Survival of Thomas Ford, The by John A. A. Logan Read Free Book Online

was this later wave that started the science that led to the atomic bomb. Pwoooooossshhhhhhh . You know, Hiroshima , Nagasaki .”
    “Aye.”
    “It’s all war eh?” said Jimmy. “The scientists hating the other scientists. The bombs being dropped. Oh, and this bald guy was saying about how the main guy in the new wave of scientists had been on a week’s holiday, holed up in a hotel room with an ex-girlfriend, shagging, and it was then that he had the ideas for the new maths and that.”
    Lorna felt Jimmy’s hand on her hip.
    “Like shagging gave him the idea, for all the stuff that led to the nuclear bomb eh?” he said.
    Jimmy kissed her in the total absence of light.
    “All just a big bang eh?” said Jimmy. “Big bangs and fucking accidents.”
    “Accidents?”
    “Aye. Like eh, chaos theory and that. The bald guy on TV, he was saying like, how Einstein just hated the idea of everything being just accidents. But I like it, man. Fucking chaos. Like the universe doing kung fu with itself all day eh? Fucking bombs going whoosh and cities full of people going to dust, man. Fucking cars falling through the air into water.”
    “I need to sleep for work, Jimmy , OK ?”
    “Aye. But that Einstein was talking shite eh? There’s nothing wrong with chaos. Accidents happen. So what? There’s nothing to be scared of. That’s right eh?”
    “Let me sleep.”
    “But you see what I mean? It’s not our fault there’s accidents, not if everything around us is chaos anyway, man, eh? Like, imagine if cars were atoms eh, rushing around, they’d be bound to get in each others way eh, it wouldn’t be any one particular atom or car’s fault would it, if there was a crash? No, it’d just be an inevitable consequence eh, of how the whole thing is set up. You see? No-one’s fault.”
    “Aye, I see. Go to sleep.”
    Jimmy sniffed. He listened to Lorna’s breathing deepen as she fell asleep.
    “Not my fault,” he said, into the darkness.

Chapter Seven
     
    Thomas Ford was dressed early, sitting upright in the chair by the bed. He was regretting that he’d arranged with Finlay to be picked up at the hospital. It would have been better to just get a taxi by himself, back to the house. But then again he knew he was still unsteady on his feet, safer to fall with Finlay there. By the time Thomas saw Finlay’s head coming through the double doors at the end of the ward he had been ready to just get up and leave on his own anyway though, fall or not.
    As Finlay drove down towards the roundabout, Thomas felt a kind of terror. It was like a sickly sweet insanity, lapping at the edges of his soul in waves of suggestion. Obviously, Thomas told himself, this is what it has to be like, the first time in a car since the Toyota went into the water. He sat stiffly in Finlay’s passenger seat, trying not to look crazy. He felt his eyeballs swivelling here and there, trying to see too much, too fast. He felt his throat doing rapid swallowing motions.
    “Alright there Thomas?”
    Thomas blinked and stared straight ahead. He was surprised to find he couldn’t bring himself to turn his neck and look back at Finlay. Something in him was jammed. He could only sniff and nod as Finlay indicated right and took the car into the long, smooth turn.
    Soon they were passing through streets full of people, faces, crowds it seemed to Thomas. There had been plenty of people coming and going at the hospital, but this was different. At the hospital everyone had shared a unifying context. Here, outside the car windows, was humanity in the wild. Many of these pairs of eyes would have read about the crash, seen photographs of Lea and himself. Somehow that thought made the crash real in a horrible new way. Thomas thought he recognised a face in the crowd.
    “Slow down Finlay,” said Thomas suddenly.
    “Sorry man. I can’t go slower here. We’re packed in tight with this traffic.”
    Thomas twisted his neck, trying to look back. The thick black hair