Previous: Chapter 7. Spring
Chapter 8. Summer
Wissant, June 2062
Dad had announced his visit well in advance. Like Mama, he’d arrived in the afternoon at Pihen station and walked to Wissant. They’d had something to eat in what Muir thought was a rather forced atmosphere, although Hélène and Sarah had been genuinely glad to see Diederik again. Dad himself had been all smooth and mellow but Muir wasn’t fooled.
They had gone onto the beach the four of them. At some point, Muir and Dad had sat down on the sand; in unspoken understanding, Hélène and Sarah had walked on. Dad had said nothing, and a rather awkward few minutes had followed, until Muir couldn’t hold out any longer and burst out, “Well, Dad, what can you possibly have done that was so bad you had to leave us all for more than ten years?”
“Ten years … Aye, it’s been that long. And really, Muir, not that it helps you any but I am very sorry it had to be this way.”
“You’re right, it doesn’t help. Come on, Dad, what did you do?”
Rather than answering directly, Diederik looked towards a rusted tangle of rebar at the foot of a nearby dune. “That was a German bunker, wasn’t it? Ever wondered what caused it to turn to sand?”
Muir was getting really annoyed. Even Dad knew very well what had happened to all the concrete. He was about to make a cutting rejoinder when he saw that Dad was now gazing at him intently, with a strange gleam in his eye. “Well, did you? Never wondered why the Erskine bridge was the first to fall? Or how it spread so quickly?”
Muir was dumbfounded. Suddenly, he understood, and at the same time he saw that he should have understood long ago. All blood left his face.
“You – it was you? You didn’t! How could you?”
Slowly, he recovered and now his confusion turned to anger. “You are a mass murderer! Thousands of people died because of what you did!”
Diederik said nothing for a while, staring at the sea. Then he said quietly, “My parents were amongst those who died. ‘Stir not the bitterness in the cup that I mixed for myself.’ I make no apology. What I did was a terrible thing.”
Muir deflated a bit. Dad looked utterly miserable, and he couldn’t sustain his anger. He remembered what Mama had told him. The movement had approved Dad’s plan, and it had worked to defeat the fascists worldwide, and avoid catastrophic warming. Rationally, he knew it had been the right thing to do, but it was still awful to think his Dad had in cold blood created a bioweapon and unleashed it on the world. They sat in silence for a very long time. A way off, Hélène was helping Sarah to build a sandcastle. The tide was coming in.
Next: Chapter 9. Summer