPO028000,HUM013000","estimatedReadingTimeMinutes":22,"extractHtml":"

CHAPTER ONE<\/h2>

Monaco<\/strong><\/h2>

Johnny: <\/span>I’ll start this one. Probably the most anticipated race of the year – globally – is also the most boring. Discuss.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>No it’s not? OK. I’ll colour this one in for you, Herbert. Let’s hype it up a bit at least. It’s basically the most expensive film set on the planet. Monaco transcends motor racing. It’s a carnival of excess. A celebration of massive amounts of wonga and bling. And one of the trickiest challenges a racing driver is ever going to have. I love it.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>OK. Good challenge. So if we’re going to have a chapter about Monaco we really have to start with your old man, who used to be known as Mr Monaco, of course.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Indeed he did. Dad’s reign in Monaco wasn’t quite as long as Prince Rainier’s, but during the 1960s, which is considered to be a halcyon era for so many things, he won it five times – half the years in that decade. So he was ‘The Man’. Somehow he managed to fit in winning the Indianapolis 500 in 1966 as well, which was a week after Monaco. He must have had to qualify the car in the USA for the Indy, then fly back to do the Monaco GP, finishing a modest third, then fly back out to Indy to win that. Busy man.<\/p>

Fascinating fact is that when Dad first went to Monaco, while doing his National Service in charge of the engine room of HMS Swiftsure<\/em>, he’d never even heard of the Monaco Grand Prix and knew nothing at all about motor racing. He even went to the Casino and won a few quid. Maybe a portent of things to come? Just five years later, in 1958, he was in his first ever Grand Prix, the Monte Carlo, racing for Lotus. He tells a very funny story in his book where, about forty laps in, he’s sitting there in third place thinking, This motor racing lark’s a piece of cake!<\/em> when his left rear wheel promptly fell off.<\/p>

One question that gets asked a lot is why my old man was so successful at Monaco. One of my theories is that the track appealed to his mind in a way that other circuits did not. There’s no time to think at Monaco and no time to relax. You cannot take your eye off the ball for a split second. I think Dad’s biggest talent was his power of concentration, and his stamina from years of rowing, and a modicum of skill, of course – all things in high demand at Monaco. That’s my theory anyway. The motor racing historian Doug Nye put it well: ‘When it comes to Monaco,’ he said, ‘Graham Hill strode that stage like a Colossus!’ Quite a good quote, but he didn’t just mean his racing performances. He meant Monaco was a stage in every respect and that Dad somehow bagged the leading role. An amalgam of David Niven, Errol Flynn and Terry Thomas, Dad had that thing that made everyone feel he was doing it for them as much as for himself. He had the famous Kipling ‘common touch’, could hang with the Rainiers, yet mix on the level with everyone else. He was as comfortable standing in the terraces watching Arsenal (wearing a Savile Row suit, mind!) as he was golfing with Sean Connery or shooting with the Queen. He was a guy who’d come from humble beginnings and risen to the top without becoming a snob about it. The previous Prince Rainier said something nice about him. He described him as ‘Mediterranean’, meaning British but without the chilliness. That’s class, that is. Know what I mean, Herbert?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Class. It’s my middle name. Did you ever go to watch him race there?<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>No, I never went, which is a bit of a shame. But I remember seeing him win in 1969. The Monaco Grand Prix was hardly ever on television in those days but it happened to be that year. We were at a friend’s house somewhere in Kent and I was playing in the garden with Major Matt Mason, which was a kind of bendy rubber toy astronaut, not a friend of the family!<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>I thought it was the family dog.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Funny name for a dog? No, Herbert, it was a kind of Buzz Lightyear toy and it was bloody lethal. Inside each of the rubber arms and legs was a wire and if you bent them round too much the wire would poke out. Anyway, as I was busy impaling myself on Major Matt Mason my mother came out and said, ‘Come inside, Damon! Now! Quick! Dad’s winning the Monaco Grand Prix!’ I’m not sure what kind of reaction she was expecting but I sort of lazily got up, reluctantly dropped Major Matt Mason and dragged my grumpy little arse indoors. The TV reception in remote Kentish villages was almost non-existent in those days so all I remember seeing was a foggy black and white picture of my dad waving to the crowd as he drove through the gasworks hairpin on his last lap. I wasn’t too impressed with the picture, but I do remember getting a shot of something like pride to see the old man at work. Maybe that planted a bit of a seed? I wonder. I was too stupid to know what I thought about anything back then. But I knew if you bent Major Matt Mason’s leg too many times you’d get stabbed in the finger. Ah, happy days!<\/p>

So what was your first experience of the Principality, Johnny?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>The first time I went was in 1987 for a Formula Three race. It was a support race for the Grand Prix and I remember being absolutely wowed by the place. You were there too, I think, weren’t you?<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>In ’87? I was, but I didn’t qualify, damn it!<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>I’d never been anywhere like it before in my life. It was just so different to everywhere else. Can you recall the first time you ever walked the track? I do. Or at least I remember the first time I attempted to walk the track. You couldn’t really do a full track walk in those days, but thanks to the people at Benetton, whom I already had a connection with, I managed to do about half of it. My first thought was, this isn’t a bloody racetrack, it’s just a concrete den of iniquity. How fabulous! There were empty bottles of beer absolutely everywhere and even the odd body. Not dead bodies, of course. Bodies that had been soaked in rather too much alcohol and for rather too long. It was absolute carnage from start to finish. What I remember most, though, were those turbo V6 engines knocking out 1,200 bhp at 12,000 rpm – experiencing that was genuinely life changing for me. The hemmed-in track also made everything – the sounds, the speed, the smells, the mistakes and the danger – very, very real. There was no get-out clause at Monaco. Or at least that’s how it felt when I walked part of the track. You were either on it or in the wall. Until I first raced at Monaco the most dangerous track I’d ever raced at was probably Oulton Park. This place, though, was just ridiculous.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>The only track you could compare it to back then was Pau. Did you ever race there?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Nope. I should have when I was racing F3000, but I crashed the race before in Vallelunga in Italy and had concussion so was not allowed to drive. I do remember driving F3 at Monaco, though, for a one-off race. The F1 paddock was where it always is but we were based by the tennis courts, which is about a mile away. That meant we had to drive our cars to the track, so basically on the open road. We did so at about six o’clock in the morning prior to qualifying, so while all the residents were trying to get some sleep, a parade of F3 cars would take to the roads – which were not closed like the ones that made up the track, by the way – and basically cause mayhem.<\/p>

That 1987 F3 race was genuinely the highlight of my life up until that point. The only run-off was at Sainte Devote, and I remember experiencing this mixture of intense terror and intense pleasure. I’d obviously experienced that before many times but not to such an extent. Death or a serious accident wasn’t just close going around Monaco, it was sitting on your bloody shoulder, going, Won’t be long now, Johnny. One tiny little mistake and I’ve got you!<\/em><\/p>

Damon: <\/span>What about the first time you raced there in F1?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>That would have been in 1989. At the time, Monaco was the third race of the season. Despite finishing fourth at the first race in Brazil, I’d struggled with braking, and at race two in San Marino I qualified twenty-third (one behind Martin Brundle!) and finished eleventh. My feet, one of which had been almost severed in an accident at Brands the previous year, were in absolute agony and I’d had to be lowered into the car in Brazil. In hindsight, it was too soon for me to be racing. After finishing fourth in Brazil (behind Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and Maurício Gugelmin) I naturally gained a bit of confidence but ultimately it was a false dawn. There are nineteen corners at Monaco and you spend 21 per cent of the lap braking. If ever a track was going to highlight my problem, this was it.<\/p>

I don’t want to turn this into some kind of moan-fest, but because of everything I’d been through I was seen as being damaged goods and the only person apart from myself who had any faith in me was Peter Collins. Not only was I desperate to repay Peter’s belief in me but I also wanted to prove all the naysayers wrong. What was I supposed to do, though? Ask Peter to wait until my feet didn’t hurt anymore? They still give me jip today so I’d still be waiting. I had to give it a go. At Monaco, as with San Marino before that, I had to brake with my heel and unfortunately it only really worked once every seven or eight laps. Then, at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve in Montreal, which is somewhere you have to brake hard and often, I was well and truly found out – and that was the end of my first stint with Benetton.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Binned off by Briatore?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Yes. Which was fair enough. A driver who can’t brake isn’t much use really.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>My feet have been neither crushed nor amputated but the first time I raced in Canada I couldn’t walk when I got out. My right foot was burning from having to be hard on either the throttle or the brakes all the time. Seriously, you have my sympathy, Johnny. Like, ouch!<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Thank you, Champ. Anyway, sod Canada. Let’s get back to Monaco.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Agreed. Leaving the pits at Monaco and driving up the hill is certainly one of the most exhilarating things I’ve ever experienced. It’s even better when you have to pass another car. Every race has its fair share of squeaky-bum moments, but going up that hill always used to evoke a round of profanities from me, which was rare. You remember in Star Wars<\/em> when the Millennium Falcon goes into hyperdrive and all the stars start whizzing past? Well, that’s what it’s like when you drive an F1 car out of the paddock and up the hill at Monaco. It’s like doing the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs (one for the geeks there). Once again, it’s because everything’s in such close proximity to the car. On a motorway, you often don’t notice how fast you’re going until you hit a slip road. Why? Because everything narrows down and your speed becomes more relatable. At Monaco, you can tell how close you are to the barriers by the noise. The louder it becomes, the closer you are. There are times when you can hear, better than see, how close you are to the barrier. It’s a good sphincter test that one. All rather wee-inducing.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>All rather wee-inducing? You’re like something from another century!<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>I’ll take that as a compliment, Johnny, but I’m not quite Jacob Rees-Mogg.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Qualifying at Monaco was, in my mind, the biggest single challenge there was in F1. That’s how I used to regard it. These days the track’s quite flat but that wasn’t always the case. I think it’s the madness of being able to drive a car with that amount of power around such narrow streets that makes it so enthralling. It’s difficult to conjure up an everyday equivalent, but I suppose it would be like the government removing the speed limits on every road, street and motorway and then handing out Ferraris to everyone and saying, ‘Here you are boys and girls. Go and fill your boots!’ The people of Great Britain would be like, Really? Can I? That’s fantastic!<\/em> Which is basically what we were like when we first began to grasp what Monaco was all about.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>You’ve hit the nail on the head there, Johnny. One of my biggest fears when I first went around Monaco was whether my car was going to fit on the track. That’s completely absurd, of course, as the cars clearly do fit on the track. Just. To drive an F1 car around Monaco is to enter the Twilight Zone. Take your lap times, for instance. The first lap out always seems to take about thirty seconds, but it’s really closer to two minutes! But as the weekend goes on a lap seems to take longer and longer. The track is actually expanding your mind and time is slowing down in an Einsteinian time-warp paradigm. Are you writing this down, Johnny?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Making mental notes. Yes. (Aside:<\/em> He’s blooming mad!) I love that bit when you drive up over Avenue d’Ostende and then down towards Massenet. I always used to think to myself, whatever you do, do not understeer going into this corner! The relief I used to feel when the car turned was immense.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Going back to that F3 race in 1987 for a moment, do you remember where you finished?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Yes, I finished third behind a French driver called Didier Artzet, who didn’t progress, and my fellow short-arse and former teammate, Jean Alesi. I was behind Nicola Larini for most of the race but managed to overtake him right at the last minute. By the time we actually got to Monaco, I’d won four of the first seven races of the 1987 British Formula Three Championship, so I was on a roll. Subsequently, I was keen to impress the bigwigs from F1, and they were all there – Enzo Ferrari, Frank Williams, Ken Tyrell, Ron Dennis. The only man in F1 who makes me look like a giant was there too – Bernie Ecclestone. Before the race an idiot from our team (I was driving for Eddie Jordan at the time, who became my mentor) went and put a spool differential on my car and it turned out to be a complete disaster.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Don’t tell me. That idiot was you?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>How did you guess? The reason I put it on (I’d used it in previous races, by the way, and to great effect) was because I hadn’t experienced any understeer with it and I was convinced that it would work around Monaco. My engineer, Dave Bambo, thought I was bonkers but as opposed to pooh-poohing my suggestion he allowed it for first qualifying. The moment I went out I thought, Shit, what the hell have I done?!<\/em> I could hardly manoeuvre the bloody car. Dave was obviously teaching me a lesson and the spool came straight off. I still go red thinking about it. By the way, my podium finish at the 1987 Monaco Grand Prix Formula Three was the best result by a Brit since 1984, so all in all my first experiences of Monaco were good. Apart from that bloody differential.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>I wish I could say the same. I was driving for a team called Intersport in 1987, alongside Martin Donnelly, but the Toyota engine we had was just too heavy up top for that particular race. Neither of us qualified, so it wasn’t exactly a success. I did still win a couple of races in the 1987 British Formula Three Championship, though – at Zandvoort and Spa – and I believe I finished a meritorious fifth in the standings.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Fifth, eh? What an amazing effort. Just out of interest, who won the Championship?<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Now you’ve got me. Some forgettable cove. Diminutive in stature and bereft of character and personality. Johnny . . . something or another. Anyway, back to F1, which is fortunately where the two of us ended up.<\/p>

While I agree with you when you say that qualifying at Monaco is probably the biggest single task a Formula One driver faces in a season, I’d probably expand on that slightly and say that, front to back, it’s the hardest race of all. It demands an entirely different approach at every juncture, so getting yourself into the ‘zone’, as it were, with everything that’s going on, is nigh on impossible. It even starts a day earlier than the other races, so instead of arriving on the Thursday you have to arrive on the Wednesday. You do get a break on the Friday, but that’s kind of detrimental in a way, as you just want to get on with it. The trick is to keep busy and fortunately that’s not difficult over there. That said, even the simplest of pursuits, such as going out for a meal, have to be planned like a military campaign. First of all you have to try and get a table, which isn’t always easy on race weekend, regardless of who you are. Should you manage to book one, you then have to try and get yourself and your guest or guests to the restaurant itself. As we’ve already said, things can get a little bit hectic in the Principality during the fifth month of the year. Even a short walk can be fraught with danger and every route seems to be barriered off.<\/p>

Should you succeed in reaching your eatery of choice, you then have to try and make sure that you don’t get bombarded by autograph hunters for the duration of your meal. Some people, such as Johnny, absolutely love being set upon by hordes of adoring people (who are usually quite refreshed in Monaco), whereas I prefer them to take a ticket and form an orderly queue. Even getting from the hotel to the paddock is a nightmare. Or at least, it used to be. The track closes at 6 a.m., so regardless of where you were staying you’d have to work out how to get to the paddock via an alternative route. It was like something out of the Krypton Factor<\/em>. In the late 1980s and early ’90s, which is when you, me and Brundle burst onto the scene, some of the smaller teams such as Ligier, Lola and Minardi would be based way up in the multi-storey car park, which is almost in France. To be fair, the amount of cars we had in those days was almost double the amount we have now, but you didn’t want to be in an ‘overspill team’. You end up walking miles and climbing mountains. In 1989, for instance, which is when laddo here arrived, thirty-nine cars were entered for the Monaco Grand Prix and twelve of them failed to qualify or pre-qualify. That must have been complete and utter madness. The above certainly isn’t a complaint, by the way. It’s obviously an honour, a pleasure and a privilege racing at Monaco. I’m merely trying to describe the myriad differences a driver faces at Monaco, and how we go about dealing with them. The issues we face are obviously what you’d call first-world problems, but unless you’re properly prepared you can be exhausted before you even do a lap.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>A lot of it is obviously down to the individual. It’s non-stop from the moment you arrive until the moment you leave, so if you’re gregarious it’s manna from heaven and if you’re shy it’s manna from hell. I could never sleep because of all the bloody fireworks.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>One year I was there lying in my hotel room trying desperately to get to sleep and there was a couple having sex in the next room. And then the bloody fireworks started going off at the same time! I don’t think the two were meant to be synchronized. Bloody impressive if they were! It seemed to go on almost as long as the flipping race, too. I remember thinking to myself, One day I’m going to come back here as a spectator and see what I’ve been missing. Experience it as a fan.<\/em> Not necessarily like the couple next door did! But it is one of the frustrations about Monaco that, for the entire weekend, you’re surrounded by tens of thousands of people who are, for want of a better phrase, on the lash. So if you are lucky enough to go to Monaco one day, spare a thought for all the poor racing drivers trying to get some sleep, would you? ‘Turn that bloody racket down!’ Can’t see that happening somehow. Some drivers claimed they could party all night and still be on top form the next day, though. People like Eddie Irvine and a few others. Maybe they could?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>The same as James Hunt, I suppose. They just threw caution to the wind and joined the throng! So what’s the worst experiences you’ve had at Monaco? As a driver, that is.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Well, the worst experience I’ve had was in 1994. Monaco was the first race after the funerals of Ayrton Senna and Roland Ratzenberger and F1 was in a very dark place. We all felt very down, and the atmosphere in the grandstands and on the streets was similar. The sky may have been blue but there was a dark cloud hanging over all of us. I remember I went into the changing room on the Thursday and opened a cupboard and there was Ayrton’s T-shirt still hanging up. That really took my breath away. For the first time ever, I think, nobody really wanted to race or even be in Monaco. Do you remember it, Johnny?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Yes, of course I do. We almost lost Rubens Barrichello at Imola too. I wasn’t as close to Ayrton as you were, Champ, but we’d always had a laugh together and he’d been an inspiration to me. Do you know, he used to pinch my bum as we were leaving the drivers’ meetings? I was probably closer to Roland really. Thanks to Gerhard Berger giving me a lift in his plane, I was able to attend both funerals. As Ayrton’s teammate, though, it must have been incredibly difficult for you.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>I guess it was. I had to try and keep the team’s hopes up and I’d be lying if I said I was up to the challenge. I watched a report on the race some years later and the presenter made the very valid point that during the minute’s silence that was held shortly before the race the countenances of some of the younger drivers displayed fear and confusion. F1 was being accused of being a barbaric sport at the time and, in hindsight, remembering two deceased drivers like that before such a challenging race probably wasn’t a good idea. Then there was Karl Wendlinger’s accident, of course. He was driving for Sauber and during first practice he exited the tunnel and lost control of the car under braking for the Nouvelle Chicane. After hitting the wall sideways his head struck a barrier. He was in a coma for several weeks and didn’t drive again for the rest of the year.<\/p>

If anything good came out of Imola, maybe it was the reformation of the Grand Prix Drivers’ Association (GPDA). I forget how long the association had been disbanded for but after a meeting at the Automobile Club de Monaco on the Friday, between the current drivers and some former drivers such as Niki Lauda, a request was made for the FIA to recognize the existence of the newly formed association and to work with us to improve safety in F1. We elected Martin Brundle as chairman and Gerhard Berger and Michael Schumacher as directors. Almost to honour the reformation, it was those three who ended up on the podium! It worked for them, then!<\/p>

Come on then, Johnny. Let’s hear your worst Monaco experience before moving onto more uplifting stuff.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Well, my worst personal experience as a driver – apart from aquaplaning off in 1998 after qualifying in seventh, which was a bugger – would have to be my last Monaco, which was in 2000. Twenty years ago! Bloody hell. Throughout my entire career Monaco had always been the highlight of my season and I knew I was going to miss it. For a working-class boy from Essex with two dodgy feet to even get in sniffing distance of the world’s most glamorous sporting event was incredible, but to race there ten times and bag a podium was the stuff dreams are made of. Or at least my dreams. Knowing that I’d never get that buzz again was an incredible wrench and afterwards is probably the closest I’ve ever come to having withdrawal symptoms.<\/p>

My name is Johnny Herbert and I am a Monaco-holic.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>A Monaco-holic? You’re not on your own, Johnny. Certainly not in terms of that feeling when you have to stop racing. My dad should probably have retired several years before he did but the fact was he just couldn’t give it up. It’s like breaking up a marriage. Not many drivers have spoken publicly about it but I think it’s a very real problem. Rubens Barrichello’s solution was to keep racing! Since retiring from F1 in 2011 he’s spent eight consecutive seasons racing stock cars in Brazil. I’m assuming he doesn’t need the money so he must still be hooked. But there’s nothing worse than having to retire out of necessity rather than choice. My least favourite experience at Monaco in terms of racing was when my engine blew up in the tunnel in 1996.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>That was my best, because on that occasion I finished third!<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>That’s another fine podium you owe me, Stanley. But in all honesty, you finishing third did obviously alleviate some of my massive disappointment. Very considerate of you. After I retired from the race I stood by the barrier with my engine smoking, thinking, I do hope Johnny comes through and ends up on the podium<\/em> – not! On a more positive note, I think my best Monaco experience was taking the pole lap in 1995. I beat Michael Schumacher by almost eight tenths of a second, and looking back it was probably the closest I ever came to producing a perfect lap. Timed to absolute perfection, even if I do say so myself. And as everyone knows, if you have pole at Monaco, you have to be a complete idiot not to convert that into a win. But I managed it. Michael Schumacher got ahead during my first pit stop and led for most of the race. You finished fourth, didn’t you, Johnny?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>I did, which, despite being lapped by you and Michael, was a big thrill for me. Not as thrilling as the podium, of course, which is my all-time favourite Monaco moment, but a thrill nonetheless. The podium at Monaco is totally different to anywhere else. Prince Rainier was still around when I made it up there, and that I found impressive. Working-class Essex boy, you see. It doesn’t take much.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>You and Prince Albert are mates, though, aren’t you? You two used to go down the pub.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Absolutely! I lived in Monaco for about fifteen years and Albert and I, or Bert, as he’s known to his mates on the dominos team, used to frequent the Monaco boozers quite often. ‘Get me a brown ale and some pork scratchings, would you, Johnny?’ he used to call out. ‘Yes, Your Royal Highness,’ I’d reply. ‘Have you got a euro for the jukebox, and a stool so I can reach?’ He’s actually a really nice chap and he loves his racing.<\/p>

One of the most shocking off-track stories I’ve ever heard about Monaco involves the late, great Roy Salvadori, who was around in the 1950s and early ’60s. After a fabulous career racing for Ferrari, BRM, Lola and many others, Roy ended up living in Monaco and one day in the 1990s, who should move in underneath him but Jason Plato.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Really? Plato? Oh my God, that’s horrific! What happened?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>I read this in Jason’s autobiography – apparently after Roy came down to complain about Jason’s music one day they became friends. It’s still shocking, though. Fancy having to live above Plato. And in the 1990s!<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>In some ways it’s actually more difficult being a pundit at Monaco than it is being a driver. When I say difficult, I don’t mean in terms of hardship. When all’s said and done we’re treated like kings really, or at least dukes, but when you’re there as a pundit you’ll be up at seven every morning and you won’t finish until at least 9 p.m.<\/p>

Johnny, I think I can hear violins?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>That’ll be the readers, Damon.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Bless them all. While we’re here, I want to add two favourite moments as a spectator at Monaco. We were talking earlier about the turbos, well in 1987 I watched Nigel’s pole lap at Monaco, which was incredible. At the time I used to be able to get a pass from Bernie and could just walk around the edge of the track. There was no catch fencing at all, so in hindsight it was ridiculously dangerous. I was quite lucky, really, because as I was standing by Massenet, Philippe Streiff in the Tyrell crashed right in front of me and I got covered in brake fluid and carbon fibre shards. That was interesting.<\/p>

Best of all, though, was watching Nigel on qualifiers in that turbo Honda. He came up the hill and I had real trouble moving my head fast enough to keep up with him. His unfeasibly large testicles, which you mentioned earlier Johnny and to great effect, were obviously larger still that day. I remember thinking to myself as he flew past me, Shit, he’s not going to stop!<\/em> I genuinely thought Nigel Mansell was going to die that day. He obviously didn’t, thank God, and made it round in one piece. You’d never know by talking to Nigel, who can sound a bit like a retired bank manager, that he must be one of the bravest human beings on the planet. Earlier in the weekend I’d been standing on the bank on the exit of Casino behind Eddie Jordan. You remember the pop-off valves that used to crack open when you changed gear? Well, they were sort of mini explosions. When one of the Ferraris went past the valve popped and I swear Eddie’s wig jumped off his head. I used to think that perhaps the Jordan syrup story was a bit of blarney, but it wasn’t. Eddie’s wig did a jig! I saw it wid me own eyes. That’s my generic cultural appropriation accent.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>I’m actually crying listening to that. You do know that he glues it on these days?<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Really? I had no idea. How do you know?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>We were once on a plane to Jerez and me and my mechanic, Bruce Stewart, had a bet to see if we could find out how Eddie made his wig stay on. Fortunately Eddie fell asleep during the flight, so I took my chance and investigated. These days, whenever I’m alone with Eddie I always start looking quizzically at his hair, just to make sure it’s not moving. Whenever I do he immediately starts talking to me in a very schoolmasterly way. ‘Johnnyyyyyyyyy,’ he says. ‘Steady on, Johnnyyyyyyy.’ What an absolutely fabulous man, though. We only tease him because we love him.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Oh! I wouldn’t go that far! Just kidding, EJ! He’s our link, really. You drove for him at the very start of your career, Johnny, and I drove for him at the very end. I won him his first Grand Prix and you won him the Formula Three Championship and his first win in F3000. He’s a bit special, is our Eddie. Life would be a lot less colourful without him. And balder.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>I’ll second that. Speaking of links, before we leave the Principality we should give a mention to the film we made with Sky F1 in 2014. It was just a short film, but it was a heck of a lot of fun and is one of the most popular things we’ve ever done as pundits. Apart from putting down our microphones and going home.<\/p>

A few weeks before the 2014 Monaco Grand Prix somebody suggested that I make a comeback as a driver. Although it was obviously a joke (although not that obviously), Sky thought there was mileage in the scenario and asked Champ and me if we’d like to go over there a bit earlier and make a film about me making a comeback.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>Some would say you were never there in the first place.<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>Be that as it may, I played myself, the excitable yet perhaps slightly over the hill racing driver, and you played my manager. For one shot in the hotel, the director wanted us to get in bed together, à la Morecambe and Wise. Damon was supposed to be wearing his dressing gown and reading Le Monde<\/em> while I was supposed to be wearing my race suit and reading the Beano<\/em>. It would have been fabulous, but one of us said no.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>I know you were disappointed, Johnny, but I have my reputation to think of. What I found slightly unnerving was how naturally the whole thing fell into place; the excitable racing driver who has to be calmed down by his slightly po-faced but much more mature manager. It all felt oddly familiar. One of my favourite scenes, apart from us both impersonating Sir Jackie Stewart, is when the team went and asked the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Alain Prost, Daniel Ricciardo and the aforementioned Sir Jackie what they thought of the mighty atom making a comeback. Can you remember the verdict, Johnny?<\/p>

Johnny: <\/span>That I might just have been carrying a little bit too much weight.<\/p>

Damon: <\/span>I think we’ll leave it there, shall we?<\/p> <\/section> <\/body>","format":"DG","formatDescription":"EPUB","formatDetail":"E200","illustrator":"","imprintDisplayName":"Macmillan","isFeatured":false,"isbn":"9781529040012","isbn10":"1529040019","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/extracts.panmacmillan.com\/site\/extr\/static\/jacketimages\/9781529040012.jpg","keynote":"","nextPageLink":null,"publicationDate":"2021-04-01T00:00:00Z","reader":"","relatedWorks":[{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781529040036","isbn10":"1529040035","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2021-04-15T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529058253","isbn10":"1529058252","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1146014&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=91417","publicationDate":"2020-05-06T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529058260","isbn10":"1529058260","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1146028&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=91418","publicationDate":"2020-05-06T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529058277","isbn10":"1529058279","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1146122&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=91419","publicationDate":"2020-05-06T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529058284","isbn10":"1529058287","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1146136&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=91420","publicationDate":"2020-05-06T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BB","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529039993","isbn10":"1529039991","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1135161&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=87842","publicationDate":"2020-04-09T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"Trade Paperback","formatDetail":"B106","isbn":"9781529040005","isbn10":"1529040000","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1135175&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=87843","publicationDate":"2020-04-09T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AJ","formatDescription":"Lossless Format Audio, WAV","formatDetail":"A104","isbn":"9781529040029","isbn10":"1529040027","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1144656&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=87846","publicationDate":"2020-05-05T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BB","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529066876","isbn10":"1529066875","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2020-10-15T00:00:00Z"}],"title":"Lights Out, Full Throttle"},{"author":"John Hudson","authorBiography":"John Hudson FRGS is a survival instructor, broadcaster, writer, public speaker and training consultant based in Cornwall, whose specialist work takes him to some of the most remote and extreme environments around the globe. A former RAF helicopter pilot, John is the British Military's Chief SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Extraction) Instructor, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He's also been a resident survival expert on two series of Discovery's prime-time TV show Survive That<\/i> – a.k.a Dude You're Screwed<\/i> in the USA – successfully putting his own resilience to the test on camera in front of millions. From the darkest depths of a jungle cenote, to the top of a stormy Alaskan glacier, John's sense of humour and everyday stoicism have won him many fans worldwide.","bicCodeList":"WSZV,SPO030000,VSPM,BTP,VFJS,BGHA","bisacCodeList":"SEL024000,BIO038000,SEL027000","estimatedReadingTimeMinutes":16,"extractHtml":"

INTRODUCTION
WHY DO SOME PEOPLE SURVIVE?<\/span><\/h2>

On Christmas Eve 1971, a violent thunderstorm raged high above the Peruvian Amazon. Huge black clouds flashed white with lightning over the jungle-covered slopes. Through this churning mass, a small propeller-driven plane was tossed like a scrap of paper in the surging updrafts. LANSA Flight 508, en route from Lima to Pucallpa. Inside the plane, the ninety-two terrified passengers and crew became in turn weightless, then slammed down into their seats, their belongings raining out of the overhead lockers in pitch darkness.<\/p>

At 12.36 p.m., about halfway into the one-hour journey, all contact with Flight 508 was lost.<\/p>

Eleven days later, a seventeen-year-old girl crawled out of the jungle. She was the only survivor. Her name was Juliane Koepcke. She would later describe how she saw one of the engines get struck by lightning and the entire plane being ripped apart in mid-air by the violence of the storm.<\/p>

That Juliane survived falling for two miles without a parachute could be described as miraculous, but the fact she was then able to walk and crawl for ten days through thick jungle with concussion, deep cuts and a broken collarbone, and finally emerge to safety, is at least equally incredible. It sounds like something so extreme as to be beyond understanding, and certainly beyond what ordinary people are capable of. But Juliane isn’t some kind of superwoman, born different from the rest of us. The fact that she survived was down to a sequence of events and behaviours that allowed her to achieve the seemingly impossible but, which when understood and applied correctly, are things we can all do in all of our lives. Let’s look at what happened.<\/p>

The aspect of the story that certainly isn’t repeatable, of course, is surviving the fall. When she came to on the forest floor, apart from the broken collarbone, she had cuts, bumps, bruises and eyes swollen half-closed from the force of the impact. No one knows for certain why the fall itself wasn’t fatal, but Juliane was seatbelted into a row of three seats which spun around like a sycamore seed as it fell, and she was finally slowed in the last few metres by the branches of the tall trees themselves.<\/p>

But once she was down in the jungle, there were any number of wrong steps she could have taken. Can you imagine what that must have been like, coming to for the first time, after drifting in and out of consciousness, when your worst fear has come true and you’ve been sucked out of a plane: a seventeen-year-old, injured, scared, lying on the floor of the jungle as vultures landed in the treetops around her? She had been belted in a seat next to her mother, but there was no sign of her now. After she had managed to stand and after searching for her mother for an entire day with no success, she had to decide what to do. The first thing she had to do was overcome the very human impulse to give up before she began. What would you do first? Try and find other survivors? Look for food and water? Tend your wounds as best you could? Look for things you could use from the wreckage of the plane? Make a shelter? The normal advice in any survival situation is to stay at the site of the incident if you can. If Juliane had stayed put in the forest and waited to be rescued she’d still be there today, absorbed into the jungle soil beneath her seat like the others.<\/p>

Juliane, however, had something absolutely invaluable. Knowledge. She had spent two years being home-schooled in the Amazon jungle by her parents, who were both research scientists. She knew that this was an environment that she could survive in.<\/p>

Critically, she also knew that the jungle canopy was too thick for rescuers to see her where she was lying, and that she had no means to signal to them. She had to move. But where? The jungle stretched in every direction, it hummed and seethed with all sorts of life, much of it, she knew, potentially dangerous. So she thought back to the advice that her father had given her about getting rescued in dense tropical forest. She sat up and listened. And that’s when she heard the sound of trickling water. She remembered his tip that following water would lead you to people. So that’s what she did. Hardly able to see anything without her glasses and with only one shoe, she limped and crawled along the stream, which eventually became a river, for over 200 hours. She had to put her one-shoed foot tentatively forwards each time to avoid the jungle’s many thorns and fangs. The only food she had was a single bag of sweets she’d found after the crash. The temptation to give in must have been enormous, but she kept going, dragging herself along, one metre at a time. After a week or so one of her wounds became infested with maggots, but she kept going and was eventually able to get them out by dousing them in petrol she found in a hut used by loggers. Ultimately, it was those workers who found her, semi-conscious in their hut, and were able to take her on the ten-hour boat trip to the nearest village. In the years afterwards, Juliane became a biologist, specializing in Peruvian bats and working in a zoological library in Munich. In 2010, she published a memoir. In an interview around publication, she said, ‘I had nightmares for a long time, for years, and of course the grief about my mother’s death and that of the other people came back again and again. The thought “Why was I the only survivor?” haunts me. It always will.’<\/p>

The question of why she survived haunted Juliane, it was a kind of guilt. But later it was reported that fourteen other passengers survived the fall to the jungle floor, strewn widely over a massive area, but didn’t make it out. So the question takes on another more literal quality for me: why her? What was different about her?<\/p>

What she was able to do, after the initial luck that gave her the opportunity, was to prioritize, utilize specific knowledge and fundamental principles and apply them to her situation in a flexible way. She didn’t freeze, she remembered one piece of crucial advice, prioritized correctly, was adaptable, and then didn’t let anything stop her, task by task, inch by inch, in spite of every mental and physical hurdle put in front of her.<\/p>

What she did was remarkable, but not unrepeatable.<\/p>

In this book, I want to introduce you to people like Juliane, partly because their incredible stories offer inspiration but also because the way that they approached their situations can teach us so much about how we deal with decisions in our own lives.<\/p>

Because one thing I know is that bad things happen. Some people deal with them. Some don’t. Hopefully very few of us will ever find ourselves in the exact situations described in the book, but we can all learn life skills from them.<\/p>

By studying the choices people have made under the most extreme pressure, where the stakes are highest, we can learn how it’s possible to teach our brains to make better choices whenever we have to make them.<\/p>

Why have I written this book?<\/span><\/h3>

My day job is Chief Survival Instructor to the UK military. What that means is that I train the instructors, who in turn teach every serviceman and woman in the British military how to survive. I spend my time travelling the world, seeking out the newest ideas and technologies and how they might be applied in some of the most extreme environments known to humanity. I’ve trekked through the world’s driest deserts and its remotest jungles. I’ve been dumped into freezing water, trudged across barren tundra and been hunted through forests.<\/p>

Right now, I’m writing this introduction in the closest thing to a moon base that I can think of; I’m nearer to the North Pole than to a tree. The sun will come back above our white horizon in this part of the Arctic next week. We made headlines a while ago when the temperatures here were lower than those on Mars.<\/p>

It feels like another world too. The snow even sounds different when you move on it; it’s frozen hard and squeaks just like polystyrene as you take a step. The freezing air feels different in my nostrils as I breathe it in, the little hairs freeze rigid as the air passes them, making my nose feel sticky inside. I’ve left my snow machine running outside, its headlights forming a pool of yellow in the cool blue twilight of midday; engines are hard to start when it’s really cold so it’s better and safer not to turn them off once they’re going.<\/p>

When reaching for a door’s metal handle up here, I leave my gloves on even though it’s warm on the other side, centimetres away. Touching metal at these temperatures with bare skin can cause frostbite – flash-freezing your flesh. The door is unlocked like all the others round here; you don’t want to have to fumble through many layers of warm clothing for keys if you’re being followed by a hungry polar bear. Here, being absent-minded can get you killed quickly; prioritization isn’t an optional extra.<\/p>

I’ve spent years communicating that to people of all sorts of abilities from all sorts of different backgrounds and listening to how different their approach to problem solving is to mine. I’ve also done my fair share of sitting in offices too – as you can imagine, there’s a lot of admin and reports that go along with the exciting stuff – and I have come to apply survival principles in my everyday life. I know from what others tell me that they find the techniques useful in their lives too, especially their working lives.<\/p>

Over the last twenty years I’ve also been collecting survival stories and attempting to essentialize what survival is and how we do it. A great truism is that a wise person learns from their mistakes; a wiser one learns from the mistakes of others. When I train survival instructors I like to include stories of past survivors, alongside examples of those that weren’t so lucky.<\/p>

Although our culture is full of disaster and survival stories, from Homer’s Odyssey<\/em>, to Robinson Crusoe<\/em>, to Titanic<\/em>, we rarely properly analyse why some people survive and some don’t. We either ascribe it to blind luck, or to something more innate. The real answer is that we can all be better at developing the sort of mind-set that allows us to make better decisions under pressure. Of course, the very best training for dealing with a situation is having experienced it first hand before, but there are a multitude of easier things we can all do to be better prepared.<\/p>

That’s where my team come in. The practical world of military survival is all about learning a single, simple template that can be transposed anytime, anywhere. The people we train have enough going on in their heads with their day jobs, so survival rules have to be simple, memorable and multi-purpose. It’s about working out what’s important and what isn’t, what’s going to hurt you first and what you can do to give yourself the best chance of success. Once we understand our bodies’ physical necessities – from their normal baseline ‘tick-over’ to the very edges of their performance capabilities – we can truly know our own limits. And once we know those boundaries, we can work out strategies to surpass them, by how we approach the situation in front of us. For best results our actions need to be done in the right sequence, and this doesn’t mean memorizing abstract checklists – I hate them. The key is appreciating how the human body and most importantly the mind functions, and using that understanding to increase your performance under pressure.<\/p>

Your most important kit<\/span><\/h3>

I get asked a lot what the best bit of kit to carry for survival is. It’s not a fancy knife, or a geo-location device. The most important tool you can have with you for survival – or any kind of situation requiring self-reliance – is a well-stocked brain. Unfortunately, unlike most survival gear, it doesn’t come with a user manual and subsequently many of us aren’t using ours in the best way.<\/p>

More than ever today, we find ourselves barraged with information, with demands on our attention, which all seem equally loud, equally urgent. Many people spend their lives frantically checking their emails, cycling from one app on their smartphone to the next, refreshing their devices but not themselves. This information barrage means that we get the same sense of having solved a problem by making that little unread messages number on our phone disappear, or by posting on social media, as from solving a real problem in our lives, and the reward is much more immediate. This ‘problem solving’ fires the same circuits in our brain, gives that same little hit of pleasurable dopamine as true problem solving, but it’s constant and it’s exhausting us. At the same time, we never have to remember a phone number, or use a map – we can find out almost anything without having to remember it and our attention spans are shot to pieces. It’s like we’re only training one muscle in the gym and leaving everything else to wither away. We’re out of balance.<\/p>

Now, I’m no Luddite, I use technology all the time, but we’re carrying all this extra equipment that we think is essential – it isn’ t – and we’re constantly weighed down by it. We’ve stopped solving actual problems for ourselves, so when a problem occurs, we don’t know how to go back to first principles. What survival teaches us is to essentialize, to carry only what we need. When we travel lighter, we travel faster and cover greater distances.<\/p>

I’ve taken individuals who’ve suffered traumatic experiences on survival courses. I’ve seen first hand the confidence that comes from realizing they are equipped to deal with anything that can be thrown at them. I want to put all of that knowledge into this book. If I can give you one tiny part of the freedom and self-reliance that I know comes from realizing you can be dropped into pretty much any situation and be OK, then I’ll have succeeded.<\/p>

We can all survive better<\/span><\/h3>

This book isn’t a traditional ‘survival manual’ though – the world has enough of those already. In all likelihood, you won’t ever need to use the knowledge in this book in a life-threatening situation, which is a good thing. The real advantage to military survival skills is that because they are a set of guiding principles, their ethos can be applied to any situation.<\/p>

We are all forced to make choices constantly, to try and deal with setbacks, to react to shocking news, to prioritize tasks and face things that seem insurmountable. We will likely all face moments when our spirit is tested. The stories of survivors and how they accomplished what they did are a treasure trove of information on how we can approach these moments of crisis.<\/p>

Because the fact is, whether it’s a shipwreck in the eighteenth century or a text message that changes your world for ever, humans all have the same type of brain with which to process everything, and the way we respond to new situations hasn’t really caught up with how vastly different life is for most of us in the developed world. It seems as if every day a new story breaks about how many people are unhappy at work, or how ever more important that elusive sense of purpose is to all of us in our working lives. Luckily, it also turns out that what we do when we’re dealing with the unexpected – when we’re under pressure, when the stakes are so high that the unimportant things fall away – is focus on those essential things that keep us motivated, that help us to achieve, and that ultimately make us happy.<\/p>

Whenever I’ve given survival training to people who work in offices, I’ve noticed the satisfaction they get from a small task, well done, with a clear purpose and which clearly contributes to the good of the whole group. That’s because for most of them, their jobs involve a kind of endless mediated chain of emails in which a personal sense of ownership and completion of tasks has become blurry and indistinct, and shared goals less recognizable. In my world, if you make the fire right, it lights, if you construct a shelter correctly, you stay dry. As a species, we are innately drawn to this sort of thing; after all, the sorts of things we do when we apply survival thinking are the things we’ve been doing as a species for most of our existence, so it’s no wonder we’re set up to find them pleasurable. If applying the lessons in this book brings a tiny bit of these goal-directed rewards back into everyday life, I’ll have done my job.<\/p>

But more than this, I think there are, on a far broader level, many lessons from the world of extreme survival which are clearly applicable to anyone. For example, one of the most popular misconceptions about extreme events is that some people just naturally or instinctively know what to do, or how to survive, in any situation – while others don’t and never will. Time after time, we see the hero act while everyone else panics or freezes; the myth gets repeated, instilling in the rest of us a ‘why bother even trying’ mindset when confronted with seemingly<\/em> impossible tasks.<\/p>

But I can tell you, categorically, there is no mysterious singular ‘Will to Survive’ or survival gene that some people have while others don’t. Of course, some people bring different levels of handy skills, or others have relevant experiences that can give them a little head start in a new challenge. But while we may not all get gold medals in the race, we could all cross the finish line.<\/p>

Survival reminds us that if something is difficult then we have two choices; try harder or stop trying. Stopping trying in survival normally means dying.<\/p>

Survival often comes down to your ability to keep putting in effort even when you’re feeling discomfort. When it’s getting dark and you’re soaking wet and you have to get over the next ridge before you can make a shelter, you quickly realize the universe doesn’t owe you anything. The survival mindset has no room for entitlement.<\/p>

The lessons from survival training involve working hard and accepting temporary hardship; but they lead to an increased ability to deal with whatever life can throw at you.<\/p>

Working at the edge of human experience reminds us again and again that becoming competent at anything new takes concentration and effort. These are crucial things that I believe it is worth reminding every leader, employee, colleague and parent of.<\/p>

We’ll start by looking at the distillation of every successful survival story I’ve studied.<\/p>

The Survival Triangle<\/span><\/h3>

Below is the Survival Triangle, my personal unpicking of how people cope in the direst circumstances, the essence of this book.<\/p>

\"\"<\/div>

Pared down to its simplest form, the Survival Triangle essentially states: ‘If I can do anything to change my situation, I will begin to feel in control of it; if I feel in control of my situation then I can sustain hope; with hope I can form a plan; with a plan my efforts are directed most efficiently to my goals.’ The Survival Triangle, in combination with a few practical skills, gives you a pre-made planning template which can be used to jumpstart the whole survival process.<\/p>

Through my research into historical cases, I’ve found that if one of the three corners of the triangle is missing, then survival is unlikely. If two are missing, it’s almost impossible. As a caveat, the only thing I know of that can replace one of the Survival Triangle’s corners is luck. Luck, however, is a factor that is beyond our control; expecting it is a risky strategy.<\/p>

Over the following pages, we’ll look at the importance of effort, hope and goals and the factors that contribute to them, so that you can form a self-sustaining survival process, your own perseverance feedback loop. Over the years I’ve learned that hope in survival situations is the result of realistic optimism, generated by matching my capabilities to my circumstances. And to tackle any problem effectively I need a plan. My ultimate target of success is most easily attained via a plan with a series of smaller goals as waypoints en route. Once I know that my next small goal is achievable, I can start to work at reaching it. Work is, simply, directed, efficient effort that will eventually change my situation – I therefore gain control of it. If I can control my situation, I can sustain my hope. And repeat.<\/p>

I’ve applied this Survival Triangle – my perseverance feedback loop – when I’ve been in many extreme environments and situations, and it’s always worked for me. But you don’t need to be trudging alone through tundra to use this simple method. It can be applied to any task that, at first glance, creates a gut reaction which tells you it’s too much. Most of us would react with horror to the news that we have been chosen to write an important ninety-page report, due in a month. We’d probably stick it on the bottom of our to-do list and ignore it guiltily until we had two weeks left, then one. But if we plan properly and prioritize this report, break it down into writing three pages a day, we’re much more likely to start. Then it’s about making sure you do write three pages a day with focused effort. As you get each three-page chunk in the bag, you’ll get the satisfaction of progress each day, of controlling your situation. Flooded with realistic optimism, you’ll drive onwards with a far greater chance of executing your plan.<\/p>

Everything in this book is essentially about giving you the tools to make the Survival Triangle function more effectively in your life. Don’t worry if it feels too abstract right now, we’ll keep coming back to it until it’s second nature.<\/p>

I’ve structured the book so that the first two chapters are about preparation and planning, is about how we can best approach getting things done – what I call ‘Work’ in the triangle – and is about how we sustain hope, our perseverance engine.<\/p>

and are about how to best make use of the people and information around us to inform all three sides of the triangle, and and are about bringing it all together as we move through life.<\/p>

First things first<\/span><\/h3>

I’ve learned that the best way to use your brain to maximum advantage is to know its capabilities first, take a short tour of its features, a bit like the pre-flight walk-round check a pilot makes. Knowing how we behave helps us to make the most of our current circumstances, which warning signs to look out for, and the most advantageous ways to deal with problems before they spiral out of control.<\/p>

The unexpected<\/span><\/h3>

The foundation underlying all the survival training that I deliver is an understanding of how we initially respond to any bad situation. These theories were developed to show how we react in disastrous situations, but you can apply them to almost any stressful event. The textbook model was identified by survival psychologist John Leach after years of studying survivors – and the actions of those who weren’t so fortunate. John is a rare type of psychologist; a specialist in human behaviour during extreme circumstances, and also an RAF-trained and -qualified survival instructor. The model he has described covers the things that we humans normally do when there’s any threat to our life. His explanation of survivor behaviour is borne out by both extensive research and personal experience. The model has five parts, and it describes the normal arc of any event by breaking it into key stages – Pre-Impact, Impact, Recoil, Rescue and Post-Traumatic – each with their own typical behaviour patterns. At points in this book, I’ll refer to these stages, as it’s important to keep in mind that the vast majority of us will tend to be stunned by shocking new events that we have absolutely no frame of reference for, but that we can all adapt afterwards. It helps us to better deal with our actions later if we know that the way we initially behaved is normal for our species. Even better, knowing this and thinking ahead can really help us to react positively should we face adversity in our lives.<\/p>

So let’s start by taking a look at how our brains deal with unexpected events and just how important the right sort of planning is.<\/p> <\/body>","format":"DG","formatDescription":"EPUB","formatDetail":"E200","illustrator":"","imprintDisplayName":"Macmillan","isFeatured":false,"isbn":"9781509833597","isbn10":"1509833595","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/extracts.panmacmillan.com\/site\/extr\/static\/jacketimages\/9781509833597.jpg","keynote":"","nextPageLink":null,"publicationDate":"2020-11-02T00:00:00Z","reader":"","relatedWorks":[{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781509833580","isbn10":"1509833587","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1137267&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=73638","publicationDate":"2020-04-17T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529028379","isbn10":"152902837X","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=970532&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=86671","publicationDate":"2019-05-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529028386","isbn10":"1529028388","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=970546&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=86672","publicationDate":"2019-05-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529028393","isbn10":"1529028396","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=970561&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=86673","publicationDate":"2019-05-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529028409","isbn10":"152902840X","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=970575&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=86674","publicationDate":"2019-05-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BB","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781509833566","isbn10":"1509833560","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1075556&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=73636","publicationDate":"2019-11-28T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"Trade Paperback","formatDetail":"B106","isbn":"9781509833573","isbn10":"1509833579","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1075584&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=73637","publicationDate":"2019-11-28T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AJ","formatDescription":"Lossless Format Audio, WAV","formatDetail":"A104","isbn":"9781529014693","isbn10":"1529014697","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1145516&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=84600","publicationDate":"2020-05-06T00:00:00Z"}],"title":"How to Survive"},{"author":"John Gwynne","authorBiography":"John Gwynne studied and lectured at Brighton University. He's been in a rock 'n' roll band, playing the double bass, travelled the USA and lived in Canada for a time. He is married with four children and lives in Eastbourne running a small family business rejuvenating vintage furniture. He is the author of the epic fantasy series The Faithful and the Fallen including Malice<\/i>, Valour<\/i>, Ruin <\/i>and Wrath<\/i>.","bicCodeList":"FM,FIC009100,FJ","bisacCodeList":"FIC009020,FIC009120","estimatedReadingTimeMinutes":12,"extractHtml":"

CHAPTER<\/span> ONE<\/span><\/h2>

DREM<\/h2>

The Year 138 of the Age of Lore, Hound’s Moon<\/em><\/p>

Drem threw his grapple-hook high. He felt it reach the apex of its climb and then drop. There was a thunk <\/em>as it connected with wood. He pulled, felt it catch in timber, gave a tug to check it had caught properly and would hold his weight.<\/p>

Drem was huddled tight to the wooden wall of a stockade. The only sound he could hear was his heart pounding, echoing in his skull and the rasp of his breath. Just being back here, where it had all started – it set him on edge.<\/p>

The mine at the edge of the Starstone Lake.<\/p>

Upon Byrne’s orders, he and a few score huntsmen of the Order of the Bright Star had crept out of the northern woods in the full dark and made their way to the walls. Drem had noted that the hole Hammer had made in the stockade wall had been repaired. Emotion had swept through him as he’d looked at the spot where he had last seen Sig alive, where the giantess had made her last stand.<\/p>

The mixture of grief and anger set his blood thrumming in his veins, even as he’d crept through the heather and rocks; it had not left him yet. And now he was here, pressed tight against the wall, waiting to go over, just as he had, twice before.<\/p>

This time, though, I am going over with sixty of the toughest, hardest men and women I’ve ever encountered<\/em>. Hunters of the Order of the Bright Star. There was a reassurance in that. His hand went to the hilt of his seax and brushed it lightly. There was a reassurance in that, too. He rolled his shoulders, shifting the weight of his mail coat, wincing as it rubbed on raw skin, even with two layers of linen and wool between the mail and his flesh. He’d lived and breathed in it for more than a ten-night, slept in it as well, as they’d made a forced march from the battleground in the heart of the Desolation to here. He’d learned the value of his mail at that battle and, no matter how uncomfortable it got, he was not taking it off any time soon.<\/p>

The grey dawn was seeping into the land around him. With the dim light he could just make out the deeper shadows of another man and woman either side of him, twenty or thirty paces away. They had cast their grapple-hooks, too, and they were all waiting for the signal.<\/p>

An owl hooted.<\/p>

Keld.<\/em><\/p>

Drem sucked in a deep breath and climbed, hauling himself up the rope, feet scraping on timber. He was a big man, heavy, but he was strong, stronger than most, and the climb was little effort to him. In a few heartbeats he was at the top; he rolled over, lowering himself to the walkway, crouching low.<\/p>

A nod either side to his companions and then he twisted off the walkway, hung suspended, then dropped to the ground. A moment’s pause, holding his breath to listen, and he was slipping his seax and short axe into his hands and moving into the complex.<\/p>

The mine was a place of shadows and grey light, of muffled sounds: a door creaking on old hinges, the skittering of rats, in the distance the lapping of the lake. Drem made his way slowly from building to building, pushing doors open, checking for any inhabitants, searching the shadows. He saw tracks and crouched to inspect them. They were not a man’s, being too long and distended, the ground scarred by claws, but they were not an animal’s, either. Drem had seen too many tracks like this for his liking, lately.<\/p>

A Feral’s.<\/em><\/p>

But they were old, the soil hard and dry.<\/p>

A moon at least, maybe longer.<\/em><\/p>

And the fact that they had not been scuffed away by new tracks was a confirmation of what he’d suspected. The mine had long been abandoned.<\/p>

Drem moved on, continuing his methodical search, opening every door, scrutinizing every track. His path led him ever inwards until, abruptly, a space opened up: a square bordered on three sides by an assortment of buildings. To the north a slab of rock rose to the sky, like a cliff face. Deeper patches of shadow scattered across its darkness hinted at caves. Drem knew what they were, had seen them before.<\/p>

Cages for Fritha’s experiments.<\/p>

In the centre of the clearing was a table.<\/p>

Drem shivered as memories crawled out of the dark corners of his mind.<\/p>

Memories of blood and fire. Of Fritha, Gulla the Kadoshim and of words of power. He had seen Fritha cut Gulla’s throat and cast him upon that table, along with the body of one of the Desolation’s giant bats and the hand cut from Asroth’s body. He remembered the sensation of bile rising in his throat as he had watched that dark magic at work, the bloodied, frothing steam, the writhing and melding of the forms on the table, and finally of Gulla rising, born anew, born as something different.<\/p>

The first Revenant, he called himself.<\/em><\/p>

Drem shook his head and took a step into the open courtyard. Other forms separated from the shadows: more hunters of the Order who had made their search of the mine, all of them moving like a tightening noose towards this place, the heart of the complex. They stood in silence. Dawn was claiming the land, banishing the murk, and Drem saw more evidence that the place had long been deserted. The buildings were cold and empty, fire-pits stripped of ash by rain and wind, the only signs of life the occasional scuttle of rats or scratching of birds in eaves. The hard-packed earth was rutted with tracks. Drem imagined a gathering of many here, a mixture of animal and human, but the tracks were all hard and dry.<\/p>

A final gathering before Fritha’s warband left, marching out to meet the Order?<\/em><\/p>

The sun was rising higher now; the morning light washed over the huge table in the centre of the courtyard, where it squatted like some sleeping, malignant beast. Chains and manacles of iron were set deep into the timber, darker stains scattered in pools on the grain.<\/p>

Blood always leaves a stain.<\/em><\/p>

In the pale-streaked skies above, Drem made out the circling of crows. Others were scattered elsewhere above the mine, landing on rooftops, winging through unshuttered windows. One of the crows above Drem spiralled down to the courtyard, a pale bird, white-feathered where the others were all dark. It cawed and beat its wings, alighting on Drem’s shoulder. He felt Rab’s claws flex and dig into him, and was glad again for his coat of mail.<\/p>

‘Gulla gone<\/em>,’ Rab squawked.<\/p>

‘Aye, looks that way,’ Drem said.<\/p>

‘And no Twisted Men?<\/em>’ <\/em>Rab croaked.<\/p>

‘None that I can find,’ Drem told him, knowing that Rab was referring to Fritha’s Ferals.<\/p>

‘Good<\/em>,’ Rab muttered, shaking and puffing his feathers out.<\/p>

A figure strode from a street to the west. An older man, dark hair turning to grey, an elegance and intensity to his movement. An assortment of knives and short axes bristled from his belts. Keld, huntsman of the Order and Drem’s friend. Two huge wolven-hounds were loping at his flanks, one slate grey, the other red. In one hand Keld had something long wrapped in a cloak.<\/p>

A spear?<\/em><\/p>

Keld strode to the centre of the clearing and paused beside the table, looking at it with a glower. Then he lifted his gaze and stared around the circle, meeting the eyes of each and every hunter. Drem shook his head when Keld’s eyes locked with his.<\/p>

No sign of the living.<\/em><\/p>

With a nod, Keld put a horn to his lips and blew upon it.<\/p>

An answering horn echoed in the distance. Soon Drem felt a tremor in the ground.<\/p>

It is hard for the warband of the Order to move stealthily, especially when there are over a hundred giant bears amongst their ranks.<\/em><\/p>

Shapes filled a wide street to the west, which cut through the mine from its main gate and led here. Mounted figures spilt into the clearing. At their head was Byrne, the High Captain of the Order of the Bright Star, and Drem’s aunt. She was a stern-faced woman, dark hair drawn back tightly to her nape, her mail coat and leather surcoat thick with dust from their ride here. A curved sword arched across her back. Drem considered how unassuming she looked, no ostentatious embellishments, no gold or silver, just plain, though expertly made equipment. To see her, no one would guess just how deadly Byrne truly was. Drem thought back to the recent battle: Byrne trading blows with Fritha, using both blade and the earth magic. Fritha had clearly been outclassed. Drem felt a rush of pride and affection for Byrne. She had saved his life in that battle. She was his kin and, with both mother and father dead, the only kin he had – that meant a lot to Drem. More than that, she had shown him love and kindness, and that counted for far more in these bleak and desolate times.<\/p>

At Byrne’s shoulder a huge bear lumbered, upon it a dark-haired and pale-skinned giantess, Queen Ethlinn, a spear in her fist with its butt resting in a saddle-cup. Ethlinn’s eyes scanned the clearing, focusing on the table.<\/p>

To the other side of Byrne, another giant strode, his white hair braided, a creased lattice of scar tissue where one eye had once been. His coat of mail and leather jerkin did little to hide the slabs of muscle that padded his frame. He gripped a war-hammer in his huge hands. Balur One-Eye, father of Ethlinn, most famed warrior of the Banished Lands.<\/p>

Behind these three rode the warband of the Order: an assortment of giants upon bears with mounted warriors, more riders coming out into the clearing from smaller streets. Drem saw red-haired Cullen riding close behind Byrne. The young warrior’s eyes sought out Drem and he gave him a wry grin. Keld had spoken for Drem and his skills as a huntsman and tracker, and had easily accepted him into the hunter’s order. Cullen had wanted to accompany Drem into the mine with the other scouts, but Byrne had forbidden it. Cullen was not a hunter, with neither the patience nor aptitude for stealth. He was<\/em> skilled with a blade, more than most – far more than Drem – but he was hot-headed and acted before thinking, so Byrne had ordered the young warrior to stay with her. Cullen had been none too pleased about that.<\/p>

Byrne rode up to the table and reined in, the others rippling to a halt behind her. With practised ease, Byrne slipped from her saddle. She approached the table, stopped before it and stared at it with a scowl. Ethlinn followed, holding a hand out over the table, her lips moving, and then she winced, as if seeing the terrible acts that had occurred upon it. Balur lifted one of the chains and curled a lip, let it drop.<\/p>

‘Keld?’ Byrne looked to her huntsman.<\/p>

‘Place is empty.’ Keld grunted. ‘Been that way a while, by the looks of it.’<\/p>

Byrne nodded, her eyes returning to the table.<\/p>

‘But I did find this.’ Keld held out the object he had bundled in his cloak.<\/p>

Byrne reached out and unwrapped the object; a series of emotions flittered across her face as she recognized it. Sorrow, anger. There was a slight tremor in Byrne’s hands as she revealed it.<\/p>

A sword.<\/p>

Drem knew it immediately, even if it was still in its scabbard with a long belt wrapped around it. Its size and length made it obvious that this was no ordinary sword, that it had belonged to a giant or giantess.<\/p>

Sig’s sword.<\/em><\/p>

Drem felt a fist clench in his gut at the sight of it. He had known Sig for such a short time, but she had left an irremovable mark upon his heart. An example of true friendship, of loyalty. Of love.<\/p>

Of truth and courage.<\/em><\/p>

A tear ran down his cheek.<\/p>

Byrne nodded, holding the sword up high for all to see.<\/p>

‘You should take this,’ Byrne said, turning and offering it to Balur One-Eye.<\/p>

The old giant blinked. He slung his war-hammer over his shoulder, reached out a tentative hand, then drew it back.<\/p>

‘No,’ the giant said. ‘It should go to someone in your Order. Sig was a warrior of the Bright Star, through and through.’<\/p>

Byrne lowered the blade, resting its scabbarded tip upon the ground. ‘So are you, in here,’ Byrne said, touching a hand to her heart with one hand.<\/p>

‘Huh,’ grunted Balur, not a denial, Drem noted. ‘But I have not taken your oath.’<\/p>

‘You knew<\/em> Corban, knew<\/em> what he fought for. You were his friend<\/em>,’ Byrne said.<\/p>

‘I was,’ Balur breathed, ‘but I never took his oath. Only one oath guides me. To guard my daughter’s life with my own.’ He reached out a calloused hand and touched Ethlinn’s cheek.<\/p>

Ethlinn wrapped his hand in her own and smiled. ‘That oath would never conflict with the oath of the Order,’ she said. ‘Sig was dear to you. You should take the sword.’<\/p>

Balur stared at it and nodded.<\/p>

‘Aye, all right then.’ He reached out a hand and took the blade from Byrne, drew it from its scabbard and held it high. It glinted in the summer sun, though dark patches stained it.<\/p>

‘I’ll avenge you with this sword, brave Sig,’ Balur shouted, his voice echoing from the buildings and down empty streets. A cheer rang out from the warriors around him. Drem’s voice was one of the loudest.<\/p>

You have already fulfilled part of that promise, <\/em>Drem thought, remembering Balur fighting the giant, Gunil, Sig’s killer and a traitor to the giants. Balur had crushed his skull with a blow from his war-hammer.<\/p>

Drem had felt a huge sense of satisfaction at seeing Gunil slain, not only as revenge for Sig’s death, but Gunil had also been one of those responsible for the murder of Drem’s father, Olin.<\/p>

Just Fritha left to face justice for that, now, <\/em>Drem thought, his hands involuntarily clenching into fists at the thought of the woman who had slain his father.<\/p>

‘And it is rune-marked,’ Byrne said quietly to Balur, with a small smile as the cheering died down, and Balur slipped the sword back into its scabbard. ‘That may come in very handy in the coming days.’<\/p>

‘Aye.’ Balur nodded.<\/p>

During the battle against Fritha they had been attacked by a swarming host of Revenants, twisted offspring created by the bite of Gulla and his chosen. They were human in shape, but fought with an utter disregard for their own safety and were near-impossible to kill. Drem had seen decapitation put one down, but other than that they just kept coming at you. Unless they were stabbed with a rune-marked blade. When struck with a blade that had been inscribed with runes of earth power the Revenant would fall, every time. Drem had stabbed the host’s captain, Ulf, with his own seax, rune-marked by Drem’s father, Olin. Ulf had died and, with his death, the whole of his Revenant host had collapsed and died as well.<\/p>

Every single one of us should have a rune-marked blade.<\/em><\/p>

But they were rare, only belonging to those whom Byrne had deemed trustworthy enough to teach the earth power to. She said it was a great responsibility, learning the earth power, and so only a small portion of the Order of the Bright Star wielded such weapons. Sig had been one of them.<\/p>

Now, though, after the battle with Fritha, there was a need for all to carry a rune-marked weapon, whether they knew the earth power or not. Otherwise there would be no standing against these Revenants.<\/p>

Balur shrugged his war-hammer off his back and slid the sword over his shoulder, fumbling at the belt straps. Byrne helped him cinch them tight. The giant rolled his shoulders.<\/p>

‘I’ll have to learn how to use this thing,’ he muttered.<\/p>

‘I’ll teach you, One-Eye,’ Cullen called out. A few chuckles echoed around the clearing.<\/p>

‘I’ll hold you to that, you young pup,’ Balur growled. He bent and picked up his war-hammer. ‘But for now, I’ll stick to this.’ He hefted his war-hammer and smiled at its familiar weight.<\/p>

Byrne looked back to Keld. ‘Will Balur get to wield his new blade here?’<\/p>

‘Not likely,’ Keld said. ‘We’ve scouted the place – not a living soul ’cept rats and the like. Only place we haven’t looked is in there.’ The huntsman nodded towards the cliff face. ‘I wasn’t going to send a handful of my crew in there until there were more swords at my back.’ The rock was pocked with scores of small caves, all of them set with iron-barred gates. Now open. Drem remembered all too well the inhabitants of those cells: Ferals, mutations of men, women and children, somehow warped into a malformed half-life, created by Fritha’s twisted mind and her dark blood magic.<\/p>

Set amongst the cells was a deeper blackness: a massive cave entrance which looked as if it ran deep into the rock face. Drem had a recollection of howls echoing out from that dark hole during the battle here on that nightmare-filled night.<\/p>

Byrne lifted her eyes and stared at the black hole in the granite wall.<\/p>

‘Spread out, search every last handspan of this place,’ she called out. ‘I need to know where Gulla is.’<\/p>

The warband spread out into the surrounding buildings. Ethlinn and Balur remained, alongside a score of warriors, Byrne’s honour guard with Cullen and Utul, Byrne’s captain from the south. He was dark-skinned with a hooked nose, streaks of grey in his otherwise jet hair, and deep lines about his eyes – evidence of his near-constant smile. A curved sword hilt arched over his shoulder, similar to Byrne’s, but with a longer grip. He was one of the deadliest swordsmen Drem had ever seen, and he’d had the privilege of seeing a few, lately.<\/p>

‘Drem, you’re with us,’ Byrne said to him. Rab gave a croak, spread his wings and flapped into the air.<\/p>

‘You know this place better than any of us,’ Byrne said. ‘I want to take a look in there.’ She nodded towards the cave entrance and started walking, Ethlinn, Balur and the others following. Keld was already at the opening, striking sparks from flint and stone into a torch he’d taken from a sconce set just inside the cave entrance. Flames sparked and flared, sending shadows dancing. In the new light Drem saw the cave ran deep into the rock, sloping downwards.<\/p>

Keld strode into the cave, holding the torch high. His two wolven-hounds, Fen and Ralla, followed him, though Drem could see their hackles were up, their noses twitching. Byrne ordered half her honour guard to remain at the cave entrance, the other ten following her as she marched after Keld. Ethlinn, Balur, Cullen and Utul accompanied her.<\/p>

Drem drew in a deep breath and hurried after them.<\/p> <\/section> <\/body>","format":"DG","formatDescription":"EPUB","formatDetail":"E200","illustrator":"","imprintDisplayName":"Macmillan","isFeatured":false,"isbn":"9781509813049","isbn10":"1509813047","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/extracts.panmacmillan.com\/site\/extr\/static\/jacketimages\/9781509813049.jpg","keynote":"","nextPageLink":null,"publicationDate":"2020-09-17T00:00:00Z","reader":"","relatedWorks":[{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781509813018","isbn10":"1509813012","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1146413&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=71097","publicationDate":"2020-05-07T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BB","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781509813025","isbn10":"1509813020","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1120300&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=71095","publicationDate":"2020-03-06T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"Trade Paperback","formatDetail":"B106","isbn":"9781509813032","isbn10":"1509813039","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1120314&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=71096","publicationDate":"2020-03-06T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AJ","formatDescription":"Lossless Format Audio, WAV","formatDetail":"A104","isbn":"9781529027891","isbn10":"1529027896","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1101960&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=86614","publicationDate":"2020-01-29T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529046687","isbn10":"1529046688","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2020-04-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529046694","isbn10":"1529046696","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2020-04-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529046700","isbn10":"152904670X","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2020-04-01T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529046717","isbn10":"1529046718","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2020-04-01T00:00:00Z"}],"title":"A Time of Courage"},{"author":"John Hudson","authorBiography":"John Hudson FRGS is a survival instructor, broadcaster, writer, public speaker and training consultant based in Cornwall, whose specialist work takes him to some of the most remote and extreme environments around the globe. A former RAF helicopter pilot, John is the British Military's Chief SERE (Survival, Evasion, Resistance & Extraction) Instructor, and an elected Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. He's also been a resident survival expert on two series of Discovery's prime-time TV show Survive That<\/i> – a.k.a Dude You're Screwed<\/i> in the USA – successfully putting his own resilience to the test on camera in front of millions. From the darkest depths of a jungle cenote, to the top of a stormy Alaskan glacier, John's sense of humour and everyday stoicism have won him many fans worldwide.","bicCodeList":"VS,OCC000000,WSZV,VSPM,BTP,VFJS,BGHA","bisacCodeList":"SEL024000,SEL027000","estimatedReadingTimeMinutes":18,"extractHtml":"

How to Survive a Pandemic: Life Lessons for Coping with COVID-19<\/span><\/h2>

Show me a man who though sick is happy, who though in danger is happy, who though in prison is happy, and I’ll show you a Stoic.<\/p>

Epictetus<\/sup><\/p>

Since my book <\/em> was first published, I’ve been contacted by many readers who found its advice helpful in their daily lives and challenges, from those working in offices to members of the emergency services, and also everyday folk battling awful things like cancer and PTSD. Since the beginning of March 2020, readers have also reached out to me to ask for some practical advice that will help during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic. I hope you find the additional material here useful.<\/p>

John Hudson<\/p>

March 2020<\/p>

The shock of the new<\/h3>

Life-changing moments can happen at any time and anywhere – not just in the extreme world. But life-changing moments can also happen more gradually and, as we’ve seen with the current pandemic, it can be no less of a shock when the realization comes. As we’ve seen throughout this book, accepting this and taking responsibility increases your ability to tolerate hardship and to restart your perseverance engine. This is the key to your survival mindset and one of the greatest skills to develop in life.<\/p>

Know your enemy<\/h3>

If ‘survival’ means ‘staying alive’, viruses raise a fundamental issue because they themselves survive by leading ‘a kind of borrowed life’<\/sup>. By understanding what a virus is, we can make sure any ‘borrowing’ of our lives, or our loved ones’ lives, as hosts is avoided or is as temporary as possible. <\/p>

Viruses are small strands of genetic material that rely on infecting other living cells in order to reproduce<\/sup>. Once in there, they build replicas of themselves and then break out of that cell to find lots more cells to repeat the process, either in that host’s body or another one. When viewed under an electron microscope, we can see that their genetic material is surrounded by a ring of protein spikes which look like a crown – the Latin for crown is ‘corona’. It’s these protein spikes that allow the virus to anchor onto living cells and infect them. There are many types of coronaviruses<\/sup>, from the common cold and pneumonia to even more severe variants that attack the respiratory system. The corona family of viruses are carried by animals and can sometimes make the jump to humans in a ‘spillover’. While several known coronaviruses are circulating in animals and have not yet infected people, the COVID-19 virus was first identified as spilling over to humans in late 2019 in Wuhan, China. After comparing the new virus’s genetic material with 217 similar types, scientists in China think that this one made the leap from bats to humans, probably via snakes; bats and snakes were on sale at Wuhan animal market<\/sup>.<\/p>

How does COVID-19 work? <\/h3>

The COVID-19 virus, or SARS-CoV-2, is transmitted by droplets, typically emitted when an infected person coughs or sneezes – a single cough can produce up to 3,000 droplets. Researchers at the US National Institutes of Health found that the COVID-19 virus could survive for up to three hours after being coughed out; fine droplets can remain airborne for several hours in still air. They also found that it can survive on cardboard for up to twenty-four hours and up to two to three days on plastic and stainless-steel – the kinds of materials that surfaces like light switches and ATM keypads are made from<\/sup>. There is also evidence suggesting that it can be transmitted by faecal matter<\/sup>, meaning that shared lavatories and associated handles could harbour droplets containing the virus. You become infected by breathing in someone’s cough or sneeze, or by touching a surface with droplets containing the virus, and then transferring that to an entry point like your eyes, nose or mouth by hand contact – studies have shown that humans touch their faces up to twenty-three times per hour<\/em><\/sup>.<\/p>

Once the virus infects a person, it can take days until illness symptoms occur, which is probably one of the reasons why COVID-19 has been able to spread so quickly and widely<\/sup>. When someone does start to feel ill, the symptoms range from mild to severe, and normally include fever (your body’s immune system attempting to make you less hospitable to a virus by turning up the thermostat), respiratory effects like a dry cough (the virus initially replicates inside the cells of the host’s nasal passage and the back of their throat) or shortness of breath (once established in the throat, the virus moves down the bronchial tubes to the lungs)<\/sup>. In severe cases there’s been pneumonia, organ failure and death, with a rapid progression to severe pneumonia and respiratory failure normally happening in the first week. Respiratory failure here is down at the fundamental level: it’s the prevention of oxygen transferring from your alveoli – tiny air sacs in your lungs – to your bloodstream. These sacs become filled with fluid by the effects of the virus and stop working. The fatality rate varies due to many factors and is therefore hard to gauge, but the latest estimates have it at around 1 per cent, although this proportion rises with age, reaching 15 per cent in the over-80s<\/sup>.<\/p>

As some of the milder symptoms can appear like other seasonal illnesses, in order to diagnose that someone actually has COVID-19, a test called PCR (Polymerase Chain Reaction) needs to be done, which can identify the virus’s genetic fingerprint<\/sup>. At the time of writing, there is no specific medical treatment or pre-emptive vaccine available, just supportive care, but scientists globally are working round the clock to identify weaknesses in the COVID-19 virus, from how it attaches to our cells, through to ways of inhibiting its reproduction and spread<\/sup>.<\/p>

You can understand and adapt<\/h3>

Now you know how this particular virus spreads and works, you can fully appreciate the reasons behind advice that’s given by professionals in disease prevention like The World Health Organization (WHO)<\/sup>. As we saw in Chapter 5 of How to Survive<\/em>, with Captain Bligh’s successful crossing of over 4,000 miles of ocean in an open boat, when you know why<\/em> you should do something because you understand the principles at play, you’re much more likely to stick to the right course of action and thereby achieve your biggest goals. This is why it is so important to always get your information from the most credible source of facts and guidance when you can – in this current case the WHO. <\/p>

Try where you can to have more than one way to access information, too. During large social upheavals, key infrastructure like power, internet and mobile networks can get overwhelmed. Your nearest TV transmitter is probably still working, though; why not check if you can still pick up its signal if all the streaming services stop? If all else fails, an old-school radio that runs from batteries will pick up news updates. There may also be a radio fitted in your car.<\/p>

Know yourself – how to defend your vulnerabilities<\/h3>

The next step to dealing with a pandemic is to understand what practical steps to formulate in your own PLAN to stay safe. Regardless of the nature of the threat, the principles in survival remain the same. PLAN (Protection, Location, Acquisition, Navigation – see Chapter 2 and Amelia Earhart’s desert island for the full story) is still the key to your priorities in a scenario like a pandemic. That means the first thing you need to do is to run through the ‘what will harm me first?’ (where are the biggest threats) questions. There is a huge role that taking responsibility for personal<\/em> protection plays here. And, in the case of a pandemic, when you take the right steps to protect yourself, of course you’re also protecting others. In the case of COVID-19, humans are now the main vectors for this virus and an infected person may not display symptoms while unwittingly carrying the virus. This is why the WHO recommends<\/sup>, wherever you can, to avoid ‘agglomerations’ – groups of other people and specifically also the kinds of places and venues where other people are closed in together. <\/p>

If you have to venture into areas with other people, try to keep at least one metre away from them (but doubling this WHO advice to two metres whenever you can, as the UK Government suggests, would be even better). As important as this is, there’s no need to be rude about this ‘social distancing’. We are a civilized society and the grease that makes its wheels turn is good manners and mutual respect. We are all in this together, so smile<\/sup> because, in the long-term, the virus will pass, and we will get back to normal, and you wouldn’t want to fall out with people over a perceived lack of good manners.<\/p>

Respiratory etiquette<\/h3>

After returning from London, as the pandemic was starting to flicker on our collective concern-o-meter, a friend of mine jokingly observed that ‘on the Tube you used to have to hide a fart with a cough; these days it’s the other way around’. The key is to prevent the release of the virus droplets into the air, and that’s why we need to catch them in a tissue, and dispose of it safely – the WHO recommends into a ziplock bag if there are no closed waste bins available. Coughing and sneezing without covering was never right, but now that its true harm is much more widely known, unhindered coughs and sneezes are thankfully again a real social taboo. We can retrain ourselves to behave differently.<\/p>

If you’ve not got a tissue, the crook of your bent elbow will stop coughs and sneezes blasting into the atmosphere; but you’re reading this because you’re survival-minded, so you will have prepared for this and have some tissues, right? Afterwards you need to clean your hands: that will stop any of your germs transferring onto surfaces that others may touch. This hand-cleaning advice holds for other times you may have touched a surface that could have droplets on it too; if you’ve successfully avoided inhaling droplets by social distancing, it would be a pity to then touch your eyes, nose or mouth if they’ve transferred onto your hands by contact, and let the virus in that way. If you know you have to enter a higher-risk zone like a public toilet or the petrol station (handling the pumps is something that you may not have already thought about), you can further protect yourself by using one of your tissues as a disposable barrier when you have to touch handles, etc.<\/p>

Hand hygiene <\/h3>

When your hands are visibly dirty the best way to clean them is by washing with soap and water. Normal soap, the ‘yardstick of civilization’, works by helping the water to remove the particles from your hands, not by killing the germs that are now hiding out in the natural oils on your skin. Soap molecules work by making the oil particles (now containing pathogens) bond with water so they will rinse off together. Think of soap like loads of tiny chemical magnets, one end sticking to oil and the other end sticking to water, forcing two things that would normally not join up to bond together<\/sup>. Soap is very good at its job of distancing you from potentially harmful microorganisms, but mechanically removing them by soap handwashing takes time, and that’s why you need to be thorough. The WHO recommends you spend 40 to 60 seconds<\/sup> doing it. <\/p>

Alcohol-based hand gels can’t cut through lots of muck and grease, which is why soap and water is better if your hands look dirty. However, even if they look clean, your hands will still have huge numbers of tiny organisms on them, some of which could be the COVID-19 virus. Alcohol is a solvent for your natural skin oils that the germs are sticking to, and works slightly differently. When the concentration of alcohol in hand gels is over 60 per cent,<\/sup> there is enough alcohol for it to also destroy the outer protein shell of the virus, which will kill it. This takes a little less time than washing with soap: the WHO recommends hand gels be rubbed on your hands for 20 to 30 seconds<\/sup>. Make sure you apply enough in the first place too; it should say how much on the label. And do always check the label: you need to know that there is at least a 60 per cent alcohol content, otherwise it’s not going to kill the virus. <\/p>

\"image\"<\/p>

This link leads to a World Health Organization doctor showing you the best way to get your hands clean. Available at: <\/p>

How to avoid touching your face<\/h3>

It’s really hard to retrain yourself not to touch your own face. In the past, I’ve seen jungle survival instructors with machetes in their hands instinctively swat at mosquitoes. Even when you are trying not to touch your face, it happens before your conscious brain can override it, as we discussed in Chapter 1 when we looked at your brain’s prehistoric, pre-programmed shortcuts. But, as we also saw there, we can reprogram our brains to react differently, to override our instinctive reactions through a process of practice drills. <\/p>

Other than when we scratch itches, we touch our faces for a variety of reasons – studies have shown them to include ‘self-soothing’ and that skin-to-skin contact can release a hormone called oxytocin, which increases a feeling of calm – and if we’re mindful of those reasons, we can intercept our hands en route to our faces. More practically, if you know you have a habit of touching your eyes, perhaps when you’re tired, wear sunglasses. If you know you stroke your beard when you think, you could sit on your hands or put them in your pockets. If you need to scratch an itch, try using the back of your arm instead of your hands. As we covered in the detail about pilot emergency drills in Chapter 1, this is retraining your behaviours to have a specific, appropriate response, and is far more effective than just being told, ‘don’t do that unconscious thing that you do’<\/sup>. But all these hacks take time to embed, and you’ll never fully eliminate the chance of an unguarded moment, so keep washing your hands!<\/p>

Personal protective equipment<\/h3>

A good way to stop your hands physically touching your mouth and nose is to wear a face mask. The WHO recommends that anyone with symptoms should wear these facial barriers, and also anyone caring for an ill person. Some shops are now insisting that customers cover their faces with scarves as well as distancing themselves from other shoppers. But remember, they cannot stop all viruses.<\/p>

The best protection<\/h3>

Shelter-in-place. That’s right, in your place. Not at the seaside or, as has been seen in the UK with unthinking people crowding together, at beauty spots, but at your home. This is a pandemic, not a bank holiday. Remember, you could have the virus but not yet have the symptoms. Anyone who goes out to ‘agglomerations’ unnecessarily can pass the virus to two or three others, who can in turn spread it to two or three others, and repeat, until the healthcare system collapses, and vulnerable people die who could’ve lived. By simply staying at home, never can so many do so much for the few. <\/p>

Coping with indefinite isolation<\/h3>

The most effective action we can take is to be responsible and stay at home. But it does not come without challenges because, aside from being social creatures, our species doesn’t like uncertainty. Researchers at University College London proved this by measuring the sweat and pupil size of people playing a game where the prize for finding a snake behind a rock was a small electric shock. What they discovered in their study was that we are more stressed if we are uncertain whether a shock is coming than we are if we know we are going to get zapped. <\/p>

As we saw with stealth fighter pilot Dale Zelko in Chapter 1, you need to create a ‘what if?’ strategy to make coping with the unexpected easier – expect to be zapped. Doing this can’t provide you with all the answers, but it can retrain your brain to avoid being overwhelmed by the unexpected, and to think more clearly when some new challenge presents itself. You can further reduce your stress by limiting the amount of time that you spend scrolling for ‘news’ through bottomless social media feeds. If you want to know concrete facts rather than vested opinions, go to the info sources like health officials and disease prevention agencies. It would be advisable to limit yourself to one or two news reports per day rather than it rolling on indefinitely on a screen. As we saw in my chapter on evasion, social media – and even rolling news programmes – are all designed to be extremely addictive.<\/p>

We should reframe the situation psychologically, by not continuously monitoring our shelter-in-place screens and windows for threats, but by seizing the time it gives us as an opportunity to be usefully creative – Shakespeare supposedly wrote King Lear<\/em> during the plague ‘lockdown’. This is, hopefully, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to spend some uninterrupted time trying something new, so just get started and see what you can achieve. Far better to look back on the first draft of your novel when the pandemic has passed than wonder why you chose to watch every series on Netflix.<\/p>

There are some groups who are experts in these isolation scenarios, from whom we can learn some useful tactics. Before automation, lighthouse keepers used to work in a team of three, each taking their turn ‘on watch’ – stints of time spent alone monitoring the light and fighting off sleep. The way they would start each period of duty would be by having a half-hour chat with the keeper going off watch. The off-going keeper really wanted to get their head on a pillow and sleep, but they knew they also had a responsibility to help their colleague who’d just got out of bed to become alert, so they would brew them a big pot of tea and share it over a natter<\/sup>. If you know of any vulnerable friends or relatives who are stuck home alone, be a ‘lightkeeper’ and give them a call. And, if you can, a video call will let you actually see them and read their gestures; not only will they feel more connected but you get to keep an eye out for them and make sure they aren’t struggling to cope.<\/p>

When off watch and not sleeping, all lighthouse keepers had a hobby. You don’t want to kill time during this unexpected window of opportunity, you want to spend it well. What’s a great hobby to choose? By choosing reading you’ve chosen one of the best ways to reduce stress. It was found to be 68 per cent better at reducing stress levels than listening to music, 300 per cent better than going for a walk and 700 per cent more than playing video games<\/sup>. And if you choose some non-fiction books to read, it could be that you learn something new, too. If reading isn’t what your family are into, longer podcasts can be a brilliant way to dial into the conversations of interesting and inspirational people. Online learning courses are also a great use of this time gift; many are available with audio feeds if you want to limit screen or sitting hours. You could also make things with your hands, like finishing that DIY task that you’ve not had time to do before, or something with a more tangible reward like setting up some home brew. <\/p>

Looking at best practices from which we can learn how to cope better with isolation, another group who are very well adapted to not being able to nip out for a coffee are the astronauts of the International Space Station. Long periods in close proximity to others is not just about being with the right people, it’s about being the right person yourself. As Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield says, ‘These days, NASA looks for a certain type of person, someone who plays well with others.’<\/sup> Interestingly, Chris thinks he gained a lot of insight into teamwork and ‘playing well with others’ during his survival training<\/sup>. When you are dependent on the few people around you and your joint initiative, success really is a team sport. Establishing a routine where any unpleasant tasks are shared equally, and some time is dedicated to personal space, will help this. And as we saw in Chapter 5 where we looked at the importance of other people in survival, remaining good-humoured is a massive asset, and directly in your power to control. <\/p>

Think of this current situation you are in as your own survival training: it can be tough in the moment, but afterwards I reckon we will look back and appreciate the lessons we learn. When I come back from the Arctic, I always enjoy the spring sunshine more than I used to; when home from the jungle it’s great not to have to check for leeches before bed. After this pandemic, I know I’ll really appreciate the regained freedom to mooch to the pub, and we’re all less likely to take life’s simple pleasures for granted.<\/p>

By following these simple guidelines, you’ll have a PLAN ready for any enforced period of self-isolation in the future. Added to which, you won’t become collateral damage in any uncool fight over toilet paper. <\/p>

To panic or to prepare<\/h3>

Toilet paper panic-buying is the perfect metaphor for the combination of unhelpful rumour and inappropriate behaviour. Normal society runs on good behaviour, but it only needs one selfish person to take more than they need ‘just in case’ and a domino effect of panic-buying ensues, to the point where people are mass-buying anything they can get their hands on, not even knowing<\/em> why they needed so much toilet paper. What was slightly comic to watch at first very quickly leads to serious consequences, when it leaves healthcare workers coming off eye-reddeningly long shifts to find that they can’t even buy fruit and vegetables and the kind of food that they, more than anyone, need to stay healthy. Call it what you like – panic-buying, FOMO, the tragedy of the commons – it’s antisocial, selfish and wrong. We are in this together. <\/p>

There is no need<\/em> for people to behave like we’re an idiocracy; we can choose how we respond to any challenge. If you witness selfish types overstocking, the traditional British response – and denouncement of all socially unacceptable conduct – is a well-aimed ‘tut’. But, given these exceptional circumstances, and knowing that this behaviour has already impacted hard-pressed emergency services and healthcare professionals, why not really signify how inappropriate panic-buying is as a community response, and ask the pusher of the overloaded trolley if they really need that much toilet paper? If everyone takes a stance it should put the shelves back in balance for all. Again, it’s about being polite, confident and taking individual responsibility for the whole team. <\/p>

So, how can you avoid being affected by that kind of reactionary nonsense in future? In the short term, your local shops and smaller stores might still have what you need – bigger superstores seem to get stripped out first. And if it’s available where you live, online shopping is a great alternative in these conditions. In the longer term, once all the dust from COVID-19 settles, you’ll want a PLAN to weather any future social ‘storms’. Unless you’re ‘prepping’ for doomsday<\/sup>, the sequence and stats from Chapter 2 about what your body actually requires hold true: ‘To summarize and generalize: if you can’t breathe or are bleeding heavily, time to death is in minutes<\/strong>, uninjured at extremes of temperature it’s in hours<\/strong>, without any drinking water death takes days<\/strong>, and without food, weeks<\/strong>.’ So there really is no need to bury a container with a tonne of rice and grenades in the woods. <\/p>

Remember that things like a good first-aid kit are top of your list, then ways to protect yourself physically – including perhaps a face mask or two – to maintain your body temperature, and importantly to stay informed. Many people don’t know that batteries to power radios and torches will have a use-by date, so check them every so often; a good routine is whenever you change the clocks in spring or autumn. You will need clean drinking water more than food so have a couple of options to make your own – the next event could see people panic-buying bottled water too; boiling water is the best way, but purification tablets can be bought online, are cheap and take up hardly any space. If you aren’t one of the few who can harvest what they need to eat from the great outdoors all year round,<\/em> then get some unperishable food that won’t attract pests. How much you store is up to you, but you shouldn’t need tons, and no more than thirty days’ worth based on minimal activity. Again, you’ll need to keep an eye on use-by dates so write these on the tops of cans and packets in bold before you store them under your stairs, to make that task easier. Knowing you have it reduces the mental pressure of seeing people panic-buy on the news. If you do find yourself making odd or impulsive decisions, it may be a sign that you need to rebalance yourself and regain some perspective. As we saw at the beginning of the book, a well-stocked and well-functioning brain is the best survival tool anyone can have.<\/p>

What now?<\/h3>

How we deal with adversity defines us. If you’re feeling more stressed than usual, that is understandable in these unprecedented, uncertain times. But everything can be dealt with, with the right mindset and techniques. If you feel overwhelmed, breathe – the breathing technique in Chapter 1 will help. <\/p>

And as we saw with the amazing escape of the three Aussie aircrew in Chapter 4, breaking any task down into smaller, achievable chunks is the key to maintaining hope. Hope allows you to plan for the future, which in turn gets you started in tackling the issue and also spins up a positive feedback loop: your own engine of perseverance. <\/p>

We can learn from the Stoic philosophy of Jim Stockdale, who spent over seven years in the ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison during the Vietnam War after his jet was shot down: mentally dividing things into those you can control and those that you can’t control will reduce your worries. He knew the works of ancient philosophers like Epictetus by heart and he endured unimaginable hardship in actual physical and mental isolation by employing their core ideas daily, hourly. At the heart of survival of any situation, from the most mundane to extreme, from the known to the completely novel like the current pandemic, the key is to think like a Stoic: to accept the circumstances, understand the controllable and the uncontrollable and the difference between the two, and adapt your mindset accordingly. Humankind has been presented with challenges for as long as civilization has existed and Epictetus got it right when he talked about the Stoic’s mindset nearly 2,000 years ago.<\/p>

And remember, you have been gifted some time at home – just the simple act of reading this has reduced your stress and, I hope, given you some ideas and motivation; the conditions are ripe to gain new knowledge and skills for the future. <\/p>

Good luck.<\/p>

 <\/p>

 <\/p>

Click to read John Hudson’s book How to Survive<\/em>.<\/a><\/p>

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CHAPTER ONE<\/span><\/h2>

DREM<\/h2>

The Year 138 of the Age of Lore, Wolven’s Moon<\/em><\/p>

Drem looked up from his horse’s steady gait. Through the stark branches above he glimpsed the sun sinking into the mountains ahead, a pale glow behind snow cloud and leafless branches. In a matter of heartbeats twilight was settling upon them like a shroud.<\/p>

We must stop soon, else the horses risk snaring a leg.<\/em><\/p>

He glanced to his right, saw Cullen riding with his cloak pulled high, face hidden in shadow. Ahead of them, Keld looked as if he had no thought for stopping, the scarred huntsman loping through the trees much like his wolven-hound, Fen.<\/p>

Grief drives him, and hate.<\/em><\/p>

And fear, if he is human.<\/em><\/p>

Drem blinked, trying to dispel the image of Gulla the Kadoshim, twitching and jerking upon the blood-soaked table in the mine, then rising transformed, teeth long and gleaming, eyes red as coals.<\/p>

It felt like a dream, no, a nightmare, even though it had been less than a day and night since it happened. Too-vivid memories of the battle at the mine leaped out in Drem’s mind like rabid beasts: images of Gulla sinking his teeth deep into the throat of one of his acolytes, of feral things<\/em>, part man, part beast, snarling, clawing, of winged half-breeds screaming their malice, of Fritha, beautiful and cold as the ice-laden forest, black sword in her fist. And Sig the giantess, friend to his father.<\/p>

Friend to me.<\/em><\/p>

And now she is dead. Because of me.<\/em><\/p>

A restless anxiety was growing within him. So much had happened in so short a time, giving him little chance to feel anything; instead he had simply reacted, mostly just trying to stay alive. Now, though, they had been travelling all night and most of the day, and he had had time to think.<\/p>

So much change. I wish I was with Da, that we were trapping together, out in the Bonefells, just the two of us. And now he’s gone as well.<\/em><\/p>

As dangerous as that lifestyle had been, it was familiar to Drem, an old cloak, and it had fitted him well. All of this was so different, so new. He felt agitated, like when his legs ached and he just needed to get up and walk around, except that he couldn’t do anything here to help himself; there was no way he could return to the familiar that felt so comforting to him.<\/p>

His hand crept to his neck, looking for the steady reassurance of his pulse.<\/p>

One, two, three,<\/em> he began to count.<\/p>

‘Camp,’ Keld said as he emerged from the darkness, raising an arm and smashing a hole in a frozen stream with the butt of his spear.<\/p>

A good spot,<\/em> Drem thought, noting the spread of trees about them, the stream, huge boulders to the right, sheltering them from the cold wind that hissed out of the Bonefells, as well as providing a measure of protection from predators.<\/p>

On two legs or four.<\/em><\/p>

In silence they set to making camp. Cullen took the horses, hobbling them, removing saddles and rubbing them down. Drem found a spot for a fire and, drawing his hand-axe from his belt, began chopping through the thick rind of ice, then scooping away the softer snow until he reached the frozen ground beneath. He gathered stones, chopped kindling from a dead lightning-blasted oak and prepared a small fire. Before he set to lighting it, he trimmed thin branches from a willow beside the stream, spent a while weaving them into a latticed fence, then staked it along one side of the fire-pit he’d dug. A screen against any eyes that might be following them from the east.<\/p>

Some tinder from a pouch at his belt, flint and striking iron for sparks, some cold breath upon it and then fragile flames were clawing in the snow, hissing and hungry.<\/p>

A shaking of the ground made Drem look up, one hand reaching for the bone-hilted seax at his belt. A shadow the size of a boulder shifted within the trees, but Drem’s grip relaxed as Hammer, the giant bear, lumbered into their small clearing.<\/p>

Hammer was Sig’s battle-bear and had borne them from last night’s chaos, carrying Drem, Keld and Cullen away, crashing through tree and shrub, no thought or time for careful steps or hiding their passage, just a driving knowledge that they had to escape, to put as much distance as possible between them and Gulla.<\/p>

Hammer had run to exhaustion, bringing them back to Drem’s hold in less than half the time it would have taken them on horseback. There they had dismounted, removed the saddle, harness and battered mail shirt from Hammer’s body, packing it away in paniers and saddlebags. They’d tended to the wounded bear and fed her some foul concoction that Keld said was called brot<\/em>, then led Hammer and fresh horses into the darkness, knowing they could not wait until dawn.<\/p>

They had agreed to head west, using the cover of the forest to screen them from eyes in the skies, avoiding the town of Kergard, and then to turn south when they reached the western rim of the Bonefells. Drem had voiced his worry for the townspeople of Kergard but knew there was little they could do to help them. No one in the town had believed him before, and besides, he did not know if there was anyone in Kergard left to save. To Drem’s horror, scores of the townsfolk had been at the mine, secret acolytes of the Kadoshim, including Ulf the tanner, a man Drem had once thought of as a friend.<\/p>

So, they had committed themselves to speed. Pursuit from the mine was likely, and they had to use every moment given them to reach Dun Seren and the Order of the Bright Star.<\/p>

Drem had led to begin with, his knowledge of the terrain making him the obvious choice to steer them through the darkness. With the rising of a pale sun they had mounted their horses and Keld had taken point, his wolven-hound Fen scouting ahead. Hammer had followed them, grumbling doleful growls, taking herself deeper into the woods, though never quite out of sound or sight.<\/p>

She feels grief for Sig, just like Cullen and Keld. More, maybe. They were rider and mount for more years than Cullen has drawn breath. Probably longer than Keld has lived, too.<\/em><\/p>

Keld strode to the bear, unbuckled the saddlebags she was carrying, then checked over her wounds and patted her neck. She rubbed her huge head against the huntsman, almost knocking him from his feet.<\/p>

‘Ah, lass, we miss her, too,’ Keld muttered, tugging on one of the bear’s ears. She seemed to like it, a mournful rumble escaping her throat.<\/p>

Fen loped into the clearing, eyes glowing in the firelight. The slate-grey hound dropped a hare at Keld’s feet.<\/p>

‘A hot meal for supper, then. Thank the stars, I’ve had enough of brot<\/em>,’ Cullen said, his obvious pleasure at the thought infectious.<\/p>

Keld skinned and gutted the hare and set it on a spit over the fire, fat dripping and hissing. A flapping of wings came from above as a white crow descended from the branches, landing on Cullen’s shoulder.<\/p>

‘I was wondering where you were, Rab,’ Cullen said to the crow.<\/p>

‘Rab watching, protecting friends<\/em>,’ Rab squawked, then hopped from Cullen’s shoulder to the pile of guts and offal that had been stripped from the hare. He pecked noisily.<\/p>

‘But the love of slime and foul things drew you back to us,’ Cullen observed.<\/p>

‘All must eat<\/em>,’ the bird croaked as it swallowed an eyeball.<\/p>

‘Fair point,’ Cullen said.<\/p>

The dead can’t eat,<\/em> Drem thought, his mind filling with his father, Olin, and Sig, grief a wave rising within him, whipped high by the winds of exhaustion. His body ached, everywhere, a thousand cuts and bruises from the fight at the mine, and from before that. He raised a hand to his throat, rubbed at the scar where he’d been hung from a tree in his courtyard, twice. A memory of Fritha’s face. Sweet, kind Fritha, with her blue eyes and freckles, a face he had trusted. Thought he’d begun to love.<\/p>

He didn’t feel like that now.<\/p>

I hate her, will see her dead for what she’s done.<\/em><\/p>

A deep anger uncoiled in his chest, buried deep beneath the pain of loss and exhaustion of the last few ten-nights, distant but never gone. Much of the anger was aimed at himself, at his stupidity for staying, for the choices he’d made, choices that had led to his father’s death, the loss of the Starstone Sword, the death of Sig.<\/p>

The enormity of it all threatened to engulf him.<\/p>

‘Drem, catch,’ a voice called out, snapping him from his reverie. Cullen had thrown something to him. Instinctively, Drem caught it, a long bundle. It was his sword, still in its scabbard and belt.<\/p>

My father’s sword, mine now.<\/em> He looked at the worn leather hilt and scabbard, drew it a little, stared at the four-pointed star carved into the blade, just below where it met the cross-guard. My da, a warrior of the Order of the Bright Star.<\/em><\/p>

So much of his world had changed in such a short time; he was still reeling upon the shifting ground of his life.<\/p>

‘Come on,’ Cullen said, drawing his own sword from the scabbard at his hip.<\/p>

‘What, are they near?’ Drem asked, panic whispering in his belly as his eyes searched the shadows.<\/p>

‘No, lad,’ Cullen said with a grin, though he was younger than Drem. ‘The sword dance, while our supper’s cooking.’ He paused, looked more serious for a moment. ‘I’ve known grief,’ he said, ‘know what it can do to you, here.’ He tapped a finger to his temple. ‘I can see it in you now. The sword dance always helped me, mayhap it’ll help you, too.’<\/p>

The sword dance. Traditional training for the Order.<\/em> Drem had rarely touched a sword in his twenty-one summers of life. While a trapper’s life required being intimately accustomed to the use of spear, knife and axe in order to survive in the wild, a sword was a warrior’s weapon, used to fight other warriors. There weren’t many warriors to be found in the great wild of the Desolation and Bonefells. Only four or five moons had passed since Olin had first introduced Drem to a sword and begun to teach him the rudiments of its use. Since then Drem had killed with it. A terrible knowledge, one that he felt deep in his bones, an aching sadness that weighed upon him. Drem hated to fight, he disliked the use of violence. But these were violent times, and as his da had said, better to be the one that lives than the one that dies.<\/p>

With a sigh, Drem followed Cullen to a clear space. Keld looked up from the fire-pit to watch them.<\/p>

‘Stooping falcon,’ Cullen said, raising his sword two-handed above his head.<\/p>

Drem drew his own blade, dropping the scabbard in the snow, sending long, distended shadows stretching across the glade.<\/p>

Stooping falcon,<\/em> he heard his father’s voice whisper in his head.<\/p>

Drem licked grease from his fingers; the weight of a hot meal in his belly spread some warmth through him. He blew a long breath out, savouring the feeling. Beside him Cullen smacked his lips and Keld threw a bone to Fen, who plucked it from the air and crunched it into splinters.<\/p>

‘I can’t believe Sig’s gone,’ Cullen whispered, staring at the flames. Drem saw a tear cutting a line through the dirt and grime on Cullen’s face. ‘All my life she’s seemed immortal, solid as the stone and timber of Dun Seren. She was a legend even before joining with my great-grandfather to found the Order.’ He bowed his head.<\/p>

Keld grunted something as he sat with a whetstone, five or six knives laid out before him, as well as three hand-axes and his sword.<\/p>

‘Poor Sig<\/em>,’ Rab cawed mournfully from a branch above them.<\/p>

‘I’ll take Gulla’s head and drink mead from his boiled skull while I stand upon a mound of his dead half-breeds and acolytes,’ Cullen snarled. Drem was learning that Cullen was not one to hide his feelings, whatever they were.<\/p>

‘Rab will peck Gulla’s other eye out<\/em>,’ Rab cawed.<\/p>

Cullen smiled up at the white crow.<\/p>

‘Aye, lad, Sig was the best of us,’ Keld said quietly. ‘More than that, she was my friend, saved my life more times than I can remember.’ He paused and spat on the fire. ‘She’ll be sorely missed.’ A silence fell amongst them, filled with the grate of whetstone on steel, the crackling of flames, the creak and scrape of branches. ‘You’ll have your vengeance, my friend,’ Keld said, eyes fixed on the flames of the fire. Drem didn’t think that the huntsman was talking to him or Cullen.<\/p>

‘I’m sorry,’ Drem whispered.<\/p>

Keld and Cullen just stared at Drem.<\/p>

‘For sending my message to Dun Seren, bringing both of you and Sig here.’ He put his head in his hands. ‘I wish it had been me that died, not Sig. Wish I’d left when my da said we should run, wish I’d never laid eyes on Fritha. If not for me, my father would still be alive, Sig, too.’<\/p>

‘You didn’t kill Olin or Sig,’ Keld grunted. ‘It was that winged bastard Gulla and his brood.’<\/p>

‘But if—’<\/p>

‘No,’ Keld snapped. ‘Everything’s easy looking back at the path you’ve trod, and it’s a fool’s game to try.’ He looked up from the blade in his lap, eyes fixing Drem. There was something wild in his gaze, untamed. ‘You’ve no guilt or shame in this, Drem. Think on this: what would be happening now if we hadn’t witnessed that foul ceremony last night?’<\/p>

Drem frowned, thinking about that. ‘Gulla would be transformed, still. A Revenant, Fritha called him.’<\/p>

‘They wouldn’t be needing to spend half a day burying their dead, or torching them, and that’s a fact,’ Cullen said.<\/p>

‘Cullen and Keld are mighty warriors<\/em>,’ Rab muttered. ‘And Drem,<\/em>’ the crow added, bobbing his head at Drem.<\/p>

Is that crow trying not to hurt my feelings?<\/em><\/p>

‘Aye, true enough,’ Keld agreed. ‘Gulla turned some of his acolytes into the same corruption as him,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘This is part of the Kadoshim’s plan, part of the Long War. So, I’ll ask you again, Drem, what would be happening now?’<\/p>

‘He’d be raising his army,’ Drem told them. ‘Sig said the Kadoshim are too few to win the war against the Ben-Elim, that they need numbers, warriors.’<\/p>

‘That’s right,’ Keld said, ‘and their acolytes are not enough. They’ve been experimenting at that mine, using dark magic to make those Feral beast-men, and now these new creatures, Revenants. Once Gulla has what he needs, he’ll fall upon the Banished Lands like a plague.’<\/p>

Drem shook his head. Part of him had known this, but in the madness of battle, the grief at losing Sig and the following exhaustion of flight, the weight of it had not settled in his mind. It was starting to make sense now.<\/p>

‘Without you, we would not have known anything about it,’ Cullen said, squeezing Drem’s shoulder.<\/p>

‘Aye. Long have we searched for Gulla, High Captain of the Kadoshim. He is second only to Asroth, and you led us to him. You’ve given mankind a chance,’ Keld said. ‘Course, they may still catch us and leave us bleeding out in the snow, or those Feral things might end up gnawing on our bones and sucking out our marrows, though I’ll take a few of them with us before I’ll let that happen.’ Keld patted his axe lovingly, face twisted in a maniacal grin. ‘But at least we have a chance now, and that’s because of you. Olin would be proud.’<\/p>

Drem felt a flare of warmth in his chest at that, though edged with the grief that every memory of his da brought with it.<\/p>

‘Though he wouldn’t be so proud of that,’ Keld said, nodding at Drem’s seax.<\/p>

‘What?’ Drem said, putting a hand on the bone-hilted knife at his belt.<\/p>

‘Oh, dear Elyon above,’ Cullen said.<\/p>

‘Can you even take it from its scabbard?’ Keld asked.<\/p>

Drem tried, but it was stuck. He looked closer, saw blood had crusted black on the scabbard, thick where the bone hilt met leather. He tugged and twisted the seax free. It was a big knife, more like a short-sword, as long as his forearm, the blade thick and single-edged, curving on the sharp side to a tapered point.<\/p>

‘Ach,’ Keld said with a disgusted twist of his lips. ‘You should have a ten-night on latrine duty at Dun Seren for that.’<\/p>

Shamefaced, Drem set to scouring the blade clean, taking a pumice stone and oil from a pouch on his belt. There were new notches in the blade, testament to the battle at the mine. Blood had congealed in the pits of the steel. Drem scraped it away, scrubbing hard with the pumice.<\/p>

‘Can I see that?’ Cullen asked beside him.<\/p>

Drem passed him the seax. The hilt was worn and smooth from Drem’s grip, a perfect fit for his fist.<\/p>

Cullen hefted the weapon, noting the weight, gave it a twirl in his fist, firelight gleaming red. Then he looked closer at the blade, with Keld leaning in as well. Cullen passed the seax to the huntsman.<\/p>

‘Did Olin forge this?’ Keld asked.<\/p>

‘Aye, he did,’ Drem said. He remembered his da in the smithy at Kergard during their first winter in the Desolation. That had been five years ago.<\/p>

Keld drew his thumb along the blade’s edge, blood welled. He let a few drops land on the flat and smeared them in. ‘Nochtann<\/em>,’ he said, and the steel of the blade seemed to shimmer and ripple.<\/p>

Drem blinked; carved runes were winking into life along the blade. He leaned forwards, staring.<\/p>

‘Where did they come from?’ Drem muttered.<\/p>

‘They’ve always been there.’ Cullen smiled.<\/p>

‘Aye, lad,’ Keld said. ‘Olin put them there, when he forged it.’<\/p>

‘How? Why have I never seen them?’<\/p>

‘We learn more than swordcraft at Dun Seren,’ Keld said with a wink.<\/p>

‘I haven’t, yet,’ Cullen said sullenly.<\/p>

Drem shook his head. He’d had a lot to come to terms with over the last couple of moons, foremost of which was the fact that there was much more to his da than he had ever known. It still hurt that Olin had kept so much hidden from Drem, but he knew it had been to protect him. Only when he had helped his father forge the Starstone Sword had he seen the depth of Olin’s mystery; he’d carved runes and cast spells of power over the new-forged blade. It had been quite a shock.<\/p>

‘I’ve learned my letters, but I can’t read that,’ Drem said. ‘I don’t understand. What language is it? What does it say?’<\/p>

‘It’s the first tongue,’ Keld said, ‘spoken once by giants and men alike, but now you’d call it Giantish. It says dilis cosantoir.<\/em> Faithful protector.’<\/p>

My da tried to protect me his whole life. And even now, from the grave, his protective hand lingers.<\/em><\/p>

Drem felt his eyes mist and, for a moment, almost sensed that his father was sitting beside him at the campfire.<\/p>

‘They are more than words,’ Keld said. ‘That blade will never break, and I’m guessing it’s never needed much sharpening.’ He gave the seax back to Drem.<\/p>

‘Now that you mention it, no, it doesn’t,’ Drem said. He looked at the seax with a sense of wonder, and as he watched, the runes faded and disappeared. He cast his whetstone along its edge a few times, but that was all it needed, then set to cleaning the scabbard of dried blood. After that he worked on the hand-axe at his belt, the misery that had settled upon him during the day’s journey a little eased by Keld and Cullen’s words, and by the thought of his da.<\/p>

The three men settled into a companionable silence. Hammer the giant bear sat and then lay down. Within heartbeats she was snoring like an avalanche in the Bonefells.<\/p>

‘How long until we reach Dun Seren?’ Drem asked.<\/p>

Keld rubbed a hand over his newly shaved head, a ruse both the huntsman and Cullen had used to infiltrate the acolytes at the starstone mine.<\/p>

‘Took us two ten-nights to get here,’ he muttered, ‘but it’ll take us longer going back, using the forests and Bonefells to hide us from anyone tracking.’<\/p>

The thought of Kadoshim and Feral beast-men sent a shiver through Drem. Last night’s fight had a dreamlike quality to it, parts of it blurred and ethereal, other parts too vivid and blood-bright. He shook the thoughts away, fingers reaching to his neck, searching for the drumbeat of his heart, which always gave him a sense of calm.<\/p>

‘Whatever it takes, we must get back to Dun Seren,’ Keld said. ‘Our High Captain Byrne must hear of all that’s happened. Gulla, Revenants, Feral beasts, a Starstone Sword.’<\/p>

‘Aye,’ Cullen agreed. ‘And she must be told about Gunil.’<\/p>

‘Gunil?’ Drem said.<\/p>

‘Aye,’ Keld grunted. ‘The giant that fought for Gulla. He belonged to the Order once, was brother to Varan, the giant lord of the Jotun Clan. Varan was killed over sixteen years ago and Gunil was thought to have been slain, too.’ Keld was silent a moment, lost in thought. ‘Gunil and Sig were . . . close.’<\/p>

And Sig fought him at the mine. That must have hurt her.<\/em> Drem felt the spark of a cold anger in his gut, another wrong that needed to be put right. He put Gunil on the list of those he would make answer for their deeds.<\/p>

‘Why does he fight for Gulla?’ Drem asked.<\/p>

Keld shrugged. ‘He was always . . . guarded, secretive. But I never suspected him of being a traitor.’ He grated his teeth and patted his axe. ‘It’s something he’ll have to answer to my axe for.’<\/p>

‘We have to reach Dun Seren,’ Drem said. ‘We cannot fail.’<\/p>

‘Aye,’ Keld agreed. ‘I’ve been thinking the same thing. Rab, I want you to set wing for Dun Seren. Tell Byrne what has happened, about Sig, and what we’ve seen. And tell her to send a few swords out to meet us. We’ll probably need all the help we can get.’<\/p>

‘Rab can’t go<\/em>,’ the crow squawked, sounding horrified. ‘Rab watching you, Rab protecting you.<\/em>’<\/p>

‘And a fine job you’ve been doing,’ Cullen said. ‘But it’s more important that Byrne knows what’s happening.’<\/p>

‘Rab know.<\/em>’ The bird’s head bobbed. ‘But Rab not want to leave friends.<\/em>’<\/p>

‘Come back to us when you’ve spoken to Byrne,’ Cullen said. ‘Lead those she sends to help us.’<\/p>

‘Yes, Rab will bring help<\/em>,’ the crow cawed, sounding somewhat appeased.<\/p>

‘Good,’ Keld said. ‘Leave in the morning, as soon as the sun rises.’<\/p>

Drem woke to the gentle sensation of snow falling upon his face. He sat up, pushing off one of the thick cloaks he’d packed when they had stopped briefly at his hold. Dawn was settling about them, darkness shifting to grey. Hammer was gone, and Keld’s bed mat was empty, the huntsman nowhere to be seen, but Cullen was curled and snoring beneath a bearskin cloak. Rab was roosting beside the red-haired warrior, his head tucked under a wing. As Drem stood and stretched, a myriad of aches clamouring for his attention, the crow poked his head out from under his wing and studied Drem with a bright, intelligent eye.<\/p>

‘Rab remember Olin<\/em>,’ the bird said. ‘Olin kind to Rab.<\/em>’<\/p>

Drem blinked at that; the thought of his father talking to crows was a strange one.<\/p>

Though it shouldn’t be, not after all I’ve learned of him.<\/em><\/p>

‘He was kind to me, too,’ Drem said.<\/p>

Keld appeared from the trees, his wolven-hound a blurred shadow deeper within the forest.<\/p>

‘No sight or smell of any pursuit. Still, we should be away.’ Keld nudged Cullen with his boot and tutted. ‘He’s a good lad to have at your back in a scrap, but he’d sleep and snore his way through the world’s ending.’<\/p>

‘I’m wide awake,’ Cullen’s muffled voice came from beneath his cloak. ‘Just resting my eyes.’<\/p>

‘Rab, you should be for Dun Seren, now.’<\/p>

‘Rab go search first, make sure friends are safe from Kadoshim.<\/em>’<\/p>

‘Aye, go on then.’<\/p>

They broke camp as Rab flew into the canopy above, were saddled and ready to go by the time the white crow returned to them.<\/p>

‘Rab see nothing behind<\/em>,’ the bird cawed.<\/p>

‘Good,’ Keld said. ‘Be on your way, then.’ He looked into the trees behind them, sniffed. ‘And fly fast.’<\/p>

Cullen sat up and threw the crow something – a remnant saved from last night’s meal. The crow caught it with a snap of his beak.<\/p>

‘Farewell, Rab’s friends<\/em>,’ the crow squawked as he flapped into the air, spiralled higher and disappeared through the branches above, the sky a snow-glare beyond.<\/p>

‘Let’s be off, then,’ Keld said.<\/p>

Drem stamped his feet and rubbed his gloved hands together, then climbed into his saddle. With a clink of harness the three men set off into the snow.<\/p> <\/section> <\/body>","format":"DG","formatDescription":"EPUB","formatDetail":"E200","illustrator":"","imprintDisplayName":"Pan","isFeatured":false,"isbn":"9781509813001","isbn10":"1509813004","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/extracts.panmacmillan.com\/site\/extr\/static\/jacketimages\/9781509813001.jpg","keynote":"","nextPageLink":null,"publicationDate":"2019-10-09T00:00:00Z","reader":"","relatedWorks":[{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781509812974","isbn10":"1509812970","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=903836&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=71093","publicationDate":"2018-11-22T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529020083","isbn10":"1529020085","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=912904&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=85417","publicationDate":"2018-12-11T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529020113","isbn10":"1529020115","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=912918&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=85418","publicationDate":"2018-12-11T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529020120","isbn10":"1529020123","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=912932&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=85419","publicationDate":"2018-12-11T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AC","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781529020137","isbn10":"1529020131","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=912946&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=85420","publicationDate":"2018-12-11T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"AJ","formatDescription":"Lossless Format Audio, WAV","formatDetail":"A104","isbn":"9781529009231","isbn10":"1529009235","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=917230&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=83898","publicationDate":"2018-12-20T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BB","formatDescription":"","formatDetail":"","isbn":"9781509812981","isbn10":"1509812989","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=903029&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=71091","publicationDate":"2018-11-20T00:00:00Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"Trade Paperback","formatDetail":"B106","isbn":"9781509812998","isbn10":"1509812997","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=903043&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=71092","publicationDate":"2018-11-20T00:00:00Z"}],"title":"A Time of Blood"},{"author":"John Scalzi","authorBiography":"John Scalzi is one of the most popular and acclaimed SF authors to emerge in the last decade. His debut, Old Man's War<\/i>, won him science fiction's John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer. His New York Times <\/i>bestsellers include The Last Colony<\/i>, Fuzzy Nation<\/i>, Lock In<\/i>, <\/i>and also Redshirts<\/i>, which won 2013's Hugo Award for Best Novel. Material from his widely read blog Whatever<\/i> has also earned him two other Hugo Awards. He lives in Ohio with his wife and daughter.","bicCodeList":"FLS,FIC028010","bisacCodeList":"FIC028030","estimatedReadingTimeMinutes":10,"extractHtml":"

\"Chapter<\/h2>

“Let’s be clear about what’s going on,” Deran Wu said. “It’s the end of civilization as we know it. And it’s going to be great for business.”<\/p>

On the top floor of the Guild House building, in the great conference room set aside for the use of the governing board of the House of Wu, where Deran Wu stood at the head of the immense table and offered this opening line, the governing board of the House of Wu, to a person, stared at Deran as if he had just ripped an enormous fart directly into their faces.<\/p>

Come on,<\/em> Deran thought, that was a great line.<\/em><\/p>

Deran gave no outward indication that he was displeased his line fell flat. There was no need to. For the first time in his career with the House of Wu, Deran was not particularly concerned with what the members of the governing board of the house—each of them one of his cousins to varying degrees of separation—thought about him, or his plans, or his snappy lines. This was because Deran was now managing director of the House of Wu.<\/p>

And not just managing director. That role had been previously contingent on the sufferance of the board of directors, whose opinion about anything,<\/em> from the competence of the managing director down to what should be served for lunch, could be most charitably described as fractious. Deran Wu’s managing directorship, on the other hand, was immune from board disapproval, because Jasin Wu, the previous managing director, had attempted a coup on the emperox. The emperox, quite reasonably, believed this cast suspicion on the entire governing board of the house.<\/p>

At least, this was the excuse.<\/p>

More accurately, Deran Wu made board noninterference in his managing directorship a condition of handing over every bit of information he had on said coup, which he had been an active participant in, up to and including the assassination of one of the managing directors of one of the other great merchant houses and the attempted murder of one of the emperox’s closest friends and rumored lover. The emperox, pressed for time and preferring the devil she knew, gave her assent.<\/p>

And here we were, at the first full House of Wu board meeting since the recent unpleasantness, with Deran, previously not necessarily in line for the managing directorship, ever, now running things, whether the board liked it or not.<\/p>

Standing there, it occurred to Deran that they probably didn’t like it at all. Which might explain why the line went over so poorly.<\/p>

“Why are we here?” came a question, from far down the very long table at which the directors, the cousins of Wu, sat.<\/p>

“Pardon?” Deran said, looking down the table to see which cousin it was.<\/p>

It was Tiegan Wu, who ran the small arms division of the House of Wu armaments concern. “I said, ‘Why are we here?’” she repeated. “You are now the dictator of the House of Wu. This is the governing board. Former<\/em> governing board, I should say. Now it’s powerless. What was the purpose of calling us here?”<\/p>

“Besides to gloat,” said Nichson Wu, who ran the automated security concepts division, i.e., robots with guns.<\/p>

“Yes, the gloating part had occurred to me,” Tiegan said, staring at Deran.<\/p>

“My cousins,” Deran said, gesturing in a way that he hoped conveyed reassurance. “I remind you that these are extraordinary times. Jasin, our former managing director, tried to overthrow the emperox. She was not convinced that the governing board was not complicit in the coup attempt. She does not know you as I know you.”<\/p>

“Does she know you’re completely full of shit?” asked Belment Wu, who ran warship construction. Belment had never been Deran’s biggest fan.<\/p>

“She knows I, at least, can be trusted,” Deran replied. This got a snort from Belment.<\/p>

Proster Wu, to the immediate right of Deran, cleared his throat. Proster was arguably the most powerful person in the room because, among other things, he oversaw the entire security division. Which meant, quite literally, that he had the most guns. Traditionally, the Wus who headed up the security division never stood for the general directorship. They didn’t have to. They were the powers behind the throne, as it were. When Proster cleared his throat, everyone, including Deran, shut up and looked at him.<\/p>

“Deran,” Proster said, “let’s not waste each other’s time, shall we? You’re managing director because you betrayed Jasin and blackmailed the emperox into giving you the job. She also let you cut all of us<\/em>”—Proster nodded to the board—“out of the decision-making for the House of Wu. Well played. But don’t pretend that we<\/em> don’t know that, or that we don’t know you were just as complicit as Jasin in that stupid attempted coup. Don’t insult our intelligence. Fair enough?”<\/p>

“Fair enough,” Deran said, after a moment.<\/p>

Proster nodded and turned to face the rest of the table. “As for why we’re here, it’s simple.” He pointed at Deran. “Our new managing director is not entirely stupid. He knows that even if the emperox has given him complete control of the House of Wu, that ‘control’ is an illusion. He doesn’t have a power base in this room. He doesn’t have enough allies outside of it. And as he correctly notes”—Proster swiveled back to Deran—“the end of human civilization is coming. He doesn’t have time<\/em> to wait us out. Not if he wants to implement the plans he so clearly has and needs our cooperation to realize. Accurate?”<\/p>

Not quite,<\/em> Deran thought. He was not nearly as unprepared as Proster thought. Deran had quite a little list of people, mostly other Wu cousins, who would be delighted to cut throats if it meant they were put in charge of an actual division at the House of Wu. Hell, Proster’s<\/em> head was first on the chopping block if it came to that. There wasn’t a Wu cousin in this room who wouldn’t strangle their own grandmother—and several other<\/em> grandmothers, why be stingy—in order to run security, especially now that the managing directorship was locked up for the near future.<\/p>

Proster had been in his directorship too long; he’d forgotten how hungry an ambitious cousin could be. He should have remembered this. He’d railroaded Finnu Wu, the previous security director, right out of her chair, and well done that had been, too. Finnu ended up retiring to another system entirely, so as not to be reminded, on a daily basis, of her ignominious unseating. Deran knew more about Proster’s own set of vices and missteps than probably anyone else, Proster included, and would be happy to share that information with whatever Wu cousin would step up.<\/p>

So, no, Deran was not quite<\/em> as without a power base or allies as Proster was attempting to posit. More accurately, Deran was confident he could acquire both, in time.<\/p>

But time wasn’t on his side. Proster was right about that.<\/p>

Time wasn’t on anyone’s side, anymore.<\/p>

So Deran nodded at Proster and said, “Accurate.”<\/p>

“We all understand each other,” Proster said. “Good. Then tell us, Deran, how the end of civilization is somehow going to be good for the House of Wu.”<\/p>

“It’s simple, really.” Deran said. “The House of Wu has monopolies on shipbuilding and armaments and security. What are the things that are going to be needed as the Flow streams continue to collapse?”<\/p>

“Food,” Tiegan Wu said.<\/p>

“Water,” said Nichson.<\/p>

“Medical supplies,” added Belment.<\/p>

Deran waved these away impatiently. “You’re missing the point.”<\/p>

“People starving is not the point?” asked Tiegan.<\/p>

Deran pointed. “Close. People starving is not the point. People who are afraid<\/em> of starving is. Over the next few years the Flow streams are going to collapse. People are going to be scared. This empire is called ‘the Interdependency’ after all. Every human habitation is by design dependent on others. This was fine when the Flow was stable. As it becomes less stable, so do the political and social systems of the Interdependency. Those systems are going to need to be propped up.”<\/p>

“By security forces and arms,” Proster said.<\/p>

“That’s right.”<\/p>

“Until the security forces get scared too, because their food is running out like everyone else’s,” Tiegan said.<\/p>

“Well, actually, we have that covered,” said Nichson, i.e., the “robots with guns” cousin.<\/p>

“The point is, unrest is coming,” Deran said. “Heightened unrest. Sustained unrest.”<\/p>

“And we want to make money off the chaos,” Tiegan said.<\/p>

“We want to offer the ability to hold off chaos as long as possible,” Deran replied. “The unrest will happen. It’s already happening. It’s inevitable. But ‘inevitable’ doesn’t have to mean immediate<\/em>. We can buy time for system governments. Or more accurately, they can buy that time from us. Because, yes, we want to make money off of that.”<\/p>

“For as long as the money is good,” said Lina Wu-Gertz, near the far end of the table. Lina ran the resale division, which sold used spaceships or the ships that were built but never used because the intended owner never took delivery. “When civilization ends, money’s not going to be any use.”<\/p>

“Civilization isn’t going to end,” Deran said.<\/p>

“Did I miss something?” Belment said. “Did you not just stand there and say civilization is ending?”<\/p>

“I said, ‘civilization as we know it.’” Deran reached down to the table, picked up a remote, and pressed a button on it. The wall behind him came to life, showing a green and blue planet.<\/p>

“That’s End,” Proster observed.<\/p>

“That’s civilization,” Deran corrected.<\/p>

Proster chuckled at this. “You haven’t been to End, then.”<\/p>

“End is where our civilization is going to survive,” Deran said. “It’s the one system in the Interdependency that has a planet that’s capable of sustaining human life on its own. And from what the emperox’s scientists tell us, it’s the last place that will have a Flow stream going into it from Hub. Civilization will continue there.” He looked down the table to Lina Wu-Gertz. “Along with its money.”<\/p>

“Civilization will survive there,” Proster said. “As long as it can get<\/em> there.”<\/p>

Deran smiled at this. “Rumor is, we build starships.”<\/p>

“Not that<\/em> many starships,” Belment said.<\/p>

“We need to save civilization. Not every single person in it. Although I’m sure everyone in this room, and all the people they care about, will find their way to End, sooner or later.” This comment gave everyone a momentary pause.<\/p>

“So your plan is spaceships for some, and riot control for the rest,” Tiegan said, after the moment had passed.<\/p>

“I’m not the one who is making the Flow collapse,” Deran replied. “I’m just aware of what comes because of it. And no, the plan<\/em> is not about the spaceships and the riot control. The plan, and what I need this board to support me on, is to start building<\/em> the spaceships and riot control now,<\/em> on a massive scale, before the orders come in.”<\/p>

“That’s presuming the orders come in,” Proster said.<\/p>

“They’re coming,” Deran assured him. “And we<\/em> don’t have to wait for governments and the rest of the merchant houses to realize the end is near. We have a sales force. They will remind<\/em> them. I want to build the ships and arms now,<\/em> so that our salespeople can say to our clients that we have the stock ready to go. No delay between order and delivery except shipping. These days that will make the difference between a sale, or not.”<\/p>

“Offer them easy terms on the sale and they’ll take it,” Belment said.<\/p>

Deran shook his head. “No. Cash on the barrelhead from now on. For everything.”<\/p>

“That’s crazy,” Belment said.<\/p>

“It’s not crazy. It’s the end of civilization as we know it; we don’t have time<\/em> to collect on installment plans.”<\/p>

“That’s showing our hand,” Proster observed.<\/p>

“The point<\/em> is to show our hand,” Deran said. “If they think we<\/em> don’t think there’s time for installment plans, they’re going to prioritize the short term, too. They have the money; they just have to decide they need to give it to us, first.” He looked over to Lina Wu-Gertz. “And if they think civilization is ending and money is going to be worthless anyway, they’re not going to mind as much giving it away. They’ll think they’re getting one over on us.”<\/p>

Proster nodded. “So we build ships and arms now—”<\/p>

“While it’s still cheap and easy, because as more Flow streams collapse, it will be more expensive to get materiel, and harder to source as well,” Deran interjected.<\/p>

“—and take as much as we can get up front, and then as the Flow streams collapse, move our base of operations to End, where the money will still have value and the remainder of civilization will still need arms and spaceships.”<\/p>

“That’s the plan,” Deran said. “Basically. Broad strokes.”<\/p>

Proster nodded, and then looked down the table, where there were other nods, even from Belment and Tiegan. Then he looked back at Deran.<\/p>

“Looks like you’re right: the end of civilization is going to be good for business,” he said.<\/p>

“Yes,” Deran said. “I think so.”<\/p>

“That was a good line, by the way.”<\/p>

Deran beamed. “Thank you, Proster.”<\/p>

The door to the conference room opened, and Deran’s assistant Witka popped her head in to announce lunch; the rolling tables came in, stacked with food and drinks. The board got up and served themselves, talking to one another as they did so. Deran’s assistant came over to him with a cup of his favorite variety of hot tea, which she kept for him in a stash at her desk.<\/p>

“How did it go?” Witka asked, handing him the cup.<\/p>

“I think I may have just pulled it off,” Deran said, and took a sip. “They seemed to understand what I wanted to do with the plan.”<\/p>

“Well, it’s a good plan.”<\/p>

“I thought so,” Deran admitted.<\/p>

“I’ll get you something to eat.” Witka wandered over to the tables of food.<\/p>

Deran took another sip of tea and basked in his accomplishments for the day. He didn’t need the board to do all the things he had outlined to them—indeed he had already started the process of moving much of the house’s financial holdings to End—but having their agreement made things better. Easier. Simpler. He wouldn’t have to fight them as much, and he wouldn’t have to replace as many of them in their jobs as he’d suspected he would have to. Not yet, at least. He did have a little bit of time. Or at least he did now.<\/p>

Yes, this is all coming together nicely,<\/em> Deran thought, took another sip of his tea, and collapsed dead, teacup tumbling beside him.<\/p>

Witka, turning back to him with a plate of food, screamed, dropped the plate to the floor and ran to Deran’s body. The rest of the board stood there, silently staring at the spectacle. After a minute Witka fled from the room, calling for medical help.<\/p>

The board members continued staring at Deran’s body.<\/p>

“Well, I<\/em> didn’t do that,” Belment said, eventually.<\/p>

“Did anyone else?” Proster asked.<\/p>

There was a general murmur of denial.<\/p>

“Huh,” Proster said, and took a bite of his bread roll.<\/p>

“So, are we still going through with his plan?” Tiegan asked.<\/p>

Medics burst into the room before anyone could answer.<\/p> <\/section> <\/body>","format":"DG","formatDescription":"EPUB","formatDetail":"E200","illustrator":"","imprintDisplayName":"Tor","isFeatured":false,"isbn":"9781509835379","isbn10":"1509835377","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/extracts.panmacmillan.com\/site\/extr\/static\/jacketimages\/9781509835379.jpg","keynote":"","nextPageLink":null,"publicationDate":"2019-10-04T00:00:00Z","reader":"","relatedWorks":[{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"Trade Paperback","formatDetail":"B106","isbn":"9781509835362","isbn10":"1509835369","jacketUrl":"","publicationDate":"2021-03-30T12:04:12Z"},{"format":"BC","formatDescription":"B-format paperback","formatDetail":"B105","isbn":"9781509835355","isbn10":"1509835350","jacketUrl":"https:\/\/www.biblioimages.com\/macmillanuk-dam\/getimage.aspx?class=books&assetversionid=1045246&cat=default&size=origjpg&id=73530","publicationDate":"2019-10-04T00:00:00Z"}],"title":"The Last Emperox"}],"NextPageUrl":"","PageCount":1}