Albedo Chapter One
Saline, Snow at sea
Clear as night, clear as day, the breath within falls away,
Clear as breath, smooth as silk, slick like milk,
Slick like milk, dripping slowly, lowly paper daubed holy,
Daub the man, write the sin, paint it on his skin,
Darkest day, dark like night is, the breath within rises,
Dark as breath, jagged, heaving. You'll be leaving.
The skipper of the barge shifted his weight from feet to foot, met the two of them only minutes ago.
They came to him and the two of them proposed he take them both out onto the open waters and do so
discreetly in the low dusk. The rain had been turning from mist to clear pebble to soft sleet. The
both of them from the floor up in black, boots and hoods and the tall man's face pale white, wrapped
in gauze and bandage, black bruising around the eyes peeking from behind the cladding. Pale brown
mud, chocolate spatter, up the side of the littler one. A glimpse of feminine features when she
finally looked up, the tall one doing the little talking required. The money wasn't really enough,
the weather being what it was, but no one else was paying him. He didn't have far to go anyway.
The river had fjörded inland over the years, lapping up past his garden gate. Now someone in the
local up the road had probably recommended him. He hadn't asked and wasn't fussed. Just took
the transferred cash and invited them aboard. Setting out within ten.
Skipper of the barge's heart started a slight tremor on the way out of the dock when the tall one
started rooting in his bag for something - immediately expecting a weapon. The stranger's battered
face invoking the rites of violence. The thin little screen retrieved - with a sigh from
the skipper - illuminated his battered mug from below. His dark hood pulled down, allowing his
head free movement. Spikes of hair and ear pasted haphazardly onto the winding white. He was navigating,
little numbers changing at the top of the screen, little arrow directing the way. SOTB caught the
little one staring over, and realised he'd been doing the same.
All that remained of the day's dying light was a keen blue ember on the surface of the sky, crept
out from below the line of clouds hanging over the landscape, dusting now with proper snow. The cold
air streaming in through the open sides of the cabin. The singing of the electric motor matched the
slapping of the waves, ducking at each auditory crest like side-chained sound. Boat in low gear,
slow moving but building momentum out and away from the picture of the land moving away in the rear
window's spattered glass. The prow separating the sea and the space above it like a plow turning
earth. Furrows of the universe reeking of soil in the wake. Coming closer to the little screen's
destination, the tall one pointing the way. Dark waves breaking against the soft salt grey
shuddering away to become a solid structure upon eerily still water. A ring of calm. The girl now,
with glances through a set of small binoculars, searching. Rounding the building slowly, she said
under her breath "It's been searched, but that doesn't mean it's not still in there." To the SOTB
now "Could you bring us close?"
At an alcove in the wall, they step out of the wheelhouse and onto something floating in the water.
A bridge between the barge and the building, a momentary turn to ask Skipper to stay and wait a
while. The only thing he could see of them was their bright white headlamps once they flicked on.
He tracked their progress through the building by the reflected light shining through his porthole,
dissipating into the blank night beyond. Catching odd reflections, split into shreds of coloured
light, glints of diverse concentrations. His imagination goaded him with images of a room of
floating prisms. He could hear their low voices, the sound of the waves held back by the patch of
uncanny stillness surrounding the building. The airborne taste of salt was beginning to mingle with
the rising bile of fear. The bright overhead lighting in the wheelhouse revealed a shred of police
tape at the entrance as the craft drifted near. He could hear the whine of a motor echoing inside
the husk, and something like the sound of a bellows blustering into life.
A few tense minutes later, when all of the inside noises had died back to a kind of silence, the
sound of approaching drones filled the air. Many multi-bladed aircraft zipping in from the direction
of the land. The skipper began trying to start up his motor, but fumbled the keys and went
scrabbling across the floor after them. Spotlights and no doubt trained cameras descended on the
scene in no time, hovering above ominously. The SOTB hunkered down, his heart pounding, his mind
racing for the way he might explain away a night or two in a cell to his wife once he returned from
this ordeal. His passengers emerged now, out of the darkness carrying a large metal trunk between
them, heads down. The whole flock of drones trained on them now, surging forward, blue lights
flipped on. The first blip of a shore-bound pilot's relayed message sounded out in huge decibels
before the tall man raised an arm. Instantaneously all those looming machines bricked and plummeted
into the ocean, a vulnerability triggered aboard them all to render them as dead. A satisfying
gallop of splashes rang as they met the surface. The old pseudo-silence returned and was only broken
by the thunk of the crate hitting the deck and the skipper starting back his engine to return them
to shore.
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